The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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* * * * *

One o'clock had arrived; fifteen minutes after, I strolled into the
garden, and began to look over the little garden-gate in expectation of
every moment descrying Agnes in the distance. Half an hour passed, and
for ten minutes more I was tolerably quiet. From this time till
half-past two I became constantly more agitated--_agitated_, perhaps, is
too strong a word--but I was restless and anxious beyond what I should
have chosen to acknowledge. Still I kept arguing, What is half an
hour?--what is an hour? A thousand things might have occurred to cause
that delay, without needing to suppose any accident; or, if an accident,
why not a very trifling one? She may have slightly hurt her foot--she
may have slightly sprained her ankle. 'Oh, doubtless,' I exclaimed to
myself, 'it will be a mere trifle, or perhaps nothing at all.' But I
remember that, even whilst I was saying this, I took my hat and walked
with nervous haste into the little quiet lane upon which our garden-gate
opened. The lane led by a few turnings, and after a course of about five
hundred yards, into a broad high-road, which even at that day had begun
to assume the character of a street, and allowed an unobstructed range
of view in the direction of the city for at least a mile. Here I
stationed myself, for the air was so clear that I could distinguish
dress and figure to a much greater distance than usual. Even on such a
day, however, the remote distance was hazy and indistinct, and at any
other season I should have been diverted with the various mistakes I
made. From occasional combinations of colour, modified by light and
shade, and of course powerfully assisted by the creative state of the
eye under this nervous apprehensiveness, I continued to shape into
images of Agnes forms without end, that upon nearer approach presented
the most grotesque contrasts to her impressive appearance. But I had
ceased even to comprehend the ludicrous; my agitation was now so
overruling and engrossing that I lost even my intellectual sense of it;
and now first I understood practically and feelingly the anguish of hope
alternating with disappointment, as it may be supposed to act upon the
poor shipwrecked seaman, alone and upon a desolate coast, straining his
sight for ever to the fickle element which has betrayed him, but which
only can deliver him, and with his eyes still tracing in the far
distance

'Ships, dim-discover'd, dropping from the clouds,'--

which a brief interval of suspense still for ever disperses into hollow
pageants of air or vapour. One deception melted away only to be
succeeded by another; still I fancied that at last to a certainty I
could descry the tall figure of Agnes, her gipsy hat, and even the
peculiar elegance of her walk. Often I went so far as to laugh at
myself, and even to tax my recent fears with unmanliness and effeminacy,
on recollecting the audible throbbings of my heart, and the nervous
palpitations which had besieged me; but these symptoms, whether
effeminate or not, began to come back tumultuously under the gloomy
doubts that succeeded almost before I had uttered this self-reproach.
Still I found myself mocked and deluded with false hopes; yet still I
renewed my quick walk, and the intensity of my watch for that radiant
form that was fated never more to be seen returning from the cruel city.

It was nearly half-past three, and therefore close upon two hours beyond
the time fixed by Agnes for her return, when I became absolutely
incapable of supporting the further torture of suspense, and I suddenly
took the resolution of returning home and concerting with my female
servants some energetic measures, though _what_ I could hardly say, on
behalf of their mistress. On entering the garden-gate I met our little
child Francis, who unconsciously inflicted a pang upon me which he
neither could have meditated nor have understood. I passed him at his
play, perhaps even unaware of his presence, but he recalled me to that
perception by crying aloud that he had just seen his mamma.

'When--where?' I asked convulsively.

'Up-stairs in her bedroom,' was his instantaneous answer.

His manner was such as forbade me to suppose that he could be joking;
and, as it was barely possible (though, for reasons well-known to me, in
the highest degree improbable), that Agnes might have returned by a
by-path, which, leading through a dangerous and disreputable suburb,
would not have coincided at any one point with the public road where I
had been keeping my station. I sprang forward into the house, up-stairs,
and in rapid succession into every room where it was likely that she
might be found; but everywhere there was a dead silence, disturbed only
by myself, for, in my growing confusion of thought, I believe that I
rang the bell violently in every room I entered. No such summons,
however, was needed, for the servants, two of whom at the least were
most faithful creatures, and devotedly attached to their young mistress,
stood ready of themselves to come and make inquiries of me as soon as
they became aware of the alarming fact that I had returned without her.

