Anon. - "Reina Valera New Testament of the Bible 1858"

Various - "Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870"

Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke - "A Treasury of War Poetry"

Eugene Field - "A Little Book of Profitable Tales"

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Confession by W. Gilmore Simms

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession




"Hypocrite!" I muttered while stooping down for the chest.

"You are sick--you have your spasms!" she now said, rising from the
bed and offering to measure the medicine. This she had repeatedly
done before; but I was not now willing to trust her. Doubts of her
fidelity led to other doubts.

"If she is prepared to dishonor, she is prepared to destroy you!"
said my familiar.

This suggestion seized upon my brain, and while I measured out the
minims, the busy fiend reminded me that I grasped the bane as well
as the antidote in my hand. A stern, a terrible image of retributive
justice presented itself before my thoughts. The feeling of
an awful necessity grew strong within me. "Shall the adulterer
alone perish? Shall the adultress escape?" The fiend answered with
tremulous but stern passion--"She shall surely die!"

"If she reveals not the truth in season," I said in my secret soul;
"if she claims not protection at my hands against the adulterer,
she shall share his fate!" and with this resolve, even at the moment
when I was measuring the antidote for myself, I resolved that the
same vial should furnish the bane for her!

The medicine relieved me, though not with the same promptness as
usual. I looked at the watch and found it two o'clock. My wife
begged me to come to bed, but that was impossible. I proceeded
to change my garments. By the time that I had finished, the rain
ceased, the stars came out, the morning promised to be clear. I
determined to set forth from my office. I had no particular purpose;
but I felt that I could not meditate where she was. She continually
spoke to me--always tenderly and with great earnestness. I pleaded
my spasms as a reason for not lying down. But I lingered. I was as
unwilling to go as to stay. I longed to hear her narrative; and,
once or twice, I fancied that she wished to tell me something. But
she did not. I waited till near daylight, in order that she should
have every opportunity, but she said little beyond making professions
of love, and imploring me to come to bed.

In sheer despair, at last, I went out, taking my pistol-case,
unperceived by her, under my arm. I went to my office where I
locked it up. There I seated myself, brooding in a very whirlwind
of thought, until after daylight.

When the sun had risen, I went to a man in the neighborhood who
hired out vehicles. I ordered a close carriage to be at my door
by a certain hour, immediately after breakfast. I then despatched
a note to Kingsley, saying briefly that Edgerton and myself would
call for him at nine. I then returned home. My wife had arisen, but
had not left the chamber. She pleaded headache and indisposition,
and declined coming out to breakfast. She seemed very sad and
unhappy, not to say greatly disquieted--appearances which I naturally
attributed to guilt. For--still she said nothing. I lingered near
her on various small pretences in the hope to hear her speak. I
even made several approaches which, I fancied, might tend to provoke
the wished-for revelation. Indeed, it was wished for as ardently
as ever soul wished for the permission to live--prayed for as
sincerely as the dying man prays for respite, and the temporary
remission of his doom.

In vain! My wife said little, and nothing to the purpose. The
moments became seriously short. Could she have anything to say?
Was it possible that, being innocent, she should still lock up the
guilty secret in her bosom? She could not be innocent to do so!
This conclusion seemed inevitable. In order that she should have
no plea of discouragement, I spoke to her with great tenderness of
manner, with a more than usual display of feeling. It was no mere
show. I felt all that I said and looked. I knew that a trying and
terrible event was at hand--an event painful to us both--and all
my love for her revived with tenfold earnestness. Oh! how I longed
to take her into my arms, and warn her tenderly of the consequences
of her error; but this, of course, was impossible. But, short of
this, I did everything that I thought likely to induce her confidence.
I talked familiarly to her, and fondly, with an effort at childlike
simplicity and earnestness, in the hope that, by thus renewing the
dearest relations of ease and happiness between us, she should be
beguiled into her former trusting readiness of speech. She met my
fondnesses with equal fondness. It seemed to give her particular
pleasure that I should be thus fond. In her embrace, requiting
mine, she clung to me; and her tears dropping warm upon my hands,
were yet attended by smiles of the most hearty delight. A thousand
times she renewed the assurances of her love and attachment--nay,
she even went so far as tenderly to upbraid me that our moments
of endearment were so few;--yet, in spite of all this, she still
forbore the one only subject. She still said nothing; and as I knew
how much she COULD say and ought to say, which she did not say, I
could not resist the conviction that her tears were those of the
crocodile, and her assurances of love the glozing commonplaces of
the harlot.

