Nature and Art Part 18

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

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 dest.i.tute, 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 rect.i.tude 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 pet.i.tion to him; but, at the idea of a repulse, and of that frowning brow which she knew William _could_ dart on her pet.i.tions, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sociate 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 prost.i.tution 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sion, of distracted riot, shameless effrontery, and wild intoxication, when it _would_ force its way, even through the walls of a brothel.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

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 compa.s.sion, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ill.u.s.tration.

The first great affliction to Henry was his brother's ingrat.i.tude; 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sociate, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sed 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 x.x.xVIII.

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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sed, and many a rough encounter was destined to the lot of the two Henrys before they saw the sh.o.r.es 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 x.x.xIX.