When the dean’s family had been at Anfield about a month—one misty morning, such as portends a sultry day, as Henry was walking swiftly through a thick wood, on the skirts of the parish, he suddenly started on hearing a distant groan, expressive, as he thought, both of bodily and mental pain. He stopped to hear it repeated, that he might pursue the sound. He heard it again; and though now but in murmurs, yet, as the tone implied excessive grief, he directed his course to that part of the wood from which it came.
As he advanced, in spite of the thick fog, he discerned the appearance of a female stealing away on his approach. His eye was fixed on this object; and regardless where he placed his feet, he soon shrunk back with horror, on perceiving they had nearly trod upon a new-born infant, lying on the ground!—a lovely male child, entered on a world where not one preparation had been made to receive him.
“Ah!” cried Henry, forgetting the person who had fled, and with a smile of compassion on the helpless infant, “I am glad I have found you—you give more joy to me than you have done to your hapless parents. Poor dear,” continued he, while he took off his coat to wrap it in, “I will take care of you while I live—I will beg for you, rather than you shall want; but first, I will carry you to those who can, at present, do more for you than myself.”
Thus Henry said and thought, while he enclosed the child carefully in his coat, and took it in his arms. But proceeding to walk his way with it, an unlucky query struck him,where he should go.
“I must not take it to the dean’s,” he cried, “because Lady Clementina will suspect it is not nobly, and my uncle will suspect it is not lawfully, born. Nor must I take it to Lord Bendham’s for the self-same reason, though, could it call Lady Bendham mother, this whole village, nay, the whole country round, would ring with rejoicings for its birth. How strange!” continued he, “that we should make so little of human creatures, that one sent among us, wholly independent of his own high value, becomes a curse instead of a blessing by the mere accident of circumstances.”
He now, after walking out of the wood, peeped through the folds of his coat to look again at his charge. He started, turned pale, and trembled to behold what, in the surprise of first seeing the child, had escaped his observation. Around its little throat was a cord entwined by a slipping noose, and drawn half way—as if the trembling hand of the murderer had revolted from its dreadful office, and he or she had heft the infant to pine away in nakedness and hunger, rather than see it die.
Again Henry wished himself joy of the treasure he had found; and more fervently than before; for he had not only preserved one fellow-creature from death, but another from murder.
Once more he looked at his charge, and was transported to observe, upon its serene brow and sleepy eye, no traces of the dangers it had passed—no trait of shame either for itself or its parents—no discomposure at the unwelcome reception it was likely to encounter from a proud world! He now slipped the fatal string from its neck; and by this affectionate disturbance causing the child to cry, he ran (but he scarcely knew whither) to convey it to a better nurse.
He at length found himself at the door of his dear Rebecca—for so very happy Henry felt at the good luck which had befallen him, that he longed to bestow a part of the blessing upon her he loved.
He sent for her privately out of the house to speak to him. When she came, “Rebecca,” said he (looking around that no one observed him), “Rebecca, I have brought you something you will like.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“You know, Rebecca, that you love deserted birds, strayed kittens, and motherless lambs. I have brought something more pitiable than any of these. Go, get a cap and a little gown, and then I will give it you.”
“A gown!” exclaimed Rebecca. “If you have brought me a monkey, much as I should esteem any present fromyou, indeed I cannot touch it.”
“A monkey!” repeated Henry, almost in anger: then changing the tone of his voice, exclaimed in triumph,
“It is a child!”
On this he gave it a gentle pinch, that its cry might confirm the pleasing truth he spoke.
“A child!” repeated Rebecca in amaze.
“Yes, and indeed I found it.”
“Found it!”
“Indeed I did. The mother, I fear, had just forsaken it.”
“Inhuman creature!”
“Nay, hold, Rebecca! I am sure you will pity her when you see her child—you then will know she must have loved it—and you will consider how much she certainly had suffered before she left it to perish in a wood.”
“Cruel!” once more exclaimed Rebecca.
“Oh! Rebecca, perhaps, had she possessed a home of her own she would have given it the best place in it; had she possessed money, she would have dressed it with the nicest care; or had she been accustomed to disgrace, she would have gloried in calling it hers! But now, as it is, it is sent to us—to you and me, Rebecca—to take care of.”
Rebecca, soothed by Henry’s compassionate eloquence, held out her arms and received the important parcel; and, as she kindly looked in upon the little stranger,
“Now, are not you much obliged to me,” said Henry, “for having brought it to you? I know no one but yourself to whom I would have trusted it with pleasure.”
“Much obliged to you,” repeated Rebecca, with a very serious face, “if I did but know what to do with it—where to put it—where to hide it from my father and sisters.”
“Oh! anywhere,” returned Henry. “It is very good—it will not cry. Besides, in one of the distant, unfrequented rooms of your old abbey, through the thick walls and long gallery, an infant’s cry cannot pass. Yet, pray be cautious how you conceal it; for if it should be discovered by your father or sisters, they will take it from you, prosecute the wretched mother, and send the child to the parish.”
“I will do all I can to prevent them,” said Rebecca; “and I think I call to mind a part of the house where itmustbe safe. I know, too, I can take milk from the dairy, and bread from the pantry, without their being missed, or my father much the poorer. But if—” That instant they were interrupted by the appearance of the stern curate at a little distance. Henry was obliged to run swiftly away, while Rebecca returned by stealth into the house with her innocent burthen.
There is a word in the vocabulary more bitter, more direful in its import, than all the rest. Reader, if poverty, if disgrace, if bodily pain, even if slighted love be your unhappy fate, kneel and bless Heaven for its beneficent influence, so that you are not tortured with the anguish of—remorse.
Deep contrition for past offences had long been the punishment of unhappy Agnes; but, till the day she brought her child into the world,remorsehad been averted. From that day, life became an insupportable load, for all reflection was torture! To think, merely to think, was to suffer excruciating agony; yet, never before wasthoughtso intrusive—it haunted her in every spot, in all discourse or company: sleep was no shelter—she never slept but her racking dreams told her—“she had slain her infant.”
They presented to her view the naked innocent whom she had longed to press to her bosom, while she lifted up her hand against its life. They laid before her the piteous babe whom her eyeballs strained to behold once more, while her feet hurried her away for ever.
Often had Agnes, by the winter’s fire, listened to tales of ghosts—of the unceasing sting of a guilty conscience; often had she shuddered at the recital of murders; often had she wept over the story of the innocent put to death, and stood aghast that the human mind could premeditate the heinous crime of assassination.
From the tenderest passion the most savage impulse may arise: in the deep recesses of fondness, sometimes is implanted the root of cruelty; and from loving William with unbounded lawless affection, she found herself depraved so as to become the very object which could most of all excite her own horror!
