Adèle. A tale

Front matter

ADELE. A TALE. *T JULIA KAVANAGH, AUTHOB OB "NATHALIE," "B ACHE I, ct B A Y," &c &c. " She dwelt among the untrodden waya. A maid, whom there were noDe to praise. And very few to love." — Wc-BDawOBTH. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1858. 71*4 right oj Translation is rcttr^td. J. Billing, I\ inter, 103, Hatton Garden, London, and Gnildfcrd, Surrey. TO THE READER. There is no reason why the Author of this work should trouble the public with a preface explanatory of a very simple tale ; but she feels bound, in self justice, to state, that, for motives on which she need not enter here, she has taken liberties with the topography of the Departement de l'Ain, as well as with the names of various localities mentioned in the following pages. ADELE.

Chapter I. The Will

The funeral was over. The sun shone on the red mould of a new grave in the little and silent church yard ; and Osborne Lodge, casting by its ten days' gloom, resumed the aspect and the stir of life. William Osborne sat in his father's study. He had arrived that morning, unwarned, uncalled-for, and, his dead father met him on the threshold. The shock was great ; a dull, silent grief followed it — the grief of a son who was obliged to look back, far into the past, for the time when he received parental affection, and returned filial love. He sat, as we said, in his father's study ; and he looked at his father's portrait. Time had not yet touched that room. Sunshine, a glimpse of breezy foliage, a clear blue sky, a sound of singing birds, came in through the open window. It might have been just opened by Mr. Osborne, for he liked sun VOL. I. B ADELE heat ; and that fresh, dewy landscape cheered him ; his leather armchair, writing table, desk, and worn out pen, were still there.

He might have gone out for a moment to return in another moment, and resume his interrupted labours ; the place seemed ever waiting the absent master, by whose image, full length and lifelike, it was still guarded. A sunbeam lit that portrait, remarkable as a painting, more remarkable as a representation ; will, energy, life, breathed from that silent canvas, and seemed to defy death and the grave. A gentleman of stately presence had been the late William Os borne, — with noble and handsome features, with fine, though severe dark eyes, with a manly, though haughty bearing, — and with folded arms and with a long, sad gaze, his elder son looked at that stern coun tenance, in which he seemed to read the story of his whole past life. Into that past we will not enter ; it was full of bitterness and woe ; — let it sleep.

Every thing, and every one, in the life of that dead man, had been sacrificed to commercial ambition ; but this tale deals not with him ; let him rest with his faults and his virtues — requiescat in pace. " Was that the end ?" sorrowfully thought Wil liam Osborne, turning away — " was that the end ?" And turning, as we said, he found himself face to face with his stepmother, whom he had not seen for eight years. She had entered the room unheard, and stood by his side before he was conscious of her presence. Wrath, bitterness, had marked their last meeting, for she had helped to estrange the father from his ADELE 3 son, and to alienate the son's duty from his father. They exchanged a long, searching look, — and did not speak. He found her what he had left her — a calm, handsome, fair woman, with quiet blue eyes, and a smooth look.

She saw in him, scarcely altered by time, the same man who had ever baffled her silently ; whom she had had the power to injure, but whom she had never been able to deceive or to charm. William Osborne was thirty — pale, tall like his father, and remarkably handsome. He had the broad and noble brow, the full dark eye, the curled and raven hair, the handsome features, the free and open bearing of manly beauty, and with them a pure and intellectual cast of countenance, a look benignant, though penetrating, a smile sweet in its irony, that made it impossible to see his face once and forget it. Mrs. Osborne held out her hand — and a handsome white hand it was. He silently took and pressed it, but without cordiality. He could forgive ; he could neither forget, nor feign to forget. She sank down on a chair, and sighed.

