The letter which Jack, having hastily glanced at the superscription,
thrust out of sight, follows.
“Walworth, Tuesday.
“DEAR JOHN,
“I hope you will not be angry with me for writing to-day. You
remember what day it is? I think I need not remind you that it is
your poor Anne’s birthday. For three or four years after Katharine’s
marriage with George, and their departure for the Indies, you used to
write to _me_ on this day, but you afterwards left off doing so; and
I should not perhaps have broken in upon you now if the anniversary
had been as bright and as cheering as it once used to be. No, my dear
John, ‘hope deferred maketh the heart sick;’ and although I have by
this time learned to give up all expectation of your fulfilling
your promises made to me before your father’s death, I neither have
forgotten my affection for _you_, nor mean to upbraid you with your
forgetfulness of _me_.
“When we were so much together, and when you said you could be happy
with nobody else, and told me of your dread of your father’s anger,
which he had indeed shown by never seeing poor Katharine after her
marriage with my brother George, you led me to believe that the old
gentleman’s objections were the only obstacles in the way of our
marriage. I lived on--not in hopes of his death, for I could not be
so wicked as to hope for that--but I lived on, certain that, when it
should please Providence to take him, you would fulfil your promise
and redeem your pledge. He died, John, but you came not to me, wrote
not to me. Day after day I watched; listened to every knock at the
door, fancying it might be you; and every time I saw the postman
coming towards our lodging, my heart beat because I thought he might
bring me a letter from you.
“A year passed away, and then, as you know, I wrote to you, rather
because I had heard from George and your sister, and wished you to
have news of them, which I knew you could not otherwise get, than to
worry you with my own importunities. You answered _that_ letter, but
you came not yourself, neither did the letter which you wrote contain
one kind word, or one allusion to other days, now past and gone. Yet
I complained not. I heard of you in gay parties and gay places; I
sighed to think how far we were parted, and perhaps I cried, John:
but you were happy and prosperous, and doing well in the world; and I
could only blame myself for having, when a girl, been so foolish as
to fancy that you cared for me enough to make me your wife.
“Six years and two months this very day was the first time we met,
and God knows, although I have felt sorrow and sadness enough since,
it seems to me as if it were but yesterday. It was to oblige and
serve your sister Katharine, who was my friend, that I walked out
with her, when she used to meet George. I did not see any harm in
their courtship: I thought well of my brother; I knew he was kind and
good; his officers gave him the highest character for steadiness,
activity, honour, and integrity; he loved _her_, and she loved _him_.
I ought, perhaps, to have known, that he was not what is called a
suitable match for Katharine; but girls of seventeen, especially
upon such matters, do not always calculate. I am sure _I_ did not,
or I would not have helped her to take a step which was to make her
parents so angry.
“It was the same blindness in my own case that permitted me to listen
to your professions. I am not ashamed to own, John, that I loved you
fondly; nor am I ashamed to tell you, although perhaps you will not
believe me, that the impressions made _then_ remain as strong as
ever. I have not seen you here for more now than three years. Perhaps
it is for the best. I _did_ see you once, now about four months
since, riding with another gentleman; it was in the Kent Road. I
thought you saw _me_, but I am sure I must have been mistaken.
“What I now write about, cuts me to the soul! _My_ fate is sealed!
and never shall a murmur of mine for myself cause you a moment’s
uneasiness. The folly was mine: I alone will suffer!--But there _is_
another to whom--I scarce can hold my pen to write the words--to
whom, by the strongest ties of nature, and the sacred word of God, I
am bound. I could not beg of a stranger; my heart would burst before
I could confess my wretchedness;--to _you_, John, I _can_ speak. My
poor mother is, I fear, dying. She has been confined to her bed for
several days, and I have nobody to watch over her but myself. Her
illness has prevented her working, and my constant attendance upon
her, has hindered me from doing anything myself. Do not be angry with
me, John; what I ask, is not for myself. She shall bless you for your
care of her, and be grateful for any little aid you may afford her.
When she recovers, she and I will struggle to repay you.
