The wedding-day of Mr. William Norwynne with Miss Caroline Sedgeley
arrived; and, on that day, the bells of every parish surrounding that in
which they lived joined with their own, in celebration of the blissful
union. Flowers were strewn before the new-married pair, and favours and
ale made many a heart more gladsome than that of either bridegroom or
bride.
Upon this day of ringing and rejoicing the bells were not muffled, nor
was conversation on the subject withheld from the ear of Agnes! She
heard like her neighbours; and sitting on the side of her bed in her
little chamber, suffered, under the cottage roof, as much affliction as
ever visited a palace.
Tyrants, who have embrued their hands in the blood of myriads of their
fellow-creatures, can call their murders "religion, justice, attention to
the good of mankind." Poor Agnes knew no sophistry to calm _her_ sense
of guilt: she felt herself a harlot and a murderer; a slighted, a
deserted wretch, bereft of all she loved in this world, all she could
hope for in the next.
She complained bitterly of illness, nor could the entreaties of her
father and mother prevail on her to share in the sports of this general
holiday. As none of her humble visitors suspected the cause of her more
than ordinary indisposition, they endeavoured to divert it with an
account of everything they had seen at church--"what the bride wore; how
joyful the bridegroom looked;"--and all the seeming signs of that
complete happiness which they conceived was for certain tasted.
Agnes, who, before this event, had at moments suppressed the agonising
sting of self-condemnation in the faint prospect of her lover one day
restored, on this memorable occasion lost every glimpse of hope, and was
weighed to the earth with an accumulation of despair.
Where is the degree in which the sinner stops? Unhappy Agnes! the first
time you permitted indecorous familiarity from a man who made you no
promise, who gave you no hope of becoming his wife, who professed nothing
beyond those fervent, though slender, affections which attach the rake to
the wanton; the first time you interpreted his kind looks and ardent
prayers into tenderness and constancy; the first time you descended from
the character of purity, you rushed imperceptibly on the blackest crimes.
The more sincerely you loved, the more you plunged in danger: from one
ungoverned passion proceeded a second and a third. In the fervency of
affection you yielded up your virtue! In the excess of fear, you stained
your conscience by the intended murder of your child! And now, in the
violence of grief, you meditate--what?--to put an end to your existence
by your own hand!
After casting her thoughts around, anxious to find some bud of comfort on
which to fix her longing eye; she beheld, in the total loss of William,
nothing but a wide waste, an extensive plain of anguish. "How am I to be
sustained through this dreary journey of life?" she exclaimed. Upon this
question she felt, more poignantly than ever, her loss of innocence:
innocence would have been her support, but, in place of this best prop to
the afflicted, guilt flashed on her memory every time she flew for aid to
reflection.
At length, from horrible rumination, a momentary alleviation came: "but
one more step in wickedness," she triumphantly said, "and all my shame,
all my sufferings are over." She congratulated herself upon the lucky
thought; when, but an instant after, the tears trickled down her face for
the sorrow her death, her sinful death, would bring to her poor and
beloved parents. She then thought upon the probability of a sigh it
might draw from William; and, the pride, the pleasure of that little
tribute, counterpoised every struggle on the side of life.
As she saw the sun decline, "When you rise again," she thought, "when you
peep bright to-morrow morning into this little room to call me up, I
shall not be here to open my eyes upon a hateful day--I shall no more
regret that you have waked me!--I shall be sound asleep, never to wake
again in this wretched world--not even the voice of William would then
awake me."
While she found herself resolved, and evening just come on, she hurried
out of the house, and hastened to the fatal wood; the scene of her
dishonour--the scene of intended murder--and now the meditated scene of
suicide.
As she walked along between the close-set tree, she saw, at a little
distance, the spot where William first made love to her; and where at
every appointment he used to wait her coming. She darted her eye away
from this place with horror; but, after a few moments of emotion, she
walked slowly up to it--shed tears, and pressed with her trembling lips
that tree, against which she was accustomed to lean while he talked with
her. She felt an inclination to make this the spot to die in; but her
preconcerted, and the less frightful death, of leaping into a pool on the
other side of the wood, induced her to go onwards.
Presently, she came near the place where _her_ child, and _William's_,
was exposed to perish. Here she started with a sense of the most
atrocious guilt; and her whole frame shook with the dread of an
approaching, an omnipotent Judge, to sentence her for murder.
She halted, appalled, aghast, undetermined whether to exist longer
beneath the pressure of a criminal conscience, or die that very hour, and
meet her final condemnation.
She proceeded a few steps farther, and beheld the very ivy-bush close to
which her infant lay when she left him exposed; and now, from this minute
recollection, all the mother rising in her soul, she saw, as it were, her
babe again in its deserted state; and bursting into tears of bitterest
contrition and compassion, she cried--"As I was merciless to _thee_, my
child, thy father has been pitiless to _me_! As I abandoned _thee_ to
die with cold and hunger, he has forsaken, and has driven _me_ to die by
self-slaughter."
She now fixed her eager eyes on the distant pond, and walked more nimbly
than before, to rid herself of her agonising sensations.
