Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth
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She stopt for breath to go on; Melmond, amazed, striving vainly to articulate one word of excuse, one profession even of respect.
'Believe me, Sir,' she then continued, 'surprise was the last sensation I experienced upon a late … transaction. My extraordinary personal defects and deformity have been some time known to me, though – I cannot tell how – I had the weakness or vanity not to think of them as I ought to have done! – But I see I give you uneasiness, and therefore I will be more concise.'
Melmond, confounded, had bowed down his head not to look at her, while Camilla and Mrs. Berlinton both wept.
'The sentiments, Sir,' she then went on, 'of my cousin have never been declared to me; but it is not very difficult to me to divine what they may be. All that is certain, is the unkindness of Fortune, which forbids her to listen, or you to plead to them. This, Sir, shall be my care' – she stopt a moment, looking paler, and wanting voice; but presently recovering, proceeded – 'my happiness, let me say, to endeavour to rectify. I have much influence with my kind uncle; can I doubt, when I represent to him that I have just escaped making two worthy people wretched, he will deny aiding me to make them happy? No! the residence already intended at Cleves will still be open, though one of its parties will be changed. But as my uncle, in a manner unexampled, has bound himself, in my favour, from any future disposition of what he possesses, I have ventured, Sir, upon this paper, to obviate any apprehensions of your friends, for the unhappy time when that generous uncle can no longer act for himself.'
She then unfolded, and gave him the paper, which contained these words:
'I here solemnly engage myself, if Miss Indiana Lynmere accepts, with the consent of Sir Hugh Tyrold, the hand of Frederic Melmond, to share with them, so united, whatever fortune or estate I may be endowed with, to the end of my life, and to bequeath them the same equal portion by will after my death.
Signed. Eugenia Tyrold.'Unable to read, yet conceiving the purport of the writing, Melmond was at her feet. She endeavoured to raise him, and though extremely affected, said, with an air of some pleasantry, 'Shew less surprise, Sir, or I shall conclude you thought me as frightful within as without! But no! Providence is too good to make the mind necessarily deformed with the body.'
'Ah, Madam!' exclaimed Melmond, wholly overcome, 'the noblest as well as softest of human hearts I perceive to be yours – and were mine at my own disposal – it must find you resistless!' —
'No more, no more!' interrupted she, penetrated with a pleasure in these words which she durst not indulge, 'you shall hear from me soon. – Meanwhile, be Hope your motto, Friendship shall be mine.'
She was then going to hold out her hand to him; but her courage failed; she hastily embraced Mrs. Berlinton, took the arm of Camilla, and hurried out of the house, followed by the footman who had attended her.
Melmond, who had seen the motion of her hand now advancing, now withdrawn, would have given the universe to have stamped upon it his grateful reverence; but his courage was still less than her own; she seemed to him, on the sudden, transformed to a deity, benignly employed to rescue and bless him, but whose transcendent goodness he could only, at a distance, and in all humility, adore.
Mrs. Berlinton was left penetrated nearly as much as her brother, and doubtful if even the divine Indiana could render him as happy as the exalted, the incomparable Eugenia.
The two sisters found Miss Margland in extreme ill-humour waiting their arrival, and the whole party immediately quitted Southampton.
It not seldom occurred to Miss Margland to be cross merely as a mark of consequence; but here the displeasure was as deep with herself as with others. She had entered Southampton with a persuasion her fair pupil would make there the establishment so long the promised mede of her confinement; and Indiana herself, not knowing where to stop her sanguine and inflated hopes, imagined that the fame of her beauty would make the place where it first was exhibited the resort of all of fashion in the nation. And the opening of the scene had answered to their fullest expectations: no other name was heard but Indiana Lynmere, no other figure was admired, no other face could bear examination.
But her triumph, though splendid, was short; she soon found that the overtures of eyes were more ready than those of speech; and though one young baronet, enchanted with her beauty, immediately professed himself her lover, when he was disdained, in the full assurance of higher offers, and because a peer had addressed himself to Eugenia, she saw not that he was succeeded by any other, nor yet that he broke his own heart. Men of taste, after the first conversation, found her more admirable to look at than speak with; adventurers soon discovered that her personal charms were her only dower; the common herd were repulsed from approaching her by the repulsive manners of Miss Margland; and all evinced, that though a passion for beauty was still as fashionable as it was natural, the time was past when the altar of Hymen required no other incense to blaze upon it.
