Arthur J. Rees - "The Shrieking Pit"

Anthony Trollope - "Autobiography of Anthony Trollope"

Milo Hastings - "City of Endless Night"

Jessie Graham Flower - "Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods"

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




His eye stole upward, met mine, and sunk once more upon the floor.
He answered faintly:--

"Yes, but I have not seen her for some days."

"Not since Mother Delaney's party, I believe?"

The color came again into his cheeks, but instantly after was
succeeded by a deadly paleness.

"What a bore these parties are! and such parties as those of Mrs.
Delaney are particularly annoying to me. Why the d--l couldn't
the old tabby halter her hobby without calling in her neighbors to
witness the painful spectacle? You were there, I think?"

"Yes."

"I left early. I got heartily sick. You know I never like such
places; and, as soon as they began dancing, I took advantage of
the fuss and fiddle to steal off. It was unfortunate I did so, for
Julia was taken sick, and has had a narrow chance for it. I thought
I should have lost her."

All this was spoken in tones of the coolest imaginable indifference.
Edgerton was evidently surprised. He looked up with some curiosity
in his glance, and more confidence; and, with accents that slightly
faltered, he asked:--

"Is she well again? I trust she is better now."

"Yes!" I answered, with the same sang-froid. "But I've had a serious
business of watching through the last three nights. Her peril was
extreme. She lost her little one."

A visible shudder went through his frame.

"Tired to death of the walls of the house, which seems a dungeon
to me, I dashed out this morning, at daylight, as soon as I found
I could safely leave her; and, strolling down to the office,
who should I find there but your father, perched at the desk, and
seemingly inclined to resume all his former practice?"

"Indeed! my father--so early? What could be the matter? Did he
tell you?

"Yes, i'faith, he is in tribulation about you. He fancies you are
in a fair way to destruction. You can't conceive what he fancies.
It seems, according to his account, that you are a night-stalker.
He dwells at large upon your nightly absences from home, and then
about your appearance, which, to say truth, is very wretched. You
scarcely look like the same man. Edgerton. Have you been sick?
What's the matter with you?"

"I am NOT altogether well," he said, evasively.

"Yes, but mere indisposition would never produce such a change, in
so short a period, in any man! Your father is disposed to ascribe
it to other causes."

"Ah! what does he think?"

I fancied there was mingled curiosity and trepidation in this
inquiry.

"He suspects you of gaming and drinking; but I assured him, very
confidently, that such was not the case. On one of these heads I
could speak confidently, for I met Kingsley the other night--the
night of Mother Delaney's party--who was hot and heavy against
you because you refused to lend him money for such purposes. I was
more indulgent, lent him the money, went with him to the house,
and returned home with a pocket full of specie, sufficient to set
up a small banking-operation of my own."

"You! can it be possible!"

"True; and no such dull way of spending an evening either. I
got home in the small hours, and found Julia delirious. I haven't
had such a fright for a stolen pleasure, Heaven knows when. There
was the doctor, and there my eternal mother-in-law, and my poor
little wife as near the grave as could be! But the circumstance
of refusing the money to Kingsley, knowing his object, made me
confident that gaming was not the cause of your night-stalking,
and so I told the old gentleman."

"And what did he say?"

"Shook his head mournfully, and reasoned in this manner: 'He has
no pecuniary necessities, has no oppressive toils, and has never
had any disappointment of heart. There is nothing to make him behave
so, and look so, but guilt--GUILT!'"

I repeated the last word with an entire change in the tone of my
voice. Light, lively, and playful before, I spoke that single word
with a stern solemnity, and, bending toward him, my eye keenly
traversed the mazes of his countenance.

"HE HAS IT!" I thought to myself, as his head drooped forward, and
his whole frame shuddered momentarily.

"But"--here my tones again became lively and playful--I even
laughed--"I told the old man that I fancied I could hit the nail more
certainly on the head. In short, I said I could pretty positively
say what was the cause of your conduct and condition."

"Ah!" and, as he uttered this monosyllable, he made a feeble effort
to rise from his seat, but sunk back, and again fixed his eye upon
the floor in visible emotion.

"Yes! I told him--was I not right?--that a woman was at the bottom
of it all!"

He started to his feet. His face was averted from me.

