The Father and Daughter: A Tale, in Prose

by Amelia Opie

"But what right have you to complain?" added he: "the cheat that I put upon you relative to your father was certainly meant in kindness; and though miss Sandford will have my hand, you alone will ever possess my heart; therefore it was my design to keep you in ignorance of my marriage, and retain you as the greatest of all my worldly treasures.—Plague on this prating lord! he has destroyed the prettiest arrangement ever made. However, I hope we shall part good friends."

"Great God!" cried Agnes, raising her tearless eyes to heaven,—"and have I then forsaken the best of parents for a wretch like this!—But think not, sir," she added, turning with a commanding air towards Clifford, whose temper, naturally warm, the term 'wretch' had not soothed, "think not, fallen as I am, that I will ever condescend to receive protection and support, either for myself or child, from a man whom I know to be a consummate villain. You have made me criminal, but you have not obliterated my horror for crime and my veneration for virtue,—and, in the fulness of my contempt, I inform you, sir, that we shall meet no more."

"Not till to-morrow," said Clifford:—"this is our first quarrel, Agnes; and the quarrels of lovers are only the renewal of love, you know: therefore leaving the 'bitter, piercing air' to guard my treasure for me till to-morrow, I take my leave, and hope in the morning to find you in a better humour."

So saying he departed, secure, from the inclemency of the weather and darkness of the night, that Agnes would not venture to go away before the morning, and resolved to return very early in order to prevent her departure, if her threatened resolution were any thing more than the frantic expressions of a disappointed woman. Besides, he knew that at that time she was scantily supplied with money, and that Mrs. Askew dared not furnish her with any for the purpose of leaving him.

But he left not Agnes, as he supposed, to vent her sense of injury in idle grief and inactive lamentation; but to think, to decide, and to act.—What was the rigour of the night to a woman whose heart was torn by all the pangs which convictions, such as those which she had lately received, could give? She hastily therefore wrapped up her sleeping boy in a pélisse, of which in a calmer moment she would have felt the want herself, and took him in her arms: then, throwing a shawl over her shoulders, she softly unbarred the hall door, and before the noise could have summoned any of the family she was already out of sight.

So severe was the weather, that even those accustomed to brave in ragged garments the pelting of the pitiless storm shuddered, as the freezing wind whistled around them, and crept with trembling knees to the wretched hovel that awaited them. But the winter's wind blew unfelt by Agnes: she was alive to nothing but the joy of having escaped from a villain, and the faint hope that she was hastening to obtain, perhaps, a father's forgiveness.

"Thank Heaven!" she exclaimed, as she found herself at the rails along the Green Park,—"the air which I breathe here is uncontaminated by his breath!" when, as the watchman called half-past eleven o'clock, the recollection that she had no place of shelter for the night occurred to her, and at the same instant she remembered that a coach set off at twelve from Piccadilly, which went within twelve miles of her native place. She therefore immediately resolved to hasten thither, and, either in the inside or on the outside, to proceed on her journey as far as her finances would admit of, intending to walk the rest of the way. She arrived at the inn just as the coach was setting off, and found, to her great satisfaction, one inside place vacant.

Nothing worth mentioning occurred on the journey. Agnes, with her veil drawn over her face, and holding her slumbering boy in her arms, while the incessant shaking of her knee and the piteous manner in which she sighed gave evident marks of the agitation of her mind, might excite in some degree the curiosity of her fellow-travellers, but gave no promise of that curiosity being satisfied, and she was suffered to remain unquestioned and undisturbed.

At noon the next day the coach stopped, for the travellers to dine, and stay a few hours to recruit themselves after their labours past, and to fortify themselves against those yet to come. Here Agnes, who as she approached nearer home became afraid of meeting some acquaintance, resolved to change her dress, and to equip herself in such a manner as should, while it screened her from the inclemency of the weather, at the same time prevent her being recognised by any one. Accordingly she exchanged her pélisse, shawl, and a few other things, for a man's great coat, a red cloth cloak with a hood to it, a pair of thick shoes, and some yards of flannel in which she wrapped up her little Edward; and, having tied her straw bonnet under her chin with her veil, she would have looked like a country-woman drest for market, could she have divested herself of a certain delicacy of appearance and gracefulness of manner, the yet uninjured beauties of former days.

When they set off again she became an outside passenger, as she could not afford to continue an inside one; and covering her child up in the red cloak which she wore over her coat, she took her station on the top of the coach with seeming firmness, but a breaking heart.