My love, this letter is partly to consult you on a matter which is somewhat on my mind. With any but you I might hesitate, but I know your mind almost as I know my own, and can speak to you, as I hope I always shall—frankly and freely as a husband would to his wife.
About your sister Penelope and her great sorrow I have already written fully. Of her ultimate recovery, mentally as well as bodily, I have little doubt: she has in her the foundations of all endurance—a true upright nature and a religious mind. The first blow over, a certain little girl whom I know will be to her a saving angel; as she has been to others I could name. Fear not, therefore—“Fear God, and have no other fear:” you will bring your sister safe to land.
But, you are aware, Penelope is not the only person who has been shipwrecked.
I should not intrude this side of the subject at present, did I not feel it to be in some degree a duty, and one that, from certain information that has reached me, will not bear deferring. The more so, because my occupation here ties my own hands so much. You and I do not live for ourselves, you know—nor indeed wholly for one another. I want you to help me, Theodora.
In my last, I informed you how the story of Lydia Cartwright came to my knowledge, and how, beside her father's coffin, I was entreated by her old mother to find her out, and bring her home if possible. I had then no idea who the “gentleman” was; but afterwards was led to suspect it might be a friend of Mr. Charteris. To assure myself, I one day put some questions to him—point-blank, I believe, for I abhor diplomacy, nor had I any suspicion of him personally. In the answer, he gave me a point-blank and insulting denial of any knowledge on the subject.
When the whole truth came out, I was in doubt what to do consistent with my promise to the poor girl's mother. Finally, I made inquiries; but heard that the Kensington cottage had been sold up, and the inmates removed. I then got the address of Sarah Enfield—that is, I commissioned my old friend, Mrs. Ansdell, to get it, and sent it to Mrs. Cartwright, without either advice or explanation, except that it was that of a person who knew Lydia. Are you aware that Lydia has more than once written to her mother, sometimes enclosing money, saying she was well and happy, but nothing more?
I this morning heard that the old woman, immediately on receiving my letter, shut up her cottage, leaving the key with a neighbour, and disappeared. But she may come back, and not alone; I hope, most earnestly, it will not be alone. And therefore I write, partly to prepare you for this chance, that you may contrive to keep your sister from any unnecessary pain, and also from another reason.
You may not know it,—and it is a hard thing to have to enlighten my innocent love, but your father is quite right; Lydia's story is by no means rare, nor is it regarded in the world as we view it. There are very few—especially among the set to which Mr. Charteris belonged—who either profess or practice the Christian doctrine, that our bodies also are the temples of the Holy Spirit,—that a man's life should, be as pure as a woman's, otherwise no woman, however she may pity, can, or ought to respect him, or to marry him. This, it appears to me, is the Christian principle of love and marriage—the only one by which the one can be made sacred, and the other “honorable to all.” I have tried, invariably, in every way to set this forth; nor do I hesitate to write of it to my wife that will be—whom it is my blessing to have united with me in every work which my conscience once compelled as atonement and my heart now offers in humblest thanksgiving.
But enough of myself.
While this principle, of total purity being essential for both man and woman, cannot be too sternly upheld, there is also another side to the subject, analagous to one of which you and I have often spoken. You will find it in the seventh chapter of Luke and eighth of John: written, I conclude, to be not only read, but acted up to by all Christians who desire to have in them “the mind of Christ.”