Confession

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[Illustration: Confession]

Confession;

or,

The Blind Heart.

A Domestic Story.

By W. Gilmore Simms,

Wagner. But of the world-the heart, the mind of man,
How happy could we know!
Faust. What can we know?
Who dares bestow the infant his true name?
The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave
Their knowledge to the multitude--they fell!
Incapable to keep their full hearts in,
They, from the first of immemorial time,
Were crucified or burnt.
Goethe's Faust, MS. Version.

CHAPTER I.

Confession, or The Blind Heart.

"Who dares bestow the infant his true name?
The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave
Their knowledge to the multitude--they fell
Incapable to keep their full hearts in,
They, from the first of immemorial time,
Were crucified or burnt."--Goethe's "Faust."

The pains and penalties of folly are not necessarily death. They
were in old times, perhaps, according to the text, and he who kept
not to himself the secrets of his silly heart was surely crucified
or burnt. Though lacking in penalties extreme like these, the present
is not without its own. All times, indeed, have their penalties for
folly, much more certainly than for crime; and this fact furnishes
one of the most human arguments in favor of the doctrine of rewards
and punishments in the future state. But these penalties are not
always mortifications and trials of the flesh. There are punishments
of the soul; the spirit; the sensibilities; the intellect--which
are most usually the consequences of one's own folly. There is a
perversity of mood which is the worst of all such penalties. There
are tortures which the foolish heart equally inflicts and endures.
The passions riot on their own nature; and, feeding as they do
upon that bosom from which they spring, and in which they flourish,
may, not inaptly, be likened to that unnatural brood which gnaws
into the heart of the mother-bird, and sustains its existence at
the expense of hers. Meetly governed from the beginning, they are
dutiful agents that bless themselves in their own obedience; but,
pampered to excess, they are tyrants that never do justice, until
at last, when they fitly conclude the work of destruction by their
own.

The narrative which follows is intended to illustrate these opinions.
It is the story of a blind heart--nay, of blind hearts--blind
through their own perversity--blind to their own interests--their
own joys, hopes, and proper sources of delight. In narrating my
own fortunes, I depict theirs; and the old leaven of wilfulness,
which belongs to our nature, has, in greater or less degree, a
place in every human bosom.

I was the only one surviving of several sons. My parents died while
I was yet an infant. I never knew them. I was left to the doubtful
charge of relatives, who might as well have been strangers; and,
from their treatment, I learned to doubt and to distrust among the
first fatal lessons of my youth. I felt myself unloved--nay, as I
fancied, disliked and despised. I was not merely an orphan. I was
poor, and was felt as burdensome by those connections whom a dread
of public opinion, rather than a sense of duty and affection,
persuaded to take me to their homes. Here, then, when little more
than three years old, I found myself--a lonely brat, whom servants
might flout at pleasure, and whom superiors only regarded with a
frown. I was just old enough to remember that I had once experienced
very different treatment. I had felt the caresses of a fond mother--I
had heard the cheering accents of a generous and a gentle father.
The one had soothed my griefs and encouraged my hopes--the other
had stimulated my energies and prompted my desires. Let no one
fancy that, because I was a child, these lessons were premature.
All education, to be valuable, must begin with the child's first
efforts at discrimination. Suddenly, both of these fond parents
disappeared, and I was just young enough to wonder why.

The change in my fortunes first touched my sensibilities, which
it finally excited until they became diseased. Neglected if not
scorned, I habitually looked to encounter nothing but neglect or
scorn. The sure result of this condition of mind was a look and
feeling, on my part, of habitual defiance. I grew up with the mood
of one who goes forth with a moral certainty that he must meet and
provide against an enemy. But I am now premature.

