THE HOUSEHOLD WRECK.

'To be weak,' we need not the great archangel's voice to tell us, '_is

to be miserable_.' All weakness is suffering and humiliation, no matter

for its mode or its subject. Beyond all other weakness, therefore, and

by a sad prerogative, as more miserable than what is most miserable

in all, that capital weakness of man which regards the _tenure_ of his

enjoyments and his power to protect, even for a moment, the crown of

flowers--flowers, at the best, how frail and few!--which sometimes

settles upon his haughty brow. There is no end, there never will be

an end, of the lamentations which ascend from earth and the rebellious

heart of her children, upon this huge opprobrium of human pride--the

everlasting mutabilities of all which man can grasp by his power or

by his aspirations, the fragility of all which he inherits, and the

hollowness visible amid the very raptures of enjoyment to every eye

which looks for a moment underneath the draperies of the shadowy

_present_, the hollowness, the blank treachery of hollowness, upon which

all the pomps and vanities of life ultimately repose. This trite but

unwearying theme, this impassioned common-place of humanity, is the

subject in every age of variation without end, from the poet,

the rhetorician, the fabulist, the moralist, the divine, and the

philosopher. All, amidst the sad vanity of their sighs and groans, labor

to put on record and to establish this monotonous complaint, which needs

not other record or evidence than those very sighs and groans. What is

life? Darkness and formless vacancy for a beginning, or something beyond

all beginning--then next a dim lotos of human consciousness, finding

itself afloat upon the bosom of waters without a shore--then a few sunny

smiles and many tears--a little love and infinite strife--whisperings

from paradise and fierce mockeries from the anarchy of chaos--dust and

ashes--and once more darkness circling round, as if from the beginning,

and in this way rounding or making an island of our fantastic

existence,--_that_ is human life; _that_ the inevitable amount of man's

laughter and his tears--of what he suffers and he does--of his motions

this way and that way--to the right or to the left--backwards

or forwards--of all his seeming realities and all his absolute

negations--his shadowy pomps and his pompous shadows--of whatsoever he

thinks, finds, makes or mars, creates or animates, loves, hates, or in

dread hope anticipates;--so it is, so it has been, so it will be, for

ever and ever.

Yet in the lowest deep there still yawns a lower deep; and in the vast

halls of man's frailty, there are separate and more gloomy chambers of

a frailty more exquisite and consummate. We account it frailty that

threescore years and ten make the upshot of man's pleasurable existence,

and that, far before that time is reached, his beauty and his power

have fallen among weeds and forgetfulness. But there is a frailty, by

comparison with which this ordinary flux of the human race seems to have

a vast duration. Cases there are, and those not rare, in which a

single week, a day, an hour sweeps away all vestiges and landmarks of

a memorable felicity; in which the ruin travels faster than the flying

showers upon the mountain-side, faster 'than a musician scatters

sounds;' in which 'it was' and 'it is not' are words of the self-same

tongue, in the self-same minute; in which the sun that at noon beheld

all sound and prosperous, long before its setting hour looks out upon

a total wreck, and sometimes upon the total abolition of any fugitive

memorial that there ever had been a vessel to be wrecked, or a wreck to

be obliterated.

These cases, though here spoken of rhetorically, are of daily

occurrence; and, though they may seem few by comparison with the

infinite millions of the species, they are many indeed, if they be

reckoned absolutely for themselves; and throughout the limits of a whole

nation, not a day passes over us but many families are robbed of their

heads, or even swallowed up in ruin themselves, or their course turned

out of the sunny beams into a dark wilderness. Shipwrecks and nightly

conflagrations are sometimes, and especially among some nations,

wholesale calamities; battles yet more so; earthquakes, the famine, the

pestilence, though rarer, are visitations yet wider in their desolation.

Sickness and commercial ill-luck, if narrower, are more frequent

scourges. And most of all, or with most darkness in its train, comes the

sickness of the brain--lunacy--which, visiting nearly one thousand in

every million, must, in every populous nation, make many ruins in each

particular day. 'Babylon in ruins,' says a great author, 'is not so sad

a sight as a human soul overthrown by lunacy.' But there is a sadder

even than _that_,--the sight of a family-ruin wrought by crime is even

more appalling. Forgery, breaches of trust, embezzlement, of private

or public funds--(a crime sadly on the increase since the example of

Fauntleroy, and the suggestion of its great feasibility first made by

him)--these enormities, followed too often, and countersigned for their

final result to the future happiness of families, by the appalling

catastrophe of suicide, must naturally, in every wealthy nation,

or wherever property and the modes of property are much developed,

constitute the vast majority of all that come under the review of public

justice. Any of these is sufficient to make shipwreck of all peace and

comfort for a family; and often, indeed, it happens that the desolation

is accomplished within the course of one revolving sun; often the

whole dire catastrophe, together with its total consequences, is both

accomplished and made known to those whom it chiefly concerns within one

and the same hour. The mighty Juggernaut of social life, moving onwards

with its everlasting thunders, pauses not for a moment to spare--to

pity--to look aside, but rushes forward for ever, impassive as the

marble in the quarry--caring not for whom it destroys, for the how

many, or for the results, direct and indirect, whether many or few.

The increasing grandeur and magnitude of the social system, the more it

multiplies and extends its victims, the more it conceals them; and for

the very same reason: just as in the Roman amphitheatres, when they grew

to the magnitude of mighty cities, (in some instances accommodating

four hundred thousand spectators, in many a fifth part of that amount,)

births and deaths became ordinary events, which, in a small modern

theatre, are rare and memorable; and exactly as these prodigious

accidents multiplied, _pari passu_, they were disregarded and easily

concealed: for curiosity was no longer excited; the sensation attached

to them was little or none.

From these terrific tragedies, which, like monsoons or tornadoes,

accomplish the work of years in an hour, not merely an impressive lesson

is derived, sometimes, perhaps, a warning, but also (and this is of

universal application) some consolation. Whatever may have been the

misfortunes or the sorrows of a man's life, he is still privileged to

regard himself and his friends as amongst the fortunate by comparison,

in so far as he has escaped these wholesale storms, either as an actor

in producing them, or a contributor to their violence--or even more

innocently, (though oftentimes not less miserably)--as a participator in

the instant ruin, or in the long arrears of suffering which they entail.

The following story falls within the class of hasty tragedies, and

sudden desolations here described. The reader is assured that every

incident is strictly true: nothing, in that respect, has been altered;

nor, indeed, anywhere except in the conversations, of which, though

the results and general outline are known, the separate details have

necessarily been lost under the agitating circumstances which produced

them. It has been judged right and delicate to conceal the name of the

great city, and therefore of the nation in which these events occurred,

chiefly out of consideration for the descendants of one person concerned

in the narrative: otherwise, it might not have been requisite: for it

is proper to mention, that every person directly a party to the case has

been long laid in the grave: all of them, with one solitary exception,

upwards of fifty years.

* * * * *

It was early spring in the year 17--; the day was the 6th of April; and

the weather, which had been of a wintry fierceness for the preceding six

or seven weeks--cold indeed beyond anything known for many years,

gloomy for ever, and broken by continual storms--was now by a Swedish

transformation all at once bright, genial, heavenly. So sudden and so

early a prelusion of summer, it was generally feared, could not last.

But that only made every body the more eager to lose no hour of an

enjoyment that might prove so fleeting. It seemed as if the whole

population of the place, a population among the most numerous in

Christendom, had been composed of hybernating animals suddenly awakened

by the balmy sunshine from their long winter's torpor. Through every

hour of the golden morning the streets were resonant with female parties

of young and old, the timid and the bold, nay, even of the most delicate

valetudinarians, now first tempted to lay aside their wintry clothing

together with their fireside habits, whilst the whole rural environs of

our vast city, the woodlands, and the interminable meadows began daily

to re-echo the glad voices of the young and jovial awaking once again,

like the birds and the flowers, and universal nature, to the luxurious

happiness of this most delightful season.

Happiness do I say? Yes, happiness; happiness to me above all others.

For I also in those days was among the young and the gay; I was healthy;

I was strong; I was prosperous in a worldly sense! I owed no man a

shilling; feared no man's face; shunned no man's presence. I held a

respectable station in society; I was myself, let me venture to say it,

respected generally for my personal qualities, apart from any advantages

I might draw from fortune or inheritance; I had reason to think myself

popular amongst the very slender circle of my acquaintance; and finally,

which perhaps was the crowning grace to all these elements of happiness,

I suffered not from the presence of _ennui_, nor ever feared to suffer:

for my temperament was constitutionally ardent; I had a powerful

animal sensibility; and I knew the one great secret for maintaining its

equipoise, viz., by powerful daily exercise; and thus I lived in

the light and presence, or, (if I should not be suspected of seeking

rhetorical expressions, I would say,) in one eternal solstice of

unclouded hope.

