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 destitute, 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 rectitude
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 petition
to him; but, at the idea of a repulse, and of that frowning brow which
she knew William _could_ dart on her petitions, 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 passed, 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 associate 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
prostitution 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 sex 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 passion, of distracted riot,
shameless effrontery, and wild intoxication, when it _would_ force its
way, even through the walls of a brothel.