With a beating heart and fearful, I knew not why, I dismissed the
servant and locking my door, sat down to read my father’s letter.
These are the words that it contained.
“My dear Child
“I have betrayed your confidence; I have endeavoured to pollute your
mind, and have made your innocent heart acquainted with the looks and
language of unlawful and monstrous passion. I must expiate these
crimes, and must endeavour in some degree to proportionate my
punishment to my guilt. You are I doubt not prepared for what I am
about to announce; we must seperate and be divided for ever.
“I deprive you of your parent and only friend. You are cast out
shelterless on the world: your hopes are blasted; the peace and
security of your pure mind destroyed; memory will bring to you
frightful images of guilt, and the anguish of innocent love betrayed.
Yet I who draw down all this misery upon you; I who cast you forth and
remorselessly have set the seal of distrust and agony on the heart and
brow of my own child, who with devilish levity have endeavoured to
steal away her loveliness to place in its stead the foul deformity of
sin; I, in the overflowing anguish of my heart, supplicate you to
forgive me.
“I do not ask your pity; you must and do abhor me: but pardon me,
Mathilda, and let not your thoughts follow me in my banishment with
unrelenting anger. I must never more behold you; never more hear your
voice; but the soft whisperings of your forgiveness will reach me and
cool the burning of my disordered brain and heart; I am sure I should
feel it even in my grave. And I dare enforce this request by relating
how miserably I was betrayed into this net of fiery anguish and all my
struggles to release myself: indeed if your soul were less pure and
bright I would not attempt to exculpate myself to you; I should fear
that if I led you to regard me with less abhorrence you might hate
vice less: but in addressing you I feel as if I appealed to an angelic
judge. I cannot depart without your forgiveness and I must endeavour
to gain it, or I must despair.[35] I conjure you therefore to listen
to my words, and if with the good guilt may be in any degree
extenuated by sharp agony, and remorse that rends the brain as madness
perhaps you may think, though I dare not, that I have some claim to
your compassion.
“I entreat you to call to your remembrance our first happy life on the
shores of Loch Lomond. I had arrived from a weary wandering of sixteen
years, during which, although I had gone through many dangers and
misfortunes, my affections had been an entire blank. If I grieved it
was for your mother, if I loved it was your image; these sole emotions
filled my heart in quietness. The human creatures around me excited in
me no sympathy and I thought that the mighty change that the death of
your mother had wrought within me had rendered me callous to any
future impression. I saw the lovely and I did not love, I imagined
therefore that all warmth was extinguished in my heart except that
which led me ever to dwell on your then infantine image.
“It is a strange link in my fate that without having seen you I should
passionately love you. During my wanderings I never slept without
first calling down gentle dreams on your head. If I saw a lovely
woman, I thought, does my Mathilda resemble her? All delightful
things, sublime scenery, soft breezes, exquisite music seemed to me
associated with you and only through you to be pleasant to me. At
length I saw you. You appeared as the deity of a lovely region, the
ministering Angel of a Paradise to which of all human kind you
admitted only me. I dared hardly consider you as my daughter; your
beauty, artlessness and untaught wisdom seemed to belong to a higher
order of beings; your voice breathed forth only words of love: if
there was aught of earthly in you it was only what you derived from
the beauty of the world; you seemed to have gained a grace from the
mountain breezes--the waterfalls and the lake; and this was all of
earthly except your affections that you had; there was no dross, no
bad feeling in the composition. You yet even have not seen enough[36]
of the world to know the stupendous difference that exists between the
women we meet in dayly life and a nymph of the woods such as you were,
in whose eyes alone mankind may study for centuries & grow wiser &
purer. Those divine lights which shone on me as did those of Beatrice
upon Dante, and well might I say with him yet with what different
feelings
E quasi mi perdei gli occhi chini.
Can you wonder, Mathilda, that I dwelt on your looks, your words, your
motions, & drank in unmixed delight?
[“]But I am afraid that I wander from my purpose. I must be more brief
for night draws on apace and all my hours in this house are counted.
Well, we removed to London, and still I felt only the peace of sinless
passion. You were ever with me, and I desired no more than to gaze on
your countenance, and to know that I was all the world to you; I was
lapped in a fool’s paradise of enjoyment and security. Was my love
blamable? If it was I was ignorant of it; I desired only that which I
possessed, and if I enjoyed from your looks, and words, and most
innocent caresses a rapture usually excluded from the feelings of a
parent towards his child, yet no uneasiness, no wish, no casual idea
awoke me to a sense of guilt. I loved you as a human father might be
supposed to love a daughter borne to him by a heavenly mother; as
Anchises might have regarded the child of Venus if the sex had been
changed; love mingled with respect and adoration. Perhaps also my
passion was lulled to content by the deep and exclusive affection you
felt for me.
