Yesterday our “busy-heads” went to Wenland place, in order to give their opinion of certain alterations and improvements projected by the new tenant Malcolm. I was ordered to stay at home by my despotical doctor, and Lady Maclairn promised to take good care of me.
They departed after breakfast, meaning to dine at Mr. Wilson’s, and left us to a danger, as bad as cold rooms. I soon found it impossible to evade the topic I so much dreaded for her; she at once led to the subject by saying, that she had still secrets to communicate to her only comforter, but that she feared my sensibility. I desired her to proceed. “Some time before my sister’s death,” continued she, “I received this sealed parcel from her hands. It is, as you see, addressed to myself. I hesitated when she offered it to my acceptance. She observed my reluctance.” “Make yourself perfectly easy,” said Miss Flint, “it contains nothing but papers essentially necessary for your future security. I cannot die, without telling you that they are necessary. You do not know your brother, Harriet, so well as I do; and I must tell you, what steps I have taken to secure you from his future tyranical power. I shall die, however, without bitterness of spirit. I once loved Flamall; I do not accuse him here; nor will I accuse him hereafter; for my own envy, my own implacable spirit, my own stubborn and hard heart prepared the way for the influence of his inordinate purposes, and more deliberate mischiefs. As a father, he has been equally base and cruel. Philip has informed me of the measures he pursued, in order to gratify his ambition in regard to his son’s marriage with Miss Cowley. Let it suffice, that they were such as did not surprise me. I immediately wrote to Mr. Flamall. You will find a copy of my letter amongst those papers. He knows, that I have, by a full and ample confession of my crimes, so implicated them with those which he has committed, as must ruin him in this world, if discovered; and as inevitably destroy his hopes of a better, if he do not repent. Should he ever dare to disturb the comforts of my son, by a declaration of his real affinity to him; should he ever dare farther to invade on your peace; he knows what must be the consequence. Actions, which will be recognisable in a court of justice, will determine his fate, and crush with ignominy his worthy and unoffending child. Obdurate as he is in sin, nature is not extinguished in his bosom. He loves his son, and, I am certain, would sooner die himself, than see him disgraced in the world: time may soften to him his present disappointment. I have urged to Philip every possible measure, in order to effect a reconciliation between him and his uncle Flamall. He may, if he be wise, live on good terms with his son, and if he be not lost to conscience, he may find employment, for his remaining term of grace.” “You weep, my dear Harriet,” continued my poor Lucretia; I cannot. How many bitter tears of yours will swell my account; for I was born for your sorrow! and the ruin of the innocent! Can you give comfort to the broken and contrite of heart? Can you say you forgive me? “As freely,” answered I eagerly, “as I hope for mercy and pardon. I have also sinned, I have also erred.” “Yes,” replied she, with quickness; “but the snare was laid for you; and you only stumbled. I boldly invited the danger, and made an acquaintance with guilt and perfidy; see to what purpose? to languish with a mother’s yearnings, to behold and bless that child, who would shrink from me as a monster, did he know me; to dread the future, and to mourn, too late, the wretchedness annexed to a life of guilt. Promise me,” added she, “to be still my Philip’s mother. Let me die in the hope, that, you will never forego the title.” “Never,” answered I, sensible only to her condition, “never, whilst it depends on me to preserve it; he is mine in affection, and nothing can cancel his rights to my love.” “May Heaven reward you,” exclaimed she, in an agony. “May that child’s children bless and revere you——My poor boy will not be surprised at the tenor of my last will,” continued she thoughtfully. “He is rich; and I have explained my intentions, in regard to my brother and Mary. It required very few arguments to prove, that they had not been justly treated. But let me not think of their wrongs! I wrote him word, that it was essentially necessary to my peace to consider them. His last letter was a cordial to my sinking soul; he urges me even to omit his name, if it interfered with my kind purposes; that he possessed more than he wanted of the goods of fortune. Judge, adds he, when I tell you that my brother has frequently realized fourteen thousand pounds annually from his estates: Judge whether, my dear, I may say maternal friend and sister, needs bequeath me more than her blessing and her love.” “I wear at my heart this precious letter,” added she, taking it from her bosom; “but you must take it with the papers. His picture may yet remain, I mean it should moulder into dust with me.”—She paused—“I think,” pursued she, as though collecting herself, “that I may hope to stand acquitted before my Maker for the last and only compensation I can make to some, whom I have injured; perhaps strict justice would exact more sacrifices. But I am a mother, Harriet; the guilty mother, of an innocent child, now a worthy member of society. Something is surely due to him; and thy merciful Maker will not weigh this consideration in the balance of offended justice. Such has been my state of mind for some time past, that had it not been for Philip, I would have fearlessly met every stigma with which this world could have branded me, for the hopes of meeting with a reconciled God. It becomes not me to say, that I think, in this instance of my conduct, I have acted right. But conscience has at least been my guide; I have done for the best. Will not that prudence, which will protect the honour of your family, and the happiness of mine, sanction your secresy in regard to the birth of thy poor——!” She could not go on. Again I soothed her to composure, I solemnly repeated my promise, my dear Miss Cowley, that I would preserve our secret from every danger of a disclosure. “This engagement now distresses me,” continued Lady Maclairn, “I fear I have been wrong; but what could I do, in a moment of such difficulty? I was unequal to the trial; I could not see her die miserable.”—
