Self-control: A Novel

by Mary Brunton

'I would willingly respect your delicacy,' said Montreville, 'but this is no time for frivolous scruples. I must soon leave thee, child of my affections! My eyes must watch over thee no more; my ear must be closed to the voice of thy complaining. Oh then, give me the comfort to know that other love will console, other arms protect thee.'

'Long, long,' cried Laura, clasping his neck, 'be your affection my joy—long be your arms my shelter. But alas! what love could console me under the sense of acting wrong—what could protect me from an avenging conscience?'

'Laura, you carry your scruples too far. When I look on these wan cheeks and lustreless eyes, you cannot conceal from me that you are sacrificing to these scruples your own peace, as well as that of others.'

'Ah Sir,' said Laura, who from mere despair of escape, gathered courage to pursue the subject, 'What peace can I hope to find in a connexion which reason and religion alike condemn?'

'That these have from childhood been your guides, has ever been my joy and my pride,' returned Montreville. 'But in this instance you forge shackles for yourself, and then call them the restraints of reason and religion. It were absurd to argue on the reasonableness of preferring wealth and title, with the man of your choice, to a solitary struggle with poverty, or a humbling dependence upon strangers. And how, my dear girl, can any precept of religion be tortured into a restriction on the freedom of your choice?'

'Pardon me, Sir, the law which I endeavour to make my guide is here full and explicit. In express terms it leaves me free to marry whom I will, but with this grand reservation, that I marry "only in the Lord." It cannot be thought that this limitation refers only to a careless assent to the truth of the Gospel, shedding no purifying influence on the heart and life. And can I hope for happiness in a wilful defiance of this restriction?'

'If I could doubt,' said Montreville, avoiding a reply to what was unanswerable—'if I could doubt that a union with Colonel Hargrave would conduce to your happiness, never should I thus urge you. But I have no reason to believe that his religious principles are unsound, though the follies incident to his sex, and the frailty of human nature, may have prevailed against him.'

'My dear Sir,' cried Laura impatiently, 'how can you employ such qualifying language to express—what my soul sickens at. How can my father urge his child to join to pollution this temple, (and she laid her hand emphatically on her breast) which my great master has offered to hallow as his own abode? No! the express command of Heaven forbids the sacrilege, for I cannot suppose that when man was forbidden to degrade himself by a union with vileness, the precept was meant to exclude the sex whose feebler passions afford less plea for yielding to their power.'

'Whither does this enthusiasm hurry you?' said Montreville, in displeasure. 'Surely you will not call your marriage with Colonel Hargrave a union with vileness.' 'Yes,' returned Laura, all the glow of virtuous animation fading to the paleness of anguish, 'if his vices make him vile, I must call it so.'

'Your language is much too free, Laura, as your notions are too rigid. Is it dutiful, think you, to use such expressions in regard to a connexion which your father approves? Will you call it virtue to sport with your own happiness, with the peace of a heart that doats upon you—with the comfort of your dying parent?'