Dear Sir,--I have requested your messenger to say that I will answer
your letter by mail, which I shall now proceed to do. I assure you
that I was entirely ignorant of your residence in this neighborhood, or
it would have been the last place on earth in which I should have set
foot.
As to our past relations, they were ended by your own act. I frankly
confess that I deceived you; I have paid the penalty, and have no
complaint to make. I appreciate the delicacy which has made you
respect my brother's secret, and thank you for it. I remember the
whole affair with shame and humiliation, and would willingly forget it.
As to a future interview, I do not see what good it would do either of
us. You are white, and you have given me to understand that I am
black. I accept the classification, however unfair, and the
consequences, however unjust, one of which is that we cannot meet in
the same parlor, in the same church, at the same table, or anywhere, in
social intercourse; upon a steamboat we would not sit at the same
table; we could not walk together on the street, or meet publicly
anywhere and converse, without unkind remark. As a white man, this
might not mean a great deal to you; as a woman, shut out already by my
color from much that is desirable, my good name remains my most
valuable possession. I beg of you to let me alone. The best possible
proof you can give me of your good wishes is to relinquish any desire
or attempt to see me. I shall have finished my work here in a few
days. I have other troubles, of which you know nothing, and any
meeting with you would only add to a burden which is already as much as
I can bear. To speak of parting is superfluous--we have already
parted. It were idle to dream of a future friendship between people so
widely different in station. Such a friendship, if possible in itself,
would never be tolerated by the lady whom you are to marry, with whom
you drove by my schoolhouse the other day. A gentleman so loyal to his
race and its traditions as you have shown yourself could not be less
faithful to the lady to whom he has lost his heart and his memory in
three short months.
No, Mr. Tryon, our romance is ended, and better so. We could never
have been happy. I have found a work in which I may be of service to
others who have fewer opportunities than mine have been. Leave me in
peace, I beseech you, and I shall soon pass out of your neighborhood as
I have passed out of your life, and hope to pass out of your memory.
Yours very truly,
ROWENA WALDEN.