_To Mrs. Montford_
Banks of Delaware, September 5.
Be not anxious for me, Mary. I hope to experience very speedy relief
from the wholesome airs that perpetually fan this spot. Your apprehensions
from the influence of these scenes on my fancy are groundless. They
breathe nothing over my soul but delicious melancholy. I have done
expecting and repining, you know. Four years have passed since I was
here,--since I met your brother under these shades.
I have already visited every spot which has been consecrated by our
interviews. I have found the very rail which, as I well remember, we
disposed into a bench, at the skirt of a wood bordering a stubble-field.
The same pathway through the thicket where I have often walked with him, I
now traverse morning and night.
Be not uneasy, I repeat, on my account. My present situation is happier
than the rest of the world can afford. I tell you I have done repining. I
have done sending forth my views into an earthly futurity. Anxiety, I
hope, is now at an end with me.
What do you think I design to do? I assure you it is no new scheme.
Ever since my mother's death, I have thought of it at times. It has been
my chief consolation. I never mentioned it to you, because I knew you
would not approve it. It is this.
To purchase this farm and take up my abode upon it for the rest of my
life. I need not become farmer, you know. I can let the ground to some
industrious person, upon easy terms. I can add all the furniture and
appendages to this mansion, which my convenience requires. Luckily,
Sandford has for some time entertained thoughts of parting with it, and I
believe he could not find a more favourable purchaser.
You will tell me that the fields are sterile, the barn small, the
stable crazy, the woods scanty. These would be powerful objections to a
mere tiller of the earth, but they are none to me.
'Tis true, it is washed by a tide-water. The bank is low, and the
surrounding country sandy and flat, and you may think I ought rather to
prefer the beautiful variety of hill and dale, luxuriant groves and
fertile pastures, which abound in other parts of the country. But you
know, my friend, the mere arrangement of inanimate objects--wood, grass,
and rock--is nothing. It owes its power of bewitching us to the memory,
the fancy, and the heart. No spot of earth can possibly teem with as many
affecting images as this; for here it was----
But my eyes already overflow. In the midst of these scenes, remembrance
is too vivid to allow me thus to descant on them. At a distance I could
talk of them without that painful emotion, and now it would be useless
repetition. Have I not, more than once, related to you every dialogue,
described every interview?
God bless you, dear Mary, and continue to you all your present
happiness.
Don't forget to write to me. Perhaps some tidings may reach you--Down,
thou flattering hope! thou throbbing heart, peace! He is gone. These eyes
will never see him more. Had an angel whispered the fatal news in my
wakeful ear, I should not more firmly believe it.
And yet--But I must not heap up disappointments for myself. Would to
Heaven there was no room for the least doubt,--that, one way or the other,
his destiny was ascertained!
How agreeable is your intelligence that Mr. Cartwright has embarked,
after taking cheerful leave of you! It grieves me, my friend, that you do
not entirely approve of my conduct towards that man. I never formally
attempted to justify myself. 'Twas a subject on which I could not give
utterance to my thoughts. How irksome is blame from those we love! there
is instantly suspicion that blame is merited. A new process of
self-defence is to be gone over, and ten to one but that, after all our
efforts, there are some dregs at the bottom of the cup.
I was half willing to found my excuse on the hope of the wanderer's
return; but I am too honest to urge a false plea. Besides, I know that
certainty, in that respect, would make no difference; and would it not be
fostering in him a hope that my mind might be changed in consequence of
being truly informed respecting your brother's fate?
I persuade myself that a man of Cartwright's integrity and generosity
cannot be made lastingly unhappy by me. I know but of one human being more
excellent. Though his sensibility be keen, I trust to his fortitude.
It is true, Mary, what you have heard. Cartwright was my school-fellow.
When we grew to an age that made it proper to frequent separate schools,
he did not forget me. The schools adjoined each other, and he used to
resist all the enticements of prison-base and cricket for the sake of
waiting at the door of our school till it broke up, and then accompanying
me home.
These little gallant offices made him quite singular among his
compeers, and drew on him and on me a good deal of ridicule. But he did
not mind it. I thought him, and everybody else thought him, a most amiable
and engaging youth, though only twelve or thirteen years old.
'Tis impossible to say what might have happened had he not gone with
his mother to Europe; or rather, it is likely, I think, that our fates,
had he stayed among us, would in time have been united. But he went away
when I was scarcely fourteen. At parting, I remember, we shed a great many
tears and exchanged a great many kisses, and promises _not to
forget_. And that promise never was broken by me. He was always dear to
my remembrance.
Time has only improved all the graces of the boy. I will not conceal
from _you_, Mary, that nothing but a preoccupied heart has been an
obstacle to his wishes. If that impediment had not existed, my reverence
for his worth, my gratitude for his tenderness, would have made me comply.
I will even go further; I will say to you, though my regard to his
happiness will never suffer me to say it to him, that if three years more
pass away, and I am fully assured that your brother's absence will be
perpetual, and Cartwright's happiness is still in my hands,--that then--I
possibly may--But I am sure that, before that time, his hand and his heart
will be otherwise disposed of. Most sincerely shall I rejoice at the last
event.
All are well here. My friend is as good-natured and affectionate as
ever, and sings as delightfully and plays as adroitly. She humours me with
all my favourite airs, twice a day. We have no strangers; no impertinents
to intermeddle in our conversations and mar our enjoyments.
You know what turn my studies have taken, and what books I have brought
with me. 'Tis remarkable what unlooked-for harvests arise from small and
insignificant germs. My affections have been the stimulants to my
curiosity. What was it induced me to procure maps and charts and explore
the course of the voyager over seas and round capes? There was a time when
these objects were wholly frivolous and unmeaning in my eyes; but now they
gain my whole attention.
When I found that my happiness was embarked with your brother in a
tedious and perilous voyage, was it possible to forbear collecting all the
information attainable respecting his route, and the incidents likely to
attend it? I got maps and charts, and books of voyages, and found a
melancholy enjoyment in connecting the incidents and objects which they
presented with the destiny of my friend. The pursuit of this chief and
most interesting object has brought within view and prompted me to examine
a thousand others, on which, without this original inducement, I should
never have bestowed a thought.
The map of the world exists in my fancy in a most vivid and accurate
manner. Repeated meditation on displays of shoal, sand-bank, and water,
has created a sort of attachment to geography for its own sake. I have
often reflected on the innumerable links in the chain of my ideas between
my first eager examination of the route by sea between New York and
Tobago, and yesterday's employment, when I was closely engaged in
measuring the marches of Frederick across the mountains of Bohemia.
How freakish and perverse are the rovings of human curiosity! The
surprise which Miss Betterton betrayed, when, in answer to her inquiries
as to what study and what book I prized the most, you told her that I
thought of little else than of the art of moving from shore to shore
across the water, and that I pored over Cook's Voyages so much that I had
gotten the best part of them by rote, was very natural. She must have been
puzzled to conjecture what charms one of my sex could find in the study of
maps and voyages. _Once_ I should have been just as much puzzled
myself. Adieu.