_ Letter XLIV - To Henry Colden
To Henry Colden Philadelphia, December 1.
I said I would not write to you again; I would encourage, I would allow of, no intercourse between us. This was my solemn resolution and my voluntary and no less solemn promise; yet I sit down to abjure this vow, to break this promise.
What a wretch am I! Feeble and selfish beyond all example among women! Why, why was I born, or why received I breath in a world and at a period, with whose inhabitants I can have no sympathy, whose notions of rectitude and decency find no answering chord in my heart?
Never was a creature so bereft of all dignity, all steadfastness. The slave of every impulse; blown about by the predominant gale; a scene of eternal fluctuation.
Yesterday my mother pleaded. Her tears dropped fast into my bosom, and I vowed to be all she wished; not merely to discard you from my presence, but to banish even your image from my thoughts. To act agreeably to her wishes was not sufficient. I must _feel_ as she would have me feel. My actions must flow, not merely from a sense of duty, but from fervent inclination.
I promised every thing. My whole soul was in the promise. I retired to pen a last letter to you, and to say something to your father. My heart was firm; my hand steady. My mother read and approved:--"Dearest Jane! Now, indeed, are you my child. After this I will not doubt your constancy. Make me happy, by finding happiness in this resolution."
"Oh," thought I, as I paced my chamber alone, "what an ample recompense for every self-denial, for every sacrifice, are thy smiles, my maternal friend! I will live smilingly for thy sake, while _thou_ livest. I will live only to close thy eyes, and then, as every earthly good has been sacrificed at thy bidding, will I take the pillow that sustained thee when dead, and quickly breathe out upon it my last sigh."
My thoughts were all lightsome and serene. I had laid down, methought, no life, no joy, but my own. My mother's peace, and your peace, for the safety of either of whom I would cheerfully die, had been purchased by the same act.
How did I delight to view you restored to your father's house! I was still your friend, though invisible. I watched over you, in quality of guardian angel. I etherealized myself from all corporeal passions. I even set spiritual ministers to work to find one worthy of succeeding me in the sacred task of making you happy. I was determined to raise you to affluence, by employing, in a way unseen and unsuspected by you, those superfluities which a blind and erring destiny had heaped upon me.
And whither have these visions flown? Am I once more sunk to a level with my former self? Once I thought that religion was a substance with me,--not a shadow, to flit, to mock, and to vanish when its succour was most needed; yet now does my heart sink.
Oh, comfort me, my friend! plead against yourself; against me. Be my mother's advocate. Fly away from these arms that clasp you, and escape from me, even if your flight be my death. Think not of me, but of my mother, and secure to her the consolation of following my unwedded corpse to the grave, by disclaiming, by hating, by forgetting, the unfortunate
JANE. _