Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  Like many other thoughtless little girls, whom it is so difficult to persuade that those who have lived much longer in the world must know better than themselves, Agnes reasoned upon the commands of her parents instead of obeying them. “Those little children,” said she to herself, “are not doing any harm, and, if they were in any danger, it is not likely that their parents would allow them to play there; therefore, if it is safe for them, it must surely be safe for me; and perhaps, after all, mamma was only afraid I should spoil my frock, which, as the day is so fine and dry, I shall certainly not do.” Accordingly, although not without some smitings of conscience, she drew the bolt of the wicket, and joined the little villagers, who joyfully received this accession to their playmates, presenting her with the choicest of their flowers, and vying with each other in doing homage to the daughter of so great a man as the baron.

  The vanity of Agnes was gratified by these marks of deference, and she was in high good-humour with herself and everyone around her. It is but fair, however, to mention that her manners were always kind and conciliating towards her inferiors, she having, in this respect, profited by the example of her amiable parents. On a sudden, however, there was heard a trampling of horses, and, the next instant, there was a scream from the villagers, who, with one voice, cried, “The Bear of Andernach! The Bear of Andernach!” and fled in every direction, while poor Agnes, who was almost paralysed by fear at the mention of the dreaded name, was seized by one of the party, who placed her before him on his saddle, and gallopped away with her to the mountains, before the inmates of the castle could be summoned to attempt her rescue.

  The baron and baroness were, of course, overwhelmed by consternation and sorrow when the melancholy tidings were brought to them, particularly as they well knew that, without the combination of such a force as the contrariety of interests among the neighbouring feudal barons rendered it difficult, if not impossible, to assemble, any attempt to recover their lost darling by dint of arms would be worse than useless. Nor was their affliction alleviated when, on the following morning, they found a billet, which, enveloping a stone, had been thrown through an open casement of the castle, purporting that, unless a ransom, to an amount infinitely above what the baron could raise, were paid within three days, the head of his daughter should be sent to him as a memento of the robbers’ revenge for some act of summary justice which he had done upon a member of their community.

  In the mean time, Agnes was hurried away by the robbers, who halted not until they had reached their strong-hold at the top of the mountain, where, after having been nearly shaken to pieces, she was taken from the horse by a most ferocious-looking man, with huge black whiskers, and a hideous scar upon his forehead — the Bear of Andernach himself — and conveyed to a dark subterranean cell or dungeon, the only access to which was by a rope ladder from a small aperture at the top, which appeared to have been made through the grass-grown courtyard of the ruin. The robber gave no reply to her earnest entreaties to be restored to her parents, but shook her roughly off, and departed, taking care to draw up the ladder after him.

  Poor Agnes, on finding herself alone in this horrid chamber, burst into a fit of uncontrollable grief; but, if she wept bitterly at the consequences of her disobedience, it is but justice to say that she wept also from the sense of it, as well as for the anguish which she well knew it must have occasioned to her affectionate and doting parents. Repentance, although it cannot atone for our errors, is one of the means which have been mercifully pointed out to us of obtaining forgiveness, and Agnes’ next impulse was to fling herself upon her knees, and implore the assistance of that Power, to whom her parents’ pious instructions had taught her to commend herself, as to “a very present help in time of trouble.”

  The night came, however, but brought no deliverance; the morning dawned, and she was still a prisoner; she, who had been accustomed to repose upon a bed of down, to be fed on the choicest viands, and to be waited upon with the most assiduous attention, found herself alone upon the cold damp floor of a miserable dungeon, with a loaf of coarse bread and a pitcher of water by her side.

  The birds were singing merrily on the trees that grew over her prison-house, and, as she contrasted their liberty with her own loss of it, her grief was augmented, and she gave vent to her feelings in another flood of tears. On a sudden, she perceived the dungeon grow considerably darker, and, although fearing to encounter the forbidding visage of the Bear of Andernach, or one of his ferocious followers, she ventured to lift her eyes towards the aperture, and, to her surprise, beheld the features of a beautiful boy, about her own age, who called out to her,—”Little girl, little girl, why do you cry so?”

  “Because,” was the reply, “they have shut me up in this dark cellar, and I can’t get out.”

  “Then it was very wicked of them to do so,” rejoined the little stranger; “for I am sure you look like a good little girl, and my poor mamma used to say that nasty dark hole was only made to put naughty children into.”

  “O yes, I have been a very naughty girl indeed,” said Agnes; “for I did not mind what my papa and mamma told me, but went out of the wicket gate of the castle this morning to play with some of the children of the village on the flower bank, when those frightful-looking men came and carried me away, and shut me up as you see. But, indeed, indeed, little boy, if you will ask your mamma to come and let me out, I will never disobey my parents again — indeed I will not.”

  “Ah!” replied the little fellow, sorrowfully, “my poor mamma died a great many weeks ago, and they have buried her down by the chapel there, in the valley. I did cry so when she could not speak to me any more, and call me her dear Arthur; but the priest says she is happy now, and I am sure she was not happy then; for she would weep so, and wished so much to get away from this nasty old castle, but that naughty ugly Wolfgang would not let her. He wants me to call him papa, but I won’t though; for my mamma said he is not, and I won’t have him for a papa.”