Still, at delirious intervals, that passion, which, like a fatal talisman, had enchanted her whole soul, held out the delusive prospect that “William might yet relent;” for, though she had for ever discarded the hope of peace, she could not force herself to think but that, again blest with his society, she should, at least for the time that he was present with her, taste the sweet cup of “forgetfulness of the past,” for which she so ardently thirsted.
“Should he return to me,” she thought in those paroxysms of delusion, “I would tohimunbosom all my guilt; and as a remote, a kind of unwary accomplice in my crime, his sense, his arguments, ever ready in making light of my sins, might afford a respite to my troubled conscience.”
While thus she unwittingly thought, and sometimes watched through the night, starting with convulsed rapture at every sound, because it might possibly be the harbinger of him,hewas busied in carefully looking over marriage articles, fixing the place of residence with his destined bride, or making love to her in formal process. Yet, Agnes, vaunt!—he sometimes thought on thee—he could not witness the folly, the weakness, the vanity, the selfishness of his future wife, without frequently comparing her with thee. When equivocal words and prevaricating sentences fell from her lips, he remembered with a sigh thy candour—that open sincerity which dwelt upon thy tongue, and seemed to vie with thy undisguised features, to charm the listener even beyond the spectator. While Miss Sedgeley eagerly grasped at all the gifts he offered, he could not but call to mind “that Agnes’s declining hand was always closed, and her looks forbidding, every time he proffered such disrespectful tokens of his love.” He recollected the softness which beamed from her eyes, the blush on her face at his approach, while he could never discern one glance of tenderness from the niece of Lord Bendham: and the artificial bloom on her cheeks was nearly as disgusting as the ill-conducted artifice with which she attempted gentleness and love.
But all these impediments were only observed as trials of his fortitude—his prudence could overcome his aversion, and thus he valued himself upon his manly firmness.
’Twas now, that William being rid, by the peevishness of Agnes, most honourably of all future ties to her, and the day of his marriage with Miss Sedgeley being fixed, that Henry, with the rest of the house, learnt what to them was news. The first dart of Henry’s eye upon his cousin, when, in his presence, he was told of the intended union, caused a reddening on the face of the latter: he always fancied Henry saw his thoughts; and he knew that Henry in return would give himhis. On the present occasion, no sooner were they alone, and Henry began to utter them, than William charged him—“Not to dare to proceed; for that, too long accustomed to trifle, the time was come when serious matters could alone employ his time; and when men of approved sense must take place of friends and confidants like him.”
Henry replied, “The love, the sincerity of friends, I thought, were their best qualities: these I possess.”
“But you do not possess knowledge.”
“If that be knowledge which has of late estranged you from all who bear you a sincere affection; which imprints every day more and more upon your features the marks of gloomy inquietude; am I not happier in my ignorance?”
“Do not torment me with your ineffectual reasoning.”
“I called at the cottage of poor Agnes the other day,” returned Henry: “her father and mother were taking their homely meal alone; and when I asked for their daughter, they wept and said—Agnes was not the girl she had been.”
William cast his eyes on the floor.
Henry proceeded—“They said a sickness, which they feared would bring her to the grave, had preyed upon her for some time past. They had procured a doctor: but no remedy was found, and they feared the worst.”
“What worst!” cried William (now recovered from the effect of the sudden intelligence, and attempting a smile). “Do they think she will die? And do you think it will be for love? We do not hear of these deaths often, Henry.”
“And ifshedie, who will hear ofthat? No one but those interested to conceal the cause: and thus it is, that dying for love becomes a phenomenon.”
Henry would have pursued the discourse farther; but William, impatient on all disputes, except where his argument was the better one, retired from the controversy, crying out, “I know my duty, and want no instructor.”
It would be unjust to William to say he did not feel for this reported illness of Agnes—he felt, during that whole evening, and part of the next morning—but business, pleasures, new occupations, and new schemes of future success, crowded to dissipate all unwelcome reflections; and he trusted to her youth, her health, her animal spirits, and, above all, to the folly of the gossips’ story ofdying for love, as a surety for her life, and a safeguard for his conscience.
The child of William and Agnes was secreted, by Rebecca, in a distant chamber belonging to the dreary parsonage, near to which scarcely any part of the family ever went. There she administered to all its wants, visited it every hour of the day, and at intervals during the night viewed almost with the joy of a mother its health, its promised life—and in a short the found she loved her little gift better than anything on earth, except the giver.
Henry called the next morning, and the next, and many succeeding times, in hopes of an opportunity to speak alone with Rebecca, to inquire concerning her charge, and consult when and how he could privately relieve her from her trust; as he now meant to procure a nurse for wages. In vain he called or lurked around the house; for near five weeks all the conversation he could obtain with her was in the company of her sisters, who, beginning to observe his preference, his marked attention to her, and the languid, half-smothered transport with which she received it, indulged their envy and resentment at the contempt shown to their charms, by watching her steps when he was away, and her every look and whisper while he was present.
For five weeks, then, he was continually thwarted in his expectation of meeting her alone: and at the end of that period the whole design he had to accomplish by such a meeting was rendered abortive.
Though Rebecca had with strictest caution locked the door of the room in which the child was hid, and covered each crevice, and every aperture through which sound might more easily proceed; though she had surrounded the infant’s head with pillows, to obstruct all noise from his crying; yet one unlucky night, the strength of his voice increasing with his age, he was heard by the maid, who slept the nearest to that part of the house.
Not meaning to injure her young mistress, the servant next morning simply related to the family what sounds had struck her ear during the night, and whence they proceeded. At first she was ridiculed “for supposing herself awake when in reality she must be dreaming.” But steadfastly persisting in what she had said, and Rebecca’s blushes, confusion, and eagerness to prove the maid mistaken, giving suspicion to her charitable sisters, they watched her the very next time she went by stealth to supply the office of a mother; and breaking abruptly on her while feeding and caressing the infant, they instantly concluded it was herown; seized it, and, in spite of her entreaties, carried it down to their father.
That account which Henry had given Rebecca “of his having found the child,” and which her own sincerity, joined to the faith she had in his word, made her receive as truth, she now felt would be heard by the present auditors with contempt, even with indignation, as a falsehood. Her affright is easier conceived than described.
Accused, and forced by her sisters along with the child before the curate, his attention to their representation, his crimson face, knit brow, and thundering voice, struck with terror her very soul: innocence is not always a protection against fear—sometimes less bold than guilt.
In her father and sisters she saw, she knew the suspicions, partial, cruel, boisterous natures by whom she was to be judged; and timid, gentle, oppressed, she fell trembling on her knees, and could only articulate,
“Forgive me.”
The curate would not listen to this supplication till she had replied to this question, “Whose child is this?”
