Chapter IV

To dwell on subjects that cause us to abhor human nature, and dread to associate with civilized man, can surely convey no pleasure in the perusal, nor, in the present system of things, be productive of benefit. Let us, therefore, pass lightly over details that have no useful tendency, and revert to events, which almost justified the distrust and misanthropy that so long had governed the mind of the unhappy Montmorency, and which, perhaps, it had been better for him had he still persevered in.--Suffice it then to say, that Angelo daily beheld those obstacles which had opposed themselves to the gratification of his wishes becoming less formidable. The love of Gabrielle acquiring fresh force, though the suggestions of her virtue became not weaker, rendered the task of conquering it more and more difficult.

Angelo had so far perceived his power over her heart, that he had dared a second time to hazard to her the proposal of quitting her father’s roof, but this was again received indignantly, with bitter reproaches, and with tears of burning anguish, to see herself so fallen in the estimation of the man she loved; that at this late period, when he should have known her better, he still should presume to think her capable of sin so abominable. Thus she thought, yet still she listened to, and forgave more readily than before the man who could thus presume. Angelo perceived, and availed himself of every increasing advantage, and pressed the subject with renewed ardour; but no, though far advanced in the path of error, though tottering on the brink of a deceitful precipice, though feeble from the excess of her love, she had still virtue enough to hear this proposal with horror, and to reject it with firmness. What! desert her venerable father? the fond guardian of her childhood, the tender friend of her youth; abandon him; abandon that faded, that majestic form, which now seemed to stand accusingly before her? Deprive him of the sweet support, the staff of his declining years! terrible and alarming guilt was in the thought. Could such an image dare then for an instant to present itself before a mind once so pure? But one step remained to ensure her safety; it was to make a confession of the whole to her father. She turned this idea in her mind, but abandoned it with terror, at having proceeded so far; the shame attendant upon such a confession, the dread of the reproaches, but more of the misery of Montmorency; above all, a latent unacknowledged fear, which shook her inmost soul, that she should then be for ever torn from the object of her fatal love, prevented her from yielding to this safe suggestion of her better reason.

She suffered then the evil daily to acquire fresh strength; her virtue, her innocence, were no longer sufficient protection, and destruction became inevitable; true, she did not quit with her seducer the roof of the miserable father; she remained, and pointed the dagger at his heart, even while cherished beneath the wings of his unsuspecting love, and by that fond pride which rejoiced in the fancied contemplation of her spotless purity. Even in the midst of his felicitations was he deceived, and robbed for ever of the valued treasure of a daughter’s innocence.

To attempt description of the feelings of one, who, till this fatal period, had been sinless, even in idea,--to paint the horror of mind of that being, whose torturing remorse told her loudly of her guilt, while that guilt infatuated too much to be abjured,--would be a task no pen could accomplish. The temptation to evil once admitted, it is no longer easy to repel its insidious advances; a dreaded step once taken, another quickly follows; and the wretched victim of error seldom awakens, till repentance is in vain. Thus, with the unhappy Gabrielle;--miserable, degraded in her own eyes, having plunged in an ocean of guilt, she continued to sail amid its dangerous straits; the sun of delusion flashed over her gloomy way a momentary ray of deceitful pleasure, nor was she roused to the full horror of her situation, till, like a thunder clap sounding in her ears, the voice of Angelo spoke of his departure.

For some moments the power of speech was denied her; when, at length, she recovered the power, she had not the wish to speak,--a deadly chill crept through her blood, an universal weakness trembled through her frame, her mouth became parched, now her cheek turned of an ashy paleness, and now flushed with the crimson of agony; she did not even look at Angelo, for despair possessed her wholly.

Angelo beheld her agitation; he took her hand, “Why are you thus, my love?” he cried, “what is there so terrible in my departure? or, if you indeed consider it so, why not, at once, determine to accompany me?”

Gabrielle shook her head, but replied not.

“Why, then,” proceeded he, “this apparent unhappiness? you always knew, fair Gabrielle, that I could not remain for ever here.”

