Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman
fidelity of honour; but could he, feeling her in every pulsation, could
he ever change, could he be a villain? The emotion with which she, for
a moment, allowed herself to be pressed to his bosom, the tear of
rapturous sympathy, mingled with a soft melancholy sentiment of
recollected disappointment, said—more of truth and faithfulness, than
the tongue could have given utterance to in hours! They were silent—yet
discoursed, how eloquently? till, after a moment’s reflection, Maria
drew her chair by the side of his, and, with a composed sweetness of
voice, and supernatural benignity of countenance, said, “I must open my
whole heart to you; you must be told who I am, why I am here, and why,
telling you I am a wife, I blush not to”—the blush spoke the rest.
Jemima was again at her elbow, and the restraint of her presence did
not prevent an animated conversation, in which love, sly urchin, was
ever at bo-peep.
So much of heaven did they enjoy, that paradise bloomed around them; or
they, by a powerful spell, had been transported into Armida’s garden.
Love, the grand enchanter, “lapt them in Elysium,” and every sense was
harmonized to joy and social extacy. So animated, indeed, were their
accents of tenderness, in discussing what, in other circumstances,
would have been commonplace subjects, that Jemima felt, with surprise,
a tear of pleasure trickling down her rugged cheeks. She wiped it away,
half ashamed; and when Maria kindly enquired the cause, with all the
eager solicitude of a happy being wishing to impart to all nature its
overflowing felicity, Jemima owned that it was the first tear that
social enjoyment had ever drawn from her. She seemed indeed to breathe
more freely; the cloud of suspicion cleared away from her brow; she
felt herself, for once in her life, treated like a fellow-creature.
Imagination! who can paint thy power; or reflect the evanescent tints
of hope fostered by thee? A despondent gloom had long obscured Maria’s
horizon—now the sun broke forth, the rainbow appeared, and every
prospect was fair. Horror still reigned in the darkened cells,
suspicion lurked in the passages, and whispered along the walls. The
yells of men possessed, sometimes, made them pause, and wonder that
they felt so happy, in a tomb of living death. They even chid
themselves for such apparent insensibility; still the world contained
not three happier beings. And Jemima, after again patrolling the
passage, was so softened by the air of confidence which breathed around
her, that she voluntarily began an account of herself.
CHAPTER 5
“My father,” said Jemima, “seduced my mother, a pretty girl, with whom
he lived fellow-servant; and she no sooner perceived the natural, the
dreaded consequence, than the terrible conviction flashed on her—that
she was ruined. Honesty, and a regard for her reputation, had been the
only principles inculcated by her mother; and they had been so forcibly
impressed, that she feared shame, more than the poverty to which it
would lead. Her incessant importunities to prevail upon my father to
screen her from reproach by marrying her, as he had promised in the
fervour of seduction, estranged him from her so completely, that her
very person became distasteful to him; and he began to hate, as well as
despise me, before I was born.
“My mother, grieved to the soul by his neglect, and unkind treatment,
actually resolved to famish herself; and injured her health by the
attempt; though she had not sufficient resolution to adhere to her
project, or renounce it entirely. Death came not at her call; yet
sorrow, and the methods she adopted to conceal her condition, still
doing the work of a house-maid, had such an effect on her constitution,
that she died in the wretched garret, where her virtuous mistress had
forced her to take refuge in the very pangs of labour, though my
father, after a slight reproof, was allowed to remain in his
place—allowed by the mother of six children, who, scarcely permitting a
footstep to be heard, during her month’s indulgence, felt no sympathy
for the poor wretch, denied every comfort required by her situation.
“The day my mother, died, the ninth after my birth, I was consigned to
the care of the cheapest nurse my father could find; who suckled her
own child at the same time, and lodged as many more as she could get,
in two cellar-like apartments.
“Poverty, and the habit of seeing children die off her hands, had so
hardened her heart, that the office of a mother did not awaken the
tenderness of a woman; nor were the feminine caresses which seem a part
of the rearing of a child, ever bestowed on me. The chicken has a wing
to shelter under; but I had no bosom to nestle in, no kindred warmth to
foster me. Left in dirt, to cry with cold and hunger till I was weary,
and sleep without ever being prepared by exercise, or lulled by
kindness to rest; could I be expected to become any thing but a weak
and rickety babe? Still, in spite of neglect, I continued to exist, to
learn to curse existence, [her countenance grew ferocious as she
spoke,] and the treatment that rendered me miserable, seemed to sharpen
my wits. Confined then in a damp hovel, to rock the cradle of the
succeeding tribe, I looked like a little old woman, or a hag
shrivelling into nothing. The furrows of reflection and care contracted
the youthful cheek, and gave a sort of supernatural wildness to the
ever watchful eye. During this period, my father had married another
fellow-servant, who loved him less, and knew better how to manage his
passion, than my mother. She likewise proving with child, they agreed
to keep a shop: my step-mother, if, being an illegitimate offspring, I
may venture thus to characterize her, having obtained a sum of a rich
relation, for that purpose.
