The Father and Daughter E-Book

Amelia Opie

• Herausgeber: Amelia Opie
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

It is not without considerable apprehension that I offer myself as an avowed Author at the bar of public opinion,—and that apprehension is heightened by its being the general custom to give indiscriminately the name of NOVEL to every thing in Prose that comes in the shape of a Story, however simple it be in its construction, and humble in its pretensions.

Leseprobe

The Father and Daughter

By

Amelia Opie

Table of Contents

DEDICATION.

TO THE READER.

THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

"——she saw that he had drawn the shape of a coffin and was then writing on the lid the name of Agnes."——

DEDICATION.

TODr. ALDERSON of NORWICH.

DEAR SIR,

In dedicating this Publication to you, I follow in some measure the example of those nations who devoted to their gods the first fruits of the genial seasons which they derived from their bounty.

To you I owe whatever of cultivation my mind has received; and the first fruits of that mind to you I dedicate.

Besides, having endeavoured in "The Father and Daughter" to exhibit a picture of the most perfect parental affection, to whom could I dedicate it with so much propriety as to you, since, in describing a good father, I had only to delineate my own?

Allow me to add, full of gratitude for years of tenderness and indulgence on your part, but feebly repaid even by every possible sentiment of filial regard on mine, that the satisfaction I shall experience if my Publication be favourably received by the world, will not proceed from the mere gratification of my self-love, but from the conviction I shall feel that my success as an Author is productive of pleasure to you.

AMELIA OPIE.

Berners Street,1800.

TO THE READER.

It is not without considerable apprehension that I offer myself as an avowed Author at the bar of public opinion,—and that apprehension is heightened by its being the general custom to give indiscriminately the name of Novel to every thing in Prose that comes in the shape of a Story, however simple it be in its construction, and humble in its pretensions.

By this means, the following Publication is in danger of being tried by a standard according to which it was never intended to be made, and to be criticized for wanting those merits which it was never meant to possess.

I therefore beg leave to say, in justice to myself, that I know "The Father and Daughter" is wholly devoid of those attempts at strong character, comic situation, bustle, and variety of incident, which constitute a Novel, and that its highest pretensions are, to be a simple, moral Tale.

THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

A TALE.

 The night was dark,—the wind blew keenly over the frozen and rugged heath, when Agnes, pressing her moaning child to her bosom, was travelling on foot to her father's habitation.

"Would to God I had never left it!" she exclaimed, as home and all its enjoyments rose in fancy to her view:—and I think my readers will be ready to join in the exclamation, when they hear the poor wanderer's history.

Agnes Fitzhenry was the only child of a respectable merchant in a country town, who, having lost his wife when his daughter was very young, resolved for her sake to form no second connection. To the steady, manly affection of a father, Fitzhenry joined the fond anxieties and endearing attentions of a mother; and his parental care was amply repaid by the love and amiable qualities of Agnes. He was not rich; yet the profits of his trade were such as to enable him to bestow every possible expense on his daughter's education, and to lay up a considerable sum yearly for her future support: whatever else he could spare from his own absolute wants, he expended in procuring comforts and pleasures for her.—"What an excellent father that man is!" was the frequent exclamation among his acquaintance—"And what an excellent child he has! Well may he be proud of her!" was as commonly the answer to it.

Nor was this to be wondered at:—Agnes united to extreme beauty of face and person every accomplishment that belongs to her own sex, and a great degree of that strength of mind and capacity for acquiring knowledge supposed to belong exclusively to the other.

For this combination of rare qualities Agnes was admired;—for her sweetness of temper, her willingness to oblige, her seeming unconsciousness of her own merits, and her readiness to commend the merits of others,—for these still rarer qualities, Agnes was beloved: and she seldom formed an acquaintance without at the same time securing a friend.

Her father thought he loved her (and perhaps he was right) as never father loved a child before; and Agnes thought she loved him as child never before loved father.—"I will not marry, but live single for my father's sake," she often said;—but she altered her determination when her heart, hitherto unmoved by the addresses of the other sex, was assailed by an officer in the guards who came to recruit in the town in which she resided.

Clifford, as I shall call him, had not only a fine figure and graceful address, but talents rare and various, and powers of conversation so fascinating, that the woman he had betrayed forgot her wrongs in his presence, and the creditor, who came to dun him for the payment of debts already incurred, went away eager to oblige him by letting him incur still more.

