_Frank Henley to Oliver Trenchard_
_London, Grosvenor Street_
Oliver, I must fly!--There is neither peace nor safety for me if I
remain--Resolution begins to faint under these repeated and oppressive
struggles--Life is useless, virtue inefficient, time murdered, and I
must fly!--Here I can do nothing but doubt, hope, despair, and linger
in uncertainty: my body listless, my mind incoherent, my days wasted in
vain reveries on absurd possibilities, and my nights haunted by the
confused phantoms of a disturbed and sickly brain!--I must fly!
But whither?--I know not!--If I mean to be truly master of my
affections, seas must separate us! Impossibility must be made more
impossible!--'Tis that, Oliver, which kills me, that ignis fatuus of
false hope--Were she even married, if her husband were not immortal, I
feel as if my heart would still dwell and feed on the meagre May-be! It
refuses to renounce her, and makes a thousand and a thousand efforts to
oblige me again to urge its just claims.
I am in the labyrinth of contradictions, and know not how to get out.
My own feelings, my remarks on hers, the looks, actions and discourse
of this dangerous lover are all embroiled, all incongruous, all
illusory. I seem to tempt her to evil by my stay, him I offend, and
myself I torment--I must therefore begone!
Oliver, our hearts are united!--Truth and principle have made them one,
and prejudice and pride have not the power to dissever them!--She
herself feels this intimately, yet persists in her mistake. I think,
Oliver, it is not what the world or what she understands by love which
occasions this anarchy of mind. I think I could command and reprove my
passions into silence. Either I mistake myself, or even now, situated
as I am, I could rejoice were there a certainty, nay were there but
strong probabilities, that her favourite purpose on Clifton should be
effected. But the more I meditate, and my hours, days, and weeks pass
away and are lost in meditation on this subject, the more does my mind
persist in its doubts, and my heart in its claims.
Surely, Oliver, she is under a double mistake! Surely her reasonings
both on him and me are erroneous.
I must be honest, Oliver, and tell thee all my feelings, fears, and
suspicions. They may be false. I hope they are, but they exist. I
imagine I perceive in him repeated and violent struggles to appear what
he is not, nay what I doubt he would despise himself for being!
Is not this an unjustifiable, a cruel accusation? Why have I this keen
this jealous sensibility? Is it not dishonourable to my understanding?
Yet should there be real danger, and I blind to it! Should I neglect to
warn her, or rather to guard and preserve her from harm, where shall I
find consolation?
Oliver! There are times when these fears haunt me so powerfully that my
heart recoils, my blood freezes, and my whole frame is shaken with the
terrific dream!--A dream?--Yes, it must be a dream! If not, the
perversion of his mind and the obduracy of his heart are to me wholly
incomprehensible!
I must be more guarded--Wrongfully to doubt were irreparably to injure!
My first care must be to be just.
Mark, Oliver, how these wanderings of the mind mislead and torment me!
One minute I must fly, to recover myself, and not to disturb and
way-lay others; the next I must stay, to protect her who perhaps is
best able to protect herself!
I have no plan: I labour to form one in vain. That single channel into
which my thoughts are incessantly impelled is destructive of all order
and connexion. The efforts of the understanding are assassinated by the
emotions of the heart; till the reproaches of principle become
intolerable, and the delusions of hope distracting!--A state of such
painful inutility is both criminal and absurd.
The kindness of the father, brother, and aunt, the sympathising
tenderness which bursts from and overcomes the benign Anna, the delay
of the marriage--Oliver!--I was recapitulating the seeming inspirations
of my good angel, and have conjured up my chief tormentor!--This
delay!--Where does it originate?--With whom?--With--! I must fly!--This
of all motives is the most irrefragable! I must fly!--But when, or how,
or where, what I must undertake, whither go, or what become, is yet all
vague and incoherent conjucture.