" William," she said, in a soft, bland voice, " I am glad you are come before the reading of the will. Remember, that whatever the contents of that will may be, I know nothing of them." " And I care nothing for them," said he, with a darkening brow. " My child is rich ; my income is sufficient for the wants of a single man." ' ■' You may marry again," she interrupted. He smiled, with some bitterness, for he was a b ADELE widower, and his married life had been full of misery ; but he merely said, — " I may, certainly ; but I am rich enough even for that. My father, besides, was estranged from me in life ; I do not expect him to have remembered me in death. He has, I have no doubt, left the business to Robert, portions to my sisters, and a handsome income to you. Let it be ; it is well." " He was, indeed, a most kind and affectionate husband," began Mrs. Osborne, raising her handkerchief to her eyes.

The eulogy was interrupted. The door opened ; and the son and the two daughters of Mrs. Osborne, and a few decorous male friends in black, entered the apartment. The will was going to be read. Mr. Osborne left his stepmother's side, and walking away to the farthest window, he stood there apart, like a spectator, who looks on calmly and dispassi onately, whilst the drama, in which he has no share, is being acted. Robert, a sullen, good-looking youth of twenty two, fair, like his mother, sat down and looked what he already felt himself — master of the place. Isa bella, a fair, handsome, free-looking girl of seventeen, in whose features grief did not exclude an expression of imperious impatience, too habitual to be easily checked, went and stood by the chair of her mother, who was sobbing bitterly.

Anna, the elder daughter, a pale, fretful girl, sat down on a couch, where she moaned impatiently, and smelling her vinaigrette, shut her eyes and murmured to herself, but without caring to be heard, — ADELE, 5 " Oh ! dear, what a noise they do make, — and my head aches so !" " Do not talk to me, Isabella," exclaimed Mrs. Osborne, in a voice broken by tears, " do not. I tell you to listen to that voice from the grave." " I thought you knew nothing about the will ?" shortly said Isabella. Mrs. Osborne withdrew her handkerchief. " No ; but I knew him — his goodness, his gene rosity — and to receive new proofs of both, for on both I am dependent, and he will not have forgotten it — overpowers me." She spoke low ; but Anna was not far away, and opening her eyes, she answered her mamma rather sharply.

" But why should Pa have been so very generous to you, Ma ? You have your own fortune, you know." An angry flush rose to Mrs. Osborne's brow. " If you call a hundred and seventy pounds a year a fortune," she began. " Oh, dear !" impatiently interrupted Isabella, " I daresay we need not trouble ourselves about it, — that it all goes to the business." Here Robert frowned, and turning round, wondered they could not be silent. The room was large, and the sound, not the substance, of their discourse, had reached his ear. Mrs. Osborne again raised her handkerchief to her eyes. Isabella sat down, and in the midst of a decorous silence, the will was read. William Osborne had always been a man of few ADELE, words. His will was brief to laconism. He bur dened it with no useless legacies to wife, children, friends, and dependants.

He left all — house, plate, furniture, business, and money, to his elder son, William. Osborne ; and to the said William Osborne he solemnly bequeathed the task of providing for his father's widow, and her three children. Robert looked blank, and stared incredulously. Isabella indignantly drew up her fine figure ; Anna bit her lip and shut her eyes ; Mrs. Osborne sank back in her chair, and fainted outright ; and William Osborne, who had not left the window, but sat there by a table apart — his elbows leaning upon it, his cheek, colourless as marble, resting on his hand cast his fine dark eyes around the room, and smiled a sad and melancholy smile. It was evening. Again William Osborne sat alone in his father's study. A lamp burned by him ; around him papers were scattered. His brow was overcast with care ; he gnawed his pale lip with mingled perplexity and trouble.

Once he rose; he went to the window and looked out. The night was clear ; the lights of London burned on the horizon — a faint revelation of Babylon. But Mr. Osborne saw nothing ; — thought, tormenting and anxious, stood by his side, and claimed his ear. ADELE The late Mr. Osborne had been held a rich man. He had married twice ; and his first wife, an heiress, had left her only child, his elder son, a handsome fortune. His second wife had brought him the means of wealth, and trebled his prosperity. Yet, strange to say, Mr. Osborne had died worth very little ; he had left vast property and vast debts ; and the only legacy about which there was no illusion, the only bequest of substance he had made to his son William, was his family. Of Robert, of his sisters Isabella and Anna, Mr. Osborne knew very little.

