While I was speaking, some one knocked at the door. It was a servant, despatched by my brother to summon me back. My mother went in my stead. I was left, for some minutes, alone.
So persuasive had been my brother's rhetoric, that I began to regret my flight.
I felt something like compunction at having deprived him of an opportunity to prove his assertions. Every gentle look and insinuating accent reappeared to my memory, and I more than half repented my inflexibility.
While buried in these thoughts, my mother returned. She told me that my brother was gone, after repeatedly requesting an interview with me, and refusing to explain his business to any other person.
"Was there anybody with him, madam?"
"Yes. One Clarges,–a jeweller,–an ill-looking, suspicious person."
"Do you know any thing of this Clarges?"
"Nothing but what I am sorry to know. He is a dissolute fellow, who has broken the hearts of two wives, and thrown his children for maintenance on their maternal relations. 'Tis the same who carried your last check to the bank."
I just then faintly recollected the name of Clarges, as having occurred in the conversation at the watchmaker's, and as being the name of him who had produced the paper. This, then, was the person who was to have been introduced to me as the friend in need, the meritorious father of a numerous family, whom the payment of a just debt was to relieve from imminent ruin! How loathsome, how detestable, how insecure, are fraud and treachery! Had he been confronted with me, no doubt he would have recognised the person whom he stared at at the watch-maker's.
Next morning I received a note, dated on the preceding evening. These were the terms of it:–
"I am sorry to say, Jane, that the ruin of a father and brother may justly be laid at your door. Not to save them, when the means were in your power, and when entreated to use the means, makes you the author of their ruin. The crisis has come. Had you shown a little mercy, the crisis might have terminated favourably. As it is, we are undone. You do not deserve to know the place of my retreat. Your unsisterly heart will prompt you to intercept rather than to aid or connive at my flight. Fly I must; whither, it is pretty certain, will never come to your knowledge. Farewell."
My brother's disappearance, the immediate ruin of my father, whose whole fortune was absorbed by debts contracted in his name, and for the most part without his knowledge, the sudden affluence of the adventurer who had suggested his projects to my brother, were the immediate consequences of this event. To a man of my father's habits and views, no calamity can be conceived greater than this. Never did I witness a more sincere grief, a more thorough despair. Every thing he once possessed was taken away from him and sold. My mother, however, prevented all the most opprobrious effects of poverty, and all in my power to alleviate his solitude, and console him in his distress, was done.
Would you have thought, after this simple relation, that there was any room for malice and detraction to build up their inventions?
My brother was enraged that I refused to comply with any of his demands; not grateful for the instances in which I did comply. Clarges resented the disappointment of his scheme as much as if honour and integrity had given him a title to success.
How many times has the story been told, and with what variety of exaggeration, that the sister refused to lend her brother money, when she had plenty at command, and when a seasonable loan would have prevented the ruin of her family, while, at the same time, she had such an appetite for toys and baubles, that ere yet she was eighteen years old she ran in debt to Clarges the jeweller for upwards of five hundred dollars'-worth!
You are the only person to whom I have thought myself bound to tell the whole truth. I do not think my reluctance to draw the follies of my brother from oblivion a culpable one. I am willing to rely, for my justification from malicious charges, on the general tenor of my actions, and am scarcely averse to buy my brother's reputation at the cost of my own. The censure of the undistinguishing and undistinguished multitude gives me little uneasiness. Indeed, the disapprobation of those who have no particular connection with us is a very faint, dubious, and momentary feeling. We are thought of, now and then, by chance, and immediately forgotten. Their happiness is unaffected by the sentence casually pronounced on us, and we suffer nothing, since it scarcely reaches our ears, and the interval between the judge and the culprit hinders it from having any influence on their actions. Not so when the censure reaches those who love us. The charge engrosses their attention, influences their happiness, and regulates their deportment towards us. My self-regard, and my regard for you, equally lead me to vindicate myself to you from any charge, however chimerical or obsolete it may be.
My brother went to France. He seemed disposed to forget that he ever had kindred or country; never informed us of his situation and views. All our tidings of him came to us indirectly. In this way we heard that he procured a commission in the republican troops, had made some fortunate campaigns, and had enriched himself by lucky speculations in the forfeited estates.
My mother was informed, by some one lately returned from Paris, that Frank had attained possession of the whole property of an emigrant Compte de Puysegur, who was far from being the poorest of the ancient nobles; that he lived? with princely luxury, in the count's hotel; that he had married, according to the new mode, the compte's sister, and was probably, for the remainder of his life, a Frenchman. He is attentive to his countrymen, and this reporter partook of several entertainments at his house.
Methinks the memory of past incidents must sometimes intrude upon his thoughts. Can he have utterly forgotten the father whom he reduced to indigence, whom he sent to a premature grave? Amidst his present opulence, one would think it would occur to him to inquire into the effects of his misconduct, not only to his own family, but on others.
What a strange diversity there is among human characters! Frank is, I question not, gay, volatile, impetuous as ever. The jovial carousal and the sound sleep are never molested, I dare say, by the remembrance of the incidents I have related to you.
Methinks, had I the same heavy charges to make against my conscience, I should find no refuge but death from the goadings of remorse. To have abandoned a father to the jail or the hospital, or to the charity of strangers,–a father too who had yielded him an affection and a trust without limits; to have wronged a sister out of the little property on which she relied for support to her unprotected youth or helpless age,–a sister who was virtually an orphan, who had no natural claim upon her present patroness, but might be dismissed penniless from the house that sheltered her, without exposing the self-constituted mother to any reproach.
And has not this event taken place already? What can I expect but that, at least, it will take place as soon as she hears of my resolution with regard to thee? She ought to know it immediately. I myself ought to tell it, and this was one of the tasks which I designed to perform in your absence: yet, alas! I know not how to set about it.
My fingers are for once thoroughly weary. I must lay down the pen. But first; why don't I hear from you? Every day since Sunday, when you left me, have I despatched an enormous packet, and have not received a sentence in answer. 'Tis not well done, my friend, to forget and neglect me thus. You gave me some reason, indeed, to expect no very sudden tidings from you; but there is inexpiable treason in the silence of four long days. If you do not offer substantial excuses for this delay, woe be to thee!
Take this letter, and expect not another syllable from my pen till I hear from you.
Letter VII
Thursday Night.
What a little thing subverts my peace,–dissipates my resolutions! Am I not an honest, foolish creature, Hal? I uncover this wayward heart to thy view as promptly as if the disclosure had no tendency to impair thy esteem and forfeit thy love; that is, to devote me to death,–to ruin me beyond redemption.
And yet, if the unveiling of my follies should have this effect, I think I should despise thee for stupidity and hate thee for ingratitude; for whence proceed my irresolution, my vicissitudes of purpose, but from my love? and that man's heart must be made of strange stuff that can abhor or contemn