Until this moment, though having some private reasons for surprise that
she should have failed to come into the house for a minute or two at the
hour prefixed, in order to make some promised domestic arrangements for
the day, they had taken it for granted that she must have met with me at
some distance from home--and that either the extreme beauty of the day
had beguiled her of all petty household recollections, or (as a
conjecture more in harmony with past experiences) that my impatience and
solicitations had persuaded her to lay aside her own plans for the
moment at the risk of some little domestic inconvenience. Now, however,
in a single instant vanished _every_ mode of accounting for their
mistress's absence; and the consternation of our looks communicated
contagiously, by the most unerring of all languages, from each to the
other what thoughts were uppermost in our panic-stricken hearts. If to
any person it should seem that our alarm was disproportioned to the
occasion, and not justified at least by anything as yet made known to
us, let that person consider the weight due to the two following
facts--first, that from the recency of our settlement in this
neighbourhood, and from the extreme seclusion of my wife's previous life
at a vast distance from the metropolis, she had positively no friends on
her list of visitors who resided in this great capital; secondly, and
far above all beside, let him remember the awful denunciations, so
unexpectedly tallying with this alarming and mysterious absence, of the
Hungarian prophetess; these had been slighted--almost dismissed from our
thoughts; but now in sudden reaction they came back upon us with a
frightful power to lacerate and to sting--the shadowy outline of a
spiritual agency, such as that which could at all predict the events,
combining in one mysterious effect, with the shadowy outline of those
very predictions. The power, that could have predicted, was as dim and
as hard to grasp as was the precise nature of the evil that had been
predicted.

An icy terror froze my blood at this moment when I looked at the
significant glances, too easily understood by me, that were exchanged
between the servants. My mouth had been for the last two hours growing
more and more parched, so that at present, from mere want of moisture, I
could not separate my lips to speak. One of the women saw the vain
efforts I was making, and hastily brought me a glass of water. With the
first recovery of speech, I asked them what little Francis had meant by
saying that he had seen his mother in her bedroom. Their reply was--that
they were as much at a loss to discover his meaning as I was; that he
had made the same assertion to them, and with so much earnestness, that
they had, all in succession, gone up-stairs to look for her, and with
the fullest expectation of finding her. This was a mystery which
remained such to the very last; there was no doubt whatsoever that the
child believed himself to have seen his mother; that he could not have
seen her in her human bodily presence, there is as little doubt as there
is, alas! that in this world he never _did_ see her again. The poor
child constantly adhered to his story, and with a circumstantiality far
beyond all power of invention that could be presumed in an artless
infant. Every attempt at puzzling him or entangling him in
contradictions by means of cross-examination was but labour thrown away;
though, indeed, it is true enough that for those attempts, as will soon
be seen, there was but a brief interval allowed.

Not dwelling upon this subject at present, I turned to Hannah--a woman
who held the nominal office of cook in our little establishment, but
whose real duties had been much more about her mistress's person--and
with a searching look of appeal I asked her whether, in this moment of
trial, when (as she might see) I was not so perfectly master of myself
as perhaps always to depend upon seeing what was best to be done, she
would consent to accompany me into the city, and take upon herself those
obvious considerations of policy or prudence which might but too easily
escape my mind, darkened, and likely to be darkened, as to its power of
discernment by the hurricane of affliction now too probably at hand. She
answered my appeal with the fervour I expected from what I had already
known of her character. She was a woman of a strong, fiery, perhaps I
might say of heroic mind, supported by a courage that was absolutely
indomitable, and by a strength of bodily frame very unusual in a woman,
and beyond the promise even of her person. She had suffered as deep a
wrench in her own affections as a human being can suffer; she had lost
her one sole child, a fair-haired boy of most striking beauty and
interesting disposition, at the age of seventeen, and by the worst of
all possible fates; he lived (as we did at that time) in a large
commercial city overflowing with profligacy, and with temptations of
every order; he had been led astray; culpable he had been, but by very
much the least culpable of the set into which accident had thrown him,
as regarded acts and probable intentions; and as regarded palliations
from childish years, from total inexperience, or any other alleviating
circumstances that could be urged, having everything to plead--and of
all his accomplices the only one who had anything to plead. Interest,
however, he had little or none; and whilst some hoary villains of the
party, who happened to be more powerfully befriended, were finally
allowed to escape with a punishment little more than nominal, he and two
others were selected as sacrifices to the offended laws. They suffered
capitally. All three behaved well; but the poor boy in particular, with
a courage, a resignation, and a meekness, so distinguished and beyond
his years as to attract the admiration and the liveliest sympathy of the
public universally. If strangers could feel in that way, if the mere
hardened executioner could be melted at the final scene,--it may be
judged to what a fierce and terrific height would ascend the affliction
of a doating mother, constitutionally too fervid in her affections. I
have heard an official person declare, that the spectacle of her
desolation and frantic anguish was the most frightful thing he had ever
witnessed, and so harrowing to the feelings, that all who could by
their rank venture upon such an irregularity, absented themselves during
the critical period from the office which corresponded with the
government; for, as I have said, the affair took place in a large
provincial city, at a great distance from the capital. All who knew this
woman, or who were witnesses to the alteration which one fortnight had
wrought in her person as well as her demeanour, fancied it impossible
that she could continue to live; or that, if she did, it must be through
the giving way of her reason. They proved, however, to be mistaken; or,
at least, if (as some thought) her reason did suffer in some degree,
this result showed itself in the inequality of her temper, in moody fits
of abstraction, and the morbid energy of her manner at times under the
absence of all adequate external excitement, rather than in any positive
and apparent hallucinations of thought. The charm which had mainly
carried off the instant danger to her faculties, was doubtless the
intense sympathy which she met with. And in these offices of consolation
my wife stood foremost. For, and that was fortunate, she had found
herself able, without violence to her own sincerest opinions in the
case, to offer precisely that form of sympathy which was most soothing
to the angry irritation of the poor mother; not only had she shown a
_direct_ interest in the boy, and not a mere interest of _reflection_
from that which she took in the mother, and had expressed it by visits
to his dungeon, and by every sort of attention to his comforts which his
case called for, or the prison regulations allowed; not only had she
wept with the distracted woman as if for a brother of her own; but,
which went farther than all the rest in softening the mother's heart,
she had loudly and indignantly proclaimed her belief in the boy's
innocence, and in the same tone her sense of the crying injustice
committed as to the selection of the victims, and the proportion of the
punishment awarded. Others, in the language of a great poet,