In silence she suffered me to leave her for the breakfast-table.
She looked, it is true--but what had I to do with looks, however
earnest and devoted? I went from her slowly. When on the stairs,
fancying I had heard her voice, I returned, but she had not called
me. She was still silent. Full of sadness I left her, counting
slowly and sadly every step which I took from her presence.

Edgerton was already at table. He looked very wretched I observed
him closely. His eye shrunk from the encounter of mine. His looks
answered sufficiently for his guilt. I said to him:--

"I have to ride out a little ways in the country this morning, and
count upon your company. I trust you feel well enough to go with
me? Indeed, it will do you good."

Of course, my language and manner were stripped of everything that
might alarm his fears. He hesitated, but complied. The carriage
was at the door before we had finished breakfast; and with no
other object than simply to afford her another opportunity for the
desired revelation, I once more went up to my wife's chamber. Here
I lingered fully ten minutes, affecting to search for a paper in
trunks where I knew it could not be found. While thus engaged I
spoke to her frequently and fondly. She did not need the impulse
to make her revelation, except in her own heart. The occasion was
unemployed. She suffered me once more to depart in silence; and
this time I felt as if the word of utter and inevitable wo had been
spoken. The hour had gone by for ever. I could no longer resist
the conviction of her shameless guilt. All her sighs and tears,
professions of love and devotion, the fond tenacity of her embrace,
the deep-seated earnestness and significance in her looks--all went
for nothing in her failure to utter the one only, and all-important
communication.

Let no woman, on any pretext, however specious, deceive herself
with the fatal error, that she can safely harbor, unspoken to her
husband, the secret of any insult, or base approach, of another to
herself!






CHAPTER XLVIII.

TOO LATE!





Edgerton announced himself to be in readiness, and, at the same
time, declared his intention to withdraw at once from our hospitality
and return to his old lodging-house. He had already given instructions
to his servant for the removal of his things.

"What!" I said with a feeling of irony, which did not make itself
apparent in my speech--"you are tired of our hospitality, Edgerton?
We have not treated you well, I am afraid."

"Yes," he muttered faintly, "too well. I have every reason to be
gratified and grateful. No reason to complain."

He forced himself to say something more by way of acknowledgment;
but to this I gave little heed. We drove first to Kingsley's, and
took him up; then, to my office, where I got out, and, entering
the office, wrapped up my pistol-case carefully in a newspaper, so
that the contents might not be conjectured, and bringing it forth,
thrust it into the boot of the carriage.

"What have you got there?" demanded Kingsley. "Something for
digestion," was my reply. "We may be kept late."

"You are wise enough to be a traveller," said Kingsley; and without
further words we drove on. I fancied that when I put the case into
the vehicle, Edgerton looked somewhat suspicious. That he was
uneasy was evident enough. He could not well be otherwise. The
consciousness of guilt was enough to make him so; and then there
was but little present sympathy between himself and Kingsley.

I had already given the driver instructions. He carried us into
the loneliest spot of woods some four miles from M----, and in a
direction very far from the beaten track.

"What brings you into this quarter?" demanded Kingsley. "What
business have you here?"

"We stop here," I said as the carriage drove up. "I have some land
to choose and measure here. Shall we alight, gentlemen?"

I took the pistol-case in my hands and led the way. They followed
me. The carriage remained. We went on together several hundred
yards until I fancied we should be quite safe from interruption.
We were in a dense forest. At a little distance was a small stretch
of tolerably open pine land, which seemed to answer the usual
purposes. Here I paused and confronted them.

"Mr. Kingsley," I said without further preliminaries, "I have
taken the liberty of bringing you here, as the most honorable man
I know, in order that you should witness the adjustment of an affair
of honor between Mr. Edgerton and myself."

As I spoke I unrolled the pistol-case. Edgerton grew pale as death,
but remained silent. Kingsley was evidently astonished, but not so
much so as to forbear the obvious answer.

"How! an affair of honor? Is this inevitable--necessary, Clifford?"

"Absolutely!"

"In no way to be adjusted?"

"In but one! This man has dishonored me in the dearest relations
of my household."

"Ha! can it be?"

