How shall I thank you for the kind and delicate manner in which you
have complied with my request? You will not be surprised, nor, I hope,
offended, that I am emboldened to address you once more.
I see that I need not practise towards you a reserve at all times
foreign to my nature, and now more painful than at any other time, as my
soul is torn with emotions which I am at liberty to disclose to no other
human creature. Will you be my friend? Will you permit me to claim your
sympathy and consolation? As I told you before, I am thoroughly acquainted
with your merits, and one of the felicities which I promised myself from a
nearer alliance with Mr. Colden was that of numbering myself among your
friends.
You have deprived me of some hope by the information you give; but you
have at least put an end to a suspense more painful than the most dreadful
certainty could be.
You say that you know all our concerns. In pity to my weakness, will
you give me some particulars of my friend? I am extremely anxious to know
many things in your power to communicate.
Perhaps you know the contents of my last letter to him, and of his
answer. I know you condemn me. You think me inconsiderate and cruel in
writing such a letter; and my heart does not deny the charge. Yet my
motives were not utterly ungenerous. I could not bear to reduce the man I
loved to poverty. I could not bear that he should incur the violence and
curses of his father. I fondly thought _myself_ the only obstacle to
reconcilement, and was willing, whatever it cost me, to remove that
obstacle.
What will become of me, if my fears should now be realized?--if the
means which I used with no other view than to reconcile him to his family
should have driven him away from them and from his country forever? I
thank my God that I was capable of abandoning him on no selfish or
personal account. The maledictions of my own mother; the scorn of the
world; the loss of friends, reputation, and fortune, weighed nothing with
me. Great as these evils were, I could have cheerfully sustained them for
his sake. What I did was in oblivion of self; was from a duteous regard to
his genuine and lasting happiness. Alas! I have, perhaps, mistaken the
means, and cruel will, I fear, be the penalty of my error.
Tell me, my dear friend, was not Colden reconciled to his father before
he went? When does he mean to return? What said he, what thought he, of my
conduct? Did he call me ungrateful and capricious? Did he vow never to see
or think of me more?
I have regarded the promise that I made to the elder Colden, and to my
mother, as sacred. The decease of the latter has, in my own opinion,
absolved me from any obligation except that of promoting my own happiness
and that of him whom I love. I shall not _now_ reduce him to
indigence, and, that consequence being precluded, I cannot doubt of his
father's acquiescence.
Ah, dear madam, I should not have been so long patient, had I not, as
it now appears, been lulled into a fatal mistake. I could not taste repose
till I was, as I thought, certainly informed that he continued to reside
in his father's house. This proof of reconciliation, and the silence
which, though so near him, he maintained towards me, both before and
subsequently to my mother's death, contributed to persuade me that his
condition was not unhappy, and especially that either his resentment or
his prudence had made him dismiss me from his thoughts.
I have lately, to my utter astonishment, discovered that Colden,
immediately after his last letter to me, went upon some distant voyage,
whence, though a twelvemonth has since passed, he has not yet returned.
Hence the boldness of this address to you, whom I know only by rumour.
You will, I doubt not, easily imagine to yourself my feelings, and will
be good enough to answer my inquiries, if you have any compassion for
your