Jane Talbot Part 23

An upright demeanour, a self-acquitting conscience, are not sufficient for our safety. Calumny and misapprehension have no bounds to their rage and their activity.

How little did my thoughtless heart imagine the horrid images which beset the minds of my mother and my husband! Happy ignorance! Would to Heaven it had continued! Since knowledge puts it not in my power to remove the error, it ought to be avoided as the greatest evil.

While I know my own motives, and am convinced of their purity, let me hold in contempt the opinions of the world respecting me. They can never have a basis in truth. Be they favourable or otherwise, they cannot fail to be built on imperfect knowledge. The praise of others is therefore as little to be sought or prized as their censure to be dreaded or shunned.

Heaven knows how much I value the favour and affection of my mother; but, clear as it is, I must give it up. How can I retain it? I cannot confute the charge. I must not acknowledge a guilt that does not belong to me. Added, therefore, to her belief of my guilt, must be the persuasion of my being a hardened and obdurate criminal.

What will she think of my last two letters? The former tacitly confessing my unworthiness and promising compliance with all her wishes, the next a.s.serting my innocence and refusing her generous offers. My first she will probably ascribe to an honourable compunction, left to operate without your control. In the second she will trace your influence. Left to myself, she will imagine me capable of acting as she wishes; but, guided by you, she will lose all hopes of me, and resign me to my fate.

Indeed, I have given up my mother. There is no other alternative but that of giving up you; and in this case I can hesitate, indeed, but I cannot decide against you.

I am placed in a very painful situation. I feel as if every hour spent under this roof was an encroachment on another's rights. My mother's bounty is not withheld, merely because my rebellion against her will is not completed; but I that feel no doubt, and whom mere consideration of her pleasure, important as it is, will never make swerve from my purpose, --ought I to enjoy goods to which I have forfeited all t.i.tle? Ought I to wait for an express command to begone from her doors? Ought I to lay her under the necessity of declaring her will?

Yet if I change my lodgings immediately, without waiting her directions, will she not regard my conduct as contemptuous? Shall I not then be a rebel indeed?--one that scorns her favour, and is eager to get rid of all my obligations?

How painful is such a situation! yet there is no escaping from it, that I can see. I must, perforce, remain as I am. But perhaps her next letter will throw some light upon my destiny. I suppose my positive a.s.sertions will show her that a change of purpose cannot be hoped for from me.

The bell rings. Perhaps it is the postman, and the intelligence I wish for has arrived. Adieu.

J. TALBOT.

Letter x.x.xVII

_To the Same_

November 26.

What shall I say to thee, my friend? How shall I communicate a resolution fatal, as thy tenderness will deem it, to thy peace, yet a resolution suggested by a heart which has, at length, permitted all selfish regards to be swallowed up by a disinterested consideration of thy good?

Why did you conceal from me your father's treatment of you, and the consequences which your fidelity to me has incurred from his rage? I will never be the cause of plunging you into poverty so hopeless. Did you think I would? and could you imagine it possible to conceal from me forever his aversion to me?

How much misery would your forbearance have laid up in store for my future life! When fate had put it out of my power to absolve you from his curses, some accident would have made me acquainted with the full extent of the sufferings and contumelies with which, for my sake, he had loaded you.

But, thanks to Heaven, I am apprized in time of the truth. Instead of the bearer of a letter from my mother, whose signal at the door put an end to my last letter, it was my mother herself.

Dear and welcome as those features and that voice once were, now would I rather have encountered the eyes of a basilisk and the notes of the ill-boding raven.

She hastened with all this expedition to thank me; to urge me to execute; to a.s.sist me in performing the promises of my first letter. The second, in which these promises were recalled, never reached her hand. She left New York, as it now appeared, before its arrival. The interval had been spent on the road, where she had been detained by untoward and dangerous accidents.

Think, my friend, of the embarra.s.sments attending this unlooked-for and inauspicious meeting. Joy at my supposed compliance with her wishes, wishes that imaged to themselves my happiness, and only mine, enabled her to support the hards.h.i.+ps of this journey. Fatigue and exposure, likely to be fatal to one of so delicate, so infirm a const.i.tution, so lately and imperfectly recovered from a dangerous malady, could not deter her.