The governess, therefore, and the pupil, quitted Southampton with equal disappointment and indignation; the first foreseeing another long and yawning sojourn at Cleves; the second firmly believing herself the most unaccountably ill-used person in the creation, that one offer only had reached her, and that without repetition, though admired nearly to adoration, she literally rather than metaphorically conceived herself a demi-goddess.
One solitary offer to Eugenia, of an every way ruined young nobleman, though a blast both to the settlement and the peace of Indiana, was to herself wholly nugatory. Intent, at that period, upon dedicating for ever to Melmond her virgin heart, she was sorry, upon his account, for the application, but gave it not, upon her own, a moment's consideration. This proposition was made upon her first arrival, and was followed by no other. She was then, by the account given to the master of the ceremonies by Miss Margland, regarded as the heiress of Cleves: but, almost immediately after, the report spread by Mrs. Mittin, that Camilla was the true heiress, gained such ground amongst the shopkeepers, and thence travelled so rapidly from gossip to gossip, and house to house, that Eugenia was soon no more thought of; though a species of doubt was cast upon the whole party, from the double assertion, that kept off from Camilla, also, the fortune seekers of the place.
But another rumour got abroad, that soon entirely cleared Eugenia, not merely of lovers but acquaintances; namely, her studies with Dr. Orkborne. This was a prevailing theme of spite with Miss Margland, when the Doctor had neglected and displeased her; and a topic always at hand for her spleen, when it was angered by other circumstances not so easy of blame or of mention.
This, shortly, made Eugenia stared at still more than her peculiar appearance. The misses, in tittering, ran away from the learned lady; the beaux contemptuously sneering, rejoiced she was too ugly to take in any poor fellow to marry her. Some imagined her studies had stinted her growth; and all were convinced her education had made her such a fright.
Of the whole party, the only one who quitted Southampton in spirits was Dr. Orkborne. He was delighted to be no longer under the dominion of Miss Margland, who, though she never left him tranquil in the possession of all he valued, his leisure, and his books and papers, eternally annoyed him with reproaches upon his absence, non-attendance, and ignorance of high life; asking always, when angry, 'If any one had ever heard who was his grandfather?'
The doctor, in return, despising, like most who have it not, whatever belonged to noble birth, regarded her and her progenitors as the pest of the human race; frequently, when incensed by interruption, exclaiming, 'Where intellect is uncultivated, what is man better than a brute, or woman than an idiot?'
Nor was his return to his own room, books, and hours, under the roof of the indulgent Sir Hugh, the only relief of this removal: he knew not of the previous departure of Dr. Marchmont, and he was glad to quit a spot where he was open to a comparison which he felt to be always to his disadvantage.
So much more powerful and more prominent is character than education, that no two men could be more different than Dr. Marchmont and Dr. Orkborne, though the same university had finished their studies, and the same passion, pursuit, and success in respect to learning, had raised and had spread their names and celebrity. The first, with all his scholastic endowments, was a man of the world, and a grace to society; the second, though in erudition equally respectable, was wholly lost to the general community, and alive only with his pen and his books. They enjoyed, indeed, in common, that happy and often sole reward of learned labours, the privilege of snatching some care from time, some repining from misfortune, by seizing for themselves, and their own exclusive use, the whole monopoly of mind; but they employed it not to the same extension. The things and people of this lower sphere were studiously, by Dr. Orkborne, sunk in oblivion by the domineering prevalence of the alternate transport and toil of intellectual occupation; Dr. Marchmont, on the contrary, though his education led to the same propensities, still held his fellow creatures to be of higher consideration than their productions. Without such extravagance in the pursuit of his studies, he knew it the happy province of literary occupations, where voluntary, to absorb worldly solicitudes, and banish for a while even mental anxieties; and though the charm may be broken by every fresh intrusion of calamity, it unites again with the first retirement, and, without diminishing the feelings of social life, has a power, from time to time, to set aside their sufferings.
