LETTER XLVIII.
To Mrs. Fielder.
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 husband's 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 falsehoods 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 mine 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 parlor 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 surprisingly 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.