'Had pitied _her_ and not her grief;'

they had either not been able to see, or, from carelessness, had neglected
to see, any peculiar wrong done to her in the matter which occasioned her
grief,--but had simply felt compassion for her as for one summoned, in a
regular course of providential and human dispensation, to face an
affliction, heavy in itself, but not heavy from any special defect of
equity. Consequently their very sympathy, being so much built upon the
assumption that an only child had offended to the extent implied in his
sentence, oftentimes clothed itself in expressions which she felt to be not
consolations but insults, and, in fact, so many justifications of those whom
it relieved her overcharged heart to regard as the very worst of enemies.
Agnes, on the other hand, took the very same view of the case as herself;
and, though otherwise the gentlest of all gentle creatures, yet here, from
the generous fervour of her reverence for justice, and her abhorrence of
oppression, she gave herself no trouble to moderate the energy of her
language: nor did I, on my part, feeling that substantially she was in the
right, think it of importance to dispute about the exact degrees of the
wrong done or the indignation due to it. In this way it happened naturally
enough that at one and the same time, though little contemplating either of
these results, Agnes had done a prodigious service to the poor desolate
mother by breaking the force of her misery, as well as by arming the active
agencies of indignation against the depressing ones of solitary grief, and
for herself had won a most grateful and devoted friend, who would have gone
through fire and water to serve her, and was thenceforwards most anxious for
some opportunity to testify how deep had been her sense of the goodness
shown to her by her benign young mistress, and how incapable of suffering
abatement by time. It remains to add, which I have slightly noticed before,
that this woman was of unusual personal strength: her bodily frame matched
with her intellectual: and I notice this _now_ with the more emphasis,
because I am coming rapidly upon ground where it will be seen that this one
qualification was of more summary importance to us--did us more 'yeoman's
service' at a crisis the most awful--than other qualities of greater name
and pretension. _Hannah_ was this woman's Christian name; and her name and
her memory are to me amongst the most hallowed of my earthly recollections.