The uncle and aunt with whom I found shelter were what is called
in ordinary parlance, very good people. They attended the most
popular church with most popular punctuality. They prayed with
unction--subscribed to all the charities which had publicity and
a fashionable list to recommend them--helped to send missionaries
to Calcutta, Bombay, Owyhee, and other outlandish regions--paid
their debts when they became due with commendable readiness--and
were, in all out-of-door respects, the very sort of people who
might congratulate themselves, and thank God that they were very
far superior to their neighbors. My uncle had morning prayers at
home, and my aunt thumbed Hannah More in the evening; though it
must be admitted that the former could not always forbear, coming
from church on the sabbath, to inquire into the last news of the
Liverpool cotton market, and my aunt never failed, when they reached
home, on the same blessed day, to make the house ring with another
sort of eloquence than that to which she had listened with such
sanctimonious devotion from the lips of the preacher. There were
some other little offsets against the perfectly evangelical character
of their religion. One of these--the first that attracted my infant
consideration--was naturally one which more directly concerned
myself. I soon discovered that, while I was sent to an ordinary
charity school of the country, in threadbare breeches, made of the
meanest material--their own son--a gentle and good, but puny boy,
whom their indulgence injured, and, perhaps, finally destroyed--was
despatched to a fashionable institution which taught all sorts of
ologies--dressed in such choice broadcloth and costly habiliments,
as to make him an object of envy and even odium among all his less
fortunate school-fellows.

Poor little Edgar! His own good heart and correct natural understanding
showed him the equal folly of that treatment to which he was
subjected, and the injustice and unkindness which distinguished
mine. He strove to make amends, so far as I was concerned, for the
error of his parents. He was my playmate whenever he was permitted,
but even this permission was qualified by some remark, some direction
or counsel, from one or other of his parents, which was intended
to let him know, and make me feel, that there was a monstrous
difference between us.

The servants discovered this difference as quickly as did the
objects of it; and though we were precisely of one age, and I was
rather the largest of the two, yet, in addressing us, they paid
him the deference which should only be shown to superior age, and
treated me with the contumely only due to inferior merit. It was
"Master Edgar," when he was spoken to--and "you," when I was the
object of attention.

I do not speak of these things as of substantial evils affecting
my condition. Perhaps, in one or more respects, they were benefits.
They taught me humility in the first place, and made that humility
independence, by showing me that the lesson was bestowed in wantonness,
and not with the purpose of improvement. And, in proportion as
my physical nature suffered their neglect, it acquired strength
by the very roughening to which that neglect exposed it. In this
I possessed a vast advantage over my little companion. His frame,
naturally feeble, sunk under the oppressive tenderness to which the
constant care of a vain father, a doting mother, and sycophantic
friends and servants, subjected it. The attrition of boy with boy,
in the half-manly sports of schoolboy life--its very strifes and
scuffles--would have brought his blood into adequate circulation,
and hardened his bones, and given elasticity to his sinews. But
from all these influences, he was carefully preserved and protected.
He was not allowed to run, for fear of being too much heated. He
could not jump, lest he might break a blood-vessel. In the ball
play he might get an eye knocked out; and even tops and marbles
were forbidden, lest he should soil his hands and wear out the knees
of his green breeches. If he indulged in these sports it was only
by stealth, and at the fearful cost of a falsehood on every such
occasion. When will parents learn that entirely to crush and keep
down the proper nature of the young, is to produce inevitable
perversity, and stimulate the boyish ingenuity to crime?

With me the case was very different. If cuffing and kicking could
have killed, I should have died many sudden and severe deaths in
the rough school to which I was sent. If eyes were likely to be lost
in the campus, corded balls of India-rubber, or still harder ones
of wood, impelled by shinny (goff) sticks, would have obliterated
all of mine though they had been numerous as those of Argus. My
limbs and eyes escaped all injury; my frame grew tall and vigorous
in consequence of neglect, even as the forest-tree, left to the
conflict of all the winds of heaven; while my poor little friend,
Edgar, grew daily more and more diminutive, just as some plant,
which nursing and tendance within doors deprive of the wholesome
sunshine and generous breezes of the sky. The paleness of his cheek
increased, the languor of his frame, the meagerness of his form,
the inability of his nature! He was pining rapidly away, in spite
of that excessive care, which, perhaps, had been in the first
instance, the unhappy source of all his feebleness.

