Life's Progress Through the Passions; Or, The Adventures of Natura

by Eliza Fowler Haywood

But see, how capable are our finest resolutions of being shaken by accidents! — the most assured of men may be compared to the leaf of a tree, which veers with every blast of wind, and is never long in one position. — Had any one told Natura he had taken all this pains for nothing, and that he would be more anxious to get off his promise of marrying Lætitia, than ever he had been to engage one from her for that purpose; he would have thought himself highly injured, and that the person who said this of him was utterly a stranger to his sentiments or character; yet so it happened, and the poor Letitia found all her hopes of grandeur vanish into air, when they seemed just on the point of being accomplished. — The occasion of this strange and sudden transition was as follows:

Two days before that prefixed for his marriage, Natura received a packet from Gibralter, which brought him an account of the death of his brother. — That unfortunate young gentleman, being convinced by his sufferings, and perhaps too by his own remorse, and stings of conscience of the foulness of the crime he had been guilty of, fell into a languishing disorder, soon after his arrival in that country, which left those about him no expectations of his ever getting the better of. — Finding his dissolution near, he wrote a letter to Natura, full of contrition, and intreaties for forgiveness. This epistle accompanied that which related his death, and both together plunged Natura into very melancholly thoughts. — The offence his brother had been guilty of, was indeed great; but, when he remembered that he had repented, and was now no more, all resentment, all revenge, against him ceased with his existence, and a tender pity supplied their place: — what, while living, he never would have forgave, when dead lost great part of its atrocity, and he bewailed the fate of the transgressor, with unfeigned tears and lamentations.

This event putting an end to the motive which had induced Natura to think of marriage, put an end also to his desires that way; — he was sorry he had gone so far with Lætitia, was loth to appear a deceiver in her eyes, or in those of her father; but thought it would be the extremest madness in him to prosecute his intent, as his beloved sister had a son, who would now be his heir, and only had desired to be the father of one himself to hinder him from being so, whose crimes had rendered him unworthy of it.

The emotions of this revenge having entirely subsided, he now had leisure to consider how oddly the world would think and talk of him, if he perpetrated a marriage with a girl such as Lætitia; — he almost wondered at himself, that the just displeasure he had conceived against his brother, should have transported him so far as to make him forgetful of what was owing to his own character; and when he reflected on the miseries, vexations, and infamy, his last marriage had involved him in, he trembled to think how near he had been to entering into a state, which tho' he had a very good opinion of Lætitia's virtue, might yet possibly, some way or other, have given him many uneasinesses.

He was, however, very much embarrassed how to break with her handsomely; and it must be confessed, that after what had passed, this was no very easy matter to accomplish. — Make what pretence he would, he could not expect to escape the censure of an unstable fluctuating man. — This is indeed a character, which all men are willing, nay industrious, to avoid, yet what there are few men, but some time or other in their lives, give just reason to incur. — Natura very well knew, that to court a woman for marriage, and afterwards break his engagements with her, was a thing pretty common in the world; but then, it was thing he had always condemned in his own mind, and looked upon as most ungenerous and base: — besides, though he had made his addresses to Lætitia, meerly because he imagined she would prove a virtuous, obedient, and fruitful wife, and was not inflamed with any of those sentiments for her which are called love; yet, designing to marry her, he had set himself as much as possible to love her, and had really excited in his heart a kind of a tenderness, which made him unable to resolve on giving her the mortification of being forsaken, without feeling great part of the pain he was about to inflict on her.

All he now wished was, that she might be possessed of as little warmth of inclination for him as he had known for her, and that the disparity of years between them, might have made her consent to the proposed marriage, intirely on the motive of interest, without any mixture of love, in order that the disappointment she was going to receive, might seem the less severe: as the regard he had for her made him earnestly wish this might be the case, he carefully recollected all the passages of her behaviour, her looks, her words, nay, the very accents of her voice, were re-examined, in hope to find some tokens of that happy indifference, which alone could make him easy in this affair; but all this retrospect afforded him no more than uncertain conjectures, and imaginations which frequently contradicted each other, and indeed served only to increase his doubts, and add to his disquiets.

The mourning for his brother was, however, a very plausible pretence for delaying the marriage; and as he was willing the disappointment should come on by degrees, thinking by that means to soften the asperity of it, he contrived to let both father and daughter have room to guess the event before hand. — He seldom went to their house, and when he did, made very short visits, talked as if the necessity of his affairs would oblige him to leave the country, and settle again entirely in town: — rather avoided, than sought any opportunity of speaking to Lætitia in private, and in all his words and actions, discovered a coldness which could not but be very surprizing to them both, though they took not the least notice that they were so before him, but behaved towards him in the same manner, as when he appeared the most full of affection.

This was a piece of prudence Natura had not expected from persons of their low education and way of life: — he had imagined, that either the one or the other of them would have upbraided this change in him, and by avowing a suspicion, that he had repented him of his promises, given him an opportunity either of seeming to resent it, or by some other method, of breaking off: but this way of proceeding frustrated his measures in that point, and he found himself under a necessity of speaking first, on a subject no less disagreeable to himself, than he knew it would be to those to whom his discourse should be directed.

However, as there was no remedy, and he considered, that the longer to keep them in suspense, would only be adding to the cruelty of the disappointment; he sent one morning for the yeoman to come to his house, and after ushering in what he was about to say, with some reflections on the instability of human affairs, told him that some accidents had happened, which rendered it highly inconvenient for him to think of marrying; — that he had the utmost respect and good will for Lætitia, and that if there were not indissoluble impediments to hinder him from taking a wife, she should be still his choice, above any woman he knew in the world; — that he wished her happy with any other man, and to contribute to making her so, as also by way of atonement for his enforced leaving her, he would give her five hundred pounds, as an addition to her fortune.

This was the substance of what he said; but though he delivered it in the softest terms he could possibly make use of, he could find it was not well received by the old man; his countenance, however, a little cleared up at the closure of it: — the five hundred pounds was somewhat of a sweetener to the bitter pill; and after expatiating, according to his way, on the ungenerosity of engaging a young maid's affection, and afterwards forsaking her, he threw in some shrewd hints, that as accidents had happened to change his mind as to marriage, others might also happen, which would have the same effect, in relation to the present he now seemed to intend for her.