NIGHTMARE ABBEY

CHAPTER I


Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family-mansion, in a highly picturesque
state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land
between the sea and the fens, at the verge of the county of Lincoln,
had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire. This
gentleman was naturally of an atrabilarious temperament, and much
troubled with those phantoms of indigestion which are commonly called
_blue devils_. He had been deceived in an early friendship: he had
been crossed in love; and had offered his hand, from pique, to a lady,
who accepted it from interest, and who, in so doing, violently tore
asunder the bonds of a tried and youthful attachment. Her vanity was
gratified by being the mistress of a very extensive, if not very
lively, establishment; but all the springs of her sympathies were
frozen. Riches she possessed, but that which enriches them, the
participation of affection, was wanting. All that they could purchase
for her became indifferent to her, because that which they could not
purchase, and which was more valuable than themselves, she had, for
their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when it was too late, that
she had mistaken the means for the end--that riches, rightly used, are
instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness. In this
wilful blight of her affections, she found them valueless as means:
they had been the end to which she had immolated all her affections,
and were now the only end that remained to her. She did not confess
this to herself as a principle of action, but it operated through the
medium of unconscious self-deception, and terminated in inveterate
avarice. She laid on external things the blame of her mind's internal
disorder, and thus became by degrees an accomplished scold. She often
went her daily rounds through a series of deserted apartments, every
creature in the house vanishing at the creak of her shoe, much more
at the sound of her voice, to which the nature of things affords no
simile; for, as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by gentleness
and love, transcends all other sounds in harmony, so far does
it surpass all others in discord, when stretched into unnatural
shrillness by anger and impatience.