resentment at these vulgar expressions of female spite had hitherto
kept silent:--"Miss Fitzhenry has lost all power of charming the eye
of the libertine, and even the wish;--but she is an object whom the
compassionate and humane cannot behold, or listen to, without the
strongest emotion."
"No, to be sure," replied Mrs. Macfiendy bridling--"the girl had always
a plausible tongue of her own--and as to her beauty, I never thought
that was made for lasting.--What then you have seen her, Mr. Seymour? I
wonder that you could condescend to _look_ at such trash."
"Yes, madam, I have seen, and heard her too;--and if heart-felt misery,
contrition, and true penitence, may hope to win favour in the sight of
God, and expiate past offences, 'a ministering angel might this frail
one be, though we lay howling.'"
"I lie howling, indeed!" screamed out Mrs. Macfiendy: "Speak for
yourself, if you please, Mr. Seymour! for my part, I do not expect,
when I go to another world, to keep such company as Miss Fitzhenry."
"If with the same measure you mete, it should be meted to you again,
madam," replied Mr. Seymour, "I believe there is little chance
in another world that you and Miss Fitzhenry will be visiting
acquaintance." Then, bespeaking the attention of the company, he gave
that account of Agnes, her present situation, and her intentions for the
future, which she gave the governors; and all the company, save the
outrageously virtuous mother and her daughters, heard it with as much
emotion as he felt in relating it.--Exclamations of "Poor unfortunate
girl! what a pity she should have been guilty!--But, fallen as she is,
she is still Agnes Fitzhenry," resounded through the room.
Mrs. Macfiendy could not bear this in silence; but with a cheek pale,
nay livid with malignity, and in a voice sharpened by passion, which at
all times resembled the scream of a pea-hen, she exclaimed, "Well, for
my part, some people may do any thing, yet be praised up to the skies;
other people's daughters would not find such mercy. Before she went off,
it was Miss Fitzhenry this, and Miss Fitzhenry that,--though other
people's children could perhaps do as much, though they were not so fond
of showing what they could do."
"No," cried one of the Miss Macfiendys, "Miss Fitzhenry had courage
enough for any thing."
"True, child," resumed the mother; "and what did it end in? Why, in
becoming a--what I do not choose to name."
"Fie, madam, fie!" cried Mr. Seymour: "Why thus exult over the fallen?"
"Oh! then you do allow her to be fallen?"
"She is fallen indeed, madam," said Mr. Seymour; "but, even in her
proudest hour, Miss Fitzhenry never expressed herself towards her erring
neighbours with unchristian severity;--but set you an example of
forbearance, which you would do well to follow."
"She set _me_ an example!" vociferated Mrs. Macfiendy--"she indeed! a
creature!--I will not stay, nor shall my daughters, to hear such immoral
talk. But 'tis as I said--some people may do any thing--for, wicked as
she is, Miss Fitzhenry is still cried up as something extraordinary, and
is even held up as an example to modest women."
So saying, she arose; but Mr. Seymour rose also, and said, "There is no
necessity for _your_ leaving the company, madam, as I will leave it: for
I am tired of hearing myself so grossly misrepresented. No one abhors
more than I do the crime of Miss Fitzhenry; and no one would more
strongly object, for the sake of other young women, to her being again
received into general company: but, at the same time, I will always be
ready to encourage the penitent by the voice of just praise; and I feel
delight in reflecting that, however the judges of this world may be fond
of condemning her, she will one day appeal from them to a merciful and
long-suffering judge."
Then, bowing respectfully to all but Mrs. Macfiendy, he withdrew, and
gave her an opportunity of remarking that Mr. Seymour was mighty warm in
the creature's defence. She did not know he was so interested about
her; but she always thought him a _gay man_, and she supposed _Miss
Fitzhenry_, as he called her, would be glad to take up with any thing
_now_.
