Books: Nature and Art
M >>
Mrs Inchbald >> Nature and Art
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11
All the care of Agnes to please, her fear of offending, her toilsome
days, her patience, her submission, could not prevail on her she
served to retain her one hour after, by chance, she had heard "that
she was the mother of a child; that she wished it should be kept a
secret; and that she stole out now and then to visit him."
Agnes, with swimming eyes and an almost breaking heart, left a
place--where to have lived one hour would have plunged any fine lady
in the deepest grief.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Agnes was driven from service to service--her deficiency in the
knowledge of a mere drudge, or her lost character, pursued her
wherever she went--at length, becoming wholly destitute, she gladly
accepted a place where the latter misfortune was not of the least
impediment.
In one of these habitations, where continual misery is dressed in
continual smiles; where extreme of poverty is concealed by extreme
of finery; where wine dispenses mirth only by dispensing
forgetfulness; and where female beauty is so cheap, so complying,
that, while it inveigles, it disgusts the man of pleasure: in one
of those houses, to attend upon its wretched inhabitants, Agnes was
hired. Her feelings of rectitude submitted to those of hunger; her
principles of virtue (which the loss of virtue had not destroyed)
received a shock when she engaged to be the abettor of vice, from
which her delicacy, morality, and religion shrunk; but persons of
honour and of reputation would not employ her: was she then to
perish? That, perhaps, was easy to resolve; but she had a child to
leave behind! a child, from whom to part for a day was a torment.
Yet, before she submitted to a situation which filled her mind with
a kind of loathing horror, often she paced up and down the street in
which William lived, looked wistfully at his house, and sometimes,
lost to all her finer feelings of independent pride, thought of
sending a short petition to him; but, at the idea of a repulse, and
of that frowning brow which she knew William COULD dart on her
petitions, she preferred death, or the most degrading life, to the
trial.
It was long since that misfortune and dishonour had made her callous
to the good or ill opinion of all the world, except HIS; and the
fear of drawing upon her his increased contempt was still, at the
crisis of applying, so powerful, that she found she dared not hazard
a reproof from him even in the person of his father, whose rigour
she had already more than once experienced, in the frequent harsh
messages conveyed to her with the poor stipend for her boy.
Awed by the rigid and pious character of the new bishop, the growing
reputation, and rising honours of his son, she mistook the
appearance of moral excellence for moral excellence itself, and felt
her own unworthiness even to become the supplicant of those great
men.
Day after day she watched those parts of the town through which
William's chariot was accustomed to drive; but to see the CARRIAGE
was all to which she aspired; a feeling, not to be described, forced
her to cast her eyes upon the earth as it drew near to her; and when
it had passed, she beat her breast, and wept that she had not seen
HIM.
Impressed with the superiority of others, and her own abject and
disgustful state, she cried, "Let me herd with those who won't
despise me; let me only see faces whereon I can look without
confusion and terror; let me associate with wretches like myself,
rather than force my shame before those who are so good they can but
scorn and hate me."
With a mind thus languishing for sympathy in disgrace, she entered a
servant in the house just now described. There disregarding the
fatal proverb against "EVIL COMMUNICATIONS," she had not the
firmness to be an exception to the general rule. That pliant
disposition, which had yielded to the licentious love of William,
stooped to still baser prostitution in company still more depraved.
At first she shuddered at those practices she saw, at those
conversations she heard, and blest herself that poverty, not
inclination, had caused her to be a witness of such profligacy, and
had condemned her in this vile abode to be a servant, rather than in
the lower rank of mistress. Use softened those horrors every day;
at length self-defence, the fear of ridicule, and the hope of
favour, induced her to adopt that very conduct from which her heart
revolted.
In her sorrowful countenance and fading charms there yet remained
attraction for many visitors; and she now submitted to the mercenary
profanations of love, more odious, as her mind had been subdued by
its most captivating, most endearing joys.
While incessant regret whispered to her "that she ought to have
endured every calamity rather than this," she thus questioned her
nice sense of wrong, "Why, why respect myself, since no other
respects me? Why set a value on my own feelings when no one else
does?"