They were children when he was estranged from his father ; he had not seen them since then ; he had not corresponded with them ; they were, in all save blood, strangers to him. Mrs. Osborne he knew better ; we may add, he knew her but too well. She was a close, a subtle schemer, a disappointed politician, an ambitious woman, whom ambition had ever deluded. Her first husband, M. Joseph, a French manufacturer, had been fond of her ; he had given her his entire confidence — un folded all his plans to her. For two years Madame Joseph had been admired as a beauty and a wit in a narrow circle, in a province of France. She had been popular, and deservedly so, if persevering efforts are a title to popularity. Voltarianism was rife in the little world she wished to rule ; and Madame Joseph had been a Voltairienne of the first water.

Monsieur Joseph was a violent Bonapartist, and every one around him shared the disease ; but no one could equal Madame Joseph; the bust of the Emperor adorned her boudoir, spite all ADELE the Bourbons might have to say. Waterloo was not to be mentioned to her without insult ; and she never could forgive England, Saint Helena, never. Monsieur Joseph died, and left his widow one child, a boy, and a hundred and seventy pounds a year. All was over in France. A military uncle took the boy, who was now a captain in the French army ; and Madame Joseph returned to her native land, and looked out for a second husband. We need not say, that in decorous, church-going, loyal England, glorying in Waterloo, Voltarianism and Napoleonism were dropped. Mr. Osborne offered himself, and was accepted. Scandalous people said the lady made the offer ; and every one agreed that on either side the marriage was a bargain.

Mr. Osborne was a Catholic, and of an old Catholic family, too ; and his wife, not knowing much of him, thought at first, that as she had managed Monsieur Joseph through Voltaire, she now might manage Mr. Os borne through the Church. Her first attempt quickly undeceived her. She thought that William, her husband's son, was eminently fitted for the priest hood ; he was so handsome, so pious, so amiable, so good. "My son a priest!" cried Mr. Osborne, in great wrath, " never, madam, with my consent, never !" A sharp explanation followed. Mr. Osborne wanted his son to be like himself, a man of business. As to religion, he had none — he cared for none. Mrs. Osborne might go to church, or to meeting, for ADELE all he minded. But one thing he would request of her, never to meddle in his affairs. And to his dying day he kept her ignorant ; to his dying day he gave her the coldest share in his liking — the most niggardly portion in his esteem and con fidence.

Mrs. Osborne bore with what she could not help : she dropped her Catholic tendencies, and be came High Church. The portrait of the Prince Re gent replaced the bust of Napoleon. As to Voltaire, Mrs. Osborne had heard of him, indeed, but she hoped he was not so wicked, so dreadful as people thought. Her own convictions were, she thanked heaven, too firm to be unsettled easily ; and though she had the misfortune not to agree with her dear William on some important points, yet there was one consolation — he had left her her children. Yet, spite all this, the world gave Mrs. Osborne but a cold share in its graces. High-Church ladies were shy of her. She was pious, charitable, correct, yet she convinced no one. In vain she laid herself out, in vain she lived in style ; so far her husband gratified her.

People danced at her balls, and ate her dinners, and did not care for her. There was a feeling abroad, not that Mrs. Osborne was not sincere, not that she was a time-server, who bent to every idol and every worship, but that she had no real, substantial power. Her husband did not care for her ; her stepson had braved her openly ; her children made no account of her ; and the world saw this, and valued Mrs. Osborne accordingly. But no one knew better, and valued Mrs. Osborne ADELE less, than her stepson. Indeed, he valued her too little, or he despised her too much ; and because she had never deceived him, he concluded, unwisely, that she was not a dangerous enemy and a more dangerous friend. She had no share in the anxious and wearisome thoughts which now absorbed him. He had sat down again ; suddenly, without knock or warning, the door opened, and Robert and his two sisters entered.