“If you required any proof of my unshaken regard, you might find it
in this request. As I have told you, time and reflection have taught
me the folly of my ever considering you more than a friend,--it is
in the character of a dear friend that I ask this favour for the best
of parents.
“I have put the address to this letter, which is the same as the
one which was to my last; but I thought, perhaps, you might have
destroyed it and forgotten the direction. We have not heard from
George for more than two years, which makes my poor mother very sad;
but we have been told that his regiment is coming home. You who are
so much in the world could find out in a minute, I know: even if you
did not care about George, you must be anxious to hear of Katharine,
whom you fondly loved, and who I know loved you with equal affection.
“I will not take up more of your time. Let me have one line, to say
you have received this. I shall count the minutes till I get your
answer, which may at all events assure me that you are not angry
with me. God bless you, John--dear John! and assure yourself of the
affectionate friendship of
“Yours,
ANNE BROWN.
“You will see by the seal of this, how your present to me was valued,
and how it has been treasured. Adieu.”
This was the letter which Mr. John Brag thrust into his coat pocket
in his mother’s presence, and which in five minutes afterwards was
as hastily withdrawn from it and thrown into the fire unopened and
unread. “John,” as poor Anne called him, knew the writing, and with
the low cunning of a vulgar mind, fancied he could justly anticipate
the contents of an appeal from an amiable woman whom he had deluded
and betrayed, leaving her no consolation in her desertion but that
which she could not fail to derive from the support of religion and the
consciousness of her own unspotted virtue.
Yes, Anne, the humble unpretending Anne, was still the gentle, modest
creature he had found her. Her mind was, perhaps, not so very highly
cultivated as others in the world, nor were her accomplishments so
numerous, but she was a woman; and kindness, duty, devotion, and
disinterestedness were blended in the composition of her character.
Mr. John Brag would probably have described her in different terms,
had he ever permitted himself to speak of her, and perhaps would have
affected to pity the “poor creature,” while he laughed at her fondness
and credulity. Mr. John Brag was a great talker, and everybody knows
what that is. The nature and extent of his feelings and regard for the
once loved of his earlier days may easily be ascertained, by the way in
which he treated her appeal. He stood and looked at the flames as they
scorched and finally consumed the paper, and quitted the room perfectly
satisfied with his firmness and philosophy, thinking, as it appeared,
with Lord Monteagle’s anonymous friend, that “the danger was past as
soon as he had burned the letter.”
The writing this letter to one whom she yet believed in heart devoted
to her, although withheld from making her his wife by considerations
first instilled into his mind by his late father, and, for all she
knew, kept alive by his surviving parent, cost poor Anne a severe
struggle. When it was despatched, it became the sole object of her
consideration from morning till night. The doubt whether she had done
wrong,--whether John would think ill of her, or fancy her mercenary or
presuming,--whether he would receive it as she hoped, and come perhaps
himself, bearing the relief she sought for her poor mother,--whether
he would make a point of taking it to her on the day upon which the
application reached him, the day upon one anniversary of which he had
given her the very seal with which she had sealed it,--whether it might
awaken feelings which she was sure he possessed, but which, for the
reasons we have just stated, had been suffered to lie dormant,--and
whether----!
But vain were all her hopes--groundless all her fears,--by one rude
blow the bond between them had been eternally severed; and while the
poor anxious Anne was pondering these things in her mind, Mr. John Brag
was dining at the Ship Tavern at Greenwich, with a party of uncommonly
fine fellows, who, in spite of those leviathans of the deep, the
steam-ships, which agitate the surface of the once silver Thames into
a sort of metropolitan sea, had pulled down from Whitehall in their
accustomed blue shirts, to partake of the fare for which, as well as
its hospital, Greenwich is so famous.
Day passed after day, and, as the reader may easily anticipate, Anne
and her application remained unnoticed. In _her_ mind this silence was
associated with some calamity which must have befallen John, and this
apprehension added to her other griefs and anxiety; meanwhile, her
mother’s illness increased, and, almost without the common necessaries
of life, Anne was at all hazards forced to call in medical assistance.