These, you will say, were blessings; these were golden elements of

felicity. They were so; and yet, with the single exception of my

healthy frame and firm animal organization, I feel that I have mentioned

hitherto nothing but what by comparison might be thought of a vulgar

quality. All the other advantages that I have enumerated, had they been

yet wanting, might have been acquired; had they been forfeited, might

have been reconquered; had they been even irretrievably lost, might, by

a philosophic effort, have been dispensed with; compensations might have

been found for any of them, many equivalents, or if not, consolations at

least, for their absence. But now it remains to speak of other blessings

too mighty to be valued, not merely as transcending in rank and dignity

all other constituents of happiness, but for a reason far sadder than

that--because, once lost, they were incapable of restoration, and

because not to be dispensed with; blessings in which 'either we must

live or have no life:' lights to the darkness of our paths and to the

infirmity of our steps--which, once extinguished, never more on this

side the gates of Paradise can any man hope to see re-illumined for

himself. Amongst these I may mention an intellect, whether powerful or

not in itself, at any rate most elaborately cultivated; and, to say the

truth, I had little other business before me in this life than to pursue

this lofty and delightful task. I may add, as a blessing, not in the

same _positive_ sense as that which I have just mentioned, because not

of a nature to contribute so hourly to the employment of the thoughts,

but yet in this sense equal, that the absence of either would have been

an equal affliction,--namely, a conscience void of all offence. It

was little indeed that I, drawn by no necessities of situation into

temptations of that nature, had done no injury to any man. That was

fortunate; but I could not much value myself upon what was so much an

accident of my situation. Something, however, I might pretend to beyond

this _negative_ merit; for I had originally a benign nature; and, as I

advanced in years and thoughtfulness, the gratitude which possessed me

for my own exceeding happiness led me to do that by principle and system

which I had already done upon blind impulse; and thus upon a double

argument I was incapable of turning away from the prayer of the

afflicted, whatever had been the sacrifice to myself. Hardly, perhaps,

could it have been said in a sufficient sense at that time that I was

a religious man: yet, undoubtedly, I had all the foundations within me

upon which religion might hereafter have grown. My heart overflowed with

thankfulness to Providence: I had a natural tone of unaffected piety;

and thus far, at least, I might have been called a religious man, that

in the simplicity of truth I could have exclaimed,

'O, Abner, I fear God, and I fear none beside.'

But wherefore seek to delay ascending by a natural climax to that final

consummation and perfect crown of my felicity--that almighty blessing

which ratified their value to all the rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore

do I shrink in miserable weakness from--what? Is it from reviving,

from calling up again into fierce and insufferable light the images and

features of a long-buried happiness? That would be a natural shrinking

and a reasonable weakness. But how escape from reviving, whether I give

it utterance or not, that which is for ever vividly before me? What need

to call into artificial light that which, whether sleeping or waking, by

night or by day, for eight-and-thirty years has seemed by its miserable

splendor to scorch my brain? Wherefore shrink from giving language,

simple vocal utterance, to that burden of anguish which by so long an

endurance has lost no atom of its weight, nor can gain any most surely

by the loudest publication? Need there can be none, after this, to say

that the priceless blessing, which I have left to the final place in

this ascending review, was the companion of my life--my darling and

youthful wife. Oh! dovelike woman! fated in an hour the most

defenceless to meet with the ravening vulture,--lamb fallen amongst

wolves,--trembling--fluttering fawn, whose path was inevitably to be

crossed by the bloody tiger;--angel, whose most innocent heart fitted

thee for too early a flight from this impure planet; if indeed it were a

necessity that thou shouldst find no rest for thy footing except amidst

thy native heavens, if indeed to leave what was not worthy of thee were

a destiny not to be evaded--a summons not to be put by,--yet why, why,

again and again I demand--why was it also necessary that this, thy

departure, so full of wo to me, should also to thyself be heralded by

the pangs of martyrdom? Sainted love, if, like the ancient children

of the Hebrews, like Meshech and Abednego, thou wert called by divine

command, whilst yet almost a child, to walk, and to walk alone, through

the fiery furnace,--wherefore then couldst not thou, like that Meshech

and that Abednego, walk unsinged by the dreadful torment, and come forth

unharmed? Why, if the sacrifice were to be total, was it necessary to

reach it by so dire a struggle? and if the cup, the bitter cup, of final

separation from those that were the light of thy eyes and the pulse

of thy heart might not be put aside,--yet wherefore was it that thou

mightest not drink it up in the natural peace which belongs to a sinless

heart?

But these are murmurings, you will say, rebellious murmurings against

the proclamations of God. Not so: I have long since submitted myself,

resigned myself, nay, even reconciled myself, perhaps, to the great

wreck of my life, in so far as it was the will of God, and according to

the weakness of my imperfect nature. But my wrath still rises, like a

towering flame, against all the earthly instruments of this ruin; I am

still at times as unresigned as ever to this tragedy, in so far as it

was the work of human malice. Vengeance, as a mission for _me_, as

a task for _my_ hands in particular, is no longer possible; the

thunderbolts of retribution have been long since launched by other

hands; and yet still it happens that at times I do--I must--I shall

perhaps to the hour of death, rise in maniac fury, and seek, in the

very impotence of vindictive madness, groping as it were in blindness of

heart, for that tiger from hell-gates that tore away my darling from my

heart. Let me pause, and interrupt this painful strain, to say a word

or two upon what she was--and how far worthy of a love more honorable

to her (that was possible) and deeper (but that was not possible) than

mine. When first I saw her, she--my Agnes--was merely a child, not much

(if anything) above sixteen. But, as in perfect womanhood she retained

a most childlike expression of countenance, so even then in absolute

childhood she put forward the blossoms and the dignity of a woman. Never

yet did my eye light upon creature that was born of woman, nor could it

enter my heart to conceive one, possessing a figure more matchless in

its proportions, more statuesque, and more deliberately and advisedly to

be characterized by no adequate word but the word _magnificent_, (a word

too often and lightly abused.) In reality, speaking of women, I have

seen many beautiful figures, but hardly one except Agnes that could,

without hyperbole, be styled truly and memorably magnificent. Though

in the first order of tall women, yet, being full in person, and with a

symmetry that was absolutely faultless, she seemed to the random sight

as little above the ordinary height. Possibly from the dignity of her

person, assisted by the dignity of her movements, a stranger would

have been disposed to call her at a distance a woman of _commanding_

presence; but never, after he had approached near enough to behold her

face. Every thought of artifice, of practised effect, or of haughty

pretension, fled before the childlike innocence, the sweet feminine

timidity, and the more than cherub loveliness of that countenance, which

yet in its lineaments was noble, whilst its expression was purely gentle

and confiding. A shade of pensiveness there was about her; but _that_

was in her manners, scarcely ever in her features; and the exquisite

fairness of her complexion, enriched by the very sweetest and most

delicate bloom that ever I have beheld, should rather have allied it

to a tone of cheerfulness. Looking at this noble creature, as I first

looked at her, when yet upon the early threshold of womanhood

'With household motions light and free,

And steps of virgin liberty'

you might have supposed her some Hebe or young Aurora of the dawn. When

you saw only her superb figure, and its promise of womanly development,

with the measured dignity of her step, you might for a moment have

fancied her some imperial Medea of the Athenian stage--some Volumnia

from Rome,

'Or ruling bandit's wife amidst the Grecian isles.'

But catch one glance from her angelic countenance--and then combining

the face and the person, you would have dismissed all such fancies, and

have pronounced her a Pandora or an Eve, expressly accomplished and held

forth by nature as an exemplary model or ideal pattern for the future

female sex:--

'A perfect woman, nobly plann'd,

To warm, to comfort, to command:

And yet a spirit too, and bright

With something of an angel light.'

To this superb young woman, such as I have here sketched her, I

surrendered my heart for ever, almost from my first opportunity of

seeing her: for so natural and without disguise was her character, and

so winning the simplicity of her manners, due in part to her own native

dignity of mind, and in part to the deep solitude in which she had been

reared, that little penetration was required to put me in possession of

all her thoughts; and to win her love, not very much more than to let

her see, as see she could not avoid, in connection with that chivalrous

homage which at any rate was due to her sex and her sexual perfections,

a love for herself on my part, which was in its nature as exalted a

passion and as profoundly rooted as any merely human affection can ever

yet have been.