"Ha! was I not right? I knew it! I saw through it from the first;
and, though I did not tell the old man THAT, I was pretty sure that
you were trespassing upon your neighbor's grounds. Ha! what say you?
Was I not right? Were yon not stealing to forbidden places--playing
the snake, on a small scale, in some blind man's Eden? Ha! ha! what
say you to that? I am right, am I not? eh?"

I clapped him on the shoulder as I spoke. His face had been half
averted from me while I was speaking; but now it turned upon me,
and his glance met mine, teeming with inquisitive horror.

"No! no! you are not right!" he faltered out; "it is not so.
Nothing is the matter with me! I am quite well--quite! I will see
my father, and set him right."

"Do so," I said, coolly and indifferently--"do so; tell him what you
please: but you can't change my conviction that you're after some
pretty woman, and probably poaching on some neighbor's territory.
Come, make me your confidante, Edgerton. Let us know the history
of your misfortune. Is the lady pliant? I should judge so, since
you continue to spend so many nights away from home. Come, make a
clean breast of it. Out with your secret! I have always been your
friend. WE COULD NOT BETRAY EACH OTHER, I THINK!"

"You are quite mistaken," he said, with the effort of one who is
half strangled. "There is nothing in it; I assure you, you were
never more mistaken."

"Pshaw, Edgerton! you may blind papa, but you can not blind me.
Keep your secret, if you please, but, if you provoke me, I will
trace it out; I will unkennel you. If I do not show the sitting
hare in a fortnight, by the course of the hunter, tell me I am none
myself."

His consternation increased, but I did not allow it to disarm me. I
probed him keenly, and in such a manner as to make him wince with
apprehension at every word which I uttered. Morally, William Edgerton
was a brave man. Guilt alone made him a coward. It actually gave
me pain, after a while, to behold his wretched imbecility. He hung
upon my utterance with the trembling suspense of one whose eye has
become enchained with the fascinating gaze of the serpent. I put
my questions and comments home to him, on the assumption that he
was playing the traitor with another's wife; though taking care,
all the while, that my manner should be that of one who has no sort
of apprehensions on his own score. My deportment and tone tallied
well with the practised indifference which had distinguished my
previous overt conduct. It deceived him on that head; but the truth,
like a sharp knife, was no less keen in penetrating to his soul;
and, preserving my coolness and directness, with that singular
tenacity of purpose which I could maintain in spite of my own
sufferings--and keep them still unsuspected--I did not scruple to
impel the sharp iron into every sensitive place within his bosom.

He writhed visibly before me. His struggles did not please me, but
I sought to produce them simply because they seemed so many proofs
confirming the truth of my conjectures. The fiend in my own soul
kept whispering, "He has it!"--and a fatal spell, not unlike that
which riveted his attention to the language which tore and vexed
him, urged me to continue it until at length the sting became too
keen for his endurance. In very desperation, he broke away from
the fetters of that fascination of terror which had held him for
one mortal hour to the spot.

"No more! no more!" he exclaimed, with an uncontrollable burst
of emotion. "You torture me! I can stand it no longer! There is
nothing in your conjecture! There is no reason for your suspicions!
She is--"

"She? Ah!"

I could not suppress the involuntary exclamation. The truth seemed
to be at hand. I was premature. My utterance brought him to his
senses. He stopped, looked at me wildly for an instant, his eyes
dilated almost to bursting. He seemed suddenly to be conscious that
the secrets of his soul--its dark, uncommissioned secrets--were
about to force themselves into sight and speech; and unable, perhaps,
to arrest them in any other way he darted headlong from my presence.






CHAPTER XXXVI.

MEDITATED EXILE.





With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had
not gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as
many pangs as himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised
under the supposed condition of another, the subject of my own
mockery; and if I succeeded in driving the iron into HIS soul,
the other end of the shaft was all the while working in mine! His
flight was an equal relief to both of us. The stern spirit left me
from that moment. My agony found relief, momentary though it was,
in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy head sank upon my palms,
and I groaned in unreserved homage to the never-slumbering genius
of pain--that genius which alone is universal--which adopts us from
the cradle--which distinguishes our birth by our tears, hallows
the sentiment of grief to us from the beginning, and maintains
the fountains which supply its sorrows to the end. The lamb skips,
the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps, the young colt
frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn. He alone
is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the first
proofs of his singular and superior destiny.

Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains
of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment
when my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within
it, and when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and
fro, the most sore and shrineing passages of my soul. Had not
Edgerton fled, I could not have sustained it much longer. My passions
would have hurled aside my judgment, and mocked that small policy
under which I acted. I felt that they were about to speak, and
rejoiced that he fled. Had he remained, I should most probably have
poured forth all my suspicion, all my hate; dragged by violence
from his lips the confession of his wrong, and from his heart the
last atonement for it.

At first I reproached myself that I had not done so. I accused
myself of tameness--the dishonorable tameness of submitting to
indignity--the last of all indignities--and of conferring calmly,
even good-humoredly, with the wrong-doer. But cooler moments came.
A brief interval sufficed--helped by the flood of tears which
rushed, hot and scalding, from my eyes--to subdue the angry spirit.
I remembered my pledges to the father; my unspeakable obligations
to him; and when I again recollected that my convictions had not
assailed the purity of my wife, and, at most, had questioned her
affections only, my forbearance seemed justified.

But could the matter rest where it was? Impossible! What was to be
done? It was clear enough that the only thing that could be done,
for the relief of all parties, was to be done by myself. Edgerton
was suffering from a guilty pursuit. That pursuit, if still urged,
might be successful, if not so at present. The constant drip of
the water will wear away the stone; and if my wife could submit
to impertinent advances without declaring them to her husband, the
work of seduction was already half done. To listen is, in half the
number of cases, to fall. I must save her; I had not the courage
to put her from me. Believing that she was still safe, I resolved,
through the excess of that love which was yet the predominant
passion in my soul, in spite of all its contradictions, to keep her
so, if human wit could avail, and human energy carry its desires
into successful completion.

To do this, there was but one process. That was flight. I must
leave this city--this country. By doing so, I remove my wife from
temptation, remove the temptation from the unhappy young man whom
it is destroying; and thus, though by a sacrifice of my own comforts
and interests, repay the debt of gratitude to my benefactor in the
only effective manner. It called for no small exercise of moral
courage and forbearance--no small benevolence--to come to this
conclusion. It must be understood that my professional business was
becoming particularly profitable. I was rising in my profession.
My clients daily increased in number; my acquaintance daily increased
in value. Besides, I loved my birthplace--thrice-hallowed--the only
region in my eyes--

"The spot most worthy loving Of all beneath the sky."

But the sacrifice was to be made; and my imagination immediately
grew active for my compensation, by describing a woodland home--a
spot, remote from the crowd, where I should carry my household gods,
and set them up for my exclusive and uninvaded worship. The whole
world-wide West was open to me. A virgin land, rich in natural
wealth and splendor, it held forth the prospect of a fair field
and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep
in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There,
no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble
the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the
place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed
strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late
conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my
reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an
hour. "I will go to Alabama."

Such was my resolution. I was the man to make sudden resolutions.
This, however, reasoned upon with the utmost circumspection, seemed
the very best that I could make. My wife, yet pure, was rescued
from the danger that threatened her; I was saved the necessity of
taking a life so dear to my benefactor; and the unhappy young man
himself--the victim to a blind passion--having no longer in his sight
the temptation which misled him, would be left free to return to
better thoughts, and the accustomed habits of business and society.
I had concluded upon my course in the brief interval which followed
my interview with William Edgerton and my return home.

The next day I saw his father. I communicated the assurance of
the son, and renewed my own, that neither drunkenness nor gaming
was a vice. What it was that afflicted him I did not pretend to
know, but I ascribed it to want of employment; a morbid, unenergetic
temperament; the fact that he was independent, and had no rough
necessities to make him estimate the true nature and the objects
of life; and, at the close, quietly suggested that possibly there
was some affair of the heart which contributed also to his suffering.
I did not deny that his looks were wretched, but I stoutly assured
the old man that his parental fears exaggerated their wretchedness.
We had much other talk on the subject. When we were about to separate
for the day, I declared my own determination in this manner:--

"I have just decided on a step, Mr. Edgerton, which perhaps will
somewhat contribute to the improvement of your son, by imposing some
additional tasks upon him. I am about to emigrate for the southwest."