She had here again a difficult, a delicate task to perform, but it was
a duty, a filial duty; and who can doubt that the well-regulated mind
of this now humble girl was soon made up as to the course she was to
pursue? The reader may have noticed the expression, “_now_ humble,” it
is meant that he should notice it, because, humble as was and had been
the position of the mother and her two children, they had been born to
better things. Anne’s father was the son of a Bristol merchant who had
amassed considerable property, to which his son succeeded. He married
early, and, contrary to the advice of his friends, left his native city
to enter upon a new field of speculation in London.
Those who remember the wonderful prospects held out in the year 1825,
and who perhaps are even yet suffering from the effects of their
vast and sudden destruction, may anticipate the termination of Mr.
Brown’s career at an earlier period. Those who at the present moment
are assailed on every side by the most plausible professions and the
most tempting offers of fortunes incalculable, by an embarkation in
the variously diverging abominations called rail-roads, and who fancy
a dividend is at hand before a spade has been struck in the ground,
which it is proposed to disfigure and destroy for the lucre of gain,
had better take warning by it.--For some two or three years Mr.
Brown occupied a handsome house, his table was open to his numerous
mercantile friends, and, in those days, everything that Mr. Brown
possessed was of the best, everything he did was of the wisest. The
war which the triumph of Waterloo so gloriously closed, was, at
the time of Mr. Brown’s prosperity, raging fiercely; every foreign
port was closed by an embargo; the market was safely shut against
the importation of an article in general demand, of which he held
a considerable quantity. The fine and liberal notion struck him of
buying up at all hazards and all prices this desirable commodity:--he
did so,--and, although as a young beginner in London not much known,
he had agents all over the Empire, who were employed by him to keep
incessantly purchasing, until warehouse after warehouse was stored with
it, and he became nearly the only holder in the kingdom. Thus, having
long before expended all his capital in the pursuit, he proposed to
regulate the market with the turn of his finger. The price advanced, he
still held; it advanced yet more; and he began to doubt whether he had
screwed it up to a pitch sufficiently high to answer his purpose, and
make him a _millionaire_; when, one fine morning, an order in council
suddenly and unexpectedly opened the long-closed ports, and the next
week beheld, Mr. Brown an irretrievably ruined bankrupt.
In the pursuit of his infatuating speculation his engagements had
become incalculably enormous, and the consequent securities unbounded.
The shock of such a reverse was too much for such a mind, and in the
midst of recklessness, remorse, and despair, he consummated all his
other madnesses by suicide.
In the hour of distress, it was shown that no provision had been made
for his widow and two children. His connexions at Bristol were few,
and those, greatly offended at his quitting his native city, did not
feel at all disposed to relieve his relict, whom, however unjustly,
they thought proper, conveniently enough in order to save their own
pence, to denounce as the first cause of his increased rate of living,
to support which he had had recourse to extraordinary means of gain;
and when all was done that _could_ be done, an annuity of forty pounds
a year was secured for her, by a subscription amongst a few of her
husband’s friends in London.
The fall was sudden, dreadful; at that period her son George was about
eighteen, Anne about twelve. George had received a fair education at
a school at Clapton or Hackney, I now forget which, and was a fine
handsome grown young man. Anne was almost too young to appreciate the
full extent of her misfortune, and her affectionate disposition led her
thus early to devote all her care to her surviving parent, to whom the
change in their circumstances and station, to her almost unaccountable,
only endeared her the more.
George was old enough to know the whole truth, and to feel the
bitterness of repulse when his mother tried to procure him a mercantile
situation in the city, and being of a bold and resolute character,
he left his home without any communication with either his mother or
sister, and enlisted in an infantry regiment, then in Ireland. It was
not until his scheme had been irrevocably completed, that he imparted
the truth to his parent, and then returning to receive her blessing,
departed for the Emerald Isle with a sort of negative concurrence on
her part, obtained by the expression of his determination upon the
point, and an avowal that, if he even could obtain footing in any
merchant’s counting-house, he felt assured that his disposition and
feelings would not permit him to continue in it.