On the seventeenth birthday of Agnes we were married. Oh! calendar of

everlasting months--months that, like the mighty rivers, shall flow on

for ever, immortal as thou, Nile, or Danube, Euphrates, or St. Lawrence!

and ye, summer and winter, day and night, wherefore do you bring round

continually your signs, and seasons, and revolving hours, that still

point and barb the anguish of local recollections, telling me of this

and that celestial morning that never shall return, and of too blessed

expectations, travelling like yourselves through a heavenly zodiac of

changes, till at once and for ever they sank into the grave! Often do I

think of seeking for some quiet cell either in the Tropics or in

Arctic latitudes, where the changes of the year, and the external signs

corresponding to them, express themselves by no features like those in

which the same seasons are invested under our temperate climes: so that,

if knowing, we cannot at least feel the identity of their revolutions.

We were married, I have said, on the birthday--the seventeenth

birthday--of Agnes; and pretty nearly on her eighteenth it was that she

placed me at the summit of my happiness, whilst for herself she

thus completed the circle of her relations to this life's duties,

by presenting me with a son. Of this child, knowing how wearisome to

strangers is the fond exultation of parents, I shall simply say, that

he inherited his mother's beauty; the same touching loveliness and

innocence of expression, the same chiselled nose, mouth, and chin,

the same exquisite auburn hair. In many other features, not of person

merely, but also of mind and manners, as they gradually began to open

before me, this child deepened my love to him by recalling the image of

his mother; and what other image was there that I so much wished to

keep before me, whether waking or asleep? At the time to which I am now

coming but too rapidly, this child, still our only one, and unusually

premature, was within four months of completing his third year;

consequently Agnes was at that time in her twenty-first year; and I may

here add, with respect to myself, that I was in my twenty-sixth.

But, before I come to that period of wo, let me say one word on the

temper of mind which so fluent and serene a current of prosperity may

be thought to have generated. Too common a course I know it is, when

the stream of life flows with absolute tranquillity, and ruffled by no

menace of a breeze--the azure overhead never dimmed by a passing cloud,

that in such circumstances the blood stagnates: life, from excess and

plethora of sweets, becomes insipid: the spirit of action droops: and

it is oftentimes found at such seasons that slight annoyances and

molestations, or even misfortunes in a lower key, are not wholly

undesirable, as means of stimulating the lazy energies, and disturbing a

slumber which is, or soon will be, morbid in its character. I have known

myself cases not a few, where, by the very nicest gradations, and by

steps too silent and insensible for daily notice, the utmost harmony and

reciprocal love had shaded down into fretfulness and petulance, purely

from too easy a life, and because all nobler agitations that might have

ruffled the sensations occasionally, and all distresses even on the

narrowest scale that might have re-awakened the solicitudes of love, by

opening necessities for sympathy, for counsel, or for mutual aid, had

been shut out by foresight too elaborate, or by prosperity too cloying.

But all this, had it otherwise been possible with my particular mind,

and at my early age, was utterly precluded by one remarkable peculiarity

in my temper. Whether it were that I derived from nature some jealousy

and suspicion of all happiness which seems too perfect and unalloyed--[a

spirit of restless distrust, which in ancient times often led men to

throw valuable gems into the sea, in the hope of thus propitiating the

dire deity of misfortune, by voluntarily breaking the fearful chain of

prosperity, and led some of them to weep and groan when the gems

thus sacrificed were afterwards brought back to their hand by simple

fishermen, who had recovered them in the intestines of fishes--a

portentous omen, which was interpreted into a sorrowful indication

that the deity thus answered the propitiatory appeal, and made solemn

proclamation that he had rejected it]--whether, I say, it were this

spirit of jealousy awaked in me by too steady and too profound a

felicity--or whether it were that great overthrows and calamities have

some mysterious power to send forward a dim misgiving of their advancing

footsteps, and really and indeed,

'That in to-day already walks to-morrow;'

or whether it were partly, as I have already put the case in my first

supposition, a natural instinct of distrust, but irritated and enlivened

by a particular shock of superstitious alarm; which, or whether any of

these causes it were that kept me apprehensive, and on the watch for

disastrous change, I will not here undertake to determine. Too certain

it is that I was so. I never ridded myself of an over-mastering and

brooding sense, shadowy and vague, a dim abiding feeling (that sometimes

was and sometimes was not exalted into a conscious presentiment) of

some great calamity travelling towards me; not perhaps immediately

impending--perhaps even at a great distance; but already--dating from

some secret hour--already in motion upon some remote line of approach.

This feeling I could not assuage by sharing it with Agnes. No motive

could be strong enough for persuading me to communicate so gloomy a

thought with one who, considering her extreme healthiness, was but too

remarkably prone to pensive, if not to sorrowful, contemplations. And

thus the obligation which I felt to silence and reserve, strengthened

the morbid impression I had received; whilst the remarkable incident

I have adverted to served powerfully to rivet the superstitious chain

which was continually gathering round me. The incident was this--and

before I repeat it, let me pledge my word of honor, that I report to you

the bare facts of the case, without exaggeration, and in the simplicity

of truth:--There was at that time resident in the great city, which

is the scene of my narrative, a woman, from some part of Hungary, who

pretended to the gift of looking into futurity. She had made herself

known advantageously in several of the greatest cities of Europe, under

the designation of the Hungarian Prophetess; and very extraordinary

instances were cited amongst the highest circles of her success in the

art which she professed. So ample were the pecuniary tributes which

she levied upon the hopes and the fears, or the simple curiosity of

the aristocracy, that she was thus able to display not unfrequently

a disinterestedness and a generosity, which seemed native to her

disposition, amongst the humbler classes of her applicants; for she

rejected no addresses that were made to her, provided only they were

not expressed in levity or scorn, but with sincerity, and in a spirit of

confiding respect. It happened, on one occasion, when a nursery-servant

of ours was waiting in her anteroom for the purpose of taking her turn

in consulting the prophetess professionally, that she had witnessed a

scene of consternation and unaffected maternal grief in this Hungarian

lady upon the sudden seizure of her son, a child of four or five years

old, by a spasmodic inflammation of the throat (since called croup)

peculiar to children, and in those days not very well understood by

medical men. The poor Hungarian, who had lived chiefly in warm, or

at least not damp, climates, and had never so much as heard of this

complaint, was almost wild with alarm at the rapid increase of the

symptoms which attend the paroxysms, and especially of that loud and

distressing sound which marks the impeded respiration. Great, therefore,

was her joy and gratitude on finding from our servant that she had

herself been in attendance more than once upon cases of the same nature,

but very much more violent,--and that, consequently, she was well

qualified to suggest and to superintend all the measures of instant

necessity, such as the hot-bath, the peculiar medicines, &c., which are

almost sure of success when applied in an early stage. Staying to give

her assistance until a considerable improvement had taken place in the

child, our servant then hurried home to her mistress. Agnes, it may

be imagined, dispatched her back with such further and more precise

directions as in a very short time availed to re-establish the child in

convalescence. These practical services, and the messages of maternal

sympathy repeatedly conveyed from Agnes, had completely won the heart of

the grateful Hungarian, and she announced her intention of calling with

her little boy, to make her personal acknowledgments for the kindness

which had been shown to her. She did so, and we were as much impressed

by the sultana-like style of her Oriental beauty, as she, on her part,

was touched and captivated by the youthful loveliness of my angelic

wife. After sitting for above an hour, during which time she talked with

a simplicity and good feeling that struck us as remarkable in a person

professing an art usually connected with so much of conscious fraud, she

rose to take her leave. I must mention that she had previously had our

little boy sitting on her knee, and had at intervals thrown a hasty

glance upon the palms of his hands. On parting, Agnes, with her usual

frankness, held out her hand. The Hungarian took it with an air of sad

solemnity, pressed it fervently, and said:--'Lady, it is my part in

this life to look behind the curtain of fate; and oftentimes I see such

sights in futurity--some near, some far off--as willingly I would _not_

see. For you, young and charming lady, looking like that angel which you

are, no destiny can be equal to your deserts. Yet sometimes, true it

is, God sees not as man sees; and he ordains, after his unfathomable

counsels, to the heavenly-minded a portion in heaven, and to the

children whom he loves a rest and a haven not built with hands.

