Joseph Smith Fletcher - "The Borough Treasurer"

Baron Trenck - "The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck Volume 1"

J. C. Manning - "The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses"

Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym) - "The Merry Thought: or the Glass Window and Bog House Miscellany"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Confession

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession




"He offered his carriage, but Julia put off accepting for a long
time, saying you would soon return. But at last he pressed her
so, and seeing everybody else gone, she concluded to go, and Mr.
Delaney helped her into the carriage, and Mr. Edgerton got in too,
to see her home; and off they drove, and it was not an hour after,
when Becky (the servant-girl) came to rout us up, saying that her
mistress was dying. I hurried on my clothes, and Delaney--dear
good man--he was just as quick; and off we came, and sure enough,
we found her in a bad way, and nobody with her but the servants;
and I sent off after you, and after the doctor; and he just came
in time to help her; but she went on wofully; was very lightheaded;
talked a great deal about you; and about Mr. Edgerton; I suppose
because he had just been seeing her home; but didn't seem to know
and doesn't know to this moment what has happened to her."

I have shortened very considerably the long story which Mrs. Delaney
made of it. Rambling as it was--full of nonsense--with constant
references to her "dear good man," and her party, the company,
herself, her fashion, and frivolities--there was yet something to
sting and trouble me at the core of her narration. Edgerton and my
wife linger to the last--Edgerton rides home with her--he and she
in the carriage, alone, at midnight;--and then this catastrophe,
which the doctor thought was a natural consequence of some excitement
or alarm.

These facts wrought like madness in my brain. Then, too, in her
delirium she raves of HIM! Is not that significant? True, it comes
from the lips of that malicious old woman! she, who had already
hinted to me that my wife--her daughter--was likely to be as faithless
to me as she had been to herself. Still, it is significant, even
if it be only the invention of this old woman. It showed what
she conjectured--what she thought to be a natural result of these
practices which had prompted her suspicions as well as my own.

How hot was the iron-pressure upon my brain--how keen and scorching
was that fiery arrow in my soul, when I took my place of watch
beside the unconscious form of my wife, God alone can know. If
I am criminal--if I have erred with wildest error--surely I have
struggled with deepest misery. I have been misled by wo, not
temptation! Sore has been my struggle, sore my suffering, even in
the moment of my greatest fault and folly. Sore!---how sore!






CHAPTER XXXIII.

STILL THE CLOUD.





For three days and nights did I watch beside the sick bed of my
wife. In all this time her fate continued doubtful. I doubt if any
anxiety or attention could have exceeded mine; as it was clear to
myself that, in spite of jealousy and suspicion, my love for her
remained without diminution. Yet this watch was not maintained
without some trials far more severe and searching than those which
it produced upon the body. Her mind, wandering and purposeless, yet
spoke to mine, and renewed all its racking doubts, and exaggerated
all its nameless fears. Her veins burned with fever. She was fitfully
delirious. Words fell from her at spasmodic moments--strange,
incoherent words, but all full of meaning in my ears. I sat beside
the bed on one hand, while, on one occasion, her mother occupied
a seat upon that opposite. The eyes of my wife opened upon both of
us--turned from me, convulsively, with an expression, as I thought,
of disgust, then closed--while her lips, taking up their language,
poured forth a torrent of threats and reproaches.

I can not repeat her words. They rang in my ears, understood, indeed,
but so wildly and thrillingly, that I should find it a vain task
to endeavor to remember them. She spoke of persecution, annoyance,
beyond propriety, beyond her powers of endurance. She threatened
me--for I assumed myself to be the object of her denunciation--with
the wrath of some one capable to punish--nay, to rescue her, if
need be, by violence, from the clutches of her tyrant. Then followed
another change in her course of speech. She no longer threatened or
denounced. She derided. Words of bitter scorn and loathing contempt
issued from those bright, red, burning, and always beautiful lips,
which I had never supposed could have given forth such utterance,
even if her spirit could have been supposed capable of conceiving
it. Keen was the irony which she expressed--irony, which so well
applied to my demerits in one great respect, that I could not help
making the personal application.

"How manly and generous," she proceeded, "was this sort of persecution
of one so unprotected, so dependent, so placed, that she must even
be silent, and endure without speech or complaint, in the dread of
dangers which, however, would not light upon her head. Oh, brave
as generous!" she exclaimed, with a burst of tremendous delirium,
terminating in a shriek; "oh, brave as generous!--scarcely lion-like,
however, for the noble beast rushes upon his victim. He does not
prowl, and skulk, and sneak, watching, cat-like; crouching and base,
in stealth and darkness. Very noble, but mousing spirit! Beware!
Do I not know you now! Fear you not that I will show your baseness,
and declare the truth, and guide other eyes to your stealthy
practice? Beware! Do not drive me into madness!"

