Tales and Novels Volume IV Part 46

"You can gain nothing by your present obstinacy--you are the cause of your father's lying in jail, and of your mother's being as she is, nearly starved to death. You can relieve them from misery worse than death, and place them in ease and comfort for the remainder of their days. Be a.s.sured, they do not speak sincerley to you, when they pretend not to wish that your compliance should put an end to their present sufferings. It is you that are cruel to them--it is you that are cruel to yourself, and can blame n.o.body else. You might live all your days in a house as good as mine, and have a plentiful table served from one year's end to another, with all the dainties of the season, and you might be dressed as elegantly as the most elegant lady in London (which, by-the-bye, your beauty deserves), and you would have servants of your own, and a carriage of your own, and nothing to do all day long but take your pleasure. And after all, what is asked of you?--only to make a person happy, whom half the town would envy you, that would make it a study to gratify you in every wish of your heart. The person alluded to you have seen, and more than once, when you have been talking to me of work in my parlour. He is a very rich and generous gentleman. If you come to Chiswell-street about six this evening, you will find all I say true--if not, you and yours must take the consequences."

Coa.r.s.e as the eloquence of this letter may appear, Anne could not read it without emotion: it raised in her heart a violent contest. Virtue, with poverty and famine, were on one side--and vice, with affluence, love, and every worldly pleasure, on the other.

Those who have been bred up in the lap of luxury; whom the breath of heaven has never visited too roughly; whose minds from their earliest infancy have been guarded even with more care than their persons; who in the dangerous season of youth are surrounded by all that the solicitude of experienced friends, and all that polished society, can devise for their security; are not perhaps competent to judge of the temptations by which beauty in the lower cla.s.ses of life may be a.s.sailed. They who have never seen a father in prison, or a mother peris.h.i.+ng for want of the absolute necessaries of life--they who have never themselves known the cravings of famine, cannot form an adequate idea of this poor girl's feelings, and of the temptation to which she was now exposed. She wept--she hesitated--and "the woman that deliberates is lost." Perhaps those who are the most truly virtuous of her s.e.x will be the most disposed to feel for this poor creature, who was literally half famished before her good resolutions were conquered. At last she yielded to necessity. At the appointed hour she was in Mrs. Carver's house. This woman received her with triumph--she supplied Anne immediately with food, and then hastened to deck out her victim in the most attractive manner. The girl was quite pa.s.sive in her hand. She promised, though scarcely knowing that she uttered the words, to obey the instructions that were given to her, and she suffered herself without struggle, or apparent emotion, to be led to destruction. She appeared quite insensible--but at last she was roused from this state of stupefaction, by the voice of a person with whom she found herself alone. The stranger, who was a young and gay gentleman, pleasing both in his person and manners, attempted by every possible means to render himself agreeable to her, to raise her spirits, and calm her apprehensions. By degrees his manner changed from levity to tenderness. He represented to her, that he was not a brutal wretch, who could be gratified by any triumph in which the affections of the heart have no share; and he a.s.sured her, that in any connexion which she might be prevailed upon to form with him, she should be treated with honour and delicacy.

Touched by his manner of speaking, and overpowered by the sense of her own situation, Anne could not reply one single word to all he said--but burst into an agony of tears, and sinking on her knees before him, exclaimed, "Save me! save me from myself!--Restore me to my parents, before they have reason to hate me."

The gentleman seemed to be somewhat in doubt whether this was _acting_ or nature: but he raised Anne from the ground, and placed her upon a seat beside him. "Am I to understand, then, that I have been deceived, and that our present meeting is against your own consent?"

"No, I cannot say that--oh, how I wish that I could!--I did wrong, very wrong, to come here--but I repent--I was half-starved--I have a father in jail--I thought I could set him free with the money----but I will not pretend to be better than I am--I believe I thought that, beside relieving my father, I should live all my days without ever more knowing what distress is--and I thought I should be happy--but now I have changed my mind--I never could be happy with a bad conscience--I know--by what I have felt this last hour."

Her voice failed; and she sobbed for some moments without being able to speak. The gentleman, who now was convinced that she was quite artless and thoroughly in earnest, was struck with compa.s.sion; but his compa.s.sion was not unmixed with other feelings, and he had hopes that, by treating her with tenderness, he should in time make it her wish to live with him as his mistress. He was anxious to hear what her former way of life had been; and she related, at his request, the circ.u.mstances by which she and her parents had been reduced to such distress. His countenance presently showed how much he was interested in her story--he grew red and pale--he started from his seat, and walked up and down the room in great agitation, till at last, when she mentioned the name of Colonel Pembroke, he stopped short, and exclaimed, "I am the man--I am Colonel Pembroke--I am that unjust, unfeeling wretch! How often, in the bitterness of your hearts, you must have cursed me!"

"Oh, no--my father, when he was at the worst, never cursed you; and I am sure he will have reason to bless you now, if you send his daughter back again to him, such as she was when she left him."

"That shall be done," said Colonel Pembroke; "and in doing so, I make some sacrifice, and have some merit. It is time I should make some reparation for the evils I have occasioned," continued he, taking a handful of guineas from his pocket: "but first let me pay my just debts."

"My poor father!" exclaimed Anne; "to-morrow he will be out of prison."

"I will go with you to the prison, where your father is confined--I will force myself to behold all the evils I have occasioned."

Colonel Pembroke went to the prison; and he was so much struck by the scene, that he not only relieved the misery of this family, but in two months afterwards his debts were paid, his race-horses sold, and all his expenses regulated, so as to render him ever afterwards truly independent. He no longer spent his days, like many young men of fas.h.i.+on, either in DREADING or in d.a.m.nING DUNS.

_Edgeworthstown_, 1802.

THE END.