Camilla or A Picture of Youth Part 117

Edgar, who had hurried to Camilla at the first tumult, was stung to the heart to see who handed her away; and, forcing a pa.s.sage, followed, till Henry, the envied Henry, deposited her in the carriage of Mrs.

Berlinton.

The confusion in the room, meanwhile, was not likely soon to decrease, for old Mr. Westwyn, delighted by this mortifying chastis.e.m.e.nt to Clermont, would permit neither mediation nor a.s.sistance on his side; saying, with great glee, 'It will do him a great deal of good! My poor old friend will bless me for it. This is a better lesson than he got in all Leipsic. Let him feel that a Man's a Man; and not take it into his head a person's to stand still to be switched, when he's doing his duty, according to his calling. Switching a man is a bad thing. I can't say I like it. A gentleman should always use good words; and then a poor man's proud to serve him; or, if he's insolent for nothing, he may trounce him and welcome. I've no objection.'

Miss Margland, meanwhile, had not been remiss in what she esteemed a most capital feminine accomplishment, screaming; though, in its exercise, she had failed of any success; since, while her voice called remark, her countenance repelled its effect. Yet as she saw that not one lady of the group retreated unattended, she thought it a disgrace to seem the only female, who, from internal courage, or external neglect, should retire alone; she therefore called upon Dr. Orkborne, conjuring, in a shrill and pathetic voice, meant more for all who surrounded than for himself, that he would protect her.

The Doctor, who had kept his place in defiance of all sort of inconvenience, either to himself or to others; and who, with some curiosity, was viewing the combat, which he was mentally comparing with certain pugilistic games of old, was now, for the first time in the evening, receiving some little entertainment, and therefore composedly answered, 'I have a very good place here, ma'am; and I would rather not quit it till this scene is over.'

'So you won't come, then, Doctor?' cried she, modulating into a soft whine the voice which rage, not terror, rendered tremulous.

Dr. Orkborne, who was any thing rather than loquacious, having given one answer, said no more.

Miss Margland appealed to all present upon the indecorum of a lady's being kept to witness such unbecoming violence, and upon the unheard-of inattention of the Doctor: but a short, 'Certainly!--' 'To be sure, ma'am!--' or, 'It's very shocking indeed!' with a hasty decampment from her neighbourhood, was all of sympathy she procured.

The entrance, at length, of the master of the house, stopt the affray, by calling off the waiter. Clermont, then, though wishing to extirpate old Westwyn from the earth, and ready to eat his own flesh with fury at the double disgrace he had endured, affected a loud halloo, as if he had been contending for his amus.e.m.e.nt; and protesting Bob, the waiter, was a fine fellow, went off with great apparent satisfaction.

'Now, then, at least, sir,' cried Miss Margland, imperiously to the Doctor, who, still ruminating upon the late contest, kept his seat, 'I suppose you'll condescend to take care of me to the coach?'

'These modern clothes are very much in the way,' said the Doctor, gravely; 'and give a bad effect to att.i.tudes.' He rose, however, but not knowing what _to take care of a lady to a coach_ meant, stood resolutely still, till she was forced, in desperation, to walk on alone. He then slowly followed, keeping many paces behind, notwithstanding her continually looking back; and when, with a heavy sigh at her hard fate, she got, una.s.sisted, into the carriage, where her young ladies were waiting, he tranquilly mounted after her, tolerably reconciled to the loss of his evening, by some new annotations it had suggested for his work, relative to the games of antiquity.

CHAPTER X

_A Youthful Effusion_

Camilla now thought herself safe in harbour; the storms all over, the dangers all past, and but a light gale or two wanting to make good her landing on the bosom of permanent repose. This gale, this propitious gale, she thought ready to blow at her call; for she deemed it no other than the breath of jealousy. She had seen Edgar, though he knew her to be protected, follow her to the coach, and she had seen, by the light afforded from the lamps of the carriage, that her safety from the crowd and tumult was not the sole object of his watchfulness, since though that, at the instant she turned round, was obviously secure, his countenance exhibited the strongest marks of disturbance. The secret spring, therefore, she now thought, that was to re-unite them, was in her own possession.

All the counsels of Mrs. Arlbery upon this subject occurred to her; and imagining she had hitherto erred from a simple facility, she rejoiced in the accident which had pointed her to a safer path, and shewn her that, in the present disordered state of the opinions of Edgar, the only way to a lasting accommodation was to alarm his security, by a.s.serting her own independence.

Her difficulty, however, was still considerable as to the means. The severe punishment she had received, and the self blame and penitence she had incurred, from her experiment with Sir Sedley Clarendel, all rendered, too, abortive, by Edgar's contempt of the object, determined her to suffer no hopes, no feelings of her own, to engross her ever more from weighing those of another. The end, therefore, of her deliberation was to shew general gaiety, without appropriate favour, and to renew solicitude on his part by a displayed ease of mind on her own.

Elated with this idea, she determined upon every possible public exhibition by which she could execute it to the best advantage. Mrs.

