LETTER LXII.
To Mrs. Montford.
Banks of Delaware, Sept. 5.
Be not anxious for me, Mary. I hope to experience
very speedy relief from the wholesome airs that perpetually
fan this spot. Your apprehension from the influence of
these scenes on my fancy are groundless. They breathe
nothing over my soul but delicious melancholy. I have
done expecting and repining, you know. Four years have
passed since I was here; since I met your brother under
these shades.
I have already visited every spot which has been consecrated
by our interviews. I have found the very rail which,
as I well remember, we disposed into a bench, at the skirt
of a wood, bordering a stubble field. The same pathway
through the thicket, where I have often walked with him, I
now traverse morning and night.
Be not uneasy, I repeat, on my account. My present
situation is happier than the rest of the world can afford. I
tell you I have done repining. I have done sending forth
my views into an earthly futurity. Anxiety, I hope, is now
at an end with me.
What do you think I design to do? I assure you it is no
new scheme. Ever since my mother's death, I have
thought of it at times. It has been my chief consolation. I
never mentioned it to you because I knew you would not
approve it. It is this.
To purchase this farm, and take up my abode upon it for
the rest of my life. I need not become farmer, you know.
I can let the ground to some industrious person, upon easy
terms. I can add all the furniture and appendages to this
mansion, which my convenience requires. Luckily Sandford
has for some time, entertained thoughts of parting with
it, and I believe he could not find a more favorable purchaser.
You will tell me that the fields are sterile, the barn small,
the stable crazy, the woods scanty. These would be powerful
objections to a mere tiller of the earth, but they are
none to me.
'Tis true, it is washed by a tide-water. The bank is low,
and the surrounding country sandy and flat, and you may
think I ought rather to prefer the beautiful variety of hill
and dale, luxuriant groves and fertile pastures which abound
in other parts of the country. But you know, my friend,
the mere arrangement of inanimate objects, wood, grass,
and rock, is nothing. It owes its power of bewitching us to
the memory, the fancy and the heart. No spot of earth
can possibly teem with as many affecting images as this;
for here it was—
But my eyes already overflow. In the midst of these
scenes, remembrance is too vivid to allow me thus to descant
on them. At a distance I could talk of them without
that painful emotion, and now it would be useless repetition,
Have I not, more than once, related to you every dialogue;
described every interview?
God bless you, dear Mary, and continue to you all your
present happiness.
Don't forget to write to me. Perhaps some tidings may
reach you—down! thou flattering hope! thou throbbing
heart, peace! He is gone. These eyes will never see him
more. Had an angel whispered the fatal news in my wakeful
ear, I should not more firmly believe it.
And yet—but I must not heap up disappointments for
myself. Would to heaven there was no room for the
least doubt; that, one way or the other, his destiny was
ascertained.
How agreeable is your intelligence, that Mr. Cartwright
has embarked, after taking cheerful leave of you. It grieves
me, my friend, that you do not entirely approve of my conduct
towards that man. I never formally attempted to justify
myself. 'Twas a subject on which I could not give utterance
to my thoughts. How irksome is blame from those
we love! there is instantly suspicion that blame is merited.
A new process of self-defence is to be gone over, and ten to
one, but that after all our efforts, there are some dregs at the
bottom of the cup.
I was half willing to found my excuse on the hope of
the wanderer's return; but I am too honest to urge a false
plea. Besides, I know that certainty, in that respect, would
make no difference, and would it not be fostering in him
a hope that my mind might be changed in consequence of
being truly informed respecting your brother's fate?
I persuade myself that a man of Cartwright's integrity
and generosity cannot be made lastingly unhappy by me.
I know but of one human being more excellent. Though
his sensibility be keen, I trust to his fortitude.
It is true, Mary, what you have heard. Cartwright was
my school-fellow. When we grew to an age, that made it
proper to frequent separate schools, he did not forget me.
The schools adjoined each other, and he used to resist all
the enticements of prison-bass and cricket, for the sake of
waiting at the door of our school, till it broke up, and then
accompanying me home.
These little gallant offices made him quite singular among
his compeers, and drew on him and on me, a good deal of
ridicule. But he did not mind it. I thought him, and
every body else thought him, a most amiable and engaging
youth, though only twelve or thirteen years old.
'Tis impossible to say what might have happened, had
he not gone with his mother to Europe; or rather, it is
likely, I think, that our fates, had he stayed among us, would
in time have been united. But he went away when I was
scarcely fourteen. At parting, I remember, we shed a
great many tears and exchanged a great many kisses; and
promises not to forget. And that promise never was broken
by me. He was always dear to my remembrance.
Time has only improved all the graces of the boy. I
will not conceal from you, Mary, that nothing but a preoccupied
heart has been an obstacle to his wishes. If that
impediment had not existed, my reverence for his worth,
my gratitude for his tenderness would have made me comply.
I will even go further; I will say to you, though my
regard to his happiness will never suffer me to say it to him,
that if three years more pass away, and I am fully assured
that your brother's absence will be perpetual, and Cartwright's
happiness is still in my hands—that then—I possibly
may—but I am sure that, before that time, his hand and his
heart will be otherwise disposed of. Most sincerely shall I
rejoice at the last event.
All are well here. My friend is as good natured and
affectionate as ever; and sings as delightfully, and plays as
adroitly. She humors me with all my favorite airs, twice
a day. We have no strangers; no impertinents to intermeddle
in our conversations and mar our enjoyments.
You know what turn my studies have taken, and what
books I have brought with me. 'Tis remarkable what unlooked
for harvests arise from small and insignificant germs.
My affections have been the stimulants to my curiosity.
What was it induced me to procure maps and charts, and
explore the course of the voyager over seas and round
capes? There was a time when these objects were wholly
frivolous and unmeaning in my eyes, but now they gain my
whole attention.
When I found that my happiness was embarked with
your brother in a tedious and perilous voyage, was it possible
to forbear collecting all the information attainable respecting
his route, and the incidents likely to attend it? I
got maps, and charts, and books of voyages, and found a
melancholy enjoyment in connecting the incidents and objects
which they presented, with the destiny of my friend.
The pursuit of this chief and most interesting object, has
brought within view, and prompted me to examine a thousand
others, on which, without this original inducement, I
should never have bestowed a thought.
The map of the world exists in my fancy in a most vivid
and accurate manner. Repeated meditation on displays of
shoal, sand-bank, and water, has created a sort of attachment
to geography for its own sake. I have often reflected
on the innumerable links in the chain of my ideas between
my first eager examination of the route by sea between
New York and Tobago, and yesterday's employment, when
I was closely engaged in measuring the marches of Frederick
across the mountains of Bohemia.
How freakish and perverse are the rovings of human curiosity!
The surprise which Miss Betterton betrayed, when,
in answer to her inquiries, as to what study and what book
I prized the most, you told her that I thought of little else
than of the art of moving from shore to shore across the
water, and that I pored over Cook's voyages so much, that
I had gotten the best part of them by rote, was very natural.
She must have been puzzled to conjecture what charms
one of my sex could find in the study of maps and voyages.
Once I should have been just as much puzzled myself.
Adieu.