He died--and I became an object of greater dislike than ever
to his parents. They could not but contrast my strength, with his
feebleness--my improvement with his decline--and when they remembered
how little had been their regard for me and how much for him--without
ascribing the difference of result to the true cause--they repined
at the ways of Providence, and threw upon me the reproach of it.
They gave me less heed and fewer smiles than ever. If I improved
at school, it was well, perhaps; but they never inquired, and I
could not help fancying that it was with a positive expression of
vexation, that my aunt heard, on one occasion, from my teacher, in
the presence of some guests, that I was likely to be an honor to
the family.

"An honor to the family, indeed!" This was the clear expression in
that Christian lady's eyes, as I saw them sink immediately after
in a scornful examination of my rugged frame and coarse garments.

The family had its own sources of honor, was the calm opinion of
both my patrons, as they turned their eyes upon their only remaining
child--a little girl about five years old, who was playing around
them on the carpet. This opinion was also mine, even then: and my
eyes followed theirs in the same direction. Julia Clifford was one
of the sweetest little fairies in the world. Tender-hearted, and
just, and generous, like the dear little brother, whom she had
only known to lose, she was yet as playful as a kitten. I was twice
her age--just ten--at this period; and a sort of instinct led me to
adopt the little creature, in place of poor Edgar, in the friendship
of my boyish heart. I drew her in her little wagon--carried her over
the brooklet--constructed her tiny playthings--and in consideration
of my usefulness, in most generally keeping her in the best of
humors, her mother was not unwilling that I should be her frequent
playmate. Nay, at such times she could spare a gentle word even
to me, as one throws a bone to the dog, who has jumped a pole, or
plunged into the water, or worried some other dog, for his amusement.
At no other period did my worthy aunt vouchsafe me such unlooked-for
consideration.

But Julia Clifford was not my only friend. I had made another
shortly before the death of Edgar; though, passingly it may be said,
friendship-making was no easy business with a nature such as mine
had now become. The inevitable result of such treatment as that
to which my early years had been subjected, was fully realized. I
was suspicious to the last degree of all new faces--jealous of the
regards of the old; devoting myself where my affections were set
and requiring devotion--rigid, exclusive devotion--from their object
in return. There was a terrible earnestness in all my moods which
made my very love a thing to be feared. I was no trifler--I could
not suffer to be trifled with--and the ordinary friendships of man
or boy can not long endure the exactions of such a disposition.
The penalties are usually thought to be--and are--infinitely beyond
the rewards and benefits.

My intimacies with William Edgerton were first formed under
circumstances which, of all others, are most likely to establish
them on a firm basis in our days of boyhood. He came to my rescue
one evening, when, returning from school, I was beset by three
other boys, who had resolved on drubbing me. My haughty deportment
had vexed their self-esteem, and, as the same cause had left me
with few sympathies, it was taken for granted that the unfairness
of their assault would provoke no censure. They were mistaken. In
the moment of my greatest difficulty, William Edgerton dashed in
among them. My exigency rendered his assistance a very singular
benefit. My nose was already broken--one of my eyes sealed up for
a week's holyday; and I was suffering from small annoyances, of hip,
heart, leg, and thigh, occasioned by the repeated cuffs, and the
reckless kicks, which I was momently receiving from three points
of the compass. It is true that my enemies had their hurts to
complain of also; but the odds were too greatly against me for any
conduct or strength of mine to neutralize or overcome; and it was
only by Edgerton's interposition that I was saved from utter defeat
and much worse usage. The beating I had already suffered. I was
sore from head to foot for a week after; and my only consolation
was that my enemies left the ground in a condition, if anything,
something worse than my own.

But I had gained a friend, and that was a sweet recompense, sweeter
to me, by far, than it is found or felt by schoolboys usually. None
could know or comprehend the force of my attachment--my dependence
upon the attachment of which I felt assured!--none but those who,
with an earnest, impetuous nature like my own--doomed to denial
from the first, and treated with injustice and unkindness--has felt
the pang of a worse privation from the beginning;--the privation
of that sustenance, which is the "very be all and end all" of its
desire and its life--and the denial of which chills and repels its
fervor--throws it back in despondency upon itself--fills it with
suspicion, and racks it with a never-ceasing conflict between its
apprehension and its hopes.

