THE MAN OF THE WORLD. CHAP. XXX. Mrs Wistanly's recital. Conclusion of the "WHEN I entered the house, and had got upon the stairs leading to the room in which Harriet lay, I heard a voice, enchantingly sweet, but low, and sometimes broken, singing snatches of songs, varying from the sad to the gay, and from the gay to the sad: it was she herself sitting up in her bed, fingering her pillow as if it had been a harpsichord. It is not easy to conceive the horror I felt on seeing her in such a situation! She seemed unconscious of my approach, though her eye was turned towards me as I entered; only that she stopt in the midst of a quick and lively movement she had begun, and, looking wistfully upon me, breathed such a note of sorrow, and dwelt on it with a cadence so mournful, that my heart lost all the firmness I had resolved to preserve, and I flung my arms round her neck, which I washed with my bursting tears!-The traces which her brain could now only recollect, were such as did not admit of any object long; I had passed over it in the and it now wandered moment of my entrance, from the idea; she paid no regard to my caresses, but pushed me gently from her, gazing stedfastly in an opposite direction towards the door of the apartment. A servant entered with some medicine he had been sent to procure; she put it by when I offered it to her, and kept looking earnestly upon him; she ceased her singing too, and seemed to articulate certain imperfect sounds. For some time I could not make them out into words, but at last she spoke more distinctly, and with a firmer tone. "You saved my life once, sir, and I could then thank you, because I wished to preserve it ;-but now-no matter, he is happier than I would have him.-I would have nursed the poor old man till he had seen some better days! Bless his white beard!-look there! I have heard how they grow in the grave !-Poor old man!' "You weep, my dear sir; but had you heard her speak these words! I can but coldly repeat them. "All that day she continued in a state of delirium and insensibility to every object around her; towards evening she seemed exhausted with fatigue, and the tossing of her hands, which her frenzy had caused, grew languid as of one breathless and worn out: about midnight she dropped asleep. "I sat with her during the night, and when she waked in the morning, she gave signs of having recovered her senses, by recollecting me, At first, indeed, and calling me by my name. 6 her questions were irregular and wild ; but in a "At that moment we heard some unusual stir below stairs, and, as the floor was thin and ill laid, the word child was very distinctly audible from every tongue. Upon this she started up in her bed, and with a look piteous and wild beyond description, exclaimed, Oh! my God! what of my child!'-She had scarcely uttered the words, when the landlady entered the room, and shewed sufficiently, by her countenance, that she had some dreadful tale to tell. By signs I begged her to be silent. What is become of my infant?' cried Harriet. No ill, madam,' answered the woman, faultering, 'is come to it, I hope.'-'Speak,' said she, I charge you, for I will know the worst: speak, as you would give peace to my departing soul !' spring-It was not easy to resist ing out of bed, and grasping the woman's hands with all her force.so solemn a charge.- Alas!' said the landlady, 'I fear she is drowned; for the nurse's cloak and the child's wrapper have been found in some ooze which the river had carried down beup her low the ford.' She let go the woman's hands, and wringing her own together, threw eyes to heaven till their sight was lost in the sockets. We were supporting her, each of us holding one of her arms.-She fell on her knees between us, and dropping her hands for a moment, then raising them again, uttered with a voice that sounded hollow, as if sunk within her: "Power omnipotent! who wilt not lay on thy creatures calamity beyond their strength to bear! if thou hast not yet punished me enough, continue to pour out the phials of thy wrath upon me, and enable me to support what thou inflictest! But if my faults are expiated, suffer me to rest in peace, and graciously blot out the offences which thy judgments have punished here!'-She continued in the same posture for a few moments; then leaning on us as if she meant to rise, bent her head forward, and drawing her breath strongly, expired in our arms.' Such was the conclusion of Mrs Wistanly's tale of woe! Spirits of gentleness and peace! who look with such pity as angels feel, on the distresses of mortality! often have ye seen me labouring under the afflictions which Providence had laid upon me. Ye have seen me in a strange land, without friend, and without comforter, poor, sick, and naked; ye have seen me shivering over the last faggot which my last farthing had purchased, moistening the crust that supported na ture with the tears which her misery shed on it! yet have ye seen me look inward with a smile, and overcome them.