Degraded in her own judgment, she doubted her own understanding when
it sometimes told her she had deserved better treatment; for she
felt herself a fool in comparison with her learned seducer and the
rest who despised her. "And why," she continued, "should I
ungratefully persist to contemn women who alone are so kind as to
accept me for a companion? Why refuse conformity to their customs,
since none of my sex besides will admit me to their society a
partaker of virtuous habits?"
In speculation these arguments appeared reasonable, and she pursued
their dictates; but in the practice of the life in which she plunged
she proved the fallacy of the system, and at times tore her hair
with frantic sorrow, that she had not continued in the mid-way of
guilt, and so preserved some portion of self-approbation, to
recompense her in a small degree, for the total loss of the esteem
of all the reputable world.
But she had gone too far to recede. Could she now have recalled her
innocence, even that remnant she brought with her to London,
experience would have taught her to have given up her child, lived
apart from him, and once more with the brute creation, rather than
to have mingled with her present society. Now, alas! the time for
flying was past; all prudent choice was over, even all reflection
was gone for ever, or only admitted on compulsion, when it
imperiously forced its way amidst the scenes of tumultuous mirth or
licentious passion, of distracted riot, shameless effrontery, and
wild intoxication, when it WOULD force its way, even through the
walls of a brothel.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Is there a reader so little experienced in the human heart, so
forgetful of his own, as not to feel the possibility of the
following fact?
A series of uncommon calamities had been for many years the lot of
the elder Henry; a succession of prosperous events had fallen to the
share of his brother William. The one was the envy, while the other
had the compassion, of all who thought about them. For the last
twenty years, William had lived in affluence, bordering upon
splendour, his friends, his fame, his fortune, daily increasing,
while Henry throughout that very period had, by degrees, lost all he
loved on earth, and was now existing apart from civilised society;
and yet, during those twenty years, where William knew one happy
moment, Henry tasted hundreds.
That the state of the mind, and not outward circumstances, is the
nice point on which happiness depends is but a trite remark; but
that intellectual power should have the force to render a man
discontented in extraordinary prosperity, such as that of the
present bishop, or contented in his brother's extreme of adversity,
requires illustration.
The first great affliction to Henry was his brother's ingratitude;
but reasoning on the frailty of man's nature, and the force of man's
temptations, he found excuses for William, which made him support
the treatment he had received with more tranquillity than William's
proud mind supported his brother's marriage.
Henry's indulgent disposition made him less angry with William than
William was with him.
The next affliction Henry suffered was the loss of his beloved wife.
That was a grief which time and change of objects gradually
alleviated; while William's wife was to him a permanent grief, her
puerile mind, her talking vanity, her affected virtues, soured his
domestic comfort, and, in time, he had suffered more painful moments
from her society than his brother had experienced, even from the
death of her he loved.
In their children, indeed, William was the happier; his son was a
pride and pleasure to him, while Henry never thought upon HIS
without lamenting his loss with bitterest anguish. But if the elder
brother had in one instance the advantage, still Henry had a
resource to overbalance this article. Henry, as he lay imprisoned
in his dungeon, and when, his punishment being remitted, he was
again allowed to wander, and seek his subsistence where he would, in
all his tedious walks and solitary resting-places, during all his
lonely days and mournful nights, had THIS RESOURCE to console him -
"I never did an injury to any one; never was harsh, severe, unkind,
deceitful. I did not merely confine myself to do my neighbour no
harm; I strove to do him service."
This was the resource that cheered his sinking heart amidst gloomy
deserts and a barbarous people, lulled him to peaceful slumber in
the hut of a savage hunter, and in the hearing of the lion's roar,
at times impressed him with a sense of happiness, and made him
contemplate with a longing hope the retribution of a future world.
The bishop, with all his comforts, had no comfort like this; he had
HIS solitary reflections too, but they were of a tendency the
reverse of these. "I used my brother ill," was a secret thought of
most powerful influence. It kept him waking upon his safe and
commodious bed; was sure to recur with every misfortune by which he
was threatened to make his fears still stronger, and came with
invidious stabs, upon every successful event, to take from him a
part of his joy. In a word, it was CONSCIENCE which made Henry's
years pass happier than William's.
