A. W. ST. IVES
LETTER LXXIII
Frank Henley to Oliver Trenchard
London, Grosvenor Street
Oliver, I must fly!—There is neither peace nor safety for me if I remain—Resolution begins to faint under these repeated and oppressive struggles—Life is useless, virtue inefficient, time murdered, and I must fly!—Here I can do nothing but doubt, hope, despair, and linger in uncertainty: my body listless, my mind incoherent, my days wasted in vain reveries on absurd possibilities, and my nights haunted by the confused phantoms of a disturbed and sickly brain!—I must fly!
But whither?—I know not!—If I mean to be truly master of my affections, seas must separate us! Impossibility must be made more impossible!—'Tis that, Oliver, which kills me, that ignis fatuus of false hope—Were she even married, if her husband were not immortal, I feel as if my heart would still dwell and feed on the meagre May-be! It refuses to renounce her, and makes a thousand and a thousand efforts to oblige me again to urge its just claims.
I am in the labyrinth of contradictions, and know not how to get out. My own feelings, my remarks on hers, the looks, actions and discourse of this dangerous lover are all embroiled, all incongruous, all illusory. I seem to tempt her to evil by my stay, him I offend, and myself I torment—I must therefore begone!
Oliver, our hearts are united!—Truth and principle have made them one, and prejudice and pride have not the power to dissever them!—She herself feels this intimately, yet persists in her mistake. I think, Oliver, it is not what the world or what she understands by love which occasions this anarchy of mind. I think I could command and reprove my passions into silence. Either I mistake myself, or even now, situated as I am, I could rejoice were there a certainty, nay were there but strong probabilities, that her favourite purpose on Clifton should be effected. But the more I meditate, and my hours, days, and weeks pass away and are lost in meditation on this subject, the more does my mind persist in its doubts, and my heart in its claims.
Surely, Oliver, she is under a double mistake! Surely her reasonings both on him and me are erroneous.
I must be honest, Oliver, and tell thee all my feelings, fears, and suspicions. They may be false. I hope they are, but they exist. I imagine I perceive in him repeated and violent struggles to appear what he is not, nay what I doubt he would despise himself for being!