Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service Part 10

A strange-looking, coa.r.s.e-papered doc.u.ment, that till then had escaped my notice, now caught my eye. It was headed "Court of Probate and Divorce," and set forth that on a certain day in term the case of "MacNamara _versus_ Mac-Namara, Gosslett, co-respondent," would come on for trial; the action being to obtain a rule _nisi_ for divorce, with damages against the co-respondent.

A notice of service, duly signed by one of my own people, lay beside this; so that at last I got a faint glimmering of what my uncle meant, and clearly descried what was im plied by my "victim."

I believe that most readers of the "Times" or the "Morning Post" could finish my story; they, at all events, might detail the catastrophe with more patience and temper than I could. The MacNamara divorce was a nine-days' scandal. And "if the baseness of the black-hearted iniquity of the degraded creature who crept into a family as a supplicant that he might pollute it with dishonor; who tracked his victim, as the Indian tracks his enemy, from lair to lair,--silent, stealthily, and with savage intensity,--never faltering from any momentary pang of conscience, nor hesitating in his vile purpose from any pa.s.sing gleam of virtue,--if this wretch, stigmatized by nature with a rotten heart, and branded by a name that will sound appropriately in the annals of crime, for he is called Gosslett,"--if all this, and a great deal more in the same fashion, is not familiar to the reader, it is because he has not carefully studied the Demosthenic orations of the Court of Arches. In one word, I was supposed to have engaged the affections and seduced the heart of Mrs. MacNamara, who was a cousin of my own, and the daughter of the Rev. W. Dudgeon, in whose house I had been "brought up," &c. I had withdrawn her from her husband, and taken her to live with me at Lahneck under the name of Dacre, where our course of life--openly, fearlessly infamous--was proved by a host of witnesses; in particular, by a certain Virginie, maid of the respondent, who deposed to having frequently found me at her feet, and who confessed to have received costly presents to seduce her into favoring the cause of the betrayer. Mr. Bracken, a retired detective, who produced what were called the love-letters, amused the jury considerably by his account of my mad freaks and love-sick performances. As for Mrs. MacNamara herself, she entered no appearance to the suit; and the decree _nisi_ was p.r.o.nounced, with damages of five thousand pounds, against Paul Gosslett, who, the counsel declared, was in "a position to pay handsomely for his vices, and who had ample means to afford himself the luxury of adultery." I was told that the mob were prepared to stone me if I had been seen; and that, such was the popular excitement about me, a strong police force was obliged to accompany a red-whiskered gentleman to his house because there was a general impression abroad that he was Gosslett.

Of course I need not say I never ventured back to England; and I indite this, my last confession, from a small village in Bohemia, where I live in board--partial board it is--with a very humble family, who, though not complimentary to me in many things, are profuse in the praises of my appet.i.te.

I rarely see an English newspaper; but a Galignani fell in my way about a week ago, in which I read the marriage of Mrs. MacNamara with R. St.

John, Esq., the then Secretary of Legation at Rio. This piece of news gave me much matter of reflection as to my unhappy victim, and has also enabled me to unseal my lips about the bridegroom, of whom I knew something once before.

The man who is always complaining is the terror of his friends; hence, if nothing but bad luck attend we, I shall trouble the world no more with my Confessions; if Fate, however, should be pleased to smile ever so faintly on me, you shall hear once more from poor Paul Gosslett.

THE END.