Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth

CHAPTER IV

A Public Breakfast

The unfitting, however customary, occasion of this speedy repetition of public amusement in the town of Northwick, was, that the county assizes were now held there; and the arrival of the Judges of the land, to hear causes which kept life or death suspended, was the signal for entertainment to the surrounding neighbourhood: a hardening of human feelings against human crimes and human miseries, at which reflection revolts, however habit may persevere.

The young men, who rode on first, joined the ladies as they entered the town, and told them to drive straight to the ballroom, where the company had assembled, in consequence of a shower of rain which had forced them from the public garden intended for the breakfast.

Here, as they stopt, a poor woman, nearly in rags, with one child by her side, and another in her arms, approached the carriage, and presenting a petition, besought the ladies to read or hear her case. Eugenia, with the ready impulse of generous affluence, instantly felt for her purse; but Miss Margland, angrily holding her hand, said, with authority: 'Miss Eugenia, never encourage beggars; you don't know the mischief you may do by it.' Eugenia reluctantly desisted, but made a sign to her footman to give something for her. Edgar then alighting, advanced to hand them from the coach, while Lionel ran forward to settle their tickets of admittance.

The woman now grew more urgent in her supplications, and Miss Margland in her remonstrances against attending to them.

Indiana, who was placed under the care of Edgar, enchanted to again display herself where sure of again being admired, neither heard nor saw the petitioner; but dimpling and smiling, quickened her motions towards the assembly room: while Camilla, who was last, stopping short, said: 'What is the matter, poor woman?' and took her paper to examine.

Miss Margland, snatching it from her, threw it on the ground, peremptorily saying: 'Miss Camilla, if once you begin such a thing as that, there will be no end to it; so come along with the rest of your company, like other people.'

She then haughtily proceeded; but Camilla, brought up by her admirable parents never to pass distress without inquiry, nor to refuse giving at all, because she could give but little, remained with the poor object, and repeated her question. The woman, shedding a torrent of tears, said she was wife to one of the prisoners who was to be tried the next day, and who expected to lose his life, or be transported, for only one bad action of stealing a leg of mutton; which, though she knew it to be a sin, was not without excuse, being a first offence, and committed in poverty and sickness. And this, she was told, the Judges would take into consideration; but her husband was now so ill, that he could not feed on the gaol allowance, and not having wherewithal to buy any other, would either die before his trial, or be too weak to make known his sad story in his own behalf, for want of some wine or some broth to support him in the meanwhile.

Camilla, hastily giving her a shilling, took one of her petitions, and promising to do all in her power to serve her, left the poor creature almost choaked with sobbing joy. She was flying to join her party, when she perceived Edgar at her side. 'I came to see,' cried he, with glistening eyes, 'if you were running away from us; but you were doing far better in not thinking of us at all.'

Camilla, accustomed from her earliest childhood to attend to the indigent and unhappy, felt neither retreating shame, nor parading pride in the office; she gave him the petition of the poor woman, and begged he would consider if there was any thing that could be done for her husband.

'I have received a paper from herself,' he answered, 'before you alighted; and I hope I should not have neglected it: but I will now take yours, that my memory may run no risk.'

They then went on to the assembly room.

The company, which was numerous, was already seated at breakfast. Indiana and Camilla, now first surveyed by daylight, again attracted all eyes; but, in the simplicity of undress, the superiority of Indiana was no longer wholly unrivalled, though the general voice was still strongly in her favour.

Indiana was a beauty of so regular a cast, that her face had no feature, no look to which criticism could point as susceptible of improvement, or on which admiration could dwell with more delight than on the rest. No statuary could have modelled her form with more exquisite symmetry; no painter have harmonised her complexion with greater brilliancy of colouring. But here ended the liberality of nature, which, in not sullying this fair workmanship by inclosing in it what was bad, contentedly left it vacant of whatever was noble and desirable.

