Amabel; or the victory of love

Front matter

AMABEL; OR, THE VICTORY OF LOVE. VOL. I. AMABEL; OR, THE VICTORY OF LOVE. BY MARY ELIZABETH WORMELEY. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER & CO., 65, CORNHILL, BOMBAY: SMITH, TAYLOR AND CO. 1853. The Publishers of this work reserve the right of authorizing a translation of it. London : Printed by Stewart and Murrat, Old Bailey. TH A. E. T., MY TRIED AND TRUE FRIEND, THESE VOLUMES ARE AFFECTIONATELY OFFERED ; AND IF THEY BE FOUND TO POINT THE MORAL, THAT LOVE THE PRINCIPLE INFUSED INTO OUR DUTIES WORKS ITS OWN REWARD, TO NO ONE COULD THEY BE MORE APPROPRIATELY INSCRIBED. INTEODUCTION. Lives of great men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Foot-prints on the sands of time. Foot-prints that perhaps another Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.

H. W. Longfellow. " I dwell amongst mine own people." The woman who can echo these words of the Shuna mite is blessed beyond aU others of her sex, in her position in society. " Amongst mine own people ! " — a sound of peace is in the very words. How much they seem to promise of usefulness, of happiness, of that kind sympathy and watchful consideration which are the birth-right of our sex, I vid

Introduction

. and for the loss of which no pubhc triumphs can bring us consolation ! Enjoyment is not happiness. Happiness has its seat in the affections. It is reserved, modest, and retiring ; it never courts publicity. The triumphs of beauty, wit, or even virtue have their value, but they cannot restore tranquillity when lost ; they leave the heart as lonely as they found it : they cannot take the place of con siderate friends. " I dweU amongst mine own people." Not only the living but the dead surround me. I raise my eyes and fix them on the portraits of the lost and loved. At yonder mansion, half hidden by tad cedar trees, dweU my grandfather and grandmother ; since the appointment of my father to the South American station I have Uved there too ; but the house is no longer what it used to be— a very fairyland of merriment and happi ness, since the boys were " cut adrift," as grand father expresses it; and my sweet sister Ella was married on the same day and hour as our cousin Mab.

INTRODUCTION.

. IX In a few months there is to be another wedding. Edward wid have come home from the coast of South America ; Mab and Ella with their young and happy husbands will return, though only for a season, to the dear old Hall ; relations of all degrees of consanguinity will be gathered to gether by invitation ; grandmama will bold high counsel with her housekeeper, and grandpapa will give away another blushing bride. But although the happy pair may seek for a short period some undisturbed retreat, the bride wid continue to " dwell amongst her own people." Edward has purchased this dear cottage ; he has promised to instal his "wee bit wifie" where she loves best to dwell ; and although some few articles of modern furniture are already in pre paration, he has promised to disturb no one of these dear pictures, to banish no one of these stiff-backed, uncomfortable, time - hallowed arm chairs. My dear kind Edward ! . . . Shame on thee, truant goosequill! I was talking of my ancestors.

INTRODUCTION.

. X Is it possible, I ask myself when I gaze upon their pictures, that " Such as these have lived and died," without leaving a trace of their being upon the tablets of time ? They were not heroes, not authors, not founders of noble houses, not renowned for their discoveries in science or in art. They were plain, everyday, matter-of-fact men and women : but are the pages of the Annual Register to be alone our passport to immor tality ? I have often been led to reflect, as I sit sur rounded by the portraits enUvening the waUs of this little drawing-room, that there is a veil hung up between the present and the past, whose folds are as impenetrable as that before the future. In the life of every one there is an inner sanctuary — a Holy of HoUes — which the stranger may not enter, and where the footfalls of friendship are never heard. It is this veil that I now seek to draw

INTRODUCTION.

. XI aside from the history of my ancestors. We seldom Uft it from the inner Use of living friend or neighbour .... but the dead .... the lessons of their experience, so far as we can gather them, are our own inheritance ; and some times it does us good to look at Use under circumstances in which its " deep things " are revealed to us : on the chart of the experience of others we discern the breakers, the sunk rocks and shifting sand-banks that endanger our own course, with the Pharos of hope kindled for us beyond. In one respect I am dl fitted for the task before me : my Use has been fuU of the sunshine of happiness. Those whose history I am to chro nicle, drank to the very dregs, the cup of suffer ing; but my path has been so fringed with the shadow of their sorrows, that I have imbibed a portion of their spirit, and have grown capable of appreciating their struggles with adversity. Besides this, from my earhest chddhood, I have been famdiar with the outhne of their

INTRODUCTION.