This speech, sorry am I to say, was received with a general and
complaisant smile, though it was reckoned unjust; for there are few who
have virtue and resolution enough to stand forward as champions for an
absent and calumniated individual, if there be any thing ludicrous in
the tale against him;--and the precise, careful, elderly Mr. Seymour,
who was always shrinking from censure like a sensitive plant from the
touch, accused by implication of being the private friend of the
youthful Agnes, excited a degree of merry malice in the company not
unpleasant to their feelings.
But, in spite of the efforts of calumny, the account Mr. Seymour had
given of Agnes and her penitence became town talk; and, as it was
confirmed by the other governors, every one, except the ferociously
chaste, was eager to prevent Agnes from feeling pecuniary distress, by
procuring her employment.
Still she was not supplied with work as fast as she executed it; for,
except during the hours which she was allowed to spend with her father,
she was constantly employed; and she even deprived herself of her
accustomed portion of rest, and was never in bed before one, or after
four.
In proportion as her business and profits increased, were her spirits
elevated; but the more she gained, the more saving she became: she
would scarcely allow herself sufficient food or clothing; and, to the
astonishment of Fanny, the once generous Agnes appeared penurious, and a
lover of money. "What does this change mean, my dear lady?" said Fanny
to her one day.--"I have my reasons for it," replied Agnes coldly; then
changed the subject: and Fanny respected her too much to urge an
explanation.
But Agnes soon after began to wonder at an obvious change in Fanny. At
first, when Agnes returned from visiting her father, Fanny used to
examine her countenance: and she could learn from that, without asking a
single question, whether Fitzhenry seemed to show any new symptoms of
amendment, or whether his insanity still appeared incurable. If the
former, Fanny, tenderly pressing her hand, would say, "Thank God!" and
prepare their dinner or supper with more alacrity than usual: if the
latter, Fanny would say nothing; but endeavour, by bringing little
Edward to her, or by engaging her in conversation, to divert the gloom
which she could not remove: and Agnes, though she took no notice of
these artless proofs of affection, observed and felt them deeply; and as
she drew near the house, she always anticipated them as one of the
comforts of her home.
But, for some days past, Fanny had discontinued this mode of welcome so
grateful to the feelings of Agnes, and seemed wholly absorbed in her
own. She was silent, reserved, and evidently oppressed with some anxiety
which she was studious to conceal. Once or twice, when Agnes came
home rather sooner than usual, she found her in tears; and when she
affectionately asked the reason of them, Fanny pleaded mere lowness of
spirits as the cause.
But the eye of anxious affection is not easily blinded. Agnes was
convinced that Fanny's misery had some more important origin; and,
secretly fearing that it proceeded from her, she was on the watch for
something to confirm her suspicions.
One day, as she passed through the room where Fanny kept her school,
Agnes observed that the number of her scholars was considerably
diminished; and when she asked Fanny where the children whom she missed
were, there was a confusion and hesitation in her manner, while she
made different excuses for their absence, which convinced Agnes that she
concealed from her some unwelcome truth.
A very painful suspicion immediately darted across her mind, the truth
of which was but too soon confirmed. A day or two after, while again
passing through the school-room, she was attracted by the beauty of a
little girl, who was saying her lesson; and, smoothing down her curling
hair, she stooped to kiss her ruddy cheek: but the child, uttering a
loud scream, sprang from her arms, and, sobbing violently, hid her face
on Fanny's lap. Agnes, who was very fond of children, was much hurt by
symptoms of a dislike so violent towards her, and urged the child to
give a reason for such strange conduct: on which the artless girl owned
that her mother had charged her never to touch or go near Miss
Fitzhenry, because she was the most wicked woman that ever breathed.
Agnes heard this new consequence of her guilt with equal surprise
and grief; but, on looking at Fanny, though she saw grief in her
countenance, there was no surprise in it; and she instantly told her she
was convinced that the loss of her scholars was occasioned by her having
allowed her to reside with her. Fanny, bursting into tears, at last
confessed that her suspicions were just; while to the shuddering Agnes
she unfolded a series of persecutions which she had undergone from her
employers, because she had declared her resolution of starving, rather
than drive from her house her friend and benefactress.
Agnes was not long in forming her resolution; and the next morning,
without saying a word to Fanny on the subject, she went out in search
of a lodging for herself and child--as gratitude and justice forbade her
to remain any longer with her persecuted companion.