  Agnes, continuing to look up towards the mouth of the dungeon, espied a portion of the ladder by which her captor had descended with her, when she cried out to her little visiter—”O! do pray let that ladder down again, I could get out then; I know I could!”

  “Ay,” was his reply; “but you don’t know that there is that wicked Otto guarding the pass down there, and he would soon carry you back again, and perhaps beat you, as he has done me many a time. Ah! there he is,” continued Arthur, peeping over the ruined wall; “how cross he looks! I wish he’d go away, or fall sleep; I’d soon show you the road down the mountain. And there’s his leather bottle too: I’ve heard them say he’d go any where after his bottle — let’s try.”

  So saying, the little fellow, snatching up a hazel rod with which he had been playing, crept softly along the ruins, until he got within a few feet of the robber, and, concealing himself behind a projecting rock, stretched forth his stick, and unperceived, set the bottle rolling into a hollow, which the owner could reach only by making a détour of several hundred yards, by a difficult and somewhat dangerous path.

  The sentinel, grumbling at the circumstance, without detecting the cause, cast a sharp look down the pass, to satisfy himself that no one could reach his post from below before his return, and set off in quest of his bottle.

  Arthur, full of exultation at the success of his experiment, hastened back to the prisoner, lowered the rope ladder, with the use of which he was familiar, and assisted Agnes in ascending it. No sooner was she set at liberty than, hand in hand, they ran off as fast as their little legs could carry them, and succeeded in passing the post of the sentinel some time before he could regain it; and it was not until they had arrived almost at the foot of the mountain that he discovered their flight. Firing his carbine, less, perhaps, with a view of injuring them, than of alarming a party of his comrades who were carousing in a remote part of the ruins, he hurried back for his horse, and a detachment was, consequently, soon in pursuit of the fugitives.

  The latter, how
ever, having once gained the valley, were enabled to proceed in a much straighter line than their pursuers, who, being mounted, were impeded by banks and fences, which the children could scramble over. They had already arrived within sight of the castle of Agnes’ parents, and she was exulting in the prospect, when a sudden turn in their path brought them to the brink of a rivulet, which was too deep for them to ford. They simultaneously uttered a cry of terror and disappointment, and, casting a fearful glance behind them, perceived their pursuers, four in number, within a hundred yards of them.

  At that instant a party of horsemen gallopped up to the opposite bank of the rivulet, and Agnes, immediately recognising the baron as their leader, cried out, in an agony of terror, “O papa! papa! save me! save me!” The troop, who were superior in force to the banditti, dashed their horses into the stream, and, gaining the other bank, soon placed themselves between the fugitives and their pursuers, who, disappointed of their prey, scampered back to their strong-hold, to endure, as they best could, the reproaches of their commander for their want of vigilance.

  My young readers will more easily imagine than I can describe to them the joy of the baron and his lady at the recovery of their daughter; and it is scarcely necessary for me to add, that they not only received little Arthur under their immediate protection, but took care of his future fortunes, justly considering themselves indebted to him for the restoration of their lost treasure.

  Nor was the lesson lost upon Agnes, who, from that hour, added to her virtues that of implicit obedience, not only to the commands, but to the slightest wish of her affectionate parents.

  My dear young friends! for whose instruction, and not amusement only, this story has been written, let not the moral it is intended to convey be addressed to you in vain; but learn from it the sinfulness of filial disobedience — a crime which, as far as my observation has gone, is more frequently punished in this life than any other offence not cognizable by the laws of man. Learn also, that the ears of our heavenly Father are ever open to the prayers of those who call upon him “in spirit and in truth;” and that he is able to work out our deliverance in circumstances apparently the most desperate, and oftentimes by means, to our fallible judgments, most inadequate to the end.

  GOING TO MARKET.

  BY JAMES BIRD.

  Every one who had seen, admired the beautiful cottage of Dame Ashford. It was the abode of cheerful piety, and the home of content and happiness.

  The dame was sitting in her ancient chair, and beside her stood her daughter, whose husband was pursuing his daily employment in the fields, while little Amy, with a basket upon her arm, her head decorated with her “Sunday bonnet,” and her shoulders arrayed in the very beau idéal of dotted tippets, was listening to the manifold injunctions which her grandmother was giving her respecting sundry commissions with which Amy was intrusted, for the exemplification of her talents during this, her first essay at “Going to Market.”

  As her mother was to accompany her, Amy was confident of success, and this was observable in the placid smile that played around her lips, as she listened to the praises, the cautions, and the oft-repeated “Recollect, Amy!” of her kind-hearted grandmother. Her little brother Tom was busily employed in tying a cord around the neck of his favourite Shock, who, with great complacency, and with much serious canine submission in his countenance, awaited the commands of his juvenile master, without even once deigning to turn his eye upon his agile playmate, and sometimes teazing companion, Mynheer Grimalkin, who sat curled up in a half-dreaming insensibility, at the foot of the dame’s chair, with all the gravity of a bearded Mussulman.