Fondly, rapturously did she fold to her bosom the long-lost and late- recovered child. Tears of joy she shed over me, and thanked me for the tranquil and serene close which my return to virtue, as she called my acquiescence, had secured to her life. That life would at all events be short; but my compliances, if they could not much protract it, would at least render its approaching end peaceful.

All attempts to reason with my mother were fruitless. She fell into alarming agonies when she discovered the full import of that coldness and dejection which my demeanour betrayed. Fatigued and indisposed as she was, she made preparation to depart; she refused to pa.s.s one night under the same roof,--her _own_ roof,--and determined to begone, on her return home, the very next morning.

Will not your heart comprehend the greatness of this trial, and pity and excuse a momentary wavering, a yielding irresolution? Yet it was but momentary. An hour's solitude and deep reflection fortified my heart against the grief and supplication even of my mother.

Next day she was more calm. She condescended to reason, to expostulate.

She carefully shunned the mention of atrocious charges. She dwelt only on the proofs which your past life and your own confessions had afforded of unsteady courage and unwarrantable principles; your treatment of the Woodbury girl; your correspondence with Thomson; your ign.o.ble sloth; your dependence upon others; your helplessness.

From these accusations I defended you in silence. My heart was your secret advocate. I did not verbally repel any of these charges. That of inglorious dependence for subsistence upon others I admitted; but I could not forbear urging that this dependence was on a father. A father who was rich; who had no other child than yourself; whose own treatment of you had planted and reared in you this indisposition to labour; to whose property your t.i.tle, ultimately, could not be denied.

"And has he then," she exclaimed, "deceived you in that particular? Has he concealed from you his father's resolutions? That his engagement with you has already drawn down his father's anger, and even his curses? On his persisting to maintain an inviolable faith to you, he was ignominiously banished from his father's roof. All kindred and succour were disclaimed, and on you depends the continuance of that decree, and whether that protection and subsistence which he has. .h.i.therto enjoyed, and of which his character stands in so much need, shall be lost to him forever."

You did not tell me _this_, my friend. In claiming your love, far was I from imagining that I tore you from your father's house, and plunged you into that indigence which your character and education so totally unfit you for sustaining or escaping from.

My mother removed all doubt which could not but attend such unwelcome tidings, by showing me her own letter to your father, and his answer to it.

Well do I recollect your behaviour on the evening when my mother's letter was received by your father. At that time, your deep dejection was inexplicable. And did you not--my heart bleeds to think how much my love has cost you--did you not talk of a fall on the ice when I pointed to a bruise on your forehead? That bruise, and every token of dismay, your endeavours at eluding or diverting my attention from your sorrow and solemnity, are now explained.

Good Heaven! And was I indeed the cause of that violence, that contumely,--the rage, and even curses, of a father? And why concealed you these maledictions and this violence from me? Was it not because you well knew that I would never consent to subject you to such a penalty?

Hasten then, I beseech you, to your father; lay this letter before him; let it inform him of my solemn and irrevocable resolution to sever myself from you forever.

But this I will myself do. I will acquaint him with my resignation to _his_ will and that of my mother, and beseech him to restore you to his favour.

Farewell, my friend. By that name, at least, I may continue to call you. Yet no. I must never see you nor hear from you again, unless it be in answer to this letter.

Let your pity stifle the emotions of indignation or grief, and return me such an answer as may tend to reconcile me to the vow which, whether difficult or easy, must not be broken.

J. T.

Letter x.x.xVIII

_To Henry Colden, Senior_

November 26.

Sir:--

I was not informed till to-day of the correspondence that has pa.s.sed between you and my mother, nor of your aversion to the alliance which was designed to take place between your son and me.

It is my duty to inform you that, in my opinion, your approbation was absolutely necessary to such a union; and consequently, since your concurrence is withheld, it will never take place. Every tie or engagement between us is from this moment dissolved, and all intercourse, by letter or otherwise, will here end.

Your son, in opposing your wishes, imagined himself consulting my happiness. In that he was mistaken; and I have now removed his error, by acquainting him with my present determination.

I am deeply grieved that his attachment to me has forfeited your favour. I hope that there is no other obstacle to reconcilement, and that the termination of all intercourse between us may remove that obstacle.

JANE TALBOT.