"Too true! There is no help for it now. I am dealing with him
still as a man of honor. I should have been justified in shooting
him down like a dog--as one shoots down the reptile that crawls to
the cradle of his children. I give him an equal chance for life."

"It is only what I feared!" said Kingsley, looking at Edgerton as
he spoke.

The latter had staggered back against a tree. Big drops of sweat
stood upon his brows. His head hung down. Still he was silent. I
gave the weapons to Kingsley, who proceeded to charge them.

"I will not fight you, Clifford!" exclaimed the criminal with husky
accents.

"You must!"

"I can not--I dare not--I will not! You may shoot me down where I
stand. I have wronged you. I dare not lift weapon at your breast."

"Wretch! say not this!" I answered. "You must make the atonement."

"Be it so! Shoot me! You are right! I am ready to die."

"No, William Edgerton, no! You must not refuse me the only atonement
you can make. You must not couple that atonement with a sting.
Hear me! You have violated the rites of hospitality, the laws of
honor and of manhood, and grossly abused all the obligations of
friendship. These offences would amply justify me in taking your
life without scruple, and without exposing my own to any hazard.
But my soul revolts at this. I remember the past--our boyhood
together--and the parental kindness of your venerated parent. These
deprive me of a portion of that bitterness which would otherwise
have moved me to destroy you. Take the pistol. If life is nothing
to you, it is as little to me now. Use the privilege which I give
you, and I shall be satisfied with the event."

He shook his head while he repeated:--

"No! I can not. Say no more, Clifford. I deserve death!"

I clapped the pistol to his head. He folded his arms, lifted his
eyes, and regarded me more steadily than he had done for months
before. Kingsley struck up nay arm, as I was cocking the weapon.

"He must die!" I exclaimed fiercely.

"Yes, that is certain!" replied the other. "But I am not willing
that I should be brought here as the witness to a murder. If he
will fight you, I will see you through. If he will not fight you,
there needs no witness to your shooting him. You have no right,
Clifford, to require this of me."

"You are not a coward, William Edgerton?"

"Coward!" he exclaimed, and his form rose to its fullest height,
and his eye flashed out the fires of a manhood, which of late he
had not often shown.

"Coward! No! Do I not tell you shoot? I do not fear death. Nay,
let me say to you, Clifford, I long for it. Life has been a long
torture to me--is still a torture. It can not now be otherwise.
Take it--you will see me smile in the death agony."

"Hear me William Edgerton, and submit to my will. You know not
half your wrong. You drove me from my home--my birthplace. When I
was about to sacrifice you for your previous invasion of my peace
in C--, I looked on your old father, I heard the story of his
disappointment--his sorrows--and you were the cause. I determined
to spare you--to banish myself rather, in order to avoid the
necessity of taking your life. You were not satisfied with having
wrought this result. You have pursued me to the woods, where my
cottage once more began to blossom with the fruits of peace and
love. You trample upon its peace--you renew your indignities and
perfidies here. You drive me to desperation and fill my habitation
with disgrace. Will you deny me then what I ask? Will you refuse
me the atonement--any atonement--which I may demand?"

"No, Clifford!" he replied, after a pause in which he seemed subdued
with shame and remorse. "You shall have it as you wish. I will fight
you. I am all that you declare. I am guilty of the wrong you urge
against me. I knew not, till now, that I had been the cause of your
flight from C--. Had I known that!"

Kingsley offered him the pistol.

"No!" he said, putting it aside. "Not now! I will give you this
atonement this afternoon. At this moment I can not. I must write.
I must make another atonement. Your claim for justice, Clifford,
must not preclude my settlement of the claims of others."

"Mine must have preference!"

"It shall! The atonement which I propose to make shall be, one of
repentance. You would not deny me the melancholy privilege of saying
a few last words to my wretched parents?"

"No! no! no!"

"I thank you, Clifford. Come for me at four to my lodgings--bring
Mr. Kingsley with you. You will find me ready to atone, and to save
you every unnecessary pang in doing so."

