Nature and Art Part 17

If I find he has n.o.body, or does not love those he has, even in the midst of all his profusion of finery and grandeur, I p.r.o.nounce him a being in deep adversity. In loving you, I am happier than my cousin William; even though I am obliged to leave you for a time.

"Do not be afraid you should grow old before I return; age can never alter you in my regard. It is your gentle nature, your unaffected manners, your easy cheerfulness, your clear understanding, the sincerity of all your words and actions which have gained my heart; and while you preserve charms like these, you will be dearer to me with white hairs and a wrinkled face than any of your s.e.x, who, not possessing all these qualities, possess the form and features of perfect beauty.

"You will esteem me, too, I trust, though I should return on crutches with my poor father, whom I may be obliged to maintain by daily labour.

"I shall employ all my time, during my absence, in the study of some art which may enable me to support you both, provided Heaven will bestow two such blessings on me. In the cheering thought that it will be so, and in that only, I have the courage, my dear, dear Rebecca, to say to you

"Farewell! H. NORWYNNE."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

Before Henry could receive a reply to his letter, the fleet in which he sailed put to sea.

By his absence, not only Rebecca was deprived of the friend she loved, but poor Agnes lost a kind and compa.s.sionate adviser. The loss of her parents, too, she had to mourn; for they both sickened, and both died, in a short time after; and now wholly friendless in her little exile, where she could only hope for toleration, not being known, she was contending with suspicion, rebuffs, disappointments, and various other ills, which might have made the most rigorous of her Anfield persecutors feel compa.s.sion for her, could they have witnessed the throbs of her heart, and all the deep wounds there imprinted.

Still, there are few persons whom Providence afflicts beyond the limits of _all_ consolation; few cast so low as not to feel pride on _certain_ occasions; and Agnes felt a comfort and a dignity in the thought, that she had both a mind and a body capable of sustaining every hardship, which her destiny might inflict, rather than submit to the disgrace of soliciting William's charity a second time.

This determination was put to a variety of trials. In vain she offered herself to the strangers of the village in which she was accidentally cast as a servant; her child, her dejected looks, her broken sentences, a wildness in her eye, a kind of bold despair which at times overspread her features, her imperfect story who and what she was, prejudiced all those to whom she applied; and, after thus travelling to several small towns and hamlets, the only employer she could obtain was a farmer; and the only employment to tend and feed his cattle while his men were in the harvest, tilling the ground, or at some other labour which required at the time peculiar expedition.

Though Agnes was born of peasants, yet, having been the only child of industrious parents, she had been nursed with a tenderness and delicacy ill suited to her present occupation; but she endured it with patience; and the most laborious part would have seemed light could she have dismissed the reflection--what it was that had reduced her to such a state.

Soon her tender hands became hard and rough, her fair skin burnt and yellow; so that when, on a Sunday, she has looked in the gla.s.s, she has started back as if it were some other face she saw instead of her own.

But this loss of beauty gave her no regret--while William did not see her, it was indifferent to her, whether she were beautiful or hideous. On the features of her child only, she now looked with joy; there, she fancied she saw William at every glance, and, in the fond imagination, felt at times every happiness short of seeing him.

By herding with the brute creation, she and her child were allowed to live together; and this was a state she preferred to the society of human creatures, who would have separated her from what she loved so tenderly.

Anxious to retain a service in which she possessed such a blessing, care and attention to her humble office caused her master to prolong her stay through all the winter; then, during the spring, she tended his yeaning sheep; in the summer, watched them as they grazed; and thus season after season pa.s.sed, till her young son could afford her a.s.sistance in her daily work.

He now could charm her with his conversation as well as with his looks: a thousand times in the transports of parental love she has pressed him to her bosom, and thought, with an agony of horror, upon her criminal, her mad intent to destroy what was now so dear, so necessary to her existence.

Still the boy grew up more and more like his father. In one resemblance alone he failed; he loved Agnes with an affection totally distinct from the pitiful and childish gratification of his own self-love; he never would quit her side for all the tempting offers of toys or money; never would eat of rarities given to him till Agnes took a part; never crossed her will, however contradictory to his own; never saw her smile that he did not laugh; nor did she ever weep, but he wept too.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

From the mean subject of oxen, sheep, and peasants, we return to personages; i.e., persons of rank and fortune. The bishop, who was introduced in the foregoing pages, but who has occupied a very small s.p.a.ce there, is now mentioned again, merely that the reader may know he is at present in the same state as his writings--dying; and that his friend, the dean, is talked of as the most likely successor to his dignified office.

The dean, most a.s.suredly, had a strong friendship for the bishop, and now, most a.s.suredly, wished him to recover; and yet, when he reflected on the success of his pamphlet a few years past, and of many which he had written since on the very same subject, he could not but think "that he had more righteous pretensions to fill the vacant seat of his much beloved and reverend friend (should fate ordain it to be vacated) than any other man;" and he knew that it would not take one moment from that friend's remaining life, should he exert himself, with all due management, to obtain the elevated station when be should he no more.

In presupposing the death of a friend, the dean, like many other virtuous men, "always supposed him going to a better place." With perfect resignation, therefore, he waited whatever change might happen to the bishop, ready to receive him with open arms if he recovered, or equally ready, in case of his dissolution, to receive his dignities.

