Your motive for desiring a change of fortune has been greatly enforced
since we have become known to each other. Thou hast honoured me with thy
affection; but that union, on which we rely for happiness, could not
take place while both of us were poor. My habits, indeed, have made
labour and rustic obscurity less painful than they would prove to my
friend, but my present condition is wholly inconsistent with marriage. As long as my exertions are insufficient to maintain us both, it would
be unjustifiable to burden you with new cares and duties. Of this you
are more thoroughly convinced than I am. The love of independence and
ease, and impatience of drudgery, are woven into your constitution. Perhaps they are carried to an erroneous extreme, and derogate from that
uncommon excellence by which your character is, in other respects,
distinguished; but they cannot be removed. This obstacle was unexpectedly removed by the death of your brother. However justly to be deplored was this catastrophe, yet, like every
other event, some of its consequences were good. By giving you
possession of the means of independence and leisure, by enabling us to
complete a contract which poverty alone had thus long delayed, this
event has been, at the same time, the most disastrous and propitious
which could have happened. Why thy brother should have concealed from us the possession of this
money,--why, with such copious means of indulgence and leisure, he
should still pursue his irksome trade, and live in so penurious a
manner,--has been a topic of endless and unsatisfactory conjecture
between us. It was not difficult to suppose that this money was held in
trust for another; but in that case it was unavoidable that some
document or memorandum, or at least some claimant, would appear. Much
time has since elapsed, and you have thought yourself at length
justified in appropriating this money to your own use. Our flattering prospects are now shut in. You must return to your
original poverty, and once more depend for precarious subsistence on
your needle. You cannot restore the whole, for unavoidable expenses and
the change of your mode of living have consumed some part of it. For so
much you must consider yourself as Weymouth's debtor. Repine not, my friend, at this unlooked-for reverse. Think upon the
merits and misfortunes of your brother's friend; think upon his aged
father, whom we shall enable him to rescue from poverty; think upon his
desolate wife, whose merits are, probably, at least equal to your own,
and whose helplessness is likely to be greater. I am not insensible to
the evils which have returned upon us with augmented force, after
having, for a moment, taken their flight. I know the precariousness of
my condition and that of my sisters; that our subsistence hangs upon the
life of an old man. My uncle's death will transfer this property to his
son, who is a stranger and an enemy to us, and the first act of whose
authority will unquestionably be to turn us forth from these doors. Marriage with thee was anticipated with joyous emotions, not merely on
my own account or on thine, but likewise for the sake of those beloved
girls to whom that event would enable me to furnish an asylum. But wedlock is now more distant than ever. Mv heart bleeds to think of
the sufferings which my beloved Mary is again fated to endure; but
regrets are only aggravations of calamity. They are pernicious, and it
is our duty to shake them off. I can entertain no doubts as to the equity of Weymouth's claim. So many
coincidences could not have happened by chance. The non-appearance of
any letters or papers connected with it is indeed a mysterious
circumstance; but why should Waldegrave be studious of preserving these? They were useless paper, and might, without impropriety, be cast away or
made to serve any temporary purpose. Perhaps, indeed, they still lurk in
some unsuspected corner. To wish that time may explain this mystery in a
different manner, and so as to permit our retention of this money, is,
perhaps, the dictate of selfishness. The transfer to Weymouth will not
be productive of less benefit to him and to his family, than we should
derive from the use of it. These considerations, however, will be weighed when we meet. Meanwhile I
will return to my narrative. Chapter XVI. Here, my friend, thou must permit me to pause. The following incidents
are of a kind to which the most ardent invention has never conceived a
parallel. Fortune, in her most wayward mood, could scarcely be suspected
of an influence like this. The scene was pregnant with astonishment and
horror. I cannot, even now, recall it without reviving the dismay and
confusion which I then experienced. Possibly, the period will arrive when I shall look back without agony on
the perils I have undergone. That period is still distant. Solitude and
sleep are now no more than the signals to summon up a tribe of ugly
phantoms. Famine, and blindness, and death, and savage enemies, never
fail to be conjured up by the silence and darkness of the night. I
cannot dissipate them by any efforts of reason. Sly cowardice requires
the perpetual consolation of light. My heart droops when I mark the
decline of the sun, and I never sleep but with a candle burning at my
pillow. If, by any chance, I should awake and find myself immersed in
darkness, I know not what act of desperation I might be suddenly
impelled to commit. I have delayed this narrative longer than my duty to my friend enjoined. Now that I am able to hold a pen, I will hasten to terminate that
uncertainty with regard to my fate in which my silence has involved
thee. I will recall that series of unheard-of and disastrous
vicissitudes which has constituted the latest portion of my life. I am not certain, however, that I shall relate them in an intelligible
manner. One image runs into another; sensations succeed in so rapid a
train, that I fear I shall be unable to distribute and express them with
sufficient perspicuity. As I look back, my heart is sore, and aches
within my bosom. I am conscious to a kind of complex sentiment of
distress and forlornness that cannot be perfectly portrayed by words;
but I must do as well as I can. In the utmost vigour of my faculties, no
eloquence that I possess would do justice to the tale. Now, in my
languishing and feeble state, I shall furnish thee with little more than
a glimpse of the truth. With these glimpses, transient and faint as they
are, thou must be satisfied. I have said that I slept. My memory assures me of this; it informs me of
the previous circumstances of my laying aside my clothes, of placing the
light upon a chair within reach of my pillow, of throwing myself upon
the bed, and of gazing on the rays of the moon reflected on the wall and
almost obscured by those of the candle. I remember my occasional
relapses into fits of incoherent fancies, the harbingers of sleep.