The dean's family passed this first summer at the new-purchased estate so
pleasantly, that they left it with regret when winter called them to
their house in town.
But if some felt concern in quitting the village of Anfield, others who
were left behind felt the deepest anguish. Those were not the poor--for
rigid attention to the religion and morals of people in poverty, and
total neglect of their bodily wants, was the dean's practice. He forced
them to attend church every Sabbath; but whether they had a dinner on
their return was too gross and temporal an inquiry for his spiritual
fervour. Good of the soul was all he aimed at; and this pious
undertaking, besides his diligence as a pastor, required all his exertion
as a magistrate--for to be very poor and very honest, very oppressed yet
very thankful, is a degree of sainted excellence not often to be
attained, without the aid of zealous men to frighten into virtue.
Those, then, who alone felt sorrow at the dean's departure were two young
women, whose parents, exempt from indigence, preserved them from
suffering under his unpitying piety, but whose discretion had not
protected them from the bewitching smiles of his nephew, and the seducing
wiles of his son.
The first morning that Rebecca rose and knew Henry was gone till the
following summer, she wished she could have laid down again and slept
away the whole long interval. Her sisters' peevishness, her father's
austerity, she foresaw, would be insupportable now that she had
experienced Henry's kindness, and he was no longer near to fortify her
patience. She sighed--she wept--she was unhappy.
But if Rebecca awoke with a dejected mind and an aching heart, what were
the sorrows of Agnes? The only child of doating parents, she never had
been taught the necessity of resignation--untutored, unread, unused to
reflect, but knowing how to feel; what were her sufferings when, on
waking, she called to mind that "William was gone," and with him gone all
that excess of happiness which his presence had bestowed, and for which
she had exchanged her future tranquillity?
Loss of tranquillity even Rebecca had to bemoan: Agnes had still more--the
loss of innocence!
Hal William remained in the village, shame, even conscience, perhaps,
might have been silenced; but, separated from her betrayer, parted from
the joys of guilt, and left only to its sorrows, every sting which quick
sensibility could sharpen, to torture her, was transfixed in her heart.
First came the recollection of a cold farewell from the man whose love
she had hoped her yielding passion had for ever won; next, flashed on her
thoughts her violated person; next, the crime incurred; then her cruelty
to her parents; and, last of all, the horrors of detection.
She knew that as yet, by wariness, care, and contrivance, her meetings
with William had been unsuspected; but, in this agony of mind, her fears
fore-boded an informer who would defy all caution; who would stigmatise
her with a name--dear and desired by every virtuous female--abhorrent to
the blushing harlot--the name of mother.
That Agnes, thus impressed, could rise from her bed, meet her parents and
her neighbours with her usual smile of vivacity, and voice of mirth, was
impossible: to leave her bed at all, to creep downstairs, and reply in a
faint, broken voice to questions asked, were, in her state of mind,
mighty efforts; and they were all to which her struggles could attain for
many weeks.
William had promised to write to her while he was away: he kept his word;
but not till the end of two months did she receive a letter. Fear for
his health, apprehension of his death during this cruel interim, caused
an agony of suspense, which, by representing him to her distracted fancy
in a state of suffering, made him, if possible, still dearer to her. In
the excruciating anguish of uncertainty, she walked with trembling steps
through all weathers (when she could steal half a day while her parents
were employed in labour abroad) to the post town, at six miles' distance,
to inquire for his long-expected, long-wished-for letter.
When at last it was given to her, that moment of consolation seemed to
repay her for the whole time of agonising terror she had endured. "He is
alive!" she said, "and I have suffered nothing."
She hastily put this token of his health and his remembrance of her into
her bosom, rich as an empress with a new-acquired dominion. The way from
home, which she had trod with heavy pace, in the fear of renewed
disappointment, she skimmed along on her return swift as a doe: the cold
did not pierce, neither did the rain wet her. Many a time she put her
hand upon the prize she possessed, to find if it were safe: once, on the
road, she took it from her bosom, curiously viewed the seal and the
direction, then replacing it, did not move her fingers from their fast
grip till she arrived at her own house.
Her father and her mother were still absent. She drew a chair, and
placing it near to the only window in the room, seated herself with
ceremonious order; then gently drew forth her treasure, laid it on her
knee, and with a smile that almost amounted to a laugh of gladness, once
more inspected the outward part, before she would trust herself with the
excessive joy of looking within.
At length the seal was broken--but the contents still a secret. Poor
Agnes had learned to write as some youths learn Latin: so short a time
had been allowed for the acquirement, and so little expert had been her
master, that it took her generally a week to write a letter of ten lines,
and a month to read one of twenty. But this being a letter on which her
mind was deeply engaged, her whole imagination aided her slender
literature, and at the end of a fortnight she had made out every word.
They were these--
"Dr. Agnes,--I hope you have been well since we parted--I have been
very well myself; but I have been teased with a great deal of
business, which has not given me time to write to you before. I have
been called to the bar, which engages every spare moment; but I hope
it will not prevent my coming down to Anfield with my father in the
summer.
"I am, Dr. Agnes,
"With gratitude for all the favours you
have conferred on me,
"Yours, &c.
"W. N."
To have beheld the illiterate Agnes trying for two weeks, day and night,
to find out the exact words of this letter, would have struck the
spectator with amazement, had he also understood the right, the delicate,
the nicely proper sensations with which she was affected by every
sentence it contained.
She wished it had been kinder, even for his sake who wrote it; because
she thought so well of him, and desired still to think so well, that she
was sorry at any faults which rendered him less worthy of her good
opinion. The cold civility of his letter had this effect--her clear, her
acute judgment felt it a kind of prevarication to _promise to write and
then write nothing that was hoped for_. But, enthralled by the magic of
her passion, she shortly found excuses for the man she loved, at the
expense of her own condemnation.
"He has only the fault of inconstancy," she cried; "and that has been
caused by _my_ change of conduct. Had I been virtuous still, he had
still been affectionate." Bitter reflection!
Yet there was a sentence in the letter, that, worse than all the
tenderness left out, wounded her sensibility; and she could not read the
line, _gratitude for all the favours conferred on me_, without turning
pale with horror, then kindling with indignation at the commonplace
thanks, which insultingly reminded her of her innocence given in exchange
for unmeaning acknowledgments.