"You, Clifford? Impossible! What puts that into your head?"

It was something difficult to furnish any good reason for such a
movement. The only obvious reason spoke loudly for iny remaining
where I was.

"This is unaccountable," said he. "You are doing here as few young
men have done before you. Your business increasing--your income
already good--surely, Clifford, you have not thought upon the
matter--you are not resolved."

I could plead little other than a truant disposition for my proceeding,
but I soon convinced him that I was resolved. He seemed very much
troubled; betrayed the most flattering concern in my interests;
and, renewing his argument for my stay, renewed also his warmest
professions of service.

"I had hoped," he said, "to have seen you and William, closely
united, pursuing the one path equally and successfully together.
I shall have no hopes of him if you leave us."

"The probability is, sir, that he will do better with the whole
responsibility of the office thrown upon him."

"No! no!" said the old man, mournfully. "I have no hope of him.
There seems to me a curse upon wealth always--that follows and
clings to it, and never leaves it, till it works out the ruin of
all the proprietors. See the number of our young men, springing
from nothing, that make everything out of it--rise to eminence and
power--get fortune as if it were a mere sport to command and to
secure it; while, on the other Sand, look at the heirs of our proud
families. Profligate, reckless, abandoned: as if, reasoning from
the supposed wealth of their parents, they fancied that there were
no responsibilities of their own. I saw this danger from the beginning.
I have striven to train up my son in the paths of duty and constant
employment; and yet--but complaint is idle. The consciousness of
having tried my best to have and make it otherwise is, nevertheless,
a consolation. When do you think to go?"

"In a week or two at farthest. I have but to rid myself of my
impediments."

"Always prompt; but it is best. Once resolved, action is the moral
law. Still, I wish I could delay you. I still think you are committing
a great error. I can not understand it. You have established
yourself. This is not easy anywhere. You will find it difficult in
a new country, and among strangers."

"Nay, sir, more easy there than anywhere else. If a man has anything
in him, strangers and a new country are the proper influences to
bring it out. Friends and an old community keep it down, suppress,
strangle it. This is the misfortune of your son. He has family,
friends--resources which defeat all the operations of moral courage,
and prevent independence. Necessity is the moral lever. Do you
forget the saying of one of the wise men? 'If you wish your son
to become a man, strip him naked and send him among strangers'--in
other words, throw him upon his own resources, and let him take
care of himself. The not doing this is the source of that misfortune
which only now you deplored as so commonly following the condition
of the select and wealthy. I do not fear the struggle in a new
country. It will end in my gaining my level, be that high or low.
Nothing, in such a region, can keep a man from that."

"Ay, but the roughness of those new countries--the absence of
refinement--the absolute want of polish and delicacy."

"The roughness will not offend me, if it is manly. The world is full
of it. To be anything, a man must not have too nice a stomach. Such
a stomach will make him recoil from sights of misery and misfortune;
and he who recoils from such sights, will be the last to relieve,
to repair them. But while I admit the roughness and the want
of polish among these frontier men, I deny the want of delicacy.
Their habits are rude and simple, perhaps, but their tastes are
pure and unaffected, and their hearts in the right place. They
have strong affections; and strong affections, properly balanced,
are the true sources of the better sort of delicacy. All other is
merely conventional, and consists of forms and phrases, which are
very apt to keep us from the thing itself which they are intended
to represent. Give me these frank men and women of the frontier,
while my own feelings are yet strong and earnest. Here, I am
perpetually annoyed by the struggle to subdue within the social
limits the expression of that nature which is for ever boiling
up within me, and the utterance of which is neither more nor less
than the heart's utterance of the faith and hope which are in it.
We are told of those nice preachers who 'never mention hell to ears
polite.' They are the preachers of your highly-refined, sentimental
society. Whatever hell may be, they are the very teachers that,
by their mincing forbearance, conduct the poor soul that relies on
them into its jaws. It is a sort of lie not to use the properest
language to express our thoughts, but rather so to falsify our
thoughts by a sort of lack-a-daisaical phraseology which deprives
them of all their virility. A nation or community is in a bad way
for truth, when there is a tacit understanding among their members
to deal in the diminutives of a language, and forbear the calling
of things by their right names. An Englishman, wishing to designate
something which is graceful, pleasing, delicate, or fine, uses
the word 'nice'--more fitly applied to bon-bons or beefsteaks,
according to the stomach of the speaker. An energetic form of
speech is rated, in fashionable society, as particularly vulgar.
In our larger American cities, where they have much pretension but
little character, a leg must not be spoken of as such. You may say
'limb,' but not 'leg.' The word 'woman'--one of the sweetest in the
language--is supposed to disparage the female to whom it is applied.
She must be called a 'lady,' forsooth; and this word, originally
intended to pacify an aristocratic vanity, has become the ordinary
appellative of every member of that gross family which, in the
language of Shakspere, is only fit to 'suckle fools and chronicle
small beer.' I shall be more free, and feel more honest in that
rough world of the west; a region in which the dilettantism, such
as it is, of our Atlantic cities, is always very prompt to sneer
at and disparage; but I look to see the day, even in our time, when
that west shall be, not merely an empire herself, but the nursing
mother of great empires. There shall be a genius born in that vast,
wide world--a rough, unlicked genius it may be, but one whose
words shall fall upon the hills like thunder, and descend into the
valleys like a settled, heavy rain, which shall irrigate them all
with a new life. Perhaps--"