George’s removal from her care and charge, however much she lamented
the separation, of course relieved the widow from considerable expense;
and the little Anne was not yet of an age to require much outlay; for
her mother, who had been cruelly misrepresented by her late husband’s
connexions as being the cause and origin of his follies, was of a most
domestic turn of mind, and sufficiently accomplished to instruct her
daughter in as much of ornamental education as it was probable she ever
would require.
Still it was evident that the annuity which was secured to her would
not be sufficient to support them without additions derivable from
some other source; and thus it was that she formed the resolution
of retiring to one of the villages near town, and turning the minor
accomplishments which she possessed, to account, in order to increase
her income. This she did, and, under the blessing of Providence,
successfully. Undisturbed by the inquiries of any of the friends
of her prosperity, but encouraged by the respectable inhabitants
of the neighbourhood in which she had fixed her humble abode, she
obtained by the sale of numerous fancy articles of her own making,
and by even humbler employments, a sufficient income to render _her_
happy, inasmuch as it secured the society of her beloved daughter.
In Bristol and its neighbourhood the name of Brown, common as it is,
might from circumstances have attracted the unpleasant curiosity of
some, and entailed upon her the equally disagreeable commiseration
or condemnation--coming hand in hand, perhaps--of others; but in the
neighbourhood of London few people, out of his own immediate circle,
knew the victim of ill-fated ambition, and all that was said of Mrs.
Brown in the village in which she located herself was, that she was a
remarkably nice civil lady-like person, and had evidently been born
much above the station she then filled.
It was about two years after George’s departure from the home he had
scarcely inhabited, that the acquaintance between Katharine Brag and
Nancy Brown commenced. It originated in the fact that Mrs. Brown,
anxious that her child should improve herself upon certain points
of education beyond those to which she might herself be competent
to lead her, or rather, if the truth were told, finding that more
regularity and restraint were necessary to settle the habits and
fix the attention of her child, than were likely to be observed or
enforced at home, resolved on sending her as a day scholar to Lavender
Lodge, the “Seminary for young Ladies,” at which Miss Brag was--in all
probability as a set-off for soap and candles--being polished up to
perfection--this special favour being granted to the widow on account
of her exemplary conduct, and the universal respect in which she was
held.
With the girls at Lavender Lodge, little Anne soon became an amazing
favourite and a general pet. The very circumstance of her returning
home to dinner, and quitting her companions after school hours, gave
her a sort of distinction, and made her, as it were, the medium
of intelligence, and even of communication, by which contraband
luxuries were sometimes smuggled in, and what are technically called
“slip-letters,” from the bigger girls to their friends, were smuggled
out of the seminary. By these acts of kindness, the impropriety of
which Nancy was then not old enough perfectly to comprehend, she was
quite the fashion, and the boarders were unanimous in treating her with
kindness and affection.
Amongst her greatest friends was Katharine Brag, who was more than
ordinarily good-natured to her, and during the three years Miss Brag
remained at school before she was pronounced everything that heart
could wish, Anne had grown up to be more than sixteen years of age--and
had so far gained the confidence of the head of the establishment, that
it seemed more than probable she might eventually become a permanent
assistant in its duties. Circumstances, however, occurred to put an end
to this probability; for a lady who had taken considerable interest
in Mrs. Brown’s success, made a proposal to her to establish herself
in the village of Walworth, near London, where she was certain she
could ensure her support and patronage in the sale of her various
works, as well as in the art and mystery of dress-making, which the
industrious mother had studied, and now practised, to maintain herself
and her child. This offer, superadded to the desire of Anne herself
to contribute her share of labour to their joint maintenance, decided
their removal.
This change of habitation tended rather to confirm the friendship of
Miss Brag for her friend; for it was effected just about the period at
which that young lady finally quitted school. The amiable manners of
Anne again became her passport into the society of the elder Brags; and
although she was received as the humble companion of the young lady,
she was so genteel and so clever that they thought (much strengthened
in their opinions by that of their daughter) that it was greatly to her
advantage to have such a companion.