CHAPTER VII
Brides and no Brides
In the hall of the Cleves mansion the party from Southampton were received by Sir Hugh, Mr. Tyrold, and Lavinia. The baronet greeted in particular the two nieces he regarded as brides elect, with an elation that prevented him from observing their sadness; while their confusion at his mistake he attributed to the mere bashfulness of their situation. He enquired, nevertheless, with some surprise, why the two bridegrooms did not attend them? which, he owned, he thought rather odd; though he supposed it might be only the new way.
The changing colour and starting tears of the two sisters still escaped his kindly occupied but undiscerning eyes: while Mr. Tyrold, having tenderly embraced, avoided looking at them from the fear of adding to their blushes, and sat quiet and grave, striving to alleviate his present new and deep sorrow, by participating in the revived happiness of his brother. But Lavinia soon saw their mutual distress, and with apprehensive affection watched an opportunity to investigate its cause.
'But come,' cried Sir Hugh, 'I sha'n't wait for those gentlemen to shew you what I've done for you, seeing they don't wait for me, by their following their own way, which, however, I suppose they may be with their lawyers, none of those gentleman having been here, which I think rather slow, considering the rooms are almost ready.'
He would now have taken them round the house; but, nearly expiring with shame, they entreated to be excused; and, insupportably oppressed by the cruel discovery they had to divulge, stole apart to consult upon what measures they should take. They then settled that Camilla should accompany Mr. Tyrold to Etherington, but keep off all disclosure till the next morning, when Eugenia would arrive, and unfold the sad tidings.
When they returned to the parlour, they found Sir Hugh, in the innocency of his heart, had forced Indiana, Miss Margland, and even Dr. Orkborne, to view his improvements for the expected nuptials, judging the disinterestedness of their pleasure by his own; though to the two ladies, nothing could be less gratifying than preparations for a scene in which they were to bear no part, and the Doctor thought every evil genius at work to detain him from his study and his manuscripts.
'But what's the oddest' cried the Baronet, 'of all, is nobody's coming for poor Indiana; which I could never have expected, especially in the point of taking off little Eugenia first, whom her own cousin did not think pretty enough; which I can never think over and above good natured in him, being so difficult. However, I hope we shall soon forget that, now for which reason, I forgive him.'
Indiana was so much piqued, she could scarce refrain from relating the portico history at Lord Pervil's; but the Baronet, not remarking her discomposure, turned to Camilla and Eugenia, smilingly exclaiming: 'Well, my dear girls, I sha'n't mention what we have been looking at in your absence, because of your blushes, which I hope you approve. But we shall soon, I hope, see it all together, without any of your modesty's minding it. I shall have to pinch a little for it the rest of the year, which, God knows, will be a pleasure to me, for the sake of my two dear girls, as well as of Mr. Edgar; not to mention the new young gentleman; who seems a pretty kind of person too, though he is not one of our own relations.'
He was rather disappointed when he found Camilla was to go to Etherington, but desired there might be a general meeting the next day, when he should also invite Dr. Marchmont. 'For I think' said he, 'he's as little proud as the best dunce amongst us; which makes me like him as well. And I can't say but I was as much obliged to him that day about the mad bull, as if he had been one of my nephews or nieces himself: which is what I sha'n't forget.'
In the way back to Etherington, Camilla could scarce utter a word; and Lavinia, who had just gathered from her, in a whisper 'All is over with Edgar!' with divided, but silent pity, looked from her father to her sister, thought of her brother, and wept for all three. Mr. Tyrold alone was capable of any exertion. Unwilling to give Camilla, whom he concluded impressed with the thousand solicitudes of her impending change of situation, any abrupt account of her brother's cruel conduct, he spoke with composure though not with cheerfulness, and hoped, by a general gravity, to prepare, without alarming her, for the ill news he must inevitably relate. But he soon, however, observed an excess of sadness upon her countenance, far deeper than what he could attribute to the thoughts he had first suggested, and wholly different from an agitation in which though fear bears a part, hope preponderates.