Thus she raved. My conscience applied these stinging words of scorn,
which seemed particularly fitted to the mean suspicious watch which
I had kept upon her. I could have no thought that they were meant
for any other ears than my own, and the crimson flush upon my
cheeks was the involuntary acknowledgment which my soul made of the
demerits of my unmanly conduct. I fancied that Julia had detected
my espionage, and that her language had this object in reference
only. But there were other words; and, passing with unexpected
transition from the language of dislike and scorn, she now
indulged in that of love--language timidly suggestive of love, as
if its utterance were restrained by bashfulness, as if it dreaded
to be heard. Then a deep sigh followed, as if from the bottom of
her heart, succeeded by convulsive sobs, at last ending in a gushing
flood of tears.

For the space of half an hour I had been an attentive but suffering
listener to this wild raving. My pangs followed every sentence
from her lips, believing, as I did, that they were reproachful
of myself, and associated with a now unrestrained expression of
passion for another. Gradually I had ceased, in the deep interest
which I felt, to be conscious that Mrs. Delaney was present. I
leaned across the couch; I bent my ear down toward the lips of the
speaker, eager to drink up every feeble sound which might help to
elucidate my doubts, and subdue or confirm my suspicions. Then,
as the accumulating conviction formed itself, embodied and sharp,
like a knife, into my soul, I groaned aloud, and my teeth were
gnashed together in the bitterness of my emotion! In that moment I
caught the keen gray eyes of my mother-in-law fixed upon me, with
a jibing expression, which spoke volumes of mockery. They seemed
to say, "Ah! you have it now! The truth is forced upon you at last!
You can parry it no longer. I see the iron in your soul. I behold
and enjoy your contortions!"

Fiend language! She was something of a fiend! I started from the
bedside, and just then a flood of tears came to the relief of my
wife, and lessened the excitement of her brain. The tears relieved
her. The paroxysm passed away. She turned her eyes upon me, and
closed them involuntarily, while a deep crimson tint passed over
her cheek, a blush, which seemed to me to confirm substantially
the tenor of that language in which, while delirious, she had
so constantly indulged. It did not lessen the seeming shame and
dislike which her countenance appeared at once to embody, that
a soft sweet smile was upon her lips at the same moment, and she
extended to me her hand with an air of confidence which staggered
and surprised me.

"What is the matter, dear husband? And you here, mother? Have I
been sick? Can it be?"

"Hush!" said the mother. "You have been sick ever since the night
of my marriage."

"Ah!" she exclaimed with an air of anxiety and pain, while pressing
her hand upon her eyes, "Ah! that night!"

A shudder shook her frame as she uttered this simple and
short sentence. Simple and short as it was, it seemed to possess
a strange signification. That it was associated in her mind with
some circumstances of peculiar import, was sufficiently obvious.
What were these circumstances? Ah! that question! I ran over in
my thought, in a single instant, all that array of events, on that
fatal night, which could by any possibility distress me, and confirm
my suspicions. That waltz with Edgerton--that long conference between
them--that lonely ride together from the home of Mrs. Delaney,
in a close carriage--and the subsequent disaster--her unconscious
ravings, and the strong, strange language which she employed,
clearly full of meaning as it was, but in which I could discover
one meaning only! all these topics of doubt and agitation passed
through my brain in consecutive order, and with a compact arrangement
which seemed as conclusive as any final issue. I said nothing; but
what I might have said, was written in my face. Julia regarded me
with a gaze of painful anxiety. What she read in my looks must have
been troublously impressive. Her cheeks grew paler as she looked.
Her eyes wandered from me vacantly, and I could see her thin soft
lips quivering faintly like rose-leaves which an envious breeze
has half separated from the parent-flower. Mrs. Delaney watched
our mutual faces, and I left the room to avoid her scrutiny. I only
re-entered it with the physician. He administered medicine to my
wife.

"She will do very well now, I think," he said to me when leaving
the house; "but she requires to be treated very tenderly. All
causes of excitement must be kept from her. She needs soothing,
great care, watchful anxiety. Clifford, above all, you should leave
her as little as possible. This old woman, her mother, is no fit
companion for her--scarcely a pleasant one. I do not mean to reproach
you; ascribe what I say to a real desire to serve and make you
happy; but let me tell you that Mrs. Delaney has intimated to me
that you neglect your wife, that you leave her very much at night;
and she further intimates, what I feel assured can not well be the
case, that you have fallen into other and much more evil habits."