-If such shall ever be my lot again, so let me alleviate its sorrows; let me creep to my bed of straw in peace, after blessing God that I am not a Man of the World. END OF THE FIRST PART. INTRODUCTION. I was born to a life of wandering, yet my heart was ever at home. Though the country that gave me birth gave me but few friends, and of those few the greatest part were early lost, yet the remembrance of her was present with me in every clime to which my fate conducted me; and the idea of those, whose ashes reposed in that humble spot, where they had often been the companions of my infant sports, hallowed it in my imagination with a sort of sacred enthusiasm. I had not been many weeks an inhabitant of my native village, after that visit to the lady mentioned in the First Part, which procured me the information I have there laid before my readers, till I found myself once more obliged to quit it for a foreign country. My parting with Mrs Wistanly was more solemn and affecting than common souls will easily imagine it could have been, upon an acquaintance accidental in its beginning, and short in its duration; but there was something tender and melancholy in the cause of it, which gave an impression to our thoughts of one another, more sympathetic perhaps than what a series of mutual obligations could have effected. Before we parted, I could not help asking the reason of her secrecy with regard to the story of Annesly and his daughter. In answer to this she informed me, that, besides the danger to which she exposed herself by setting up in opposition to a man, in the midst of whose dependants she proposed ending her days, she was doubtful if her story would be of any service to the memory of her friend: That Camplin (as she supposed by the direction of Sir Thomas Sindall, who was at that time abroad) had universally given out, that Miss Annesly's elopement was with an intention to be married to him; on which footing, though a false one, the character of that young lady stood no worse, than if the truth were divulged to those, most of whom wanted discernment, as well as candour, to make the distinctions which should enable them to do it justice. Several years elapsed before I returned to that place, whence, it is probable, I shall migrate no more. My friend, Mrs Wistanly, was one of the persons after whom I first inquired on my arrival. I found her subject to the common debility, but not to any of the acuter distresses of VOL. V. age; with the same powers of reason, and the same complacency of temper, I had seen her before enjoy. "These," said she, "are the effects of temperance without austerity, and ease without indolence: I have nothing now to do, but to live without the solicitude of life, and to die without the fear of dying." At one of our first interviews, I found her accompanied by a young lady, who, besides a great share of what is universally allowed the name of beauty, had something in her appearance which calls forth the esteem of its beholders, without their pausing to account for it. It has sometimes deceived me, yet I am resolved to trust it to the last hour of my life; at that time I gave it unlimited confidence, and I had spoken the young lady's eulogium before I had looked five minutes in her face. Mrs Wistanly repeated it to me after she was gone. "That is one of my children,” said she, "for I adopt the children of virtue; and she calls me her mother, because I am old, and she can cherish me."- "I could have sworn to her goodness," I replied, "without any information besides what her countenance afforded me."""Tis a lovely one," said she, " and her mind is not flattered in its portrait: though she is a member of a family with whom I have not much intercourse, yet she is a frequent visitor at my little dwelling; her name is Sindall."-" Sindall," I exclaimed.-"Yes," said Mrs Wistanly, "but she is not therefore the less amiable. Sir Thomas returned from abroad soon after you left this place; but for several years he did not reside here, having made a purchase of another estate in a neighbouring county, and busied himself during that time, in superintending the improvement of it. When he returned hither, he brought this young lady, then a child, along with him, who, it seems, was left to his care by her father, a friend of Sir Thomas's, who died abroad; and she has lived with his aunt, who keeps house for him, ever since that period." The mention of Sir Thomas Sindall naturally recalled to my mind the fate of the worthy, but unfortunate, Annesly. Mrs Wistanly told me, she had often been anxious in her inquiries about his son William, the only remaining branch of her friend's family; but that neither she, nor Mr Rawlinson, with whom she had 2 G |