This ended our conference. Kingsley rode home with him, while,
throwing myself upon the ground, I surrendered myself to such
meditations as were natural to the moods which governed me. They
were dark and dismal enough. Edgerton had avowed his guilt. Could
there be any doubt on the subject of my wife's? He had made no
sort of qualification in his avowal of guilt, which might acquit
her. He had evidently made his confession with the belief that
I was already in possession of the whole truth. One hope alone
remained--that my wife's voluntary declaration would still be
forthcoming. To that I clung as the drowning man to his last plank.
When Kingsley and Edgerton first left me, I had resolved to waste
the hours in the woods and not to return home until after my final
meeting in the afternoon with the latter. It might be that I should
not return home then, and in such an event I was not unwilling that
my wife should still live, the miserable thing which she had made
herself. But, with the still fond hope that she might speak, and
speak in season, I now resolved to return at the usual dinner hour;
and, timing myself accordingly, I prolonged my wanderings through
the woods until noon. I then set forward, and reached the cottage
a little sooner than I had expected.

I found Julia in bed. She complained of headache and fever. She
had already taken medicine--I sat beside her. I spoke to her in
the tenderest language. I felt, at the moment when I feared to lose
her for ever, that I could love nothing half so well. I spoke to
her with as much freedom as fondness; and, momently expecting her
to make the necessary revelation, I hung upon her slightest words,
and hung upon them only to be disappointed.

The dinner hour came. The meal was finished. I returned to the
chamber, and once more resumed my place beside her on the couch. I
strove to inspire her with confidence--to awaken her sensibilities--to
beguile her to the desired utterance, but in vain. Of course I
could give no hint whatsoever of the knowledge which I had obtained.
After that, her confession would have been no longer voluntary,
and could no longer have been credited.

Time sped--too rapidly as I thought. Though anxious for vengeance,
I loved her too fondly not to desire to delay the minutes in the
earnest expectation that she would speak at last. She did not. The
hour approached of my meeting with Edgerton; and then I felt that
Edgerton was not the only criminal.

Mrs. Porterfield just then brought in some warm tea and placed it
on the table at the bed head. After a few moments delay, she left
us alone together. The eyes of my wife were averted. The vial of
prussic acid stood on the same table with the tea. I rose from the
couch, interposed my person between it and the table--and, taking
up the poison, deliberately poured three drops into the beverage.
I never did anything more firmly. Yet I was not the less miserable,
because I was most firm. My nerve was that of the executioner who
carries out a just judgment. This done, I put the vial into my
pocket. Julia then spoke to me. I turned to her with eagerness. I
was prepared to cast the vessel of tea from the window. It was my
hope that she was about to speak, though late, the necessary truths.
But she only called to me to know if I had been to my office during
the morning.

"Not since nine o'clock," was my answer. "Why?"

"Nothing. But are you going to your office now, dear husband?"

"Not directly. I shall possibly be there in the course of the
afternoon. What do you wish? Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing," she replied; "but I will tell you to-morrow why I
ask."

"To-morrow!--tell me now, if it be anything of moment. Now! now
is the appointed time!" The serious language of Scripture, became
natural to me in the agonizing situation in which I stood.

"No! no! to-morrow will do. I will not gratify your curiosity. You
are too curious, husband" and she turned from me, smiling, upon
the couch.

I felt that what she might tell me to-morrow could have nothing
to do with the affair between herself and Edgerton. THAT could be
no object for jest and merriment. I turned from her slowly, with a
feeling at my heart which was not exactly madness--for I knew then
what I was doing--but it was just thec feeling to make me doubtful
how long I should be secure from madness.

"To-morrow will not do" I muttered to myself as I descended the
stairs. "Too late!--too late!"






CHAPTER XLIX.

SUICIDE.





From the cottage I proceeded to Kingsley's. He was in readiness,
and waiting me. We drove directly to Edgerton's lodging-house,
the appointed hour of four being at hand. Kingsley only alighted
from the carriage, and entered the dwelling. He was absent several
minutes. When he returned, he returned alone.

"Edgerton is either asleep or has gone out. His room-door is locked.
The landlord called and knocked, but received no answer. He lacks
manliness, and I suspect has fled. The steamboat went at two."

"Impossible!" I exclaimed, leaping from the carriage. "I know
Edgerton better. I can not think he would fly, after the solemn
pledge he gave me."

"You have only thought too well of him always," said the other, as
we entered the house.

"Let us go to the room together," I said to the landlord. "I fear
something wrong."

