Part 16 (1/2)
This was impossible, he said--”No private confessions before a magistrate! All must be done openly.”
She urged again and again the same request: it was denied more peremptorily than at first. On which she said--”Then, sir, forgive me, since you force me to it, if I speak before Mr. Rymer and these men what I would for ever have kept a secret if I could. One of your family is my child's father.”
”Any of my servants?” cried the dean.
”No.”
”My nephew?”
”No; one who is nearer still.”
”Come this way,” said the dean; ”I _will_ speak to you in private.”
It was not that the dean, as a magistrate, distributed partial decrees of pretended justice--he was rigidly faithful to his trust: he would not inflict punishment on the innocent, nor let the guilty escape; but in all particulars of refined or coa.r.s.e treatment he would alleviate or aggravate according to the rank of the offender. He could not feel that a secret was of equal importance to a poor as to a rich person; and while Agnes gave no intimation but that her delicacy rose from fears for herself, she did not so forcibly impress him with an opinion that it was a case which had weighty cause for a private conference as when she boldly said, ”a part of _his_ family, very near to him, was concerned in her tale.”
The final result of their conversation in an adjoining room was--a charge from the dean, in the words of Mr. Rymer, ”to hush the affair up,” and his promise that the infant should be immediately taken from her, and that ”she should have no more trouble with it.”
”I have no trouble with it,” replied Agnes: ”my child is now all my comfort, and I cannot part from it.”
”Why, you inconsistent woman, did you not attempt to murder it?”
”That was before I had nursed it.”
”'Tis necessary you should give it up: it must be sent some miles away; and then the whole circ.u.mstance will be soon forgotten.”
”_I_ shall never forget it.”
”No matter; you must give up the child. Do not some of our first women of quality part with their children?”
”Women of quality have other things to love--I have nothing else.”
”And would you occasion my son and his new-made bride the shame and the uneasiness--”
Here Agnes burst into a flood of tears; and being angrily asked by the dean ”why she blubbered so--”
”_I_ have had shame and uneasiness,” she replied, wringing her hands.
”And you deserve them: they are the sure attendants of crimes such as yours. If you allured and entrapped a young man like my son--”
”I am the youngest by five years,” said Agnes.
”Well, well, repent,” returned the dean; ”repent, and resign your child.
Repent, and you may yet marry an honest man who knows nothing of the matter.”
”And repent too?” asked Agnes.
Not the insufferable ignorance of young Henry, when he first came to England, was more vexatious or provoking to the dean than the rustic simplicity of poor Agnes's uncultured replies. He at last, in an offended and determined manner, told her--”That if she would resign the child, and keep the father's name a secret, not only the child should be taken care of, but she herself might, perhaps, receive some favours; but if she persisted in her imprudent folly, she must expect no consideration on her own account; nor should she be allowed, for the maintenance of the boy, a sixpence beyond the stated sum for a poor man's unlawful offspring.” Agnes, resolving not to be separated from her infant, bowed resignation to this last decree; and, terrified at the loud words and angry looks of the dean, after being regularly discharged, stole to her home, where the smiles of her infant, and the caresses she lavished on it, repaid her for the sorrows she had just suffered for its sake.