She replied, “I do not know.”
Questioned louder, and with more violence still, “how the child came there, wherefore her affection for it, and whose it was,” she felt the improbability of the truth still more forcibly than before, and dreaded some immediate peril from her father’s rage, should she dare to relate an apparent lie. She paused to think upon a more probable tale than the real one; and as she hesitated, shook in every limb—while her father exclaimed,
“I understand the cause of this terror; it confirms your sisters’ fears, and your own shame. From your infancy I have predicted that some fatal catastrophe would befall you. I never loved you like my other children—I never had the cause: you were always unlike the rest—and I knew your fate would be calamitous; but the very worst of my forebodings did not come to this—so young, so guilty, and so artful! Tell me this instant, are you married?”
Rebecca answered, “No.”
The sisters lifted up their hands!
The father continued—“Vile creature, I thought as much. Still I will know the father of this child.”
She cast up her eyes to Heaven, and firmly vowed she “did not know herself—nor who the mother was.”
“This is not to be borne!” exclaimed the curate in fury. “Persist in this, and you shall never see my face again. Both your child and you I’ll turn out of my house instantly, unless you confess your crime, and own the father.”
Curious to know this secret, the sisters went up to Rebecca with seeming kindness, and “conjured her to spare her father still greater grief, and her own and her child’s public infamy, by acknowledging herself its mother, and naming the man who had undone her.”
Emboldened by this insult from her own sex, Rebecca now began to declare the simple truth. But no sooner had she said that “the child was presented to her care by a young man who had found it,” than her sisters burst into laughter, and her father into redoubled rage.
Once more the women offered their advice—“to confess and be forgiven.”
Once more the father raved.
Beguiled by solicitations, and terrified by threats, like women formerly accused of witchcraft, and other wretches put to the torture, she thought her present sufferings worse than any that could possibly succeed; and felt inclined to confess a falsehood, at which her virtue shrunk, to obtain a momentary respite from reproach; she felt inclined to take the mother’s share of the infant, but was at a loss to whom to give the father’s. She thought that Henry had entailed on himself the best right to the charge; but she loved him, and could not bear the thought of accusing him falsely.
While, with agitation in the extreme, she thus deliberated, the proposition again was put,
“Whether she would trust to the mercy of her father by confessing, or draw down his immediate vengeance by denying her guilt?”
She made choice of the former—and with tears and sobs “owned herself the mother of the boy.”
But still—“Who is the father?”
Again she shrunk from the question, and fervently implored “to be spared on that point.”
Her petition was rejected with vehemence; and the curate’s rage increased till she acknowledged,
“Henry was the father.”
“I thought so,” exclaimed all her sisters at the same time.
“Villain!” cried the curate. “The dean shall know, before this hour is expired, the baseness of the nephew whom he supports upon charity; he shall know the misery, the grief, the shame he has brought on me, and how unworthy he is of his protection.”
“Oh! have mercy on him!” cried Rebecca, as she still knelt to her father: “do not ruin him with his uncle, for he is the best of human beings.”
“Ay, ay, we always saw how much she loved him,” cried her sisters.
“Wicked, unfortunate girl!” said the clergyman (his rage now subsiding, and tears supplying its place), “you have brought a scandal upon us all: your sisters’ reputation will be stamped with the colour of yours—my good name will suffer: but that is trivial—your soul is lost to virtue, to religion, to shame—”
“No,indeed!” cried Rebecca: “if you will but believe me.”
“Do not I believe you? Have you not confessed?”
“You will not pretend to unsay what you have said,” cried her eldest sister: “that would be making things worse.”
“Go, go out of my sight!” said her father. “Take your child with you to your chamber, and never let me see either of you again. I do not turn you out of my doors to-day, because I gave you my word I would not, if you revealed your shame; but by to-morrow I will provide some place for your reception, where neither I, nor any of your relations, shall ever see or hear of you again.”
Rebecca made an effort to cling around her father, and once more to declare her innocence: but her sisters interposed, and she was taken, with her reputed son, to the chamber where the curate had sentenced her to remain, till she quitted his house for ever.
The curate, in the disorder of his mind, scarcely felt the ground he trod as he hastened to the dean’s house to complain of his wrongs. His name procured him immediate admittance into the library, and the moment the dean appeared the curate burst into tears. The cause being required of such “very singular marks of grief,” Mr. Rymer described himself “as having been a few moments ago the happiest of parents; but that his peace and that of his whole family had been destroyed by Mr. Henry Norwynne, the dean’s nephew.”
He now entered into a minute recital of Henry’s frequent visits there, and of all which had occurred in his house that morning, from the suspicion that a child was concealed under his roof, to the confession made by his youngest daughter of her fall from virtue, and of her betrayer’s name.
The dean was astonished, shocked, and roused to anger: he vented reproaches and menaces on his nephew; and “blessing himself in a virtuous son, whose wisdom and counsel were his only solace in every care,” sent for William to communicate with him on this unhappy subject.
William came, all obedience, and heard with marks of amazement and indignation the account of such black villainy! In perfect sympathy with Mr. Rymer and his father, he allowed “no punishment could be too great for the seducer of innocence, the selfish invader of a whole family’s repose.”
Nor did William here speak what he did not think—he merely forgot his own conduct; or if he did recall it to his mind, it was with some fair interpretations in his own behalf; such as self-love ever supplies to those who wish to cheat intruding conscience.
Young Henry being sent for to appear before this triumvirate, he came with a light step and a cheerful face. But, on the charge against him being exhibited, his countenance changed—yet only to the expression of surprise! He boldly asserted his innocence, plainly told the real fact, and with a deportment so perfectly unembarrassed, that nothing but the asseverations of the curate, “that his daughter had confessed the whole,” could have rendered the story Henry told suspected; although some of the incidents he related were of no common kind. But Mr. Rymer’s charge was an objection to his veracity too potent to be overcome; and the dean exclaimed in anger—
“We want not your avowal of your guilt—the mother’s evidence is testimony sufficient.”
“The virtuous Rebecca is not a mother,” said Henry, with firmness.
William here, like Rebecca’s sisters, took Henry aside, and warned him not to “add to his offence by denying what was proved against him.”
But Henry’s spirit was too manly, his affection too sincere, not to vindicate the chastity of her he loved, even at his own peril. He again and again protested “she was virtuous.”
“Let her instantly be sent for,” said the dean, “and this madman confronted with her.” Then adding, that as he wished everything might be conducted with secrecy, he would not employ his clerk on the unhappy occasion: he desired William to draw up the form of an oath, which he would administer as soon as she arrived.