In the midst of this happy communion, and just as John Brag had begun
to look at Anne with eyes not quite indifferent, her brother George
arrived at home on leave of absence from his regiment, previous to its
departure for India. He was then a fine handsome young man, of two or
three and twenty. The military drillings he had undergone had set him
up, and his figure was just what a figure ought to be. The career he
had run since he entered the army had been honourable and satisfactory.
The notice of his officers had very early after his enlistment been
attracted to the attention, regularity, and assiduity with which he
performed all his military duties; and a rumour having soon got about
that he was something better than he seemed to be, he was taken notice
of by the captain of his company, who, after inquiries, not further
pushed than he felt consistent with delicacy, and the evident desire of
the young man himself for a certain degree of concealment, suggested
him as a fit occupant of the office of paymaster’s clerk, for which
it was evident he was fully qualified:--he was speedily raised to be
a corporal, and before his first four years of service were expired,
had become serjeant-major of his regiment, a circumstance perhaps
unparalleled in the British service.
In one of those moments which decide the fate of empires and of ladies,
Katharine Brag met George Brown; it took but one glance of his bright
eyes to scorch her susceptible heart, and unfortunately or fortunately,
as the case may be, George Brown reciprocated the feeling. It was no
difficult matter to get Anne to agree to Katharine’s avowal, that
she had never seen so charming a person,--an officer too,--the thing
of all others; for the immediate rank of the young hero “in mufti”
was never explicitly defined; and while she was contriving all sorts
of devices to enjoy his society in the participation of the various
amusements of middling life, her brother John, who had become great
friends with George for the sake of his sister, fell into all their
arrangements with the greatest readiness; so that every day in which
they could manage it, little parties were made for Exhibitions,
Panoramas, and all the Vauxhalls, Lyceums, Playhouses, and places of
public resort, where either during the performance or after it was
over, they might so satisfactorily pair off, as to leave themselves
counterchanged in couples, to the unqualified delights of that sort of
honeyed conversation, to which it is as impossible to do justice in the
repetition, as it is barbarous to interrupt in its progress.
After the play, as George was with her, Anne would stop to supper with
the old Brags; and then, as John Brag was fond of exercise, he would
see George and his sister home to Walworth after supper was over; and
so they went on, until John was desperately in love with Anne, and
Katharine resolved upon marrying George.
Katharine believed that she had great influence over her father, and,
from what Anne had told her of her origin, never imagined but that she
should procure his consent to her marriage with George,--an affair
which “pressed,” inasmuch as his leave would be out in about three
weeks, and away he must march with his regiment. So Katharine, one fine
afternoon, just gently touched upon the subject of Mr. Brown’s good
qualities, in a _tête-à-tête_ with her papa, and led the conversation
into a channel which she thought very likely to extort an opinion from
the old gentleman. She was right;--she succeeded in her speculation,
and heard, to her infinite horror and amazement, that he would see a
daughter of his dead at his feet before she should marry what he called
a “Soger.”
And then forthwith “flared up” the anger of the venerable Brag, who,
though a really plain straightforward man, and as free from pride
or affectation as any wax and tallow chandler within the bills of
mortality, became absolutely furious at the notion of this dress-maker
and her brother,--people admitted only just to please his daughter’s
fancy,--presuming and daring, and all _that_: which fury ended in a
positive prohibition of any further intercourse between the parties;
a mandate for which was accordingly issued, sanctioned of course by
Mrs. Brag, who however, in yielding her accordance to the decree, could
not help thinking that Anne and her brother were as nice a couple of
people as ever she had seen in all her born days.
It was at this juncture that the friendship of Anne for Katharine Brag
and her affection for George were called into action. It was then she
contrived meetings for them, to which Kate came escorted by John, and
George accompanied by herself. Up to this period these had been matters
of course; but when old Brag shut his doors against the Browns, and
handed his daughter over to the care and surveillance of her brother
John, it became another sort of affair, and as John was too happy to
bask in Nancy’s smiles, he gladly squired his love-sick sister to their
appointments; and thus matters went on for a fortnight or so, when
Kitty Brag ran away with the young Sergeant, who, having as well as his
bride attained the years of discretion, procured a licence and became
man and wife,--a fact which came to the knowledge of the respectable
parents of the bride by her non-appearance at breakfast, and a return
of “_non est inventa_” made to a sort of warrant sent after her into
her bed-room, whence she had decamped very early indeed in the morning.
