be treated with the most sovereign contempt, if not by her, by Hector
and her other relations? Why then did I think of her? It was but a
very few days since the wealth and power that should have raised me,
far above the sphere of the Mowbray family, were supposed to be within
my grasp. How painful was the distance at which they now appeared! My
present debility was felt with intolerable impatience. To love and to
be unable to heap happiness on the object beloved, was a thought that
assailed me with excruciating sensations!
At this very period another event happened, that did not contribute to
enliven the prospect.
I had lately received intelligence from my mother, the tenor of which
was that she dreaded the approach of poverty; and about a fortnight
after the departure of Olivia, a letter came, by which I learned that
lawyer Thornby had refused all further supplies, affirming that my
grandfather's effects were entirely exhausted; except the thousand
pounds left by the rector at my own disposal. Of this I had already
received fifty pounds; and my mother urgently declared in her letter
that, if I did not apply part of the remainder for her support, she
should be left in the decline of life (the approach of which she was
now very ready to acknowledge) in imminent danger of want; nay, so as
perhaps even to come upon the parish. My pride revolted at the very
thought; and I was angry with her for having conceived or committed it
to paper.
Should I suffer my mother to want? No. To become a pauper? My heart
spurned at the base suggestion. I had been several years under the
tuition of the rector, and had acquired more than was good of his
family dignity. The picture before me was not a pleasing one, but I
would subject myself to any hardships, ay would starve on a grain a
day, rather than abandon my mother. My motives were mixed; some wrong
some right.
This affair made me resolve once more to visit my native country, and
my resolution was immediately put in practice. It was a relief, though
of a painful kind, to the more painful state in which my undecided
thoughts at that moment held me. The man whose contradictory impulses
goad him in a thousand different directions, without permitting him to
pursue any one, is happy to be put in motion.
My arrival was unexpected: my mother, who was but little inclined
to accuse herself, received me with much more satisfaction than
embarrassment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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