_To Henry Golden_
New York, February 12.
And are you then alive? Are you then returned? Still do you remember,
still love, the ungrateful and capricious Jane? Have you indeed come back
to soothe her almost broken heart,--to rescue her from the grave,--to
cheer her with the prospect of peaceful and bright days yet to come?
Oh, my full heart! Sorrow has not hitherto been able quite to
burst this frail tenement. I almost fear that joy,--so strange to me is
joy, and so far, so very far, beyond my notions of possibility was your
return,--I almost fear that joy will do what sorrow was unable to do.
Can it be that Golden--that selfsame, dear, pensive face, those eyes,
benignly and sweetly mild, and that heart-dissolving voice, have escaped
so many storms, so many dangers? Was it love for me that led you from the
extremity of the world? and have you, indeed, brought back with you a
heart full of "ineffable tenderness" for _me_?
Unspeakably unworthy am I of your love. Time and grief, dear Hal, have
bereft me of the glossy hues, the laughing graces, which your doting
judgment once ascribed to me. But what will not the joy of your return
effect? I already feel lightsome and buoyant as a bird. My head is giddy;
but, alas, you are not well,--yet, you assure us, not dangerously sick.
Nothing, did you not say, but time and repose necessary to heal you? Will
not my presence, my nursing, hasten thy restoration? Tuesday evening--they
say it can't possibly be sooner--I am with you. No supporters shall you
have but my arms; no pillow but my breast. Every holy rite shall instantly
be called in to make us one. And when once united, nothing but death shall
ever part us again. What did I say? Death itself--at least _thy_
death--shall never dissever that bond.
Your brother will take this. Your sister--she is the most excellent of
women, and worthy to be your sister--she and I will follow him to-morrow.
He will tell you much which my hurried spirits will not allow me to tell
you in this letter. He knows everything. He has been a brother since my
mother's death. She is dead, Henry. She died in my arms; and will it not
give you pleasure to know that her dying lips blessed me, and expressed
the hope that you would one day return to find, in my authorized love,
some recompense for all the evils to which her antipathies subjected you?
She hoped, indeed, that observation and experience would detect the
fallacy of your former tenets; that you would become wise, not in
speculation only, but in practice, and be, in every respect, deserving of
the happiness and honour which would attend the gift of her daughter's
hand and heart.
My words cannot utter, but thy own heart perhaps can conceive, the
rapture which thy confession of a change in thy opinions has afforded me.
_All_ my prayers, Henry, have not been _merely_ for your return.
Indeed, whatever might have been the dictates, however absolute the
dominion, of passion, union with you would have been _very_ far from
completing my felicity, unless our hopes and opinions, as well as our
persons and hearts, were united. Now can I look up with confidence and
exultation to the shade of my revered and beloved mother. Now can I safely
invoke her presence and her blessing on a union which death will have no
power to dissolve. Oh, what sweet peace, what serene transport, is there
in the persuasion that the selected soul will continue forever to commune
with _my_ soul, mingle with mine in its adoration of the same Divine
Parent, and partake with me in every thought, in every emotion, both
_here_ and _hereafter_!
Never, my friend, without _this_ persuasion, _never_ should I
have known one moment of true happiness. Marriage, indeed, instead of
losing its attractions in consequence of your errors, drew thence only new
recommendations, since with a zeal, a tenderness, and a faith like mine,
my efforts to restore such a heart and such a reason as yours could not
fail of success; but _till_ that restoration were accomplished,
never, I repeat, should I have tasted repose even in _your_ arms.
Poor Miss Jessup! She is dead, Henry,--yet not before she did thee and
me poor justice. Her death-bed confession removed my mother's fatal
suspicions. This confession and the perusal of all thy letters, and thy
exile, which I afterwards discovered was known to her very early, though
unsuspected by me till after her decease, brought her to regard thee with
some compassion and some respect.
I can write no more; but must not conclude till I have offered thee the
tenderest, most fervent vows of a heart that ever was and always will be
_thine own_. Witness,