faintsplintering of wood. Rather outraged than alarmed, I went back formy dressing-gown, and as I left the room, I confronted Maggie in thehallway. She had an envelope in one hand, and a hatchet in the other.
"I found it," she said briefly.
She held it out, and I took it. On the outside, in Miss Emily's writing,it said, "To whom it may concern." It was sealed.
I turned it over in my hand, while Maggie talked.
"When I saw that girl crawling around," she said, "seems to me Iremembered all at once seeing Miss Emily, that day I found her, runningher finger along the baseboard. Says I to myself, there's somethingmore hidden, and she don't know where it is. But I do. So I lifted thebaseboard, and this was behind it."
Anne heard her from her room, and she went out soon afterward. I heardher going down the stairs and called to her. But she did not answer. Iclosed the door on Maggie and stood in my room, staring at the envelope.
I have wondered since whether Miss Emily, had she lived, would have putthe responsibility on Providence for the discovery of her pitiful story.So many of us blame the remorseless hand of destiny for what is somanifestly our own doing. It was her own anxiety, surely, that led tothe discovery in each instance, yet I am certain that old Emily Bentondied, convinced that a higher hand than any on earth had directed thediscovery of the confession.
Miss Emily has been dead for more than a year now. To publish the lettercan do her no harm. In a way, too, I feel, it may be the fulfilment ofthat strange pact she made. For just as discovery was the thing she mostdreaded, so she felt that by paying her penalty here she would be savedsomething beyond--that sort of spiritual book-keeping which most of uscall religion. Anne Sprague--she is married now to Martin has, I think,some of Miss Emily's feeling about it, although she denies it. But Iam sure that in consenting to the recording of Miss Emily's story, shefeels that she is doing what that gentle fatalist would call followingthe hand of Providence.
I read the letter that night in the library where the light was good. Itwas a narrative, not a letter, strictly speaking. It began abruptly.
"I must set down this thing as it happened. I shall write it fully,because I must get it off my mind. I find that I am always composingit, and that my lips move when I walk along the street or even when I amsitting in church. How terrible if I should some day speak it aloud. Mygreat-grandmother was a Catholic. She was a Bullard. Perhaps it is fromher that I have this overwhelming impulse to confession. And lately Ihave been terrified. I must tell it, or I shall shriek it out some day,in the church, during the Litany. 'From battle and murder, and fromsudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.'"
(There was a space here. When the writing began again, time had elapsed.The ink was different, the writing more controlled.)
"What a terrible thing hate is. It is a poison. It penetrates the mindand the body and changes everything. I, who once thought I could hate noone, now find that hate is my daily life, my getting up and lying down,my sleep, my waking.
"'From hatred, envy, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord,deliver us.'
"Must one suffer twice for the same thing? Is it not true that we paybut one penalty? Surely we pay either here or beyond, but not both. Oh,not both!
"Will this ever be found? Where shall I hide it? For I have the feelingthat I must hide it, not destroy it--as the Catholic buries his sin withthe priest. My father once said that it is the healthful humiliation ofthe confessional that is its reason for existing. If humiliation be avirtue--"
I have copied the confession to this point, but I find I can not go on.She was so merciless to herself, so hideously calm, so exact as to datesand hours. She had laid her life on the table and dissected it--for theAlmighty!
I heard the story that night gently told, and somehow I feel that thatis the version by which Miss Emily will be judged.
"If humiliation be a virtue--" I read and was about to turn the page,when I heard Anne in the hall. She was not alone. I recognized DoctorLingard's voice.
Five minutes later I was sitting opposite him, almost knee to knee,and he was telling me how Miss Emily had come to commit her crime. AnneBullard was there, standing on the hearth rug. She kept her eyes onme, and after a time I realized that these two simple people fearedme, feared for Miss Emily's gentle memory, feared that I--goodheaven!--would make the thing public.
"First of all, Miss Blakiston," said the doctor, "one must have knownthe family to realize the situation--its pride in its own uprightness.The virtue of the name, what it stood for in Bolivar County. She wasraised on that. A Benton could do no wrong, because a Benton would do nowrong.
"But there is another side, also. I doubt if any girl was ever raisedas Miss Emily was. She--well, she knew nothing. At fifty she was aschildlike and innocent as she was at ten. She had practically neverheard of vice. The ugly things, for her, did not exist.
"And, all the time, there was a deep and strong nature underneath. Sheshould have married and had children, but there was no one here forher to marry. I," he smiled faintly, "I asked for her myself, and wasforbidden the house for years as a result.
"You have heard of the brother? But of course you have. I know you havefound the books. Such an existence as the family life here was bound tohave its reactions. Carlo was a reaction. Twenty-five years ago he ranaway with a girl from the village. He did not marry her. I believe hewas willing at one time, but his father opposed it violently. It wouldhave been to recognize a thing he refused to recognize." He turnedsuddenly to Anne. "Don't you think this is going to be painful?" heasked.
"Why? I know it all."
"Very well. This girl--the one Carlo ran away with--determined to makethe family pay for that refusal. She made them actually pay, year byyear. Emily knew about it. She had to pinch to make the payments. Thefather sat in a sort of detached position, in the center of BolivarCounty, and let her bear the brunt of it. I shall never forget the dayshe learned there was a child. It--well, it sickened her. She had notknown about those things. And I imagine, if we could know, that that wasthe beginning of things.
"And all the time there was the necessity for secrecy. She had neverknown deceit, and now she was obliged to practice it constantly. She hadno one to talk to. Her father, beyond making entries of the amounts paidto the woman in the case, had nothing to do with it. She bore it all,year after year. And it ate, like a cancer.
"Remember, I never knew. I, who would have done anything for her--shenever told me. Carlo lived hard and came back to die. The father went.She nursed them both. I came every day, and I never suspected. Only,now and then, I wondered about her. She looked burned. I don't know anyother word.
"Then, the night after Carlo had been buried, she telephoned for me.It was eleven o'clock, She met me, out there in the hall, and she said,'John, I have killed somebody.'
"I thought she was out of her mind. But she opened the door, and--"
He turned and glanced at Anne.
"Please!" she said.
"It was Anne's mother. You have guessed it about Anne by now, of course.It seems that the funeral had taken the money for the payment that wasdue, and there had been a threat of exposure. And Emily had reached thebreaking-point. I believe what she said--that she had no intentioneven of striking her. You can't take the act itself. You have to taketwenty-five years into account. Anyhow, she picked up a chair andknocked the woman down. And it killed her." He ran his fingers throughhis heavy hair. "It should not have killed her," he reflected. "Theremust have been some other weakness, heart or something. I don't know.But it was a heavy chair. I don't see how Emily--"
His voice trailed off.
"There we were," he said, with a long breath. "Poor Emily, and the otherpoor soul, neither of them fundamentally at fault, both victims."
"I know about the books," I put in hastily. I could not have him goingover that again.
"You knew that, too!" He gazed at me.
"Poor Emily," he said. "She tried to atone. She brought Anne here, andtold her the whole story. It was a b
ad time--all round. But at last Annesaw the light. The only one who would not see the light was Emily. Andat last she hit on this confession idea. I suspected it when she rentedthe house. When I accused her of it, she said: 'I have given it toProvidence to decide. If the confession is found, I shall know I am tosuffer. And I shall not lift a hand to save myself.'"
So it went through the hours. Her fear, which I still think was theterror that communicated itself to me; the various clues, which she,poor victim, had overlooked; the articles laid carelessly in thebook she had been reading and accidentally hidden with her brother'sforbidden literature; the books themselves, with all of five years todestroy them, and left untouched; her own anxiety about the confessionin the telephone-box, which led to