. history : every spot in our sweet vaUey is asso ciated with its scenes : the old servants of the famdy have stimulated my curiosity ; and when once interested in any vague tradition, I have only to coax grandpapa — a revealer of secrets — a Zaphnath-Paneah, and I can learn aU upon the subject that he knows. But I have a stdl more valuable source of in formation for some parts of my narrative — a manuscript that I inherit, in my father's hand. If my readers wdl have patience with me, I wid ted them how it was that my father came to record his own autobiography in connection with these scenes. The early married Use of my parents was spent abroad, my father having received a good naval appointment at one of the ports on the Medi terranean. I was a puny, sickly Uttle thing when he brought us back to England ; my mothers health was not at that time good ; and whde the doctors wished her to stay in London for advice, they strongly recommended my removal to the country.

INTRODUCTION.

. XIII In the afternoon of the second day's journey, my father raised my weary head from his supporting shoulder, and pointed out to me the gable ends of my future English home. We swept up the park avenue ; we passed the four tall cedars : the autumn sun was gilding gloriously the Suffolk hills beyond. The old gardeners rolling the smooth carriage-way and sweeping up the leaves, stood aside and raised their hats from their white heads as we flew by. We turned suddenly into a flower-garden, and drew up before the rose-entwined high porch of the hall-door. The family party had flown forth to welcome us : they were in walking-dresses, aU animated, happy, and as healthful as they were gay. I drew closer to the side of my dear father, with a feeUng of helplessness and isolation. He clasped me in his arms, and sprang out of the carriage. " God bless you, Theodosius!" said my grand father, who stood, cane in hand, the centre of a merry troop of children, in the door-way.

INTRODUCTION.

. XIV With two bounds, my father sprang up the front steps, and laid me gently in my grandmother's arms. Five children beside myself inhabited the nursery : two were the children of the house ; the parents of two others were at Singapore, in India ; the fifth was the daughter of Aunt Annie, the wife of a Lieutenant-Colonel of ArtiUery. I hardly know why I dweU upon my first introduction to my family, unless it be because it gives me pleasure to remember a big boy of seventeen, dressed in full midshipman's uniform, who, when'they had forced me by prayers, ex hortations and caresses, to go down in my white frock after dinner to dessert, took me on his knee and filled his plate with fruit for me. " Have you been introduced aU round, my child ? " inquired my grandmother. " Yes, she has," answered a sturdy little boy ; " and she won't understand how I'm an uncle to her?" " Hold your tongue, Leo. Don't worry the

INTRODUCTION.

. XV poor child," said the midshipman. " Garter king-at-arms himself would be puzzled in this house to make out our consanguinity. We are all cousins. I am your cousin Ned, mind ! Never call me your great uncle." It was in the arms of this strong cousin Xed, that I was carried that night across the park to our cottage home, attended by my father and Maurice the old butler, and wrapped warm in groat shawls by the fur hands of grandmama. My father, on coming out into the night, shook hands with the butler. "Well, Maurice, my man," said he, "so at last you have cast anchor." " Aye, aye, sir, so I have," repUed the sailor. " I have made fast alongside o' this here craft" (shaking his lantern towards the house that we were quitting) : " it's as good a berth as a sailor ought to ask ; and I'm a fitting out for my last v'v.igc. Captain — I have thought so ever since 1 saw her first — but that craft carries as her figure-head, an augeL"

INTRODUCTION.

. When Ned and Maurice left us at our cottage, I was consigned to a new maid, who put me to bed unceremoniously. But when alone in the dark room, under a heavy canopy of green moreen, an awe and horror of loneliness feU upon me. In hysterical alarm I started out of bed, and guided by the Ught that streamed beneath a door, made my way into the sitting-room. My father took me in his arms without a word, leaned my head against his breast, and sitting down before the hearth, sdently directed my attention to a picture. It was the simple head of a woman, beautiful young, but with the marks of early sorrow in the face ; an expression that fascinated rather than repelled : which made you feel that nothino that grieved you would be too trivial for her to sympathize with, and no sorrow so terrible but that she might venture, with the right of sad ex perience, to bring it balm. A sort of holy peace came into my heart as I gazed into the calm eyes of the picture.

INTRODUCTION.