The beauty of Camilla, though neither perfect nor regular, had an influence so peculiar on the beholder, it was hard to catch its fault; and the cynic connoisseur, who might persevere in seeking it, would involuntarily surrender the strict rules of his art to the predominance of its loveliness. Even judgment itself, the coolest and last betrayed of our faculties, she took by surprise, though it was not till she was absent the seizure was detected. Her disposition was ardent in sincerity, her mind untainted with evil. The reigning and radical defect of her character – an imagination that submitted to no control – proved not any antidote against her attractions; it caught, by its force and fire, the quick-kindling admiration of the lively; it possessed, by magnetic pervasion, the witchery to create sympathy in the most serious.

In their march up the room, Camilla was spoken to by a person from the tea-table, who was distinct from every other, by being particularly ill dressed; and who, though she did not know him, asked her how she did, with a familiar look of intimacy. She slightly curtsied, and endeavoured to draw her party more nimbly on; when another person, equally conspicuous, though from being accoutred in the opposite extreme of full dress, quitting his seat, formally made up to her, and drawing on a stiff pair of new gloves as he spoke, said: 'So you are come at last, ma'am! I began to think you would not come at all, begging that gentleman's pardon, who told me to the contrary last night, when I thought, thinks I, here I've bought these new gloves, for no reason but to oblige the young lady, and now I might as well not have bought 'em at all.'

Camilla, ready to laugh, yet much provoked at this renewed claim from her old persecutor, Mr. Dubster, looked vainly for redress at the mischievous Lionel, who archly answered: 'O, ay, true, sister; I told the gentleman, last night, you would be sure to make him amends this morning for putting him to so much expence.'

'I'm sure, Sir,' said Mr. Dubster, 'I did not speak for that, expence being no great matter to me at this time; only nobody likes to fool away their money for nothing.'

Edgar having now, at the end of one of the tables, secured places for the ladies, Lionel again, in defiance of the frowns of Miss Margland, invited Mr. Dubster to join them: even the appealing looks of Camilla served but to increase her brother's ludicrous diversion, in coupling her with so ridiculous a companion; who, without seeming at all aware of the liberty he was taking, engrossed her wholly.

'So I see, ma'am,' he cried, pointing to Eugenia, 'you've brought that limping little body with you again? Tom Hicks had like to have took me in finely about her! He thought she was the great fortune of these here parts; and if it had not been for the young gentleman, I might have known no better neither, for there's half the room in the same scrape at this minute.'

Observing Camilla regard him with an unpleasant surprise, he more solemnly added: 'I ask pardon, ma'am, for mentioning the thing, which I only do in excuse for what I said last night, not knowing then you was the fortune yourself.'

An eager sign of silence from Lionel, forbade her explaining this mistake; Mr. Dubster, therefore, proceeded:

'When Tom Hicks told me about it, I said at the time, says I, she looks more like to some sort of a humble young person, just brought out of a little good-nature to see the company, and the like of that; for she's not a bit like a lady of fortunes, with that nudging look; and I said to Tom Hicks, by way of joke, says I, if I was to think of her, which I don't think I shall, at least she would not be much in my way, for she could not follow a body much about, because of that hitch in her gait, for I'm a pretty good walker.'

Here the ill dressed man, who had already spoken to Camilla, quitting his seat, strolled up to her, and fastening his eyes upon her face, though without bowing, made some speech about the weather, with the lounging freedom of manner of a confirmed old acquaintance. His whole appearance had an air of even wilful slovenliness: His hair was uncombed; he was in boots, which were covered with mud; his coat seemed to have been designedly [immersed] in powder, and his universal negligence was not only shabby but uncleanly. Astonished and offended by his forwardness, Camilla turned entirely away from him.

Not disconcerted by this distance, he procured a chair, upon which he cast himself, perfectly at his ease, immediately behind her.

Just as the general breakfast was over, and the waiters were summoned to clear away the tables, and prepare the room for dancing, the lady who had so strikingly made her appearance the preceding evening, again entered. She was alone, as before, and walked up the room with the same decided air of indifference to all opinion; sometimes knotting with as much diligence and earnestness as if her subsistence depended upon the rapidity of her work; and at other times stopping short, she applied to her eye a near-sighted glass, which hung to her finger, and intently examined some particular person or group; then, with a look of absence, as if she had not seen a creature, she hummed an opera song to herself, and proceeded. Her rouge was remarkably well put on, and her claim to being still a fine woman, though past her prime, was as obvious as it was conscious: Her dress was more fantastic and studied than the night before, in the same proportion as that of every other person present was more simple and quiet; and the commanding air of her countenance, and the easiness of her carriage, spoke a confirmed internal assurance, that her charms and her power were absolute, wherever she thought their exertion worth her trouble.