"The hag!"

"She is all that, and loves you no better now than before. Still,
it is well to deprive such people of their scandal-mongering, of
the meat for it at least. I trust, Clifford, for your own sake,
that you were absent of necessity on Wednesday night."

"It will be enough for me to think so, sir," was my reply.

"Surely, if you DO think so; but I am too old a man, and too old
a friend of your own and wife's family, to justify you in taking
exception to what I say. I hope you do not neglect this dear child,
for she is one too sweet, too good, too gentle, Clifford, to be
subjected to hard usage and neglect. I think her one of earth's
angels--a meek creature, who would never think or do wrong, but
would rather suffer than complain. I sincerely hope, for your own
sake, as well as hers, that you truly estimate her worth."

I could not answer the good old man, though I was angry with him.
My conscience deprived me of the just power to give utterance to
my anger. I was silent, and he forbore any further reference to
the subject. Shortly after he took his leave, and I re-ascended the
stairs. Wearing slippers, I made little noise, and at the door of
my wife's chamber I caught a sentence from the lips of Mrs. Delaney,
which made me forget everything that the doctor had been saying.

"But Julia, there must have been some accident--something must
have happened. Did your foot slip? perhaps, in getting out of the
carriage, or in going up stairs, or--. There must have been something
to frighten you, or hurt you. What was it?"

I paused; my heart rose like a swelling, struggling mass in the
gorge of my throat. I listened for the reply. A deep sigh followed;
and then I heard a reluctant, faint utterance of the single word,
"Nothing!"

"Nothing?" repeated the old lady. "Surely, Julia, there was something.
Recollect yourself. You know you rode home with Mr. Edgerton. It
was past one o'clock--"

"No more--no more, mother. There was nothing--nothing that I
recollect. I know nothing of what happened. Hardly know where I am
now."

I felt a momentary pang that I had lingered at the entrance.
Besides, there was no possibility that she would have revealed
anything to the inquisitive old woman. Perhaps, had this been
probable, I should not have felt the scruple and the pang. The
very questions of Mrs. Delaney were as fully productive of evil
in my mind, as if Julia had answered decisively on every topic. I
entered the room, and Mrs. Delaney, after some little lingering,
took her departure, with a promise to return again soon. I paced
the chamber with eyes bent upon the floor.

"Come to me, Edward-come sit beside me." Such were the gentle
words of entreaty which my wife addressed to me. Gentle words, and
so spoken--so sweetly, so frankly, as if from the very sacredest
chamber of her heart. Could it be that guilt also harbored in that
very heart--that it was the language of cunning on her lips--the
cunning of the serpent? Ah! how can we think that with serpent-like
cunning, there should be dove-like guilelessness? My soul revolted
at the idea. The sounds of the poor girl's voice sounded like
hissing in my ears. I sat beside her as she requested, and almost
started, as I felt her fingers playing with the hair upon my temples.

"You are cold to me, dear husband; ah! be not cold. I have narrowly
escaped from death. So they tell me--so I feel! Be not cold to
me. Let me not think that I am burdensome to you."

"Why should you think so, Julia?"

"Ah! your words answer your question, and speak for me. They are
so few--they have no warmth in them; and then, you leave me so
much, dear husband--why, why do you leave me?"

"You do not miss me much, Julia."

"Do I not! ah! you do me wrong. I miss nothing else but you. I
have all that I had when we were first married--all but my husband!"

"Do not deceive yourself, Julia; these fine speeches do not deceive
me. I am afraid that the love of woman is a very light thing. It
yields readily to the wind. It does not keep in one direction long,
any more than the vane on the house-top."

"You do NOT think so, Edward. Such is not MY love. Alas! I know
not how to make it known to you, husband, if it be not already
known; and yet it seems to me that you do not know it, or, if
you do, that you do not care much about it. You seem to care very
little whether I love you or not."

I exclaimed bitterly, and with the energy of deep feeling.

"Care little! _I_ care little whether you love me or no! Psha!
Julia, you must think me a fool!"

It did seem to me a sort of mockery, knowing my feelings as _I_
did--knowing that all my folly and suffering came from the very
intensity of my passion--that I should be reproached, by its
object, with indifference! I forgot, that, as a cover for my
suspicion, I had been striving with all the industry of art to put
on the appearance of indifference. I did not give myself sufficient
credit for the degree of success with which I had labored, or I
might have suddenly arrived at the gratifying conclusion, that,
while I was impressed and suffering with the pangs of jealousy,
my wife was trembling with fear that she had for ever lost
my affections. My language, the natural utterance of my real
feelings, was not true to the character I had assumed. It filled
the countenance of the suffering woman with consternation. She
shrunk from me in terror. Her hand was withdrawn from my neck, as
she tremulously replied:--

"Oh, do not speak to me in such tones. Do not look so harshly upon
me. What have I done?"