. XVU "Who is it?— who is it, dear papa?" I cried. He answered with a kiss, " Old Maurice said to-night, it was our guardian angel." I told my grandmother next day about my angel's face. She smded. I wrote about it in a letter Ned indited to mama by my dictation; and when that dear, pale mother, reached her home, I dragged her by the hand out of the haU to see my angel. She kissed me three times as she gazed on that sweet face. Then my dear father came in, folded his arm round her, whispered something that I could not hear, which brought a blush into her cheek, and kissed her. Two years ago, after my mother's death, when our dear father, broken by his grief, had asked and obtained employment on a foreign station, we four again returned across the park from a family dinner at the haU. Again old Maurice bore the same old Ught, and at my side was cousin Ned. Let not the reader think he was VOL. I. B XV1U

INTRODUCTION.

. really my great uncle, for — our marriage was arranged. When Ned and Maurice had departed, my father sat down before the fire, and drawing a low stool near, I placed myself at his feet. " Father, have you no last instructions for your daughter ? " He was gazing earnestly at the picture. " You wdl fulfil your dear mother's last wishes, and my hopes, if you are just like her." "Father, you always say like her — and now — I know that she is perfect. But was she so at my age. I have heard — " "What?" " Strange things." My father rose up, opened an old desk and took out some papers. "Your mother wished you to know this," he said. " I would that every person, old and young, in England, knew this history, my child, and learned its lesson. You need it less than many ; but there are some who cannot see their

INTRODUCTION.

. XIX way through lise, and it might teach them — that Love — I do not mean Love the Passion, but Love the Principle — infused into our duties works its own reward. There may be often the passion of love without this lovingness, but alone it never lasts long. People wonder sometimes they are not made happy by their duties — it is because they are performed from some other motive than Love. And there is another mis take that people make, my chdd. They ascribe different origins to this Love; but it is self begetting : nothing produces it in other's hearts but its manifestation in our own. We can neither lay claim to it, command it, nor compel it. It exists, as between man and man, independ ently of relationship. Only the Christian has with respect to it a peculiar privilege: he has the advantage of the initiative.

With him it springs from God's love, and love to God in him ; and it is his privilege to caU it forth in the hearts of others. The papers were in three parts. A manu XX

INTRODUCTION.

. script labeUed by my father, "Dr Glascock's Narrative." Dr. Glascock had been Inspector of our Hospitals in Malta, and wrote down his reminiscences of Amabel during her early life, in answer to some inquiries made by my father in 1818. The second manuscript was a long letter ad dressed by Amabel herself to Captain Warner. The third was a narrative of my father's acquaintance with the same lady, begun upon the very night when he first brought me to my Eng- Ush home. The story fascinated me. I could not forget my father's wish, " that every person in England knew this tale and learned its lesson." Impelled by the interest I took in what I read, I passed many hours in rewriting the history, making ex tracts here and there from my authorities; but the language and arrangements are my own. A fourth part I have supplied from my remembrances, and as I have already said, from other sources.

INTRODUCTION.

. XXI It is Uttle the concern of any reader why after rewriting the story solely to amuse myself, I have been eventually induced to pubUsh it. It is given to the world with the fud consent of my own family. My grandfather even ventured to suggest some few days since, a sentence from the Catechism as an appropriate motto. " And do my duty in that state of life to which it may please God to caU me." "Very true, but not exactly appropriate," was my answer. " The moral of my tale is Love. And my father would have told us that the cold round of duty, without love to season it, is very unsatisfactory to aU parties, dear grandpapa." PAET I. DRAWN MAINLY FROM DR. GLASCOCK'S WRITTEN NARRATIVE. Stror g is the life that nestles there, But into action and delight It may not burst, till soft as air It feels Love's brooding, timely might. Lyra Innocentium. THE VICTORY OF LOVE.

Chapter I

English air ; For there is nothing here Which, from the outward to the inward brought, Moulded thy baby thought. Tennyson. " In our ordinary estimate of individual cha racter," says my father in one portion of his narrative, " we seldom give sufficient weight to the influences that have formed it. "A family is established: the opinion and character of the parents determine the nature of its associates, and give it its general tone. Ab one by one the children increase in years and understanding, each infuses somewhat of hia peculiar tastes and disposition into the social circle. It has its gaieties, for they are young ; its interests, for they are many ; its sorrows, for they come to all ; its relative duties ; its anni versaries ; its sympathies ; its fears. The youthful mind is formed under these influences ; it is not exposed to receive its impressions rudely from the world without, but learns at first to look on all things in a sort of family light.

By degrees the permanent family character has been formed ; and it sends forth its members, each with the family impress, to take up their positions in the world. " But who is there that, looking round amongst bis acquaintances, makes sufficient allowance for the nature of the family influence which has acted on each mind ? " Who is there, for instance, who, when pass ing judgment upon the faults or weaknesses of a young and inexperienced woman — beautiful, perhaps, and exposed to every snare of vanity ; enthusiastic, and therefore open to every tempta tion of an id-regulated fancy — will suffer the words of condemnation to die unuttered on his Ups, and plead for this young girl before the many that accuse her, that she never knew the counsels of a mother ? " A mother's love ! It is the ægis of her children.

