Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1883 — HER LAST CONFESSION. [ARTICLE]

HER LAST CONFESSION.

% BY G. P. LATHItOP. A mill without water, wind or steam to drive it—what a curious thing! Yet, there it stood, and had stood for many a year, and no ono could tell the reason, though you could not fail to see that there must be some story belonging to the place. Strangers coming to Nantucket sometimes asked about it, but a 1 they could find out was, that one day long ago the dam of the mill-pond had given way, the wetter had all .gene out with a rush, and the stream was scattered in new channels or was lost in the sandy soil. The loss came upon old Humphrey Gurton, the miller, at a time w hen he could not afford to rebuild. He was thenceforth a ruined man. People said that his loss made him crazy, for he used to declare that Ihp water could never have escaped if some one had not opened the waste-pipe in the dam; and lie vowed vengeance against the person who had ruined him out of mere mischief. Finally the idea worked upon him so that he used to go about the streets with a pistol in his hand. “Hooking for my unknown enemy,” lie said. The town-peojile were easy-going, and since Gurton had alwavs been one of the kindest men alive, and never had an enemy in the place, they didn’t dream of harm coming from his threats. But one day, about four years after the accident, he met John Bartow, and in a sudden fury shot him dead. “He was the man that'did it!” cried old Humphrey, with insane satisfaction. “Bartow is the enemy I have been looking for. I told you X would kill him when I found him, and now I’ve done lit.'” When this tragedy occurred, everybody saw that Gurton had become a maniac past cure,- for Barjtow was one of his best friends, and, in fact, Bartow’s - daughter Nelly, llien 16, was engaged to marry old Humphrey's son Will, one • of the finest fellows on the island. The poor miller was carried away to lithe mainland, to an asylum for the insane, and there he died. A great change had come over Nelly since the miller’s ruin. She was only a girl of 15 at the time; but she and Will Gurton had even then promised to marry each other when they should -grow up.

The engagement was not broken, though Will came to her when he found his father was ruined, and told hei that :she would have to marry a poor man if eke took him now. "Still,” he said, “I am only 18, and if you will be true to me when we are older, Nelly, I may get to be well oft *>y the time we are married. Only I must go as a sailor, now, for father has no business for me, as he expected to have. I must trust to the sea, and work my own way up.” “Oh, Will,” said the girl, weeping. "You know I shall love you always, and it doesn’t make any difference about the mill. And I shall keep my promise, if you still want me. But I am not .good enough. No, Will, >I am not good •enough.” At this the young boy grew a little angry. “Never say that again, Nelly,” he commanded her. “I don’t know what you mean when you cdll yourself not good enough!” But they soon came to an understanding again, and Will Kissed her, and Nelly tried to look bright once more, and the promise was renewed. The two children had already confided this promise to their parents, and, though it was looked upon as premature, it had received their approval. But the change in Nelly, of which I have spoken, was this, that, while be l fore she had been one of the merriest; romping girls in the town, always fuH •of fun and tricksiness, she now became 'Very serious and almost melancholy. “Why, cheer up, Nell,” her father would often say to her. “What is my little girl thinking about ? Has any one •done aught to hurt you ?” “No, father,” Nelly would answer, <geiy briefly. And then she would go

t away, as if to avoid being questioned. When she grew older, Mr. Bartowthought perhaps she was grieving about Will, seeing how the childish attachment was ripening into Womanly love. “I know it is hard,” he once said to her, “to think how different Will’s lot would have been if he had had the mill; but don't fix your mind on that, my child. You Have got a brave fellow, and he is. sure to do well for you.” “But I never wanted him to go to sea, you know, father. And now it is coming like a fate. He’s going away like all the other boys.” “Pshaw!” said Mr. Bartow,*who had served many years on the whale ships and rather despised land employment. “In my time the girls would not have a lover at all who had not toughened his hands on the ropes for one voyage, at least. Don’t pout over that.” Nelly agreed to try being braver; but her pensiveness did not dimmish, and her father began to suspect that there was some cause for it winch she had not revealed.

