Do I forsake you, Faulkland, cried your brother, kindly enough? No, Faulkland, I am your constant sincere friend, and will prove myself so, if you will but let me. Mr Faulkland made no reply.
Dear Faulkland, am I not your friend? You are Mrs Arnold’s brother.—You are not the man you were. Indeed Faulkland, I am; I am your true friend; suffer me to be so, come back with me; Mr Warner and I have followed you, in the hope of prevailing on you to return with us; do, Faulkland, let us persuade you to preserve a life so dear to us all.
What am I to live for, answered Mr Faulkland sternly? You have tried to deceive me; the man I loved most, now I am fallen, rejects me. Your sister persists in her obstinate cruelty towards me; she breaks her promise, and you encourage her in it. I have neither friends, fortune, or country! and do you talk to me of life on such conditions? No, Bidulph, it is a burden of which I will rid myself—Mr Warner, you are a generous man, you have an enlarged mind; may a stranger ask a favour of you?
I could have wept, continued my kinsman, to see such a frank noble fellow driven to such desperation. Command me, Sir, I replied, there is nothing I would not do to serve you.
I thank you, Sir; I have a little son; let me recommend the unhappy orphan to your protection. He will soon want a father: will you be one to him, Sir? I will send him over to you; he laid hold of my hand, and repeated his question, Will you Mr Warner? You have an enlarged mind, and do not despise the unfortunate.
I cried downright; he touched me to the very quick. I never was so affected in my life; and I own I was heartily displeased both with you and your brother, for driving him to such extremities: You especially, on whom I laid injunctions to act in a contrary way. As for Sir George, I am not surprized at his behaviour.
From Mr Faulkland’s discourse, proceeded my kinsman, it was apparent to me, that his distraction proceeded from no other cause, than his belief that you and your brother slighted him in his misfortunes. It was plain when he fled to England, that he was sufficiently in his senses to be anxious for his own safety; and though the sight of you, joined to the hurry of his spirits, his fatigue, and want of sleep, might, in a man of such violent passions, have created a temporary phrenzy, yet I am very certain it would all have subsided, if you had behaved to him as you ought to have done, and as I desired you would: nor do I see how you can answer it to yourself, after the miseries you have already brought on such a glorious man (for I never saw his equal either in mind or person) to persist in a behaviour which has already turned his brain, and must in the end occasion his death: for death he is determined on, if you refuse to become his wife.
Oh, Sir, cried I, leave him not to himself, I conjure you; you see the influence you have over his mind; you have done wonders in bringing him back.— Hold, replied Mr Warner, till I inform you of the means I was obliged to use.
I have told you how I was affected with his situation, and the request he made me to take care of his child. This was not the suggestion of madness; it was plain to me, that if the cause were removed, he would soon be restored to the perfect use of his reason, and I could not bear to see the desolation of such a noble frame, and all charged to your account.
Sir, I hope you do not mean, said I, to return to Ireland, do you not know the risque that you run by putting yourself into the power of an exasperated family from whom you can expect nothing but the most malevolent persecution?