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Jane Talbot, a novel by Charles Brockden Brown |
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Letter 62 - To Mrs. Montford |
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_ Letter LXII - To Mrs. Montford To Mrs. Montford Banks of Delaware, September 5. Be not anxious for me, Mary. I hope to experience very speedy relief from the wholesome airs that perpetually fan this spot. Your apprehensions 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 favourable 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-base 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 everybody 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 humours me with all my favourite 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. J. T. _ |
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