“True, true;” faltered Gabrielle, looking at him, and turning hastily away.

“We may meet again, my love, under happier auspices.”

Gabrielle clasped her hands in silent agony; the tears rolled down her cheeks, and again she ventured a glance at Angelo.

He pressed her hand; “Say, then, shall we go together?”

Gabrielle withdrew her hand; and, though Angelo made the proposal, who shall say, that now, as eagerly as ever, he desired that she should accede to it? “Oh, Angelo!” she indignantly exclaimed, “is this consolation?”

“Really, dearest Gabrielle, you are not yourself to-day; why thus unkind; why thus disposed to reject, with scorn, all I can say?”

“Miserable, yet justly, punished wretch that I am!” cried Gabrielle, and quickened her steps. Angelo followed, but not with quite such eager anxiety as once he had followed her with, when involuntarily he had offended her; “Come, dearest Gabrielle,” he cried, “sweet girl, be reasonable;” then, willing to divert her grief, he added sportively “what of my departure,--I would venture now, you will soon forget me.”

“Oh, this is too cruel,” exclaimed Gabrielle, bursting into tears, “Oh God, I begin to feel that my father, my dear father, spoke not too severely of man.”

Angelo was affected, not at her tears so much, but she had interested his feelings through the medium of his self-love; the heart of man is often vulnerable through that medium, when it can be touched through no other; he saw that Gabrielle really loved him, and was tortured at the thought of his departure. He instantly seized her hand again, and falling at her feet, implored forgiveness for an unintentional offence, swore that he loved her with an unabated passion, and would not rise till she had sealed his pardon.

Gabrielle sighed; with the pangs of love she had now, alas, become fully acquainted; they had followed closely upon its short-lived pleasures.

“Rise, rise then at once, Angelo,” she said.

He arose--they proceeded a few paces--Angelo still dwelt upon the excess of his love; to this Gabrielle replied not; but in a melancholy voice she said, without raising her eyes from the ground, “you will write to me, Angelo?”

“Can you doubt it, my love?”

“It would be a terrible thing _now_, Angelo, to be forgotten.”

“That can never happen, fair Gabrielle.”

Gabrielle sighed, “Where do you go from hence.”

“To Italy, where certain connections of my father will, no doubt, render my stay desirable for some time.”

A weight of ice fell upon the heart of Gabrielle; Angelo could talk of being happy, of being so without her!--A new world opened to her view; a world of misery; her doom--a dreadful doom, seemed fixed; she was no longer what she had been,--peaceful because innocent. She felt a wretch, and felt, by anticipation, what despair would be hers, when left in the terrible solitude of guilt, to her reflections.

The heart of Angelo was not systematically bad; he erred from the want of firm principle, and persisted in his errors from want of energy to combat them. The allurements of vice wire too strong for his sense of right, and while he yielded readily to every temptation, he felt not much remorse that he did so. His character was not an uncommon one; but such as is frequently met with among men; some few perhaps better, more infinitely worse; many possessing his weak heart, and wandering mind; few his sensibility, frankness, and generosity, to counterpoize the opposite balance. He had told Gabrielle that he loved her, and he had told her truth, to the extent of which his soul was capable, for deception was foreign to his nature. That he did not love her with that delicate, refined, and rare affection of which superior minds alone are capable, was not attributable to him as a fault; he loved her more than he had ever before loved woman; but his was not a mind to admit that sentiment, and to feel it in all its fine-drawn and boundless ramifications. Gabrielle, whose soul knew not vice, and whose eyes had never beheld it, loved differently; her’s was an ardent, pure, and unsophisticated passion, which, having taken root in a rich native soil, was calculated to exist, while she existed, strong and immutable. Over the conviction of her love she shed bitter tears; she felt that she ought to overcome it, but reason was unable to attempt the arduous task.

