第47章

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out.Psha! Ihave heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser.That terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he maintained were quite common, and were scarcely ever found out.A man, for instance, comes home to his wife, and...but I pause--I know that this Magazine has a very large circulation.Hundreds and hundreds of thousands--why not say a million of people at once?--well, say a million, read it.And amongst these countless readers, I might be teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found out, some fiend of a woman how to destroy her dear husband.I will NOT then tell this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a most respectable party in the confidence of private intercourse.Suppose some gentle reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt--it seems to me almost infallible--and come to grief in consequence, and be found out and hanged? Should I ever pardon myself for having been the means of doing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers? The prescription whereof I speak--that is to say, whereof I DON'T speak--shall be buried in this bosom.No, I am a humane man.I am not one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, "My dear! I am going away for a few days to Brighton.Here are all the keys of the house.You may open every door and closet, except the one at the end of the oak-room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on the mantel-piece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman--unless, to be sure, I want to get rid of her--because, after such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet.I say nothing about the closet at all.I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom I love, but who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's way.You toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, "Oh, sneerer! You don't know the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel us so!" Ah, Delia! dear, dear Delia! It is because Ifancy I do know something about you (not all, mind--no, no; no man knows that)--Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet--choose, in fact, whatever name you like--bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my darkling life, and joy of my dungeoned existence, it is because I DO know a little about you that Iconclude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my key in my pocket.You take away that closet-key then, and the house-key.

You lock Delia in.You keep her out of harm's way and gadding, and so she never CAN be found out.

And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we are being found out every day.You remember that old story of the Abbe Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one night how the first confession he ever received was--from a murderer let us say.

Presently enters to supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine.

"Palsambleu, abbe!" says the brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, "are you here? Gentlemen and ladies! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him a confession, which I promise you astonished him."To be sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance.

Only the other day I was writing in these Roundabout Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me to my friends, who of course told me.Shortly after that paper was published another friend--Sacks let us call him--scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting in perfect good-humor at the club, and passes on without speaking.A cut.A quarrel.Sacks thinks it is about him that I was writing: whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never had him once in my mind, and was pointing my moral from quite another man.But don't you see, by this wrath of the guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too? He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused.He has winced when nobody thought of hitting him.I did but put the cap out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes out to put his head into it! Never mind, Sacks, you are found out; but I bear you no malice, my man.

And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity.