Part 21 (1/2)
Methinks I am sorry he is gone. I would fain have parted with him as a sister ought. A few tears and a few blessings were not unworthy such an occasion. Most fervently should I have poured my blessings upon him. I wish he had indulged me with another visit; especially as we were to part, it seems, forever. One more visit and a kind embrace from my only brother would have been kept in melancholy, sweet remembrance.
Perhaps we shall meet again. Perhaps, some day, thou and I shall go to France. We will visit him together, and witness, with our own eyes, his good fortune. Time may make him gentle, kind, considerate, brotherly. Time has effected greater wonders than that; for I will always maintain that my brother has a n.o.ble nature: stifled and obscured it may be, but not extinguished.
Letter x.x.xIV
_To Henry Colden_
Philadelphia, November 18.
How little is the equanimity or patience that nature has allotted me!
Thy entrance now would find me quite peevish. Yet I do not fear thy entrance. Always anxious as I am to be amiable in your eyes, I am at no pains to conceal from you that impatience which now vexes my soul, because it is your absence that occasions it.
I sat alone on the sofa below, for a whole hour. Not once was the bell rung; not once did my fluttering heart answer to footsteps in the pa.s.sage.
I had no need to start up at the opening of the parlour-door, and to greet, as distinctly as the joyous tumult of my bosom would suffer me, the much-loved, long-expected visitant.
Yet, deceived by my fond heart into momentary forgetfulness of the interval of a hundred miles that lies between us, more than once I cast a glance behind me, and started, as if the hoped-for peal had actually been rung.
Tired, at length, of my solitude, where I had enjoyed your company so often, I covered up the coals and withdrew to my chamber. ”And here,” said I, ”though I cannot talk to him, yet I can write.”
But first, I read over again this cruel letter of my mother. I weighed all the contents, and especially those heavy charges against you.
How does it fall out that the same object is viewed by two observers with such opposite sensations? That what one hates, the other should dote upon?--two of the same s.e.x; one cherished from infancy, reared, modelled, taught to think, feel, and even to speak, by the other: acting till now, and even now acting in all respects but one, in inviolable harmony; that two such should jar and thwart each other, in a point, too, in respect to which the whole tendency and scope of the daughter's education was to produce a fellow-feeling with the mother. How hard to be accounted for!
how deeply to be rued!
I sometimes catch myself trembling with solicitude lest I should have erred. Am I not betrayed by pa.s.sion? can I claim the respect due to that discernment which I once boasted?
I cannot blame my mother. She acts and determines, as I sometimes believe, without the benefits of my knowledge. Did she know as much as I know, surely she would think as I do.
In general, this conclusion seems to be just; but there are moments when doubts insinuate themselves. I cannot help remembering the time when I reasoned like my mother; when the belief of a Christian seemed essential to every human excellence. All qualities, without that belief, were not to be despised as useless, but to be abhorred as pernicious. There would be no virtue, no merit, divorced from religion. In proportion to the speciousness of his qualities was he to be dreaded. The fruit, whatever form it should a.s.sume, was nothing within but bane, and was to be detested and shunned in proportion as the form was fair and its promises delicious.
I seldom trusted myself to inquire how it was my duty to act towards one whom I loved, but who was dest.i.tute of this grace; for of such moment was the question to me, that I imagined the decision would necessarily precede all others. I could not love till I had investigated this point, and no force could oblige me to hold communion with a soul whom this defect despoiled of all beauty and devoted to perdition.
But what now is the change that time and pa.s.sion have wrought! I have found a man without religion. What I supposed impossible has happened. I love the man. I cannot give him up. The mist that is before my eyes does not change what was once vice into virtue. I do not cease to regard unbelief as the blackest stain, as the most deplorable calamity that can befall a human creature; but still I _love_ the man, and that fills me with unconquerable zeal to rescue him from this calamity.
But my mother interferes. She reminds me of the horror which I once entertained for men of your tenets. She enjoins me to hate you, or to abhor myself for loving one worthy of nothing but hatred.
I cannot do either. My heart is still yours, and it is a voluntary captive. I would not free it from its thraldom, if I could. Neither do I think its captivity dishonours it. Time, therefore, has wrought some change. I can now discover some merit, something to revere and to love, even in a man without religion. I find my whole soul penetrated with zeal for his welfare. There is no scheme which I muse upon with half the constancy or pleasure, as that of curing his errors; and I am confident of curing them.
”Ah, Jane,” says my mother; ”rash and presumptuous girl, what a signal punishment hangs over thee! Thou wilt trust thyself within the toils of the grand deceiver. Thou wilt enter the list with his subtleties. Vain and arrogant, thou fearest not thy own weakness. Thou wilt stake thy eternal lot upon thy triumph in argument against one who, in spite of all his candour and humility, has his pride and his pa.s.sions engaged on the side of his opinions.
”Subtle wretch!” does she exclaim; ”accomplished villain! How nicely does he select, how adroitly manage, his tools! He will oppose, only to yield more gracefully. He will argue, only that the rash simpleton may the more congratulate herself upon her seeming victory! How easy is the verbal a.s.sent,--the equivocating accent,--the hesitating air! These he will a.s.sume whenever it is convenient to lull your fears and gratify your vanity; and nothing but the uniformity of his conduct, his continuance in the same ignominious and criminal path, will open your eyes, and show you that only grace from above can reach his obdurate heart, or dart a ray into his benighted faculties.”
Will you be surprised that I shudder when my mother urges me in this strain, with her customary energy? Always wont to be obsequious to the very turn of her eye, and to make her will not only the regulator of my actions, but the criterion of my understanding, it is impossible not to hesitate, to review all that has pa.s.sed between us, and reconsider anew the motives that have made me act as I have acted.
Yet the review always confirms me in my first opinion. You err, but are not obstinate in error. If your opinions be adverse to religion, your affections are not wholly estranged from it. Your understanding dissents, but your heart is not yet persuaded to refuse. You have powers, irresistible in whatever direction they are bent; capable of giving the highest degree of misery or happiness to yourself and to others. At present they are misdirected or inactive; they are either pernicious or useless.
How can I, who have had ample opportunities of knowing you, stand by with indifference while such is your state? I love you, it is true. All your felicity and all your woe become mine. I have a selfish interest in your welfare. I cannot bear the thought of pa.s.sing through this world, or of entering any future world, without you. My heart has tried in vain to create a separate interest, to draw consolation from a different source.
Hence indifference to your welfare is impossible. But would not indifference, even if no extraordinary tie subsisted between us, be criminal? What becomes of our obligation to do good to others, if we do not exert ourselves, when all the means are in our power, to confer the most valuable of all benefits, to remove the greatest of all ills?