But after having in vain tried to procure a lodging suitable to the low
state of her finances, or rather to her saving plan, she hired a little
cottage on the heath above the town, adjoining to that where she had
been so hospitably received in the hour of her distress; and having
gladdened the hearts of the friendly cottager and his wife by telling
them that she was coming to be their neighbour, she went to break the
unwelcome tidings to Fanny.
Passionate and vehement indeed was her distress at hearing that her
young lady, as she still persisted to call her, was going to leave her:
but her expostulations and tears were vain; and Agnes, after promising
to see Fanny every day, took possession that very evening of her humble
habitation.
But her intention in removing was frustrated by the honest indignation
and indiscretion of Fanny. She loudly raved against the illiberality
which had robbed her of the society of all that she held dear; and, as
she told every one that Agnes left her by her own choice and not at her
desire, those children who had been taken away because Agnes resided
with her were not sent back to her on her removal. At last the number of
her scholars became so small, that she gave up school-keeping, and
employed herself in shawl-working only; while her leisure time was spent
in visiting Agnes, or in inveighing, to those who would listen to her,
against the cruelty that had driven her young lady from her house.
Fanny used to begin by relating the many obligations which her mother
and she had received from Agnes and her father, and always ended with
saying, "Yet to this woman, who saved me and mine from a workhouse, they
wanted me to refuse a home when she stood in need of one! They need not
have been afraid of her being too happy! Such a mind as hers can never
be happy under the consciousness of having been guilty; and could she
ever forget her crime, one visit to her poor father would make her
remember it again."
Thus did Fanny talk, as I said before, to those who would listen to her;
and there was one auditor who could have listened to her for ever on
this subject, and who thought Fanny looked more lovely while expressing
her affection for her penitent mistress, and pleading her cause with a
cheek flushed with virtuous indignation, and eyes suffused with the
tears of artless sensibility, than when, attended by the then happy
Agnes, she gave her hand in the bloom of youth and beauty to the man of
her heart.
This auditor was a respectable tradesman who lived in Fanny's
neighbourhood, to whom her faithful attachment to Agnes had for some
time endeared her; while Fanny, in return, felt grateful to him for
entering with such warmth into her feelings, and for listening so
patiently to her complaints; and it was not long before he offered her
his hand.
To so advantageous an offer, and to a man so amiable, Fanny could make
no objection; especially as Agnes advised her accepting the proposal.
But Fanny declared to her lover that she would not marry him, unless he
would promise that Agnes and her child should, whenever they chose, have
a home with her. To this condition he consented; telling Fanny he loved
her the better for making it; and Agnes had soon the satisfaction of
witnessing the union of this worthy couple.
But they tried in vain to persuade Agnes to take up her residence with
them. She preferred living by herself. To her, solitude was a luxury;
as, while the little Edward was playing on the heath with the cottager's
children, Agnes delighted to brood in uninterrupted silence over the
soothing hope, the fond idea, that alone stimulated her to exertion, and
procured her tranquillity. All the energies of her mind and body were
directed to one end; and while she kept her eye steadfastly fixed on the
future, the past lost its power to torture, and the present had some
portion of enjoyment.
But were not these soothing reveries sometimes disturbed by the pangs
of ill-requited love? and could she, who had loved so fondly as to
sacrifice to the indulgence of her passion every thing that she held
most dear, rise superior to the power of tender recollection, and at
once tear from her heart the image of her fascinating lover? It would be
unnatural to suppose that Agnes could entirely forget the once honoured
choice of her heart, and the father of her child; or that, although
experience had convinced her of its unworthiness, she did not sometimes
contemplate, with the sick feelings of disappointed tenderness, the idol
which her imagination had decked in graces all its own.
