Jane Talbot Part 10

Thomson is an excellent young man: he loves Colden much, and describes the progress of his friend's opinions with every mark of regret. He even showed me letters that had pa.s.sed between them, and in which every horrid and immoral tenet was defended by one and denied by the other. These letters showed Colden as the advocate of suicide; a scoffer at promises; the despiser of revelation, of Providence and a future state; an opponent of marriage, and as one who denied (shocking!) that any thing but mere habit and positive law stood in the way of marriage, nay, of intercourse without marriage, between brother and sister, parent and child!

You may readily believe that I did not credit such things on slight evidence. I did not rely on Thomson's mere words, solemn and unaffected as these were; nothing but Colden's handwriting could in such a case, be credited.

To say truth, I should not be much surprised had I heard of Colden, as of a youth whose notions on moral and religious topics were, in some degree, unsettled; that, in the fervour and giddiness incident to his age, he had not tamed his mind to investigation; had not subdued his heart to regular and devout thoughts; that his pa.s.sions or his indolence had made the truths of religion somewhat obscure, and shut them out, not properly from his conviction, but only from his attention.

I expected to find, united with this vague and dubious state of mind, tokens of the influence of a pious education; a reverence,--at least, for those sacred precepts on which the happiness of men rests, and at least a practical observance of that which, if not fully admitted by his understanding, was yet very far from having been rejected by it.

But widely and deplorably different was Colden's case. A most fascinating book [Footnote: G.o.dwin's Political Justice.] fell at length into his hands, which changed, in a moment, the whole course of his ideas.

What he had before regarded with reluctance and terror, this book taught him to admire and love. The writer has the art of the grand deceiver; the fatal art of carrying the worst poison under the name and appearance of wholesome food; of disguising all that is impious, or blasphemous, or licentious, under the guise and sanctions of virtue.

Colden had lived before this without examination or inquiry. His heart, his inclination, was perhaps on the side of religion and true virtue; but this book carried all his inclination, his zeal, and his enthusiasm, over to the adversary; and so strangely had he been perverted, that he held himself bound, he conceived it to be his duty, to vindicate in private and public, to preach with vehemence, his new faith. The rage for making converts seized him; and that Thomson was not won over to the same cause proceeded from no want of industry in Colden.

Such was the man whom you had admitted to your confidence; whom you had adopted for your bosom friend. I knew your pretensions to religion, the stress which you laid upon piety as the basis of morals. I remembered your objections to Talbot on this score, not only as a husband, but as a friend. I could, therefore, only suppose that Colden had joined dissimulation to his other errors, and had gained and kept your good opinion by avowing sentiments which his heart secretly abhorred.

I cannot describe to you, Jane, my alarms upon this discovery. That your cook had intended to poison you, the next meat which you should eat in your own house, would have alarmed me, I a.s.sure you, much less. The preservation of your virtue was unspeakably of more importance in my eyes than of your life.

I wrote to you: and what was your reply? I could scarcely believe my senses. Every horrid foreboding realized! already such an adept in this accursed sophistry! the very cant of that detestable sect adopted!

I had plumed myself upon your ignorance. He had taken advantage of that, I supposed, and had won your esteem by counterfeiting a moral and pious strain. To make you put him forever at a distance, it was needed only to tear off his mask. This was done, but, alas, too late for your safety. The poison was already swallowed.

I had no patience with you, to listen to your trifling and insidious distinctions,--such as, though you could audaciously urge them to me, possessed no weight, _could_ possess no weight, in your understanding. What was it to me whether he was ruffian or madman?

whether, in destroying you, he meant to destroy or to save? Is it proper to expose your breast to a sword, because the wretch that wields it supposes madly that it is a straw which he holds in his hand?

But I will not renew the subject. The same motives that induced me to attempt to reason with you then no longer exist. The anguish, the astonishment, which your letters, as they gradually unfolded your character, produced in me, I endeavoured to show you at the time. Now I pa.s.s them over to come to a more important circ.u.mstance.

Yet how shall I tell it thee, Jane? I am afraid to intrust it to paper.

Thy fame is still dear to me. I would not be the means of irretrievably blasting thy fame. Yet what may come of relating some incidents on paper?

Faint is my hope, but I am not without some hope, that thou canst yet be saved, be s.n.a.t.c.hed from perdition. Thy life I value not, in comparison with something higher. And if, through an erring sensibility, the sacrifice of Colden cost thee thy life, I shall yet rejoice. As the wife of Colden thou wilt be worse than dead to me.

