Chapter XXXI: Letter XXX: To J. D. Esq., M. P

_Dublin_.

I am writing to you from the back-room of a noisy hotel in the centre of a great and bustling city: my only prospect the gloomy walls of the surrounding houses. What a contrast! Where now are those refreshing scenes on which my rapt gaze so lately dwelt--those wild sublimities of nature--the stupendous mountain, the Alpine cliff, the boundless ocean, and the smiling vale Where are those original and simple characters, those habits, those manners, to me at least so striking and so new?-- All vanished like a dream!--

“The baseless fabric of a vision!”

I arrived here late in the evening, and found my father waiting to receive me. Happily the rest of the party were gone to the theatre; for his agitation was scarcely less than my own. You know that, owing to our late misunderstanding, it is some months since we met. He fell on my neck and wept. I was quite overcome. He was shocked at my altered appearance, and his tenderest solicitudes were awakened for my health. I was so vanquished by his goodness, that more than once I was on the point of confessing all to him. It was my good angel checked the imprudent avowal: for what purpose could it now serve, but to render me more contemptible in his eyes, and to heighten his antipathy against those who have been in some degree the unconscious accessaries to my egregious folly and incurable imprudence. But _does_ he feel an antipathy against the worthy Prince? Can it be otherwise? Have not all his conciliatory offers been rejected with scorn?--Yet to me he never mentioned the Prince’s name; this silence surprises me--long may it continue. I dare not trust myself. In your bosom only is the secret safely reposed.

As I had rode day and night since I left M--------house, weariness and indisposition obliged me almost on my arrival to go to bed: my father sat by my side till the return of the party from the theatre. What plans for my future aggrandizement and happiness did his parental solicitude canvass and devise! the prospect of my brilliant establishment in life seems to have given him a new sense of being. On our return to England, I am to set up for the borough of ----------. My talents are calculated for the senate: fame, dignity, and emolument, are to wait upon their successful exertion. I am to become an object of popular favour and royal esteem; and all this time, in the fancied triumph of his parental hopes, he sees not that the heart of their object is breaking.

Were you to hear him! were you to see him. What a father! what a man! Such intelligence--such abilities. A mind so dignified--a heart so tender! and still retaining all the ardour, all the enthusiasm of youth. In what terms he spoke of my elected bride! He indeed dwelt chiefly on her personal charms, and the simplicity of her unmodified character. Alas! I once found both united to genius and sensibility.

“How delightful, (he exclaimed) to form this young and ductile mind, to mould it to your desires, to breathe inspiration into this lovely image of primeval innocence, to give soul to beauty, and intelligence to simplicity; to watch the rising progress of your grateful efforts, and finally clasp to your heart that perfection you have yourself created.”

And this was spoken with an energy, an enthusiasm, as though he had himself experienced all the pleasure he now painted for me. Happily, however, in the warmth of his own feelings, he perceived not the coldness, the torpidity of his son’s.

They are fast weaving for me the web of my destiny. I look on and take no part in the work. It is over--I have been presented in form. They say she is beautiful--it may be so;--but the blind man cannot be persuaded of the charms of the rose, when his finger is wounded by its thorns. She met me with some confusion, which was natural, considering she had been “won unsought.” Yet I thought it was the bashfulness of a _hoyden_, rather than that soul-born delicate bashfulness which I have seen accompanied with every grace. How few there are who do or can distinguish this in woman; yet in nature there is nothing more distinct than the modesty of sentiment and of constitution.

The father was, as usual, boisterously good-humoured, and vulgarly pleasant; he talked over our sporting adventures last winter, as if the topic were exhaustless. For my part, I was so silent, that my father looked uneasy, and I then made amends for my former taciturnity by talking incessantly, and on every subject, with vehemence and rapidity. A woman of common sense or common delicacy, would have been disgusted; but she is a child. They would fain drag me after them into public, but my plea of ill health has been received by my indulgent father. My gay young mistress seems already to consider me as her husband, and treats me accordingly with indifference. In short, she finds that love in the solitude of the country, and amidst the pleasures of the town, is a very different sentiment; yet her vanity, I believe, is piqued by my neglect; for to-day she said, when I excused myself from accompanying her to a morning concert, Oh! I should much rather have your father with me, he is the younger man of the two: I indeed never saw him in such health and spirits; he seems to tread on air. Oh! that he were my rival, my successful rival! In the present morbid state of my feelings I give in to every thing; but when it comes to a crisis, will this stupid acquiescence still befriend their wishes? Impossible!

IN CONTINUATION.