But these remembrances were rare. She oftener beheld him as he appeared
before the tribunal of her reason--a cold, selfish, profligate,
hypocritical deceiver, as the unfeeling destroyer of her hopes and
happiness, and as one who, as she had learned from his own lips, when he
most invited confidence, was the most determined to betray. She saw him
also as a wretch so devoid of the common feelings of nature and
humanity, that, though she left her apartments in London in the dead of
night, and in the depth of a severe winter, an almost helpless child in
her arms, and no visible protector near, he had never made a single
inquiry concerning her fate, or that of his offspring.
At times the sensations of Agnes bordered on phrensy, when in this
heartless, unnatural wretch she beheld the being for whom she had
resigned the matchless comforts of her home, and destroyed the happiness
and reason of her father. At these moments, and these only, she used to
rush wildly forth in search of company, that she might escape from
herself: but more frequently she directed her steps to the abode of the
poor; to those who, in her happier hours, had been supported by her
bounty, and who now were eager to meet her in her walks, to repay her
past benefactions by a "God bless you, lady!" uttered in a tone of
respectful pity.
When her return was first known to the objects of her benevolence, Agnes
soon saw herself surrounded by them; and was, in her humble apparel and
dejected state, followed by them with more blessings and more heart-felt
respect than in the proudest hour of her prosperity.
"Thank God!" ejaculated Agnes, as she turned a glistening eye on her
humble followers, "there are yet those whose eyes mine may meet with
confidence. There are some beings in the world towards whom I have done
my duty." But the next minute she recollected that the guilty flight
which made her violate the duty which she owed her father, at the same
time removed her from the power of fulfilling that which she owed the
indigent; for it is certain that our duties are so closely linked
together, that, as the breaking one pearl from a string of pearls
hazards the loss of all, so the violation of one duty endangers the
safety of every other.
"Alas!" exclaimed Agnes, as this melancholy truth occurred to her, "it
is not for me to exult; for, even in the squalid, meagre countenances of
these kind and grateful beings, I read evidences of my guilt--They
looked up to me for aid, and I deserted them!"
In time, however, these acute feelings wore away; and Agnes, by entering
again on the offices of benevolence and humanity towards the distressed,
lost the consciousness of past neglect in that of present usefulness.
True, she could no longer feed the hungry or clothe the naked, but she
could soften the pangs of sickness by expressing sympathy in its
sufferings. She could make the nauseous medicine more welcome, if not
more salutary, by administering it herself; for, though poor, she was
still superior to the sufferers whom she attended: and it was soothing
to them to see "such a lady" take so much trouble for those so much
beneath her--and she could watch the live-long night by the bed of the
dying, join in the consoling prayer offered by the lips of another, or,
in her own eloquent and impassioned language, speak peace and hope to
the departing soul.
These tender offices, these delicate attentions, so dear to the heart of
every one, but so particularly welcome to the poor from their superiors,
as they are acknowledgements of the relationship between them, and
confessions that they are of the same species as themselves, and heirs
of the same hopes, even those who bestow money with generous profusion
do not often pay. But Agnes was never content to give relief
unaccompanied by attendance: she had reflected deeply on the nature of
the human heart, and knew that a participating smile, a sympathizing
tear, a friendly pressure of the hand, the shifting of an uneasy pillow,
and patient attention to an unconnected tale of twice-told symptoms,
were, in the esteem of the indigent sufferer, of as great a value as
pecuniary assistance.
Agnes, therefore, in her poverty, had the satisfaction of knowing that
she was as consoling to the distressed, if not as useful, as she was in
her prosperity; and, if there could be a moment when she felt the glow
of exultation in her breast, it was when she left the habitation of
indigence or sorrow, followed by the well-earned blessings of its
inhabitants.
Had Agnes been capable of exulting in a consciousness of being revenged,
another source of exultation might have been hers, provided she had
ever deigned to inquire concerning her profligate seducer, whom she
wrongfully accused of having neglected to make inquiries concerning her
and her child. Agnes, two months after her return from London, saw in
the paper an account of Clifford's marriage; and felt some curiosity to
know what had so long retarded an union which, when she left town, was
fixed for the Monday following; and Fanny observed an increased degree
of gloom and abstraction in her appearance all that day. But, dismissing
this feeling from her mind as unworthy of it, from that moment she
resolved, if possible, to recall Clifford to her imagination, as one
who, towards her, had been guilty not of perfidy and deceit only, but of
brutal and unnatural neglect.
