Hargrave's Letter to Laura.
'My dearest Laura—The tantalizing business which has so long thwarted my wishes will still detain me for two days. Your gentle mind cannot imagine what this delay costs me. My only recompense is, that it affords me an opportunity of shewing you somewhat of that consideration with which I could always wish to treat you. I willingly forego the advantage of surprise for the sake of allowing you to exercise that decision which you are so well qualified to use discreetly. You know Laura how I have doated on you. For near four long years you have been the desire of my soul; and now that my happy daring has placed me within reach of my utmost wishes, I would fain attain them without distress to you. This is no time for concealment; and you must pardon me if I am explicit with you. I have known the disposition of Lady Pelham's fortune from the hour when it was made. You know that with all my faults I am not sordid; but circumstances have rendered money necessary to me. Except in the event of Lord Lincourt's death, I cannot return to England otherwise than as your husband. I will own, too, dearest Laura, that after all I have done, and all that I may be compelled to do, I dare not trust for pardon to your pity alone. I must interest your duty in my cause. Consider your situation, then, my beloved, and spare me the pain of distressing you. I have watched you, implored you, pined for you—I have borne your coldness, your scorn. I have ventured my life to obtain you. Judge whether I be of a temper to be baulked of my reward. You must be mine, bewitching Laura. No cool, insulting, plausible pretender can cheat me of you now. Trackless woods divide you from all human kind. I have provided against the possibility of tracing your retreat. It rests with you then to choose whether you will bless my love with a willing and honourable reward, or force me to extort the power of bestowing obligation. My charming Laura, for now indeed I may call you mine, pardon, in consideration of its sincerity, the abrupt language I am compelled to hold.—One thing more. In three weeks I must return hither. The engagement of your British attendants expires before that time. I cannot for a moment allow myself to suppose that you will prefer a hopeless solitary exile to the reparation which I shall even then be so anxious to make; to the endearments of a fond husband, of an impassioned lover; to the envy and the homage of an admiring world. Suffer me rather, dear lovely girl, to exult in the hope that you will receive, without reluctance, the man to whom fate assigns you, and that you will recal somewhat of the tenderness you once confessed for your own ever-devoted,
'Villiers Hargrave.'
Laura's Answer
(sent with the foregoing to Mrs Douglas:)
'I thought my spirit had been broken, crushed never more to rise. Must the glow of indignation mingle with the damps of death? But I will not upbraid you. The language of forgiveness best befits me now. The measure of your injuries to me is almost full; while those which you have heaped upon yourself are yet more deep and irreparable. My blasted fame, my life cut off in its prime, even the horrible dread that has overwhelmed me, are nothing to the pangs of hopeless remorse, the unaccepted struggle for repentance.—Yet a little while, and this darkness shall burst into light ineffable. Yet a little while, and this sorrow shall be as the remembrance of a troubled dream. But you—Oh Hargrave, have pity on yourself!
'It was not to warn, it was to plead with you, that I won on my knees the consent of your messenger to bear my reply. I will strive to hope; for you were not always pitiless. I have seen you feel for the sufferings of a stranger, and have you no mercy for me? Alas! in those pitying tears I saw you shed, began this long train of evil; for then began my base idolatry, and justly have you been made the instrument of my punishment.
'My mind wanders. I am weaker than a child. Oh Hargrave, if you have human pity let the feeble spark expire in peace. Here, where no Christian footstep shall hallow the turf that covers me, nor song of Christian praise rise near my grave, here let me lay me down and die—and I will bless you that I die in peace. I dare not spend my parting breath in uttering unholy vows, nor die a voluntary partner in your crimes. Nor would I, had my life been prolonged, have joined to pollution this dust, which, perishable as it is, must rise to immortality—which, vile as it is, more vile as it soon may be, shall yet "put on incorruption." Why then should you come hither? Will it please you to see this poor piece of clay, for which you have ventured your soul, faded to an object of horror?—cast uncoffined into the earth, robbed of the decencies which Christians pay even to the worst of sinners? When you look upon my stiffened corpse will you then triumph in the security of your possession? Will you again exult in hope when you turn from my grave and say, "here lies the wretch whom I have undone!"
'Come not I charge you, if you would escape the anguish of the murderer. When did the evil of your deeds stop within your first intention? Do not amuse your conscience with the dream of reparation. I am fallen indeed, ere you dare insult me with the thought! Will you wed the dead? Or could I outlive your injuries, think you that I would sink so low as to repay them with myself?—reward with vows of love a crime more black than murder! Though my name, already degraded through you, must no more claim alliance with the good and worthy, think you that I would bind myself before heaven to a wretch who owed his very life to my undeserved mercy? Inhuman! Your insults have roused the failing spirit. Yet I must quell these last stirrings of nature. Instant, full, and free must be my forgiveness; for such is the forgiveness which I shall soon require.
'Perhaps, as now you seem to think me fit for any baseness, you will suppose my forebodings a poor deceit to win you from your purpose. See then if you can trace in these unsteady lines the vigour of health. Ask him who bears them to you, how looks now the face which you call lovely? Ask him if the hand which gave this letter looks soft and graceful now? I love to gaze upon it. It bids me hope, for it is like no living thing. Inquire minutely. Ask if there remains one charm to lure you on to farther guilt. And if death has already seized on all, if he has spared nothing to desire, will you yet hurry him on his prey? You have made life a burden too heavy for the weary frame. Will you make death too dreadful to be endured? Will you add to its horrors till nature and religion shrink from it in agony.
'I cannot plead with you as I would. My strength fails. My eyes are dim with weeping. Oh grant that this farewell may be the last—that we may meet no more till I welcome you with the joy which angels feel over the sinner that repenteth.'