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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

Part I. — A Wife's Confession

page 4

Part I.

A Wife's Confession.

"My Dear Husband,—When you read this your wife of a day will be dead, I cannot convey to you how earnestly I wish you to credit what I am about to say. I could not rest in my grave if I thought the disgrace which has covered me is my life time should rest upon my memory when I am gone. Think of not as speaking from the dead; and remember that however improbable some of the things I relate may seem, I am not likely to write anything but the truth now, and least of all would I think of doing so to you.

"It is part of my diary—the only part bearing upon those facts of which I know you must so intensely desire to learn the truth. As it was written then, so it remains now.

"Since the day when I was dragged from before you in the cabin of your yacht, I have never known a happy hour. It was a heavy burden that was laid upon my shoulders then; and never for a moment has it been lifted from them. You believed me guilty—and oh! my dear, dear Matthew, it was in that that the bitterness of it lay. Everything has been against me;—every one has believe me to be a guilty, wicked woman, and I dared not open my lips to defend myself The trial came on; evidence was piled up against me; there was not a man or woman in the land that did not condemn me. I saw it in the faces of the gaping crowd that came every day to stare at me; in the stern looks of the judge, the jury—everywhere. I wonder I did not go mad. I have sometimes wished they had found me guilty, for then I should have escaped the slow torture I have endured since.

"And yet I was innocent.

"I might have cleared myself, but I could not bring myself to do it. It was not that I was careless of life; on the contrary, I had the one thing that should have made life happy. I knew then, as well as I know now, what I was giving up but there was only one thing that weighed with me—and that was your low, my dear Matthew, for I may call you so now. Yet I made the choice; and had I my life to live over again, I could not but choose to do the same again. Believe me I had a reason for what I did; and, much as you must have suffered, before you have read to the end of this Confession you will admit it was no light reason.

"The struggle to contain myself in silence has been a hard one for me. I have often heard about you. The world is a small place after all, and it has come to my ears in many chance ways how you have lived since that fatal epoch is our lives. I have heard how you have shut yourself out from society; how you have gone from country to country an aimless and hopeless wanderer; how you have been pressed again and again by those who had every right to advise you to get a divorce from one who was but your wife in name, to whom you had attached yourself by a hasty boyish pledge, and who had, apparently, proved herself so base and unworthy of you. I know, too, that you have remained true is spite of all. Think then, if you deem me worthy of the bestowal of a thought how I must have suffered in my obscurity when I saw from what I had shut myself out, and whether I would have condemned you and myself to all this without a weighty reason. That reason, dear Matthew, it is now my purpose to show you.

"And when you have read this Confession, and pass judgment upon my poor afflicted sister, who has been the unwitting cause of it all, do not forget the calamity that had befallen her. She was not responsible for her terrible set page 5 had she been sane she would have been incapable of even conceiving the thought. She had had much wrong, and had been basely deceived. She was an instrument in the hands of a just Fate. My heart is fit to break when I think of her and all the terrible misfortunes that overwhelmed her through one rash act. My poor Catherine!

"May you be happier henceforward than you have been while I lived to blight your prospects. May you learn to forgive her who entered into your life only to [unclear: in] it, but who would gladly have given her existence to make you happy had Providence ordered our lives more kindly than it did. Would that I could convey a you by some other means than pen and paper what i feel towards you at this mount of writing. Though misfortune has come down upon me like a thick darkness, my life has known one green spot in its dreary wilderness—through all my love for you has remained as strong as on the day when you first won the [unclear: ission] from me. I may confess it now; for when this reaches your hand the save will have hidden all the faults and follies of

"Your loving wife,

October 9. 1888. "Esther."