A man and horse were immediately despatched to bring Rebecca: William drew up an affidavit as his father had directed him—inRebecca’s name solemnly protesting she was a mother,and Henry the father of her child. And now, the dean, suppressing till she came the warmth of his displeasure, spoke thus calmly to Henry:—
“Even supposing that your improbable tale of having found this child, and all your declarations in respect to it were true, still you would be greatly criminal. What plea can you make for not having immediately revealed the circumstance to me or some other proper person, that the real mother might have been detected and punished for her design of murder?”
“In that, perhaps, I was to blame,” returned Henry: “but whoever the mother was, I pitied her.”
“Compassion on such an occasion was unplaced,” said the dean.
“Was I wrong, sir, to pity the child?”
“No.”
“Then how could I feel forthat, and yet divest myself of all feeling for its mother?”
“Its mother!” exclaimed William, in anger: “she ought to have been immediately pursued, apprehended, and committed to prison.”
“It struck me, cousin William,” replied Henry, “that the father was more deserving of a prison: the poor woman had abandoned only one—the man, in all likelihood, had forsakentwopitiable creatures.”
William was pouring execrations “on the villain if such there could be,” when Rebecca was announced.
Her eyes were half closed with weeping; deep confusion overspread her face; and her tottering limbs could hardly support her to the awful chamber where the dean, her father, and William sat in judgment, whilst her beloved Henry stood arraigned as a culprit, by her false evidence.
Upon her entrance, her father first addressed her, and said in a stern, threatening, yet feeling tone, “Unhappy girl, answer me before all present—Have you, or have you not, owned yourself a mother?”
She replied, stealing a fearful look at Henry, “I have.”
“And have you not,” asked the dean, “owned that Henry Norwynne is the father of your child?”
She seemed as if she wished to expostulate.
The curate raised his voice—“Have you or have you not?”
“I have,” she faintly replied.
“Then here,” cried the dean to William, “read that paper to her, and take the Bible.”
William read the paper, which in her name declared a momentous falsehood: he then held the book in form, while she looked like one distracted—wrung her hands, and was near sinking to the earth.
At the moment when the book was lifted up to her lips to kiss, Henry rushed to her—“Stop!” he cried, “Rebecca! do not wound your future peace. I plainly see under what prejudices you have been accused, under what fears you have fallen. But do not be terrified into the commission of a crime which hereafter will distract your delicate conscience. My requesting you of your father for my wife will satisfy his scruples, prevent your oath—and here I make the demand.”
“He at length confesses! Surprising audacity! Complicated villainy!” exclaimed the dean; then added, “Henry Norwynne, your first guilt is so enormous; your second, in steadfastly denying it, so base, this last conduct so audacious; that from the present hour you must never dare to call me relation, or to consider my house as your home.”
William, in unison with his father, exclaimed, “Indeed, Henry, your actions merit this punishment.”
Henry answered with firmness, “Inflict what punishment you please.”
“With the dean’s permission, then,” said the curate, “you must marry my daughter.”
Henry started—“Do you pronounce that as a punishment? It would be the greatest blessing Providence could bestow. But how are we to live? My uncle is too much offended ever to be my friend again; and in this country, persons of a certain class are so educated, they cannot exist without the assistance, or what is called the patronage, of others: when that is withheld, they steal or starve. Heaven protect Rebecca from such misfortune! Sir (to the curate), do you but consent to support her only a year or two longer, and in that time I will learn some occupation, that shall raise me to the eminence of maintaining both her and myself without one obligation, or one inconvenience, to a single being.”
Rebecca exclaimed, “Oh! you have saved me from such a weight of sin, that my future life would be too happy passed as your slave.”
“No, my dear Rebecca, return to your father’s house, return to slavery but for a few years more, and the rest of your life I will make free.”
“And can you forgive me?”
“I can love you; and in that is comprised everything that is kind.”
The curate, who, bating a few passions and a few prejudices, was a man of some worth and feeling, and felt, in the midst of her distress, though the result of supposed crimes, that he loved this neglected daughter better than he had before conceived; and he now agreed “to take her home for a time, provided she were relieved from the child, and the matter so hushed up, that it might draw no imputation upon the characters of his other daughters.”
The dean did not degrade his consequence by consultations of this nature: but, having penetrated (as he imagined) into the very bottom of this intricate story, and issued his mandate against Henry, as a mark that he took no farther concern in the matter, he proudly walked out of the room without uttering another word.
William as proudly and silently followed.
The curate was inclined to adopt the manners of such great examples: but self-interest, some affection to Rebecca, and concern for the character of his family, made him wish to talk a little more with Henry, who new repeated what he had said respecting his marriage with Rebecca, and promised “to come the very next day in secret, and deliver her from the care of the infant, and the suspicion that would attend her nursing it.”
“But, above all,” said the curate, “procure your uncle’s pardon; for without that, without his protection, or the protection of some other rich man, to marry, to obey God’s ordinance,increase and multiplyis to want food for yourselves and your offspring.”
Though this unfortunate occurrence in the curate’s family was, according to his own phrase, “to be hushed up,” yet certain persons of his, of the dean’s, and of Lord Bendham’s house, immediately heard and talked of it. Among these, Lady Bendham was most of all shocked and offended: she said she “never could bear to hear Mr. Rymer either pray or preach again; he had not conducted himself with proper dignity either as a clergyman or a father; he should have imitated the dean’s example in respect to Henry, and have turned his daughter out of doors.”
Lord Bendham was less severe on the seduced, but had no mercy on the seducer—“a vicious youth, without one accomplishment to endear vice.” For vice, Lord Bendham thought (with certain philosophers), might be most exquisitely pleasing, in a pleasing garb. “But this youth sinned without elegance, without one particle of wit, or an atom of good breeding.”
Lady Clementina would not permit the subject to be mentioned a second time in her hearing—extreme delicacy in woman she knew was bewitching; and the delicacy she displayed on this occasion went so far that she “could not even intercede with the dean to forgive his nephew, because the topic was too gross for her lips to name even in the ear of her husband.”
Miss Sedgeley, though on the very eve of her bridal day with William, felt so tender a regard for Henry, that often she thought Rebecca happier in disgrace and poverty, blest with the love of him, than she was likely to be in the possession of friends and fortune with his cousin.
Had Henry been of a nature to suspect others of evil, or had he felt a confidence in his own worth, such a passion as this young woman’s would soon have disclosed its existence: but he, regardless of any attractions of Miss Sedgeley, equally supposed he had none in her eyes; and thus, fortunately for the peace of all parties, this prepossession ever remained a secret except to herself.
So little did William conceive that his clownish cousin could rival him in the affections of a woman of fashion, that he even slightly solicited his father “that Henry might not be banished from the house, at least till after the following day, when the great festival of his marriage was to be celebrated.”