“But when I saw you become the object of another’s love; when I
imagined that you might be loved otherwise than as a sacred type and
image of loveliness and excellence; or that you might love another
with a more ardent affection than that which you bore to me, then the
fiend awoke within me; I dismissed your lover; and from that moment I
have known no peace. I have sought in vain for sleep and rest; my lids
refused to close, and my blood was for ever in a tumult. I awoke to a
new life as one who dies in hope might wake in Hell. I will not sully
your imagination by recounting my combats, my self-anger and my
despair. Let a veil be drawn over the unimaginable sensations of a
guilty father; the secrets of so agonized a heart may not be made
vulgar. All was uproar, crime, remorse and hate, yet still the
tenderest love; and what first awoke me to the firm resolve of
conquering my passion and of restoring her father to my child was the
sight of your bitter and sympathizing sorrows. It was this that led me
here: I thought that if I could again awaken in my heart the grief I
had felt at the loss of your mother, and the many associations with
her memory which had been laid to sleep for seventeen years, that all
love for her child would become extinct. In a fit of heroism I
determined to go alone; to quit you, the life of my life, and not to
see you again untill I might guiltlessly. But it would not do: I rated
my fortitude too high, or my love too low. I should certainly have
died if you had not hastened to me. Would that I had been indeed
extinguished!
“And now, Mathilda I must make you my last confession. I have been
miserably mistaken in imagining that I could conquer my love for you;
I never can. The sight of this house, these fields and woods which my
first love inhabited seems to have encreased it: in my madness I dared
say to myself--Diana died to give her birth; her mother’s spirit was
transferred into her frame, and she ought to be as Diana to me.[37]
With every effort to cast it off, this love clings closer, this guilty
love more unnatural than hate, that withers your hopes and destroys me
for ever.
Better have loved despair, & safer kissed her.
No time or space can tear from my soul that which makes a part of it.
Since my arrival here I have not for a moment ceased to feel the hell
of passion which has been implanted in me to burn untill all be cold,
and stiff, and dead. Yet I will not die; alas! how dare I go where I
may meet Diana, when I have disobeyed her last request; her last words
said in a faint voice when all feeling but love, which survives all
things else was already dead, she then bade me make her child happy:
that thought alone gives a double sting to death. I will wander away
from you, away from all life--in the solitude I shall seek I alone
shall breathe of human kind. I must endure life; and as it is my duty
so I shall untill the grave dreaded yet desired, receive me free from
pain: for while I feel it will be pain that must make up the whole sum
of my sensations. Is not this a fearful curse that I labour under? Do
I not look forward to a miserable future? My child, if after this life
I am permitted to see you again, if pain can purify the heart, mine
will be pure: if remorse may expiate guilt, I shall be guiltless.
* * * * *
[“]I have been at the door of your chamber: every thing is silent. You
sleep. Do you indeed sleep, Mathilda? Spirits of Good, behold the
tears of my earnest prayer! Bless my child! Protect her from the
selfish among her fellow creatures: protect her from the agonies of
passion, and the despair of disappointment! Peace, Hope and Love be
thy guardians, oh, thou soul of my soul: thou in whom I breathe!
* * * * *
[“]I dare not read my letter over for I have no time to write another,
and yet I fear that some expressions in it might displease me. Since I
last saw you I have been constantly employed in writing letters, and
have several more to write; for I do not intend that any one shall
hear of me after I depart. I need not conjure you to look upon me as
one of whom all links that once existed between us are broken. Your
own delicacy will not allow you, I am convinced, to attempt to trace
me. It is far better for your peace that you should be ignorant of my
destination. You will not follow me, for when I bannish myself would
you nourish guilt by obtruding yourself upon me? You will not do this,
I know you will not. You must forget me and all the evil that I have
taught you. Cast off the only gift that I have bestowed upon you, your
grief, and rise from under my blighting influence as no flower so
sweet ever did rise from beneath so much evil.
“You will never hear from me again: receive these then as the last
words of mine that will ever reach you; and although I have forfeited
your filial love, yet regard them I conjure you as a father’s command.