It now struck him that probably Lionel had been at Southampton: for so wide was every idea from supposing any mischief with Edgar, that, like Sir Hugh, upon his non-appearance, he had concluded him engaged with his lawyer. But of Melmond, less sure, he had been more open in enquiry, and with inexpressible concern, for his beloved and unfortunate Eugenia, gathered that the affair was ended: though her succeeding plan, by her own desire, Camilla left for her own explanation.
When they arrived at Etherington, taking her into his study, 'Camilla,' he said, 'tell me, I beg … do you know anything of Lionel?'
An unrestrained burst of tears convinced him his conjecture was right, and he soon obtained all the particulars of the meeting, except its levity and flightiness. Where directly questioned, no sisterly tenderness could induce her to filial prevarication; but she rejoiced to spare her brother all exposure that mere silence could spare; and as Mr. Tyrold suspected not her former knowledge of his extravagance and ill conduct, he neither asked, nor heard, any thing beyond the last interview.
At the plan of going abroad, he sighed heavily, but would take no measures to prevent it. Lionel, he saw was certain of being cast in any trial; and though he would not stretch out his arm to avert the punishment he thought deserved, he was not sorry to change the languid waste of imprisonment at home, for the hardships with which he might live upon little abroad.
A calamity such as this seemed cause full sufficient for the distress of Camilla; Mr. Tyrold sought no other; but though she wept, now, at liberty, his very freedom from suspicion and enquiry increased her anguish. 'Your happy fate,' cried he, 'is what most, at this moment supports me; and to that I shall chiefly owe the support of your mother; whom a blow such as this will more bitterly try than the loss of our whole income, or even than the life itself of your brother. Her virtue is above misfortune, but her soul will shudder at guilt.'
The horror of Camilla was nearly intolerable at this speech, and the dreadful disappointment which she knew yet to be awaiting her loved parents. 'Take comfort, my dearest girl,' said Mr. Tyrold, who saw her suffering, 'it is yours, for all our sakes to be cheerful, for to you we shall owe the worthiest of sons, at the piercing juncture when the weakest and most faulty fails us.'
'O my father!' she cried, 'speak not such words! Lionel himself …' she was going to say: has made you less unhappy than you will be made by me: but she durst not finish her phrase; she turned away from him her streaming eyes, and stopt.
'My dearest child,' he cried, 'let not your rising prospects be thus dampt by this cruel event. The connection you have formed will be a consolation to us all. It binds to us for life a character already so dear to us; it will afford to our Lavinia, should we leave her single, a certain asylum; it will give to our Eugenia a counsellor that may save her hereafter from fraud and ruin; it may aid poor Lionel, when, some time hence, he returns to his country, to return to the right path, whence so widely he has strayed; and it will heal with lenient balm the wounded, bleeding bosom of a meritorious but deeply afflicted mother! While to your father, my Camilla…'
These last words were not heard; such a mention of her mother had already overpowered her, and unable to let him keep up his delusion, she supported her shaking frame against his shoulder, and exclaimed in a tone of agony: 'O my father! you harrow me to the soul! – Edgar has left me! – has left England! – left us all! – '
Shocked, yet nearly incredulous, he insisted upon looking at her: her countenance impelled belief. The woe it expressed could be excited by nothing less than the deprivation of every worldly expectation, and a single glance was an answer to a thousand interrogatories.
Mr. Tyrold now sat down, with an air between calmness and despondence, saying, 'And how has this come to pass?'
Again she got behind him, and in a voice scarce audible, said, Eugenia would, the next morning, explain all.
'Very well, I will wait;' he quietly, but with palpably stifled emotions, answered: 'Go, my love, go to Lavinia; open to her your heart; you will find consolation in her kindness. My own, I confess, is now weighed down with sorrow! this last and unexpected stroke will demand some time, some solitude, to be yielded to as it ought.' He then held out to her his hand, which she could scarcely approach from trembling, and scarcely kiss for weeping, and added: 'I know what you feel for me – and know, too, that my loss to yours is nothing, – for yours is not to be estimated! you are young, however, and, with yourself, it may pass away … but your mother – my heart, Camilla, is rent for your unfortunate mother!'
He then embraced her, called Lavinia, and retired for the night.
Terribly it passed with them all.
