The Father and Daughter 15

The Father and Daughter 15

"My dear, dear lady," said Fanny sorrowfully, "I am sure I did not mean

any thing by what I said; but you have such a way with you, and talk so

sadly!--Yet, I can't bear, indeed I can't, to see such a lady in a gown

not good enough for me; and then to see my young master no better

dressed than the cottager's boys next door;--and then to hear them call

master Edward little Fitzhenry, as if he was not their betters;--I can't

bear it,--it does not signify talking, I can't bear to think of it."

 

"How, then," answered Agnes in a solemn tone, and grasping her hand as

she spoke, "How can I bear to think of the guilt which has thus reduced

so low both me and my child? O! would to God my boy could exchange

situation with the children whom you think his inferiors! I have given

him life, indeed, but not one legal claim to what is necessary to the

support of life, except the scanty pittance which I might, by a public

avowal of my shame, wring from his father."

 

"I would beg my bread with him through the streets before you should do

that," hastily exclaimed Fanny; "and, for the love of God, say no more

on this subject!--He is _my child_, as well as yours," she continued,

snatching little Edward to her bosom, who was contentedly playing with

his top at the door; and Agnes, in contemplating the blooming graces of

the boy, forgot that he was an object of compassion.

 

The next year passed away as the former had done; and at the end of it,

Fitzhenry being pronounced incurable, but perfectly quiet and harmless,

Agnes desired, in spite of the advice and entreaties of the governors,

that he might be delivered up to her, that she might put him under the

care of Dr. W----.

 

Luckily for Agnes, the assignees of her father recovered a debt of a

hundred pounds, which had long been due to him; and this sum they

generously presented to Agnes, in order to further the success of her

last hope.

 

On the day fixed for Fitzhenry's release, Agnes purchased a complete

suit of clothes for him, such as he used to wear in former days, and

dressed herself in a manner suited to her birth, rather than her

situation; then set out in a post-chaise, attended by the friendly

cottager, as it was judged imprudent for her to travel with her father

alone, to take up Fitzhenry at the bedlam, while Fanny was crying with

joy to see her dear lady looking like herself again, and travelling like

a _gentlewoman_.

 

But the poor, whom gratitude and affection made constantly observant of

the actions of Agnes, were full of consternation, when some of them

heard, and communicated to the others, that a post-chaise was standing

at Miss Fitzhenry's door. "O dear! she is going to leave us again; what

shall we do without her?" was the general exclamation; and when Agnes

came out to enter her chaise, she found it surrounded by her humble

friends lamenting and inquiring, though with cautious respect, whether

she ever meant to come back again. "Fanny will tell you every thing,"

said Agnes, overcome with grateful emotion at observing the interest

which she excited. Unable to say more, she waved her hand as a token of

farewell to them, and the chaise drove off.

 

"Is miss Fitzhenry grown _rich_ again?" was the general question

addressed to Fanny; and I am sure it was a disinterested one, and that,

at the moment, they asked it without a view to their profiting by her

change of situation, and merely as anxious for her welfare;--and when

Fanny told them whither and wherefore Agnes was gone, could prayers,

good wishes and blessings have secured success to the hopes of Agnes,

her father, even as soon as she stopped at the gate of the bedlam, would

have recognised and received her with open arms. But when she arrived,

she found Fitzhenry as irrational as ever, though delighted to hear that

he was going to take a ride with "_the lady_" as he always called Agnes;

and she had the pleasure of seeing him seat himself beside her with a

look of uncommon satisfaction. Nothing worth relating happened on the

road. Fitzhenry was very tractable, except at night, when the cottager,

who slept in the same room with him, found it difficult to make him

keep in bed, and was sometimes forced to call Agnes to his assistance:

at sight of her he always became quiet, and obeyed her implicitly.

 

The skilful and celebrated man to whom she applied received her with

sympathizing kindness, and heard her story with a degree of interest and

sensibility peculiarly grateful to the afflicted heart. Agnes related

with praiseworthy ingenuousness the whole of her sad history, judging it

necessary that the doctor should know the cause of the malady for which

he was to prescribe.

 

It was peculiarly the faculty of Agnes to interest in her welfare those

with whom she conversed; and the doctor soon experienced a more than

ordinary earnestness to cure a patient so interesting from his

misfortunes, and recommended by so interesting a daughter. "Six months,"

said he, "will be a sufficient time of trial; and in the mean while you

shall reside in a lodging near us." Fitzhenry then became an inmate of

the doctor's house; Agnes took possession of apartments in the

neighbourhood; and the cottager returned to ----.

 

The ensuing six months were passed by Agnes in the soul-sickening

feeling of hope deferred: and, while the air of the place agreed so well

with her father that he became fat and healthy in his appearance,

anxiety preyed on her delicate frame, and made the doctor fear that,

when he should be forced to pronounce his patient beyond his power to

cure, she would sink under the blow, unless the hope of being still

serviceable to her father should support her under its pressure. He

resolved, therefore, to inform her, in as judicious and cautious a

manner as possible, that he saw no prospect of curing the

thoroughly-shattered intellect of Fitzhenry.