In a short time Angelo was no longer an inmate of the cottage of Meillerie. Montmorency took leave of him with feelings of regret; his solitude for some time past had been cheered by the presence of a rational, and, as he believed, a not unworthy human being; for, with all his experience of mankind, he could not consider Angelo in that light; he had seen him, without alarm, the companion of his daughter, for he thought him too artless to be dangerous; he did not take into his calculation, that Gabrielle, from her inexperience, required no artifice to be misled; he did not remember that from that very inexperience she would be unable to judge but from appearance, to penetrate into motives, or to draw correct deductions; above all, he forgot,--for he was not of an age when those ideas present themselves forcibly to the mind,--he forgot the danger attendant upon the circumstance of her being a stranger to man, till one the most engaging in form and manners presented himself to her astonished view. In the world he dreaded, Montmorency would have been the guardian of his daughter, because in the mass of mankind, he would have prepared himself to encounter the greater part villains; but, independently of his believing that the innocence of the one, and guilelessness of the other, were sufficient security for the safety of his child, he did not, in all the severity of his judgment of society, conceive that there existed a creature base enough, under such circumstances, to repay his trust with treachery and ingratitude: he did not consider that man became as often base from weakness as from depravity, and that even the firmest, and best-intentioned minds are not always proof against the powerful temptation of combining circumstances. Thus is it ever with short-sighted mortals, who, shielding themselves by the strong habergeon of caution and mistrust, are assailed in a path where least they dreamt of danger, and vanquished in points which were considered too insignificant to guard. Thus too with Montmorency, who, while cautiously guarding the out-posts, admitted the enemy into the camp.

Some time had now elapsed since the departure of Angelo from the cottage of Meillerie, but its inhabitants were no longer in the state he had found them; in his once animated and blooming daughter, Montmorency found no more the intelligent and rational companion, or the cheering associate; on her fair cheek, where, indeed, the teint of the red rose had never blushed, he now beheld the sickly hue of grief, and marked the change with fond unsuspicious solicitude. He divined not the cause, for no superior female, and superior she must have been to have charmed Montmorency, had ever taught him to feel for her the pain or delirium of love; he knew, therefore, but little of the extremities to which it sometimes drives its victims. All he knew, and all he beheld, was, that the only happiness of his life, the only charm which bound him to existence, was fading before his eyes, like a fragile flower at the approach of autumn. The conviction struck a dagger to his heart; and, looking tenderly upon her, he would sometimes say, “Oh, my beloved child, what is the cause that thus I see thee perishing before my aged eyes? Wilt thou die, Gabrielle, and leave me to support alone the burthen of increasing years? Wilt thou not exert thyself, my child? wilt thou not endeavour to live for the sake of thy father?”

These words would pierce Gabrielle to the soul; oft was she on the point of confessing all, but dread of the grief she would inflict, horror at the thought, lest such dreadful acknowledgement should hasten him to the grave; these were the thoughts, rather than the shame that restrained her, for that oppressive shame humbly she would have submitted to, as slender penance for her inexpiable guilt, the terrible idea of which weighed down her aching heart.

But soon remorse for her crime became not the only anguish or punishment of the wretched Gabrielle, that anguish and that punishment, which had already more than trebly exceeded the transitory delight she had enjoyed; soon more dreadful, boundless, and overwhelming misery opened to her view,--she found, with horror that mocks expression, that long she might not even spare her miserable father the terrible secret of her grief, and that one might yet exist, who to the reproaches of her conscience might add others bitterer still, for being called into life the offspring of guilt and shame. Unhappy Gabrielle! unfortunate Montmorency! fate pursues thee, even in thy solitude, with re-doubled rigour; thy seclusion from man shall not preserve thee from misfortune, and thy cottage, in the bosom of mountains, shall, equally with the habitations of the populous world, become the house of mourning and despair.