In this last accusation, however, as I said before, she was unjust. When
Clifford awoke the next morning after his last interview with Agnes, and
the fumes of the wine he had drunk the night before were entirely
dissipated, he recollected, with great uneasiness, the insulting manner
in which he had justified his intended marriage, and the insight into
the baseness of his character which his unguarded confessions had given
to her penetration.
The idea of having incurred the contempt of Agnes was insupportable.
Yet, when he recollected the cold, calm, and dignified manner in which
she spoke and acted when he bade her adieu, he was convinced that he had
taught her to despise him; and, knowing Agnes, he was also certain that
she must soon cease to love the man whom she had once learned to
despise.
"But I will go to her directly," exclaimed he to himself, ringing his
bell violently; "and I will attribute my infernal folly to drunkenness."
He then ordered his servant to call a coach, finding himself too
languid, from his late intemperance, to walk; and was just going to step
into it when he saw Mrs. Askew pale and trembling, and heard her, in a
faltering voice, demand to see him in private for a few minutes.
I shall not attempt to describe his rage and astonishment when he heard
of the elopement of Agnes. But these feelings were soon followed by
those of terror for her safety and that of his child; and his agitation
for some moments was so great as to deprive him of the power of
considering how he should proceed, in order to hear some tidings of the
fugitives, and endeavour to recall them.
It was evident that Agnes had escaped the night before, because a
servant, sitting up for a gentleman who lodged in the house, was
awakened from sleep by the noise which she made in opening the door;
and, running into the hall, she saw the skirt of Agnes's gown as she
shut it again; and looking to see who was gone out, she saw a lady, who
she was almost certain was Miss Fitzhenry, running down the street with
great speed. But to put its being Agnes beyond all doubt, she ran up to
her room, and, finding the door open, went in, and could see neither her
nor her child.
To this narration Clifford listened with some calmness; but when Mrs.
Askew told him that Agnes had taken none of her clothes with her, he
fell into an agony amounting to phrensy, and exclaiming, "Then it must
be so--she has destroyed both herself and the child!" his senses
failed him, and he dropped down insensible on the sofa. This horrible
probability had occurred to Mrs. Askew; and she had sent servants
different ways all night, in order to find her if she were still in
existence, that she might spare Clifford, if possible, the pain of
conceiving a suspicion like her own.
Clifford was not so fortunate as to remain long in a state of
unconsciousness, but soon recovered to a sense of misery and unavailing
remorse. At length he recollected that a coach set off that very night
for her native place, from the White-horse Cellar, and that it was
possible that she might have obtained a lodging the night before, where
she meant to stay till the coach was ready to set off the following
evening. He immediately went to Piccadilly, to see whether places for a
lady and child had been taken,--but no such passengers were on the list.
He then inquired whether a lady and child had gone from that inn the
night before in the coach that went within a few miles of the town
of ----. But, as Agnes had reached the inn just as the coach was setting
off, no one belonging to it, but the coachman, knew that she was a
passenger.
"Well, I flatter myself," said Clifford to Mrs. Askew, endeavouring to
smile, "that she will make her appearance here at night, if she do not
come to-day; and I will not stir from this spot till the coach set off,
and will even go in it some way, to see whether it do not stop to take
her up on the road."
This resolution he punctually put in practice. All day Clifford was
stationed at a window opposite to the inn, or in the book-keeper's
office; but night came, the coach was ready to set off, and still no
Agnes appeared. However, Clifford, having secured a place, got in with
the other passengers, and went six miles or more before he gave up the
hope of hearing the coachman ordered to stop, in the soft voice of
Agnes.
At last, all expectation failed him; and, complaining of a violent
headache, he desired to be set down, sprang out of the carriage, and
relieved the other passengers from a very restless and disagreeable
companion: and Clifford, in a violent attack of fever, was wandering on
the road to London, in hopes of meeting Agnes, at the very time when his
victim was on the road to her native place, in company with her unhappy
father.