LETTER XLVIII.
To Mrs. Fielder.
December 8.
Madam,
This comes from a very unfortunate and culpable
hand. A hand that hardly knows how to
sign its own condemnation, and which sickness
no less than irresolution, almost deprives of the
power to hold the pen.
Yet I call Heaven to witness, that I expected
not the evil from my infatuation which, it seems,
has followed it. I meant to influence none but
Mr. Talbot's belief. I had the misfortune to
see and to love him long before his engagement
with your daughter. I overstepped the limits
of my sex, and met with no return to my generous
offers, and my weak entreaties, but sternness
and contempt.
You, Madam, are perhaps raised above the
weakness of a heart like mine. You will not
comprehend how an unrequited passion can ever
give place to rage and revenge, and how the
merits of the object preferred to me, should
only embitter that revenge.
Jane Talbot never loved the man, whom I
would have made happy. Her ingenuous temper
easily disclosed her indifference, and she married
not to please herself, but to please others.
Her husbands infatuation in marrying on such
terms, could be exceeded by nothing but his
folly in refusing one who would have lived for
no other end than to please him.
I observed the progress of the intimacy between
Mr. Colden and her, in Talbot's absence,
and can you not conceive madam that my heart
was disposed to exult in every event that verified
my own predictions, and would convince
Talbot of the folly of his choice? Hence I was
a jealous observer. The worst construction was
put upon your daughter's conduct. That open,
impetuous temper of hers, confident of innocence,
and fearless of ungenerous or malignant
constructions, easily put her into my power.
Unrequited love made me her enemy as well as
that of her husband, and I even saw, in her
unguarded deportment and in the reputed licentiousness
of Mr. Colden's principles, some reason,
some probability in my surmises.
Several anonymous letters were written to
you. I thank heaven that I was seldom guilty
of direct falshoods in these letters. I told you
little more than what a jealous eye and a prying
disposition easily discovered; and I never saw
any thing in their intercourse that argued
more than a temper thoughtless and indiscreet.
To distinguish minutely between truths and exaggerations
in the letters which I sent you,
would be a painful, and I trust, a needless task,
since I now solemnly declare that, on an impartial
review of all that I ever witnessed in the
conduct of your daughter, I remember nothing
that can justify the imputation of guilt. I believe
her conduct to Colden was not always limited
by a due regard to appearances; that she
trusted her fame too much to her consciousness
of innocence, and set too lightly by the malignity
of those who would be glad to find her in
fault, and the ignorance of others who naturally
judged of her by themselves. And this, I now
solemnly take Heaven to witness, is the only
charge that can truly be brought against her.
There is still another confession to make—If
suffering and penitence can atone for any offence,
surely my offence has been atoned for!
But it still remains that I should, as far as my
power goes, repair the mischief.
It is no adequate apology, I well know, that
the consequences of my crime were more extensive
and durable than I expected; but is it
not justice to myself to say, that this confession
would have been made earlier, if I had earlier
known the extent of the evil? I never suspected
but that the belief of his wife's infidelity, was
buried with Talbot.
Alas! wicked and malignant as I was, I meant
not to persuade the mother of her child's profligacy.
Why should I have aimed at this? I
had no reason to disesteem or hate you. I was
always impressed with reverence for your character.
In the letters sent directly to you, I
aimed at nothing but to procure your interference,
and make maternal authority declare itself
against that intercourse which was essential to
your daughter's happiness. It was not you, but
her, that I wished to vex and distress.
I called at Mrs. Talbot's at a time when visitants
are least expected. Nobody saw me enter.
Her parlour was deserted; her writing-desk was
open; an unfinished letter caught my eye. A
sentiment half inquisitive and half mischievous,
made me snatch it up, and withdraw as abruptly
as I entered.
On reading this billet, it was easy to guess
for whom it was designed. It was frank and
affectionate; consistent with her conjugal duty,
but not such as a very circumspect and wary
temper would have allowed itself to write.
How shall I describe the suggestions that led
me to make a most nefarious use of this paper?
Circumstances most unhappily concurred to
make my artifice easy and plausible. I discovered
that Colden had spent most of the preceding
night with your daughter. It is true a
most heavy storm had raged during the evening,
and the moment it remitted, which was not till
three o'clock, he was seen to come out. His
detention, therefore, candor would ascribe to
the storm; but this letter, with such a conclusion
as was too easily made, might fix a construction
on it that no time could remove, and
innocence could never confute.
I had not resolved in what way I should employ
this letter, as I had eked it out, before Mr.
Talbot's return. When that event took place,
my old infatuation revived. I again sought his
company, and the indifference, and even contempt
with which I was treated, filled me anew
with resentment. To persuade him of his wife's
guilt was, I thought, an effectual way of destroying
whatever remained of matrimonial happiness:
and the means were fully in my power.
Here I was again favored by accident. Fortune
seemed determined to accomplish my ruin.
My own ingenuity in vain attempted to fall on a
safe mode of putting this letter in Talbot's way,
and this had never been done if chance had not
surprizingly befriended my purpose.
One evening I dropped familiarly in upon
your daughter. Nobody was there but Mr.
Talbot and she. She was writing at her desk as
usual, for she seemed never at ease but with a
pen in her fingers; and Mr. Talbot seemed
thoughtful and uneasy. At my entrance the
desk was hastily closed and locked. But first
she took out some papers, and mentioning her
design of going up stairs to put them away, she
tripped to the door. Looking back, however,
she perceived she had dropped one. This she
took up, in some hurry, and withdrew.
Instead of conversing with me, Talbot walked
about the room in a peevish and gloomy humor.
A thought just then rushed into my mind. While
Talbot had his back towards me, and was at a
distance, I dropped the counterfeit, at the spot
where Jane had just before dropped her paper,
and with little ceremony took my leave. Jane
had excused her absence to me, and promised
to return within five minutes. It was not possible,
I thought, that Talbot's eye, as he walked
backward and forward during that interval, could
miss the paper, which would not fail to appear
as if dropped by his wife.
My timidity and conscious guilt hindered me
from attempting to discover by any direct means,
the effects of my artifice. I was mortified extremely
in finding no remarkable difference in
their deportment to each other. Sometimes I
feared I had betrayed myself; but no alteration
ever afterwards appeared in their behaviour to
me.
I know how little I deserve to be forgiven.
Nothing can palliate the baseness of this action.
I acknowledge it with the deepest remorse, and
nothing, especially since the death of Mr. Talbot,
has lessened my grief; but the hope that
some unknown cause prevented the full effect
of this forgery on his peace, and that the secret,
carefully locked up in his own breast, expired
with him. All my enmities and restless jealousy
found their repose in the same grave.
You have come to the knowledge of this letter,
and I now find that the fraud was attended
with even more success than I wished it to have.
Let me now, though late, put an end to the illusion,
and again assure you, Madam, that the
concluding paragraphs were written by me, and
that those parts of it which truly belong to your
daughter, are perfectly innocent.
If it were possible for you to forgive my misconduct—and
to suffer this confession to go no
farther than the evil has gone—you will confer
as great a comfort as can now be conferred on
the unhappy
