Confession; Or, The Blind Heart. A Domestic Story

by William Gilmore Simms

CHAPTER VII. — TEMPTATION.

Thus stood the affair between my fair cousin and myself—a condition of things seriously and equally affecting her health and my temper—when an explosion took place, of a nature calculated to humble my uncle and myself, if not in equal degree, or to the same attitude, at least to a most mortifying extent in both cases. I have not stated before—indeed, it was not until the affair which I am now about to relate had actually exploded, that I was made acquainted with any of the facts which produced it—that, prior to my father's death, there had been some large business connections between himself and my uncle. In those days secret connections in business, however dangerous they might be in social, and more than equivocal in moral respects, were considered among the legitimate practices of tradesmen. What was the particular sort of relations existing between my father and uncle, I am not now prepared to state, nor is it absolutely necessary to my narrative. It is enough for me to say that an exposure of them took place, in part, in consequence of some discovering made by my father's unsatisfied creditors, by which the obscure transactions of thirty years were brought to light, or required to be brought to light; and in the development of which, the fair business fame of my uncle was likely to be involved in a very serious degree—not to speak of the inevitable effects upon his resources of a discovery and proof of fraudulent concealment. The reputation of my father must have suffered seriously, had it not been generally known that he left nothing—a fact beyond dispute from the history of my own career, in which neither goods nor chattels, lands nor money, were suffered to enure to my advantage.

The business was brought to me. The merchant who brought it, and who had been busy for some years in tracing out the testimony, so far as it could be procured, gave me to understand that he had determined to place it in my hands for two reasons: firstly, to enable me to release the memory of my father from the imputation—under any circumstances discreditable—of bankruptcy, by compelling my uncle to disgorge the sums which he had appropriated, and which, as was alleged, would satisfy all my father's creditors; and, secondly, to give me an opportunity of revenging my own wrongs upon one, of whose course of conduct toward me the populace had already seen enough, during the last election, to have a tolerably correct idea.

I examined the papers, thanked my client for his friendly intentions, but declined taking charge of the case for two other reasons. My relations to the dead and to the living were either of them sufficient reasons for this determination. I communicated the grounds of action, in a respectful letter, to my uncle, and soon discovered, by the alarm which he displayed in consequence, that the cause of the complaint was in all probability good. The case belonged to the equity jurisdiction, and the relator soon filed his bill.

My uncle's tribulation may be conjectured from the fact that he called upon me, and seemed anxious enough to bury the hatchet. He wished me to take part in the proceedings—insisted, somewhat earnestly, and strove very hard to impress me with the conviction that my father's memory demanded that I should devote myself to the task of meeting and confounding the creditor who thus, as it were, had set to work to rake up the ashes of the dead; but I answered all this very briefly and very dryly:—

“If my father has participated in this fraud, he has reaped none of its pleasant fruits. He lived poor, and died poor. The public know that; and it will be difficult to persuade them, with a due knowledge of these facts, that he deliberately perpetrated such unprofitable villany. Besides, sir, you do not seem to remember that, if the claim of Banks, Tressell, & Sons, is good, it relieves my father's memory of the only imputation that now lies against it—that of being a bankrupt.”

“Ay!” he cried hoarsely, “but it makes me one—me, your uncle.”

“And what reason, sir, have I to remember or to heed this relationship?” I demanded sternly, with a glance beneath which he quailed.

“True, true, Edward, your reproach is a just one. I have not been the friend I should have been; but—let us be friends, now, and hereafter—we must be friends. Mrs. Clifford is very anxious that it should be so—and—and—Edward,” solemnly, “you must help me out of this business. You must, by Heaven, you must—if you would not have me blow my brains out!”