There is a word in the vocabulary more bitter, more direful in its
import, than all the rest. Reader, if poverty, if disgrace, if bodily
pain, even if slighted love be your unhappy fate, kneel and bless Heaven
for its beneficent influence, so that you are not tortured with the
anguish of--_remorse_.
Deep contrition for past offences had long been the punishment of unhappy
Agnes; but, till the day she brought her child into the world, _remorse_
had been averted. From that day, life became an insupportable load, for
all reflection was torture! To think, merely to think, was to suffer
excruciating agony; yet, never before was _thought_ so intrusive--it
haunted her in every spot, in all discourse or company: sleep was no
shelter--she never slept but her racking dreams told her--"she had slain
her infant."
They presented to her view the naked innocent whom she had longed to
press to her bosom, while she lifted up her hand against its life. They
laid before her the piteous babe whom her eyeballs strained to behold
once more, while her feet hurried her away for ever.
Often had Agnes, by the winter's fire, listened to tales of ghosts--of
the unceasing sting of a guilty conscience; often had she shuddered at
the recital of murders; often had she wept over the story of the innocent
put to death, and stood aghast that the human mind could premeditate the
heinous crime of assassination.
From the tenderest passion the most savage impulse may arise: in the deep
recesses of fondness, sometimes is implanted the root of cruelty; and
from loving William with unbounded lawless affection, she found herself
depraved so as to become the very object which could most of all excite
her own horror!
Still, at delirious intervals, that passion, which, like a fatal
talisman, had enchanted her whole soul, held out the delusive prospect
that "William might yet relent;" for, though she had for ever discarded
the hope of peace, she could not force herself to think but that, again
blest with his society, she should, at least for the time that he was
present with her, taste the sweet cup of "forgetfulness of the past," for
which she so ardently thirsted.
"Should he return to me," she thought in those paroxysms of delusion, "I
would to _him_ unbosom all my guilt; and as a remote, a kind of unwary
accomplice in my crime, his sense, his arguments, ever ready in making
light of my sins, might afford a respite to my troubled conscience."
While thus she unwittingly thought, and sometimes watched through the
night, starting with convulsed rapture at every sound, because it might
possibly be the harbinger of him, _he_ was busied in carefully looking
over marriage articles, fixing the place of residence with his destined
bride, or making love to her in formal process. Yet, Agnes, vaunt!--he
sometimes thought on thee--he could not witness the folly, the weakness,
the vanity, the selfishness of his future wife, without frequently
comparing her with thee. When equivocal words and prevaricating
sentences fell from her lips, he remembered with a sigh thy candour--that
open sincerity which dwelt upon thy tongue, and seemed to vie with thy
undisguised features, to charm the listener even beyond the spectator.
While Miss Sedgeley eagerly grasped at all the gifts he offered, he could
not but call to mind "that Agnes's declining hand was always closed, and
her looks forbidding, every time he proffered such disrespectful tokens
of his love." He recollected the softness which beamed from her eyes,
the blush on her face at his approach, while he could never discern one
glance of tenderness from the niece of Lord Bendham: and the artificial
bloom on her cheeks was nearly as disgusting as the ill-conducted
artifice with which she attempted gentleness and love.
But all these impediments were only observed as trials of his
fortitude--his prudence could overcome his aversion, and thus he valued
himself upon his manly firmness.
'Twas now, that William being rid, by the peevishness of Agnes, most
honourably of all future ties to her, and the day of his marriage with
Miss Sedgeley being fixed, that Henry, with the rest of the house, learnt
what to them was news. The first dart of Henry's eye upon his cousin,
when, in his presence, he was told of the intended union, caused a
reddening on the face of the latter: he always fancied Henry saw his
thoughts; and he knew that Henry in return would give him _his_. On the
present occasion, no sooner were they alone, and Henry began to utter
them, than William charged him--"Not to dare to proceed; for that, too
long accustomed to trifle, the time was come when serious matters could
alone employ his time; and when men of approved sense must take place of
friends and confidants like him."
Henry replied, "The love, the sincerity of friends, I thought, were their
best qualities: these I possess."
"But you do not possess knowledge."
"If that be knowledge which has of late estranged you from all who bear
you a sincere affection; which imprints every day more and more upon your
features the marks of gloomy inquietude; am I not happier in my
ignorance?"
"Do not torment me with your ineffectual reasoning."
"I called at the cottage of poor Agnes the other day," returned Henry:
"her father and mother were taking their homely meal alone; and when I
asked for their daughter, they wept and said--Agnes was not the girl she
had been."
William cast his eyes on the floor.
Henry proceeded--"They said a sickness, which they feared would bring her
to the grave, had preyed upon her for some time past. They had procured
a doctor: but no remedy was found, and they feared the worst."
"What worst!" cried William (now recovered from the effect of the sudden
intelligence, and attempting a smile). "Do they think she will die? And
do you think it will be for love? We do not hear of these deaths often,
Henry."
"And if _she_ die, who will hear of _that_? No one but those interested
to conceal the cause: and thus it is, that dying for love becomes a
phenomenon."
Henry would have pursued the discourse farther; but William, impatient on
all disputes, except where his argument was the better one, retired from
the controversy, crying out, "I know my duty, and want no instructor."
It would be unjust to William to say he did not feel for this reported
illness of Agnes--he felt, during that whole evening, and part of the
next morning--but business, pleasures, new occupations, and new schemes
of future success, crowded to dissipate all unwelcome reflections; and he
trusted to her youth, her health, her animal spirits, and, above all, to
the folly of the gossips' story of _dying for love_, as a surety for her
life, and a safeguard for his conscience.