But the swiftly moving drama could not be stayed; and Sir Harry, called to England by imperative duties, carried his treasure with him to his ancestral home. At least there was this to be said in his favor, during these doubtful days,—he was not of those who love and ride away, and his loyalty to the one chosen woman never suffered reproach. In England, either defiant or strangely obtuse to the values of their relation, he introduced Agnes to his family; but neither her beauty nor accomplishments redeemed her unhappy standing, and she was made to suffer that social ignominy which is so absolutely blighting to a sensitive spirit. The strange irony of her position is very dramatic in retrospect. A lovely and loving woman, bound to the man who should have been her husband, by all the most holy vows of nature, she was destined to an unrelieved and bitter expiation; and though Sir Harry doubtless suffered with her, yet, in obedience to the laws that govern womankind, Agnes must have endured a desolation of misery entirely unimagined by him. Again they went into happy exile, and made the grand tour of the Continent, ending at Lisbon, at that time a species of modern Sybaris. Enriched by Brazilian gold, the court was supported in a magnificence then unparalleled in Europe. The opera was the finest on the Continent, and one pageant succeeded another, obedient to the whims of any ever-regnant luxury. Here, too, on the eminence of the seven hills, a colony of wealthy English merchants had congregated, and spent their fairy gold, flowing back through the magic portals leading to the New World, with a prodigality emulating that of the court. Here Frankland gave himself up to the fair god of Pleasure; he lived as if there were to be no morrow, and lo! the morrow came, and with it the judgment of God. On All Saints’ Day, 1755, the sun rose in splendor over the city of Lisbon; and all its inhabitants, from courtier to beggar, took their way churchward, for the celebration of High Mass. Frankland, in his court dress, was riding with a lady, when without warning the earth surged sea-like under them, and a neighboring house fell, engulfing them in its ruins. The lady (who was she, O Historic Muse? and was their talk light or sober, that care-free day in Lisbon?), this unnamed lady, in her agony and terror, bit through the sleeve of Frankland’s cloth coat, and tore a piece of flesh from his arm. And for him, he lay helpless, reading the red record of his sins, and adjudging himself in nothing so guilty as the wrong to the woman who loved him. Strange and awful scenes had driven the city frantic. Churches and dwellings had fallen; the sea swelled mountain-high, and swallowed the quay, with its thousands of bewildered fugitives. Lisbon went mad, and beat its breast, beseeching all the saints for mercy. But to one great spirit, even the insecurity of the solid earth was as nothing compared with the danger of her beloved mate. Agnes Surriage, aflame with anxiety for Frankland, ran out, as soon as the surging streets would give her foothold, and rushed about the desolated city in agonizing search. By some chance, strange as all the chances of her dramatic life, she came upon the very spot of his fearful burial. She tore at the rubbish above him with her tender hands; she offered large rewards, so purchasing the availing strength of others, and Frankland was saved.
To court and people, the earthquake voiced the vengeance of an angry God; to Frankland, it had been a flaming finger, writing on the wall a sentence for him alone, and in security he did not forget its meaning. Waiting only for the healing of his wounds, he at last besought the blessing of holy church upon his love; and Agnes Surriage under went a radiant change into the Lady Agnes Frankland. And now for a time her days became gleaming points in a procession of happiness. Her husband returned with her to England, where she was received as a beloved daughter of the house, and enshrined in those steadfast English hearts, where fealty, once given, so seldom grows cold; and after a tranquil space, the two set sail again for America. Even amid the scenes of her former martyrdom, Agnes was no longer to be regarded as an alien and social outcast. She walked into Boston society as walks a princess entering her rightful domain, and there took up the sceptre of social sway at the aristocratic North End. Frankland had purchased the most lordly mansion there, of which the fragmentary descriptions are enough to make the antiquary’s mouth water. The stairs ascending from the great hall were so broad and low that he could ride his pony up and down in safety; there were wonderful inlaid floors, Italian marbles, and carven pillars. There Agnes lived the life of a dignified matron, and a social leader whose fiats none might gainsay. Indeed, from this time forward her story is that of the happy women whose deeds are unrecorded, and is only to be guessed through scanning the revelations of her husband’s journal. His health seems to have guided their movements in great measure; for they again visited Lisbon, and then came home to England, where he died, in 1768.
