Jane Talbot Part 15

But how much more than this have you done for me! You have given me, by your instructions and example, an understanding and a heart. You have taught me to value a fair fame beyond every thing but the peace of virtue; you have made me capable of a generous affection for a benefactor equal to yourself; capable of acting so as at once to _deserve_ and to _lose_ your esteem; and enabled me to relinquish cheerfully those comforts and luxuries which cannot be retained but at the price of my integrity.

I look forward to poverty without dismay. Perhaps I make light of its evils because I have never tried them. I am indeed a weak and undiscerning creature. Yet nothing but experience will correct my error, if it be an error.

So sanguine am I that I even cherish the belief that the privation of much of that ease which I have hitherto enjoyed will strengthen my mind, and somewhat qualify me for enduring those evils which I cannot expect always to escape.

You know, my mother, that the loss of my present provision will not leave me dest.i.tute. If it did, I know your generosity too well to imagine that you would withdraw from me all the means of support.

Indeed, my own fund, slender as it is in comparison with what your bounty supplies me, is adequate to all my personal wants: I am sure it would prove so on the trial. So that I part with your gifts with less reluctance, though with no diminution of my grat.i.tude.

If I could bring to you my faith unbroken, and were allowed to present to you my friend, I would instantly fly to your presence; but that is a felicity too great for my hope. The alternative, however painful, must be adopted by

Your ever-grateful

JANE.

Letter XXVII

_To Mrs. Talbot_

Baltimore, November 5.

I highly approve of your letter. It far exceeded the expectations I had formed of you. You are indeed a surprising creature.

One cannot fail to be astonished at the differences of human characters; at the opposite principles by which the judgments of men are influenced.

Experience, however, is the antidote of wonder. There was a time when I should have reflected on the sentiments of your mother with a firm belief that no human being could be practically influenced by them.

She offers, and surely with sincerity, to divide her large property with you; to give away half her estate during her own life, and while, indeed, she is yet in her prime: and to whom give it? To one who has no natural relation to her; who is merely an adopted child; who has acted for several years in direct repugnance to her will, in a manner she regards as not only indiscreet, but flagrantly criminal. Whom one guilty act has (so it must appear to your mamma) involved in a continued series of falsehoods and frauds.

She offers this immense gift to you, on no condition but a mere verbal promise to break off intercourse with the man you love? and with whom you have been actually criminal.

She seems not aware how easily promises are made that are not designed to be performed; how absurd it would be to rely upon your integrity in this respect, when you have shown yourself (so it must appear to her) grossly defective in others of infinitely greater moment. How easily might a heart like yours be persuaded to recall its promises, or violate this condition, as soon as the performance of her contract has made you independent of her and of the world!

You promise--it is done in half a dozen syllables--that you will see the hated Colden no more. All that you promise, you intend. To-morrow she enriches you with half her fortune. Next day the seducer comes, and may surely expect to prevail on you to forget this promise, since he has conquered your firmness in a case of unspeakably greater importance.

This offer of hers surely indicates not only love for you, but reverence for your good faith inconsistent with the horrid imputation she has urged against you.

As to me, what a portrait does her letter exhibit! And yet this scoffer at the obligation of a promise is offered four or five thousand dollars on condition that he plights his word to embark for England and to give up all his hopes of you.

Villain as he is; a villain not by habit or by pa.s.sion, but by _principle;_ a cool-blooded, systematic villain; yet she will give him affluence and the means of depraving thousands by his example and his rhetoric, on condition that he refuses to marry the woman whom he has made an adulteress; who has imbibed, from the contagion of his discourse, all the practical and speculative turpitude which he has to impart.

This conduct might be considered only as proving her aversion to me. So strong is it as to impel her to indiscreet and self-destructive expedients; and so I should likewise reason if these very expedients did not argue a confidence in my integrity somewhat inconsistent with the censure pa.s.sed on my morals.

After all, is there not reason to question the sincerity of her hatred?

Is not thy mother a dissembler, Jane? Does she really credit the charge she makes against thee? Does she really suppose me that insane philosopher which her letter describes?

Yet this is only leaping from a ditch into a quicksand. It is quite as hard to account for her dissimulation as for her sincerity. Why should she pretend to suspect _you_ of so black a deed, or me of such abominable tenets?

And yet, an observer might say, it is one thing to promise and another to perform, in her case as well as in ours. She tells us what she _will do_, provided we enter into such engagements; but, if we should embrace her offers, is it certain that she would not hesitate, repent, and retract?

Pa.s.sion may dictate large and vehement offers upon paper, which deliberating prudence would never allow to be literally adhered to.

Besides, may not these magnificent proposals be dictated by a knowledge of our characters, which a.s.sured her that they would never be accepted?

But, with this belief, why should the offers be made?

The answer is easy. These offers, by the kindness and respect for us which they manifest, engage our esteem and grat.i.tude, and, by their magnitude, show how deeply she abhors this connection, and hence dispose us to do that, for pity's sake, which mere lucre would never recommend.

