I sighed, and my eyes filled with tears—'Is, then, affection so capricious a sentiment—is it possible to love what we despise?'
'I cannot tell,' retorted Mr Harley, with quickness. 'Triflers can give no serious occasion for uneasiness:—the humours of superior women are sometimes still less tolerable.'
'Ah! how unjust. If gentleness be not the perfection of reason, it is a quality which I have never, yet, properly understood.'
He made no reply, but sunk into silence, reserve, and reverie. On our arrival at my apartments, I ventured (my cousin having left us) to expostulate with him on his unkind behaviour; but was answered with severity. Some retrospection ensued, which gradually led to the subject ever present to my thoughts.—Again I expressed a solicitude to be informed of the real state of his heart, of the nature of those mysterious obstacles, to which, when clearly ascertained, I was ready to submit.—'Had he, or had he not, an attachment, that looked to, as its end, a serious and legal engagement?' He appeared ruffled and discomposed.—'I ought not to be so urgent—he had already sufficiently explained himself.' He then repeated to me some particulars, apparently adverse to such a supposition—asking me, in his turn, 'If these circumstances bespoke his having any such event in view?'
CHAPTER VI
For some time after this he absented himself from me; and, when he returned, his manners were still more unequal; even his sentiments, and principles, at times, appeared to me equivocal, and his character seemed wholly changed. I tried, in vain, to accommodate myself to a disposition so various. My affection, my sensibility, my fear of offending—a thousand conflicting, torturing, emotions, threw a constraint over my behaviour.—My situation became absolutely intolerable—time was murdered, activity vain, virtue inefficient: yet, a secret hope inspired me, that indifference could not have produced the irritations, the inequalities, that thus harrassed me. I thought, I observed a conflict in his mind; his fits of absence, and reflection, were unusual, deep, and frequent: I watched them with anxiety, with terror, with breathless expectation. My health became affected, and my mind disordered. I perceived that it was impossible to proceed, in the manner we had hitherto done, much longer—I felt that it would, inevitably, destroy me.
I reflected, meditated, reasoned, with myself—'That one channel, into which my thoughts were incessantly impelled, was destructive of all order, of all connection.' New projects occurred to me, which I had never before ventured to encourage—I revolved them in my mind, examined them in every point of view, weighed their advantages and disadvantages, in a moral, in a prudential, scale.—Threatening evils appeared on all sides—I endeavoured, at once, to free my mind from prejudice, and from passion; and, in the critical and singular circumstances in which I had placed myself, coolly to survey the several arguments of the case, and nicely to calculate their force and importance.
'If, as we are taught to believe, the benevolent Author of nature be, indeed, benevolent,' said I, to myself, 'he surely must have intended the happiness of his creatures. Our morality cannot extend to him, but must consist in the knowledge, and practice, of those duties which we owe to ourselves and to each other.—Individual happiness constitutes the general good:—happiness is the only true end of existence;—all notions of morals, founded on any other principle, involve in themselves a contradiction, and must be erroneous. Man does right, when pursuing interest and pleasure—it argues no depravity—this is the fable of superstition: he ought to only be careful, that, in seeking his own good, he does not render it incompatible with the good of others—that he does not consider himself as standing alone in the universe. The infraction of established rules may, it is possible, in some cases, be productive of mischief; yet, it is difficult to state any rule so precise and determinate, as to be alike applicable to every situation: what, in one instance, might be a vice, in another may possibly become a virtue:—a thousand imperceptible, evanescent, shadings, modify every thought, every motive, every action, of our lives—no one can estimate the sensations of, can form an exact judgment for, another.
'I have sometimes suspected, that all mankind are pursuing phantoms, however dignified by different appellations.—The healing operations of time, had I patience to wait the experiment, might, perhaps, recover my mind from its present distempered state; but, in the meanwhile, the bloom of youth is fading, and the vigour of life running to waste.—Should I, at length, awake from a delusive vision, it would be only to find myself a comfortless, solitary, shivering, wanderer, in the dreary wilderness of human society. I feel in myself the capacities for increasing the happiness, and the improvement, of a few individuals—and this circle, spreading wider and wider, would operate towards the grand end of life—general utility.'