Resolutely shake of[f] the wretchedness that this first misfortune in
early life must occasion you. Bear boldly up against the storm:
continue wise and mild, but believe it, and indeed it is, your duty to
be happy. You are very young; let not this check for more than a
moment retard your glorious course; hold on, beloved one. The sun of
youth is not set for you; it will restore vigour and life to you; do
not resist with obstinate grief its beneficent influence, oh, my
child! bless me with the hope that I have not utterly destroyed you.
“Farewell, Mathilda. I go with the belief that I have your pardon.
Your gentle nature would not permit you to hate your greatest enemy
and though I be he, although I have rent happiness from your
grasp;[38] though I have passed over your young love and hopes as the
angel of destruction, finding beauty and joy, and leaving blight and
despair, yet you will forgive me, and with eyes overflowing with
tears I thank you; my beloved one, I accept your pardon with a
gratitude that will never die, and that will, indeed it will, outlive
guilt and remorse.
“Farewell for ever!”
The moment I finished this letter I ordered the carriage and prepared
to follow my father. The words of his letter by which he had dissuaded
me from this step were those that determined me. Why did he write
them? He must know that if I believed that his intention was merely to
absent himself from me that instead of opposing him it would be that
which I should myself require--or if he thought that any lurking
feeling, yet he could not think that, should lead me to him would he
endeavour to overthrow the only hope he could have of ever seeing me
again; a lover, there was madness in the thought, yet he was my lover,
would not act thus. No, he had determined to die, and he wished to
spare me the misery of knowing it. The few ineffectual words he had
said concerning his duty were to me a further proof--and the more I
studied the letter the more did I perceive a thousand slight
expressions that could only indicate a knowledge that life was now
over for him. He was about to die! My blood froze at the thought: a
sickening feeling of horror came over me that allowed not of tears. As
I waited for the carriage I walked up and down with a quick pace; then
kneeling and passionately clasping my hands I tried to pray but my
voice was choked by convulsive sobs--Oh the sun shone[,] the air was
balmy--he must yet live for if he were dead all would surely be black
as night to me![39]
The motion of the carriage knowing that it carried me towards him and
that I might perhaps find him alive somewhat revived my courage: yet I
had a dreadful ride. Hope only supported me, the hope that I should
not be too late[.] I did not weep, but I wiped the perspiration from
my brow, and tried to still my brain and heart beating almost to
madness. Oh! I must not be mad when I see him; or perhaps it were as
well that I should be, my distraction might calm his, and recall him
to the endurance of life. Yet untill I find him I must force reason to
keep her seat, and I pressed my forehead hard with my hands--Oh do not
leave me; or I shall forget what I am about--instead of driving on as
we ought with the speed of lightning they will attend to me, and we
shall be too late. Oh! God help me! Let him be alive! It is all dark;
in my abject misery I demand no more: no hope, no good: only passion,
and guilt, and horror; but alive! Alive! My sensations choked me--No
tears fell yet I sobbed, and breathed short and hard; one only thought
possessed me, and I could only utter one word, that half screaming was
perpetually on my lips; Alive! Alive!--
I had taken the steward[40] with me for he, much better than I[,]
could make the requisite enquiries--the poor old man could not
restrain his tears as he saw my deep distress and knew the cause--he
sometimes uttered a few broken words of consolation: in moments like
these the mistress and servant become in a manner equals and when I
saw his old dim eyes wet with sympathizing tears; his gray hair thinly
scattered on an age-wrinkled brow I thought oh if my father were as he
is--decrepid & hoary--then I should be spared this pain--
When I had arrived at the nearest town I took post horses and followed
the road my father had taken. At every inn where we changed horses we
heard of him, and I was possessed by alternate hope and fear. A length
I found that he had altered his route; at first he had followed the
London road; but now he changed it, and upon enquiry I found that the
one which he now pursued led _towards the sea_. My dream recurred to
my thoughts; I was not usually superstitious but in wretchedness every
one is so. The sea was fifty miles off, yet it was towards it that he
fled. The idea was terrible to my half crazed imagination, and almost
over-turned the little self possession that still remained to me. I
journied all day; every moment my misery encreased and the fever of my
blood became intolerable. The summer sun shone in an unclouded sky;
the air was close but all was cool to me except my own scorching skin.
Towards evening dark thunder clouds arose above the horrizon and I
heard its distant roll--after sunset they darkened the whole sky and
it began to rain[,] the lightning lighted up the whole country and the
thunder drowned the noise of our carriage. At the next inn my father
had not taken horses; he had left a box there saying he would return,
and had walked over the fields to the town of ---- a seacost town
eight miles off.