“Soon after her lying-in, she prevailed on my father to take me home,
to save the expense of maintaining me, and of hiring a girl to assist
her in the care of the child. I was young, it was true, but appeared a
knowing little thing, and might be made handy. Accordingly I was
brought to her house; but not to a home—for a home I never knew. Of
this child, a daughter, she was extravagantly fond; and it was a part
of my employment, to assist to spoil her, by humouring all her whims,
and bearing all her caprices. Feeling her own consequence, before she
could speak, she had learned the art of tormenting me, and if I ever
dared to resist, I received blows, laid on with no compunctious hand,
or was sent to bed dinnerless, as well as supperless. I said that it
was a part of my daily labour to attend this child, with the servility
of a slave; still it was but a part. I was sent out in all seasons, and
from place to place, to carry burdens far above my strength, without
being allowed to draw near the fire, or ever being cheered by
encouragement or kindness. No wonder then, treated like a creature of
another species, that I began to envy, and at length to hate, the
darling of the house. Yet, I perfectly remember, that it was the
caresses, and kind expressions of my step-mother, which first excited
my jealous discontent. Once, I cannot forget it, when she was calling
in vain her wayward child to kiss her, I ran to her, saying, ‘I will
kiss you, ma’am!’ and how did my heart, which was in my mouth, sink,
what was my debasement of soul, when pushed away with—‘I do not want
you, pert thing!’ Another day, when a new gown had excited the highest
good humour, and she uttered the appropriate dear, addressed
unexpectedly to me, I thought I could never do enough to please her; I
was all alacrity, and rose proportionably in my own estimation.
“As her daughter grew up, she was pampered with cakes and fruit, while
I was, literally speaking, fed with the refuse of the table, with her
leavings. A liquorish tooth is, I believe, common to children, and I
used to steal any thing sweet, that I could catch up with a chance of
concealment. When detected, she was not content to chastize me herself
at the moment, but, on my father’s return in the evening (he was a
shopman), the principal discourse was to recount my faults, and
attribute them to the wicked disposition which I had brought into the
world with me, inherited from my mother. He did not fail to leave the
marks of his resentment on my body, and then solaced himself by playing
with my sister.—I could have murdered her at those moments. To save
myself from these unmerciful corrections, I resorted to falshood, and
the untruths which I sturdily maintained, were brought in judgment
against me, to support my tyrant’s inhuman charge of my natural
propensity to vice. Seeing me treated with contempt, and always being
fed and dressed better, my sister conceived a contemptuous opinion of
me, that proved an obstacle to all affection; and my father, hearing
continually of my faults, began to consider me as a curse entailed on
him for his sins: he was therefore easily prevailed on to bind me
apprentice to one of my step-mother’s friends, who kept a slop-shop in
Wapping. I was represented (as it was said) in my true colours; but
she, ‘warranted,’ snapping her fingers, ‘that she should break my
spirit or heart.’
“My mother replied, with a whine, ‘that if any body could make me
better, it was such a clever woman as herself; though, for her own
part, she had tried in vain; but good-nature was her fault.’
“I shudder with horror, when I recollect the treatment I had now to
endure. Not only under the lash of my task-mistress, but the drudge of
the maid, apprentices and children, I never had a taste of human
kindness to soften the rigour of perpetual labour. I had been
introduced as an object of abhorrence into the family; as a creature of
whom my step-mother, though she had been kind enough to let me live in
the house with her own child, could make nothing. I was described as a
wretch, whose nose must be kept to the grinding stone—and it was held
there with an iron grasp. It seemed indeed the privilege of their
superior nature to kick me about, like the dog or cat. If I were
attentive, I was called fawning, if refractory, an obstinate mule, and
like a mule I received their censure on my loaded back. Often has my
mistress, for some instance of forgetfulness, thrown me from one side
of the kitchen to the other, knocked my head against the wall, spit in
my face, with various refinements on barbarity that I forbear to
enumerate, though they were all acted over again by the servant, with
additional insults, to which the appellation of bastard, was commonly
added, with taunts or sneers. But I will not attempt to give you an
adequate idea of my situation, lest you, who probably have never been
drenched with the dregs of human misery, should think I exaggerate.
“I stole now, from absolute necessity,—bread; yet whatever else was
taken, which I had it not in my power to take, was ascribed to me. I
was the filching cat, the ravenous dog, the dumb brute, who must bear
all; for if I endeavoured to exculpate myself, I was silenced, without
any enquiries being made, with ‘Hold your tongue, you never tell
truth.’ Even the very air I breathed was tainted with scorn; for I was
sent to the neighbouring shops with Glutton, Liar, or Thief, written on
my forehead. This was, at first, the most bitter punishment; but sullen
pride, or a kind of stupid desperation, made me, at length, almost
regardless of the contempt, which had wrung from me so many solitary
tears at the only moments when I was allowed to rest.
“Thus was I the mark of cruelty till my sixteenth year; and then I have
only to point out a change of misery; for a period I never knew. Allow
me first to make one observation. Now I look back, I cannot help
attributing the greater part of my misery, to the misfortune of having