George Parsons Lathrop - "A Study Of Hawthorne"

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Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences - "Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2"

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Confession by W. Gilmore Simms

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession




"Oh. I beseech you!--two proverbs at a time will be fatal to one
or other of us. Perhaps both. But he can not fare worse by going
to Texas."

"He will do well enough here."

"Perhaps."

"Recover your lands, for example, as a beginning."

"Ah! now you would bribe me. That is certainly a suggestion to
make me keep my tongue, at least until the verdict is rendered.
'Till then, you know, I shall make no permanent remove myself."

"But do you mean to go before the trial?" I asked.

"Yes, for a couple of months or so. I should only get into some
squabble with my opponents by remaining here; and I may be preparing
for all of us by going in season. I will look out for a township,
Mrs. Clifford, on the edge of some beautiful prairie, and near some
beautiful river. Your husband has a passion for water prospects,
I can tell you, and would become a misanthrope without them. I
am doubtful if he will be happy, indeed, if not within telescope
distance from the sea itself. I don't think that a river will
altogether satisfy him."

"Oh yes, THIS must;" and as she spoke she pointed to the fair glassy
surface of the Alabama, as it stretched away, at intervals, in
broad glimpses before our eyes.

"Well, we shall see; but I will make my preparations, nevertheless,
precisely as if he were not likely to be content. I have formed
to myself a plan for all of you. I must make a dear little colony
of our own in Texas. We shall have a nest of the sweetest little
cottages, each with its neat little garden. In the centre we shall
have a neat little playground for our neat little children; on the
hill a neat little church; in the grove a neat little library; on
the river a neat little barge; and over this neat little empire,
you, Lady Clifford, shall be the neat little empress."

"Dear me! what a neat little establishment!"

"It shall be all that, I assure you; and it shall have other advantages.
You shall have a kingdom free from taxes and wars. There shall be
no law-givers but yourself. We shall have no elections except when
we elect our wives, and the women shall be the only voters then. We
shall have no custom houses--everything shall be free of duty;--we
shall have no banks--everything shall be free of charge;--we shall
have no parson, for shall we not be sinless?"

"But what will you do with the neat little church?"

"Oh! that we shall keep merely to remind us of what is necessary
in less fortunate communities."

"Very good; but how, if you have no parsons, will you perform the
marriage ceremony?"

"That shall be a natural operation of government. The voters having
given their suffrages, you shall determine and declare with whom
the majority lies, and give a certificate to that effect. The first
choice will lie with the damsel having the highest number of votes;
the second with the next; and so on to the end of the chapter; and
then elections are to take place annually among the unmarried--the
ladies being the privileged class as I said before. You will keep
a record of these events, the names of parties, and so forth; and
this record shall be proof, conclusive to conviction, against any
party falling off from his or her duties."

"Quite a system. I do not deny that our sex will have some new
privileges by this arrangement."

"Unquestionably. But you have not heard all. We shall have no
doctors, for we shall have no diseases in the beautiful world to
which I shall carry you. We shall have no lawyers, for we shall
have no wrangling."

"Indeed; but what is my husband to do then?"

"Why, he is your husband. What should he do? He takes rank from
you. You are queen, you know. He will have no need of law."

"There's reason in that; but how will you prevent wrangling where
there are men and women?"

"Oh, by giving the women their own way. The government is a
despotism--you are queen--surely you will make no further objection
to so admirable a system?"

In good-humored chat like this, in which our landlady, Mrs.
Porterfield--a lady who, though fully sixty-five years of age, was
yet of a cheery and chatty disposition--took considerable part,
our first evening passed away. Though fatigued, we sat up until a
tolerably late hour, enlivened by the frank spirit of our friend,
Kingsley, and inspired by the natural feeling of curiosity which
our change of situation inspired It was midnight before we solicited
the aid of sleep.






CHAPTER XL.

THE BLACK DOG ONCE MORE UPON THE SCENE.





