Books: Nature and Art
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Mrs Inchbald >> Nature and Art
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"Was I wrong, sir, to pity the child?"
"No."
"Then how could I feel for THAT, and yet divest myself of all
feeling for its mother?"
"Its mother!" exclaimed William, in anger: "she ought to have been
immediately pursued, apprehended, and committed to prison."
"It struck me, cousin William," replied Henry, "that the father was
more deserving of a prison: the poor woman had abandoned only one--
the man, in all likelihood, had forsaken TWO pitiable creatures."
William was pouring execrations "on the villain if such there could
be," when Rebecca was announced.
Her eyes were half closed with weeping; deep confusion overspread
her face; and her tottering limbs could hardly support her to the
awful chamber where the dean, her father, and William sat in
judgment, whilst her beloved Henry stood arraigned as a culprit, by
her false evidence.
Upon her entrance, her father first addressed her, and said in a
stern, threatening, yet feeling tone, "Unhappy girl, answer me
before all present--Have you, or have you not, owned yourself a
mother?"
She replied, stealing a fearful look at Henry, "I have."
"And have you not," asked the dean, "owned that Henry Norwynne is
the father of your child?"
She seemed as if she wished to expostulate.
The curate raised his voice--"Have you or have you not?"
"I have," she faintly replied.
"Then here," cried the dean to William, "read that paper to her, and
take the Bible."
William read the paper, which in her name declared a momentous
falsehood: he then held the book in form, while she looked like one
distracted--wrung her hands, and was near sinking to the earth.
At the moment when the book was lifted up to her lips to kiss, Henry
rushed to her--"Stop!" he cried, "Rebecca! do not wound your future
peace. I plainly see under what prejudices you have been accused,
under what fears you have fallen. But do not be terrified into the
commission of a crime which hereafter will distract your delicate
conscience. My requesting you of your father for my wife will
satisfy his scruples, prevent your oath--and here I make the
demand."
"He at length confesses! Surprising audacity! Complicated
villainy!" exclaimed the dean; then added, "Henry Norwynne, your
first guilt is so enormous; your second, in steadfastly denying it,
so base, this last conduct so audacious; that from the present hour
you must never dare to call me relation, or to consider my house as
your home."
William, in unison with his father, exclaimed, "Indeed, Henry, your
actions merit this punishment."
Henry answered with firmness, "Inflict what punishment you please."
"With the dean's permission, then," said the curate, "you must marry
my daughter."
Henry started--"Do you pronounce that as a punishment? It would be
the greatest blessing Providence could bestow. But how are we to
live? My uncle is too much offended ever to be my friend again; and
in this country, persons of a certain class are so educated, they
cannot exist without the assistance, or what is called the
patronage, of others: when that is withheld, they steal or starve.
Heaven protect Rebecca from such misfortune! Sir (to the curate),
do you but consent to support her only a year or two longer, and in
that time I will learn some occupation, that shall raise me to the
eminence of maintaining both her and myself without one obligation,
or one inconvenience, to a single being."
Rebecca exclaimed, "Oh! you have saved me from such a weight of sin,
that my future life would be too happy passed as your slave."
"No, my dear Rebecca, return to your father's house, return to
slavery but for a few years more, and the rest of your life I will
make free."
"And can you forgive me?"
"I can love you; and in that is comprised everything that is kind."
The curate, who, bating a few passions and a few prejudices, was a
man of some worth and feeling, and felt, in the midst of her
distress, though the result of supposed crimes, that he loved this
neglected daughter better than he had before conceived; and he now
agreed "to take her home for a time, provided she were relieved from
the child, and the matter so hushed up, that it might draw no
imputation upon the characters of his other daughters."
The dean did not degrade his consequence by consultations of this
nature: but, having penetrated (as he imagined) into the very
bottom of this intricate story, and issued his mandate against
Henry, as a mark that he took no farther concern in the matter, he
proudly walked out of the room without uttering another word.
William as proudly and silently followed.
The curate was inclined to adopt the manners of such great examples:
but self-interest, some affection to Rebecca, and concern for the
character of his family, made him wish to talk a little more with
Henry, who new repeated what he had said respecting his marriage
with Rebecca, and promised "to come the very next day in secret, and
deliver her from the care of the infant, and the suspicion that
would attend her nursing it."