And then came the terrible day when he wa3 murdered by the poor, crazed miller. After that, no one wasted any wonder over that melancholy expression which was gradually becoming indelible upon Nelly’s face. * Her future husband’s father had fallen a prey to disaster and died in madnes*, while her own father had been cut off in his hale vigor by. that very hand which should have welcomed her as a daughter. Were not these events enough to have wrought a revolution in her character ? She was terribly overwhelmed when her fat! er was brought home, after the shooting. Those who saw her related that her grief was almost too awful even to speak of afterward. She seeded to consider herself the cause of the calamity; “On, I wish I had never been born!” she cried. “But for me these griefs would never have come to us all. My poor, poor father —he wondered so what made me sad, and I never told him; and I felt something dreadful coming—but how could I tell it was to be this?” “Hush!” said one of her friends. “It is wrong to talk so, as if you could make or prevent what Providence has appointed.” “But I am doomed, I am doomed,” moaned Nelly. “And all who are nearest to me are being visited with my doom. ” “How do you mean?” asked her

friend, bewildered. -Then Nelly became quiet at once. She set herself to care for her mother, and never again gave any Outward sign of her own dreadful suffering; and she showed such dread when any reference was made.to that one outbreak of wild grief, that her friends learned not to speak of it again. She was so devoted to her stricken mother, that every one* pointed her out as a pattern to their children, and poor Mrs. Bartow often said to her that without her she should not have been able to live a week. “How different you are, Nelly,” she would say, “from the thoughtless, funloving little tiling you used to be. I never thought you would be sucb a comfort and stay to me. ” “Oh, mother,” begged Nelly, “don’t praise me for that. I don’t deserve to have you think so much of me. I ought to have been better than I am. I can’t bear to liave you call me good!” When she sp@ke thus it only made her seem all the better for her modesty. But in spite of her tender care, the widow gradually fell into a decline, arid at length she, too, passed away.

This was while Will was absent on his first cruise. At first, when Mr. Bartow was killed, the gossips had decided that it would be unnatural for Nelly Bartow and Will Gurton to become man and wife. But the two young people in question decided otherwise. Their love was the one bright thing left to them in the midst of the gloom that was gathering over their lives, and they clung to it faithfully. So when Will came home and found Nelly left alone in the world, they were married at once. They lived in the old mill by the grassy hollow, that now occupied the place of the pond. Around it some shabby poplars grew, from behind which the queer, antique houses, standing at various angles, peered out in a dazed kind of a way, as if they bad never got over the joke, or the surprise, of having the little stretch of water suddenly vanish from before them. Nelly, also, had never gotten over the shock of that event and all the changes which followed it. But she tried to be cheerful, for Will’s sake, and he was proud of his wife. Yet Nelly’s misfortunes were not over; for, on his second cruise, Will’s ship was wrecked and he was lost with a number of the crew. She never would marry again, and so she was left to live, without children, utterly alone in the old mill. She shunned all companionship, for she had a secret in her heart which was a very exacting companion and drove out everything else. By-and-by, as she grew old, she w’as so peculiar that few persons attempted to have anything to do with her. She became very poor, but when charitable towns-people went and offered her help she repulsed them, saying, almost fiercely: “ What have Ito do with you,? You are not witches, and don’t you know I am an old witch and have brought sorrow and suffering on all who have had to do with me? Leave me alone.” So the children got to be afraid of her. But, as is often the case, they tried to show that they weren’t afraid, by majcing fun of her and teasing her. They would go to her house and knock on the windows and door, and hide when she came out; or else they would fasten the door on the outside, and throw things in at the open window, to plague her. 1 Peggy Winslow, who was a leader Its these adventures, one day conceived the idea of placing some flowers, which she had filled with red pepper, on the top of the door, so that they would fall down on old Dame Gurton (as Nelly was now called) when she came out, and half choke her with sneezing. Peggy chose flowers so that if Dame Gurton didn’t feel the pepper at once,

would be most likely to take up the flowers and smell them. The trick succeeded. Poor old Nelly was brought to the door by a gentle tap which deceived her into thinking it was some one come with sewing for her to do. Bdt when the flowers fell down, and she found no one at the threshold, she stooped and picked up the nosegay with a strange sensation of surprised happiness. She fancied some one had had a kind thought for her, and expressed it in this way. But when she stooped with difficulty and picked up the flewers, she discovered the imposition too late. The pepper went into her nose and eyes and convulsed her. What was worse than that was the bitter disappointment of finding what seemed such a pretty gift only a malicious jest. She rushed out into the old patch of shrubbery she called her garden, to find the offender. Peggy had hidden behind a bush, expecting the result with great enjoyment. But, when Dame Gurton appeared, she was overcome with fright. The old woman was gasping for breath, her eyes were streaming; she shook her fist in the air with rage, and sobs of mortification interrupted her outcries.