The next day was devoted to an examination of our premises and the
neighborhood. The result of this examination was such as to render
us better satisfied with the change that we had made. We were
still young enough to be sensible to the loveliness of novelty.
Everything wore that purple light which the eye of youth confers
upon the object. And then there was repose. That harassing strife
of the "blind heart" was at rest. I had no more suspicions; and
my wife looked and spoke as if she had never had either doubts of
me, or fears of herself, within her bosom. I was happiness itself,
when, by the unreserved ease and gayety of her deportment she
persuaded me that she suffered no regrets. I little fancied how
much the change in my wife's manner had arisen from the involuntary
change which had been going on in mine. I now looked the love which
I felt; and she felt, in the improvement of my looks, the renewal
of that fond passion which I had never ceased to feel, but which
I had only too much ceased to show while suffering from the "blind
heart." She resumed her old amusements with new industry. Our
little parlor received constant accessions of new pictures. All our
leisure was employed in exploring the scenery of the neighborhood;
and not a bit of forest, or patch of hill, or streak of rivulet or
stream, to whiah the genius of art could lend loveliness, but she
picked up, in these happy rambles, and worked into fitting places
upon our cottage walls.

Our good old hostess became attached to us. She virtually surrendered
the management of the household to my wife. She was old and quite
infirm; and was frequently confined for days to her chamber; which
must have been a solitary place enough before our coming. My wife
became a companion to her in these periods of painful seclusion,
and thus provided her with a luxury which had been long denied
her. Under these circumstances we had very much our own way. The
old lady had few associates, and these were generally very worthy
people. They soon became our associates also, and under the
influence of better feelings than had governed me for a long time
past, I now found myself in a condition of comfoft, cheerfulness,
and peace, which I fancied I had forfeited for ever.

Two weeks after our arrival, Kingsley took his departure for Texas,
on a visit. He proposed to be absent two months. His object, as
he had described it before, in some pleasant exaggerations, was
to select some favorable spots for purchase, which should combine
as nearly as possible the three prime requisites of salubrity,
fertility, and beauty. His object was to speculate; "and this was
to be done," he said, "at an early hour of the day." "The Spanish
proverb," he was wont to say, "which regulates the eating of oranges,
is not a bad rule to govern a man in making his speculations.
Speculations (oranges) are gold at morning, silver at noon, and
lead at night. It is your wise man," he added, "who buys and sells
early; your merely sensible man who does so at midday; while your
dunce, waiting for an increased appetite at evening, swallows
nothing but lead."

I was in some respects a very fortunate man. If I had been a wise
one! It has been seen that I was singularly successful in business at
my first beginning in my native city. I had not been long in the
town of M--, before I began to congratulate myself on the prospect of
like fortune attending me there. The affairs of Kingsley brought me
into contact with several men of business. My letters of introduction
made me acquainted with many more; not simply of the town, but
of the neighboring country. My ardency of temper was particularly
suited to a frank, confiding people, such as are most of the
southwestern men; and one or two accidental circumstances yielded
me professional occupation long before I expected to find it. I
had occasion to appear in court at an early day, and succeeded in
making a favorable impression upon my hearers. To be a good speaker,
in the south and southwest, is to be everything. Eloquence implies
wisdom--at least all the wisdom which is supposed to be necessary
in making lawyers and law-makers--a precious small modicum of a
material by no means precious. I was supposed to have the gift of
the gab in moderate perfection, and my hearers were indulgent. My
name obtained circulation, and, in a short time, I discovered that,
in a professional as well as personal point of view, I had no reason
to regret the change of residence which I had made. Business began
to flow in upon me. Applications reached me from adjoining counties,
and though my fees, like the cases which I was employed in, were
of moderate amount, they promised to be frequent, while my clients
generally were very substantial persons.

It will not need that I should dwell farther on these topics. It
will be sufficient to show that, in worldly respects, I was as
likely to prosper in my new as in my past abode. In social respects
I had still more reason to be gratified. The days went by with me
as smoothly as with Thalaba. My wife was all that I could wish.
She was the very Julia whom I had married. Nay, she was something
more--something better. Her health improved, and with it her
spirits. She evidently had no regrets. A sigh never escaped her.
Her content and cheerfulness were wonderful. She had none of that
vague, vain yearning which the feeble feel, called "home-sickness." She
convinced me that I was her home--the only home that she desired.
It was evident that she thought less of our ancient city than I
did myself. I am sure that if either of us, at any moment, felt a
desire to look upon it again, the person was myself. I maintained
a correspondence with the place--received the newspapers, groped over
them with persevering industry--nay--missed not the advertisements,
and was disappointed and a discontent on those days when the mail
failed. My wife had no such appetite. She sometimes read the papers,
but she appeared to have no curiosity; and, with the exception of
an occasional letter which she received from her mother, she had
no intercourse whatever with her former home.