What has come to me, I wonder? I began this letter with a firm, and, as I thought, inflexible, soul. Despair had made me serene; yet now thy image rises before me with all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when thou wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart, and my tears suffocate me.

Shall I shock, shall I wound thee, my child, by lifting the veil from thy misconduct, behind which thou thinkest thou art screened from every human eye? How little dost thou imagine that I know _so much_!

Now will thy expostulations and reasonings have an end. Surely they _will_ have an end. Shame at last, shame at last, will overwhelm thee and make thee dumb.

Yet my heart sorely misgives me. I shudder at the extremes to which thy accursed seducer may have urged thee. What thou hast failed in concealing thou mayest be so obdurately wicked as to attempt to justify.

Was it not the unavoidable result of confiding in a man avowedly irreligious and immoral; of exposing thy understanding and thy heart to such stratagems as his philosophy made laudable and necessary? But I know not what I would say. I must lay down the pen till I can reason myself into some composure. I will write again to-morrow.

H. FIELDER.

Letter XVI

_To the same_

O my lost child! In thy humiliations at this moment I can sympathize.

The shame that must follow the detection of it is more within my thoughts at present than the negligence or infatuation that occasioned thy faults.

I know all. Thy intended husband knew it all. It was from him that the horrible tidings of thy unfaithfulness to marriage-vows first came.

He visited this city on purpose to obtain an interview with me. He entered my apartment with every mark of distress. He knew well the effect of such tidings on my heart. Most eagerly would I have laid down my life to preserve thy purity spotless.

He demeaned himself as one who loved thee with a rational affection, and who, however deeply he deplored the loss of thy love, accounted thy defection from virtue of infinitely greater moment.

I was willing to discredit even his a.s.sertion. Far better it was that the husband should prove the defamer of his wife, than that my darling child should prove a profligate. But he left me no room to doubt, by showing me a letter.

He showed it me on condition of my being everlastingly silent to you in regard to its contents. He yielded to a jealousy which would not be conquered, and had gotten this letter by surrept.i.tious means. He was ashamed of an action which his judgment condemned as ign.o.ble and deceitful.

Far more wise and considerate was this excellent and injured man than I. He was afraid, by disclosing to you the knowledge he had thus gained, of rendering you desperate and hardened. As long as reputation was not gone, he thought your errors were retrievable. He distrusted the success of his own efforts, and besought me to be your guardian. As to himself, he resigned the hope of ever gaining your love, and entreated me to exert myself for dissolving your connection with Colden, merely for your own sake.

To show me the necessity of my exertions, he had communicated this letter, believing that my maternal interest in your happiness would prevent me from making any but a salutary use of it. Yet he had not put your safety into my hands without a surety. He was so fully persuaded of the ill consequences of your knowing how much was known, that he had given me the proofs of your guilt only on my solemn promise to conceal them from you.

I saw the generosity and force of his representations, and, while I endeavoured by the most earnest remonstrances to break your union with Colden, I suffered no particle of the truth to escape me. But you were hard as a rock. You would not forbid his visits, nor reject his letters.

I need not repeat to you what followed; by what means I endeavoured to effect that end which your obstinate folly refused.

When I gave this promise to Talbot, I foresaw not his speedy death and the consequences to Colden and yourself. I have been affrighted at the rumour of your marriage; and, to justify the conduct I mean to pursue, I have revealed to you what I promised to conceal merely because I foresaw not the present state of your affairs.

You will not be surprised that, on your marriage with this man, I should withdraw from you what you now hold from my bounty. No faultiness in you shall induce me to leave you without the means of decent subsistence; but I owe no benevolence to Colden. My duty will not permit me to give any thing to your paramour. When you change your name you must change your habitation and leave behind you whatever you found.

Think not, Jane, that I cease to love thee. I am not so inhuman as to refuse my forgiveness to a penitent; yet I ask not thy penitence to insure thee my affection. I have told thee my conditions, and adhere to them still.

To preclude all bickerings and cavils, I enclose the letter which attests your fall.

H. FIELDER.

Letter XVII

(Enclosed Letter.)

_To Henry Colden_

Tuesday Morning.

You went away this morning before I was awake. I think you might have stayed to breakfast; yet, on second thoughts, your early departure was best. _Perhaps_ it was so. You have made me very thoughtful to-day.

What pa.s.sed last night has left my mind at no liberty to read and to scribble as I used to do. How your omens made me shudder!

I want to see you. Can't you come again this evening? but no; you must not. I must not be an encroacher. I must judge of others, and of their claims upon your company, by myself and my own claims. Yet I should be glad to see that creature who would dare to enter into compet.i.tion with _me_.