"But, above all," said the curate, "procure your uncle's pardon; for
without that, without his protection, or the protection of some
other rich man, to marry, to obey God's ordinance, INCREASE AND
MULTIPLY is to want food for yourselves and your offspring."
CHAPTER XXIX.
Though this unfortunate occurrence in the curate's family was,
according to his own phrase, "to be hushed up," yet certain persons
of his, of the dean's, and of Lord Bendham's house, immediately
heard and talked of it. Among these, Lady Bendham was most of all
shocked and offended: she said she "never could bear to hear Mr.
Rymer either pray or preach again; he had not conducted himself with
proper dignity either as a clergyman or a father; he should have
imitated the dean's example in respect to Henry, and have turned his
daughter out of doors."
Lord Bendham was less severe on the seduced, but had no mercy on the
seducer--"a vicious youth, without one accomplishment to endear
vice." For vice, Lord Bendham thought (with certain philosophers),
might be most exquisitely pleasing, in a pleasing garb. "But this
youth sinned without elegance, without one particle of wit, or an
atom of good breeding."
Lady Clementina would not permit the subject to be mentioned a
second time in her hearing--extreme delicacy in woman she knew was
bewitching; and the delicacy she displayed on this occasion went so
far that she "could not even intercede with the dean to forgive his
nephew, because the topic was too gross for her lips to name even in
the ear of her husband."
Miss Sedgeley, though on the very eve of her bridal day with
William, felt so tender a regard for Henry, that often she thought
Rebecca happier in disgrace and poverty, blest with the love of him,
than she was likely to be in the possession of friends and fortune
with his cousin.
Had Henry been of a nature to suspect others of evil, or had he felt
a confidence in his own worth, such a passion as this young woman's
would soon have disclosed its existence: but he, regardless of any
attractions of Miss Sedgeley, equally supposed he had none in her
eyes; and thus, fortunately for the peace of all parties, this
prepossession ever remained a secret except to herself.
So little did William conceive that his clownish cousin could rival
him in the affections of a woman of fashion, that he even slightly
solicited his father "that Henry might not be banished from the
house, at least till after the following day, when the great
festival of his marriage was to be celebrated."
But the dean refused, and reminded his son, "that he was bound both
by his moral and religious character, in the eyes of God, and still
more, in the eyes of men, to show lasting resentment of iniquity
like his."
William acquiesced, and immediately delivered to his cousin the
dean's "wishes for his amendment," and a letter of recommendation
procured from Lord Bendham, to introduce him on board a man-of-war;
where, he was told, "he might hope to meet with preferment,
according to his merit, as a sailor and a gentleman."
Henry pressed William's hand on parting, wished him happy in his
marriage, and supplicated, as the only favour he would implore, an
interview with his uncle, to thank him for all his former kindness,
and to see him for the last time.
William repeated this petition to his father, but with so little
energy, that the dean did not grant it. He felt himself, he said,
compelled to resent that reprobate character in which Henry had
appeared; and he feared "lest the remembrance of his last parting
from his brother might, on taking a formal leave of that brother's
son, reduce him to some tokens of weakness, that would ill become
his dignity and just displeasure."
He sent him his blessing, with money to convey him to the ship, and
Henry quitted his uncle's house in a flood of tears, to seek first a
new protectress for his little foundling, and then to seek his
fortune.
CHAPTER XXX.
The wedding-day of Mr. William Norwynne with Miss Caroline Sedgeley
arrived; and, on that day, the bells of every parish surrounding
that in which they lived joined with their own, in celebration of
the blissful union. Flowers were strewn before the new-married
pair, and favours and ale made many a heart more gladsome than that
of either bridegroom or bride.
Upon this day of ringing and rejoicing the bells were not muffled,
nor was conversation on the subject withheld from the ear of Agnes!
She heard like her neighbours; and sitting on the side of her bed in
her little chamber, suffered, under the cottage roof, as much
affliction as ever visited a palace.
Tyrants, who have embrued their hands in the blood of myriads of
their fellow-creatures, can call their murders "religion, justice,
attention to the good of mankind." Poor Agnes knew no sophistry to
calm HER sense of guilt: she felt herself a harlot and a murderer;
a slighted, a deserted wretch, bereft of all she loved in this
world, all she could hope for in the next.