Something that I have seen dimly warns me to look no farther. Yet, if

you desire it, I will do my office, and I will read for you with truth

the lines of fate as they are written upon your hands.' Agnes was a

little startled, or even shocked, by this solemn address; but, in a

minute or so, a mixed feeling--one half of which was curiosity, and

the other half a light-hearted mockery of her own mysterious awe in

the presence of what she had been taught to view as either fraud or

insanity--prompted her playfully to insist upon the fullest application

of the Hungarian's art to her own case; nay, she would have the hands

of our little Francis read and interpreted as well as her own, and

she desired to hear the full professional judgment delivered without

suppression or softening of its harshest awards. She laughed whilst she

said all this; but she also trembled a little. The Hungarian first

took the hand of our young child, and perused it with a long and steady

scrutiny. She said nothing, but sighed heavily as she resigned it. She

then took the hand of Agnes--looked bewildered and aghast--then gazed

piteously from Agnes to her child--and at last, bursting into tears,

began to move steadily out of the room. I followed her hastily, and

remonstrated upon this conduct, by pointing her attention to the obvious

truth--that these mysterious suppressions and insinuations, which

left all shadowy and indistinct, were far more alarming than the most

definite denunciations. Her answer yet rings in my ear:--'Why should I

make myself odious to you and to your innocent wife? Messenger of evil

I am, and have been to many; but evil I will not prophecy to her. Watch

and pray! Much may be done by effectual prayer. Human means, fleshly

arms, are vain. There is an enemy in the house of life,' [here she

quitted her palmistry for the language of astrology;] 'there is a

frightful danger at hand, both for your wife and your child. Already

on that dark ocean, over which we are all sailing, I can see dimly the

point at which the enemy's course shall cross your wife's. There is

but little interval remaining--not many hours. All is finished; all

is accomplished; and already he is almost up with the darlings of your

heart. Be vigilant, be vigilant, and yet look not to yourself, but to

Heaven, for deliverance.'

This woman was not an impostor: she spoke and uttered her oracles

under a wild sense of possession by some superior being, and of mystic

compulsion to say what she would have willingly left unsaid; and never

yet, before or since, have I seen the light of sadness settle with so

solemn an expression into human eyes as when she dropped my wife's

hand, and refused to deliver that burden of prophetic wo with which she

believed herself to be inspired.

The prophetess departed; and what mood of mind did she leave behind her

in Agnes and myself? Naturally there was a little drooping of spirits

at first; the solemnity and the heart-felt sincerity of fear and grief

which marked her demeanor, made it impossible, at the moment when we

were just fresh from their natural influences, that we should recoil

into our ordinary spirits. But with the inevitable elasticity of youth

and youthful gaiety we soon did so; we could not attempt to persuade

ourselves that there had been any conscious fraud or any attempt at

scenical effect in the Hungarian's conduct. She had no motive for

deceiving us; she had refused all offerings of money, and her whole

visit had evidently been made under an overflow of the most grateful

feelings for the attentions shown to her child. We acquitted her,

therefore, of sinister intentions; and with our feelings of jealousy,

feelings in which we had been educated, towards everything that tended

to superstition, we soon agreed to think her some gentle maniac or sad

enthusiast, suffering under some form of morbid melancholy. Forty-eight

hours, with two nights' sleep, sufficed to restore the wonted

equilibrium of our spirits; and that interval brought us onwards to

the 6th of April--the day on which, as I have already said, my story

properly commences.

On that day, on that lovely 6th of April, such as I have described it,

that 6th of April, about nine o'clock in the morning, we were seated at

breakfast near the open window--we, that is, Agnes, myself, and little

Francis; the freshness of morning spirits rested upon us; the golden

light of the morning sun illuminated the room; incense was floating

through the air from the gorgeous flowers within and without the house;

there in youthful happiness we sat gathered together, a family of

love, and there we never sat again. Never again were we three gathered

together, nor ever shall be, so long as the sun and its golden

light--the morning and the evening--the earth and its flowers endure.

Often have I occupied myself in recalling every circumstance the most

trivial of this the final morning of what merits to be called my life.

Eleven o'clock, I remember, was striking when Agnes came into my study,

and said that she would go into the city, (for we lived in a quite rural

suburb,) that she would execute some trifling commissions which she

had received from a friend in the country, and would be at home again

between one and two for a stroll which we had agreed to take in the

neighboring meadows. About twenty minutes after this she again came into

my study dressed for going abroad; for such was my admiration of her,

that I had a fancy--fancy it must have been, and yet still I felt it to

be real--that under every change she looked best; if she put on a shawl,

then a shawl became the most feminine of ornaments; if she laid

aside her shawl and her bonnet, then how nymph-like she seemed in her

undisguised and unadorned beauty! Full-dress seemed for the time to be

best, as bringing forward into relief the splendor of her person, and

allowing the exposure of her arms; a simple morning-dress, again, seemed

better still, as fitted to call out the childlike innocence of her face,

by confining the attention to that. But all these are feelings of fond

and blind affection, hanging with rapture over the object of something

too like idolatry. God knows, if that be a sin, I was but too profound

a sinner; yet sin it never was, sin it could not be, to adore a beauty

such as thine, my Agnes. Neither was it her beauty by itself, and that

only, which I sought at such times to admire; there was a peculiar

sort of double relation in which she stood at moments of pleasurable

expectation and excitement, since our little Francis had become of an

age to join our party, which made some aspects of her character trebly

interesting. She was a wife--and wife to one whom she looked up to

as her superior in understanding and in knowledge of the world, whom,

therefore, she leaned to for protection. On the other hand, she was also

a mother. Whilst, therefore, to her child she supported the matronly

part of guide, and the air of an experienced person; to me she wore,

ingenuously and without disguise, the part of a child herself, with all

the giddy hopes and unchastised imaginings of that buoyant age. This

double character, one aspect of which looks towards her husband and one

to her children, sits most gracefully upon many a young wife whose heart

is pure and innocent; and the collision between the two separate parts

imposed by duty on the one hand, by extreme youth on the other, the

one telling her that she is a responsible head of a family and the

depository of her husband's honor in its tenderest and most vital

interests, the other telling her, through the liveliest language of

animal sensibility, and through the very pulses of her blood, that she

is herself a child; this collision gives an inexpressible charm to

the whole demeanor of many a young married woman, making her other

fascinations more touching to her husband, and deepening the admiration

she excites; and the more so, as it is a collision which cannot exist

except among the very innocent. Years, at any rate, will irresistibly

remove this peculiar charm, and gradually replace it by the graces

of the matronly character. But in Agnes this change had not yet been

effected, partly from nature, and partly from the extreme seclusion of

her life. Hitherto she still retained the unaffected expression of her

childlike nature; and so lovely in my eyes was this perfect exhibition

of natural feminine character, that she rarely or never went out alone

upon any little errand to town which might require her to rely upon her

own good sense and courage, that she did not previously come to exhibit

herself before me. Partly this was desired by me in that lover-like

feeling of admiration already explained, which leads one to court the

sight of a beloved object under every change of dress, and under all

effects of novelty. Partly it was the interest I took in that exhibition

of sweet timidity, and almost childish apprehensiveness, half disguised

or imperfectly acknowledged by herself, which (in the way I have just

explained) so touchingly contrasted with (and for that very reason so

touchingly drew forth) her matronly character. But I hear some objector

say at this point, ought not this very timidity, founded (as in part

at least it was) upon inexperience and conscious inability to face the

dangers of the world, to have suggested reasons for not leaving her to

her own protection? And does it not argue, on my part, an arrogant or

too blind a confidence in the durability of my happiness, as though

charmed against assaults, and liable to no shocks of sudden revolution?

I reply that, from the very constitution of society, and the tone of

manners in the city which we inhabited, there seemed to be a moral

impossibility that any dangers of consequence should meet her in the

course of those brief absences from my protection, which only

were possible; that even to herself any dangers, of a nature to be

anticipated under the known circumstances of the case, seemed almost

imaginary; that even _she_ acknowledged a propriety in being trained, by

slight and brief separations from my guardianship, to face more boldly

those cases of longer separation and of more absolute consignment to her

own resources which circumstances might arise to create necessarily, and

perhaps abruptly. And it is evident that, had she been the wife of any

man engaged in the duties of a profession, she might have been summoned

from the very first, and without the possibility of any such gradual

training, to the necessity of relying almost singly upon her own courage

and discretion. For the other question, whether I did not depend too

blindly and presumptuously upon my good luck in not at least affording

her my protection so long as nothing occurred to make it impossible? I

may reply, most truly, that all my feelings ran naturally in the very

opposite channel. So far from confiding too much in my luck, in the

present instance I was engaged in a task of writing upon some points

of business which could not admit of further delay; but now, and at all

times, I had a secret aversion to seeing so gentle a creature thrown

even for an hour upon her own resources, though in situations which

scarcely seemed to admit of any occasion for taxing those resources;

and often I have felt anger towards myself for what appeared to be an

irrational or effeminate timidity, and have struggled with my own mind

upon occasions like the present, when I knew that I could not have

acknowledged my tremors to a friend without something like shame, and

a fear to excite his ridicule. No; if in anything I ran into excess,

it was in this very point of anxiety as to all that regarded my wife's

security. Her good sense, her prudence, her courage, (for courage she

had in the midst of her timidity,) her dignity of manner, the more

impressive from the childlike character of her countenance, all should

have combined to reassure me, and yet they did not. I was still anxious

for her safety to an irrational extent; and to sum up the whole in a

most weighty line of Shakspeare, I lived under the constant presence of

a feeling which only that great observer of human nature (so far as I

am aware) has ever noticed, viz., that merely the excess of my happiness

made me jealous of its ability to last, and in that extent less capable

of enjoying it; that in fact the prelibation of my tears, as a homage to

its fragility, was drawn forth by my very sense that my felicity was too

exquisite; or, in the words of the great master

'I wept to have' [absolutely, by anticipation, shed tears in

possessing] 'what I so feared to lose.'

Thus end my explanations, and I now pursue my narrative: Agnes, as

I have said, came into my room again before leaving the house--we

conversed for five minutes--we parted--she went out--her last words

being that she would return at half-past one o'clock; and not long

after that time, if ever mimic bells--bells of rejoicing, or bells of

mourning, are heard in desert spaces of the air, and (as some have said)

in unreal worlds, that mock our own, and repeat, for ridicule, the vain

and unprofitable motions of man, then too surely, about this hour, began

to toll the funeral knell of my earthly happiness--its final hour had

sounded.

* * * * *

One o'clock had arrived; fifteen minutes after, I strolled into the

garden, and began to look over the little garden-gate in expectation of

every moment descrying Agnes in the distance. Half an hour passed,

and for ten minutes more I was tolerably quiet. From this time till

half-past two I became constantly more agitated--_agitated,_ perhaps, is

too strong a word--but I was restless and anxious beyond what I should

have chosen to acknowledge. Still I kept arguing, What is half an hour?

what is an hour? A thousand things might have occurred to cause that

delay, without needing to suppose any accident; or, if an accident, why

not a very trifling one? She may have slightly hurt her foot--she

may have slightly sprained her ankle. 'Oh, doubtless,' I exclaimed to

myself, 'it will be a mere trifle, or perhaps nothing at all.' But I

remember that, even whilst I was saying this, I took my hat and walked

with nervous haste into the little quiet lane upon which our garden-gate

opened. The lane led by a few turnings, and after a course of about five

hundred yards, into a broad high-road, which even at that day had begun

to assume the character of a street, and allowed an unobstructed

range of view in the direction of the city for at least a mile. Here

I stationed myself, for the air was so clear that I could distinguish

dress and figure to a much greater distance than usual. Even on such a

day, however, the remote distance was hazy and indistinct, and at any

other season I should have been diverted with the various mistakes

I made. From occasional combinations of color, modified by light and

shade, and of course powerfully assisted by the creative state of the

eye under this nervous apprehensiveness, I continued to shape into

images of Agnes forms without end, that upon nearer approach presented

the most grotesque contrasts to her impressive appearance. But I

had ceased even to comprehend the ludicrous; my agitation was now so

overruling and engrossing that I lost even my intellectual sense of it;

and now first I understood practically and feelingly the anguish of hope

alternating with disappointment, as it may be supposed to act upon the

poor shipwrecked seaman, alone and upon a desolate coast, straining his

sight for ever to the fickle element which has betrayed him, but

which only can deliver him, and with his eyes still tracing in the far

distance,

'Ships, dim-discover'd, dropping from the clouds,'--

which a brief interval of suspense still for ever disperses into hollow

pageants of air or vapor. One deception melted away only to be succeeded

by another; still I fancied that at last to a certainty I could descry

the tall figure of Agnes, her gipsy hat, and even the peculiar elegance

of her walk. Often I went so far as to laugh at myself, and even to tax

my recent fears with unmanliness and effeminacy, on recollecting the

audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous palpitations which had

besieged me; but these symptoms, whether effeminate or not, began to

come back tumultuously under the gloomy doubts that succeeded almost

before I had uttered this self-reproach. Still I found myself mocked

and deluded with false hopes; yet still I renewed my quick walk, and the

intensity of my watch for that radiant form that was fated never more to

be seen returning from the cruel city.

It was nearly half-past three, and therefore close upon two hours

beyond the time fixed by Agnes for her return, when I became absolutely

incapable of supporting the further torture of suspense, and I suddenly

took the resolution of returning home and concerting with my female

servants some energetic measures, though _what_ I could hardly say, on

behalf of their mistress. On entering the garden-gate I met our little

child Francis, who unconsciously inflicted a pang upon me which he

neither could have meditated nor have understood. I passed him at his

play, perhaps even unaware of his presence, but he recalled me to that

perception by crying aloud that he had just seen his mamma.

'When--where?' I asked convulsively.

'Up stairs in her bedroom,' was his instantaneous answer.

His manner was such as forbade me to suppose that he could be joking;

and, as it was barely possible (though, for reasons well known to me,

in the highest degree improbable) that Agnes might have returned by a

by-path, which, leading through a dangerous and disreputable suburb,

would not have coincided at any one point with the public road where I

had been keeping my station. I sprang forward into the house, up stairs,

and in rapid succession into every room where it was likely that she

might be found; but everywhere there was a dead silence, disturbed only

by myself, for, in my growing confusion of thought, I believe that

I rang the bell violently in every room I entered. No such summons,

however, was needed, for the servants, two of whom at the least were

most faithful creatures, and devotedly attached to their young mistress,

stood ready of themselves to come and make inquiries of me as soon as

they became aware of the alarming fact, that I had returned without her.

Until this moment, though having some private reasons for surprise that

she should have failed to come into the house for a minute or two at the

hour prefixed, in order to make some promised domestic arrangements for

the day, they had taken it for granted that she must have met with me at

some distance from home--and that either the extreme beauty of the

day had beguiled her of all petty household recollections, or (as a

conjecture more in harmony with past experiences) that my impatience

and solicitations had persuaded her to lay aside her own plans for the

moment at the risk of some little domestic inconvenience. Now, however,

in a single instant vanished _every_ mode of accounting for their

mistress's absence; and the consternation of our looks communicated

contagiously, by the most unerring of all languages, from each to the

other what thoughts were uppermost in our panic-stricken hearts. If

to any person it should seem that our alarm was disproportioned to the

occasion, and not justified at least by anything as yet made known to

us, let that person consider the weight due to the two following facts:

First, that from the recency of our settlement in this neighborhood, and

from the extreme seclusion of my wife's previous life at a vast distance

from the metropolis, she had positively no friends on her list of

visitors who resided in this great capital; secondly, and far above

all beside, let him remember the awful denunciations, so unexpectedly

tallying with this alarming and mysterious absence, of the Hungarian

prophetess; these had been slighted--almost dismissed from our thoughts;

but now in sudden reaction they came back upon us with a frightful power

to lacerate and to sting--the shadowy outline of a spiritual agency,

such as that which could at all predict the events, combining in one

mysterious effect, with the shadowy outline of those very predictions.

The power, that could have predicted, was as dim and as hard to grasp as

was the precise nature of the evil that had been predicted.

An icy terror froze my blood at this moment when I looked at the

significant glances, too easily understood by me, that were exchanged

between the servants. My mouth had been for the last two hours growing

more and more parched, so that at present, from mere want of moisture,

I could not separate my lips to speak. One of the women saw the vain

efforts I was making, and hastily brought me a glass of water. With the

first recovery of speech, I asked them what little Francis had meant by

saying that he had seen his mother in her bedroom. Their reply was, that

they were as much at a loss to discover his meaning as I was; that he

had made the same assertion to them, and with so much earnestness, that

they had, all in succession, gone up stairs to look for her, and

with the fullest expectation of finding her. This was a mystery which

remained such to the very last; there was no doubt whatsoever that the

child believed himself to have seen his mother; that he could not have

seen her in her human bodily presence, there is as little doubt as there

is, alas! that in this world he never _did_ see her again. The poor

child constantly adhered to his story, and with a circumstantiality

far beyond all power of invention that could be presumed in an

artless infant. Every attempt at puzzling him or entangling him in

contradictions by means of cross-examination was but labor thrown away;

though indeed, it is true enough that for those attempts, as will soon

be seen, there was but a brief interval allowed.

