LETTER LVIII.
To Mrs. Montford.
Philadelphia, October 12.
Dear Madam,
How shall I thank you for the kind and delicate manner
in which you have complied with my request. You will
not be surprised, nor, I hope, offended, that I am emboldened
to address you once more.
I see that I need not practise towards you a reserve, at
all times foreign to my nature, and now more painful than
at any other time, as my soul is torn with emotions, which
I am at liberty to disclose to no other human creature.
Will you be my friend? Will you permit me to claim your
sympathy and consolation? As I told you before, I am thoroughly
acquainted with your merits, and one of the felicities
which I promised myself from a nearer alliance with
Mr. Colden, was that of numbering myself among your
friends.
You have deprived me of some hope, by the information
you give; but you have at least put an end to a suspense
more painful than the most dreadful certainty could be.
You say that you know all our concerns. In pity to my
weakness, will you give me some particulars of my friend.
I am extremely anxious to know many things in your power
to communicate.
Perhaps you know the contents of my last letter to him,
and of his answer. I know you condemn me. You think
me inconsiderate and cruel in writing such a letter, and my
heart does not deny the charge. Yet my motives were
not utterly ungenerous. I could not bear to reduce the
man I loved to poverty. I could not bear that he should
incur the violence and curses of his father. I fondly
thought myself the only obstacle to reconcilement, and was
willing, whatever it cost me, to remove that obstacle.
What will become of me, if my fears should now be realized,
if the means which I used, with no other view than
to reconcile him to his family, should have driven him away
from them and from his country forever? I thank my God
that I was capable of abandoning him on no selfish or personal
account. The maledictions of my own mother; the
scorn of the world; the loss of friends, reputation and fortune,
weighed nothing with me. Great as these evils were,
I could have cheerfully sustained them for his sake. What
I did, was in oblivion of self; was from a dutious regard to
his genuine and lasting happiness. Alas! I have, perhaps,
mistaken the means, and cruel will, I fear, be the penalty
of my error.
Tell me, my dear friend, was not Colden reconciled to
his father before he went? When does he mean to return?
What said he, what thought he of my conduct? Did he
call me ungrateful and capricious? Did he vow never to
see or think of me more?
I have regarded the promise that I made to the elder
Colden and to my mother, as sacred. The decease of the
latter has, in my own opinion, absolved me from any obligation,
except that of promoting my own happiness, and that
of him whom I love. I shall not now reduce him to indigence,
and that consequence being precluded, I cannot
doubt of his father's acquiescence.
Ah! dear Madam! I should not have been so long patient,
had I not, as it now appears, been lulled into a fatal
mistake. I could not taste repose till I was, as I thought,
certainly informed that he continued to reside in his father's
house. This proof of reconciliation, and the silence which,
though so near him, he maintained towards me, both before
and subsequently to my mother's death, contributed to
persuade me that his condition was not unhappy, and especially,
that either his resentment or his prudence had made
him dismiss me from his thoughts.
I have lately, to my utter astonishment, discovered that
Colden, immediately after his last letter to me, went upon
some distant voyage, whence, though a twelvemonth has
since passed, he has not yet returned. Hence the boldness
of this address to you, whom I know only by rumor.
You will, I doubt not, easily imagine to yourself my feelings,
and will be good enough to answer my inquiries, if you
have any compassion for your