One of her two fellow-servants, known technically amongst us as the
'parlour-maid,' was also, but not equally, attached to her mistress; and
merely because her nature, less powerfully formed and endowed, did not allow
her to entertain or to comprehend any service equally fervid of passion or
of impassioned action. She, however, was good, affectionate, and worthy to
be trusted. But a third there was, a nursery-maid, and therefore more
naturally and more immediately standing within the confidence of her
mistress--her I could not trust: her I suspected. But of that hereafter.
Meantime, Hannah--she upon whom I leaned as upon a staff in all which
respected her mistress, ran up-stairs, after I had spoken and received her
answer, in order hastily to dress and prepare herself for going out along
with me to the city. I did not ask her to be quick in her movements: I knew
there was no need: and, whilst she was absent, I took up, in one of my
fretful movements of nervousness, a book which was lying upon a side table:
the book fell open of itself at a particular page; and in that, perhaps,
there was nothing extraordinary; for it was a little portable edition of
_Paradise Lost_; and the page was one which I must naturally have turned to
many a time: for to Agnes I had read all the great masters of literature,
especially those of modern times; so that few people knew the high classics
more familiarly: and as to the passage in question, from its divine beauty I
had read it aloud to her, perhaps, on fifty separate occasions. All this I
mention to take away any appearance of a vulgar attempt to create omens; but
still, in the very act of confessing the simple truth, and thus weakening
the marvellous character of the anecdote, I must notice it as a strange
instance of the '_Sortes Miltonianae_'--that precisely at such a moment as
this I should find thrown in my way, should feel tempted to take up, and
should open, a volume containing such a passage as the following: and
observe, moreover, that although the volume, _once being taken up_, would
naturally open where it had been most frequently read, there were, however,
many passages which had been read _as_ frequently--or more so. The
particular passage upon which I opened at this moment was that most
beautiful one in which the fatal morning separation is described between
Adam and his bride--that separation so pregnant with wo, which eventually
proved the occasion of the mortal transgression--the last scene between our
first parents at which both were innocent and both were happy--although the
superior intellect already felt, and, in the slight altercation preceding
this separation, had already expressed a dim misgiving of some coming
change: these are the words, and in depth of pathos they have rarely been
approached:--

'Oft he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated; she to him as oft engag'd
To be returned by noon amid the bow'r,
And all things in best order to invite
Noon-tide repast, or afternoon's repose.
Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve!
Of thy presumed return, event perverse!
Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast, or sound repose.'

'_My_ Eve!' I exclaimed, 'partner in _my_ paradise, where art thou? _Much
failing_ thou wilt not be found, nor _much deceived_; innocent in any case
thou art; but, alas! too surely by this time _hapless_, and the victim of
some diabolic wickedness.' Thus I murmured to myself; thus I ejaculated;
thus I apostrophised my Agnes; then again came a stormier mood. I could not
sit still; I could not stand in quiet; I threw the book from me with
violence against the wall; I began to hurry backwards and forwards in a
short uneasy walk, when suddenly a sound, a step; it was the sound of the
garden-gate opening, followed by a hasty tread. Whose tread! Not for a
moment could it be fancied the oread step which belonged to that daughter of
the hills--my wife, my Agnes; no, it was the dull massy tread of a man: and
immediately there came a loud blow upon the door, and in the next moment,
the bell having been found, a furious peal of ringing. Oh coward heart! not
for a lease of immortality could I have gone forwards myself. My breath
failed me; an interval came in which respiration seemed to be stifled--the
blood to halt in its current; and then and there I recognised in myself the
force and living truth of that Scriptural description of a heart consciously
beset by evil without escape: 'Susannah _sighed_.' Yes, a long long sigh--a
deep deep sigh--that is the natural language by which the overcharged heart
utters forth the wo that else would break it. I sighed--oh how profoundly!
But that did not give me power to move. Who will go to the door? I whispered
audibly. Who is at the door? was the inaudible whisper of my heart. Then
might be seen the characteristic differences of the three women. That one,
whom I suspected, I heard raising an upper window to look out and
reconnoitre. The affectionate Rachael, on the other hand, ran eagerly
down-stairs; but Hannah, half dressed, even her bosom exposed, passed her
like a storm; and before I heard any sound of opening a door, I saw from the
spot where I stood the door already wide open, and a man in the costume of a
policeman. All that he said I could not hear; but this I heard--that I was
wanted at the police office, and had better come off without delay. He
seemed then to get a glimpse of me, and to make an effort towards coming
nearer; but I slunk away, and left to Hannah the task of drawing from him
any circumstances which he might know. But apparently there was not much to
tell, or rather, said I, there is too much, the _much_ absorbs the _many_;
some one mighty evil transcends and quells all particulars. At length the
door was closed, and the man was gone. Hannah crept slowly along the
passage, and looked in hesitatingly. Her very movements and stealthy pace
testified that she had heard nothing which, even by comparison, she could
think good news. 'Tell me not now, Hannah,' I said; 'wait till we are in
the open air.' She went up-stairs again. How short seemed the time till she
descended!--how I longed for further respite! 'Hannah!' I said at length
when we were fairly moving upon the road, 'Hannah! I am too sure you have
nothing good to tell. But now tell me the worst, and let that be in the
fewest words possible.'