She complained bitterly of illness, nor could the entreaties of her
father and mother prevail on her to share in the sports of this
general holiday. As none of her humble visitors suspected the cause
of her more than ordinary indisposition, they endeavoured to divert
it with an account of everything they had seen at church--"what the
bride wore; how joyful the bridegroom looked;"--and all the seeming
signs of that complete happiness which they conceived was for
certain tasted.
Agnes, who, before this event, had at moments suppressed the
agonising sting of self-condemnation in the faint prospect of her
lover one day restored, on this memorable occasion lost every
glimpse of hope, and was weighed to the earth with an accumulation
of despair.
Where is the degree in which the sinner stops? Unhappy Agnes! the
first time you permitted indecorous familiarity from a man who made
you no promise, who gave you no hope of becoming his wife, who
professed nothing beyond those fervent, though slender, affections
which attach the rake to the wanton; the first time you interpreted
his kind looks and ardent prayers into tenderness and constancy; the
first time you descended from the character of purity, you rushed
imperceptibly on the blackest crimes. The more sincerely you loved,
the more you plunged in danger: from one ungoverned passion
proceeded a second and a third. In the fervency of affection you
yielded up your virtue! In the excess of fear, you stained your
conscience by the intended murder of your child! And now, in the
violence of grief, you meditate--what?--to put an end to your
existence by your own hand!
After casting her thoughts around, anxious to find some bud of
comfort on which to fix her longing eye; she beheld, in the total
loss of William, nothing but a wide waste, an extensive plain of
anguish. "How am I to be sustained through this dreary journey of
life?" she exclaimed. Upon this question she felt, more poignantly
than ever, her loss of innocence: innocence would have been her
support, but, in place of this best prop to the afflicted, guilt
flashed on her memory every time she flew for aid to reflection.
At length, from horrible rumination, a momentary alleviation came:
"but one more step in wickedness," she triumphantly said, "and all
my shame, all my sufferings are over." She congratulated herself
upon the lucky thought; when, but an instant after, the tears
trickled down her face for the sorrow her death, her sinful death,
would bring to her poor and beloved parents. She then thought upon
the probability of a sigh it might draw from William; and, the
pride, the pleasure of that little tribute, counterpoised every
struggle on the side of life.
As she saw the sun decline, "When you rise again," she thought,
"when you peep bright to-morrow morning into this little room to
call me up, I shall not be here to open my eyes upon a hateful day--
I shall no more regret that you have waked me!--I shall be sound
asleep, never to wake again in this wretched world--not even the
voice of William would then awake me."
While she found herself resolved, and evening just come on, she
hurried out of the house, and hastened to the fatal wood; the scene
of her dishonour--the scene of intended murder--and now the
meditated scene of suicide.
As she walked along between the close-set tree, she saw, at a little
distance, the spot where William first made love to her; and where
at every appointment he used to wait her coming. She darted her eye
away from this place with horror; but, after a few moments of
emotion, she walked slowly up to it--shed tears, and pressed with
her trembling lips that tree, against which she was accustomed to
lean while he talked with her. She felt an inclination to make this
the spot to die in; but her preconcerted, and the less frightful
death, of leaping into a pool on the other side of the wood, induced
her to go onwards.
Presently, she came near the place where HER child, and WILLIAM'S,
was exposed to perish. Here she started with a sense of the most
atrocious guilt; and her whole frame shook with the dread of an
approaching, an omnipotent Judge, to sentence her for murder.
She halted, appalled, aghast, undetermined whether to exist longer
beneath the pressure of a criminal conscience, or die that very
hour, and meet her final condemnation.
She proceeded a few steps farther, and beheld the very ivy-bush
close to which her infant lay when she left him exposed; and now,
from this minute recollection, all the mother rising in her soul,
she saw, as it were, her babe again in its deserted state; and
bursting into tears of bitterest contrition and compassion, she
cried--"As I was merciless to THEE, my child, thy father has been
pitiless to ME! As I abandoned THEE to die with cold and hunger, he
has forsaken, and has driven ME to die by self-slaughter."
She now fixed her eager eyes on the distant pond, and walked more
nimbly than before, to rid herself of her agonising sensations.
Just as she had nearly reached the wished-for brink, she heard a
footstep, and saw, by the glimmering of a clouded moon, a man
approaching. She turned out of her path, for fear her intentions
should be guessed at, and opposed; but still, as she walked another
way, her eye was wishfully bent towards the water that was to
obliterate her love and her remorse--obliterate, forever, William
and his child.