"Well, so do I," responded the publican. "The poor gentleman has
been looking very badly, and sometimes gets into a strange wild
taking, and then he goes along seeing nobody. Only last Saturday
I said to my old woman, as how I thought everything warn't altogether
right HERE,"--and the licensed sinner touched his head with his
fore-finger, himself looking the very picture of well-satisfied
sagacity. We said nothing, but leaving the eloquence to him, followed
him up to Edgerton's chamber. I struck the door thrice with the
butt end of my whip, then called his name, but without receiving
any answer. Endeavoring to look through the key-hole, I discovered
the key on the inside, and within the lock. I then immediately
conjectured the truth. William Edgerton had committed suicide.

And so it was. We burst the door, and found him suspended by a
silk handkerchief to a beam that traversed the apartment. He had
raised himself upon a chair, which he had kicked over after the knot
had been adjusted. Such a proceeding evinced the most determined
resolution.

We took him down with all despatch, but life had already been
long extinct. He must have been hanging two hours. His face was
perfectly livid--his eyeballs dilated--his mouth distorted--but the
neck remained unbroken. He had died by suffocation. I pass over the
ordinary proceedings--the consternation, the clamor, the attendance
of the grave-looking gentlemen with lancet and lotion. They did
a great deal, of course, in doing nothing. Nothing could be done.
Then followed the "crowner's" inquest. A paper, addressed to the
landlord, was submitted to them, and formed the burden of their
report.

"I die by my own hands," said this document, "that I may lose the
sense of pain, bodily and mental. I die at peace with the world.
It has never wronged me. I am the source of my own sorrows, as I
am the cause of my own death. I will not say that I die sane. I am
doubtful on that head. I am sure that I have been the victim of a
sort of madness for a very long time. This has led me to do wrong,
and to meditate wrong--has made me guilty of many things, which,
in my better moments of mind and body, I should have shrunk from
in horror. I write this that nobody may be suspected of sharing
in a deed the blame of which must rest on my head only."

Then followed certain apologies to the landlord for having made
his house the scene of an event so shocking. The same paper also
conveyed certain presents of personal stuff to the same person, with
thanks for his courtesy and attention. An adequate sum of money,
paying his bill, and the expenses of his funeral, was left in his
purse, upon the paper.

Kingsley assumed the final direction of these affairs; and having
seen everything in a fair way for the funeral, which was appointed
to take place the next morning, he hurried me away to his lodging-house.






CHAPTER L.

CONFESSION OF EDGERTON.





When within his chamber, he carefully fastened the door and placed
a packet in my hands.

"This is addressed to you," he said. "I found it on the table
with other papers, and seeing the address, and fearing that if the
jury laid eyes on it, they might insist on knowing its contents, I
thrust it into my pocket and said nothing about it there. Read it
at your leisure, while I smoke a cigar below."

He left me, and I opened the seal with a sense of misgiving and
apprehension for which I could not easily account. The outer packet
was addressed to myself. But the envelope contained several other
papers, one of which was addressed to his father; another--a small
billet, unsealed--bore the name of my wife upon it.

"That," I inly (sic) muttered, "she shall never read!"

An instant after, I trembled with a convulsive horror, as the demon
who had whispered in my ears so long, seemed to say, in mocking
accents:--

"Shall not! Ha! ha! She can not! can not!" and then the fiend
seemed to chuckle, and I remembered the insuppressible anguish of
Othello's apostrophe, to make all its eloquence my own. I murmured
audibly:--


"My wife! my wife! What wife?--I have no wife!
Oh, insupportable--oh, heavy hour!"


My eyes were blinded. My face sunk down upon the table, and a cold
shiver shook my frame as if I had an ague. But I recovered myself
when I remembered the wrongs I had endured--her guilt and the guilt
of Edgerton. I clutched the papers--brushed the big drops from my
forehead, and read.

"Clifford, I save you guiltless of my death. You would be less
happy were my blood upon your hands, for, though I deserve to die
by them, I know your nature too well--to believe that you would
enjoy any malignant satisfaction at the performance of so sad
a duty. Still, I know that this is no atonement. I have simply
ceased from persecuting you and the angelic woman, your wife. But
how shall I atone for the tortures and annoyances of the past,
inflicted upon you both? Never! never! I perish without hope of
forgiveness, though, here, alone with God, in the extreme of mortal
humility, I pray for it!

"Perhaps, you know all. From what escaped you this morning, it
would seem so. You knew of my madness when in C----; you know that
it pursued you here. Nothing then remains for me to tell. I might
simply say all is true; but that, in the confession of my guilt
and folly, each particular act of sin demands its own avowal, as
it must be followed by its own bitter agony and groan.

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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