Upon this information, she thought that she would keep in reserve, till some new sorrow befell her, the consolation of passing his door (perchance of seeing him) which must ever be an alleviation of her grief. It was not long before she had occasion for more substantial comfort. She soon found she was not likely to obtain a service here, more than in the country. Some objected that she could not make caps and gowns; some that she could not preserve and pickle; some, that she was too young; some, that she was too pretty; and all declined accepting her, till at last a citizen’s wife, on condition of her receiving but half the wages usually given, took her as a servant of all work.
In romances, and in some plays, there are scenes of dark and unwholesome mines, wherein the labourer works, during the brightest day, by the aid of artificial light. There are in London kitchens equally dismal though not quite so much exposed to damp and noxious vapours. In one of these, underground, hidden from the cheerful light of the sun, poor Agnes was doomed to toil from morning till night, subjected to the command of a dissatisfied mistress; who, not estimating as she ought the misery incurred by serving her, constantly threatened her servants “with a dismission;” at which the unthinking wretches would tremble merely from the sound of the words; for to have reflected—to have considered what their purport was—“to be released from a dungeon, relieved from continual upbraidings, and vile drudgery,” must have been a subject of rejoicing; and yet, because these good tidings were delivered as a menace, custom had made the hearer fearful of the consequence. So, death being described to children as a disaster, even poverty and shame will start from it with affright; whereas, had it been pictured with its benign aspect, it would have been feared but by few, and many, many would welcome it with gladness.
All the care of Agnes to please, her fear of offending, her toilsome days, her patience, her submission, could not prevail on her she served to retain her one hour after, by chance, she had heard “that she was the mother of a child; that she wished it should be kept a secret; and that she stole out now and then to visit him.”
Agnes, with swimming eyes and an almost breaking heart, left a place—where to have lived one hour would have plunged any fine lady in the deepest grief.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Agnes was driven from service to service—her deficiency in the knowledge of a mere drudge, or her lost character, pursued her wherever she went—at length, becoming wholly destitute, she gladly accepted a place where the latter misfortune was not of the least impediment.
In one of these habitations, where continual misery is dressed in continual smiles; where extreme of poverty is concealed by extreme of finery; where wine dispenses mirth only by dispensing forgetfulness; and where female beauty is so cheap, so complying, that, while it inveigles, it disgusts the man of pleasure: in one of those houses, to attend upon its wretched inhabitants, Agnes was hired. Her feelings of rectitude submitted to those of hunger; her principles of virtue (which the loss of virtue had not destroyed) received a shock when she engaged to be the abettor of vice, from which her delicacy, morality, and religion shrunk; but persons of honour and of reputation would not employ her: was she then to perish? That, perhaps, was easy to resolve; but she had a child to leave behind! a child, from whom to part for a day was a torment. Yet, before she submitted to a situation which filled her mind with a kind of loathing horror, often she paced up and down the street in which William lived, looked wistfully at his house, and sometimes, lost to all her finer feelings of independent pride, thought of sending a short petition to him; but, at the idea of a repulse, and of that frowning brow which she knew William could dart on her petitions, she preferred death, or the most degrading life, to the trial.
It was long since that misfortune and dishonour had made her callous to the good or ill opinion of all the world, except his; and the fear of drawing upon her his increased contempt was still, at the crisis of applying, so powerful, that she found she dared not hazard a reproof from him even in the person of his father, whose rigour she had already more than once experienced, in the frequent harsh messages conveyed to her with the poor stipend for her boy.
Awed by the rigid and pious character of the new bishop, the growing reputation, and rising honours of his son, she mistook the appearance of moral excellence for moral excellence itself, and felt her own unworthiness even to become the supplicant of those great men.
Day after day she watched those parts of the town through which William’s chariot was accustomed to drive; but to see the carriage was all to which she aspired; a feeling, not to be described, forced her to cast her eyes upon the earth as it drew near to her; and when it had passed, she beat her breast, and wept that she had not seen him.