 

"_I_ can do nothing for your father," said he to Agnes (when he had

been under his care six months), laying great stress on the word

_I_;----(Agnes, with a face of horror, started from her seat, and laid

her hand on his arm)----"but _you_ can do a great deal."

 

"Can I? can I?" exclaimed Agnes, sobbing convulsively.--"Blessed

hearing! But the means--the means?"

 

"It is very certain," he replied, "that he experiences great delight

when he sees you, and sees you too employed in his service;--and when he

lives with you, and sees you again where he has been accustomed to see

you----"

 

"You advise his living with me, then?" interrupted Agnes with eagerness.

 

"I do, most strenuously," replied the doctor.

 

"Blessings on you for those words!" answered Agnes: "they said you would

oppose it. You are a wise and a kind-hearted man."

 

"My dear child," rejoined the doctor, "when an evil can't be cured, it

should at least be alleviated."

 

"You think it can't be cured, then?" again interrupted Agnes.

 

"Not absolutely so:--I know not what a course of medicine, and living

with you as much in your old way as possible, may do for him. Let him

resume his usual habits, his usual walks, live as near your former

habitation as you possibly can; let him hear his favourite songs, and be

as much with him as you can contrive to be; and if you should not

succeed in making him rational again, you will at least make him happy."

 

"Happy!--I make him happy, now!" exclaimed Agnes, pacing the room in an

agony:--"I made him happy once!--but now!----"

 

"You must hire some one to sleep in the room with him," resumed the

doctor.

 

"No, no," cried Agnes impatiently;--"no one shall wait on him but

myself;--I will attend him day and night."

 

"And should your strength be worn out by such incessant watching, who

would take care of him then?--Remember, you are but mortal."--Agnes

shook her head, and was silent.--"Besides, the strength of a man may

sometimes be necessary; and, for his sake as well as yours, I must

insist on being obeyed."

 

"You shall be obeyed," said Agnes mournfully.

 

"Then now," rejoined he, "let me give you my advice relative to diet,

medicine, and management."--This he did in detail, as he found Agnes

had a mind capacious enough to understand his system; and promising to

answer her letters immediately, whenever she wrote to him for advice,

he took an affectionate farewell of her; and Agnes and her father,

accompanied by a man whom the doctor had procured for the purpose, set

off for ----.

 

Fanny was waiting at the cottage with little Edward to receive

them,--but the dejected countenance of Agnes precluded all necessity of

asking concerning the state of Fitzhenry. Scarcely could the caresses of

her child, and the joy which he expressed at seeing her, call a smile to

her lips; and as she pressed him to her bosom, tears of bitter

disappointment mingled with those of tenderness.

 

In a day or two after, Agnes, in compliance with the doctor's desire,

hired a small tenement very near the house in which they formerly lived;

and in the garden of which, as it was then empty, they obtained leave to

walk. She also procured a person to sleep in the room with her father,

instead of the man who came with them; and he carried back a letter from

her to the doctor, informing him that she had arranged every thing

according to his directions.

 

It was a most painfully pleasing sight to behold the attention of Agnes

to Fitzhenry. She knew that it was not in her power to repair the

enormous injury which she had done him, and that all she could now do

was but a poor amends; still it was affecting to see how anxiously she

watched his steps whenever he chose to wander alone from home, and what

pains she took to make him neat in his appearance, and cleanly in his

person. Her child and herself were clothed in coarse apparel, but she

bought for her father everything of the best materials; and, altered as

he was, Fitzhenry still looked like a gentleman.

 

Sometimes he seemed in every respect so like himself, that Agnes,

hurried away by her imagination, would, after gazing on him some

minutes, start from her seat, seize his hand, and, breathless with hope,

address him as if he were a rational being,--when a laugh of vacancy, or

a speech full of the inconsistency of phrensy, would send her back on

her chair again, with a pulse quickened, and a cheek flushed with the

fever of disappointed expectation.

 

However, he certainly was pleased with her attentions,--but, alas! he

knew not who was the bestower of them: he knew not that the child, whose

ingratitude or whose death he still lamented in his ravings in the dead

of night, was returned to succour, to soothe him, and to devote herself

entirely to his service. He heard her, but he knew her not; he saw her,

but in her he was not certain that he beheld his child: and this was the

pang that preyed on the cheek and withered the frame of Agnes: but she

persisted to hope, and patiently endured the pain of to-day, expecting

the joy of to-morrow; nor did her hopes always appear ill-founded.

 

The first day that Agnes led him to the garden once his own, he ran

through every walk with eager delight; but he seemed surprised and angry

to see the long grass growing in the walks, and the few flowers that

remained choked up with weeds,--and began to pluck up the weeds with hasty violence.