Edgerton supplied a vacuum which my bosom had long felt. He was,
however, very unlike, in most respects, to myself. He was rather
phlegmatic than ardent--slow in his fancies, and shy in his
associations from very fastidiousness. He was too much governed
by nice tastes, to be an active or performing youth; and too much
restrained by them also, to be a popular one. This, perhaps, was
the secret influence which brought us together. A mutual sense
of isolation--no matter from what cause--awakened the sympathies
between us. Our ties were formed, on my part, simply because I was
assured that I should have no rival; and on his, possibly, because
he perceived in my haughty reserve of character, a sufficient
security that his fastidious sensibilities would not be likely to
suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and
tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently,
when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;--and
ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose
from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and
abstract. He was contemplative--an idealist; I was impetuous and
devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was
disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal;
but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things and
persons habitually subjected me.

CHAPTER II.

BOY PASSIONS--A PROFESSION CHOSEN.

Between William Edgerton and Julia Clifford my young life and best
affections were divided, entirely, if not equally. I lived for no
other--I cared to seek, to know, no other--and yet I often shrunk
from both. Even at that boyish period, while the heavier cares and
the more painful vexations of life were wanting to our annoyance,
I had those of that gnawing nature which seemed to be born of the
tree whose evil growth "brought death into the world and all our
wo." The pang of a nameless jealousy--a sleepless distrust--rose
unbidden to my heart at seasons, when, in truth, there was no
obvious cause. When Julia was most gentle--when William was most
generous--even then, I had learned to repulse them with an indifference
which I did not feel--a rudeness which brought to my heart a pain
even greater than that which my wantonness inflicted upon theirs.
I knew, even then, that I was perverse, unjust; and that there was
a littleness in the vexatious mood in which I indulged, that was
unjust to my own feelings, and unbecoming in a manly nature. But
even though I felt all this, as thoroughly as I could ever feel it
under any situation, I still could not succeed in overcoming tha'
insane will which drove me to its indulgence.

Vainly have I striven to account for the blindness of heart--for
such it is, in all such cases--which possessed me. Was there
anything in my secret nature, born at my birth and growing with
my growth--which impelled me to this willfulness. I can scarcely
believe so; but, after serious reflection, am compelled to think
that it was the strict result of moods growing out of the particular
treatment to which I had been subjected. It does not seem unnatural
that an ardent temper of mind, willing to confide, looking to
love and affection for the only aliment which it most and chiefly
desires, and repelled in this search, frowned on by its superiors
as if it were something base, will, in time, grow to be habitually
wilful, even as the treatment which has schooled it. Had I been
governed and guided by justice, I am sure that I should never have
been unjust.

My waywardness in childhood did not often amount to rudeness, and
never, I may safely say, where Julia was concerned. In her case,
it was simply the exercise of a sullenness that repelled her
approaches, even as its own approaches had been repelled by others.
At such periods I went apart, communing, sternly with myself,
refusing the sympathy that I most yearned after, and resolving not
to be comforted. Let me do the dear child the justice to say that
the only effect which this conduct had upon her, was to increase
her anxieties to soothe the repulsive spirit which should have
offended her. Perhaps, to provoke this anxiety in one it loves, is
the chief desire of such a spirit. It loves to behold the persevering
devotion, which it yet perversely toils to discourage. It smiles
within, with a bitter triumph, as it contemplates its own power,
to impart the same sorrow which a similar perversity has already
made it feel.

But, without seeking further to analyze and account for such
a spirit, it is quite sufficient if I have described it. Perhaps,
there are other hearts equally froward and wayward with my own. I
know not if my story will amend--perhaps it may not even instruct
or inform them--I feel that no story, however truthful, could have
disarmed the humor of that particular mood of mind which shows
itself in the blindness of the heart under which it was my lot to
labor. I did not want knowledge of my own perversity. I knew--I
felt it--as clearly as if I had seen it written in characters of
light, on the walls of my chamber. But, until it had exhausted
itself and passed away by its own processes, no effort of mine could
have overcome or banished it. I stalked apart, under its influence,
a gloomy savage--scornful and sad--stern, yet suffering--denying
myself equally, in the perverse and wanton denial to which I
condemned all others.