I have had a short but extraordinary conversation with my father. Would you believe it? he has for some time back cherished an attachment of the tenderest nature; but to his heart, the interests of his children have ever been an object of the first and dearest concern. Having secured their establishment in life, and as he hopes and believes, effected their happiness, he now feels himself warranted in consulting his own. In short, he has given me to understand that there is a probability of his marriage with a very amiable and deserving person, closely following after my brother’s and mine. The lady’s name he refused to mention, until every thing was finally arranged; and whoever she is, I suspect her rank is inferior to her merits, for he said, “The world will call the union disproportioned--disproportioned in every sense; but I must in this instance, prefer the approval of my own heart to the world’s opinion.” He then added, (equivocally) that had he been able to follow me immediately to Ireland, as he had at first proposed, he would have related to me some circumstances of peculiar interest, but that _I should yet know all_ and seemed, I thought, to lament that disparity of character between my brother and him, which prohibited that flow of confidence his heart seems panting to indulge in. You know Edward takes no pains to conceal that he smiles at those ardent virtues in his father’s character, to which the phlegmatic temperament of his own gives the name of _romance_.

The two fathers settle every thing as they please. A property which fell to my father a few weeks back, by the death of a rich maiden aunt, with every thing not entailed, he has made over to me, even during his life. Expostulation was in vain, he would not hear me:--for himself he has retained nothing but his purchased estates in Connaught, which are infinitely more extensive than that he possesses by inheritance. What if he resides at the Lodge, in the very neighbourhood of------? Oh! my good friend, I fear I am deceiving myself: I fear I am preparing for the heart of the best of fathers, a mortal disappointment. When the throes of wounded pride shall have subsided, when the resentments of a doat-ing, a deceived heart, shall have gradually abated, and the recollection of former blisses shall have soothed away the pangs of recent suffering; will I then submit to the dictates of an imperious duty, or resign myself unresisting to the influence of morbid apathy?

Sometimes my father fixes his eyes so tenderly on me, yet with a look as if he would search to the most secret folds of my heart. He has never once asked my opinion of my elected bride, who, gay and happy as the first circles of this dissipated city can make her, cheerfully receives the plea which ill health affords (attributed to a heavy cold) of not attending her in her pursuit of pleasure. The fact is, I am indeed ill; my mind and body seem declining together, and nothing in this world can give me joy, but the prospect of its delivery.

By this I suppose the mysterious friend is arrived. It was expedient, therefore, that I should be dismissed. By this I suppose she is....

So closely does my former weakness cling round my heart, that I cannot think of it without madness.

After having contemplated for a few minutes the sun’s cloudless radiancy, the impression left on the averted gaze is two dark spots, and the dazzled organ becomes darkened by a previous excess of lumination. It is thus with my mind; its present gloom is proportioned to its former light. Oh! it was too, too much! Rescued from that moral death, that sickbed satiety of feeling, that state of chill, hopeless existence, in which the torpid faculties were impalpable to every impression, when to breathe, to move, constituted all the powers of being: and then suddenly, as if by intervention of Providence (and what an agent did it appoint for the execution of its divine will!) raised to the summit of human thought, human feeling, human felicity, only again to be plunged in endless night. It was too much.

*****

Good God! would you believe it! My father is gone to M------house, to prepare for the reception of the bridal party. We are to follow, and he proposes spending the summer there; there too, he says, my marriage with Miss D------ is to be celebrated; he wishes to conciliate the good will, not only of the neighbouring gentry, but of his tenantry in general, and thinks this will be a fair occasion. Well be it so; but I shall not hold myself answerable for the consequences: my destiny is in their hands--let them look to the result.

Since my father left us, I am of necessity obliged to pay some attention to _his friends_; but I should be a mere automaton by the side of my gay mistress, did I not court an artificial flow of spirits, by means to me the most detestable. In short, I generally contrive to leave my senses behind me at the drinking table; or rather my reason and my spirits, profiting by its absence, are roused to boisterous anarchy: my bride (_my_ bride!) is then quite charmed with my gaiety, and fancies she is receiving the homage of a lover, when she is insulted by the extravagance of a maniac; but she is a simple child, and her father is an insensible fool. God knows how little of my thoughts are devoted to either. Yet the girl is much followed for her beauty, and the splendid figure which the fortune of the father enables them to make, has procured them universal attention from persons of the first rank.

*****

A thousand times the dream of short slumbers gives her to my arms as I last beheld her. A thousand times I am awakened from a heavy unrefreshing sleep by the fancied sound of her harp and voice. There was one old Irish air she used to sing like an angel, and in the idiom of her national music sighed out certain passages with a heart-breaking thrill, that used to rend my very soul! Well, this song I cannot send from my memory; it breathes around me, it dies upon my ear, and in the weakness of emotion I weep--weep like a child. Oh! this cannot be much longer endured. I have this moment received your letter; I feel all the kindness of your intention, but I must insist on your not coming over; it would now answer no purpose. Besides, a new plan of conduct has suggested itself. In a word, my father shall know all: my unfortunate adventure may come to his ears: it is best he should know it from myself. I will then resign my fate into his hands: surely he will not forget I am still his son. Adieu.

H. M