I laughed and cried. I know not which, for the tears were very near my eyes all that time.
But oh! that thing did happen which she prophesied and I longed for—I will quickly tell you how. And, as I have said before, I took Cicely into my service, and a good and faithful maid she proved, and married the curate. I forgot to say that when young Lord Eardesley heard the story of her father’s elopement with Jenny Medlicott, he laughed, because his mother, Jenny’s friend and far-off cousin, had taken her away to Virginia with her, where, after (I hope) the death of Joshua Crump, she had married again. Jenny, it appeared, was the daughter of the same alderman whose fall in 1720 ruined my poor ladies. And it was for this reason that his lordship afterwards, when Cicely had a houseful of babies, took a fancy to them, and would have them, when they were big enough, out to Virginia. Here he made them overseers, and, in course of time, settled them on estates of their own, where some of them prospered, and some, as happens in all large families, wasted their substance and fell into poverty.
The next day, being Sunday, we spent chiefly over our devotions. It was moving to hear the congregation invited to pray for one in grievous danger—meaning poor Will, who would have been better at this moment had he sometimes prayed for himself. Nancy sat beside me in our pew, and caught my hand at the words. One could not choose but weep, poor child! for there was no improvement in Will’s fever: all night long the doctor had sat beside his bed, while the lad, in his delirium, fancied himself riding races, wrestling, boxing, and drinking with his boon companions. A pitiful contrast! The pleasures of the world in his mind, and eternity in prospect. Yet, for a man in delirium, allowance must be made. The fever was now, in fact, at its height, and four men were necessary to hold him down in his ravings.
We spent a gloomy Sunday indeed, Mrs. Esther being so saddened by the anxieties of our friends that she resumed her reading of “Drelincourt on Death,” a book she had laid aside since we left the Rules. And we observed a fast, not so much from religious motives, as because, in the words of Mrs. Esther, roast veal and stuffing is certain to disagree when a heart of sensibility is moved by the woes of those we love. In the evening we had it cold, when Nancy came to sit with us, her eyes red with her weeping, and we were fain to own that we were hungry after crying together all day long.
“Hot meat,” said Mrs. Esther, “at such a juncture, would have choked us.”
Nancy said, that after what had happened, it would certainly be impossible for us to stay longer at Epsom, and that for herself, all she hoped and expected now was shame and disgrace for the rest of her life. She wished that there were convents in the country to which she could repair for the rest of her days; go with her hair cut short, get up in the middle of the night for service, and eat nothing but bread and water. “For,” she said, “I shall never cease to think that my own brother tried to do such a wicked thing.”
Nancy as a nun made us all laugh, and so with spirits raised a little, we kissed, and said farewell. Nancy promised to let me know every other day by post, whatever the letter should cost, how things went. It seemed to me, indeed, as if, seeing that Will had not died in the first twenty-four hours, the chance was somewhat in favour of his recovery. And he was so strong a man, and so young. I sent a message of duty and respect to Sir Robert—I dared not ask to have my name so much as mentioned to Will’s mother—and left Nancy in her trouble, full of mine own.
Before we started next morning, Cicely went for news, but there was no improvement. The stable-boy, she told me, was going about the town, his arm bandaged up, saying that if ever a man was murdered in cold blood it was his master, because he had never a sword, and only a stick to defend himself with. Also, it was reported that among the lower classes, the servants, grooms, footmen, and such, the feeling was strong that the poor gentleman had met with foul play. Asked whether they understood rightly what Mr. Will Levett was doing, Cicely replied that they knew very well, and that they considered he was doing a fine and gallant thing, one which would confer as much honour upon the lady as upon himself, which shows that in this world there is no opinion too monstrous to be held by rough and uneducated people; wherefore we ought the more carefully to guard the constitution and prevent the rabble from having any share in public business, or the control of affairs.
Our carriage took us to London in three hours, the road being tolerably good, and so well frequented, after the first three miles, that there was little fear of highway robbers or footpads. And so we came back to our lodgings in Red Lion Street, after such a two months as I believe never before fell to the lot of any girl.
Remember that I was a wife, yet a maiden; married to a man whom I had never seen except for a brief quarter of an hour, who knew not my name, and had never seen me at all—making allowance for the state of drunkenness in which he was married; that I knew this man’s name, but he knew not mine; that I met him at Epsom, and that he had fallen in love with me, and I, God help me! with him. Yet that there was no way out of it, no escape but that before he could marry me (again) I must needs confess the deceit of which I had been guilty. No Heaven, say the Roman Catholics, without Purgatory. Yet suppose, after going through Purgatory, one were to miss one’s Heaven!