But though, comparatively with his brother, William was the less
happy man, yet his self-reproach was not of such magnitude, for an
offence of that atrocious nature as to banish from his breast a
certain degree of happiness, a sensibility to the smiles of fortune;
nor was Henry's self-acquittal of such exquisite kind as to chase
away the feeling of his desolate condition.
As he fished or hunted for his daily dinner, many a time in full
view of his prey, a sudden burst of sorrow at his fate, a sudden
longing for some dear associate, for some friend to share his
thoughts, for some kind shoulder on which to lean his head, for some
companion to partake of his repast, would make him instantaneously
desist from his pursuit, cast him on the ground in a fit of anguish,
till a shower of tears and his CONSCIENCE came to his relief.
It was, after an exile of more than twenty-three years, when, on one
sultry morning, after pleasant dreams during the night, Henry had
waked with more than usual perception of his misery, that, sitting
upon the beach, his wishes and his looks all bent on the sea towards
his native land, he thought he saw a sail swelling before an
unexpected breeze.
"Sure I am dreaming still!" he cried. "This is the very vessel I
last night saw in my sleep! Oh! what cruel mockery that my eyes
should so deceive me!"
Yet, though he doubted, he leaped upon his feet in transport, held
up his hands, stretched at their length, in a kind of ecstatic joy,
and, as the glorious sight approached, was near rushing into the sea
to hail and meet it.
For awhile hope and fear kept him in a state bordering on
distraction.
Now he saw the ship making for the shore, and tears flowed for the
grateful prospect. Now it made for another point, and he vented
shrieks and groans from the disappointment.
It was at those moments, while hope and fear thus possessed him,
that the horrors of his abode appeared more than ever frightful.
Inevitable afflictions must be borne; but that calamity which admits
the expectation of relief, and then denies it, is insupportable.
After a few minutes passed in dreadful uncertainty, which enhanced
the wished-for happiness, the ship evidently drew near the land; a
boat was launched from her, and while Henry, now upon his knees,
wept and prayed fervently for the event, a youth sprang from the
barge on the strand, rushed towards him, and falling on his neck,
then at his feet, exclaimed, "My father! oh, my father!"
William! dean! bishop! what are your honours, what your riches, what
all your possessions, compared to the happiness, the transport
bestowed by this one sentence, on your poor brother Henry?
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The crosses at land, and the perilous events at sea, had made it now
two years since young Henry first took the vow of a man no longer
dependent on the will of another, to seek his father. His fatigues,
his dangers, were well recompensed. Instead of weeping over a
silent grave, he had the inexpressible joy to receive a parent's
blessing for his labours. Yet, the elder Henry, though living, was
so changed in person, that his son would scarcely have known him in
any other than the favourite spot, which the younger (keeping in
memory every incident of his former life) knew his father had always
chosen for his morning contemplations; and where, previously to his
coming to England, he had many a time kept him company. It was to
that particular corner of the island that the captain of the ship
had generously ordered they should steer, out of the general route,
to gratify the filial tenderness he expressed. But scarcely had the
interview between the father and the son taken place, than a band of
natives, whom the appearance of the vessel had called from the woods
and hills, came to attack the invaders. The elder Henry had no
friend with whom he wished to shake hands at his departure; the old
negro servant who had assisted in young Henry's escape was dead; and
he experienced the excessive joy of bidding adieu to the place,
without one regret for all he left behind.
On the night of that day, whose morning had been marked by peculiar
sadness at the louring prospect of many exiled years to come, he
slept on board an English vessel, with Englishmen his companions,
and his son, his beloved son--who was still more dear to him for
that mind which had planned and executed his rescue--this son, his
attentive servant, and most affectionate friend.