Who can estimate its influence in a family of Love ?" This is not in truth the moral of my story ; but these reflections seem to have been called forth from my father, by an allusion to the early years of its heroine — Amabel de Karnac. Yes, heroine I called her, for like my father, I have little symyathy with those who think that heroism went out of date together with chain armour. She was born at the close of the last century, at the last place in the world one would have fixed upon for the production of a heroine — a low, close, miserable lodging, near the gates of Deptford Dockyard. Her father, Louis Marie Amable de Karnac, was a Viscount and an emigre. The opening of the Revolution found him in Paris, one of those mere men of the day — those star-spangled court danglers — who, caring for nothing but their privileges as members of an aristocracy, passed into foreign countries on the first signal of popular insurrection, intending when all was settled to return triumphant from their voluntary exile, to reap the pleasant fruits that other hands had sown, and to exult over the discomfiture of rebellion and anarchy, which men of another stamp had encountered and put down.

This was the more disgraceful to the Viscount because he came from Brittany, a province which up to the time of the Revolution was fuU of country gentlemen, living on their estates, sur rounded by their peasantry ; unconnected with general pohtics, or with the intrigues of the court: to which, indeed, they had been tradi tionally hostile since the annexation of the pro vince, three hundred years before, to the French crown. The Viscount had the acquaintance of certain men of influence in England ; who, as the French emigration increased and claims upon their pa tronage grew numerous, provided for him by procuring him the situation of teacher of French in a young ladies' school at Blackheath : pro bably considering that if a Marquis could keep a cook's shop in Oxford Street in the days of his misfortune, a Viscount might be well con tent to drag the youthful inteUect through Telemaque, and the four regular conjugations of French verbs.

But the situation, though not dishonourable, was not a lucrative one, and the Viscount was willing to exchange advantages. He took an early opportunity of making love to one of hia pupils, reported to possess a small amount of private property. English beauty is always attractive to a foreigner, and the heiress had enough of it to enhance the value of her gold. They eloped together at the close of a school ball, and before the alarmed preceptress could convey intelligence of the event to Miss Lane's family, she had united her fortunes to those of the Viscount, and no remedy remained for the evil done. The event, so far from improving the young Viscount's position, deprived him of the bare sub sistence he had hitherto enjoyed. It turned out that Miss Lane's little fortune, till she was twenty-one, was not in her own power.

Her father, willing that she should reap for a time the fruits of ber own foUy, refused to contribute to her support, or to extend to her his forgiveness; the Viscount lost the countenance of his English patrons, who were not ill-pleased to have an excuse for getting rid of him ; no careful mother would receive him as French teacher into her family ; while to complete their misfortunes, his only sister, Louise, who had been receiving her education in a convent in Brittany, barely escaping with lise and reason from the destruction of her asylum, was, by the fidelity of one of her father's old retainers, brought over into England, to add to the number of those who must be fed from money raised at an enormous interest upon Madame de Karnac's future fortune. In the midst of all this poverty and anxiety, Amabel de Karnac came into the world.

The very necessaries of her situation were procured for the young mother by Louise ; who, impressed by the idea that she entailed a burthen on the family, worked early and late to meet her share of the expenses, procuring a coarse and pre carious employment from a marine store nearly opposite their windows at Deptsord. As she went backwards and forwards to this estabhshment, for the purpose of obtaining work or of returning it, she was quite unconscious that a lover's eyes were on her ; till one morning, a few days after the birth of her brother's baby, the master of the marine store, having invited her into his back parlour, seized the opportunity of de claring his passion, and of setting before her a full account of his late pecuniary successes as a government contractor. Poor pale Louise !

As soon as she understood him, she broke away from the rash storekeeper, and covering her face with her little neat black apron, she darted through the shop, to the astonishment of the customers, and never stopped till, in the little closet that she caUed her chamber, she fell upon her knees beside her bed, weeping passionately and long. Her admirer was not discouraged by this conduct: he gave her what he supposed a sufficient time to recover herself, and to explain aU that had passed between them to her brother, and then, eager and presump tuous, he took his hat, and went across the street to honour the young Viscount with a caU. The astonishment of de Karnac at the pro posal was equal to the measure of his family pride; but by degrees he saw the thing more reasonably: he reflected on his own position, and remembered that the marriage of a female in a foreign land with a rich " negociant Anglais" would scarcely mar the glories of his famdy tree.

