The Confession | Page 9

length of candle to burn itself out in the
hall when I went up to bed.
I have seen one of Willie's boys waken up at night screaming with a
terror he could not describe. Well, it was much like that with me,
except that I was awake and horribly ashamed of myself.
On the fourth of August I find in my journal the single word "flour." It
recalls both my own cowardice at that time, and an experiment I made.
The telephone had not bothered us for several nights, and I began to
suspect a connection of this sort: when the telephone rang, there was no
night visitor, and vice versa. I was not certain.
Delia was setting bread that night in the kitchen, and Maggie was
reading a ghost story from the evening paper. There was a fine sifting
of flour over the table, and it gave me my idea. When I went up to bed
that night, I left a powdering of flour here and there on the lower floor,
at the door into the library, a patch by the table, and--going back rather
uneasily--one near the telephone.
I was up and downstairs before Maggie the next morning. The patches
showed trampling. In the doorway they were almost obliterated, as by
the trailing of a garment over them, but by the fireplace there were two
prints quite distinct. I knew when I saw them that I had expected the
marks of Miss Emily's tiny foot, although I had not admitted it before.
But these were not Miss Emily's. They were large, flat, substantial, and
one showed a curious marking around the edge that--It was my own!
The marking was the knitted side of my bedroom slipper. I had, so far
as I could tell, gone downstairs, in the night, investigated the candles,
possibly in darkness, and gone back to bed again.
The effect of the discovery on me was--well undermining. In all the
uneasiness of the past few weeks I had at least had full confidence in
myself. And now that was gone. I began to wonder how much of the
things that had troubled me were real, and how many I had made for
myself.

To tell the truth, by that time the tension was almost unbearable. My
nerves were going, and there was no reason for it. I kept telling myself
that. In the mirror I looked white and anxious, and I had a sense of
approaching trouble. I caught Maggie watching me, too, and on the
seventh I find in my journal the words: "Insanity is often only a
formless terror."
On the Sunday morning following that I found three burnt matches in
the library fireplace, and one of the candles in the brass holders was
almost gone. I sat most of the day in that room, wondering what would
happen to me if I lost my mind. I knew that Maggie was watching me,
and I made one of those absurd hypotheses to myself that we all do at
times. If any of the family came, I would know that she had sent for
them, and that I was really deranged! It had been a long day, with a
steady summer rain that had not cooled the earth, but only set it
steaming. The air was like hot vapor, and my hair clung to my moist
forehead. At about four o'clock Maggie started chasing a fly with a
folded newspaper. She followed it about the lower floor from room to
room, making little harsh noises in her throat when she missed it. The
sound of the soft thud of the paper on walls and furniture seemed
suddenly more than I could bear.
"For heaven's sake!" I cried. "Stop that noise, Maggie." I felt as though
my eyes were starting from my head.
"It's a fly," she said doggedly, and aimed another blow at it. "If I don't
kill it, we'll have a million. There, it's on the mantel now. I never--"
I felt that if she raised the paper club once more I should scream. So I
got up quickly and caught her wrist. She was so astonished that she let
the paper drop, and there we stood, staring at each other. I can still see
the way her mouth hung open.
"Don't!" I said. And my voice sounded thick even to my own ears.
"Maggie--I can't stand it!"
"My God, Miss Agnes!"

Her tone brought me up sharply. I released her arm.
"I--I'm just nervous, Maggie," I said, and sat down. I was trembling
violently.
I was sane. I knew it then as I know it now. But I was not rational.
Perhaps to most of us come now and then times when they realize that
some act, or some thought, is not balanced,