Though many a year passed, and many a rough encounter was destined
to the lot of the two Henrys before they saw the shores of Europe,
yet to them, to live or to die together was happiness enough: even
young Henry for a time asked for no greater blessing--but, the first
glow of filial ardour over, he called to mind, "Rebecca lived in
England;" and every exertion which love, founded on the highest
reverence and esteem, could dictate, he employed to expedite a
voyage, the end of which would be crowned by the sight of her.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
The contrast of the state of happiness between the two brothers was
nearly resembled by that of the two cousins--the riches of young
William did not render him happy, nor did the poverty of young Henry
doom him to misery. His affectionate heart, as he had described in
his letter to Rebecca, loved PERSONS rather than THINGS; and he
would not have exchanged the society of his father, nor the prospect
of her hand and heart, for all the wealth and splendour of which his
cousin William was the master.
He was right. Young William, though he viewed with contempt Henry's
inferior state, was far less happy than he. His marriage had been
the very counterpart of his father's; and having no child to create
affection to his home, his study was the only relief from that
domestic incumbrance called his wife; and though, by unremitting
application there (joined to the influence of the potent relations
of the woman he hated), he at length arrived at the summit of his
ambitious desires, still they poorly repaid him for the sacrifice he
had made in early life of every tender disposition.
Striding through a list of rapid advancements in the profession of
the law, at the age of thirty-eight he found himself raised to a
preferment such as rarely falls to the share of a man of his short
experience--he found himself invested with a judge's robe; and,
gratified by the exalted office, curbed more than ever that aversion
which her want of charms or sympathy had produced against the
partner of his honours.
While William had thus been daily rising in fortune's favour, poor
Agnes had been daily sinking deeper and deeper under fortune's
frowns: till at last she became a midnight wanderer through the
streets of London, soliciting, or rudely demanding, money of the
passing stranger. Sometimes, hunted by the watch, she affrighted
fled from street to street, from portico to portico; and once,
unknowing in her fear which way she hurried, she found her trembling
knees had sunk, and her wearied head was reclined against the
stately pillars that guarded William's door.
At the sudden recollection where she was, a swell of passion,
composed of horror, of anger, of despair, and love, gave reanimated
strength to her failing limbs; and, regardless of her pursuer's
steps, she ran to the centre of the street, and, looking up to the
windows of the mansion, cried, "Ah! there he sleeps in quiet, in
peace, in ease--he does not even dream of me--he does not care how
the cold pierces, or how the people persecute me! He does not thank
me for all the lavish love I have borne him and his child! His
heart is so hard, he does not even recollect that it was he who
brought me to ruin."
Had these miseries, common to the unhappy prostitute, been alone the
punishment of Agnes--had her crimes and sufferings ended in distress
like this, her story had not perhaps been selected for a public
recital; for it had been no other than the customary history of
thousands of her sex. But Agnes had a destiny yet more fatal.
Unhappily, she was endowed with a mind so sensibly alive to every
joy, and every sorrow, to every mark of kindness, every token of
severity, so liable to excess in passion, that, once perverted,
there was no degree of error from which it would revolt.
Taught by the conversation of the dissolute poor, with whom she now
associated, or by her own observation on the worldly reward of
elevated villainy, she began to suspect "that dishonesty was only
held a sin to secure the property of the rich; and that, to take
from those who did not want, by the art of stealing, was less guilt,
than to take from those who did want, by the power of the law."
By false yet seducing opinions such as these, her reason estranged
from every moral and religious tie, her necessities urgent, she
reluctantly accepted the proposal to mix with a band of practised
sharpers and robbers, and became an accomplice in negotiating bills
forged on a country banker.
But though ingenious in arguments to excuse the deed before its
commission, in the act she had ever the dread of some
incontrovertible statement on the other side of the question.
Intimidated by this apprehension, she was the veriest bungler in her
vile profession--and on the alarm of being detected, while every one
of her confederates escaped and absconded, she alone was seized--was
arrested for issuing notes they had fabricated, and committed to the
provincial jail, about fifty miles from London, where the crime had
been perpetrated, to take her trial for--life or death.
CHAPTER XL.
The day at length is come on which Agnes shall have a sight of her
beloved William! She who has watched for hours near his door, to
procure a glimpse of him going out, or returning home; who has
walked miles to see his chariot pass: she now will behold him, and
he will see her by command of the laws of their country. Those
laws, which will deal with rigour towards her, are in this one
instance still indulgent.