I never heard any one talk of the character of the Viscount, but he must have been an emi nently selfish man, although he looks so spe ciously handsome in the miniature now hanging on the waU beside me ; for before the storekeeper had departed from his presence, he had arranged that if the shop were given up and a handsome marriage settlement made upon his sister, he would use his influence to bring her over to their views. Louise had passed aU her Use in the seclusion of her convent, or in the almost equal retirement of her father's lands in Brittany. Her Uttle fluttering heart was yet entirely free; and she had always looked upon a marriage de convenance as her natural destiny. Like all French girls, however, she had trusted to the affection of her friends to make a choice Ukely to be agreeable to her.

Yet, when her brother spoke to her on the subject ; when he laid before her reasons, bearing less upon her happiness than his own, he found her resigned and yielding ; and in less than a fortnight after the proposal, Louise de Karnac, the descendant of a long line of Breton ancestors, became the wife of the storekeeper Sibbes. The next event that happened in the Karnac family was scarcely more of a tragedy than such a wedding. Poor, pale Louise, who every day grew paler, passed much of her time in her late home, her brother's lodgings ; where, pressing to her heart his little baby, she at least felt that her feelings and her prejudices were not rudely ruffled by the bluff, vulgar bonhommie of Mr. Sibbes. She was thus employed one evening, when a sailor was suddenly shown in, who, with such preparation as a kind, rough nature could suggest, informed the ladies that the Viscount de Karnac had taken a boat at the Tower Stairs to row down to Deptsord, that a collier coming up the river had run down the Uttle wherry, that it had turned over on the unfortunate Viscount, and that before he could be got out of the water he was drowned.

VOL. I. c Though Madame de Karnac had ceased to love her husband — though she reproached him daily with having deceived her into an unhappy marriage, and, at the very moment when the sad news reached her, was engaged in pouring a long tale of his delinquencies into his sister's ear — she was not the less vehement in her grief; not the less helpless, as she shrieked forth ber lamentations. Louise had her immediately removed to her own cottage, and Mr. Sibbes took on himself all the arrangements for the inquest and the funeral. He easily persuaded Madame de Karnac, after the first paroxysm of her despair was over, to write to her own family ; and in a few hours her father arrived to take charo-e of her. He made no offer to attend the obsequies of the Viscount, or to share the funeral ex penses.

He only inquired after his liabiUties ; was shocked and indignant at the inroads made in his wife's fortune; and as soon as possible departed, taking with him the widow and her little girl. Louise, as she watched the departure of the carriage, burst into a passion of weeping. She felt that the last tie which connected her present existence with the past had been severed, and that henceforward she was to be nothing more than the wife of Mr. Sibbes. The next intelligence she received of Madame de Karnac was through the medium of a newspaper, which reported her approaching marriage with a gallant naval officer. Louise glanced at her own black dress, and again wept long and bitterly. At length a thought occurred to her. Mr. Sibbes had always sought to gratify her wishes, what if she should entreat him to adopt her brother's orphan as their own ?

It was with an impatience she had never felt before to see her husband, that she awaited his return. She had full confidence in the power she had never yet cared to exert over him, and she broached the subject eagerly before he had stepped across the threshold of his door. Her enthusiasm had lost sight of opposition to her wishes, and she was both surprised and angry to discover that her proposition was met by Mr. Sibbes with coldness. He did not approve of meddling with other people's chddren, he told her ; the Viscount had been much expense AMABEL ; OR, to him already, and Madame de Karnac he es pecially abhorred. " Say what remains when Hope is dead ? She answered — ' Endless weeping ! ' " And the character of Louise must have resem bled that of the mother of the Boy of Egremont ; for, though excited into energy by the approach of care or danger, since all hope of ameliorating her condition had forsaken her, she had become almost weak in mind.

Mr. Sibbes was not a man of strong sen sibilities, but he was made uncomfortable by tears. He arose early one morning, went down by coach to the country-seat of Mr. Lane, saw the young widow in gay half-mourning Ustening to the pleasant nothings of Captain Talbot her intended, and, after some negotiation, struck a bargain with little Amabel's grandfather. The terms of which were : first, that the Sibbes should have the entire care and charge of the child ; secondly, that in consideration of the honour thence devolving on him, Mr. Sibbes should furnish little Amabel with a handsome marriage-portion, or settle an equivalent upon her should he die. A third proviso was added by the grandfather, that she should not be brought up in the Roman Catholic religion. Amabel was a model of chddish beauty; but had she been deformed and ugly Mr. Sibbes would not have cared.