LETTER II
FROM ARTHUR MURDEN
TO
CLEMENT MONTGOMERY
'Thou wilt make her thy wife.'—Good God what an implication! And is her claim yet to be enforced!—'I will make her my wife.'—How often, since I read thy letter, have I repeated those words—those despicable words!
Trust me, Clement, I have no settled ill will towards thee. No: by heaven, have I not—yet, there are moments when I hate thee heartily.
The severity with which I speak may dissolve the bond of our intimacy:—was it ever a bond of friendship?—Carry me back to its origin.—'Mr. Murden,' said the good natured Du Bois, 'I have a young gentleman committed to my care whom I wish to make known to you.'—And then he expatiated on the greatness of your expectations, the astonishing privacy of your education, and the singular naiveté of your manners.
Such as he described, you were; and I neglected all my former acquaintance, to run with you through the round of town amusements:—With what enthusiasm did you enjoy! with what fire did you describe! No moment of disgust or lassitude assailed you. The existing pleasure was still the best, the greatest. All to you, was rapture, fascination, enchantment.
What a novelty, methought! How enviable and extraordinary!—For, I had partaken of these pleasures without a particle of enjoyment. Frequenting the resorts of dissipation from custom, labouring to compel my revolting senses to the gratifications of pleasure, struggling to wear a character opposite to my inclination, seeking in public to seduce the attentions of women, from whose hours of private yielding I fled with disgust, effectually removed from society which would have taught me the importance of mental pursuits, and living in the profusion of splendor, I almost prayed for wants, for a something, any thing, that could interrupt the routine of sameness, that could make me cease to be as it were the mere automaton of habit.
You charmed me. I longed to investigate the source of your never-failing satisfactions. You did not inform my understanding, but you greatly interested my curiosity. My uncle talked of my making the grand tour; and that was your destiny likewise. It must be amusing, thought I, to travel with one so volatile yet energetic; and such an arrangement was speedily resolved on.
We travelled. Sometimes you complained of my indifference, of the cold reserve that hung upon my character; but the avidity with which you perpetually hunted after variety, and the readiness wherewith I listened to your descriptions, reconciled you to whatever discordance you chanced to perceive between my feelings and your own.—Am I not right, Clement? Was not this rather intimacy than friendship?
While we viewed the Alps and Pyrenees, their sublimity poured into my mind a flood of enthusiasm. The laughing (as the French emphatically call it) country of Italy filled me with delight. But memory can often present such scenes with the warmth and vigour they first bestow; and even her attempts were repressed by the multitudes of follies that perpetually assailed us. I saw on every hand oppression, priestcraft, and blindness. Neither my tutor nor my companions were capable of stimulating me to inquire into the moral and physical causes of the evils I lamented; and, perceiving only the effect, I concluded they were without remedy, and dismissed the subject.
To one point, then, I chained my expectations; and that one point was love. And here, I quixoted my fancy into the wildest hopes. I wanted beauty without vanity, talent without ostentation, delicacy without timidity, and courage without boast. If I saw the semblance of any of these qualities, I hastened to search for the rest. Disappointment succeeded disappointment, without producing any other effect than to bring the visions of my brain before me with fresh allurements, with increase of attributes.
You, Montgomery, perhaps happily for yourself, have been a stranger to this species of refinement. You could have loved any where; and the utmost stretch of your powers of imagination, will not produce even a faint picture of that life of never-fading bliss I expected to enjoy, when I should have found my ideal fair one, for whose tenderness I preserved my heart a sanctuary, sacred, and inviolate. What, then, had been my faith, if, when the prototype of the ideal form did burst upon me in existence, I had been the chosen above all mankind of a heart corresponding in all things with my own.
Sir Thomas commanded me home. You I left without pain. To him I returned without pleasure.—Yes: I returned home—and soon—it was men, Clement—ay then it was—
You say I advised you to forget her in other arms. Montgomery, why did I advise?—And wherein was I competent to judge?—Had you not already prepared other arms to open for your reception? How could I divine that she whom you loved was not of the race of those beings to whom you were constantly lending the epithets of charming, lovely, exquisite angelic? Nought beyond a glance of transient admiration, or a temporary delirium of the senses, could they excite in me. I sighed to find something worthy of remembrance. You sighed to forget the worth, the inestimable worth you had known!
Wearied with the importunity of—'would to God I could forget her!'—Forget her in other arms, I said.—Most readily did you yield to the advice; for which, as you have justly said in one of your letters, you deserved—'tis your own words, Clement—you deserved damnation.
And what art thou doing now?—Now, even that she has sacrificed herself to save thee from despair?—That she has—Let thy heart tell thee her deserts—let it remind thee, that she is sorrowing for thy safety—preparing in mind and affection against thy return ages of joy, of felicity, such as never—merciful heaven!—And thou art—seeking reconciliation with Janetta Laundy.
Rememberest thou, Montgomery, the terrific and awful minutes we past on Vesuvius! Was not that a scene which, while it gratified curiosity and exhausted wonder, made nature shrink with repugnance from the situation?—Yet, in all the horrors of a night worse than that hour, lighted only by the flame of destruction, with showers of thundering dangers obstructing my footsteps, yet, had I been thee Clement! would I have climbed that summit—aye and precipitated myself into the gulph of ruin, rather than forever blacken the fair sheet of love, by sinking to the embraces of a prostitute!
Oh 'tis a stain indelible!
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous sea incarnadine,
Making the green, one red.
I seek not to quarrel with you, Montgomery. Careless as to your resentment, but willing still to possess your esteem, I am not more ready to declaim against your errors than to confess my own. Your's are recoverable. Make peace with yourself and heaven; while I go, not to expiate, but patiently to abide the punishment of mine.
This is the last time, Clement, that mystery shall cloud my words and actions.—In this very letter I meant to have cast it off. I thought I had torn myself for ever from the enchantment; and that reserve and secresy were at an end. But a strange unexpected circumstance, perchance productive of benefit to those for whom I would if possible sacrifice more than self, leads me once more to that scene where my dearest wishes lie buried—where I raised a funeral pile of all my hopes of happiness in this world—'twas I conducted the fatal torch—I stood passive and witnessed their annihilation!
One day longer shall I remain at Barlowe Hall. I only arrived here yesterday. I may be absent a week; then I return again for a short time, to seek in solitude, a temporary recruit of spirits and resolution. Much indeed do I need them. You I have to meet. My uncle too. All who call themselves my friends: for, with this emaciated form, and mere emaciated mind, am I coming to London.
And what is my business there?—To take an everlasting leave of ye all.—To implore Sir Thomas Barlowe that he will allow me but a pat of the ample provision he has given me here, to supply nature's necessities in a foreign land.—I go abroad. Opposition and remonstrances are a feather in the balance.—I go, Montgomery, to find a grave.—Life and I are already separated!—I breathe: but I do not live!—Sleep and peace are vanished from me!—How swift are the ravages of an unhealthy mind, and who would not rejoice when the vague and fleeting scene shall have finally closed!—But a little time Montgomery and rumour will say, or perhaps some stranger affected into sympathy by my youth, will, as the least office of humanity, charge himself particularly to inform thee, that it was a sigh of resignation which liberated the agonized soul and, forever sealed the lips of
A. MURDEN