From that morning neither Brag the elder nor Mrs. Brag had ever seen
their child up to the period of the commencement of my narrative; Mr.
Brag, as we know, had been gathered to his fathers; and George and his
wife were still in India.
After the wedding and flight the proscribed Anne used to see John, who
contrived, unknown to the old people, to visit her and her mother as
usual. This acquaintance was for some time continued as the reader may
have already discovered; its happy termination being only delayed, as
Brag had himself said, until the death of his father should leave him
free to act for himself. Meanwhile the said father having then but one
object left upon which to lavish all his paternal affection, gave his
son counsel and promises which led him to aspire, and, as he said,
“look up,” and so Johnny by degrees became less ardent and infinitely
more civil towards Miss Brown, until by those gentle gradations of
coolness which fond and anxious hearts can only justly estimate,
she saw him seldom, and heard from him rarely. His father’s death
occurred,--Brag immediately took a higher flight, and having furbished
himself up by dint of private lessons and evening tuition, was ready,
when he came into possession of the business, to abandon the course
which his blinded parent had pursued, to enable him to cut a figure,
and became the thing which the reader has already seen him to be.
The intelligence which Mrs. Brown had from time to time received of
George was extremely satisfactory; he had been specially noticed by
Major Mopes, (the military secretary of Sir Cadwallader Adamthwaite,
the commander-in-chief at the presidency,) who had, upon the
recommendation of the paymaster of the regiment, whose clerk he had
been, appointed him to a similar situation in his office; a step which
George, who was full of ambition, wrote home to say he hoped might lead
to better things.
What they might be, Mrs. Brown of Walworth did not exactly understand;
however, he appeared happy, spoke affectionately of his wife, and
looked forward to the next ten or fifteen years as likely to bring him
home again. To Anne, a prospective view of ten or fifteen years was but
a sad one; the loss of Katharine had been to her severe and trying,
and every month, and every year grew sadder, until at last the only
consolation left which she derived from George’s letters, was lost,
and at the time she wrote the appeal to John, with which the chapter
begins, she had not, as she says, heard from him for more than two
years.
Then it was that real sorrow and bitterness of heart came over
her,--her mother’s illness, her brother’s silence, her lover’s
falsehood, her own destitution,--it was a dreadful combination of
evils, against which she had to bear up. One other blow was only
wanting to overwhelm her,--and it fell.
There _are_ moments when the most serious calamities affect us less
than matters which to the million may appear of no moment or importance
whatever; a look, a frown, a smile, nothing in themselves, have, when
the mind is wrought up to a certain pitch of excitement, a power more
dreadful than the gravest evils of another day.
I have already said that, after waiting for an answer to the letter
she wrote to “John,”--on her birth-day,--sealed with his seal,--and
moistened with her tears--(the letter he destroyed unread),--she felt
the absolute necessity of overcoming all scruples, and conquering all
repugnance to what might be considered the solicitation of charity in
favour of her mother; and accordingly she set forth from their humble
dwelling, leaving her sinking parent in the care of a temporary nurse,
to call upon a well-known professional man in the neighbourhood of
Burlington Gardens, of whom she had often heard the lady who first
induced them to take up their abode in Walworth (but who now was
herself dead)--speak in the highest terms. Anne had indeed seen him at
that lady’s house, and felt that that circumstance gave her something
like confidence to make an appeal to him on behalf of her sick mother,
which she would not have felt with regard to a perfect stranger.