Not dwelling upon this subject at present, I turned to Hannah--a woman

who held the nominal office of cook in our little establishment, but

whose real duties had been much more about her mistress's person--and

with a searching look of appeal I asked her whether, in this moment of

trial, when (as she might see) I was not so perfectly master of myself

as perhaps always to depend upon seeing what was best to be done, she

would consent to accompany me into the city, and take upon herself those

obvious considerations of policy or prudence which might but too easily

escape my mind, darkened, and likely to be darkened, as to its power of

discernment by the hurricane of affliction now too probably at hand. She

answered my appeal with the fervor I expected from what I had already

known of her character. She was a woman of a strong, fiery, perhaps I

might say of heroic mind, supported by a courage that was absolutely

indomitable, and by a strength of bodily frame very unusual in a woman,

and beyond the promise even of her person. She had suffered as deep a

wrench in her own affections as a human being can suffer; she had

lost her one sole child, a fair-haired boy of most striking beauty and

interesting disposition, at the age of seventeen, and by the worst

of all possible fates; he lived (as we did at that time) in a large

commercial city overflowing with profligacy, and with temptations of

every order; he had been led astray; culpable he had been, but by very

much the least culpable of the set into which accident had thrown him,

as regarded acts and probable intentions; and as regarded palliations

from childish years, from total inexperience, or any other alleviating

circumstances that could be urged, having everything to plead--and of

all his accomplices the only one who had anything to plead. Interest,

however, he had little or none; and whilst some hoary villains of the

party, who happened to be more powerfully befriended, were finally

allowed to escape with a punishment little more than nominal, he and two

others were selected as sacrifices to the offended laws. They suffered

capitally. All three behaved well; but the poor boy in particular, with

a courage, a resignation, and a meekness, so distinguished and beyond

his years as to attract the admiration and the liveliest sympathy of

the public universally. If strangers could feel in that way, if the

mere hardened executioner could be melted at the final scene,--it may be

judged to what a fierce and terrific height would ascend the affliction

of a doating mother, constitutionally too fervid in her affections.

I have heard an official person declare, that the spectacle of her

desolation and frantic anguish was the most frightful thing he had ever

witnessed, and so harrowing to the feelings, that all who could by their

rank venture upon such an irregularity, absented themselves during the

critical period from the office which corresponded with the government;

for, as I have said, the affair took place in a large provincial city,

at a great distance from the capital. All who knew this woman, or who

were witnesses to the alteration which one fortnight had wrought in her

person as well as her demeanor, fancied it impossible that she could

continue to live; or that, if she did, it must be through the giving way

of her reason. They proved, however, to be mistaken; or, at least, if

(as some thought) her reason did suffer in some degree, this result

showed itself in the inequality of her temper, in moody fits of

abstraction, and the morbid energy of her manner at times under the

absence of all adequate external excitement, rather than in any positive

and apparent hallucinations of thought. The charm which had mainly

carried off the instant danger to her faculties, was doubtless the

intense sympathy which she met with. And in these offices of consolation

my wife stood foremost. For, and that was fortunate, she had found

herself able, without violence to her own sincerest opinions in the

case, to offer precisely that form of sympathy which was most soothing

to the angry irritation of the poor mother; not only had she shown a

_direct_ interest in the boy, and not a mere interest of _reflection_

from that which she took in the mother, and had expressed it by visits

to his dungeon, and by every sort of attention to his comforts which

his case called for, or the prison regulations allowed; not only had

she wept with the distracted woman as if for a brother of her own; but,

which went farther than all the rest in softening the mother's heart,

she had loudly and indignantly proclaimed her belief in the boy's

innocence, and in the same tone her sense of the crying injustice

committed as to the selection of the victims, and the proportion of the

punishment awarded. Others, in the language of a great poet,

'Had pitied _her,_ and not her grief;'

they had either not been able to see, or, from carelessness, had

neglected to see, any peculiar wrong done to her in the matter which

occasioned her grief,--but had simply felt compassion for her as for one

summoned, in a regular course of providential and human dispensation,

to face an affliction, heavy in itself, but not heavy from any special

defect of equity. Consequently their very sympathy, being so much

built upon the assumption that an only child had offended to the extent

implied in his sentence, oftentimes clothed itself in expressions which

she felt to be not consolations but insults, and, in fact, so many

justifications of those whom it relieved her overcharged heart to regard

as the very worst of enemies. Agnes, on the other hand, took the very

same view of the case as herself; and, though otherwise the gentlest

of all gentle creatures, yet here, from the generous fervor of her

reverence for justice, and her abhorrence of oppression, she gave

herself no trouble to moderate the energy of her language: nor did I,

on my part, feeling that substantially she was in the right, think it of

importance to dispute about the exact degrees of the wrong done or the

indignation due to it. In this way it happened naturally enough that

at one and the same time, though little contemplating either of these

results, Agnes had done a prodigious service to the poor desolate mother

by breaking the force of her misery, as well as by arming the active

agencies of indignation against the depressing ones of solitary grief,

and for herself had won a most grateful and devoted friend, who would

have gone through fire and water to serve her, and was thenceforwards

most anxious for some opportunity to testify how deep had been her

sense of the goodness shown to her by her benign young mistress, and

how incapable of suffering abatement by time. It remains to add, which

I have slightly noticed before, that this woman was of unusual personal

strength: her bodily frame matched with her intellectual: and I notice

this _now_ with the more emphasis, because I am coming rapidly upon

ground where it will be seen that this one qualification was of more

summary importance to us--did us more 'yeoman's service' at a crisis

the most awful--than other qualities of greater name and pretension.

_Hannah_ was this woman's Christian name; and her name and her memory

are to me amongst the most hallowed of my earthly recollections.

One of her two fellow-servants, known technically amongst us as the

'parlor maid,' was also, but not equally, attached to her mistress; and

merely because her nature, less powerfully formed and endowed, did not

allow her to entertain or to comprehend any service equally fervid of

passion or of impassioned action. She, however, was good, affectionate,

and worthy to be trusted. But a third there was, a nursery maid, and

therefore more naturally and more immediately standing within the

confidence of her mistress--her I could not trust: her I suspected. But

of that hereafter. Meantime, Hannah, she upon whom I leaned as upon a

staff in all which respected her mistress, ran up stairs, after I had

spoken and received her answer, in order hastily to dress and prepare

herself for going out along with me to the city. I did not ask her to

be quick in her movements: I knew there was no need: and, whilst she was

absent, I took up, in one of my fretful movements of nervousness, a book

which was lying upon a side-table: the book fell open of itself at a

particular page; and in that, perhaps, there was nothing extraordinary,

for it was a little portable edition of _Paradise Lost_; and the page

was one which I must naturally have turned to many a time: for to Agnes

I had read all the great masters of literature, especially those of

modern times; so that few people knew the high classics more familiarly:

and as to the passage in question, from its divine beauty I had read it

aloud to her, perhaps, on fifty separate occasions. All this I mention

to take away any appearance of a vulgar attempt to create omens;

but still, in the very act of confessing the simple truth, and thus

weakening the marvellous character of the anecdote, I must notice it as

a strange instance of the '_Sortes Miltonianæ_,'--that precisely at such

a moment as this I should find thrown in my way, should feel tempted

to take up, and should open, a volume containing such a passage as the

following: and observe, moreover, that although the volume, _once being

taken up_, would naturally open where it had been most frequently

read, there were, however, many passages which had been read _as_

frequently--or more so. The particular passage upon which I opened

at this moment was that most beautiful one in which the fatal morning

separation is described between Adam and his bride--that separation so

pregnant with wo, which eventually proved the occasion of the mortal

transgression--the last scene between our first parents at which both

were innocent and both were happy--although the superior intellect

already felt, and, in the slight altercation preceding this separation,

had already expressed a dim misgiving of some coming change: these are

the words, and in depth of pathos they have rarely been approached:--

'Oft he to her his charge of quick return

Repeated; she to him as oft engag'd

To be returned by noon amid the bow'r,

And all things in best order to invite

Noon-tide repast, or afternoon's repose.

Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve!

Of thy presumed return, event perverse!

Thou never from that hour in Paradise

Found'st either sweet repast, or sound repose.'

'_My_ Eve!' I exclaimed, 'partner in _my_ paradise, where art thou?

_Much failing_ thou wilt not be found, nor _much deceived_; innocent in

any case thou art; but, alas! too surely by this time _hapless_, and the

victim of some diabolic wickedness.' Thus I murmured to myself; thus I

ejaculated; thus I apostrophized my Agnes; then again came a stormier

mood. I could not sit still; I could not stand in quiet; I threw the

book from me with violence against the wall; I began to hurry backwards

and forwards in a short uneasy walk, when suddenly a sound, a step; it

was the sound of the garden-gate opening, followed by a hasty tread.