It was now that Henry, who, to prevent scandal, had stolen at that
still hour of night to rid the curate of the incumbrance so irksome
to him, and take the foundling to a woman whom he had hired for the
charge--it was now that Henry came up, with the child of Agnes in
his arms, carefully covered all over from the night's dew.
"Agnes, is it you?" cried Henry, at a little distance. "Where are
you going thus late?"
"Home, sir," said she, and rushed among the trees.
"Stop, Agnes," he cried; "I want to bid you farewell; to-morrow I am
going to leave this part of the country for a long time; so God
bless you, Agnes."
Saying this, he stretched out his arm to shake her by the hand.
Her poor heart, trusting that his blessing, for want of more potent
offerings, might, perhaps, at this tremendous crisis ascend to
Heaven in her behalf, she stopped, returned, and put out her hand to
take his.
"Softly!" said he; "don't wake my child; this spot has been a place
of danger to him, for underneath this very ivy-bush it was that I
found him."
"Found what?" cried Agnes, with a voice elevated to a tremulous
scream.
"I will not tell you the story," replied Henry; "for no one I have
ever yet told of it would believe me."
"I will believe you--I will believe you," she repeated with tones
yet more impressive.
"Why, then," said Henry, "only five weeks ago--"
"Ah!" shrieked Agnes.
"What do you mean?" said Henry.
"Go on," she articulated, in the same voice.
"Why, then, as I was passing this very place, I wish I may never
speak truth again, if I did not find" (here he pulled aside the warm
rug in which the infant was wrapped) "this beautiful child."
"With a cord?--"
"A cord was round its neck."
"'Tis mine--the child is mine--'tis mine--my child--I am the mother
and the murderer--I fixed the cord, while the ground shook under me-
-while flashes of fire darted before my eyes!--while my heart was
bursting with despair and horror! But I stopped short--I did not
draw the noose--I had a moment of strength, and I ran away. I left
him living--he is living now--escaped from my hands--and I am no
longer ashamed, but overcome with joy that he is mine! I bless you,
my dear, my dear, for saving his life--for giving him to me again--
for preserving MY life, as well as my child's."
Here she took her infant, pressed it to her lips and to her bosom;
then bent to the ground, clasped Henry's knees, and wept upon his
feet.
He could not for a moment doubt the truth of what she said; her
powerful yet broken accents, her convulsive embraces of the child,
even more than her declaration, convinced him she was its mother.
"Good Heaven!" cried Henry, "and this is my cousin William's child!"
"But your cousin does not know it," said she; "I never told him--he
was not kind enough to embolden me; therefore do not blame HIM for
MY sin; he did not know of my wicked designs--he did not encourage
me--"
"But he forsook you, Agnes."
"He never said he would not. He always told me he could not marry
me."
"Did he tell you so at his first private meeting?"
"No."
"Nor at the second?"
"No; nor yet at the third."
"When was it he told you so?"
"I forget the exact time; but I remember it was on that very evening
when I confessed to him--"
"What?"
"That he had won my heart."
"Why did you confess it?"
"Because he asked me and said it would make him happy if I would say
so."
"Cruel! dishonourable!"
"Nay, do not blame him; he cannot help NOT loving me, no more than I
can help LOVING him."
Henry rubbed his eyes.
"Bless me, you weep! I always heard that you were brought up in a
savage country; but I suppose it is a mistake; it was your cousin
William."
"Will not you apply to him for the support of your child?" asked
Henry.
"If I thought he would not be angry."
"Angry! I will write to him on the subject if you will give me
leave."
"But do not say it is by my desire. Do not say I wish to trouble
him. I would sooner beg than be a trouble to him."
"Why are you so delicate?"
"It is for my own sake; I wish him not to hate me."
"Then, thus you may secure his respect. I will write to him, and
let him know all the circumstances of your case. I will plead for
his compassion on his child, but assure him that no conduct of his
will ever induce you to declare (except only to me, who knew of your
previous acquaintance) who is the father."
To this she consented; but when Henry offered to take from her the
infant, and carry him to the nurse he had engaged, to this she would
not consent.
"Do you mean, then, to acknowledge him yours?" Henry asked.
"Nothing shall force me to part from him again. I will keep him,
and let my neighbours judge of me as they please."