Perhaps something of this temper is derived from the yearnings of
the mental nature. It may belong somewhat to the natural direction
of a mind having a decided tendency to imaginative pursuits. There
is a dim, vague, indefinite struggle, for ever going on in the nature
of such a person, after an existence and relations very foreign to
the world in which it lives; and equally far from, and hostile to
that condition in which it thrives. The vague discontent of such
a mind is one of the causes of its activity; and how far it may be
stimulated into diseased intensity by injudicious treatment, is a
question of large importance for the consideration of philosophers.
The imaginative nature is one singularly sensitive in its conditions;
quick, jealous, watchful, earnest, stirring, and perpetually
breaking down the ordinary barriers of the actual, in its struggles
to ascertain the extent of the possible. The tyranny which drives
it from the ordinary resources and enjoyments of the young,
by throwing it more completely on its own, impels into desperate
activity that daring of the imaginative mood, which, at no time,
is wanting in courage and audacity. My mind was one singularly
imaginative in its structure; and my ardent temperament contributed
largely to its activity. Solitude, into which I was forced by the
repulsive and unkind treatment of my relatives, was also favorable
to the exercise of this influence; and my heart may be said to have
taken, in turn, every color and aspect which informed my eyes. It
was a blind heart for this very reason, in respect to all those
things for which it should have had a color of its own. Books and
the woods--the voice of waters and of song--the dim mysteries of
poetry, and the whispers of lonely forest-walks, which beguiled me
into myself, and more remotely from my fellows, were all, so far
as my social relations were concerned, evil influences! Influences
which were only in part overcome by the communion of such gentle
beings as William Edgerton and Julia Clifford.

With these friends, and these only, I grew up. As my years advanced,
my intimacy with the former increased, and with the latter diminished.
But this diminution of intimacy did not lessen the kindness of her
feelings, or the ordinary devotedness of mine. She was still--when
the perversity of heart made me not blind--the sweet creature to
whom the task of ministering was a pleasure infinitely beyond any
other which I knew. But, as she grew up to girlhood, other prospects
opened upon her eyes, and other purposes upon those of her parents.
At twelve she was carried by maternal vanity into company--sent to
the dancing school--provided with teachers in music and painting,
and made to understand--so far as the actions, looks, and words of
all around could teach--that she was the cynosure of all eyes, to
whom the whole world was bound in deference.

Fortunately, in the case of Julia, the usual effects of maternal
folly and indiscretion did not ensue. Nature interposed to protect
her, and saved her in spite of them all. She was still the meek, modest
child, solicitous of the happiness of all around her--unobtrusive,
unassuming--kind to her inferiors, respectful to superiors, and
courteous to, and considerate of all other persons. Her advancing
years, which rendered these new acquisitions and accomplishments
desirable, if not necessary, at the same time prompted her foolish
mother to another step which betrayed the humiliating regard which
she entertained for me. When I was seventeen, Julia was twelve,
and when neither she nor myself had a solitary thought of love,
the over considerate mother began to think, on this subject, for
us both. The result of her cogitations determined her that it was
no longer fitting that Julia should be my companion. Our rambles in
the woods together were forbidden; and Julia was gravely informed
that I was a poor youth, though her cousin--an orphan whom her
father's charity supported, and whom the public charity schooled.
The poor child artlessly told me all this, in a vain effort to
procure from me an explanation of the mystery (which her mother had
either failed or neglected to explain) by which such circumstances
were made to account for the new commands which had been given her.
Well might she, in her simplicity of heart, wonder why it was, that
because I was poor, she should be familiar with me no longer.

The circumstance opened my eyes to the fact that Julia was a tall
girl, growing fast, already in her teens, and likely, under the
rapidly-maturing influence of our summer sun, to be soon a woman.
But just then--just when she first tasked me to solve the mystery
of her mother's strange requisitions, I did not think of this.
I was too much filled with indignation--the mortified self-esteem
was too actively working in my bosom to suffer me to think of anything
but the indignity with which I was treated. A brief portion of the
dialogue between the child and my self, will give some glimpses of
the blind heart by which I was afflicted.

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