Whose tread? Not for a moment could it be fancied the oread step which

belonged to that daughter of the hills--my wife, my Agnes; no, it was

the dull massy tread of a man: and immediately there came a loud blow

upon the door, and in the next moment, the bell having been found, a

furious peal of ringing. Oh coward heart! not for a lease of immortality

could I have gone forwards myself. My breath failed me; an interval

came in which respiration seemed to be stifled--the blood to halt in its

current; and then and there I recognised in myself the force and living

truth of that Scriptural description of a heart consciously beset by

evil without escape: 'Susannah _sighed_.' Yes, a long, long sigh--a

deep, deep sigh--that is, the natural language by which the over-charged

heart utters forth the wo that else would break it. I sighed--oh how

profoundly! But that did not give me power to move. Who will go to the

door? I whispered audibly. Who is at the door? was the inaudible whisper

of my heart. Then might be seen the characteristic differences of the

three women. That one, whom I suspected, I heard raising an upper window

to look out and reconnoitre. The affectionate Rachael, on the other

hand, ran eagerly down stairs; but Hannah, half dressed, even her

bosom exposed, passed her like a storm; and before I heard any sound of

opening a door, I saw from the spot where I stood the door already wide

open, and a man in the costume of a policeman. All that he said I could

not hear; but this I heard--that I was wanted at the police office, and

had better come off without delay. He seemed then to get a glimpse of

me, and to make an effort towards coming nearer; but I slunk away, and

left to Hannah the task of drawing from him any circumstances which he

might know. But apparently there was not much to tell, or rather, said

I, there is too much, the _much_ absorbs the _many_; some one mighty

evil transcends and quells all particulars. At length the door was

closed, and the man was gone. Hannah crept slowly along the passage, and

looked in hesitatingly. Her very movements and stealthy pace testified

that she had heard nothing which, even by comparison, she could think

good news. 'Tell me not now, Hannah,' I said; 'wait till we are in the

open air.' She went up stairs again. How short seemed the time till she

descended! how I longed for further respite! 'Hannah!' I said at length

when we were fairly moving upon the road, 'Hannah! I am too sure you

have nothing good to tell. But now tell me the worst, and let that be in

the fewest words possible.'

'Sir,' she said, 'we had better wait until we reach the office; for

really I could not understand the man. He says that my mistress is

detained upon some charge; but _what_, I could not at all make out. He

was a man that knew something of you, Sir, I believe, and he wished to

be civil, and kept saying, "Oh! I dare say it will turn out nothing

at all, many such charges are made idly and carelessly, and some

maliciously." "But what charges?" I cried, and then he wanted to speak

privately to you. But I told him that of all persons he must not speak

to you, if he had anything painful to tell; for that you were too much

disturbed already, and had been for some hours, out of anxiety and

terror about my mistress, to bear much more. So, when he heard that, he

was less willing to speak freely than before. He might prove wrong, he

said; he might give offence; things might turn out far otherwise than

according to first appearances; for his part, he could not believe

anything amiss of so sweet a lady. And after all, it would be better to

wait till we reached the office.'

Thus much then was clear--Agnes was under some accusation. This was

already worse than the worst I had anticipated. 'And then,' said I,

thinking aloud to Hannah, 'one of two things is apparent to me; either

the accusation is one of pure hellish malice, without a color of

probability or the shadow of a foundation, and that way, alas! I am

driven in my fears by that Hungarian woman's prophecy; or, which but for

my desponding heart I should be more inclined to think, the charge

has grown out of my poor wife's rustic ignorance as to the usages then

recently established by law with regard to the kind of money that could

be legally tendered. This, however, was a suggestion that did not tend

to alleviate my anxiety; and my nervousness had mounted to a painful,

almost to a disabling degree, by the time we reached the office. Already

on our road thither some parties had passed us who were conversing with

eagerness upon the case: so much we collected from the many and ardent

expressions about 'the lady's beauty,' though the rest of such words as

we could catch were ill calculated to relieve my suspense. This,

then, at least, was certain--that my poor timid Agnes had already been

exhibited before a tumultuous crowd; that her name and reputation had

gone forth as a subject of discussion for the public; and that the

domestic seclusion and privacy within which it was her matronly

privilege to move had already undergone a rude violation.

The office, and all the purlieus of the office, were occupied by a dense

crowd. That, perhaps, was always the case, more or less, at this time

of day; but at present the crowd was manifestly possessed by a more than

ordinary interest; and there was a unity in this possessing interest;

all were talking on the same subject, the case in which Agnes had so

recently appeared in some character or other; and by this time it became

but too certain in the character of an accused person. Pity was the

prevailing sentiment amongst the mob; but the opinions varied much as to

the probable criminality of the prisoner. I made my way into the office.

The presiding magistrates had all retired for the afternoon, and would

not reassemble until eight o'clock in the evening. Some clerks only

or officers of the court remained, who were too much harassed by

applications for various forms and papers connected with the routine of

public business, and by other official duties which required signatures

or attestations, to find much leisure for answering individual

questions. Some, however, listened with a marked air of attention to my

earnest request for the circumstantial details of the case, but finally

referred me to a vast folio volume, in which were entered all the

charges, of whatever nature, involving any serious tendency--in fact,

all that exceeded a misdemeanor--in the regular chronological succession

according to which they came before the magistrate. Here, in this vast

calendar of guilt and misery, amidst the _aliases_ or cant designations

of ruffians, prostitutes, felons, stood the description, at full length,

Christian and surnames all properly registered, of my Agnes--of her

whose very name had always sounded to my ears like the very echo of

mountain innocence, purity, and pastoral simplicity. Here in another

column stood the name and residence of her accuser. I shall call him

_Barratt_, for that was amongst his names, and a name by which he had at

one period of his infamous life been known to the public, though not his

principal name, or the one which he had thought fit to assume at

this era. James Barratt, then, as I shall here call him, was a

haberdasher--keeping a large and conspicuous shop in a very crowded and

what was then considered a fashionable part of the city. The charge was

plain and short. Did I live to read it? It accused Agnes M---- of having

on that morning secreted in her muff, and feloniously carried away, a

valuable piece of Mechlin lace, the property of James Barratt. And the

result of the first examination was thus communicated in a separate

column, written in red ink--'Remanded to the second day after to-morrow

for final examination.' Everything in this sin-polluted register was

in manuscript; but at night the records of each day were regularly

transferred to a printed journal, enlarged by comments and explanatory

descriptions from some one of the clerks, whose province it was to

furnish this intelligence to the public journals. On that same night,

therefore, would go forth to the world such an account of the case, and

such a description of my wife's person, as would inevitably summon

to the next exhibition of her misery, as by special invitation and

advertisement, the whole world of this vast metropolis--the idle, the

curious, the brutal, the hardened amateur in spectacles of wo, and the

benign philanthropist who frequents such scenes with the purpose of

carrying alleviation to their afflictions. All alike, whatever might

be their motives or the spirit of their actions, would rush (as to

some grand festival of curiosity and sentimental luxury) to this public

martyrdom of my innocent wife.

Meantime, what was the first thing to be done? Manifestly, to see Agnes:

her account of the affair might suggest the steps to be taken. Prudence,

therefore, at any rate, prescribed this course; and my heart would not

have tolerated any other. I applied, therefore, at once, for information

as to the proper mode of effecting this purpose without delay. What

was my horror at learning that, by a recent regulation of all the

police-offices, under the direction of the public minister who presided

over that department of the national administration, no person could be

admitted to an interview with any accused party during the progress of

the official examinations; or, in fact, until the final committal of

the prisoner for trial. This rule was supposed to be attended by great

public advantages, and had rarely been relaxed--never, indeed, without a

special interposition of the police minister authorizing its suspension.

But was the exclusion absolute and universal? Might not, at least,

a female servant, simply as the bearer of such articles as were

indispensable to female delicacy and comfort, have access to her

mistress? No; the exclusion was total and unconditional. To argue the

point was manifestly idle; the subordinate officers had no discretion in

the matter; nor, in fact, had any other official person, whatever were

his rank, except the supreme one; and to him I neither had any obvious

means of introduction, nor (in case of obtaining such an introduction)

any chance of success; for the spirit of the rule, I foresaw it would be

answered, applied with especial force to cases like the present.

Mere human feelings of pity, sympathy with my too visible agitation,

superadded to something of perhaps reverence for the blighting misery

that was now opening its artillery upon me--for misery has a privilege,

and everywhere is felt to be a holy thing--had combined to procure for

me some attention and some indulgence hitherto. Answers had been given

with precision, explanations made at length, and anxiety shown

to satisfy my inquiries. But this could not last; the inexorable

necessities of public business coming back in a torrent upon the

official people after this momentary interruption, forbade them to

indulge any further consideration for an individual case, and I saw that

I must not stay any longer. I was rapidly coming to be regarded as a

hinderance to the movement of public affairs; and the recollection

that I might again have occasion for some appeal to these men in their

official characters, admonished me not to abuse my privilege of the

moment. After returning thanks, therefore, for the disposition shown to

oblige me, I retired.