They came laden with a declara tion of war. At a glance Mr. Osborne saw it, and he could not help smiling. He wheeled his chair round, and faced the three. Isabella stepped haughtily forward. — " I oppose the will," she said, dogmatically. " I give you fair warning, William — I oppose it." " There never was such a cruel, selfish affair," fretfully began Anna ; " I shall certainly not allow myself to be despoiled in that way." Robert was not remarkable for eloquence ; all he could find to say was the observation, doggedly uttered, of " It won't stand, you know — can't." Their elder brother gave them a compassionate look. " Poor young simpletons !" he said, with more irony than wrath, " have you for the last five years been living in this style, with a mansion in town and a lodge in the country ? — with carriages and horses — hounds, too, I believe — with foreign tours, and home splendours ? — with a locust-like array of servants, retainers, and friends ? and have you really thought ADELE 11 that it would last ?

I am amazed at your folly, and still more at your blindness !" Severe was his tone as he concluded. A dim re" velation of ruin floated before the three allies, but they would not give in. " I tell you I oppose the will !" said Isabella, strongly. " Very well !" was the calm reply. " I shall not submit,'' said Anna, " on no account." " Very well !" " It can't stand, and it sha'n't !" growled Robert. " Very well !" persisted their phlegmatic brother. His coolness, his amused, and yet pitying smile, his absence of wrath, disconcerted them. They exchanged alarmed looks. What more they would have said, we cannot record. Again the door opened : this time it was their mother who entered. She gave them a severe, suspicious glance, but said, with grave gentleness — " Robert, Isabella, Anna, my dear, I wish to speak to your brother William alone."

They obeyed ungraciously, though well" pleased in reality to obey. There was a pause after their departure. Mrs. Osborne sat down in a deep chair facing her step son's, and said, softly — " William, I hope the children have not annoyed you ?" " Oh, no," he calmly answered ; " they are sore because they do not know the truth, and think ADELE themselves harshly used. They will do me, or, rather, their father— for what have I to do in this ? — ample justice yet." His stepmother looked more disturbed than sur prised. She gave him a searching, anxious look, which he met with great composure. She was agi tated, for one habitually so calm, but he was silent ; he made no offer to meet her half way. Compelled to speak, she said, at length — "William, what do you mean?" " I mean," he composedly replied, " that this large inheritance which I have this day received, is left to me in trust ; by no means for my personal use or enjoyment.

Surely I need not inform you that it makes me none the richer than I was yester day." Mrs. Osborne seemed to wish to pass lightly over this. " Yes, yes, I understand," she said quickly ; "your father was too just, too upright — he gave you great power — but it was for the good of his children and their mother. And what have you decided on ?" " On nothing as yet," he slowly replied ; " per haps you are not aware, ma'am," he added, fixing his dark eye on his stepmother, " that my father's affairs were and are in a most embarrassed state." " Indeed !" " Ay, indeed ! But do not misunderstand me ; dishonour cannot reach my father's name. He spent and speculated to rashness ; from disgrace he ever remained free." ADELE She raised her hand to her forehead. " Is it ruin ?" she asked. " Very nearly so," he calmly replied.

" What do you mean to do ?" " There is nothing to do, but to go on and be ruined outright." Mrs. Osborne gnawed her pale lip, and looked fixedly before her. " But in the meanwhile — " she suggested. " Oh ! in the meanwhile, the only thing is to sell off, pay all debts, and, so far as is possible, provide for you and your children." Mrs. Osborne looked alarmed, and tried to smile. " Matters cannot be so bad," she said, " your father hoped, or he would not have left the business to you." " It was because my father did not hope, that he did leave all to me," said Mr. Osborne ; " he knew that he could trust my honour ;-he knew that nature never meant me to be a man of business." " No — no ; he thought highly of your talents," exclaimed Mrs. Osborne, with some eagerness ; " be sides, you were his elder son.

