“Dear Jane,—Your letter was like a thunderbolt to me, and I am hardly able to pen a reply. But I see the wisdom of the course you suggest, and shall make my arrangements at once to go to the law school at Cambridge. I know my own heart so well that I can have no doubts concerning yours; and if labor, and toil, and success can win your mother’s approbation, it shall be mine. But in any case I am yours till death.
Thomas Barton.”
Accordingly, Tom went off to Cambridge, and devoted all his strength to the herculean task of piling up his legal knowledge “higher than one story”—Everett has said so many witty things in his day, that he need not mind lending one occasionally—whilst I, with envy in my heart, was still playing the part of a faithful friend, and keeping Jane advised of all his movements, and of all his success.
But neither his success in his studies, nor the reputation which one year’s practice at the bar had given him, softened the prejudices of the Huguenot lady; and it was as much with a view of keeping them apart as any thing else, that she traveled with her daughter every summer.
Edward Neville was precisely to the taste of the old lady. She favored him in every way—gave him a seat in her carriage to Lake George, invited him to her private parlor, told him at what hour in the morning she drank the water—in short, turned me completely adrift, and adopted him as her constant attendant.
I feared the result, and wrote to Tom about it. In reply he thanked me for the interest I had manifested, but assured me that he had no fears, that he had the most perfect trust in Jane, that he was laboring with assiduity to improve the little fortune he had inherited, for he was sorry to add that there was every probability, that the Elliots would be in need of the assistance of their friends, and that very soon.
This intelligence very much surprised me. I knew that the old gentleman had endorsed most imprudently for a friend who was speculating in western lands, but I had heard only the day before the most glowing accounts of the value of those lands.
However, the season ended; and when leaving the springs, Mr. Elliot, at his wife’s earnest solicitation, invited Neville to pay him a visit during the winter. He accepted it gladly, went to New York, sold his books, rented his office, and told his friends that he had given up law, and was thinking of making an investment in the South.
But the denouement of this true history presses upon me, and I must hurry its narration.
About the merry Christmas time, our court-house door and village papers informed the people that the SHERIFF would sell “all that valuable, &c., &c.,” enumerating every earthly thing that Mr. Elliot possessed.