And here is a string of guesses to amuse thee, Jane. Their truth or falsehood is of little moment to us, since these offers ought not to influence our conduct.

One thing is sure; that is, thy mother's aversion to me. And yet I ought not to blame her. That I am an atheist in morals, the seducer of her daughter, she fully believes; and these are surely sufficient objections to me. Would she be a discerning friend or virtuous mother if she did not, with this belief, remonstrate against your alliance with one so wicked?

The fault lies not with her. With whom, then, does it lie? Or, what only is important, where is the remedy? Expostulation and remonstrance will avail nothing. I cannot be a hypocrite: I cannot dissemble that I have _once_ been criminal, and that I am, at present, conscious of a thousand weaknesses and self-distrusts. There is but one meagre and equivocal merit that belongs to me. I stick to the truth; yet this is a virtue of late growth. It has not yet acquired firmness to resist the undermining waves of habit, or to be motionless amidst the hurricane of pa.s.sions.

You offer me yourself. I love you. Shall I not then accept your offer?

Shall my high conception of your merits, and my extreme contempt and distrust of myself, hinder me from receiving so precious a boon? Shall I not make happy by being happy? Since you value me so much beyond my merits; since my faults, though fully disclosed to you, do not abate your esteem, do not change your views in my favour, shall I withhold my hand?

I am not obdurate. I am not ungrateful. With you I never was a hypocrite. With the rest of the world I have ceased to be so. If I look forward without confidence, I look back with humiliation and remorse. I have always wished to be good, but, till I knew you, I despaired of ever being so, and even now my hopes are perpetually drooping.

I sometimes question, especially since your actual condition is known, whether I should accept your offered hand; but mistake me not, my beloved creature. My distrust does not arise from any doubts of my own constancy.

That I shall grow indifferent or forgetful or ungrateful to you, can never be.

All my doubts are connected with you. Can I compensate you for those losses which will follow your marriage?--the loss of your mother's affection,--the exchange of all that splendour and abundance you have hitherto enjoyed for obscurity and indigence?

You say I _can_. The image of myself in my own mind is a sorry compound of hateful or despicable qualities. I am even out of humour with my person, my face. So absurd am I in my estimates of merit, that my homely features and my scanty form had their part in restraining me from aspiring to one supreme in loveliness, and in causing the surprise that followed the discovery of your pa.s.sion.

In your eyes, however, this mind and this person are venerable and attractive. My affection, my company, are chief goods with you. The possession of all other goods cannot save you from misery, if this be wanting. The loss of all others will not bereave you of happiness if this be possessed.

Fain would I believe you. You decide but reasonably. Fortune's goods ought not to be so highly prized as the reason of many prizes them, and as my habits, in spite of reason's dissent and remonstrances, compel me to prize them. They contribute less to your happiness, and that industry and frugality which supplies their place, you look upon without disgust; with even some degree of satisfaction.

Not so I: I cannot labour for bread; I cannot work to live. In that respect I have no parallel. The world does not contain my likeness. My very nature unfits me for any profitable business. My dependence must ever be on others or on fortune.

As to the influence of some stronger motive to industry than has yet occurred, I am without hope. There can be no stronger ones to a generous mind, than have long been urgent with me: being proof against these, none will ever conquer my reluctance.

I am not indolent, but my activity is vague, profitless, capricious. No lucrative or n.o.ble purpose impels me. I aim at nothing but selfish gratification. I have no relish, indeed, for sensual indulgences. It is the intellectual taste that calls for such banquets as imagination and science can furnish; but, though less sordid than the epicure, the voluptuary, or the sportsman, the principle that governs them and me is the same; equally limited to self; equally void of any basis in morals or religion.

Should you give yourself to me, and rely upon my _labour_ for shelter and food, deplorable and complete would be your disappointment. I know myself too well to trust myself with such an office. My love for you would not strengthen my heart or my hands. No; it would only sink me with more speed into despair. Quickly, and by some fatal deed, should I abandon you, my children and the world.

Possibly I err. Possibly I underrate my strength of mind and the influence of habit, which makes easy to us every path; but I will not trust to the _possible_.

Hence it is that, if by marriage you should become wholly dependent on me, it could never take place. Some freak of fortune may indeed place me above want, but my own efforts never will. Indeed, in this forbearance, in this self-denial, there is no merit. While admitted to the privileges of a betrothed man, your company, your confidence, every warrantable proof of love mine, I may surely dispense with the privileges of wedlock. Secretly repine I might; occasionally I might murmur. But my days would glide along with fewer obstacles, at least, than if I were that infirm and disconsolate wretch, _your husband_.

But this unhappy alternative is not ours. Thou hast something which thy mother cannot take away; sufficient for thy maintenance, thy frugal support. Meaner and more limited indeed than thy present and former affluence; such as I, of my own motion, would never reduce thee to; such as I can object to only on thy own account.

How has the night run away! My friend's sister arrived here yesterday.