It was just.'' Mr. Osborne did not look convinced, and said very coldly : " Excuse me, madam, but how could my father reckon on my doing after his death that which I had refused to do during his lifetime V Mrs. Osborne's handkerchief was ever that lady's most useful auxiliary. She raised it to her eyes, and said from behind it : " Ah ! William, a voice from the grave." ADELE William frowned and looked bored, but did not answer. " And there is still hope," pursued Mrs. Osborne, returning to the practical ; " all cannot be over in England, and the connection in France is still splen did. You remember Courcelles ?" " I have not forgotten it," he replied with some emphasis ; and his dark eyes met hers with grave sternness. " Ah ! there is much to be done there," she said, " much by one who knows the place and the people.

My first husband was a Frenchman, as you know, and I shared his confidence and helped his views, and there is much to be done in Cour celles." She paused, waiting for a reply ; but Mr. Osborne preserved the listening attitude of one who receives information and has none to communicate. Mrs. Osborne coughed, and resumed with a sigh : " For my own part, I care not what becomes of me : France, a desert, any place would be an accept able home if, as I fear, Osborne Lodge must be relinquished." " There is no doubt about that," observed Mr. Osborne ; " Osborne Lodge, all its appurtenances, must be sold ; the debts." " Yes, yes," she interrupted, wincing, " my feeling quite. Honour before all, I said so from the first ; but as I said, any place, any home you appoint will do for me — for the dear girls, who are both the most unselfish, the most devoted of daughters."

Mr. Osborne smiled. ADELE " My sisters shall be thought of first," he said, " and in an hour I shall be able to give you a final answer." " We are all in your hands," she said, with a con strained sigh. She rose ; he walked with her to the door, closed it upon her and came back ; and for an hour he paced that room, haunted by the Past, bating the Future. Mr. Osborne had suffered and got over his suffer ings. In a careless, dreamy way, he was happy and enjoyed life. What, though the path to happiness was closed, that path which to youth's seeming stretches to the very horizon, and which to man's knowledge is but a few steps and ends in the barren ness of the desert ; yet there is more in a man's life than domestic bliss or a woman's love. His intellect remained to him; his love of art, his delight in beauti ful places and lovely things, and, with these and the means of wandering — for his tastes were simple, and required no more — many pleasures.

But take away Liberty, and what was left to the sad and disappointed man ? AVith a sense of wrong and injury, Mr. Osborne looked up at his father's portrait. " I resisted him in life," he thought, bitterly, " and dear did it cost me. I obey him in death — I trust in God that it may not cost me dearer yet." But his resolve was taken ; he went down to the drawing-room, where his stepmother and her three children were sitting, sullen and silent : they knew all, and felt conquered. Mr. Osborne took a few turns in the room, then he came back to the table, ADELE around which his relatives, were seated, and he said calmly — " I am going to France in a week. 1 shall ex plain to Robert what he can do here in my absence. If you are willing to reside in Courcelles with my sisters, I shall be happy to see you there."

The last words were addressed to Mrs. Osborne. " As you please, as you like," she said, graciously. " That horrid lake and those horrid mountains will kill me," moaned Anna. " I hope not," said Mr. Osborne, smiling. " I don't care where I go," observed Isabella, tossing her haughty, handsome head ; " I know I was too proud, too independent to be a favourite with Mr. Osborne. He has left me a beggar, but I don't care." " I suppose you will leave me your instructions," sneered Robert. " Of course," briefly replied his elder brother. " Oh, what a noise they do make," murmured Anna ; " and they know I have a head-ache — so selfish." Mrs. Osborne's lip curled, and her blue eyes had a touch of scorn. " Who knows but I can lead him yet ?" murmured ambition in her ear. " Who knows ?" William Osborne looked at his stepmother, whom he disliked ; at his brother, whom he despised ; at his sisters, whom he did not love, and he bowed his head before inexorable duty, and thought sadly: " The soldier must not shrink from the battle-day the captain must not desert the sinking ship."