The time of the assizes, at the county town in which she is
imprisoned, is arrived--the prisoners are demanded at the shire-
hall--the jail doors are opened--they go in sad procession--the
trumpet sounds--it speaks the arrival of the judge--and that judge
is William!
The day previous to her trial, Agnes had read, in the printed
calendar of the prisoners, his name as the learned justice before
whom she was to appear. For a moment she forgot her perilous state
in the excess of joy which the still unconquerable love she bore to
him permitted her to taste even on the brink of the grave! After-
reflection made her check those worldly transports, as unfit for the
present solemn occasion. But alas! to her, earth and William were
so closely united that, till she forsook the one, she could never
cease to think, without the contending passions of hope, of fear, of
joy, of love, of shame, and of despair, on the other.
Now fear took place of her first immoderate joy--she feared that,
although much changed in person since he had seen her, and her real
name now added to many an ALIAS--yet she feared that same well-known
glance of the eye, turn of the action, or accent of speech, might
recall her to his remembrance; and at that idea shame overcame all
her other sensations--for still she retained pride, in respect to
HIS opinion, to wish him not to know Agnes was that wretch she felt
she was! Once a ray of hope beamed on her, "that if he knew her, he
recognised her, he might possibly befriend her cause;" and life
bestowed through William's friendship seemed a precious object! But
again, that rigorous honour she had often heard him boast, that
firmness to his word, of which she had fatal experience, taught her
to know, he would not for any unproper compassion, any unmanly
weakness, forfeit his oath of impartial justice.
In meditations such as these she passed the sleepless night. When,
in the morning, she was brought to the bar, and her guilty hand held
up before the righteous judgment seat of William--imagination could
not form two figures, or two situations more incompatible with the
existence of former familiarity, than the judge and the culprit--and
yet, these very persons had passed together the most blissful
moments that either ever tasted! Those hours of tender dalliance
were now present to HER mind. HIS thoughts were more nobly employed
in his high office; nor could the haggard face, hollow eye,
desponding countenance, and meagre person of the poor prisoner, once
call to his memory, though her name was uttered among a list of
others which she had assumed, his former youthful, lovely Agnes!
She heard herself arraigned with trembling limbs and downcast looks;
and many witnesses had appeared against her before she ventured to
lift her eyes up to her awful judge. She then gave one fearful
glance, and discovered William, unpitying but beloved William, in
every feature! It was a face she had been used to look on with
delight, and a kind of absent smile of gladness now beamed on her
poor wan visage.
When every witness on the part of the prosecutor had been examined,
the judge addressed himself to her--"What defence have you to make?"
It was William spoke to Agnes! The sound was sweet; the voice was
mild, was soft, compassionate, encouraging! It almost charmed her
to a love of life!--not such a voice as when William last addressed
her; when he left her undone and pregnant, vowing never to see or
speak to her more.
She could have hung upon the present words for ever! She did not
call to mind that this gentleness was the effect of practice, the
art of his occupation: which, at times, is but a copy, by the
unfeeling, from his benevolent brethren of the bench. In the
present judge, tenderness was not designed for the consolation of
the culprit, but for the approbation of the auditors.
There were no spectators, Agnes, by your side when last he parted
from you: if there had, the awful William had been awed to marks of
pity.
Stunned with the enchantment of that well-known tongue directed to
her, she stood like one just petrified--all vital power seemed
suspended.
Again he put the question, and with these additional sentences,
tenderly and emphatically delivered--"Recollect yourself. Have you
no witnesses? No proof in your behalf?"
A dead silence followed these questions.
He then mildly, but forcibly, added--"What have you to say?"
Here a flood of tears burst from her eyes, which she fixed earnestly
upon him, as if pleading for mercy, while she faintly articulated,
"Nothing, my lord."
After a short pause, he asked her, in the same forcible but
benevolent tone -
"Have you no one to speak to your character?" The prisoner answered
-
A second gush of tears followed this reply, for she called to mind
by WHOM her character had first been blasted.
He summed up the evidence; and every time he was compelled to press
hard upon the proofs against her she shrunk, and seemed to stagger
with the deadly blow; writhed under the weight of HIS minute
justice, more than from the prospect of a shameful death.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 | 9 |
10 |
11