I need not pursue this. I throw it upon paper with no deliberation.
It streams from me like the rest. Its tone was somewhat derived
from those peculiar, sad feelings, and that pang-provoking course
of thought, which it has been the purpose of this narrative to
embody. In the expression of digressive but earnest notions like
these, I could momentarily divert myself from deeper and more
painful emotions. I had really gone through a great trial: I say
a great trial--always assuming human indulgence for that disease
of the blind heart which led me where I found myself, which makes
me what I am. I did not feel lightly the pang of parting with my
birthplace. I did not esteem lightly the sacrifice of business,
comfort, and distinction which I was making; and of that greater
cause of suffering, supposed or real, of the falling off in my
wife's affection, the agony is already in part recorded. It may
be permitted to me, perhaps, under these circumstances--with the
additional knowledge, which I yet suppressed, that these sacrifices
were to be made, and these sufferings endured, partly that the
son might be saved--to speak with some unreserved warmth of tone
to the venerable and worthy sire. He little knew how much of my
determination to remove from my country was due to my regard for
him. I felt assured that, if I remained, two things must happen.
William Edgerton would persevere in his madness, and I should murder
him in his perseverance! I banished myself in regard for that old
man, and in some measure to requite his benefactions, that I might
be spared this necessity.

When, the next day, I sought William Edgerton himbelf, and declared
my novel determination, he turned pale as death. I could see that
his lips quivered. I watched him closely. He was evidently racked
by an emotion which was more obvious from the necessity he was
under of suppressing it. With considerable difficulty he ventured
to ask my reasons for this strange step, and with averted countenance
repeated those which his father had proffered against my doing
so. I could see that he fain would have urged his suggestions more
vehemently if he dared. But the conviction that his wishes were
the fathers to his arguments was conclusive to render him careful
that his expostulations should not put on a show of earnestness.
I must do William Edgerton the justice to say that guilt was not
his familiar. He could not play the part of the practised hypocrite.
He had no powers of artifice. He could not wear the flowers upon
his breast, having the volcano within it. Professionally, he could
be no roue. He could seem no other than he was. Conscious of guilt,
which he had not the moral strength to counteract and overthrow,
he had not, at the same time, the art necessary for its concealment.
He could use no smooth, subtle blandishments. His cheek and eye
would tell the story of his mind, though it strove to make a false
presentment. I do him the further justice to believe that a great
part of his misery arose from this consciousness of his doing
wrong, rather than from the difficulties in the way of his success.
I believe that, even were he successful in the prosecution of
his illicit purposes, he would not have looked or felt a jot less
miserable. I felt, while we conferred together, that my departure
was perhaps the best measure for his relief. While I mused upon his
character and condition, my anger yielded in part to commiseration.
I remembered the morning-time of our boyhood--when we stood up
for conflict with our young enemies, side by side--obeyed the same
rallying-cry, recognised the same objects, and were a sort of David
and Jonathan to one another. Those days!--they soothed and softened
me while I recalled them. My tone became less keen, my language
less tinctured with sarcasm, when I thought of these things; and
I thought of our separation without thinking of its cause.

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