All this was calculated to satisfy me. But this was not all. If
gentleness, sweetness, cheerfulness, and a sleepless consideration
of one's wants and feelings, could convince any mortal of the love
of another--I must have been satisfied. We resumed most of the
habits which began with our marriage, but which had been so long
discontinued. We rose with the sun, and went abroad after his
example. Like him we rose to the hill-tops, and then descended into
the valleys. We grew familiar with the deepest shades of wood and
forest while the dewdrops were yet beading the bosoms of the wild
flowers; and we followed the meandering course of the Alabama,
long before the smoking steamer vexed it with her flashing paddles.
My professional toils from breakfast to dinner-time--for this
interval I studiously gave to my office, even if I had little to do
there--occasioned the only interregnum which I knew in the positive
pleasures which I enjoyed. In the afternoon our enjoyments were
renewed. Our cottage was so sweetly secluded, that we did not need
to go far in order to find the Elysian grove which we desired.
At the top of our hill we were surrounded by a natural temple of
proud pines--guarding the spot from any but that sort of devine
and religious light which streams through the painted windows of
the ancient cathedral. The gay glances of the sun came gliding
through the foliage in drops, and lay upon the grass in little pale,
fanciful gleams, most like eyes of fairies peeping upward from its
velvety tufts. Here we read together from the poets--sometimes
Julia sung, even while sketching. Not unfrequently, Mrs. Porterfield
came with us, and, at such times, our business was to detect distant
glimpses of barge, or steamboat, as they successively darted into
sight, along such of the glittering patches of the Alabama as were
revealed to us in its downward progress through the woods.

Our evenings were such as hallow and make the luxury of cottage
life--evenings yielded up to cheerfulness, to content and harmony.
Between music, and poetry, and painting, my heart was subdued to
the sweetest refinements of love. Without the immorality, we had
the very atmosphere of a Sybarite indulgence. I was enfeebled by the
excess of sweets; and the happiness which I felt expressed itself
in signs. These denoted my presentiments. My apprehensions were
my sole cause of doubt and sorrow. How could such enjoyments last?
Was it possible, with any, that they should last? Was it possible
that they should last with me? I should have been mad to think it.

But, in the sweet delirium which their possession inspired, I
almost forgot the past. The soul of man is the most elastic thing
in nature. Those harassing tortures of the heart which I had been
suffering for months--those weary days of exhausting doubt--those
long nights of torturing suspicion--the shame and the fear, the
sting of jealousy, and the suffering--I had almost forgotten in the
absorbing pleasures of my new existence. If I remembered them it
was only to smile; if I thought of William Edgerton it was only
to pity;--and, as for Julia, deep was the crimson shadow upon my
cheek, whenever the reproachful memory reminded me of the tortures
which I had inflicted upon her gentle heart while laboring under
the tortures of my own--when I thought of the unmanly espionage which
I had maintained over conduct which I now felt to be irreproachable.

But, just at the moment when I thus thought and felt--when I
no longer suffered and no longer inflicted pain--when my wife was
not only virtue in my sight, but love, and beauty, and grace, and
meekness--all that was good and all that was dear besides;--when
my sky was without a cloud, and the evening star shone through the
blue sky upon the green tops of our cottage trees, with the serene
lustre of a May-divinity--just then a thunderbolt fell upon my
dwelling, and blackened the scene for ever.

I had now been three months a resident in M----, and never
had I been more happy--never less apprehensive on the score of my
happiness--when I received a letter from my venerable friend and
patron, the father of William Edgerton.