When she came to the head of the room, she turned about, and, with her glass, surveyed the whole company; then smilingly advancing to the sloven, whom Camilla was shunning, she called out: 'O! are you there? what rural deity could break your rest so early?'

'None!' answered he, rubbing his eyes; 'I am invulnerably asleep at this very moment! In the very centre of the morphetic dominions. But how barbarously late you are! I should never have come to this vastly horrid place before my ride, if I had imagined you could be so excruciating.'

Struck with a jargon of which she could not suspect two persons to be capable, Camilla turned round to her slighted neighbour, and with the greatest surprise recognised, upon examination, the most brilliant beau of the preceding evening, in the worst dressed man of the present morning.

The lady now, again holding her glass to her eye, which she directed without scruple towards Camilla and her party, said: 'Who have you got there?'

Camilla looked hastily away, and her whole set, abashed by so unseasoned an inquiry, cast down their eyes.

'Hey!' cried he, calmly viewing them, as if for the first time himself: 'Why, I'll tell you!' Then making her bend to hear his whisper, which, nevertheless, was by no means intended for her own ear alone, he added: 'Two little things as pretty as angels, and two others as ugly as – I say no more!'

'O, I take in the full force of your metaphor!' cried she, laughing; 'and acknowledge the truth of its contrast.'

Camilla alone, as they meant, had heard them; and ashamed for herself, and provoked to find Eugenia coupled with Miss Margland, she endeavoured to converse with some of her own society; but their attention was entirely engaged by the whispers; nor could she, for more than a minute, deny her own curiosity the pleasure of observing them.

They now spoke together for some time in low voices, laughing immoderately at the occasional sallies of each other; Sir Sedley Clarendel sitting at his ease, Mrs. Arlbery standing, and knotting by his side.

The officers, and almost all the beaux, began to crowd to this spot; but neither the gentleman nor the lady interrupted their discourse to return or receive any salutations. Lionel, who with much eagerness had quitted an inside seat at a long table, to pay his court to Mrs. Arlbery, could catch neither her eye nor her ear for his bow or his compliment.

Sir Sedley, at last, looking up in her face and smiling, said: 'A'n't you shockingly tired?'

'To death!' answered she, coolly.

'Why then, I am afraid, I must positively do the thing that's old fashioned.'

And rising, and making her a very elegant bow, he presented her his seat, adding: 'There, ma'am! I have the honour to give you my chair – at the risk of my reputation.'

'I should have thought,' cried Lionel, now getting forward, 'that omitting to give it would rather have risked your reputation.'

'It is possible you could be born before all that was over?' said Mrs. Arlbery, dropping carelessly upon the chair as she perceived Lionel, whom she honoured with a nod: 'How do do, Mr. Tyrold? are you just come in?' But turning again to Sir Sedley, without waiting for his answer, 'I swear, you barbarian,' she cried, 'you have really almost killed me with fatigue.'

'Have I indeed?' said he, smiling.

Mr. Dubster now, leaning over the table, solemnly said: 'I am sure I should have offered the lady my own place, if I had not been so tired myself; but Tom Hicks over-persuaded me to dance a bit before you came in, ma'am,' addressing Camilla, 'for you have lost a deal of dancing by coming so late; for they all fell to as soon as ever they come; and, as I'm not over and above used to it, it soon makes one a little stiffish, as one may say; and indeed, the lady's much better off in getting a chair, for one sits mighty little at one's ease on these here benches, with nothing to lean one's back against.'

'And who's that?' cried Mrs. Arlbery to Sir Sedley, looking Mr. Dubster full in the face.