"Ay! ay!" I muttered, turning away.

She caught my hand.

"Do not go--do not leave me, and with such a look! Oh! husband,
I may not live long. I feel that I have had a very narrow escape
within these few days past. Do not kill me with cruel looks; with
words, that, if cruel from you, would sooner kill than the knife
in savage hands. Oh! tell me in what have I offended? What is it
you think? For what am I to blame? What do you doubt--suspect?"

These questions were asked hurriedly, apprehensively, with a
look of vague terror, her cheoks whitening as she spoke, her eyes
darting wildly into mine, and her lips remaining parted after she
had spoken.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, keenly watching her. Her glance sank beneath
my gaze. I put my hand upon her own.

"What do I suspect I What should I suspect? Ha!"--Here I arrested
myself. My ardent anxiety to know the truth led me to forget my
caution; to exhibit a degree of eagerness, which might have proved
that I did suspect and seriously. To exhibit the possession of
jealousy was to place her upon her guard--such was the suggestion
of that miserable policy by which I had been governed--and defeat
the impression of that feeling of perfect security and indifference,
which I had been so long striving to awaken. I recovered myself,
with this thought, in season to re-assume this appearance.

"Your mind still wanders, Julia. What should I suspect? and whom?
You do not suppose me to be of a suspicious nature, do you?"

"Not altogether--not always--no! But, of course, there is nothing
to suspect. I do not know what I say. I believe I do wander."

This reply was also spoken hurriedly, but with an obvious effort
at composure. The eagerness with which she seized upon my words,
insisting upon the absence of any cause of suspicion, and ascribing to
her late delirium, the tacit admissions which her look and language
had made, I need not say, contributed to strengthen my suspicions,
and to confirm all the previous conjectures of my jealous spirit.

"Be quiet," I said with an air of sang froid. "Do not worry yourself
in this manner. You need sleep. Try for it, while I leave you."

"Do not leave me; sit beside me, dear Edward. I will sleep so much
better when you are beside me."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, believe me. Ah! that I could always keep you beside me!"

"What! you are for a new honeymoon?" I said this in a TONE of
merriment, which Heaven knows, I little felt.

"Do not speak of it so lightly, Edward. It is too serious a matter.
Ah! that you would always remain with me; that you would never
leave me."

"Pshaw! What sickly tenderness is this! Why, how could I earn my
bread or yours?"

"I do not mean that you should neglect your business, but that
when business is over, you should give me all your time as you
used to. Remember, how pleasantly we passed the evenings after
our marriage. Ah! how could you forget?"

"I do not, Julia."

"But you do not care for them. We spend no such evenings now!"

"No! but it is no fault of mine!" I said gloomily; then, interrupting
her answer, as if dreading that she might utter some simple but
true remark, which might refute the interpretation which my words
conveyed, that the fault was hers, I enjoined silence upon her.

"You scarcely speak in your right mind yet, Julia. Be quiet,
therefore, and try to sleep."

"Well, if you will sit beside me."

"I will do so, since you wish for it; but where's the need?"

"Ah! do not ask the need, if you still love me," was all she
said, and looked at me with such eyes--so tearful, bright, so sad,
soliciting--that, though I did not less doubt, I could no longer
deny. I resumed the seat beside her. She again placed her fingers
in my hair, and in a little while sunk into a profound slumber,
only broken by an occasional sob, which subsided into a sigh.

Were she guilty--such was the momentary suggestion of the good
angel--could she sleep thus?--thus quietly, confidingly, beside the
man she had wronged--her fingers still paddling in his hair--her
sleeping eyes still turning in the direction of his face?

To the clear, open mind, the suggestion would have had the force
of a conclusive argument; but mine was no longer a clear, open
mind. I had the disease of the blind heart upon me, and all things
came out upon my vision as through a glass, darkly. The evil one
at my elbow jeered when the good angel spoke.

"Fool! does she not see that she can blind you still!" Then, in
the vanity and vexation of my spirit, I mused upon it further, and
said to myself:--"Ay, but she will find, ere many days, that I am
no longer to be blinded!" The scales were never thicker upon my
sight than when I boasted in this foolish wise.






CHAPTER XXXIV.

A FATHER'S GRIBFS.