  Dame Ashford doated upon her grandchildren, and prided herself upon being Amy’s instructress: she was, moreover, not a little vain of her “acquirements;” for she could, as she had often affirmed, read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” without spelling the words, and knew the first six pages of “Fenning’s Universal Spelling-book” by rote. Besides, she had worked a sampler when at school, and had stitched “Good King Charles’s Rules” upon the superficies of a chintz bed-curtain.

  “Recollect, Amy,” she said to her granddaughter; “recollect all the little things I have told you — when in the town keep close by the side of your mother, and” — here the old lady assumed an air of proud secrecy, and, bending to the ear of the little girl, whispered softly, “and — don’t forget the two ounces of best Scotch snuff! You can buy it, Amy, of Pinch, at the corner of Market-street.” To this important commission Amy promised to pay proper attention, and, with her mother, was soon on the road towards the county town, with a heart light and happy, the certain result of an amiable disposition, and of a constant willingness to obey her parents, and “all that were put in authority over her.”

  Little Amy and her mother had arranged their various purchases, and accomplished the principal object of their “Going to Market,” and the former had seen all the most attractive objects which a market-town presents for the juvenile eye to wonder at, when Amy’s mother proposed that they should immediately pursue their way homewards. “I have not bought Tom any thing yet,” said Amy; “I love Tom, and must buy him something.” Her mother, having commended the pleasing proof which Amy had given of her affection for her brother, suggested that she should purchase Tom something which might prove useful to him. “Useful!” rejoined Amy; “I will buy him a pretty thing.” “My dear, that which is pretty is not always useful,” replied her mother, accompanying this remark with a little proper advice upon the necessity of observing this distinction; but Amy either did not, or was unwilling to, comprehend the difference. “Why, mother, what a pretty doll I have — what a pretty whip Tom has — and what a pretty snuff-box my grandmother has!” “And in what consists the usefulness of these things, Amy? You nurse your doll — Tom whips the cats — and your grandmother takes snuff!” At this forcible, though somewhat homely, illustration, Amy turned her blue eyes timidly upon the ground, and, although she was unable exactly to understand the distinction between the pretty and the useful, or to comprehend why the object which possessed one of these qualities should not necessarily possess the other, she was still determined that the present which she intended for Tom should partake largely of the former attractive property.

  As the child was about requesting permission to step into a neat-looking shop, situated near the spot where her mother and she were standing, their landlord and neighbour, Launcelot Lovechild, Esq., patted Amy gently upon the shoulder, took her hand, and led her silently into the shop. Her mother, after giving her child an injunction to wait a few minutes for her there, retired to arrange certain necessary preliminaries for her departure homeward.

  A short time only elapsed before Amy beheld her mother returning. The little girl was already on the steps of the shop door, with a small packet in her hand, which she displayed with evident triumph. “A present for Tom! — a present for Tom!” “And what have you purchased, Amy?” inquired her mother. “I do not know — the gentleman gave it to me — but I shall give it to Tom — I love Tom!” The heart of the affectionate mother glowed with emotion when she heard her child’s artless expression of her sisterly affection; while she imagined, from the size of the carefully packed parcel, that it was composed of a “Humphy and Mendoza,” as the country-people used to call the thick, and — to speak like a bibliopole — 24mo gingerbread cakes, which were formerly impressed with the two figures of the above celebrated pugilists; and which were often so temptingly exhibited to our juvenile eyes, and so lovingly pressed to our lips — alas! how many summers ago!

  “I dare say, Amy, you have something there which is neither pretty nor useful,” said her mother. Poor Amy scarcely replied; for the joy which she anticipated of adding to her brother’s happiness was so great, that she repeatedly urged her mother to stimulate the short ambling of her pony to a respectable trot, that they might the sooner arrive at their cottage.

  They soon beheld their humble but happy dwelling, glittering through the foliage of the trees, th
at gleamed in the reflection of a setting sun, whose day’s pilgrimage had been one of unclouded brightness. They found Tom at the door, holding Shock by the cord which he had affixed to the dog’s collar; and Amy, having first kissed her grandmother and given the dame an account of her market speculations, proposed an immediate inspection of her packet, which was examined with all due formality, and, to their surprise, it exhibited a small but elegant volume. “This is pretty, however, if it be not useful!” exclaimed Amy’s mother. When Dame Ashford beheld the book, she felt that a subject presented itself which would afford her an opportunity of displaying the depth of her erudition, and the extent of her important reading, which had not been confined, she asserted, to the “History of the Wars,” nor to “The Seven Champions of Chistendom,” every word of which she believed to be literally true.

  “What book have you there, my dear?” asked the old lady. Amy, though not a proficient in reading, was desirous of embracing every opportunity to learn; and feeling proud of exhibiting her power over the twenty-six giants of the alphabet, she gazed delighted upon the beautiful cover of the volume, and began to spell the title, while her grandmother listened with the profound look of a philosopher.