Sir Sedley made some answer in a whisper, which proved highly entertaining to them both. Mr. Dubster, with an air much offended, said to Camilla: 'People's laughing and whispering, which one don't know what it's about, is not one of the politest things, I know, for polite people to do; and, in my mind, they ought to be above it.'

This resentment excited Lionel to join in the laugh; and Mr. Dubster, with great gravity of manner, rose, and said to Camilla: 'When you are ready to dance, ma'am, I am willing to be your partner, and I shan't engage myself to nobody else; but I shall go to t'other end of the room till you choose to stand up; for I don't much care to stay here, only to be laughed at, when I don't know what it's for.'

They now all left the table; and Lionel eagerly begged permission to introduce his sisters and cousin to Mrs. Arlbery, who readily consented to the proposal.

Indiana advanced with pleasure into a circle of beaux, whose eyes were most assiduous to welcome her. Camilla, though a little alarmed in being presented to a lady of so singular a deportment, had yet a curiosity to see more of her, that willingly seconded her brother's motion. And Eugenia, to whose early reflecting mind every new character and new scene opened a fresh fund for thought, if not for knowledge, was charmed to take a nearer view of what promised such food for observation. But Miss Margland began an angry remonstrance against the proceedings of Lionel, in thus taking out of her hands the direction of her charges. What she urged, however, was vain: Lionel was only diverted by her wrath, and the three young ladies, as they had not requested the introduction, did not feel themselves responsible for its taking effect.

Lionel led them on: Mrs. Arlbery half rose to return their curtsies; and gave them a reception so full of vivacity and good humour, that they soon forgot the ill will with which Miss Margland had suffered them to quit her; and even lost all recollection that it belonged to them to return to her. The satisfaction of Indiana, indeed, flowed simply from the glances of admiration which every where met her eye; but Eugenia attended to every word, and every motion of Mrs. Arlbery, with that sort of earnestness which marks an intelligent child at a first play; and Camilla, still more struck by the novelty of this new acquaintance, scarce permitted herself to breathe, lest she should lose anything she said.

Mrs. Arlbery perceived their youthful wonder, and felt a propensity to increase it, which strengthened all her powers, and called forth all her faculties. Wit she possessed at will; and, with exertions which rendered it uncommonly brilliant, she displayed it, now to them, now to the gentlemen, with a gaiety so fantastic, a raillery so arch, a spirit of satire so seasoned with a delight in coquetry, and a certain negligence of air so enlivened by a whimsical pleasantry, that she could not have failed to strike with admiration even the most hackneyed seekers of character; much less the inexperienced young creatures now presented to her; who, with open eyes and ears, regarded her as a phenomenon, upon finding that the splendor of her talents equalled the singularity of her manners.

When the room was prepared for dancing, Major Cerwood brought to Indiana Mr. Macdersey, the young Ensign who had so improperly addressed her at the ball; and, after a formal apology, in his name, for what had passed, begged the honour of her hand for him this morning. Indiana, flattered and fluttered together by this ceremony, almost forgot Edgar, who stood quietly but watchfully aloof, and was actually giving her consent when, meeting his eye, she recollected she was already engaged. Mr. Macdersey hoped for more success another time, and Edgar advanced to lead his fair partner to her place.

Major Cerwood offered himself to Camilla; but Mr. Dubster coming forward, pulled him by the elbow, and making a stiff low bow, said: 'Sir, I ask your pardon for taking the liberty of giving you such a jog, but the young lady's been engaged to me ever so long.' The Major looked surprised; but, observing that Camilla coloured, he bowed respectfully and retreated.

Camilla, ashamed of her beau, determined not to dance at all: though she saw, with much vexation, upon the general dispersion, Miss Margland approach to claim her. Educated in all the harmony of contentment and benevolence, she had a horror of a temper so irascible, that made it a penance to remain a moment in its vicinity. Mr. Dubster, however, left her not alone to it: when she positively refused his hand, he said it was equal agreeable to him to have only a little dish of chat with her; and composedly stationed himself before her. Eugenia had already been taken out by the handsome stranger, with whom she had danced the evening before; and Lionel, bewitched with Mrs. Arlbery, enlisted himself entirely in her train; and with Sir Sedley Clarendel, and almost every man of any consequence in the room, declined all dancing for the pleasure of attending her.