Fatal perversion of uncommon abilities! This man, who might have taught a nation to look up to him as its best pride in prosperity and its best hope in adversity, made no other use of his talents than to betray the unwary of both sexes, the one to shame, the other to pecuniary difficulties; and he whose mind was capacious enough to have imagined schemes to aggrandize his native country, the slave of sordid selfishness, never looked beyond his own temporary and petty benefit, and sat down contented with the achievements of the day, if he had overreached a credulous tradesman, or beguiled an unsuspecting woman.

But, to accomplish even these paltry triumphs, great knowledge of the human heart was necessary,—a power of discovering the prevailing foible in those on whom he had designs, and of converting their imagined security into their real danger. He soon discovered that Agnes, who was rather inclined to doubt her possessing in an uncommon degree the good qualities which she really had, valued herself, with not unusual blindness, on those which she had not. She thought herself endowed with great power to read the characters of those with whom she associated, when she had even not discrimination enough to understand her own: and, while she imagined that it was not in the power of others to deceive her, she was constantly in the habit of deceiving herself.

Clifford was not slow to avail himself of this weakness in his intended victim; and, while he taught her to believe that none of his faults had escaped her observation, with hers he had made himself thoroughly acquainted.—But not content with making her faults subservient to his views, he pressed her virtues also into his service; and her affection for her father, that strong hold, secure in which Agnes would have defied the most violent assaults of temptation, he contrived should be the means of her defeat.

I have been thus minute in detailing the various and seducing powers which Clifford possessed, not because he will be a principal figure in my narrative,—for, on the contrary, the chief characters in it are the Father and Daughter,—but in order to excuse as much as possible the strong attachment which he excited in Agnes.

"Love," says Mrs. Inchbald, whose knowledge of human nature can be equalled only by the humour with which she describes its follies, and the unrivalled pathos with which she exhibits its distresses—"Love, however rated by many as the chief passion of the heart, is but a poor dependent, a retainer on the other passions—admiration, gratitude, respect, esteem, pride in the object; divest the boasted sensation of these, and it is no more than the impression of a twelvemonth, by courtesy, or vulgar error, called love[1]."—And of all these ingredients was the passion of Agnes composed. For the graceful person and manner of Clifford she felt admiration; and her gratitude was excited by her observing that, while he was an object of attention to every one wherever he appeared, his attentions were exclusively directed to herself; and that he who, from his rank and accomplishments, might have laid claim to the hearts even of the brightest daughters of fashion in the gayest scenes of the metropolis, seemed to have no higher ambition than to appear amiable in the eyes of Agnes, the humble toast of an obscure country town. While his superiority of understanding, and brilliancy of talents, called forth her respect, and his apparent virtues her esteem; and when to this high idea of the qualities of the man was added a knowledge of his high birth and great expectations, it is no wonder that she also felt the last-mentioned, and often perhaps the greatest, excitement to love, "pride in the object."

[1] Nature and Art, vol. i. p. 142.

When Clifford began to pay those marked attentions to Agnes, which ought always on due encouragement from the woman to whom they are addressed to be followed by an offer of marriage, he contrived to make himself as much disliked by the father as admired by the daughter: yet his management was so artful, that Fitzhenry could not give a sufficient reason for his dislike; he could only declare its existence; and for the first time in her life Agnes learned to think her father unjust and capricious.

Thus, while Clifford ensured an acceptance of his addresses from Agnes, he at the same time secured a rejection of them from Fitzhenry; and this was the object of his wishes, as he had a decided aversion to marriage, and knew besides that marrying Agnes would disappoint all his ambitious prospects in life, and bring on him the eternal displeasure of his father.

At length, after playing for some time with her hopes and fears, Clifford requested Fitzhenry to sanction with his approbation his addresses to his daughter; and Fitzhenry, as he expected, coldly and firmly declined the honour of his alliance. But when Clifford mentioned, as if unguardedly, that he hoped to prevail on his father to approve the marriage after it had taken place, if not before, Fitzhenry proudly told him that he thought his daughter much too good to be smuggled into the family of any one; while Clifford, piqued in his turn at the warmth of Fitzhenry's expressions, and the dignity of his manner, left him, exulting secretly in the consciousness that he had his revenge,—for he knew that the heart of Agnes was irrecoverably his.