But the dean refused, and reminded his son, “that he was bound both by his moral and religious character, in the eyes of God, and still more, in the eyes of men, to show lasting resentment of iniquity like his.”
William acquiesced, and immediately delivered to his cousin the dean’s “wishes for his amendment,” and a letter of recommendation procured from Lord Bendham, to introduce him on board a man-of-war; where, he was told, “he might hope to meet with preferment, according to his merit, as a sailor and a gentleman.”
Henry pressed William’s hand on parting, wished him happy in his marriage, and supplicated, as the only favour he would implore, an interview with his uncle, to thank him for all his former kindness, and to see him for the last time.
William repeated this petition to his father, but with so little energy, that the dean did not grant it. He felt himself, he said, compelled to resent that reprobate character in which Henry had appeared; and he feared “lest the remembrance of his last parting from his brother might, on taking a formal leave of that brother’s son, reduce him to some tokens of weakness, that would ill become his dignity and just displeasure.”
He sent him his blessing, with money to convey him to the ship, and Henry quitted his uncle’s house in a flood of tears, to seek first a new protectress for his little foundling, and then to seek his fortune.
The wedding-day of Mr. William Norwynne with Miss Caroline Sedgeley arrived; and, on that day, the bells of every parish surrounding that in which they lived joined with their own, in celebration of the blissful union. Flowers were strewn before the new-married pair, and favours and ale made many a heart more gladsome than that of either bridegroom or bride.
Upon this day of ringing and rejoicing the bells were not muffled, nor was conversation on the subject withheld from the ear of Agnes! She heard like her neighbours; and sitting on the side of her bed in her little chamber, suffered, under the cottage roof, as much affliction as ever visited a palace.
Tyrants, who have embrued their hands in the blood of myriads of their fellow-creatures, can call their murders “religion, justice, attention to the good of mankind.” Poor Agnes knew no sophistry to calmhersense of guilt: she felt herself a harlot and a murderer; a slighted, a deserted wretch, bereft of all she loved in this world, all she could hope for in the next.
She complained bitterly of illness, nor could the entreaties of her father and mother prevail on her to share in the sports of this general holiday. As none of her humble visitors suspected the cause of her more than ordinary indisposition, they endeavoured to divert it with an account of everything they had seen at church—“what the bride wore; how joyful the bridegroom looked;”—and all the seeming signs of that complete happiness which they conceived was for certain tasted.
Agnes, who, before this event, had at moments suppressed the agonising sting of self-condemnation in the faint prospect of her lover one day restored, on this memorable occasion lost every glimpse of hope, and was weighed to the earth with an accumulation of despair.
Where is the degree in which the sinner stops? Unhappy Agnes! the first time you permitted indecorous familiarity from a man who made you no promise, who gave you no hope of becoming his wife, who professed nothing beyond those fervent, though slender, affections which attach the rake to the wanton; the first time you interpreted his kind looks and ardent prayers into tenderness and constancy; the first time you descended from the character of purity, you rushed imperceptibly on the blackest crimes. The more sincerely you loved, the more you plunged in danger: from one ungoverned passion proceeded a second and a third. In the fervency of affection you yielded up your virtue! In the excess of fear, you stained your conscience by the intended murder of your child! And now, in the violence of grief, you meditate—what?—to put an end to your existence by your own hand!
After casting her thoughts around, anxious to find some bud of comfort on which to fix her longing eye; she beheld, in the total loss of William, nothing but a wide waste, an extensive plain of anguish. “How am I to be sustained through this dreary journey of life?” she exclaimed. Upon this question she felt, more poignantly than ever, her loss of innocence: innocence would have been her support, but, in place of this best prop to the afflicted, guilt flashed on her memory every time she flew for aid to reflection.
At length, from horrible rumination, a momentary alleviation came: “but one more step in wickedness,” she triumphantly said, “and all my shame, all my sufferings are over.” She congratulated herself upon the lucky thought; when, but an instant after, the tears trickled down her face for the sorrow her death, her sinful death, would bring to her poor and beloved parents. She then thought upon the probability of a sigh it might draw from William; and, the pride, the pleasure of that little tribute, counterpoised every struggle on the side of life.
As she saw the sun decline, “When you rise again,” she thought, “when you peep bright to-morrow morning into this little room to call me up, I shall not be here to open my eyes upon a hateful day—I shall no more regret that you have waked me!—I shall be sound asleep, never to wake again in this wretched world—not even the voice of William would then awake me.”
While she found herself resolved, and evening just come on, she hurried out of the house, and hastened to the fatal wood; the scene of her dishonour—the scene of intended murder—and now the meditated scene of suicide.
As she walked along between the close-set tree, she saw, at a little distance, the spot where William first made love to her; and where at every appointment he used to wait her coming. She darted her eye away from this place with horror; but, after a few moments of emotion, she walked slowly up to it—shed tears, and pressed with her trembling lips that tree, against which she was accustomed to lean while he talked with her. She felt an inclination to make this the spot to die in; but her preconcerted, and the less frightful death, of leaping into a pool on the other side of the wood, induced her to go onwards.
Presently, she came near the place whereherchild, andWilliam’s, was exposed to perish. Here she started with a sense of the most atrocious guilt; and her whole frame shook with the dread of an approaching, an omnipotent Judge, to sentence her for murder.
She halted, appalled, aghast, undetermined whether to exist longer beneath the pressure of a criminal conscience, or die that very hour, and meet her final condemnation.
She proceeded a few steps farther, and beheld the very ivy-bush close to which her infant lay when she left him exposed; and now, from this minute recollection, all the mother rising in her soul, she saw, as it were, her babe again in its deserted state; and bursting into tears of bitterest contrition and compassion, she cried—“As I was merciless tothee, my child, thy father has been pitiless tome! As I abandonedtheeto die with cold and hunger, he has forsaken, and has drivenmeto die by self-slaughter.”
She now fixed her eager eyes on the distant pond, and walked more nimbly than before, to rid herself of her agonising sensations.
Just as she had nearly reached the wished-for brink, she heard a footstep, and saw, by the glimmering of a clouded moon, a man approaching. She turned out of her path, for fear her intentions should be guessed at, and opposed; but still, as she walked another way, her eye was wishfully bent towards the water that was to obliterate her love and her remorse—obliterate, forever, William and his child.
It was now that Henry, who, to prevent scandal, had stolen at that still hour of night to rid the curate of the incumbrance so irksome to him, and take the foundling to a woman whom he had hired for the charge—it was now that Henry came up, with the child of Agnes in his arms, carefully covered all over from the night’s dew.
“Agnes, is it you?” cried Henry, at a little distance. “Where are you going thus late?”
“Home, sir,” said she, and rushed among the trees.