Berlinton had but to appear, to secure the most fashionable persons at Southampton for her parties, and soon renewed the same course of life she had lived at Tunbridge, of seeing company either at home or abroad every day, except when some accidental plan offered a scheme of more novelty.

Upon all these occasions, young Westwyn, though wholly unsought, and even unthought of by Camilla, was instinctively and incautiously the most alert to second her plan; he was her first partner when she danced, her constant attendant when she walked, and always in wait to converse with her when she was seated; while, not purposing to engage him, she perceived not his fast growing regard, and intending to be open to all alike, observed not the thwarting effect to her design of this peculiar a.s.siduity.

By old Mr. Westwyn this intercourse was yet more urgently forwarded.

Bewitched with Camilla, he carried his son to her wherever she appeared, and said aloud to everybody but herself: 'If the boy and girl like one another, they shall have one another; and I won't inquire what she's worth; for she thinks so well of my son, that I'd rather he'd have her than an empress. Money goes but a little way to make people happy; and true love's not a thing to be got every day; so if she has a mind to my Hal, and Hal has a mind to her, why, if they have not enough, he must work hard and get more. I don't like to cross young people. Better let a man labour with his hands, than fret away his spirit. Neither a boy nor a girl are good for much when they've got their hearts broke.'

This new experiment of Camilla, like every other deduced from false reasoning, and formed upon false principles, was flattering in its promise, pernicious in its progress, and abortive in its performance.

Edgar saw with agony what he conceived the ascendance of a new attachment built upon the declension of all regard for himself; and in the first horror of his apprehensions, would have resisted the supplanter by enforcing his own final claim; but Dr. Marchmont represented that, since he had heard in silence his right to that claim solemnly withdrawn, he had better first ascertain if this apparent connection with young Westwyn were the motive, or only the consequence of that resumption: 'If the first be the case,' he added, 'you must trust her no more; a heart so inflammable as to be kindled into pa.s.sion by a mere accidental blaze of gallantry and valour, can have nothing in consonance with the chaste purity and fidelity your character requires and merits: If the last, investigate whether the net in which she is entangling herself is that of levity, delighting in change, or of pique, disguising its own agitation in efforts to agitate others.'

'Alas!' cried the melancholy Edgar, 'in either case, she is no more the artless Camilla I first adored! that fatal connection at the Grove, formed while her character, pure, white, and spotless, was in its enchanting, but dangerous state of first ductility, has already broken into that clear transparent singleness of mind, so beautiful in its total ignorance of every species of scheme, every sort of double measure, every idea of secret view and latent expedient!'

'Repine not, however, at the connection till you know whether she owe to it her defects, or only their manifestation. A man should see the woman he would marry in many situations, ere he can judge what chance he may have of happiness with her in any. Though now and then 'tis a blessed, 'tis always a perilous state; but the man who has to weather its storms, should not be remiss in studying the clouds which precede them.'

'Ah, Doctor! by this delay ... by these experiments ... should I lose her!...'

'If by finding her unworthy, where is the loss?'

Edgar sighed, but acknowledged this question to be unanswerable.

'Think, my dear young friend, what would be your sufferings to discover any radical, inherent failing, when irremediably hers! run not into the very common error of depending upon the grat.i.tude of your wife after marriage, for the inequality of her fortune before your union. She who has no fortune at all, owes you no more for your alliance, than she who has thousands; for you do not marry her because she has no fortune! you marry her because you think she has some endowment, mental or personal, which you conclude will conduce to your happiness; and she, on her part, accepts you, because she supposes you or your situation will contribute to hers. The object may be different, but neither side is indebted to the other, since each has self, only, in contemplation; and thus, in fact, rich or poor, high or low, whatever be the previous distinction between the parties, on the hour of marriage they begin as equals. The obligation and the debt of grat.i.tude can only commence when the knot is tied: self, then, may give way to sympathy; and whichever, from that moment, most considers the other, becomes immediately the creditor in the great account of life and happiness.'

While Camilla, in gay ignorance of danger, and awake only to hope, pursued her new course, Eugenia had the infinite delight of improving daily and even hourly in the good graces of Mrs. Berlinton; who soon discovered how wide from justice to that excellent young creature was all judgment that could be formed from her appearance. She found that she was as elegant in her taste for letters as herself, and far more deeply cultivated in their knowledge; that her manners were gentle, her sentiments were elevated, yet that her mind was humble; the same authors delighted and the same pa.s.sages struck them; they met every morning; they thought every morning too short, and their friendship, in a very few days, knit by so many bands of sympathy, was as fully established as that which already Mrs. Berlinton had formed with Camilla.

To Eugenia this treaty of amity was a delicious poison, which, while it enchanted her faculties by day, preyed upon her vitals by night. She frequently saw Melmond, and though a melancholy bow was almost all the notice she ever obtained from him, the countenance with which he made it, his air, his figure, his face, nay his very dress, for the half instant he bestowed upon her, occupied all her thoughts till she saw him again, and had another to con over and dwell upon.