Here Henry caught at a hope he feared to name before. "You will
then have no objection," said he, "to clear an unhappy girl to a few
friends, with whom her character has suffered by becoming, at my
request, his nurse?"
"I will clear any one, so that I do not accuse the father."
"You give me leave, then, in your name, to tell the whole story to
some particular friends, my cousin William's part in it alone
excepted?"
"I do."
Henry now exclaimed, "God bless you!" with greater fervour than when
he spoke it before; and he now hoped the night was nearly gone, that
the time might be so much the shorter before Rebecca should be
reinstated in the esteem of her father, and of all those who had
misjudged her.
"God bless YOU!" said Agnes, still more fervently, as she walked
with unguided steps towards her home; for her eyes never wandered
from the precious object which caused her unexpected return.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Henry rose early in the morning, and flew to the curate's house,
with more than even his usual thirst of justice, to clear injured
innocence, to redeem from shame her whom he loved. With eager haste
he told that he had found the mother, whose fall from virtue
Rebecca, overcome by confusion and threats, had taken on herself.
Rebecca rejoiced, but her sisters shook their heads, and even the
father seemed to doubt.
Confident in the truth of his story, Henry persisted so boldly in
his affirmations, that if Mr. Rymer did not entirely believe what he
said, he secretly hoped that the dean and other people might;
therefore he began to imagine he could possibly cast from HIS family
the present stigma, whether or no it belonged to any other.
No sooner was Henry gone than Mr. Rymer waited on the dean to report
what he had heard; and he frankly attributed his daughter's false
confession to the compulsive methods he had adopted in charging her
with the offence. Upon this statement, Henry's love to her was also
a solution of his seemingly inconsistent conduct on that singular
occasion.
The dean immediately said, "I will put the matter beyond all doubt;
for I will this moment send for the present reputed mother; and if
she acknowledges the child, I will instantly commit her to prison
for the attempt of putting it to death."
The curate applauded the dean's sagacity; a warrant was issued, and
Agnes brought prisoner before the grandfather of her child.
She appeared astonished at the peril in which she found herself.
Confused, also, with a thousand inexpressible sensations which the
dean's presence inspired, she seemed to prevaricate in all she
uttered. Accused of this prevarication, she was still more
disconcerted; said, and unsaid; confessed herself the mother of the
infant, but declared she did not know, then owned she DID know, the
name of the man who had undone her, but would never utter it. At
length she cast herself on her knees before the father of her
betrayer, and supplicated "he would not punish her with severity, as
she most penitently confessed her fault, so far as is related to
herself."
While Mr. and Mrs. Norwynne, just entered on the honeymoon, were
sitting side by side enjoying with peace and with honour conjugal
society, poor Agnes, threatened, reviled, and sinking to the dust,
was hearing from the mouth of William's father the enormity of those
crimes to which his son had been accessory. She saw the mittimus
written that was to convey her into a prison--saw herself delivered
once more into the hands of constables, before her resolution left
her, of concealing the name of William in her story. She now,
overcome with affright, and thinking she should expose him still
more in a public court, if hereafter on her trial she should be
obliged to name him--she now humbly asked the dean to hear a few
words she had to say in private, where she promised she "would speak
nothing but the truth."
This was impossible, he said--"No private confessions before a
magistrate! All must be done openly."
She urged again and again the same request: it was denied more
peremptorily than at first. On which she said--"Then, sir, forgive
me, since you force me to it, if I speak before Mr. Rymer and these
men what I would for ever have kept a secret if I could. One of
your family is my child's father."
"Any of my servants?" cried the dean.
"No"
"My nephew?"
"No; one who is nearer still."
"Come this way," said the dean; "I WILL speak to you in private."
It was not that the dean, as a magistrate, distributed partial
decrees of pretended justice--he was rigidly faithful to his trust:
he would not inflict punishment on the innocent, nor let the guilty
escape; but in all particulars of refined or coarse treatment he
would alleviate or aggravate according to the rank of the offender.
He could not feel that a secret was of equal importance to a poor as
to a rich person; and while Agnes gave no intimation but that her
delicacy rose from fears for herself, she did not so forcibly
impress him with an opinion that it was a case which had weighty
cause for a private conference as when she boldly said, "a part of
HIS family, very near to him, was concerned in her tale."
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