'Sir,' she said, 'we had better wait until we reach the office; for really I
could not understand the man. He says that my mistress is detained upon some
charge; but _what_, I could not at all make out. He was a man that knew
something of you, sir, I believe, and he wished to be civil, and kept
saying, "Oh! I dare say it will turn out nothing at all, many such charges
are made idly and carelessly, and some maliciously." "But what charges?" I
cried, and then he wanted to speak privately to you. But I told him that of
all persons he must not speak to you, if he had anything painful to tell;
for that you were too much disturbed already, and had been for some hours,
out of anxiety and terror about my mistress, to bear much more. So, when he
heard that, he was less willing to speak freely than before. He might prove
wrong, he said; he might give offence; things might turn out far otherwise
than according to first appearances; for his part, he could not believe
anything amiss of so sweet a lady. And alter all it would be better to wait
till we reached the office.'

Thus much then was clear--Agnes was under some accusation. This was already
worse than the worst I had anticipated. 'And then,' said I, thinking aloud
to Hannah, 'one of two things is apparent to me; either the accusation is
one of pure hellish malice, without a colour of probability or the shadow of
a foundation, and that way, alas! I am driven in my fears by that Hungarian
woman's prophecy; or, which but for my desponding heart I should be more
inclined to think, the charge has grown out of my poor wife's rustic
ignorance as to the usages then recently established by law with regard to
the kind of money that could be legally tendered. This, however, was a
suggestion that did not tend to alleviate my anxiety; and my nervousness had
mounted to a painful, almost to a disabling degree, by the time we reached
the office. Already on our road thither some parties had passed us who were
conversing with eagerness upon the case: so much we collected from the many
and ardent expressions about 'the lady's beauty,' though the rest of such
words as we could catch were ill calculated to relieve my suspense. This,
then, at least, was certain--that my poor timid Agnes had already been
exhibited before a tumultuous crowd; that her name and reputation had gone
forth as a subject of discussion for the public; and that the domestic
seclusion and privacy within which it was her matronly privilege to move had
already undergone a rude violation.

The office, and all the purlieus of the office, were occupied by a dense
crowd. That, perhaps, was always the case, more or less, at this time of
day; but at present the crowd was manifestly possessed by a more than
ordinary interest; and there was a unity in this possessing interest; all
were talking on the same subject, the case in which Agnes had so recently
appeared in some character or other; and by this time it became but too
certain in the character of an accused person. Pity was the prevailing
sentiment amongst the mob; but the opinions varied much as to the probable
criminality of the prisoner. I made my way into the office. The presiding
magistrates had all retired for the afternoon, and would not reassemble
until eight o'clock in the evening. Some clerks only or officers of the
court remained, who were too much harassed by applications for various forms
and papers connected with the routine of public business, and by other
official duties which required signatures or attestations, to find much
leisure for answering individual questions. Some, however, listened with a
marked air of attention to my earnest request for the circumstantial details
of the case, but finally referred me to a vast folio volume, in which were
entered all the charges, of whatever nature, involving any serious
tendency--in fact, all that exceeded a misdemeanour--in the regular
chronological succession according to which they came before the magistrate.
Here, in this vast calendar of guilt and misery, amidst the _aliases_ or
cant designations of ruffians--prostitutes--felons, stood the description,
at full length, Christian and surnames all properly registered, of my
Agnes--of her whose very name had always sounded to my ears like the very
echo of mountain innocence, purity, and pastoral simplicity. Here in another
column stood the name and residence of her accuser. I shall call him
_Barratt_, for that was amongst his names, and a name by which he had at one
period of his infamous life been known to the public, though not his
principal name, or the one which he had thought fit to assume at this era.
James Barratt, then, as I shall here call him, was a haberdasher--keeping a
large and conspicuous shop in a very crowded and what was then considered a
fashionable part of the city. The charge was plain and short. Did I live to
read it? It accused Agnes M---- of having on that morning secreted in her
muff, and feloniously carried away, a valuable piece of Mechlin lace, the
property of James Barratt. And the result of the first examination was thus
communicated in a separate column, written in red ink--'Remanded to the
second day after to-morrow for final examination.' Everything in this
sin-polluted register was in manuscript; but at night the records of each
day were regularly transferred to a printed journal, enlarged by comments
and explanatory descriptions from some one of the clerks, whose province it
was to furnish this intelligence to the public journals. On that same night,
therefore, would go forth to the world such an account of the case, and such
a description of my wife's person, as would inevitably summon to the next
exhibition of her misery, as by special invitation and advertisement, the
whole world of this vast metropolis--the idle, the curious, the brutal, the
hardened amateur in spectacles of wo, and the benign philanthropist who
frequents such scenes with the purpose of carrying alleviation to their
afflictions. All alike, whatever might be their motives or the spirit of
their actions, would rush (as to some grand festival of curiosity and
sentimental luxury) to this public martyrdom of my innocent wife.

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