Since human happiness, like every other feeling of the human heart, loses its poignancy by reiteration, its fragrance with its bloom; let me not (while the first fallen dew of pleasure hangs fresh upon the flower of your existence) seize on those precious moments which Hope, rescued from the fangs of despondency, and bliss, succeeding to affliction, claim as their own. Brief be the detail which intrudes on the hour of newborn joy, and short the narrative which holds captive the attention, while the heart, involved in its own enjoyments, denies its interest.
It is now unnecessary for me fully to explain all the motives which led me to appear at the castle of Inismore in a fictitious character. Deeply interested for a people whose national character I had hitherto viewed through the false medium of prejudice; anxious to make it my study in a situation, and under circumstances, which as an English landholder, as the Earl of M———, was denied me, and to turn the stream of my acquired information to that channel which would tend to the promotion of the happiness and welfare of those whose destiny, in some measure, was consigned to my guidance:—solicitous to triumph over the hereditary prejudices of my hereditary enemy; to seduce him into amity, and force him to esteem the man he hated; while he unconsciously became his accessary in promoting the welfare of those of his humble compatriots who dwelt within the sphere of our mutual observation. Such were the motives which principally guided my late apparently romantic adventure; would that the means had been equally laudable.
Received into the mansion of the generous but incautious Prince, as a proscribed and unfortunate wanderer, I owed my reception to his humanity rather than his prudence; and when I told him that I threw my life into his power, his honour became bound for its security, though his principles condemned the conduct which he believed had effected its just forfeiture.
For some months, in two succeeding summers, I contrived to perpetuate, with plausive details, the mystery I had forged; and to confirm the interest I had been so fortunate at first to awaken into an ardent friendship, which became as reciprocal as it was disinterested. Yet it was still my destiny to be loved identically as myself; as myself adventitiously to be hated. And the name of the Earl of M———— was forbidden to be mentioned in the presence of the Prince, while he frequently confessed that the happiest of his hours were passed in Lord M————‘s society.
Thus singularly situated, I dared not hazard a revelation of my real character, lest I should lose by the discovery all those precious immunities with which my fictitious one had endowed me.
But while it was my good fortune thus warmly to ingratiate myself with the father, can I pass over in silence my prouder triumph in that filial interest I awakened in the heart of his daughter. Her tender commiseration for my supposed misfortunes; the persevering goodness with which she endeavoured to rescue me from those erroneous principles she believed the efficient cause of sufferings, and which I appeared to sacrifice to her better reason. The flattering interest she took in my conversation; the eagerness with which she received those instructions it was my supreme pleasure to bestow on her; and the solicitude she incessantly expressed for my fancied doubtful fate; awakened my heart’s tenderest regard and liveliest gratitude. But though I admired her genius and adored her virtues, the sentiment she inspired never for a moment lost its character of parental affection; and even when I formed the determination, the accomplishment of which you so unexpectedly, so providentially frustrated, the gratification of any selfish wish, the compliance with any passionate impulse, held no influence over the determination. No, it was only dictated by motives pure as the object that inspired them; it was the wish of snatching this lovely blossom from the desert where she bloomed unseen, of raising her to that circle in society her birth entitled her to, and her graces were calculated to adorn; of confirming my amity with her father by the tenderest unity of interests and affection; of giving her a legally sanctioned claim on that part of her hereditary property which the suspected villany of my steward had robbed her of; and of retributing the parent through the medium of the child.
Had I had a son to offer her, I had not offered her myself; but my eldest was already engaged, and for the worldly welfare of my second an alliance at once brilliant and opulent was necessary; for, dazzled by his real or supposed talents, I viewed his future destiny through the medium of parental ambition, and thought only of those means by which he might become great, without considering the more important necessity of his becoming happy. Yet, well aware of the phlegmatic indifference of the one, and the romantic imprudence of the other, I denied them my confidence, until the final issue of the adventure would render its revelation necessary. Nor did I suspect the possibility of their learning it by any other means; for the one never visited Ireland, and the other, as the son of Lord M————, would find no admittance to the castle of Inismore.
When a fixed determination succeeded to some months of wavering indecision, I wrote to Glorvina, with whom I had been in habits of epistolary correspondence, distantly touching on a subject I yet considered with timidity, and faintly demanding her sanction of my wishes before I unfolded them to her father, which I assured her I would not do until I could claim her openly in my own character.
In the interim, however, I received a letter from her, written previous to her receipt of mine. It began thus:—“In those happy moments of boundless confidence, when the pupil and the child hung upon the instructive accents of the friend and the father, you have often said to me, ‘I am not altogether what I seem; I am not only grateful, but I possess a power stronger than words of convincing those to whom I owe so much of my gratitude; and should the hour of affliction ever reach thee, Glorvina, call on me as the friend who would fly from the remotest corner of the earth to serve, to save thee.’
“The hour of affliction is arrived—I call upon you!” She then described the disordered state of her father’s affairs, and painted his sufferings with all the eloquence of filial sorrow, requesting my advice, and flatteringly lamenting the destiny which placed us at such a distance from each other.