“Stop, Agnes,” he cried; “I want to bid you farewell; to-morrow I am going to leave this part of the country for a long time; so God bless you, Agnes.”
Saying this, he stretched out his arm to shake her by the hand.
Her poor heart, trusting that his blessing, for want of more potent offerings, might, perhaps, at this tremendous crisis ascend to Heaven in her behalf, she stopped, returned, and put out her hand to take his.
“Softly!” said he; “don’t wake my child; this spot has been a place of danger to him, for underneath this very ivy-bush it was that I found him.”
“Found what?” cried Agnes, with a voice elevated to a tremulous scream.
“I will not tell you the story,” replied Henry; “for no one I have ever yet told of it would believe me.”
“I will believe you—I will believe you,” she repeated with tones yet more impressive.
“Why, then,” said Henry, “only five weeks ago—”
“Ah!” shrieked Agnes.
“What do you mean?” said Henry.
“Go on,” she articulated, in the same voice.
“Why, then, as I was passing this very place, I wish I may never speak truth again, if I did not find” (here he pulled aside the warm rug in which the infant was wrapped) “this beautiful child.”
“With a cord?—”
“A cord was round its neck.”
“’Tis mine—the child is mine—’tis mine—my child—I am the mother and the murderer—I fixed the cord, while the ground shook under me—while flashes of fire darted before my eyes!—while my heart was bursting with despair and horror! But I stopped short—I did not draw the noose—I had a moment of strength, and I ran away. I left him living—he is living now—escaped from my hands—and I am no longer ashamed, but overcome with joy that he is mine! I bless you, my dear, my dear, for saving his life—for giving him to me again—for preservingmylife, as well as my child’s.”
Here she took her infant, pressed it to her lips and to her bosom; then bent to the ground, clasped Henry’s knees, and wept upon his feet.
He could not for a moment doubt the truth of what she said; her powerful yet broken accents, her convulsive embraces of the child, even more than her declaration, convinced him she was its mother.
“Good Heaven!” cried Henry, “and this is my cousin William’s child!”
“But your cousin does not know it,” said she; “I never told him—he was not kind enough to embolden me; therefore do not blamehimformysin; he did not know of my wicked designs—he did not encourage me—”
“But he forsook you, Agnes.”
“He never said he would not. He always told me he could not marry me.”
“Did he tell you so at his first private meeting?”
“No.”
“Nor at the second?”
“No; nor yet at the third.”
“When was it he told you so?”
“I forget the exact time; but I remember it was on that very evening when I confessed to him—”
“What?”
“That he had won my heart.”
“Why did you confess it?”
“Because he asked me and said it would make him happy if I would say so.”
“Cruel! dishonourable!”
“Nay, do not blame him; he cannot helpnotloving me, no more than I can helplovinghim.”
Henry rubbed his eyes.
“Bless me, you weep! I always heard that you were brought up in a savage country; but I suppose it is a mistake; it was your cousin William.”
“Will not you apply to him for the support of your child?” asked Henry.
“If I thought he would not be angry.”
“Angry! I will write to him on the subject if you will give me leave.”
“But do not say it is by my desire. Do not say I wish to trouble him. I would sooner beg than be a trouble to him.”
“Why are you so delicate?”
“It is for my own sake; I wish him not to hate me.”
“Then, thus you may secure his respect. I will write to him, and let him know all the circumstances of your case. I will plead for his compassion on his child, but assure him that no conduct of his will ever induce you to declare (except only to me, who knew of your previous acquaintance) who is the father.”
To this she consented; but when Henry offered to take from her the infant, and carry him to the nurse he had engaged, to this she would not consent.
“Do you mean, then, to acknowledge him yours?” Henry asked.
“Nothing shall force me to part from him again. I will keep him, and let my neighbours judge of me as they please.”
Here Henry caught at a hope he feared to name before. “You will then have no objection,” said he, “to clear an unhappy girl to a few friends, with whom her character has suffered by becoming, at my request, his nurse?”
“I will clear any one, so that I do not accuse the father.”
“You give me leave, then, in your name, to tell the whole story to some particular friends, my cousin William’s part in it alone excepted?”
“I do.”
Henry now exclaimed, “God bless you!” with greater fervour than when he spoke it before; and he now hoped the night was nearly gone, that the time might be so much the shorter before Rebecca should be reinstated in the esteem of her father, and of all those who had misjudged her.
“God blessyou!” said Agnes, still more fervently, as she walked with unguided steps towards her home; for her eyes never wandered from the precious object which caused her unexpected return.
Henry rose early in the morning, and flew to the curate’s house, with more than even his usual thirst of justice, to clear injured innocence, to redeem from shame her whom he loved. With eager haste he told that he had found the mother, whose fall from virtue Rebecca, overcome by confusion and threats, had taken on herself.
Rebecca rejoiced, but her sisters shook their heads, and even the father seemed to doubt.
Confident in the truth of his story, Henry persisted so boldly in his affirmations, that if Mr. Rymer did not entirely believe what he said, he secretly hoped that the dean and other people might; therefore he began to imagine he could possibly cast fromhisfamily the present stigma, whether or no it belonged to any other.
No sooner was Henry gone than Mr. Rymer waited on the dean to report what he had heard; and he frankly attributed his daughter’s false confession to the compulsive methods he had adopted in charging her with the offence. Upon this statement, Henry’s love to her was also a solution of his seemingly inconsistent conduct on that singular occasion.
The dean immediately said, “I will put the matter beyond all doubt; for I will this moment send for the present reputed mother; and if she acknowledges the child, I will instantly commit her to prison for the attempt of putting it to death.”
The curate applauded the dean’s sagacity; a warrant was issued, and Agnes brought prisoner before the grandfather of her child.
She appeared astonished at the peril in which she found herself. Confused, also, with a thousand inexpressible sensations which the dean’s presence inspired, she seemed to prevaricate in all she uttered. Accused of this prevarication, she was still more disconcerted; said, and unsaid; confessed herself the mother of the infant, but declared she did not know, then owned shedidknow, the name of the man who had undone her, but would never utter it. At length she cast herself on her knees before the father of her betrayer, and supplicated “he would not punish her with severity, as she most penitently confessed her fault, so far as is related to herself.”
While Mr. and Mrs. Norwynne, just entered on the honeymoon, were sitting side by side enjoying with peace and with honour conjugal society, poor Agnes, threatened, reviled, and sinking to the dust, was hearing from the mouth of William’s father the enormity of those crimes to which his son had been accessory. She saw the mittimus written that was to convey her into a prison—saw herself delivered once more into the hands of constables, before her resolution left her, of concealing the name of William in her story. She now, overcome with affright, and thinking she should expose him still more in a public court, if hereafter on her trial she should be obliged to name him—she now humbly asked the dean to hear a few words she had to say in private, where she promised she “would speak nothing but the truth.”
