Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

THE ATTEMPT
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Chapter IX.
On awakening the next morning from a troubled and unrefreshing sleep, Alice’s
first thought was how to get away from Edinburgh. She could talk of nothing and
think of nothing, but the means of prosecuting her object with the utmost speed, yet
could form no definite plan to guide her in the course she was to follow. Her
purse was well nigh exhausted, as the expenses of her father’s illness had made rapid
inroads on her small capital, and the annuity he had enjoyed was now at an end, so
go where she would, she felt that she must depend on her own exertions for a
livelihood. Sister Agnes knew not how to advise her, hut like Ruth of old clave to
her saying, “ Whither thou goest I will go.” At last, after many plans being set aside
as unattainable, Alice determined to return to the neighbourhood of her birth-place,
and fixed upon a small village in Xorthumberlandshire (near the town where her
father had been an honoured minister) as their future home, thinking that by so doing
she would most readily find some way of supporting herself, and thankful she felt,
when she remembered that she had never named the village to Charles, as she feared
he might again insult her by offers of help if he knew her whereabouts. So weak and
worn out she looked, that Agnes insisted on her resting all day; but in the evening
she stole out to her old landlady’s, and begged of her to try and dispose of her father’s
books, and a few of her own trinkets, as she had immediate need of money. The
kind woman gladly undertook this mission, and promised to have everything arranged
for her if she called the next night. This was the evening on which Charles had told her
to expect him, and she smiled bitterly, when Mrs Young, in answer to her inquiries,
told her that no one had called for her. “ Oh, ” she thought, “ I had no need to fear
meeting him, he is already rejoicing in his freedom.” All next day the two
desolate women were busy preparing for their departure. Alice, as arranged, called at
her former lodgings, received the money that the sale of the books had brought her, and
bade her landlady good-bye. The worthy woman parted from her in tears, bemoaning
the change that grief had made on that fair young face, and how lonely she would feel
without the light step and the cheerful voice, that seemed like music in her house.
At length, all their arrangements were completed, and early the next morning the
two sisters, for sisters in misfortune truly they were, turned their back on the Scottish
Capital, and set off on a new and hitherto untrodden path. How grateful Alice felt
that Agnes accompanied her, feeling that there was still one left on earth who cared for