Fatal perversion of uncommon abilities! This man, who might have taught a nation to look up to him as its best pride in prosperity and its best hope in adversity, made no other use of his talents than to betray the unwary of both sexes, the one to shame, the other to pecuniary difficulties; and he whose mind was capacious enough to have imagined schemes to aggrandize his native country, the slave of sordid selfishness, never looked beyond his own temporary and petty benefit, and sat down contented with the achievements of the day, if he had overreached a credulous tradesman, or beguiled an unsuspecting woman.
But, to accomplish even these paltry triumphs, great knowledge of the human heart was necessary,—a power of discovering the prevailing foible in those on whom he had designs, and of converting their imagined security into their real danger. He soon discovered that Agnes, who was rather inclined to doubt her possessing in an uncommon degree the good qualities which she really had, valued herself, with not unusual blindness, on those which she had not. She thought herself endowed with great power to read the characters of those with whom she associated, when she had even not discrimination enough to understand her own: and, while she imagined that it was not in the power of others to deceive her, she was constantly in the habit of deceiving herself.
Clifford was not slow to avail himself of this weakness in his intended victim; and, while he taught her to believe that none of his faults had escaped her observation, with hers he had made himself thoroughly acquainted.—But not content with making her faults subservient to his views, he pressed her virtues also into his service; and her affection for her father, that strong hold, secure in which Agnes would have defied the most violent assaults of temptation, he contrived should be the means of her defeat.
I have been thus minute in detailing the various and seducing powers which Clifford possessed, not because he will be a principal figure in my narrative,—for, on the contrary, the chief characters in it are the Father and Daughter,—but in order to excuse as much as possible the strong attachment which he excited in Agnes.
"Love," says Mrs. Inchbald, whose knowledge of human nature can be equalled only by the humour with which she describes its follies, and the unrivalled pathos with which she exhibits its distresses—"Love, however rated by many as the chief passion of the heart, is but a poor dependent, a retainer on the other passions—admiration, gratitude, respect, esteem, pride in the object; divest the boasted sensation of these, and it is no more than the impression of a twelvemonth, by courtesy, or vulgar error, called love[1]."—And of all these ingredients was the passion of Agnes composed. For the graceful person and manner of Clifford she felt admiration; and her gratitude was excited by her observing that, while he was an object of attention to every one wherever he appeared, his attentions were exclusively directed to herself; and that he who, from his rank and accomplishments, might have laid claim to the hearts even of the brightest daughters of fashion in the gayest scenes of the metropolis, seemed to have no higher ambition than to appear amiable in the eyes of Agnes, the humble toast of an obscure country town. While his superiority of understanding, and brilliancy of talents, called forth her respect, and his apparent virtues her esteem; and when to this high idea of the qualities of the man was added a knowledge of his high birth and great expectations, it is no wonder that she also felt the last-mentioned, and often perhaps the greatest, excitement to love, "pride in the object."
[1] Nature and Art, vol. i. p. 142.
When Clifford began to pay those marked attentions to Agnes, which ought always on due encouragement from the woman to whom they are addressed to be followed by an offer of marriage, he contrived to make himself as much disliked by the father as admired by the daughter: yet his management was so artful, that Fitzhenry could not give a sufficient reason for his dislike; he could only declare its existence; and for the first time in her life Agnes learned to think her father unjust and capricious.
Thus, while Clifford ensured an acceptance of his addresses from Agnes, he at the same time secured a rejection of them from Fitzhenry; and this was the object of his wishes, as he had a decided aversion to marriage, and knew besides that marrying Agnes would disappoint all his ambitious prospects in life, and bring on him the eternal displeasure of his father.
At length, after playing for some time with her hopes and fears, Clifford requested Fitzhenry to sanction with his approbation his addresses to his daughter; and Fitzhenry, as he expected, coldly and firmly declined the honour of his alliance. But when Clifford mentioned, as if unguardedly, that he hoped to prevail on his father to approve the marriage after it had taken place, if not before, Fitzhenry proudly told him that he thought his daughter much too good to be smuggled into the family of any one; while Clifford, piqued in his turn at the warmth of Fitzhenry's expressions, and the dignity of his manner, left him, exulting secretly in the consciousness that he had his revenge,—for he knew that the heart of Agnes was irrecoverably his.
Agnes heard from her lover that his suit was rejected, with agonies as violent as he appeared to feel.—"What!" exclaimed she, "can that affectionate father, who has till now anticipated my wishes, disappoint me in the wish nearest to my heart?" In the midst of her first agitation her father entered the room, and, with "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger" began to expostulate with her on the impropriety of the connection which she was desirous of forming. He represented to her the very slender income which Clifford possessed; the inconvenience to which an officer's wife is exposed; and the little chance which there is for a man's making a constant and domestic husband who has been brought up in an idle profession, and accustomed to habits of intemperance, expense, and irregularity:——