Your affectionate
Charles Falkland.
LETTER II.
Miss Douglas to Miss Sandford.
Dearest Julia,
Glenalta.
Your letter, which I received yesterday, reproaches me with silence, and I plead guilty to the charge, though you are very wrong in supposing that my failure in punctuality proceeds from weariness of communion with you. I have very few correspondents, and amongst these few I rejoice to say, that there is not one, to whom I write from any other motive than because I love and value every species of intercourse with those who are really dear to my heart. I know that it is only necessary to tell you, that I have been much engaged, to be certain of your forgiveness; but I should not satisfy myself if I did not say how I have been occupied.
Shut out as we are from the gay world, and living for weeks together without any interruption to our pursuits, even you may perhaps wonder that time is not a burthen on our hands. Yet this is not the case; but on the contrary, the day appears scarcely set in before it has arrived at its close. Is this always the effect of full employment, or is it peculiar to the little circle at Glenalta to wish that the sun would stand still, and give more of his company?—I am too little acquainted with people and places beyond my own home to answer the question; and you are not here to do it for me; so now I will proceed with the causes of my long silence.
Our dear friend, and invaluable neighbour, Mr. Otway, has been ill: thank heaven, he is quite recovered now.—This dear friend and your aunt are, I think, the only people on earth who for the last twelve years could have poured the balm of comfort into the desolate spirit of my beloved mother—the latter in becoming a tender parent to you and your sisters has had too much care connected with her immediate duties to admit of her being often with us; but what she, under different circumstances, might have been, Mr. Otway has been; and what can we ever do sufficiently to prove our gratitude, as well as our affection? During his illness, which continued for three months, we shared, not only the task of nursing him with unremitting assiduity, but endeavoured to supply his place by undertaking the labours which, for a series of years, he has imposed upon himself. We took care of his schools, we visited his sick poor, we distributed his benefactions, became his deputies on the roads and in the fields; and resolved that, on his return to his gardens and plantations, he should find all things meeting him with that pleasant welcome which even the inanimate world is enabled to testify, when the hand of diligent affection has taught every shrub and flower to glow with its own emotions!—I know nothing more touching than such a reception, which needs no words to convince the object of our solicitude, how constantly the heart has been occupied in an endeavour to please by the cultivation of whatever might confer enjoyment; and the suppression of all that would be productive of pain.
Though one of the actors in the scene, I will confess to you, that the success of our efforts was complete. There was no arrangement—no display that appeared to solicit thanks for our faithful stewardship; but I never shall forget the happiness of seeing tears, not of grief, stealing from my mother's eyes, while our dear friend, leaning upon her arm on one side, and Frederick's on the other—Charlotte, Fanny, and I, bringing up the rear—took his first walk upon the terrace which commands that panorama of loveliness and expanse which you admired so much in your visit at Glenalta, to which my mind frequently recurs as the most joyful period of my existence. In addition to all the blessings of my daily life, I had then the enlivening influence of your presence. The landscape was the same, but you were the sunshine: and while you were here, all seemed "gold and green."—When will you come again, I wonder!—Well, what a wanderer I am! continually deviating from my path, my narrative advances but slowly,—and you are yet to learn, that besides our extra employments at his farm, we have been as busy as bees preparing for the accommodation of my Cousin Arthur Howard, who is expected here to-morrow evening.
People who live in towns, or even in what is called civilized parts of the country, have little idea how we poor pill-garlicks labour to perform what they accomplish as if by the stroke of a magical wand. A few words are pronounced in the shape of an order, to one of your fashionable upholsterers, and lo! sophas, ottomans, tables, arm-chairs, and all the elegant etceteras of modern furniture rise up like an exhalation, and are found in their exact places, as if a fairy had arranged them. While country folks, like us, have to wish, and to wait, for many a long day before we can obtain even an imperfect representation of a new luxury. I do not complain of this; for I really believe, that we gain by every difficulty, and enjoy our humble acquisitions, after going through much trouble to obtain them, a thousand times more than the rich and fashionable do their superfluities, which it is only to desire, and to possess; but I state the fact to account for the employment of time and pains in filling up a comfortable bed-chamber and dressing-room for Arthur Howard, whose approach I dread, not because I have any reason to be afraid of him, but because I feel how entirely out of his natural (or perhaps I should rather say artificial) element, he will find himself in this peaceful retreat.