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!