Jane Talbot
Copyright© 2024 by Charles Brockden Brown
Letter XXXI
[Editorial note: The observant reader will have noticed this is the second letter bearing the number XXXI. The original text contained two Letters XXXI, and we have chosen to let the letters retain their original numbers, rather than renumber them. ]
To Henry Colden
Philadelphia, November 11.
How shall I tell you the strange--strange incident? Every fibre of my frame still trembles. I have endeavoured, during the last hour, to gain tranquillity enough for writing, but without success. Yet I can forbear no longer: I must begin.
I had just closed my last to you, when somebody knocked. I heard footsteps below, as the girl ushered in the visitant, which were not quite unknown to me. The girl came up:--”A gentleman is waiting.”
“A gentleman!” thought I. “An odd hour this” (it was past ten) “for any man but one to visit me. His business must be very urgent.” So, indeed, he told the girl it was, for she knew me averse to company at any time, and I had withdrawn to my chamber for the night; but he would not be eluded. He must see me, he said, this night.
A tall and noble figure, in a foreign uniform, arose from the sofa at my entrance. The half-extinct lamp on the mantel could not conceal from me--my brother!
My surprise almost overpowered me. I should have sunk upon the floor, had he not stepped to me and sustained me in his arms.
“I see you are surprised, Jane,” said he, in a tone not without affection in it. “You did not expect, I suppose, ever to see me again. It was a mere chance brought me to America. I shall stay here a moment, and then hie me back again. I could not pass through the city without a ‘How d’ye’ to the little girl for whom I have still some regard.”
The violence of my emotions found relief in a flood of tears. He was not unmoved, but, embracing me with tenderness, he seated me by him on the sofa.
When I had leisure to survey his features, I found that time had rather improved his looks. They were less austere, less contemptuous, than they used to be: perhaps, indeed, it was only a momentary remission of his customary feelings.
To my rapid and half-coherent questions, he replied, “I landed--you need not know where. My commission requires secrecy, and you know I have personal reasons for wishing to pass through this city without notice. My business did not bring me farther southward than New London; but I heard your mother resided in New York, and could not leave the country without seeing you. I called on her yesterday; but she looked so grave and talked so obscurely about you, that I could not do less than come hither. She told me you were here. How have been affairs since I left you?”
I answered this question vaguely.
“Pray,” (with much earnestness, ) “are you married yet?”
The confusion with which I returned an answer to this did not escape him.
“I asked Mrs. Fielder the same question, and she talked as if it were a doubtful point. She could not tell, she said, with a rueful physiognomy. Very probable it might be so. I could not bring her to be more explicit. As I proposed to see you, she said, you were the fittest person to explain your own situation. This made me the more anxious to see you. Pray, Jane, how do matters stand between you and Mrs. Fielder? are you not on as good terms as formerly?”
I answered, that some difference had unhappily occurred between us, that I loved and revered her as much as ever, and hoped that we should soon be mother and daughter again.
“But the cause?--the cause, Jane? Is a lover the bone of contention between you? That’s the rock on which family harmony is sure to be wrecked. But tell me: what have you quarrelled about?”
How could I explain on such a subject, thus abruptly introduced to him? I told him it was equally painful and useless to dwell on my contentions with my mother, or on my own affairs. “Rather let me hear,” said I, “how it fares with you; what fortunes you have met with in this long absence.”
“Pretty well; pretty well. Many a jade’s trick did Fortune play me before I left this spot, but ever since, it has been all smooth and bright with me. But this marriage--Art thou a wife or not? I heard, I think, some talk about a Talbot. What’s become of him? They said you were engaged to him.”
“It is long since the common destiny has ended all Talbot’s engagements.”
“Dead, is he? Well, a new aspirer, I suppose, has succeeded, and he is the bone of contention. Who’s he?”
I could not bear that a subject of such deep concern to me should be discussed thus lightly, and therefore begged him to change the subject.
“Change the subject? With all my heart, if we can find any more important; but that’s impossible. So we must even stick to this a little longer. Come; what’s his parentage; fortune; age; character; profession? ‘Tis not likely I shall find fault where Mrs. Fielder does. Young men and old women seldom hit upon the same choice in a husband; and, for my part, I am easily pleased.”
“This is a subject, brother, on which it is impossible that we should think alike; nor is it necessary. Let us then talk of something in which we have a common concern; something that has a claim to interest you.”
“What subject, girl, can have a stronger claim on my attention than the marriage of my sister? I am not so giddy and unprincipled as to be unconcerned on that head, So make no more ado, but tell your brother candidly what are your prospects.”
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