The Children of the Abbey: A Tale

by Regina Maria Roche

Amanda listened in silence to Mrs. Duncan’s discourse, fearful that if she spoke she should betray the emotions it excited.

They at last entered between the mountains that enclosed the valley on which the Abbey stood. The scene was solemn and solitary. Every prospect, except one of the sea, seen through an aperture in one of the mountains, was excluded. Some of these mountains were bare, craggy, and projecting. Others were skirted with trees, robed with vivid green, and crowned with white and yellow furze. Some were all a wood of intermingled shades, and others covered with long and purple heath. Various streams flowed from them into the valley. Some stole gently down their sides in silver rills, giving beauty and vigor wherever they meandered. Others tumbled from fragment to fragment, with a noise not undelightful to the ear, and formed for themselves a deep bed in the valley, over which trees, that appeared coeval with the building, bent their old and leafy heads.

At the foot of what to the rest was called a gently swelling hill lay the remains of the extensive gardens which had once given the luxuries of the vegetable world to the banquets of the Abbey; but the buildings which had nursed those luxuries were all gone to decay, and the gay plantations were overrun with the progeny of neglect and sloth.

The Abbey was one of the most venerable looking buildings Amanda had ever beheld; but it was in melancholy grandeur she now saw it—in the wane of its days, when its glory was passed away, and the whole pile proclaimed desertion and decay. She saw it when, to use the beautiful language of Hutchinson, its pride was brought low, when its magnificence was sinking in the dust, when tribulation had taken the seat of hospitality, and solitude reigned, where once the jocund guest had laughed over the sparkling bowl, whilst the owls sang nightly their strains of melancholy to the moonshine that slept upon its mouldering battlements.

The heart of Amanda was full of the fond idea of her parents, and the sigh of tender remembrance stole from it. “How little room,” thought she, “should there be in the human heart for the worldly pride which so often dilates it, liable as all things are to change! the distress in which the descendants of noble families are so often seen, the decline of such families themselves, should check the arrogant presumption with which so many look forward to having their greatness and prosperity perpetuated through every branch of their posterity.

“The proud possessors of this Abbey, surrounded with affluence, and living in its full enjoyment, never perhaps admitted the idea as at all probable, that one of their descendants should ever approach the seat of her ancestors without that pomp and elegance which heretofore distinguished its daughters. Alas! one now approaches it neither to display nor contemplate the pageantry of wealth, but meek and lowly; not to receive the smile of love, or the embrace of relatives, but afflicted and unknown, glad to find a shelter, and procure the bread of dependence, beneath its decaying roof.”

Mrs. Duncan happily marked not Amanda’s emotion as she gazed upon the Abbey. She was busily employed in answering her children’s questions, who wanted to know whether she thought they would be able to climb up the great big hills they saw.

The carriage at last stopped before the Abbey. Mrs. Bruce was already at the door to receive them. She was a little, smart old woman, and welcomed her niece and the children with an appearance of the greatest pleasure. On Amanda’s being presented to her, she gazed steadfastly in her face a few minutes, and then exclaimed, “Well, this is very strange; though I know I could never have seen this young lady before, her face is quite familiar to me.”

The hall into which they entered was large and gloomy, paved with black marble, and supported by pillars, through which the arched doors that led to various apartments were seen. Rude implements, such as the Caledonians had formerly used in war and hunting, were ranged along the walls. Mrs. Bruce conducted them into a spacious parlor, terminated by an elegant saloon. This, she told them, had once been the banquetingroom. The furniture, though faded, was still magnificent, and the windows, though still in the gothic style, from being enlarged considerably beyond their original dimensions, afforded a most delightful view of the domain.

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Duncan, “this apartment, though one of the pleasantest in the Abbey in point of situation, always makes me melancholy. The moment I enter it I think of the entertainments once given in it, and then its present vacancy and stillness almost instantly reminds me that those who partook of these entertainments are now almost all humbled with the dust!” Her aunt laughed, and said, “she was very romantic.”