LETTER XVII
FROM ARTHUR MURDEN
TO
CLEMENT MONTGOMERY
Montgomery
Call me mad, possessed. Curse me, reproach me, do anything, only that when you have had your revenge, forget such a letter as I wrote you last ever had existence.
Say it was strange, I say so too. Call it insolent, I will confess it; unaccountable, I still join with you. It was one of the sudden whirls of this vertigo brain of mine, almost as incomprehensible to myself as to you.
I have no excuses to offer, for the fit may come again upon me. Promise has no power with me, I am the creature of impulse. Alas! Alas! that reason and consistency should thus become the shuttlecocks of fancy!
Now taking it for granted, that I gain your pardon, next have I a long account to settle with myself. I would not partake of happiness of a common mould; lay it before me, and I disdained the petty prize, stalked proudly over it, and stalked on, prying, and watching, to seize hold on some hidden blessing, that reserved itself to be the reward of a deserving venturous hero like myself—Oh! I have embraced a cloud, and the tormenting wheel rolls round with a rapid motion!
I know I am talking algebra to you, and if you take me for a companion, you must even be content to travel on in the dark. It is so, but why it is, I think your best discernment will not aid you to discover. Enquiry is useless, expostulation, a farce. Be patient, and forgive me this, and other transgressions, for I tell you, Montgomery, you have a potent revenge.
There is little probability that you and I should meet each other, as London will be the scene of your action, while I condemn myself to wander north and south, in search of a few grains of that content I so wantonly gave the winds to scatter. I must have room to vent my suffocating thoughts. I cannot be pinioned in the crowd; and I would rather seek converse with myself in a charnel house, than enter the brightest circles of fashion. I hate to be the wonder of fools. Already is my reputation raised, and I have now just sense enough in madness to play my antics alone.
Driven by winds and storms, I may seek an occasional shelter at Barlowe Hall. Whither, if you are so disposed, you may direct to
ARTHUR MURDEN
I believe, Montgomery, it is necessary that I say something more to you. The above conclusion is abrupt and harsh. That I feel inclined to treat you thus is the consequence of my own folly, rather than your deservings of me. Let it pass then. I wish you no ill, but as I told you before, I am become the tool of every changing impulse.
I sympathize in your change of fortune; or rather, I feel a concern that you should colour with such darkened hues, so unimportant a circumstance.
I too have counted upon heirship. But let my uncle the nabob put five hundred pound in my pocket, and set me down in London, Petersburg, or Pekin, and if I did not walk my own pace through the world, let me die like a dog, and have no better burial.
Five hundred pound! 'Tis a mine. Ah, sigh not to be foremost of the throng! Independence, peace, and self approving reflection may be, if you will, the companions of your new destiny.
Certainly Mr. Valmont managed his plan of making you a Hermit with wonderful ingenuity, to send you forth from your cave at that very age when the fancy runs gadding after novelty, and shadow passes for substance. He decked you too with the trappings of wealth, and expected every man to appear before you, with a label written on his forehead, of his souls most secret vice.—He had better have driven you out to beg with an empty wallet, and then perhaps when one had said—Go work—another had hinted—Go steal—and a third had passed you and said nothing, you might possibly have returned to a leopard's skin, and a hut of branches, the man after Mr. Valmont's own heart.
Be wiser and happier, Montgomery, than this man has been; shun his weaknesses and your own; you also have your portion of weaknesses follies, vices. Yes Montgomery the latter word is not too harsh, or I should not have had now to pity you for being duped by the contemptible Janetta L——. Other instances there are for me to cite: They press upon my feelings—they wound—they torture me!
Judge for yourself, Montgomery, upon the right and wrong of your conduct and intentions. I am ill fitted to become your adviser.
How could you so far mistake my character as to suppose I was the seducer of Seymour's mistress: I think one of your letters asserted so much. If to persuade a deceived girl to quit her profligate companion (I will not say lover, I should disgrace the name) and return to console the latter days of an aged grandmother be seduction, I am guilty. This I did to Seymour, and his invectives or the rumours he may spread are as unimportant and as little troublesome to my repose as the insects that are buzzing around me.
Montgomery, no more of your phrases, nor his accusations. Be assured I am neither your soul-less marble, nor Seymour's libertine.
At a boyish age from boyish vanity I aimed to be called a man of pleasure. It was easy to imitate the air and manners of such a man, and not less by such imitation alone to arrive at the contemptible fame among persons equally ready to encourage the practice and accuse the practitioner.
I renounce the loathsome labours of the flatterers, the despicable renown of the libertine. Miss Ashburn is my monitress, she began her lessons at Barlowe Hall, and now continues the instruction at Bath.
Do not imagine it was done in devout lectures or pious declamations. No, it was the stedfast modesty of her eye, her intelligent condemning mien, which said, here shall thy proud boast be stayed.
She was the finest woman of our party; and all the rest prepared to meet me with the glance of approbations and the smile of encouragement; yet she having been forewarned of my renown preferred the hand or arm or speech of a silly old colonel of sixty.—Now she knows me better. No, she does not, I evade, I fly her penetration.
Montgomery, the worthiest feeling I know of you is, that you lament your having made your truth and innocence a sacrifice.
I am not in love with Miss Ashburn. I would give an ear, an eye, any thing I have on earth, except the full confidence of my heart, to call her my sister, my friend. I admire, seek, venerate her; but, Montgomery, I am not in love with Miss Ashburn.