Slowly did I and Hannah retrace our steps. Hannah sustained, in the tone

of her spirits, by the extremity of her anger, a mood of feeling which

I did not share. Indignation was to her in the stead of consolation and

hope. I, for my part, could not seek even a momentary shelter from my

tempestuous affliction in that temper of mind. The man who could accuse

my Agnes, and accuse her of such a crime, I felt to be a monster; and

in my thoughts he was already doomed to a bloody atonement (atonement!

alas! what atonement!) whenever the time arrived that _her_ cause would

not be prejudiced, or the current of public feeling made to turn in his

favor by investing him with the semblance of an injured or suffering

person. So much was settled in my thoughts with the stern serenity of a

decree issuing from a judgment-seat. But that gave no relief, no shadow

of relief, to the misery which was now consuming me. Here was an end, in

one hour, to the happiness of a life. In one hour it had given way, root

and branch--had melted like so much frost-work, or a pageant of vapory

exhalations. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and yet for ever

and ever, I comprehended the total ruin of my situation. The case, as

others might think, was yet in suspense; and there was room enough for

very rational hopes, especially where there was an absolute certainty of

innocence. Total freedom from all doubt on that point seemed to justify

almost more than hopes. This might be said, and most people would have

been more or less consoled by it. I was not. I felt as certain, as

irredeemably, as hopelessly certain of the final results as though I

had seen the record in the books of Heaven. 'Hope nothing,' I said to

myself; 'think not of hope in this world, but think only how best to

walk steadily, and not to reel like a creature wanting discourse of

reason, or incapable of religious hopes under the burden which it has

pleased God to impose, and which in this life cannot be shaken off. The

countenance of man is made to look upward and to the skies. Thither also

point henceforwards your heart and your thoughts. Never again let your

thoughts travel earthwards. Settle them on the heavens, to which your

Agnes is already summoned. The call is clear, and not to be mistaken.

Little in _her_ fate now depends upon you, or upon anything that man

can do. Look, therefore, to yourself; see that you make not shipwreck

of your heavenly freight because your earthly freight is lost; and miss

not, by any acts of wild and presumptuous despair, that final reunion

with your Agnes, which can only be descried through vistas that open

through the heavens.'

Such were the thoughts, thoughts often made audible, which came

spontaneously like oracles from afar, as I strode homewards with Hannah

by my side. Her, meantime, I seemed to hear; for at times I seemed and

I intended to answer her. But answer her I did not; for not ten words of

all that she said did I really and consciously hear. How I went through

that night is more entirely a blank in my memory, more entirely a

chapter of chaos and the confusion of chaos, than any other passage

the most impressive in my life. If I even slumbered for a moment, as at

intervals I did sometimes, though never sitting down, but standing

or pacing about throughout the night, and if in this way I attained a

momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this

enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation

_as_ rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if the

momentary trance--this fugitive beguilement of my wo--had been conceded

by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing the pang,

by thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the insidious peace

preceding it. It is a well known and most familiar experience to all

the sons and daughters of affliction, that under no circumstances is the

piercing, lancinating torment of a recent calamity felt so keenly as in

the first moments of awaking in the morning from the night's slumbers.

Just at the very instant when the clouds of sleep, and the whole

fantastic illusions of dreaminess are dispersing, just as the

realities of life are re-assuming their steadfast forms--re-shaping

themselves--and settling anew into those fixed relations which they are

to preserve throughout the waking hours; in that particular crisis of

transition from the unreal to the real, the wo which besieges the brain

and the life-springs at the heart rushes in afresh amongst the other

crowd of realities, and has at the moment of restoration literally the

force and liveliness of a new birth--the very same pang, and no whit

feebler, as that which belonged to it when it was first made known. From

the total hush of oblivion which had buried it and sealed it up, as it

were, during the sleeping hours, it starts into sudden life on our

first awaking, and is to all intents and purposes a new and not an

old affliction--one which brings with it the old original shock which

attended its first annunciation.

That night--that first night of separation from my wife--_how_ it

passed, I know not; I know only _that_ it passed, I being in our common

bed-chamber, that holiest of all temples that are consecrated to human

attachments, whenever the heart is pure of man and woman, and the love

is strong--I being in that bedchamber, once the temple now the sepulchre

of our happiness,--I there, and my wife--my innocent wife--in a dungeon.

As the morning light began to break, somebody knocked at the door; it

was Hannah: she took my hand--misery levels all feeble distinctions of

station, sex, age--she noticed my excessive feverishness, and gravely

remonstrated with me upon the necessity there was that I should maintain

as much health as possible for the sake of 'others,' if not for myself.

She then brought me some tea, which refreshed me greatly; for I

had tasted nothing at all beyond a little water since the preceding

morning's breakfast. This refreshment seemed to relax and thaw the stiff

frozen state of cheerless, rayless despair in which I had passed the

night; I became susceptible of consolation--that consolation which lies

involved in kindness and gentleness of manner--if not susceptible more

than before of any positive hope. I sat down; and, having no witnesses

to my weakness but this kind and faithful woman, I wept, and I found a

relief in tears; and she, with the ready sympathy of woman, wept along

with me. All at once she ventured upon the circumstances (so far as she

had been able to collect them from the reports of those who had been

present at the examination) of our calamity. There was little indeed

either to excite or to gratify any interest or curiosity separate from

the _personal_ interest inevitably connected with a case to which there

were two such parties as a brutal, sensual, degraded ruffian, on one

side in character of accuser, and on the other as defendant, a meek

angel of a woman, timid and fainting from the horrors of her situation,

and under the licentious gaze of the crowd--yet, at the same time, bold

in conscious innocence, and in the very teeth of the suspicions which

beset her, winning the good opinion, as well as the good wishes of all

who saw her. There had been at this first examination little for her to

say beyond the assigning her name, age, and place of abode; and here

it was fortunate that her own excellent good sense concurred with

her perfect integrity and intuitive hatred of all indirect or crooked

courses in prompting her to an undisguised statement of the simple

truth, without a momentary hesitation or attempt either at evasion or

suppression. With equally good intentions in similar situations many a

woman has seriously injured her cause by slight evasions of the entire

truth, where nevertheless her only purpose has been the natural and

ingenuous one of seeking to save the reputation untainted of a name

which she felt to have been confided to her keeping. The purpose was an

honorable one, but erroneously pursued. Agnes fell into no such error.

She answered calmly, simply, and truly, to every question put by the

magistrates; and beyond _that_ there was little opportunity for her to

speak; the whole business of this preliminary examination being confined

to the deposition of the accuser as to the circumstances under which he

alleged the act of felonious appropriation to have taken place. These

circumstances were perfectly uninteresting, considered in themselves;

but amongst them was one which to us had the most shocking interest,

from the absolute proof thus furnished of a deep-laid plot against

Agnes. But for this one circumstance there would have been a possibility

that the whole had originated in error--error growing out of and

acting upon a nature originally suspicious, and confirmed perhaps by

an unfortunate experience. And in proportion as that was possible, the

chances increased that the accuser might, as the examinations advanced,

and the winning character of the accused party began to develop itself,

begin to see his error, and to retract his own over-hasty suspicions.

But now we saw at a glance that for this hope there was no countenance

whatever, since one solitary circumstance sufficed to establish a

conspiracy. The deposition bore--that the lace had been secreted and

afterwards detected in a muff; now it was a fact as well known to both

of us as the fact of Agnes having gone out at all--that she had laid

aside her winter's dress for the first time on this genial sunny day.

Muff she had not at the time, nor could have had appropriately from the

style of her costume in other respects. What was the effect upon us of

this remarkable discovery! Of course there died at once the hope of any

abandonment by the prosecutor of his purpose; because here was proof of

a predetermined plot. This hope died at once; but then, as it was one

which never had presented itself to my mind, I lost nothing by which I

had ever been solaced. On the other hand, it will be obvious that a new

hope at the same time arose to take its place, viz., the reasonable one

that by this single detection, if once established, we might raise a

strong presumption of conspiracy, and moreover that, as a leading fact

or clue, it might serve to guide us in detecting others. Hannah

was sanguine in this expectation; and for a moment her hopes were

contagiously exciting to mine. But the hideous despondency which in

my mind had settled upon the whole affair from the very first, the

superstitious presentiment I had of a total blight brooding over the

entire harvest of my life and its promises, (tracing itself originally,

I am almost ashamed to own, up to that prediction of the Hungarian

woman)--denied me steady light, anything--all in short but a wandering

ray of hope. It was right, of course, nay, indispensable, that the

circumstance of the muff should be strongly insisted upon at the

next examination, pressed against the prosecutor, and sifted to the

uttermost. An able lawyer would turn this to a triumphant account; and

it would be admirable as a means of pre-engaging the good opinion as

well as the sympathies of the public in behalf of the prisoner. But,

for its final effect--my conviction remained, not to be shaken, that all

would be useless; that our doom had gone forth, and was irrevocable.