Agnes heard from her lover that his suit was rejected, with agonies as violent as he appeared to feel.—"What!" exclaimed she, "can that affectionate father, who has till now anticipated my wishes, disappoint me in the wish nearest to my heart?" In the midst of her first agitation her father entered the room, and, with "a countenance more in sorrow than in anger" began to expostulate with her on the impropriety of the connection which she was desirous of forming. He represented to her the very slender income which Clifford possessed; the inconvenience to which an officer's wife is exposed; and the little chance which there is for a man's making a constant and domestic husband who has been brought up in an idle profession, and accustomed to habits of intemperance, expense, and irregularity:——

"But above all," said he, "how is it possible that you could ever condescend to accept the addresses of a man whose father, he himself owns, will never sanction them with his approbation?"

Alas! Agnes could plead no excuse but that she was in love, and she had too much sense to urge such a plea to her father.

"Believe me," he continued, "I speak thus from the most disinterested consideration of your interest; for, painful as the idea of parting with you must be to me, I am certain I should not shrink from the bitter trial, whenever my misery would be your happiness (Here his voice faltered); but, in this case, I am certain that by refusing my consent to your wishes I ensure your future comfort; and in a cooler moment you will be of the same opinion."

Agnes shook her head, and turned away in tears.

"Nay, hear me, my child," resumed Fitzhenry, "you know that I am no tyrant; and if, after time and absence have been tried in order to conquer your unhappy passion, it remain unchanged, then, in defiance of my judgement, I will consent to your marriage with Mr. Clifford, provided his father consent likewise:—for, unless he do, I never will:—and if you have not pride and resolution enough to be the guardian of your own dignity, I must guard it for you; but I am sure there will be no need of my interference: and Agnes Fitzhenry would scorn to be clandestinely the wife of any man."

Agnes thought so too,—and Fitzhenry spoke this in so mild and affectionate a manner, and in a tone so expressive of suppressed wretchedness, which the bare idea of parting with her had occasioned him, that, for the moment, she forgot every thing but her father, and the vast debt of love and gratitude which she owed him; and throwing herself into his arms she protested her entire, nay cheerful, acquiescence in his determination.

"Promise me, then," replied Fitzhenry, "that you will never see Mr. Clifford more, if you can avoid it: he has the tongue of Belial, and if——"

Here Agnes indignantly interrupted him with reproaches for supposing her so weak as to be in danger of being seduced into a violation of her duty; and so strong were the terms in which she expressed herself, that her father entreated her pardon for having thought such a promise necessary.

The next day Clifford did not venture to call at the house, but he watched the door till he saw Agnes come out alone. Having then joined her, he obtained from her a full account of the conversation which she had had with Fitzhenry; when, to her great surprise, he drew conclusions from it which she had never imagined possible.

He saw, or pretended to see, in Fitzhenry's rejection of his offers, not merely a dislike of her marrying him, but a design to prevent her marrying at all; and as a design like this was selfish in the last degree, and ought to be frustrated, he thought it would be kinder in her to disobey her father then, and marry the man of her heart, than, by indulging his unreasonable wishes on this subject once, to make him expect that she would do so again, and continue to lead a single life;—because, in that case, the day of her marrying, when it came at last, would burst on him with tenfold horrors.

The result of this specious reasoning, enforced by tears, caresses and protestations, was, that she had better go off to Scotland immediately with him, and trust to time, necessity, and their parents' affection, to secure their forgiveness.

Agnes the first time heard these arguments, and this proposal, with the disdain which they merited; but, alas! she did not resolve to avoid all opportunity of hearing them a second time: but, vain of the resolution she had shown on this first trial, she was not averse to stand another, delighted to find that she had not overrated her strength, when she reproached Fitzhenry for his want of confidence in it.

The consequence is obvious:—again and again she heard Clifford argue in favour of an elopement; and, though she still retained virtue sufficient to withhold her consent, she every day saw fresh reason to believe he argued on good grounds, and to think that that parent whose whole study, till now, had been her gratification, was, in this instance at least, the slave of unwarrantable selfishness.——

At last, finding that neither time, reflection, nor even a temporary absence, had the slightest effect on her attachment, but that it gained new force every day, she owned that nothing but the dread of making her father unhappy withheld her from listening to Clifford's proposal:—'Twas true, she said, pride forbade it; but the woman who could listen to the dictates of pride, knew nothing of love but the name.

This was the moment for Clifford to urge more strongly than ever that the elopement was the most effectual means of securing her father's happiness, as well as her own; till at last her judgement became the dupe of her wishes; and, fancying that she was following the dictates of filial affection, when she was in reality the helpless victim of passion, she yielded to the persuasions of a villain; and set off with him for Scotland.