For a moment I was almost paralized by fear; but my energy returned
and I demanded a guide to accompany me in following his steps. The
night was tempestuous but my bribe was high and I easily procured a
countryman. We passed through many lanes and over fields and wild
downs; the rain poured down in torrents; and the loud thunder broke in
terrible crashes over our heads. Oh! What a night it was! And I passed
on with quick steps among the high, dank grass amid the rain and
tempest. My dream was for ever in my thoughts, and with a kind of half
insanity that often possesses the mind in despair, I said aloud;
“Courage! We are not near the sea; we are yet several miles from the
ocean”--Yet it was towards the sea that our direction lay and that
heightened the confusion of my ideas. Once, overcome by fatigue, I
sunk on the wet earth; about two hundred yards distant, alone in a
large meadow stood a magnificent oak; the lightnings shewed its myriad
boughs torn by the storm. A strange idea seized me; a person must have
felt all the agonies of doubt concerning the life and death of one who
is the whole world to them before they can enter into my feelings--for
in that state, the mind working unrestrained by the will makes strange
and fanciful combinations with outward circumstances and weaves the
chances and changes of nature into an immediate connexion with the
event they dread. It was with this feeling that I turned to the old
Steward who stood pale and trembling beside me; “Mark, Gaspar, if the
next flash of lightning rend not that oak my father will be alive.”
I had scarcely uttered these words than a flash instantly followed by
a tremendous peal of thunder descended on it; and when my eyes
recovered their sight after the dazzling light, the oak no longer
stood in the meadow--The old man uttered a wild exclamation of horror
when he saw so sudden an interpretation given to my prophesy. I
started up, my strength returned; [_sic_] with my terror; I cried,
“Oh, God! Is this thy decree? Yet perhaps I shall not be too late.”
Although still several miles distant we continued to approach the sea.
We came at last to the road that led to the town of----and at an inn
there we heard that my father had passed by somewhat before sunset; he
had observed the approaching storm and had hired a horse for the next
town which was situated a mile from the sea that he might arrive there
before it should commence: this town was five miles off. We hired a
chaise here, and with four horses drove with speed through the storm.
My garments were wet and clung around me, and my hair hung in straight
locks on my neck when not blown aside by the wind. I shivered, yet my
pulse was high with fever. Great God! What agony I endured. I shed no
tears but my eyes wild and inflamed were starting from my head; I
could hardly support the weight that pressed upon my brain. We arrived
at the town of ---- in a little more than half an hour. When my father
had arrived the storm had already begun, but he had refused to stop
and leaving his horse there he walked on--_towards the sea_. Alas! it
was double cruelty in him to have chosen the sea for his fatal
resolve; it was adding madness to my despair.[41]
The poor old servant who was with me endeavoured to persuade me to
remain here and to let him go alone--I shook my head silently and
sadly; sick almost to death I leant upon his arm, and as there was no
road for a chaise dragged my weary steps across the desolate downs to
meet my fate, now too certain for the agony of doubt. Almost fainting
I slowly approached the fatal waters; when we had quitted the town we
heard their roaring[.] I whispered to myself in a muttering
voice--“The sound is the same as that which I heard in my dream. It is
the knell of my father which I hear.”[42]
The rain had ceased; there was no more thunder and lightning; the wind
had paused. My heart no longer beat wildly; I did not feel any fever:
but I was chilled; my knees sunk under me--I almost slept as I walked
with excess of weariness; every limb trembled. I was silent: all was
silent except the roaring of the sea which became louder and more
dreadful. Yet we advanced slowly: sometimes I thought that we should
never arrive; that the sound of waves would still allure us, and that
we should walk on for ever and ever: field succeeding field, never
would our weary journey cease, nor night nor day; but still we should
hear the dashing of the sea, and to all this there would be no end.
Wild beyond the imagination of the happy are the thoughts bred by
misery and despair.
At length we reached the overhanging beach; a cottage stood beside the
path; we knocked at the door and it was opened: the bed within
instantly caught my eye; something stiff and straight lay on it,
covered by a sheet; the cottagers looked aghast. The first words that
they uttered confirmed what I before knew. I did not feel shocked or
overcome: I believe that I asked one or two questions and listened to
the answers. I har[d]ly know, but in a few moments I sank lifeless to
the ground; and so would that then all had been at an end!