CHAPTER XXXV.
While the bishop and his son were sailing before prosperous gales on the ocean of life, young Henry was contending with adverse winds, and many other perils, on the watery ocean; yet still, his distresses and dangers were less than those which Agnes had to encounter upon land. The sea threatens an untimely death; the shore menaces calamities from which death is a refuge.
The affections she had already experienced could just admit of aggravation: the addition occurred.
Had the good farmer, who made her the companion of his flocks and herds, lived till now, till now she might have been secure from the annoyance of human kind; but, thrown once more upon society, she was unfit to sustain the conflict of decorum against depravity. Her master, her patron, her preserver, was dead; and hardly as she had earned the pittance she received from him, she found that it surpassed her power to obtain the like again. Her doubtful character, her capacious mind, her unmethodical manners, were still badly suited to the nice precision of a country housewife; and as the prudent mistress of a family sneered at her pretensions, she, in her turn, scorned the narrow-minded mistress of a family.
In her inquiries how to gain her bread free from the cutting reproaches of discretion, she was informed “that London was the only private corner, where guilt could be secreted undisturbed; and the only public place where, in open day, it might triumphantly stalk, attended by a chain of audacious admirers.”
There was a charm to the ear of Agnes in the name of London, which thrilled through her soul. William lived in London; and she thought that, while she retired to some dark cellar with her offences, he probably would ride in state with his, and she at humble distance might sometimes catch a glance at him.
As difficult as to eradicate insanity from a mind once possessed, so difficult it is to erase from the lover’s breast the deep impression of a real affection. Coercion may prevail for a short interval, still love will rage again. Not all the ignominy which Agnes experienced in the place where she now was without a home—not the hunger which she at times suffered, and even at times saw her child endure—not every inducement for going to London, or motive for quitting her present desolate station, had the weight to affect her choice so much as—in London, she should live nearer William; in the present spot she could never hope to see him again, but there she might chance to pass him in the streets; she might pass his house every day unobserved—might inquire about him of his inferior neighbours, who would be unsuspicious of the cause of her curiosity. For these gratifications, she should imbibe new fortitude; for these she could bear all hardships which London threatened; and for these, she at length undertook a three weeks’ journey to that perilous town on foot, cheering, as she walked along, her innocent and wearied companion.
William—in your luxurious dwelling, possessed of coffers filled with gold, relations, friends, clients, joyful around you, delicious viands and rich wines upon your sumptuous board, voluptuousness displayed in every apartment of your habitation—contemplate, for a moment, Agnes, your first love, with her son, your first and only child, walking through frost and snow to London, with a foreboding fear on the mother that, when arrived, they both may perish for the want of a friend.
But no sooner did Agnes find herself within the smoke of the metropolis than the old charm was renewed; and scarcely had she refreshed her child at the poor inn at which she stopped than she inquired how far it was to that part of the town where William, she knew, resided?
She received for answer, “about two miles.”