Peggy fled home as fast as she could go, feeling that she had been very wicke'd. She could hardly bear to face her mother. Yet how could her mother ever know what she had done ? This reflection, however, didn’t console her; and, before she had said her prayers that night, she had confessed the whole story. # Mrs. Winslow took Peggy'to the old mill the very next morning to tell Dame Gurton how sorry they both were that such a cruel and wanton thing should have been done. They found old Nelly very gentle. She looked at Peggy a long while, then sighed and said: “You are like me when I was young. But you will change, you will change. God grant you may not have such a lesson as I did.” , “What was that?” asked Mrs. Winslow. But Dame Gurton would say nothing more. After that, though* she allowed Mrs. Winslow and Peggy to visit and befriend her. It was only a few weeks later that old Nelly fell ill, and her case soon became so serious that it was plain she could not recover. When she was perfectly sure that she must die, she asked Mrs. Winslow, who was with her, to send for Peggy. “I have something to tell you both,” she said. “But no one else shall hear, and if the doctor comes, he must wait till I have done. ” Then, after Peggy had come and. taken her place beside the bed, the dying woman began. “I am glad I am going to tell it,” she said, “for my whole life has been blackened by keeping it to myself. It would have been aav-ful to die with that secret in my breast. “Oh, you may say it was a little thing to feel so about; but that was what I said to myself all the time, and I was wrong! I only did it for fun, just for fun, as you put pepper in those flowers, my little Peggy. But see what it did to me afterward ! That wasn’t for fun, you may be sure. ” She paused, and her abstracted gaze and suffering face seemed to show that she was looking back over her life. Then she went oar

“It was the waste-pipe in the milldam, and I kept thinking how funny it would be, and how Mr. Gurton would stare, if I could let all the water out before he knew it. I thought it was all right, because Will made love to me then, and I didn’t dream of doing any harm to them that were like to be so near aftd dear ,to me. So I went all alone and secret, and I could work at it without being seen, because there were bushes growing close around it. At last I got the plug out, and then I crept away and hurried home. Mr. Gurton —he was the miller, you know —was away. But the water got down so it wouldn’t run over the top, and the race was shut off, so it pushed against the dam faster than the plug-hole would let it run out, and the whole thing went and the water was lost. “I didn’t think even then but what it could be fixed, though I was awful scared. But you know, Mrs. Winslow, what happened to Will’s father, and then to mine. ” she explained to Peggy what has bee, told above.) “And wher I found a:’ that mischief had been done and how people felt, I was afraid. And I durstn’t tell Will, for fear he’d hate me. And I never told anybody. “I thought it couldn’t hMp things any to tell, now the harm had been done, and so I held my tongue. But when my husband died, and I thought how he was gone from me perhaps forever, and didn’t know it was I that drove his pooy father crazy, and so led to my own father's death—oh, then, I tell you, I saw how wrong I had been to keep secret about it! “Just think! I had ruined miller Gurton, and lost father, mother and husband, all through letting out the pond; and yet I had been taking their love and pretending to be fit for it, all the time. “So I had done two wrong things instead of one. And all these years I’ve sat and looked at the place where the pond was, and the old happiness that used to be in my heart withered away like the water-plants that used to grow by the pond. “If I hadn’t done that one thing for fun, Will needn’t have been a sailor, and I might have had him with me till now, and if I had only told him everything ! But now some one knows at last. I’ve told all, and I shall die easier.” A greater peace came into her face than had ever been there since her girlhood ; and with that look she breathed her last the same night. Little Peggy Winslow needed no one to enforce the lesson she had learned from Dame Gurton’a confession. “How glad I am, mamma,” said she, “that I fjold you right away the wrong thing I had done!”— Youth’s Companion. In New York City 100,000 children earn their own living.