"My son," he wrote, "is no better than when you left us. We have
every reason to believe him worse. He has a cough, he is very thin,
and there is a flushed spot upon his cheek which seems to his mother
and myself the indubitable sign of vital decay. His frame is very
feeble, and our physician advises travel. Under this counsel he
set off with a favorite servant on Wednesday of last week. He will
make easy stages through Tennessee to the Ohio, will descend into
Mississippi, and return home by way of Alabama. He contemplates
paying you a brief visit. I need not say, dear Clifford, how grateful
I shall be for any kindness which you can show to my poor boy. His
mother particularly invokes it. I should not have deemed it necessary
to say so much, but would have preferred leaving it to William to
make his own communication, were it not that she so particularly
desires it. It may be well to add, that on one subject we are
both very much relieved. We now have reason to believe that our
apprehensions on the score of his morals were without foundation.
It is our present belief that he neither gamed nor drank. This is
a consolation, dear Clifford, though it brings us no nigher to our
wish. It is something to believe that the object of our love is
not worthless; though it adds to the pang that we should feel in
the event of losing him. Our parting would be less easy. For my own
part, I have little hope that his journey will do him any material
benefit. It may prolong his days, but can not, I fear, have any more
decided influence upon his disease. His mother, however, is more
sanguine, and it is perhaps well that she should be so. I know
that when William reaches your neighborhood, you will make it as
cheerful and pleasant to him as possible. The talent of your young
and sweet wife--her endowments in painting and music--have always
been a great solace to him. His tastes you know are very much like
hers. I trust she will exercise them, and be happy in ministering
to the comfort of one, who will not, I fear, trespass very long
upon any earthly ministry. My dear Clifford, I know that you will
do your utmost in behalf of your earliest friend, and I will waste
no more words in unnecessary solicitation."

Such was the important portion of the letter. In an instant, as
I read it, I saw, with the instinct of jealousy, the annihilation
of all my hopes of happiness. All my dreams were in the dust--all
my fancies scattered--my schemes and temples overthrown. Bitter
was the pang I felt on reading this letter. It said more--much
more--in the very language of solicitation which the good old father
professed to believe unnecessary. He poured forth the language of
a father's grief and entreaty. I felt for the venerable man--the
true friend--in spite of my own miserable apprehensions. I felt
for him, but what could I do? What would he have me do? I had no
house in which to receive his son. He would lodge, perhaps, for a
time, in the community. It could not be supposed that he would remain
long. The letter of the father spoke only of a brief visit. Our
neighborhood had no repute, as a place of resort, for consumptive
patients. I consoled myself with the reflection that William Edgerton
could, on no pretence, linger more than a week or two among us. I
will treat him kindly--give him the freedom of the house while he
remains. A dying man, if so he be, must have reached a due sense of
his situation, and will not be likely to trespass upon the rights
of another. His passions must be subdued by this time. Ah! but will
not his condition be more likely to inspire sympathy?

The fiend of the blind heart prompted that last suggestion. It
was the only one that I remembered. When I returned home that day
to dinner, I mentioned, as if casually, the letter I had received,
and the contents. My eye narrowly watched that of my wife while
I spoke. Hers sunk beneath my glance Her cheeks were suddenly
flushed--then, as suddenly, grew pale, and I observed, that, though
she appeared to eat, but few morsels of food were carried into her
mouth that day. She soon left the table, and, pleading headache
declined joining me in our usual evening rambles.






CHAPTER XLI.

TRIAL--THE WOMAN GROWS STRONG.





Thus, then, I was once more at sea, rudderless--not yet
companionless--perhaps, soon to be so. My relapse was as sudden as
my thought. It seemed as if every past misery of doubt and suspicion
were at once revived within me. All my day-dreams vanished in an
instant. William Edgerton would again behold--would again seek--my
wife. They must meet; I owed that to the father; and, whatever the
condition of the son might be, it was evident that his feelings
toward her must be the same as ever; else, why should he seek her
out?--why pursue our footsteps and haunt my peace? I must receive
him and treat him kindly for the father's sake; but that one bitter
thought, that he was pursuing us, the deadly enemy to my peace--and
now, evidently, a wilful one--gave venom to the bitter feeling with
which I had so long regarded his attentions.

It was evident, too, whatever may have been its occasion, that the
knowledge of his coming awakened strange emotions in the bosom of
my wife. That blush--that sudden paleness of the cheek--what was
their language? I fain would have struggled against the conviction,
that it denoted a guilty consciousness of the past--a guilty
feeling of the future. But the mocking demon of the blind heart
forced the assurance upon me. What was to be done? Ah! what? This
was the question, and there was no variation in the reply which
my jealous spirit made. There was but one refuge. I must pursue
the same insidious policy as before. I must resort to the same
subterfuge, meet them with the same smiles, disguise once more the
true features of my soul; seem to shut my eyes, and afford them the
same opportunities as before, in the torturing hope (fear?) that
I should finally detect them in some guilty folly which would be
sufficient to justify the final punishment. I must put on the aspect
of indifference, the better to pursue the vocation of the spy.

