But if some felt concern in quitting the village of Anfield, others who were left behind felt the deepest anguish. Those were not the poor—for rigid attention to the religion and morals of people in poverty, and total neglect of their bodily wants, was the dean’s practice. He forced them to attend church every Sabbath; but whether they had a dinner on their return was too gross and temporal an inquiry for his spiritual fervour. Good of the soul was all he aimed at; and this pious undertaking, besides his diligence as a pastor, required all his exertion as a magistrate—for to be very poor and very honest, very oppressed yet very thankful, is a degree of sainted excellence not often to be attained, without the aid of zealous men to frighten into virtue.
Those, then, who alone felt sorrow at the dean’s departure were two young women, whose parents, exempt from indigence, preserved them from suffering under his unpitying piety, but whose discretion had not protected them from the bewitching smiles of his nephew, and the seducing wiles of his son.
The first morning that Rebecca rose and knew Henry was gone till the following summer, she wished she could have laid down again and slept away the whole long interval. Her sisters’ peevishness, her father’s austerity, she foresaw, would be insupportable now that she had experienced Henry’s kindness, and he was no longer near to fortify her patience. She sighed—she wept—she was unhappy.
But if Rebecca awoke with a dejected mind and an aching heart, what were the sorrows of Agnes? The only child of doating parents, she never had been taught the necessity of resignation—untutored, unread, unused to reflect, but knowing how to feel; what were her sufferings when, on waking, she called to mind that “William was gone,” and with him gone all that excess of happiness which his presence had bestowed, and for which she had exchanged her future tranquillity?
Loss of tranquillity even Rebecca had to bemoan: Agnes had still more—the loss of innocence!
Hal William remained in the village, shame, even conscience, perhaps, might have been silenced; but, separated from her betrayer, parted from the joys of guilt, and left only to its sorrows, every sting which quick sensibility could sharpen, to torture her, was transfixed in her heart. First came the recollection of a cold farewell from the man whose love she had hoped her yielding passion had for ever won; next, flashed on her thoughts her violated person; next, the crime incurred; then her cruelty to her parents; and, last of all, the horrors of detection.
She knew that as yet, by wariness, care, and contrivance, her meetings with William had been unsuspected; but, in this agony of mind, her fears fore-boded an informer who would defy all caution; who would stigmatise her with a name—dear and desired by every virtuous female—abhorrent to the blushing harlot—the name of mother.
That Agnes, thus impressed, could rise from her bed, meet her parents and her neighbours with her usual smile of vivacity, and voice of mirth, was impossible: to leave her bed at all, to creep downstairs, and reply in a faint, broken voice to questions asked, were, in her state of mind, mighty efforts; and they were all to which her struggles could attain for many weeks.
William had promised to write to her while he was away: he kept his word; but not till the end of two months did she receive a letter. Fear for his health, apprehension of his death during this cruel interim, caused an agony of suspense, which, by representing him to her distracted fancy in a state of suffering, made him, if possible, still dearer to her. In the excruciating anguish of uncertainty, she walked with trembling steps through all weathers (when she could steal half a day while her parents were employed in labour abroad) to the post town, at six miles’ distance, to inquire for his long-expected, long-wished-for letter.
When at last it was given to her, that moment of consolation seemed to repay her for the whole time of agonising terror she had endured. “He is alive!” she said, “and I have suffered nothing.”