Confession; Or, The Blind Heart. A Domestic Story

by William Gilmore Simms

CHAPTER XXXVI. — MEDITATED EXILE.

With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had not gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as many pangs as himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised under the supposed condition of another, the subject of my own mockery; and if I succeeded in driving the iron into HIS soul, the other end of the shaft was all the while working in mine! His flight was an equal relief to both of us. The stern spirit left me from that moment. My agony found relief, momentary though it was, in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy head sank upon my palms, and I groaned in unreserved homage to the never-slumbering genius of pain—that genius which alone is universal—which adopts us from the cradle—which distinguishes our birth by our tears, hallows the sentiment of grief to us from the beginning, and maintains the fountains which supply its sorrows to the end. The lamb skips, the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps, the young colt frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn. He alone is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the first proofs of his singular and superior destiny.

Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment when my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within it, and when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and fro, the most sore and shining passages of my soul. Had not Edgerton fled, I could not have sustained it much longer. My passions would have hurled aside my judgment, and mocked that small policy under which I acted. I felt that they were about to speak, and rejoiced that he fled. Had he remained, I should most probably have poured forth all my suspicion, all my hate; dragged by violence from his lips the confession of his wrong, and from his heart the last atonement for it.

At first I reproached myself that I had not done so. I accused myself of tameness—the dishonorable tameness of submitting to indignity—the last of all indignities—and of conferring calmly, even good-humoredly, with the wrong-doer. But cooler moments came. A brief interval sufficed—helped by the flood of tears which rushed, hot and scalding, from my eyes—to subdue the angry spirit. I remembered my pledges to the father; my unspeakable obligations to him; and when I again recollected that my convictions had not assailed the purity of my wife, and, at most, had questioned her affections only, my forbearance seemed justified.

But could the matter rest where it was? Impossible! What was to be done? It was clear enough that the only thing that could be done, for the relief of all parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton was suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged, might be successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of the water will wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit to impertinent advances without declaring them to her husband, the work of seduction was already half done. To listen is, in half the number of cases, to fall. I must save her; I had not the courage to put her from me. Believing that she was still safe, I resolved, through the excess of that love which was yet the predominant passion in my soul, in spite of all its contradictions, to keep her so, if human wit could avail, and human energy carry its desires into successful completion.

To do this, there was but one process. That was flight. I must leave this city—this country. By doing so, I remove my wife from temptation, remove the temptation from the unhappy young man whom it is destroying; and thus, though by a sacrifice of my own comforts and interests, repay the debt of gratitude to my benefactor in the only effective manner. It called for no small exercise of moral courage and forbearance—no small benevolence—to come to this conclusion. It must be understood that my professional business was becoming particularly profitable. I was rising in my profession. My clients daily increased in number; my acquaintance daily increased in value. Besides, I loved my birthplace—thrice-hallowed—the only region in my eyes—

“The spot most worthy loving Of all beneath the sky.”

But the sacrifice was to be made; and my imagination immediately grew active for my compensation, by describing a woodland home—a spot, remote from the crowd, where I should carry my household gods, and set them up for my exclusive and uninvaded worship. The whole world-wide West was open to me. A virgin land, rich in natural wealth and splendor, it held forth the prospect of a fair field and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an hour. “I will go to Alabama.”

Such was my resolution. I was the man to make sudden resolutions. This, however, reasoned upon with the utmost circumspection, seemed the very best that I could make. My wife, yet pure, was rescued from the danger that threatened her; I was saved the necessity of taking a life so dear to my benefactor; and the unhappy young man himself—the victim to a blind passion—having no longer in his sight the temptation which misled him, would be left free to return to better thoughts, and the accustomed habits of business and society. I had concluded upon my course in the brief interval which followed my interview with William Edgerton and my return home.