I placed before Lady Maclairn the wonderful interference of Providence, which had removed the guilty, to secure the innocent. I urged to her the purity of her intentions, and the humanity which pointed out to her the line of conduct she had pursued, and had engaged to pursue. “Repose on your merciful Maker,” added I, “for an acquittal, where you mean to do for the best; patiently wait the end, when this darkness shall be removed; and you will, I trust, find, that having lived to promote the happiness of others, to have contributed to the comfort and security of your family has not been to live in vain. Be assured, my dear friend, that your sufferings will have their place with a Being “who knoweth what is in man; and with a Father, who loveth his children, you may reasonably hope for acceptance and favour.”” “You are my comforter,” replied she, meekly raising her eyes to Heaven; “I have not outlived this first of all human hopes. My weakness, not my will, has betrayed me from the paths of rectitude. But it is difficult for me, to conceal my feelings. I dare not even break the seal, which confines my knowledge to what I already know of the wretched life and conduct of my brother; I sometimes think I shall lose my senses, in reflecting on his end, and the enormities of his conduct. Oh, it is dreadful, Miss Cowley, to follow him to that tribunal before which he must appear!——Leave me for a while,” added she, sobbing, “leave me to my God, to my Almighty supporter”——I obeyed, too much affected to resist. I took the papers with me. She has acted prudently in not reading them. She begs they may be forwarded to you, and that the whole transaction may remain in your hands. You are allowed to read them. What will you say to the letter marked No. 4? The one she burned was the answer to it; but I dare not pursue this horrid subject. My eyes would betray me, and the doctor would be angry; for he has made me promise not to harrass my spirits, and to check my friend’s sorrows. I am going to her! and we will be wise. The return of the vagrants renders this necessary.
Yours,
Rachel Cowley.
P. S. Sedley will give you this.
LETTER LXXIV.
From Miss Cowley to Miss Hardcastle.
Again I am permitted to take a better cordial than bark. Mrs. Heartley has fully explained to us the mystery relative to the portraits in Miss Flint’s possession. It appears that Mrs. Howard, apprehending that they would be more pernicious to her brother, than consolatory, requested Mrs. Heartley to secrete them from his search. She obeyed her dying friend. “But,” added Mrs. Heartley, “my feelings at this juncture were nearly as little under the control of my reason, as poor Percival’s. I wrote a letter to Miss Flint, which was dictated by my sorrow, and the romantic hope of touching her heart in favour of a child whom she had contributed to render an orphan and a beggar. I enclosed these powerful pleaders,” continued Mrs. Heartley, taking up the miniatures, and surveying them with emotion, “and my language was not less forcible. Malcolm was employed to place my packet in her hands. He effected his purpose; for she found it on her dressing table. The next morning he was questioned, and he frankly owned, that he had, at my request, placed the parcel where she had found it. You have been faithful, Sir, in the performance of your commission, said Miss Flint, trembling and pale with fury; “be so in delivering my message to your Mrs. Heartley. Tell her, that her insolent and officious interference has failed, and that whilst Miss Flint’s family have no better advocates than a kept mistress, she wants no apology for renouncing it.” Malcolm bluntly told her, that she must employ some one to deliver such a message who had never heard of Mrs. Heartley; for himself, he begged leave to decline insulting his best friend. I heard no more from Miss Flint; and I concluded that she had destroyed the portraits in a similar manner as she had that of her mother. Frustrated in my project, I was forced to conceal this occurrence; and the pictures were supposed to be irrecoverably and unaccountably lost.”
Although my conscience reproached me frequently when hearing the captain bewail this loss, it never did so as to the motive from which I had acted: but it is to be feared, that my zeal in the cause of the injured, disqualified me for making a convert to justice and humanity. It is most probable that I irritated where I wished to heal; and it is certain, that I was from that time the object of Miss Flint’s implacable resentment. “Poor woman!” continued Mrs. Heartley, with compassion, “she was then under the miserable yoke of those passions, which although they govern, cannot blind us. Neither her spirit of resentment, nor any entrenchment from her prosperous fortune, could shield her from the voice within her bosom. It spoke my language with tenfold energy, and she hated me, because she knew I was in unison with her conscience. She shunned me, as she would have shunned that, had she been able.” “Is it not unaccountable,” added Mrs. Heartley, addressing me, “that any rational being should fear to encounter the eyes of a fellow creature under the circumstances of guilt, nay, even of folly, without considering the power of conscience, from whose suggestions this very dread arises. That Miss Flint was sensible of its power is certain. Nor do I believe, with some, that it is possible for us to outlive its authority. When I hear of such, who are said to be hardened by sin, and become callous by guilt, I no more believe it, than I do those tales I hear of the elixir for perpetuating our existence here for ever. I am convinced that God will not be mocked by the creatures of his power, and I have only to follow the bold and impious offender of his laws to his hours of privacy, to learn, that he cannot evade that Being’s presence, whose commands he insults.” I was more disposed to shorten this conversation, than to dispute the truths it contained. Lady Maclairn’s conscience wants no stimulants. Douglass entered, and we became cheerful. You love the doctor, you say, prithee who does not? but no one shall love him so well as Horace. You have heard of his gallantry three or four nights he past in my antichamber!
Rachel Cowley.