Confession by W. Gilmore Simms
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W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession
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"I shudder to declare the rest! This man, your friend--he whom you
sheltered in your bosom, and trusted beyond all others--whom you
have now taken into your house with a blindness that looks more
like a delusion of witchcraft than of friendship--this impious man,
I say, dared to wrap me in his embrace--dared to press his lips
upon mine!
"My cheek even now burns as I write, and I must lay down the pen
because of my trembling. I struggled from his grasp--I broke the
window by my side, and cried for help from the wayfarers. I cried
for you! But, you did not answer! Oh, husband! where were you? Why,
why did you expose me to such indignities?
"He was alarmed. He promised me forbearance; and, convulsed with
fright and fear, I found myself within our enclosure, I knew not
how; but before I reached the cottage I became insensible, and
knew nothing more until the pangs of labor subdued the more lasting
pains of thought and recollection.
"You resolved to leave our home--to go abroad among strangers, and
Oh! how I rejoiced at your resolution. It seemed to promise me
happiness; at least it promised me rescue and relief. I should at
all events be free from the persecution of this man. I dreaded the
consequences, either to you or to him-self, of the exposure of his
insolence. I had resolved on making it; and only hesitated, day by
day, as my mother dwelt upon the dangers which would follow. And
when you determined on removal, it seemed to me the most fortunate
providence, it promised to spare me the necessity of making this
painful revelation at all. Surely, I thought, and my mother said,
as this will put an effectual stop to his presumption, there will
be no need to narrate what is already past. The only motive in
telling it at all would be to prevent, not to punish: if the previous
one is effected by other means, it is charity only to forbear the
relation of matters which would breed hatred, and probably provoke
strife. This made me silent; and, full of new hope--the hope that
having discarded all your old associates and removed from all your
old haunts, you would become mine entirely--I felt a new strength
in my frame, a new life in my breast, and a glow upon my cheeks as
within my soul, which seemed a guaranty for a long and happy term
of that love which had begun in my bosom with the first moments of
its childish consciousness and confidence.
"But one painful scene and hour I was yet compelled to endure the
night before our departure. Mr. Edgerton came to play his flute
under our window. I say Mr. Edgerton, but it was only by a sort
of instinct that I fixed upon him as the musician. Perhaps it was
because I knew not what other person to suspect. Frequently, before
this night, had I heard this music; but on this occasion he seemed
to have approached more nearly to the dwelling; and, indeed, I finally
discovered that he was actually beneath the China-tree that stood
on the south front of the cottage. I was asleep when the music
began. He must have been playing for some time before I awakened.
How I was awakened I know not; but something disturbed me, and I
then saw you about to leave the room stealthily. I heard your feet
upon the stairs, and in the next moment I discovered one of your
pistols lying upon the window-sill, just beneath my eyes. This
alarmed me; a thousand apprehensions rushed into my brain; all the
suggestions of strife and bloodshed which my mother had ever told
me, filled my mind; and without knowing exactly what I did or said,
I called out to the musician to fly with all possible speed. He
did so; and after a delay which was to me one of the most cruel
apprehension, you returned in safety. Whether you suspected, and
what, I could not conjecture; but if you had any suspicions of
me, yon did not seem to entertain any of him, for you spoke of him
afterward with the same warm tone of friendship as before.
"That something in my conduct had not pleased you, I could see from
your deportment as we travelled the next morning. You were sad,
and very silent and abstracted. This disappeared, however, and, day
by day, my happiness, my hope, my confidence in you, in myself, in
all things, increased--and I felt assured of realizing that perfect
idea of felicity which I proposed to myself from the moment when
you declared your purpose to emigrate. Were we not happy, husband--so
happy at M----, for weeks, for months--always, morning, noon, and
night--until the reappearance of this false friend of yours? Then,
it seemed to me as if everything changed. Then, that other friend
of yours--who, though he never treated me with aught but respect,
I yet can call no friend of mine--Mr. Kingsley, drew you away
again from your home--carried you with him to his haunts--detained
you late and long, by night and day--and I was left once more
exposed to the free and frequent familiarity of Mr. Edgerton. He
renewed his former habits; his looks were more presuming, and his
attentions more direct and loathsome than ever. More than once
I strove to speak with you on this hateful subject; but it was so
shocking, and you were so fond of him, and I still had my fears! At
length, moved by compassion, you brought him to our house. Blind
and devoted to him--with a blindness and devotion beyond that which
the noblest friendship would deserve, but which renders tenfold
more hateful the dishonest and treacherous person upon whom it is
thrown away--you command me to meet him with kindness--to tend his
bed of sickness--to soothe his moments of sadness and despondency--to
expose myself to his insolence!
"Husband, my soul revolts at this charge! I have disobeyed it and
you; and I must justify myself in this my disobedience. I must at
length declare the truth. I have striven to do so in the preceding
narrative. This narrative I began when you brought this false friend
into our dwelling. He must leave it. You must command his departure.
