LETTER IV
FROM SIBELLA VALMONT
TO
CAROLINE ASHBURN
Clement—my Clement is gone! All is silence around me. The trees have dropped their leafy ornaments; the wind sweeps through them in mournful cadence. Their foliage no longer intercepts my eye when it would extend itself around the vast horizon. I, now seated on the ivy-covered ruins of the hermitage, view this space; and tell myself it contains not one being to whom Sibella is the object of esteem, tenderness, or concern. Oh Caroline, Caroline! I am weary of this solitude. My mind bursts the bounds prescribed to my person, and impels itself forward to share the advantages of society. Compelled to return to its prison, it is disgusted with its own conceptions, and sinks into languor and dissatisfaction. Could it be my parents who doomed me to this slavery? Did they deem the benefits of intercourse a blessing too great for their innocent offspring? No: it must be Mr. Valmont's own plan; 'tis he alone who could wish to rob me of the faculties of my soul; and, finding I dare think, dare aim to extend them, dare seek to be happy, he shuns me with aversion or loads me with reproach.
Why, if he meant me to degenerate into the mere brute, did he not chain me in a cave, shut out the light of the glorious sun, forbid me to converse with intelligent nature? Then I might have expressed my wants in a savage way; have ravenously satisfied the calls of hunger or thirst; and, lying down to enjoy the sleep of apathy, have thought, if I could have thought at all, that this was to be happy. A being superior to this only in a little craft, did Mr. Valmont design to make me: a timid, docile slave, whose thoughts, will, passions, wishes, should have no standard of their own, but rise, change or die as the will of a master should require! Such is the height of virtues I have heard Mr. Valmont describe as my zenith of perfection.
He laments that he suffered me to share in Clement's education. Happy mistake! Then I found I was to be the friend and companion of man—Man the image of Divinity!—Where, then, are the boundaries placed that are to restrain my thought?—To be the companion, I must be equal—To be the friend, I must have comprehension and judgment: must be able to assist, or willing to be taught.
In the little intercourse I have had with Mrs. Valmont, she also has placed before me her picture of females: a picture as absurd and much more unintelligible to me than the other. She represents beauty as the supreme good; ascribes to it the most fabulous effects of power, conquest, and dominion. She represented me to myself as entering your world; and transformed me into a being so totally without description, that I ran from her to seek again my own nature: to find the friend and companion of man.
You, Caroline, are not such as either of these people describe. No: nor am I. Then shall I—but let me be content—a very short time and I shall join my Clement: shall aid his labour with my exertions. Oh, my Clement, my love, my lover, speed forward to the accomplishment of thy talk! Oh, be thy desires as bounded as my wishes! Thy Sibella covets no castles, no palaces. Seek for her but a shelter from inclemency, and take her therein to liberty, to thee!
Often, Caroline, have I imagined the useless parts of that vast building converted into little cottages such as I have seen from the top of its turrets. Fancy has instantly peopled the desert. I have believed myself surrounded by an active hardy race. I have arisen to enjoy the delights of communication: when, perchance, the rushing of a silent fawn through the thicket has awakened me from my trance; has reminded me that I too was one of the solitary herd; that the castle with its moats, walls, and battlements yet stood where gloom and silence hold their court, where Mr. Valmont presides and denies Sibella his presence, and where the inexorable key is turned on that library lest she should think too often or too well.
Andrew comes through the wood—he beckons—holds up a letter.—'Tis your's, Caroline.
I have pondered on the contents of your letter three days. What shall I say for myself more than you have already said for me? I feel, I confess, that in being secret I have deceived Mr. Valmont, have been guilty of vice. But how could I, tell me, Caroline; for my future benefit tell if you can, how could I devise a means by which I might have preserved my sincerity and saved my lover?—I can not. Remember it was my Clement's peace, happiness, and welfare, for which I made the sacrifice.
Yet now I feel it forcibly; for I hesitate to declare the rest; I, who knew no concealment, have by one deviation from my sincerity even become cowardly and irresolute in friendship. I fear your censures, Caroline; and dare think of eluding them, because too conscious that I cannot refute them.—I persevere in secresy, in deception! Mr. Valmont is still unacquainted with our marriage. For myself, I had not done this—for myself, I could not perceive its value or necessity. I yielded to the ardent remonstrances of Clement; and promised to conceal our union, till his independence should have placed him beyond the mischief of my uncle's resentment. Ah! let me turn, to seek solace, in the end, for the means!
Be the means what they may, the end is effected. My Clement is restored. The energies of his mind are renovated. You will see him, Caroline: but you will see no feebleness in his character. You will find his love could never be a trifling effervescence; you will discover that we mutually love, from the intimate knowledge of increasing virtues; and no fabled or real oblivion can shed its influence on a love so elevated, so entire, so utterly beyond the reach of annihilation.
I conjure you, my friend, by your own words, to watch over my Clement—to preserve him free from taint; and to restore him, just such as he so lately quitted the arms of his, and your.