Lady Clementina displayed her sensibility and feeling for the sick prelate by the extravagance of hysteric fits; except at those times when she talked seriously with her husband upon the injustice which she thought would be done to him, and to his many pamphlets and sermons, if he did not immediately rise to episcopal honour.

"Surely, dean," said she, "should you be disappointed upon this occasion, you will write no more books for the good of your country?"

"Yes, I will," he replied; "but the next book I write for the good of my country shall be very different, nay the very reverse of those I have already written."

"How, dean! would you show yourself changed?"

"No, but I will show that my country is changed."

"What! since you produced your last work; only six weeks ago!"

"Great changes may occur in six days," replied the dean, with a threatening accent; "and if I find things _have_ taken a new and improper turn, I will be the first to expose it."

"But before you act in this manner, my dear, surely you will wait--"

"I will wait until the see is disposed of to another," said he.

He did wait: the bishop died. The dean was promoted to the see of ---, and wrote a folio on the prosperity of our happy country.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

While the bishop and his son were sailing before prosperous gales on the ocean of life, young Henry was contending with adverse winds, and many other perils, on the watery ocean; yet still, his distresses and dangers were less than those which Agnes had to encounter upon land. The sea threatens an untimely death; the sh.o.r.e menaces calamities from which death is a refuge.

The affections she had already experienced could just admit of aggravation: the addition occurred.

Had the good farmer, who made her the companion of his flocks and herds, lived till now, till now she might have been secure from the annoyance of human kind; but, thrown once more upon society, she was unfit to sustain the conflict of decorum against depravity. Her master, her patron, her preserver, was dead; and hardly as she had earned the pittance she received from him, she found that it surpa.s.sed her power to obtain the like again. Her doubtful character, her capacious mind, her unmethodical manners, were still badly suited to the nice precision of a country housewife; and as the prudent mistress of a family sneered at her pretensions, she, in her turn, scorned the narrow-minded mistress of a family.

In her inquiries how to gain her bread free from the cutting reproaches of discretion, she was informed "that London was the only private corner, where guilt could be secreted undisturbed; and the only public place where, in open day, it might triumphantly stalk, attended by a chain of audacious admirers."

There was a charm to the ear of Agnes in the name of London, which thrilled through her soul. William lived in London; and she thought that, while she retired to some dark cellar with her offences, he probably would ride in state with his, and she at humble distance might sometimes catch a glance at him.

As difficult as to eradicate insanity from a mind once possessed, so difficult it is to erase from the lover's breast the deep impression of a _real_ affection. Coercion may prevail for a short interval, still love will rage again. Not all the ignominy which Agnes experienced in the place where she now was without a home--not the hunger which she at times suffered, and even at times saw her child endure--not every inducement for going to London, or motive for quitting her present desolate station, had the weight to affect her choice so much as--in London, she should live nearer William; in the present spot she could never hope to see him again, but there she might chance to pa.s.s him in the streets; she might pa.s.s his house every day un.o.bserved--might inquire about him of his inferior neighbours, who would be unsuspicious of the cause of her curiosity. For these gratifications, she should imbibe new fort.i.tude; for these she could bear all hardships which London threatened; and for these, she at length undertook a three weeks' journey to that perilous town on foot, cheering, as she walked along, her innocent and wearied companion.

William--in your luxurious dwelling, possessed of coffers filled with gold, relations, friends, clients, joyful around you, delicious viands and rich wines upon your sumptuous board, voluptuousness displayed in every apartment of your habitation--contemplate, for a moment, Agnes, your first love, with her son, your first and only child, walking through frost and snow to London, with a foreboding fear on the mother that, when arrived, they both may perish for the want of a friend.

But no sooner did Agnes find herself within the smoke of the metropolis than the old charm was renewed; and scarcely had she refreshed her child at the poor inn at which she stopped than she inquired how far it was to that part of the town where William, she knew, resided?

She received for answer, "about two miles."

Upon this information, she thought that she would keep in reserve, till some new sorrow befell her, the consolation of pa.s.sing his door (perchance of seeing him) which must ever be an alleviation of her grief.

It was not long before she had occasion for more substantial comfort. She soon found she was not likely to obtain a service here, more than in the country. Some objected that she could not make caps and gowns; some that she could not preserve and pickle; some, that she was too young; some, that she was too pretty; and all declined accepting her, till at last a citizen's wife, on condition of her receiving but half the wages usually given, took her as a servant of all work.

In romances, and in some plays, there are scenes of dark and unwholesome mines, wherein the labourer works, during the brightest day, by the aid of artificial light. There are in London kitchens equally dismal though not quite so much exposed to damp and noxious vapours. In one of these, underground, hidden from the cheerful light of the sun, poor Agnes was doomed to toil from morning till night, subjected to the command of a dissatisfied mistress; who, not estimating as she ought the misery incurred by serving her, constantly threatened her servants "with a dismission;" at which the unthinking wretches would tremble merely from the sound of the words; for to have reflected--to have considered what their purport was--"to be released from a dungeon, relieved from continual upbraidings, and vile drudgery," must have been a subject of rejoicing; and yet, because these good tidings were delivered as a menace, custom had made the hearer fearful of the consequence. So, death being described to children as a disaster, even poverty and shame will start from it with affright; whereas, had it been pictured with its benign aspect, it would have been feared but by few, and many, many would welcome it with gladness.

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.