Base necessity, but still, as I then fancied, a necessity not the
less. Ah I was I not a thing to be pitied? Was ever any case more
pitiable than mine? I ask not this question with any hope that
an answer may be found to justify my conduct. It is not the less
pitiable--nay, it is more--that no such answer can be found. My
folly is not the less a thing of pity, because it is also a thing
of scorn. That was the pity--and yet, I was most severely tried.
Deep were my sufferings! Strong was that demon within me--I care
not how engendered, whether by the fault and folly of others, or
by my own--still it was strong. If I was guilty--base, blind--was
I not also suffering? Never did I inflict on the bosom of Julia
Clifford, so deep a pang as I daily--nay, hourly, inflicted upon
my own. She was a victim, true--but was I less so! But she was
innocently a victim, therefore, less a sufferer, whatever her
sufferings, than me! Let none condemn or curse me, till they have
asked what curse I have already undergone. I live!--they will say.
Ah! me! They must ask what is the value of life, not to themselves,
but to a crushed, a blasted heart, like mine! But I hurry forward
with my pangs rather than my story.

Instantly, a barrier seemed to rise up between Julia Clifford ind
myself. She had her consciousness, evidently, no less than I. What
was THAT consciousness? Ah! could I have guessed THAT, there would
have been no barrier--all might have been peace again. But a destiny
was at work which forbade it all; and we strove ignorantly with
one another and against ourselves. There was a barrier between
us, which our mutual blindness of heart made daily thicker, and
higher, and less liable to overthrow. A coldness overspread my
manner. I made it a sort of shelter. The guise of indifference is
one of the most convenient for hiding other and darker feelings.
Already we ceased to ramble by river and through wood. Already the
pencil was discarded. We could no longer enjoy the things which
so lately made us happy, because we no longer entertained the same
confidence in one another. Without this confidence there is no
communion sweet. And all this had been the work of that letter. The
name of William Edgarton had done it all--his name and threatened
visit!

But--and I read, the letter again and again--it would be some
time before he might be expected. The route, as laid down for him
by his father, was a protracted one. "Through Georgia, Tennessee,
Mississippi, then homeward, by way of Alabama." "He can not be
here in less than six weeks. He must travel slowly. He must make
frequent rests."

And there was a further thought--a hope--which, though it filled
my mind, I did not venture to express in words. "He may perish on
his route: if he be so feeble, it is by no means improbable!"

At all events, I had six weeks' respite--perhaps more. Such was
my small consolation then. But even this was false. In less than
a week from that time, William Edgerton stood at the door of our
cottage!

Instead of going into Tennessee, he had shot straight forward,
through Georgia, into Alabama.

Though surprised, I was not confounded by his presence. Under the
policy which I had resolved upon, I received him with the usual
professions of kindness, and a manner as nearly warm and natural
as the exercise of habitual art could make it. He certainly did
look very miserable. His features wore an expression of uniform
despair. They brightened up, when he beheld my wife, as the cloud
brightens suddenly beneath the moonlight. His eyes were riveted
upon her. He was almost speechless, but he advanced and took her
hand, which I observed was scarcely extended to him. He sat the
evening with us, and a chilly, dull evening it was. He himself
spoke little--my wife less; and the conversation, such as it was,
was carried on chiefly between old Mrs. Porterfield and myself.
But I could see that Edgerton employed his eyes in a manner which
fully compensated for the silence of his tongue. They were seldom
withdrawn from the quarter of the apartment in which my wife sat.
When withdrawn, it was but for an instant, and they soon again
reverted to the spot. He had certainly acquired a degree of
boldness, which, in this respect, he had not before possessed. I
keenly analyzed his looks without provoking his attention. It was
not possible for me to mistake the unreserved admiration that his
glance expressed. There was a strange spiritual expression in his
eyes, which was painful to the spectator. It was that fearful
sign which the soul invariably makes when it begins to exert itself
at the expense of the shell which contains it. It was the sign of
death already written. But he might linger for months. His cough
did not seem to me oppressive. The flush was not so obvious upon
his cheek. Perhaps, looking through the medium of my peculiar
feelings, his condition was not half so apparent as his designs.
At least, I felt my sympathies in his behalf--small as they were
before--become feebler with every moment of his stay that night.

Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

The barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.

Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.

A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."

The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

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Would you have your ashes scattered in Jane Austen's garden?
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight

The royal family doesn't need a poet

The power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)

Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.

(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)

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