In vain did the distracted Gabrielle endeavour to consider the best steps to pursue; her mind was chaos, and she could not organize it to reflect. First, she imagined to quit the roof of her still unconscious father, and save him the dreadful pang that knowledge of her guilt must inflict; but then again, this, by leaving him in all the horrors of suspence, would cause him torture equal to a knowledge of the truth; and yet a knowledge of the truth!--The idea was madness; it would be instant death; how then determine? how act? she could decide on nothing. Day after day passed on; her secret wretchedness, her concealed anguish, became almost too great for endurance; her form faded, her melancholy became uninterrupted by even occasional attempts at vivacity, and the hapless Montmorency, catching the infection of her gloom, resigned himself to a hopeless woe, which seemed neither to expect or look for termination but in the grave.

It was the sight of this awful grief that increased the sufferings of the wretched daughter; add to all, Angelo had now been three months absent. During that space, she had heard from him but once, and that in the first fortnight after his departure. His letter then informed her of his arrival at Naples, in what spot he had taken up his residence, and that his stay in the country being rendered so agreeable by numerous connexions of his father, all anxious to pay him tribute, he could fix no certain period of departure, but rather imagined it would not take place for some months at least. He concluded by the most tender protestations (which Gabrielle, however, thought cold and constrained) of undiminished affection, and intreaties to render her mind as happy as possible, till propitious fate should permit them to be re-united. To this letter Gabrielle had returned an answer, but not at that time surmising her situation, had merely expressed her deep sorrow at his absence, the remorse and anguish which preyed upon her mind, and conjured him to write speedily, as his letters alone could rouse her from the gloomy melancholy that oppressed her. Unhappily, however, with this pathetic entreaty on the part of the forlorn Gabrielle, the correspondence had ceased, and the wretched girl, though necessarily uncertain of the fate of her letter, felt too much pride, supposing him to have received it, to trouble with love-sick reproaches, a man who, perhaps, desired to forget her. For the same reason could she not consent to inform him, that forgotten as she might be, her cruel fate ordained that in tender anguish she should still remember him.

In truth, Angelo had received her letter, received it too in a brilliant society, and, retiring a moment, had hastily perused it; he had kissed it even, and promised himself that ere he slept he would answer it. Overcome with wine, however, he had retired to rest, and forgotten his intention; he slept till late the following morning, and scarcely awoke in time to attend a party of pleasure, which had been planned the preceding evening. Pleasure, pleasure varying, though unvaried, left no room for the performance of a duty. Brilliant beauties present, eclipsed the memory of an absent love; another, and another day, and still something intervened to prevent his writing. At length so many days had elapsed, that when a spare half hour did present itself, accompanied by the recollection of his unperformed promise to Gabrielle, the gay Angelo took up the pen, but suddenly decided, that now to think of answering a letter so long ago received, would lead Gabrielle to suppose, that neglect or indifference alone could have hitherto caused the delay. He therefore determined, that he would wait for another letter, and then answer that on the instant; and perhaps, the vanity so natural to man, made him desire this additional proof of being fondly remembered by the girl, whose superior love he was so little capable of appreciating.

Meantime, great was the pain, and bitter were the feelings which this unknown arrangement, in the giddy mind of Angelo, gave to the susceptible heart of Gabrielle; yet did not Angelo intentionally inflict this pain, but purely from not considering that he did so. Had Gabrielle been with him, had she been present, it is probable he would have still loved, admired, and dedicated his fondest moments to her; but, immersed as he was in voluptuous gaiety, he thought not often of his poor girl of the mountains, who for him had sacrificed all, and become a wretch. The idea grew fainter and fainter in his mind, and when he had leisure to remember that she did not write, his pride became offended at the omission, and he considered himself now justified in not having answered her first letter. Oh, man! such is your cruelty and injustice; by setting first the example of indifference, you provoke and induce that conduct in woman, which ye are likewise first to censure and condemn.

Thus was Gabrielle left to pine unnoticed.--Though Angelo possessed feelings, they required to be roused; Gabrielle was absent; her presence might have acted as a stimulus, for in some respects Angelo resembled the flint, which, to emit a spark, requires the strong collision of the steel.