She continued to improve, but slowly. Her organization was always
very delicate. Her frame was becoming thin, almost to meagreness;
and this last disaster, whatever might be its cause, had contributed
still more to weaken a constitution which education and nature had
never prepared for much hard encounter. But, though I saw these
proofs of feebleness--of a feebleness that might have occasioned
reasonable apprehensions of premature decay, and possibly very rapid
decline--there were little circumstances constantly occurring--looks
shown, words spoken--which kept up the irritation of my soul,
and prevented me from doing justice to her enfeebled condition.
My sympathies were absorbed in my suspicions. My heart was the
debateable land of self. The blind passion which enslaved it, I
need scarce say, was of a nature so potent, that it could easily
impregnate, with its own color, all the objects of its survey.
Seen through the eyes of suspicion, there is no truth, no virtue;
the smile is that of the snake; the tear, that of the crocodile;
the assurance, that of the traitor. There is no act, look, word,
of the suspected object, however innocent, which, to the diseased
mind of jealousy, does not suggest conjectures and arguments,
all conclusive or confirmatory of its doubts and fears. It is not
necessary to say that I shrunk from Julia's endearment, requited
her smiles with indifference; and, though I did not avoid her
presence--I could not, in the few days when her case was doubtful--yet
exhibited, in all respects, the conduct of one who was in a sort
of Coventry.

But one fact may be stated--one of many--which seemed to give
a sanction to my suspicions, will help to justify my course, and
which, at the time, was terribly conclusive, to my reason, of the
things which I feared. She spoke audibly the name of Edgerton,
twice, thrice, while she slept beside me, in tones very faint, it
is true, but still distinct enough. The faintness of her utterance,
gave the tones an emphasis of tenderness which perhaps was
unintended. Twice, thrice, that fatal name; and then, what a sigh
from the full volume of a surcharged heart. Let any one conceive my
situation--with my feelings, intense on all subjects--my suspicions
already so thoroughly awakened; and then fancy what they must have
been on hearing that utterance; from the unguarded lips of slumber;
from the wife lying beside him; and of the name of him on whom
suspicion already rested. I hung over the sleeper, breathless,
almost gasping, finally, in the effort to contain my breath--in
the hope to hear something, however slight, which was to confirm
finally, or finally end my doubts. I heard no more; but did
more seem to be necessary? What jealous heart had not found this
sufficiently conclusive? And that deep-drawn sigh, sobbing, as
of a heart breaking with the deferred hope, and the dream of youth
baffled at one sweeping, severing blow.

I rose. I could no longer subdue my emotions to the necessary
degree of watchfulness. I trod the chamber till daylight. Then,
I dressed myself and went out into the street. I had no distinct
object. A vague persuasion only, that I must do something--that
something must be done--that, in short, it was necessary to force
this exhausting drama to its fit conclusion. Of course William
Edgerton was my object. As yet, how to bring about the issue, was
a problem which my mind was not prepared to solve. Whether I was
to stab or shoot him; whether we were to go through the tedious
processes of the duel; to undergo the fatigue of preliminaries,
or to shorten them by sudden rencounter; these were topics which
filled my thoughts confusedly; upon which I had no clear conviction;
not because I did not attempt to fix upon a course, but from a sheer
inability to think at all. My whole brain was on fire; a chaotic
mass, such as rushes up from the unstopped vents of the volcano--fire,
stones, and lava--but dense smoke enveloping the whole.

In this frame of mind I hurried through the streets. The shops were
yet unopened. The sun was just about to rise. There was a humming
sound, like that of distant waters murmuring along the shore, which
filled my ears; but otherwise everything was silent. Sleep had not
withdrawn with night from his stealthy watch upon the household. It
seemed to me that I alone could not sleep. Even guilt--if my wife
were really guilty--even guilt could sleep. I left her sleeping,
and how sweetly! as if the dream which had made her sob and sigh,
had been succeeded by others, that made all smiles again. I could
not sleep, and yet, who, but a few months before, had been possessed
of such fair prospects of peace and prosperity? Fortune held
forth sufficient promise; fame--so far as fame can be accorded by
a small community--had done something toward giving me an honorable
repute; and love--had not love been seemingly as liberal and prompt
as ever young passions could have desired? I was making money; I was
getting reputation; the only woman whom I had ever loved or sought,
was mine; and mine, too, in spite of opposition and discouragements
which would have chilled the ardor of half the lovers in the world.
And yet I was not happy. It takes so small an amount of annoyance
to produce misery in the heart of selfesteem, when united with
suspicion, that it was scarcely possible that I should be happy.
Such a man has a taste for self-torture; as one troubled with an
irritating humor, is never at rest, unless he is tearing the flesh
into a sore; he may then rest as he may.

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