Mr. Dubster, unacquainted with the natural high spirits of Camilla, inferred nothing to his own disadvantage from her silence, but talked incessantly himself with perfect complacency. 'Do you know, ma'am,' cried he, 'just as that elderly lady, that, I suppose, is your mamma, took you all away in that hurry last night, up comes the boy with my new pair of gloves! but, though I run down directly to tell you of it, there was no making the old lady stop; which I was fool to try at; for as to women, I know their obstinacy of old. But what I grudged the most was, as soon as I come up again, as ill luck would have it, Tom Hicks finds me my own t'other glove! So there I had two pair, when I might as well have had never a one!'

Observing that Eugenia was dancing, 'Lack a-day!' he exclaimed, 'I'll lay a wager that poor gentleman has been took in, just as I was yesterday! He thinks that young lady that's had the small-pox so bad, is you, ma'am! 'Twould be a fine joke if such a mistake as that should get the little lame duck, as I call her, a husband! He'd be in a fine hobble when he found he'd got nothing but her ugly face for his bargain. Though, provided she'd had the rhino, it would not much have signified: for, as to being pretty or not, it's not great matter in a wife. A man soon tires of seeing nothing but the same face, if it's one of the best.'

Camilla here, in the midst of her chagrin, could not forbear asking him if he was married? 'Yes, ma'am,' answered he calmly, 'I've had two wives to my share already; so I know what I'm speaking of; though I've buried them both. Why it was all along of my wives, what with the money I had with one, and what with the money I had with the other, that I got out of business so soon.'

'You were very much obliged to them, then?'

'Why, yes, ma'am, as to that, I can't say to the contrary, now that they're gone: but I can't say I had much comfort with 'em while they lived. They was always a thinking they had a right to what they had a mind, because of what they brought me; so that I had enough to do to scrape a little matter together, in case of outliving them. One of 'em has not been dead above a twelvemonth, or there about; these are the first clothes I've bought since I left off my blacks.'

When Indiana past them, he expressed his admiration of her beauty. 'That young lady, ma'am,' he said, 'cuts you all up, sure enough. She's as fine a piece of red and white as ever I see. I could think of such a young lady as that myself, if I did not remember that I thought no more of my wife that was pretty, than of my wife that was ugly, after the first month or so. Beauty goes for a mere nothing in matrimony, when once one's used to it. Besides, I've no great thoughts at present of entering into the state again of one while, at any rate, being but just got to be a little comfortable.'

The second dance was now called, when Mrs. Arlbery, coming suddenly behind Camilla, said, in a low voice, 'Do you know who you are talking with?'

'No, ma'am!'

'A young tinker, my dear! that's all!' And, with a provoking nod, she retreated.

Camilla, half ready to laugh, half to cry, restrained herself with difficulty from running after her; and Mr. Dubster, observing that she abruptly turned away, and would listen no more, again claimed her for his partner; and, upon her absolute refusal, surprised and affronted, walked off in silence. She was then finally condemned to the morose society of Miss Margland: and invectives against Sir Hugh for mismanagement, and Lionel, with whom now that lady was at open war, for impertinence, filled up the rest of her time, till the company was informed that refreshments were served in the card-room.

Thither, immediately, every body flocked, with as much speed and avidity, as if they had learnt to appreciate the blessing of plenty, by the experience of want. Such is the vacancy of dissipated pleasure, that, never satisfied with what it possesses, an opening always remains for something yet to be tried, and, on that something still to come, all enjoyment seems to depend.

The day beginning now to clear, the sashes of a large bow-window were thrown up. Sir Sedley Clarendel sauntered thither, and instantly everybody followed, as if there were no breathing anywhere else; declaring, while they pressed upon one another almost to suffocation, that nothing was so reviving as the fresh air: and, in a minute, not a creature was to be seen in any other part of the room.

Here, in full view, stood sundry hapless relations of the poorer part of the prisoners to be tried the next morning, who, with supplicating hands and eyes, implored the compassion of the company, whom their very calamities assembled for amusement.