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 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,
candour 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 favoured 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 humour. 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 further than the evil has gone, you will confer
as great a comfort as can now be conferred on the unhappy