Do not think me moved by any unhappy or unbecoming prejudices against
him. My antipathies have arisen solely from his presumption and
misconduct. I esteemed him--nay, I even liked him--before. I liked
his taste for the arts, his amiable manners, his love of music and
poetry, and all those graces of the superior mind and education,
which dignify humanity, and indicate its probable destinies. But when
he showed me how false he was to a friendship so free and confiding
as was yours--when he abused my eyes and ears with expressions
unbecoming in him, and insulting and ungenerous to me--I loathed
and spurned him. While he is in your house I will strive and treat
him civilly, but do not tax me further. For your sake I have borne
much; for the sake of peace, and to avoid strife and crime, I have
been silent--perhaps too long. The strange, improper letters of
my mother, which I enclose, almost make me tremble to think that
I have paid but too much defference to her opinion. But, in the
expulsion of this miserable man from your dwelling, there needs
no violence, there needs no crime! A word will overwhelm him with
shame. Remember, dear husband, that he is feeble and sick; it is
probable he has not long to live. Perform your painful duty privily,
and with all the forbearance which is consistent with a proper
firmness. In truth, he has done us no real harm. Let us remember
THAT! If anything, he has only made me love you the more, by showing
so strongly how generous is the nature which he has so infamously
abused. Once more, dear husband, do no violence. Let not our future
days be embittered by any recollections of the present. Command,
compel his departure, and come home to me, and keep with me always.
"Your own true wife,
"Julia Clifford."
"Postscript.--I had closed this letter yesterday, thinking to send
it to your office in the afternoon. I had hoped that there would
be nothing more;--but last night, this madman--for such I must
believe him to be--committed another outrage upon my person! He has
a second time seized me in his arms and endeavored to grasp me in
his embrace. O husband!--why, why do you thus expose me? Do you
indeed love me? I sometimes tremble with a fear lest you do not.
But I dare not think so. Yet, if you do, why am I thus exposed--thus
deserted--thus left to a companionship which is equally loathsome
to me and dishonoring to you? I implore you to open your eyes--to
believe me, and discard this false friend from your dwelling and
your confidence. But, oh, be merciful, dear husband! Strike no
sudden blow! Send him forth with scorn but remember his feebleness,
his family, and spare his life. I send this by Emma. Let no one
see the letters of my mother but burn them instantly.
"Your own Julia."
And this was the writing which had employed her time for days
before the sad catastrophe! And it was for this reason that she
asked, with so much earnestness, if I had been to my office on the
day when I drove Edgerton out into the woods for the adjustment of
our issue? No wonder that she was anxious at that moment. How much
depended upon that simple and ordinary proceeding. Had I but gone
that day to my office as usual!......
There were no longer doubts. There could be none. There was now
no mystery. It was all clear. The most ambiguous portions of her
conduct had been as easily and simply explained as the rest. But it
availed nothing! The blow had fallen. I was an accursed man--truly
accursed, and miserably desolate.
I still sat, stolid, seemingly, as the insensible chair which
sustained me, when Kingsley came in. He took the papers from my
unresisting hands. He read them in silence. I heard but one sentence
from his lips, and it came from them unconsciously:--
"Poor, poor girl!"
I looked round and started to my feet. The tears were on on manly
checks. I hatched none. My eyes were dry! The fountains of tears
seemed shut up, arid and dusty.
"I must make atonement!" I exclaimed. "I must deliver myself up to
justice!"
"This is madness," said he, seizing my arm as I was about to leave
the room.
"No: retribution only! I have destroyed her. I must make the only
atonement which is in my power. I must die!"
"What you design is none," he said solemnly. "Your death will atone
nothing. It is by living only that you can atone!"
"How?"
"By repentance! This is the grand--the only sovereign atonement which
the spirit of man can ever make. There is no other mode provided
in nature. The laws, which would take your life, would deprive you
of the means of atonement. This is due to God; it can be performed
only by living and suffering. Life is a duty because it is an ordeal.
You must preserve life, as a sacred trust, for this reason. Even
if you were a felon--one wilfully resolving and coldly executing
crime--you were yet bound to preserve life! Throw it away, and
though you comply with the demand of social laws, you forfeit the
only chance of making atonement to those which are far superior.
Rather pray that life may be spared you. It was with this merciful
purpose that God not only permitted Cain to live, but commanded
that none should slay him. You must live for this!"
"Yet I slew HER!"
He did with me as he pleased. Three days after beheld us on our way
to the rich empire of Texas--its plains, rich but barren--unstocked,
wild-running to waste with its tangled weeds--needing, imploring
the vigorous hand of cultivation. Even such, at that moment, was
my heart! Rich in fertile affections, yet gone to waste; waiting,
craving, praying for the hand of the cultivator!--Yet who now was
that cultivator?
To this question the words of Kingsley, which were those of truth
and wisdom, were a sufficient answer; and evermore an echo arose
as from the bottom of my soul; and my lips repeated it to my own
ears only; and but one word was spoken; and that word was--"ATONEMENT!"
THE END
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