The History of Emily Montague Part 56

Adieu! Your faithful Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 180.

To Miss Montague, Rose-hill, Berks.h.i.+re.

Temple-house, Sept. 16.

I have but a moment, my dearest Emily, to tell you heaven favors your tenderness: it removes every anxiety from two of the worthiest and most gentle of human hearts.

You and my brother have both lamented to me the painful necessity you were under, of reducing my mother to a less income than that to which she had been accustomed.

An unexpected event has restored to her more than what her tenderness for my brother had deprived her of.

A relation abroad, who owed every thing to her father's friends.h.i.+p, has sent her, as an acknowledgement of that friends.h.i.+p, a deed of gift, settling on her four hundred pounds a year for life.

My brother is at Stamford, and is yet unacquainted with this agreable event.

You will hear from him next post.

Adieu! my dear Emily!

Your affectionate L. Temple.

END OF VOL. III.

THE HISTORY OF EMILY MONTAGUE.

Vol. IV

LETTER 181.

To Colonel Rivers, at Bellfield, Rutland.

Rose-hill, Sept. 17.

Can you in earnest ask such a question? can you suppose I ever felt the least degree of love for Sir George? No, my Rivers, never did your Emily feel tenderness till she saw the loveliest, the most amiable of his s.e.x, till those eyes spoke the sentiments of a soul every idea of which was similar to her own.

Yes, my Rivers, our souls have the most perfect resemblance: I never heard you speak without finding the feelings of my own heart developed; your conversation conveyed your Emily's ideas, but cloathed in the language of angels.

I thought well of Sir George; I saw him as the man destined to be my husband; I fancied he loved me, and that grat.i.tude obliged me to a return; carried away by the ardor of my friends for this marriage, I rather suffered than approved his addresses; I had not courage to resist the torrent, I therefore gave way to it; I loved no other, I fancied my want of affection a native coldness of temper. I felt a languid esteem, which I endeavored to flatter myself was love; but the moment I saw you, the delusion vanished.

Your eyes, my Rivers, in one moment convinced me I had a heart; you staid some weeks with us in the country: with what transport do I recollect those pleasing moments! how did my heart beat whenever you approached me! what charms did I find in your conversation! I heard you talk with a delight of which I was not mistress. I fancied every woman who saw you felt the same emotions: my tenderness increased imperceptibly without my perceiving the consequences of my indulging the dear pleasure of seeing you.

I found I loved, yet was doubtful of your sentiments; my heart, however, flattered me yours was equally affected; my situation prevented an explanation; but love has a thousand ways of making himself understood.

How dear to me were those soft, those delicate attentions, which told me all you felt for me, without communicating it to others!

Do you remember that day, my Rivers, when, sitting in the little hawthorn grove, near the borders of the river, the rest of the company, of which Sir George was one, ran to look at a s.h.i.+p that was pa.s.sing: I would have followed; you asked me to stay, by a look which it was impossible to mistake; nothing could be more imprudent than my stay, yet I had not resolution to refuse what I saw gave you pleasure: I stayed; you pressed my hand, you regarded me with a look of unutterable love.

My Rivers, from that dear moment your Emily vowed never to be another's: she vowed not to sacrifice all the happiness of her life to a romantic parade of fidelity to a man whom she had been betrayed into receiving as a lover; she resolved, if necessary, to own to him the tenderness with which you had inspired her, to entreat from his esteem, from his compa.s.sion, a release from engagements which made her wretched.

My heart burns with the love of virtue, I am tremblingly alive to fame: what bitterness then must have been my portion had I first seen you when the wife of another!

Such is the powerful sympathy that unites us, that I fear, that virtue, that strong sense of honor and fame, so powerful in minds most turned to tenderness, would only have served to make more poignant the pangs of hopeless, despairing love.

How blest am I, that we met before my situation made it a crime to love you! I shudder at the idea how wretched I might have been, had I seen you a few months later.

I am just returned from a visit at a few miles distance. I find a letter from my dear Bell, that she will be here to-morrow; how do I long to see her, to talk to her of my Rivers!

I am interrupted.

Adieu! Yours, Emily Montague.

LETTER 182.

To Mrs. Temple.

Rose-hill, Sept. 18, Morning.

I have this moment, my dear Mrs. Temple's letter: she will imagine my transport at the happy event she mentions; my dear Rivers has, in some degree, sacrificed even filial affection to his tenderness for me; the consciousness of this has ever cast a damp on the pleasure I should otherwise have felt, at the prospect of spending my life with the most excellent of mankind: I shall now be his, without the painful reflection of having lessened the enjoyments of the best parent that ever existed.

I should be blest indeed, my amiable friend, if I did not suffer from my too anxious tenderness; I dread the possibility of my becoming in time less dear to your brother; I love him to such excess that I could not survive the loss of his affection.

There is no distress, no want, I could not bear with delight for him; but if I lose his heart, I lose all for which life is worth keeping.

Could I bear to see those looks of ardent love converted into the cold glances of indifference!

You will, my dearest friend, pity a heart, whose too great sensibility wounds itself: why should I fear? was ever tenderness equal to that of my Rivers? can a heart like his change from caprice? It shall be the business of my life to merit his tenderness.

I will not give way to fears which injure him, and, indulged, would destroy all my happiness.

I expect Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald every moment. Adieu!

Your affectionate Emily Montague.