Behold then this fair, fond, and affectionate daughter on her
way--trembling and doubting, as she hurried along the crowded
streets,--her eyes cast down or heedlessly wandering, while her
thoughts are all concentered on the pillow on which her dying mother’s
aching head was laid; a prayer to Heaven resting on her lips, and
hope, strengthened and sanctified by the silent appeal, glowing in her
heart. Just as she reaches the neighbourhood of the worthy man who is
to minister worldly relief to her parent’s afflictions, her way is
intercepted,--there is a crowd--a stoppage,--she is rudely pressed
upon,--stared at, by an unmeaning insolent countenance belonging to a
tall, tiger-looking, smoke-dried dandy, upon whose arm is leaning a
short, smart, vulgar-genteel companion. The tall fellow continues his
gaze for a moment; the short fellow, emulating this impertinence, and
anxious to behold the beauty who has attracted his friend’s attention,
proceeds to the manual experiment of pinching her arm. The suffering
wanderer turns indignantly to repel the insult, and sees before her,
grinning and grimacing, like a baboon, that paragon of pretension, Mr.
John Brag.
At such a moment such a sight was, indeed, a trial;--but if it struck
daggers into her heart thus to be treated by _him_, who once, and in
other days, had vowed his vow of love and faith to her, what must she
have felt, when, upon beholding her pallid agitated countenance, she
saw the fellow wink at his companion, and heard him exclaim with the
peculiar elegance of the school to which he aspired to belong, “Ho,
ho,--come along, my lord--no go--this _is_ a mistake,”--and clutching
his tall friend’s arm, hurry on, shrugging up his shoulders in a sort
of mock despair, and no doubt giving his own version of the nature of
the previous acquaintance which had evidently subsisted between himself
and the supposed stranger!
Anne stood still for a moment--had she tried to move forward, she
would have fallen;--her breath faltered--the blood seemed to ebb and
flow in her heart--her eyes swam with tears;--she was better,--she
continued her way, and reached the physician’s door,--it was opened
to her, and she was shown into a parlour where those who came under
similar circumstances were accustomed to wait:--there it was that her
feelings had way,--she scarcely had entered, before floods of tears
poured down her pale cheeks, and they who had come for advice and
assistance themselves, were eager and active in her service. As soon
as intelligence of the circumstance had been conveyed to the master
of the house, he made his appearance in the apartment, and seeing the
extent of poor Anne’s agitation, caused her to be removed into another
room, where every attention was paid her which the exigency of her case
required.
Her agitation, however, appeared to increase, and the moment she was
sufficiently recovered to attempt to explain herself, she relapsed into
a state so painful and alarming, that the excellent man, satisfied
by the circumstances that she was laboring under some excitement, any
attempt to soothe which, upon the instant would be perfectly vain
and useless, placed her in the care of his housekeeper, (for whom he
dispatched a servant,) with directions to keep the young lady perfectly
quiet, and endeavour to soothe and calm her mind until he should
return, after having seen those patients who were in the habit, at
stated hours, of calling upon _him_ at his own house.
And while all this was going on, Mr. John Brag and his friend Lord Tom
Towzle, who, as the reader perhaps has anticipated, was his companion
upon the occasion, and whom although he “Tommied” him and “Towzled”
him in his absence, he “my lorded” in his presence to an immeasurable
extent of vulgarity, not merely to toady the stripling but to be
overheard by the passing crowd--were, as I suspected, engaged in an
elaborate detail of Jack’s foregone adventures with Anne, which, as
Lord Tom did not care whether Brag were hanged or not, so as he rode
his horse “Slap-bang” to win on the following Thursday, he might just
as well have saved himself the trouble of repeating.
Upon what small things great things turn, say ten thousand writers,--so
is it proved by this adventure of Mr. Brag’s. Worlds would not have
convinced Anne Brown of his falsehood and heartlessness, had this event
not occurred; they were now proclaimed--established,--practically
established. His first assault might have been mere rudeness,--not
likely to endear him to one who fancied him devoted to her; but when
the discovery _had been_ made, and he saw whom he had outraged, to
conduct himself as he had done, was enough to decide the question.
Thus it is that we learn more in an hour from a lecture illustrated
by experiments, than we can collect from written treatises or printed
instructions in a year. The art, or science, whatever it may be, is
embodied,--you have it before you,--and the very facility with which
the professor performs his operations, makes the spectator himself a
proficient.
So was it with Anne:--she had seen what no book could have taught her,
she had witnessed _that_ which no other evidence would have induced her
to believe. The blow was severe, but perhaps it was providential.