Arthur Mervyn; Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793

by Charles Brockden Brown

I will be content. I will be as good a housewife and dairywoman, stir about as briskly, and sing as merrily, as Peggy Curling. Why not? I am as young, as innocent, and enjoy as good health. Alas! she has reason to be merry. She has father, mother, brothers; but I have none. And he that was all these, and more than all these, to me, has—forgotten me.

But, perhaps, it is some accident that hinders. Perhaps Oliver left the market earlier than he used to do; or you mistook the house; or perhaps some poor creature was sick, was taken suddenly ill, and you were busy in chafing his clay-cold limbs; it fell to you to wipe the clammy drops from his brow. Such things often happen (don't they, Arthur?) to people of your trade, and some such thing has happened now; and that was the reason you did not write.

And if so, shall I repine at your silence? Oh no! At such a time the poor Bess might easily be, and ought to be, forgotten. She would not deserve your love if she could repine at a silence brought about this way.

And oh! may it be so! May there be nothing worse than this! If the sick man—see, Arthur, how my hand trembles. Can you read this scrawl? What is always bad, my fears make worse than ever.

I must not think that. And yet, if it be so, if my friend himself be sick, what will become of me? Of me, that ought to cherish you and comfort you; that ought to be your nurse. Endure for you your sickness, when she cannot remove it.

Oh! that——I will speak out—Oh that this strange scruple had never possessed you! Why should I not be with you? Who can love you and serve you as well as I? In sickness and health, I will console and assist you. Why will you deprive yourself of such a comforter and such an aid as I would be to you?

Dear Arthur, think better of it. Let me leave this dreary spot, where, indeed, as long as I am thus alone, I can enjoy no comfort. Let me come to you. I will put up with any thing for the sake of seeing you, though it be but once a day. Any garret or cellar in the dirtiest lane or darkest alley will be good enough for me. I will think it a palace, so that I can but see you now and then.

Do not refuse—do not argue with me, so fond you always are of arguing! My heart is set upon your compliance. And yet, dearly as I prize your company, I would not ask it, if I thought there was any thing improper. You say there is, and you talk about it in a way that I do not understand. For my sake, you tell me, you refuse; but let me entreat you to comply for my sake.

Your pen cannot teach me like your tongue. You write me long letters, and tell me a great deal in them; but my soul droops when I call to mind your voice and your looks, and think how long a time must pass before I see you and hear you again. I have no spirit to think upon the words and paper before me. My eye and my thought wander far away.

I bethink me how many questions I might ask you; how many doubts you might clear up if you were but within hearing. If you were but close to me; but I cannot ask them here. I am too poor a creature at the pen, and, somehow or another, it always happens, I can only write about myself or about you. By the time I have said all this, I have tired my fingers, and when I set about telling you how this poem and that story have affected me, I am at a loss for words; I am bewildered and bemazed, as it were.