Just as she had nearly reached the wished-for brink, she heard a
footstep, and saw, by the glimmering of a clouded moon, a man
approaching. She turned out of her path, for fear her intentions should
be guessed at, and opposed; but still, as she walked another way, her eye
was wishfully bent towards the water that was to obliterate her love and
her remorse--obliterate, forever, William and his child.
It was now that Henry, who, to prevent scandal, had stolen at that still
hour of night to rid the curate of the incumbrance so irksome to him, and
take the foundling to a woman whom he had hired for the charge--it was
now that Henry came up, with the child of Agnes in his arms, carefully
covered all over from the night's dew.
"Agnes, is it you?" cried Henry, at a little distance. "Where are you
going thus late?"
"Home, sir," said she, and rushed among the trees.
"Stop, Agnes," he cried; "I want to bid you farewell; to-morrow I am
going to leave this part of the country for a long time; so God bless
you, Agnes."
Saying this, he stretched out his arm to shake her by the hand.
Her poor heart, trusting that his blessing, for want of more potent
offerings, might, perhaps, at this tremendous crisis ascend to Heaven in
her behalf, she stopped, returned, and put out her hand to take his.
"Softly!" said he; "don't wake my child; this spot has been a place of
danger to him, for underneath this very ivy-bush it was that I found
him."
"Found what?" cried Agnes, with a voice elevated to a tremulous scream.
"I will not tell you the story," replied Henry; "for no one I have ever
yet told of it would believe me."
"I will believe you--I will believe you," she repeated with tones yet
more impressive.
"Why, then," said Henry, "only five weeks ago--"
"Ah!" shrieked Agnes.
"What do you mean?" said Henry.
"Go on," she articulated, in the same voice.
"Why, then, as I was passing this very place, I wish I may never speak
truth again, if I did not find" (here he pulled aside the warm rug in
which the infant was wrapped) "this beautiful child."
"With a cord?--"
"A cord was round its neck."
"'Tis mine--the child is mine--'tis mine--my child--I am the mother and
the murderer--I fixed the cord, while the ground shook under me--while
flashes of fire darted before my eyes!--while my heart was bursting with
despair and horror! But I stopped short--I did not draw the noose--I had
a moment of strength, and I ran away. I left him living--he is living
now--escaped from my hands--and I am no longer ashamed, but overcome with
joy that he is mine! I bless you, my dear, my dear, for saving his
life--for giving him to me again--for preserving _my_ life, as well as my
child's."
Here she took her infant, pressed it to her lips and to her bosom; then
bent to the ground, clasped Henry's knees, and wept upon his feet.
He could not for a moment doubt the truth of what she said; her powerful
yet broken accents, her convulsive embraces of the child, even more than
her declaration, convinced him she was its mother.
"Good Heaven!" cried Henry, "and this is my cousin William's child!"
"But your cousin does not know it," said she; "I never told him--he was
not kind enough to embolden me; therefore do not blame _him_ for _my_
sin; he did not know of my wicked designs--he did not encourage me--"
"But he forsook you, Agnes."
"He never said he would not. He always told me he could not marry me."
"Did he tell you so at his first private meeting?"
"No."
"Nor at the second?"
"No; nor yet at the third."
"When was it he told you so?"
"I forget the exact time; but I remember it was on that very evening when
I confessed to him--"
"What?"
"That he had won my heart."
"Why did you confess it?"
"Because he asked me and said it would make him happy if I would say so."
"Cruel! dishonourable!"
"Nay, do not blame him; he cannot help _not_ loving me, no more than I
can help _loving_ him."
Henry rubbed his eyes.
"Bless me, you weep! I always heard that you were brought up in a savage
country; but I suppose it is a mistake; it was your cousin William."
"Will not you apply to him for the support of your child?" asked Henry.
"If I thought he would not be angry."
"Angry! I will write to him on the subject if you will give me leave."
"But do not say it is by my desire. Do not say I wish to trouble him. I
would sooner beg than be a trouble to him."
"Why are you so delicate?"
"It is for my own sake; I wish him not to hate me."
"Then, thus you may secure his respect. I will write to him, and let him
know all the circumstances of your case. I will plead for his compassion
on his child, but assure him that no conduct of his will ever induce you
to declare (except only to me, who knew of your previous acquaintance)
who is the father."
To this she consented; but when Henry offered to take from her the
infant, and carry him to the nurse he had engaged, to this she would not
consent.
"Do you mean, then, to acknowledge him yours?" Henry asked.
"Nothing shall force me to part from him again. I will keep him, and let
my neighbours judge of me as they please."
Here Henry caught at a hope he feared to name before. "You will then
have no objection," said he, "to clear an unhappy girl to a few friends,
with whom her character has suffered by becoming, at my request, his
nurse?"
"I will clear any one, so that I do not accuse the father."
"You give me leave, then, in your name, to tell the whole story to some
particular friends, my cousin William's part in it alone excepted?"
"I do."
Henry now exclaimed, "God bless you!" with greater fervour than when he
spoke it before; and he now hoped the night was nearly gone, that the
time might be so much the shorter before Rebecca should be reinstated in
the esteem of her father, and of all those who had misjudged her.
"God bless _you_!" said Agnes, still more fervently, as she walked with
unguided steps towards her home; for her eyes never wandered from the
precious object which caused her unexpected return.