This was impossible, he said—“No private confessions before a magistrate! All must be done openly.”
She urged again and again the same request: it was denied more peremptorily than at first. On which she said—“Then, sir, forgive me, since you force me to it, if I speak before Mr. Rymer and these men what I would for ever have kept a secret if I could. One of your family is my child’s father.”
“Any of my servants?” cried the dean.
“No.”
“My nephew?”
“No; one who is nearer still.”
“Come this way,” said the dean; “Iwillspeak to you in private.”
It was not that the dean, as a magistrate, distributed partial decrees of pretended justice—he was rigidly faithful to his trust: he would not inflict punishment on the innocent, nor let the guilty escape; but in all particulars of refined or coarse treatment he would alleviate or aggravate according to the rank of the offender. He could not feel that a secret was of equal importance to a poor as to a rich person; and while Agnes gave no intimation but that her delicacy rose from fears for herself, she did not so forcibly impress him with an opinion that it was a case which had weighty cause for a private conference as when she boldly said, “a part ofhisfamily, very near to him, was concerned in her tale.”
The final result of their conversation in an adjoining room was—a charge from the dean, in the words of Mr. Rymer, “to hush the affair up,” and his promise that the infant should be immediately taken from her, and that “she should have no more trouble with it.”
“I have no trouble with it,” replied Agnes: “my child is now all my comfort, and I cannot part from it.”
“Why, you inconsistent woman, did you not attempt to murder it?”
“That was before I had nursed it.”
“’Tis necessary you should give it up: it must be sent some miles away; and then the whole circumstance will be soon forgotten.”
“Ishall never forget it.”
“No matter; you must give up the child. Do not some of our first women of quality part with their children?”
“Women of quality have other things to love—I have nothing else.”
“And would you occasion my son and his new-made bride the shame and the uneasiness—”
Here Agnes burst into a flood of tears; and being angrily asked by the dean “why she blubbered so—”
“Ihave had shame and uneasiness,” she replied, wringing her hands.
“And you deserve them: they are the sure attendants of crimes such as yours. If you allured and entrapped a young man like my son—”
“I am the youngest by five years,” said Agnes.
“Well, well, repent,” returned the dean; “repent, and resign your child. Repent, and you may yet marry an honest man who knows nothing of the matter.”
“And repent too?” asked Agnes.
Not the insufferable ignorance of young Henry, when he first came to England, was more vexatious or provoking to the dean than the rustic simplicity of poor Agnes’s uncultured replies. He at last, in an offended and determined manner, told her—“That if she would resign the child, and keep the father’s name a secret, not only the child should be taken care of, but she herself might, perhaps, receive some favours; but if she persisted in her imprudent folly, she must expect no consideration on her own account; nor should she be allowed, for the maintenance of the boy, a sixpence beyond the stated sum for a poor man’s unlawful offspring.” Agnes, resolving not to be separated from her infant, bowed resignation to this last decree; and, terrified at the loud words and angry looks of the dean, after being regularly discharged, stole to her home, where the smiles of her infant, and the caresses she lavished on it, repaid her for the sorrows she had just suffered for its sake.
Let it here be observed that the dean, on suffering Agnes to depart without putting in force the law against her as he had threatened, did nothing, as it were,behind the curtain. He openly and candidly owned, on his return to Mr. Rymer, his clerk, and the two constables who were attending, “that an affair of some little gallantry, in which he was extremely sorry to say his son was rather too nearly involved, required, in consideration of his recent marriage, and an excellent young woman’s (his bride’s) happiness, that what had occurred should not be publicly talked of; therefore he had thought proper only to reprimand the hussy, and send her about her business.”
The curate assured the dean, “that upon this, and upon all other occasions, which should, would, orcouldoccur, he owed to his judgment, as his superior, implicit obedience.”
The clerk and the two constables most properly said, “his honour was a gentleman, and of course must know better how to act than they.”
The pleasure of a mother which Agnes experienced did not make her insensible to the sorrow of a daughter.
Her parents had received the stranger child, along with a fabricated tale she told “of its appertaining to another,” without the smallest suspicion; but, by the secret diligence of the curate, and the nimble tongues of his elder daughters, the report of all that had passed on the subject of this unfortunate infant soon circulated through the village; and Agnes in a few weeks had seen her parents pine away in grief and shame at her loss of virtue.
She perceived the neighbours avoid, or openly sneer ather; but that was little—she saw them slight her aged father and mother upon her account; and she now took the resolution rather to perish for want in another part of the country than live where she was known, and so entail an infamy upon the few who loved her. She slightly hoped, too, that by disappearing from the town and neighbourhood some little reward might be allowed her for her banishment by the dean’s family. In that she was deceived. No sooner was she gone, indeed, than her guilt was forgotten; but with her guilt her wants. The dean and his family rejoiced at her and her child’s departure; but as this mode she had chosen chanced to be no specified condition in the terms proposed to her, they did not think they were bound to pay her for it; and while she was too fearful and bashful to solicit the dean, and too proud (forlorn as she was) to supplicate his son, they both concluded she “wanted for nothing;” for to be poor, and too delicate to complain, they deemed incompatible.
To heighten the sense of her degraded, friendless situation, she knew that Henry had not been unmindful of his promise to her, but that he had applied to his cousin in her and his child’s behalf; for he had acquainted her that William’s answer was—“all obligations onhispart were now undertaken by his father; for that, Agnes having chosen (in a fit of malignity upon his marriage) to apprise the dean of their former intercourse, such conduct had for ever cancelled all attention due from him to her, or to her child, beyond what its bare maintenance exacted.”
In vain had Henry explained to him, by a second application, the predicament in which poor Agnes was involved before she consented to reveal her secret to his father. William was happy in an excuse to rid himself of a burthen, and he seemed to believe, what he wished to be true—that she had forfeited all claim to his farther notice.
Henry informed her of this unkind reception of his efforts in her favour in as gentle terms as possible, for she excited his deepest compassion. Perhaps ourownmisfortunes are the cause of our pity for others, even more thantheirills; and Henry’s present sorrows had softened his heart to peculiar sympathy in woe. He had unhappily found that the ardour which had hurried him to vindicate the reputation of Rebecca was likely to deprive him of the blessing of her ever becoming his proved an offender instead of his wife; for the dean, chagrined that his son was at length nephew, submitted to the temptation of punishing the latter, while he forgave the former. He sent for Henry, and having coldly congratulated him on his and Rebecca’s innocence, represented to him the impropriety of marrying the daughter of a poor curate, and laid his commands on him, “never to harbour such an intention more.” Henry found this restriction so severe that he would not promise obedience; but on his next attempt to visit Rebecca he met a positive repulse from her father, who signified to him, “that the dean had forbidden him to permit their farther acquaintance;” and the curate declared “that, for his own part, he had no will, judgment, or faculties, but that he submitted in all things to the superior clergy.”