Melmond, inexpressibly wretched at the deprivation of all hope of Indiana, at the very period when fortune seemed to favour his again pursuing her, dreamt not of this partiality. His time was devoted to deliberating upon some lucrative scheme of future life, which his literary turn of mind rendered difficult of selection, and which his refined love of study and retirement made hateful to him to undertake.

He was kind, however, and even consoling to his aunt, who saw his nearly desolate state with a compunction bitterly increased by finding she had thrown their joint properties, with her own person, into the hands of a rapacious tyrant. To soften her repentance, and allow her the soothing of all she could spare of her own time, Mrs. Berlinton invited her to her own house. Mr. Ulst, of course included in the invitation, made the removal with alacrity, not for the pleasure it procured his wife, but for the money it saved himself; and Mrs. Mittin voluntarily resigned to them the apartment she had chosen for her own, by way of a little peace-offering for her undesired length of stay; for still, though incessantly Camilla inquired for her account, she had received no answer from the creditors, and was obliged to wait for another and another post.

Mrs. Ulst, though not well enough, at present, to see company, and at all times, fanatically averse to every species of recreation, could not entirely avoid Eugenia, whose visits were constant every morning, and whose expected inheritance made a similar wish occur for her nephew, with that which had disposed of her niece; for she flattered herself that if once she could see them both in possession of great wealth, her mind would be more at ease.

She communicated this idea to Mr. Ulst, who, most willing, also, to get rid of the reproach of the poverty and ruin of Melmond, imparted it, with strong exhortation for its promotion, to the young man; but he heard with disdain the mercenary project, and protested he would daily labour for his bread, in preference to prost.i.tuting his probity, by soliciting a regard he could never return, for the acquirement of a fortune which he never could merit.

Mr. Ulst, much too hard to feel this as any reflection upon himself, applied for the interest of Mrs. Berlinton; but she so completely thought with her brother, that she would not interfere, till Mr. Ulst made some observations upon Eugenia herself, that inclined her to waver.

He soon remarked, in that young and artless character, the symptoms of the partiality she had conceived in favour of Melmond, which, when once pointed out, could not be mistaken by Mrs. Berlinton, who, though more than equally susceptible with Eugenia, was self-occupied, and saw neither her emotion at his name, nor her timid air at his approach, till Mr. Ulst, whose discernment had been quickened by his wishes, told her when, and for what, to look.

Touched now, herself, by the double happiness that might ensue, from a gratified choice to Eugenia, and a n.o.ble fortune to her brother, she took up the cause, with delicacy, yet with pity; representing all the charming mental and intellectual accomplishments of Eugenia, and beseeching him not to sacrifice both his interest and his peace, in submitting to a hopeless pa.s.sion for one object, while he inflicted all its horrors upon another.

Melmond, amazed and softened, listened and sighed; but protested such a change, from all of beauty to all of deformity, was impracticable; and that though he revered the character she painted, and was sensible to the honour of such a preference, he must be base, double, and perjured, to take advantage of her great, yet unaccountable goodness, by heartless professions of feigned partic.i.p.ation.

Mrs. Berlinton, to whom sentiment was irresistible, urged the matter no longer, but wept over her brother, with compa.s.sionate admiration.

Another day only pa.s.sed, when Mrs. Mittin picked up a paper upon the stairs, which she saw fall from the pocket of Eugenia, in drawing out her handkerchief, but which, determining to read ere she returned, she found contained these lines.

'O Reason! friend of the troubled breast, guide of the wayward fancy, moderator of the flights of hope, and sinkings of despair, Eugenia calls thee!'

O! to a feeble, suppliant Maid, Light of Reason, lend thy aid!

And with thy mild, thy lucid ray, Point her the way To genial calm and mental joy!

From Pa.s.sion far! whose flashes bright Startle--affright-- Yet ah! invite!

With varying powers attract, repel, Now fiercely beam, Now softly gleam, With magic spell Charm to consume, win to destroy!

Ah! lead her from the chequer'd glare So false, so fair!-- Ah, quick from Pa.s.sion bid her fly, Its sway repulse, its wiles defy; And to a feeble, suppliant heart Thy aid, O Reason's light, impart!

Next, Eugenia, point thy prayer That He whom all thy wishes bless, Whom all thy tenderest thoughts confess, Thy calm may prove, thy peace may share.

O, if the griefs to him a.s.sign'd, To thee might pa.s.s--thy strengthened mind Would meet all woe, support all pain, Suffering despise, complaint disdain, Brac'd with new nerves each ill would brave, From Melmond but one pang to save!'

Overjoyed by the possession of the important secret this little juvenile effusion of tenderness betrayed, Mrs. Mittin ran with it to Mrs.

Berlinton, and without mentioning she had seen whence the paper came, said she had found it upon the stairs: for even those who have too little delicacy to attribute to treachery a clandestine indulgence of curiosity, have a certain instinctive sense of its unfairness, which they evince without avowing, by the care with which they soften their motives, or their manner, of according themselves this species of gratification.

Mrs. Berlinton, who scrupulously would have withheld from looking into a letter, could not see a copy of verses, and recognise the hand of Eugenia, already known to her by frequent notes, and refrain reading.