ADELE 17 He saw the conflict, the storm, and their fatal end, and he saw no more. The hours of heavenly repose, the blessings unknown and unwished for, the unsuspected torments and trials that lay behind both in the bosom of the future year, were all alike hidden from his gaze in the Almighty and all-mer ciful Hand. c VOT/. I. ADELE

Chapter II. How The World Was Gotng Away In The Manor Of

COURCELLES. " The world is going away," said Mademoiselle de Janson, " the world is going away." Her melancholy look sought the high ceiling, then wandered over the oak-panelled walls of the old Hall, with its deep windows, until it finally came back to the stone chimney, high and deep, the smouldering wood fire, and the diminutive figure of her little goddaughter Adele, sitting on a low stool, with her hands clasped around her knees, and the light of the dying flame playing on her wistful young face. " Where is the world going to, Cousine ?" she asked, looking up. " There it is," exclaimed Mademoiselle de Janson, sitting up erect in her chair, " the very child asks where to, and who shall venture to answer the mo mentous question ?" ADELE 19 She sank back with a sigh, and shut her eyes. " Where can the world be going to ?" thought Adele, very much puzzled ; " I wish she would tell me."

She looked up at her godmother, and her thoughts took another turn. " How pretty she must have been," she thought ; " how pretty she is still, — more than pretty, beautiful ; better than beautiful, lovely." " Open the window, child," murmured Made moiselle de Janson, " it is quite close." " Of course it is with a fire," thought Adele, but she did as she was told. "My head aches !" moaned Mademoiselle de Janson, feebly. " Are you sure it is your head, Cousine ?" doubt fully asked Adele. " Well," confidentially replied Mademoiselle de Janson, " I am not ; strange I should not know, is it not ?" "Very," replied Ad61e, still looking admiringly at her cousin. Mademoiselle de Janson had been a fair beauty, with golden hair, blue eyes, and an angelic face, and lovely she was still, at we will not say what age.

She might be mad, as some said, or only whimsical, as the more indulgent averred ; she certainly was peculiar, capricious to the tip of her fingers, per verse in her ways, neither amiable nor kind, but she was lovely, and ever would be. Caprices, folly, faults without number, could not make her lose the gift ; she was original, too, independent, and cared for nothing, and no one. Her favourite sentiment, ADELE " that the world' was going away," gives a fair clue to her position and her character. A beauty must regret the past ; a nobly-born and impoverished lady cannot look with favour on a new order of things. To be sure, revolutions had nothing to do with the late Monsieur de Janson's passion for gambling; a passion that had left his daughter merely what the law would not allow him to touch — her mother's fortune, namely, the old manor in which she resided, and which she could not afford to keep in repair ; a neglected garden and orchard, a few acres of in different land, and an object which, though a perfect eyesore to her aristocratic gaze, was, nevertheless, the chief source of her income, a forge let on an endless lease to an English capitalist, to whom, indeed, the whole estate was heavily mortgaged.

Mademoiselle de Janson had grown accustomed to her poverty — to her old ruined manor; but she had never reconciled herself to her plebeian possession, the forge. It was visible, she declared, from every window of her dwelling ; and in whatever room she sat, she could hear, she averred, its clanking. To abuse and hate this enemy had become one of the chief occupations of Mademoiselle de Janson's life. Adele had risen ; she was standing in one of the deep windows ; she looked at a wild landscape ; a rugged road wound by a silent lake ; rocks hemmed in her view to the left ; dark mountains rose to the right, and enclosed the sheet of w,ater ; a vapoury sky of summer blue softened the hues and outlines of thc scene ; it looked viyid, living ; eternal in its beauty. ADELE, " Cousine," suddenly said xldele, turning round, " do tell me how you know that the world is going away."