At the very time young Henry had received the proposal from Mr. Rymer of his immediate union with his daughter, and the dean had made no objection Henry waived the happiness for the time present, and had given a reason why he wished it postponed. The reason he then gave had its weight; but he had another concealed, of yet more import. Much as he loved, and looked forward with rapture to that time when every morning, every evening, and all the day, he should have the delight of Rebecca’s society, still there was one other wish nearer his heart than this one desire which for years had been foremost in his thoughts, and which not even love could eradicate. He longed, he pined to know what fate had befallen his father. Provided he were living, he could conceive no joy so great as that of seeing him! If he were dead, he was anxious to pay the tribute of filial piety he owed, by satisfying his affectionate curiosity in every circumstance of the sad event.
While a boy he had frequently expressed these sentiments to both his uncle and his cousin; sometimes they apprised him of the total improbability of accomplishing his wishes; at other times, when they saw the disappointment weigh heavy on his mind, they bade him “wait till he was a man before he could hope to put his designs in execution.” He did wait. But on the very day he arrived at the age of twenty-one, he made a vow—“that to gain intelligence of his father should be the first important act of his free will.”
Previously to this time he had made all the inquiries possible, whether any new adventure to that part of Africa in which he was bred was likely to be undertaken. Of this there appeared to be no prospect till the intended expedition to Sierra Leone was announced, and which favoured his hope of being able to procure a passage, among those adventurers, so near to the island on which his father was (or had been) prisoner, as to obtain an opportunity of visiting it by stealth.
Fearing contention, or the being dissuaded from his plans if he communicated them, he not only formed them in private, but he kept them secretly; and, his imagination filled with the kindness, the tenderness, the excess of fondness he had experienced from his father, beyond any other person in the world, he had thought with delight on the separation from all his other kindred, to pay his duty to him, or to his revered memory. Of late, indeed, there had been an object introduced to his acquaintance, from whom it was bitter to part; but his designs had been planned and firmly fixed before he knew Rebecca; nor could he have tasted contentment even with her at the expense of his piety to his father.
In the last interview he had with the dean, Henry, perceiving that his disposition towards him was not less harsh than when a few days before he had ordered him on board a vessel, found this the proper time to declare his intentions of accompanying the fleet to Sierra Leone. His uncle expressed surprise, but immediately gave him a sum of money in addition to that he had sent him before, and as much as he thought might defray his expenses; and, as he gave it, by his willingness, his look, and his accent, he seemed to say, “I foresee this is the last you will ever require.”
Young William, though a very dutiful son, was amazed when he heard of Henry’s project, as “the serious and settled resolution of a man.”
Lady Clementina, Lord and Lady Bendham, and twenty others, “wished him a successful voyage,” and thought no more about him.
It was for Rebecca alone to feel the loss of Henry; it was for a mind like hers alone to know his worth; nor did this last proof of it, the quitting her for one who claimed by every tie a preference, lessen him in her esteem. When, by a message from him, she became acquainted with his design, much as it interfered with her happiness, she valued him the more for this observance of his duty; the more regretted his loss, and the more anxiously prayed for his return—a return which he, in the following letter, written just before his departure, taught her to hope for with augmented impatience.
“My Dear Rebecca,“I do not tell you I am sorry to part from you—you know I am—and you know all I have suffered since your father denied me permission to see you.“But perhaps you do not know the hopes I enjoy, and which bestow on me a degree of peace; and those I am eager to tell you.“I hope, Rebecca, to see you again; I hope to return to England, and overcome every obstacle to our marriage; and then, in whatever station we are placed, I shall consider myself as happy as it is possible to be in this world. I feel a conviction that you would be happy also.“Some persons, I know, estimate happiness by fine houses, gardens, and parks; others by pictures, horses, money, and various things wholly remote from their own species; but when I wish to ascertain the real felicity of any rational man, I always inquirewhom he has to love. If I find he has nobody, or does not love those he has, even in the midst of all his profusion of finery and grandeur, I pronounce him a being in deep adversity. In loving you, I am happier than my cousin William; even though I am obliged to leave you for a time.“Do not be afraid you should grow old before I return; age can never alter you in my regard. It is your gentle nature, your unaffected manners, your easy cheerfulness, your clear understanding, the sincerity of all your words and actions which have gained my heart; and while you preserve charms like these, you will be dearer to me with white hairs and a wrinkled face than any of your sex, who, not possessing all these qualities, possess the form and features of perfect beauty.“You will esteem me, too, I trust, though I should return on crutches with my poor father, whom I may be obliged to maintain by daily labour.“I shall employ all my time, during my absence, in the study of some art which may enable me to support you both, provided Heaven will bestow two such blessings on me. In the cheering thought that it will be so, and in that only, I have the courage, my dear, dear Rebecca, to say to you“Farewell!H. Norwynne.”
“My Dear Rebecca,
“I do not tell you I am sorry to part from you—you know I am—and you know all I have suffered since your father denied me permission to see you.
“But perhaps you do not know the hopes I enjoy, and which bestow on me a degree of peace; and those I am eager to tell you.
“I hope, Rebecca, to see you again; I hope to return to England, and overcome every obstacle to our marriage; and then, in whatever station we are placed, I shall consider myself as happy as it is possible to be in this world. I feel a conviction that you would be happy also.
“Some persons, I know, estimate happiness by fine houses, gardens, and parks; others by pictures, horses, money, and various things wholly remote from their own species; but when I wish to ascertain the real felicity of any rational man, I always inquirewhom he has to love. If I find he has nobody, or does not love those he has, even in the midst of all his profusion of finery and grandeur, I pronounce him a being in deep adversity. In loving you, I am happier than my cousin William; even though I am obliged to leave you for a time.
“Do not be afraid you should grow old before I return; age can never alter you in my regard. It is your gentle nature, your unaffected manners, your easy cheerfulness, your clear understanding, the sincerity of all your words and actions which have gained my heart; and while you preserve charms like these, you will be dearer to me with white hairs and a wrinkled face than any of your sex, who, not possessing all these qualities, possess the form and features of perfect beauty.
“You will esteem me, too, I trust, though I should return on crutches with my poor father, whom I may be obliged to maintain by daily labour.
“I shall employ all my time, during my absence, in the study of some art which may enable me to support you both, provided Heaven will bestow two such blessings on me. In the cheering thought that it will be so, and in that only, I have the courage, my dear, dear Rebecca, to say to you
“Farewell!H. Norwynne.”