The next morning, before they assembled to breakfast, Eugenia was in the chamber of Camilla.
She entered with a bright beam upon her countenance, which, in defiance of the ravaging distemper that had altered her, gave it an expression almost celestial. It was the pure emanation of virtue, of disinterested, of even heroic virtue. 'Camilla!' she cried, 'all is settled with my uncle! Indiana … you will not wonder – consents; and already this morning I have written to Mr. Mel…'
With all her exaltation, her voice faltered at the name, and, with a faint smile, but deep blush, she called for the congratulations of her sister upon her speedy success.
'Ah, far more than my congratulations, my esteem, my veneration is yours, dear and generous Eugenia! true daughter of my mother! and proudest recompence of my father!'
She was not sufficiently serene to give any particulars of the transaction; and Mr. Tyrold soon sent for her to his room.
Camilla, trembling and hanging over her, said: 'You will do for me, I know better than I could do for myself: – but spare poor Lionel – and be just to Edgar!' —
Eugenia strictly obeyed: in sparing Lionel she spared also her father, whom his highly unfeeling behaviour with regard to Sir Sedley would yet further have incensed and grieved; and, in doing justice to Edgar, she flattered herself she prevented an alienation from one yet destined to be nearly allied to him, since time, she still hoped, would effect the reconciliation of Camilla with the youth whom – next to Melmond – she thought the most amiable upon earth.
Mr. Tyrold, by this means, gathered no further intelligence than that they had parted upon some mutual, though slight dissatisfaction. He hoped, therefore, with Eugenia, they might soon meet again; and resolved, till he could better judge what might prove the event, to keep this distress from Sir Hugh.
He then met Camilla with the most consolatory kindness; yet would not trust her ardent mind with the hopes he cherished himself, dreading infinitely more to give than to receive disappointment. He blamed her for admitting any doubts of the true regard of Edgar, in whom promise was always short of performance, and whom he conceived displeased by unjust suspicions, or offended by undue expectations of professions, which the very sincerity of his rational and manly character prevented him from making.
Camilla heard in silence suggestions she could not answer, without relating the history of Sir Sedley: 'No, Lionel, no!' she said to herself, 'I will not now betray you! I have lost all! – and now the loss to me is irreparable, shall I blast you yet further to my poor father, whose deepest sigh is already for your misconduct?'
The story of Eugenia herself he learnt with true admiration, and gave to her magnanimity its dearest mede, in her mother's promised, and his own immediate approbation.
But Sir Hugh, notwithstanding all Eugenia could urge in favour of Melmond, had heard her account with grief and resentment. All, however, being actually ready for the double wedding, he could not, he said, answer to his conscience doing so much for the rest, and refusing the same for Indiana, whom he called upon to accept or reject the preparations made for her cousin.
Indiana stood fluttering for a few minutes between the exultation of being the first bride, and the mortification of marrying a man without fortune or title. But the observation of Sir Hugh, upon the oddity of her marrying the last, she was piqued with a most earnest ambition to reverse. Nor did Melmond himself go for nothing in this affair, as all she had of heart he had been the first to touch.
She retired for a short conference with Miss Margland, who was nearly in an equal dilemma, from unwillingness to dispose of her beautiful pupil without a title, and from eagerness to quit Cleves, which she thought a convent for dullness, and a prison for confinement. Melmond had strongly in his favour the received maxim amongst match-makers, that a young lady without fortune has a less and less chance of getting off upon every public appearance, which they call a public failure: their joint deliberations were, however, interrupted by an abrupt intrusion of Molly Mill, who announced she had just heard that Miss Dennel was going to be married.
This information ended the discussion. The disgrace of a bridal appearance anticipated in the neighbourhood by such a chit, made Indiana hastily run down stairs, and tell her uncle that the merit of Melmond determined her to refuse every body for his sake.
A man and horse, therefore, at break of day the next morning, was sent off by Eugenia to Southampton with these words:
To Frederic Melmond, Esq.;You will be welcome, Sir, at Cleves, where you will forget, I hope, every painful sensation, in the happiness which awaits you, and dismiss all retrospection, to return with sincerity the serene friendship of