Nature and Art Part 14

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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d, 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 pet.i.tion 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 x.x.x.

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 m.u.f.fled, 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 acc.u.mulation 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 pa.s.sion 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 compa.s.sion, 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 inc.u.mbrance 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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."