Momentary, however, was the pleasure such a thought could afford him;— ‘O, Camilla,’ he cried, ‘if, indeed, I might hope from you any partiality, why act any part at all? — how plain, how easy, how direct your road to my heart, if but straightly pursued!’
CHAPTER V
Strictures on Deformity
Camilla went on to Etherington in deep distress; every ray of hope was chaced from her prospects, with a certainty more cruel, though less offensive, to her feelings, than the crush given them by Miss Margland. He cares not for me! she cried; he even destines me for another! He is the willing agent of the Major; he would portion me, I suppose, for him, to accelerate the impossibility of ever thinking of me! And I imagined he loved me! — what a dream! — what a dream! — how has he deceived me! — or, alas! how have I deceived myself!
She rejoiced, however, that she had made so decided an answer with regard to Major Cerwood, whom she could not doubt to be the person meant, and who, presented in such a point of view, grew utterly odious to her.
The tale she had to relate to Mr. Tyrold, of the sufferings and sad resolution of Eugenia, obviated all comment upon her own disturbance. He was wounded to the heart by the recital. ‘Alas!’ he cried, ‘your wise and excellent mother always foresaw some mischief would ensue, from the extreme caution used to keep this dear unfortunate child ignorant of her peculiar situation. This dreadful shake might have been palliated, at least, if not spared, by the lessons of fortitude that noble woman would have inculcated in her young and ductile mind. But I could not resist the painful entreaties of my poor brother, who, thinking himself the author of her calamities, believed he was responsible for saving her from feeling them; and, imagining all the world as soft-hearted as himself, concluded, that what her own family would not tell her, she could never hear elsewhere. But who should leave any events to the caprices of chance, which the precautions of foresight can determine?’
These reflections, and the thoughts of her sister, led at once and aided Camilla to stifle her own unhappiness; and for three days following, she devoted herself wholly to Eugenia.
On the morning of the fourth, instead of sending the carriage, Sir Hugh arrived himself to fetch Camilla, and to tell his brother, he must come also, to give comfort to Eugenia; for, though he had thought the worst was over, because she appeared quiet in his presence, he had just surprised her in tears, by coming upon her unawares. He had done all he could, he said, in vain; and nothing remained but for Mr. Tyrold to try his hand himself: ‘For it is but justice,’ he added, ‘to Dr. Orkborne, to say she is wiser than all our poor heads put together; so that there is no answering her for want of sense.’ He then told him to be sure to put one of his best sermons in his pocket to read to her.
Mr. Tyrold was extremely touched for his poor Eugenia, yet said he had half an hour’s business to transact in the neighbourhood, before he could go to Cleves. Sir Hugh waited his time, and all three then proceeded together.
Eugenia received her Father with a deliberate coldness that shocked him. He saw how profound was the impression made upon her mind, not merely of her personal evils, but of what she conceived to be the misconduct of her friends.
After a little general discourse, in which she bore no share, he proposed walking in the park; meaning there to take her aside, with less formality than he could otherwise desire to speak with her alone.
The ladies and Sir Hugh immediately looked for their hats or gloves: but Eugenia, saying she had a slight head-ache, walked away to her room.
‘This, my dear brother,’ cried Sir Hugh, sorrowfully following her with his eyes, ‘is the very thing I wanted you for; she says she’ll never more stir out of these doors as long as she’s alive; which is a sad thing to say, considering her young years; and nobody knowing how Clermont may approve it. However, it’s well I’ve had him brought up from the beginning to the classics, which I rejoice at every day more and more, it being the only wise thing I ever did of my own head; for as to talking Latin and Greek, which I suppose is what they will chiefly be doing, there’s no doubt but they may do it just as well in a room as in the fields, or the streets.’
Mr. Tyrold, after a little consideration, followed her. He tapped at her door; she asked, in a tone of displeasure, who was there?— ‘Your Father, my dear,’ he answered; and then, hastily opening it, she proposed returning with him down stairs.
‘No,’ he said; ‘I wish to converse with you alone. The opinion I have long cherished of your heart and your understanding, I come now to put to the proof.’
Eugenia, certain of the subject to which he would lead, and feeling she could not have more to hear than to say, gave him a chair, and composedly seated herself next to him.
‘My dear Eugenia,’ said he, taking her passive hand, ‘this is the moment that more grievously than ever I lament the absence of your invaluable Mother. All I have to offer to your consideration she could much better have laid before you; and her dictates would have met with the attention they so completely deserve.’
‘Was my Mother, then, Sir,’ said she, reproachfully, ‘unapprized of the worldly darkness in which I have been brought up? Is she unacquainted that a little knowledge of books and languages is what alone I have been taught?’
‘We are all but too apt,’ answered Mr. Tyrold, mildly, though surprised, ‘to deem nothing worth attaining but what we have missed, nothing worth possessing but what we are denied. How many are there, amongst the untaught and unaccomplished, who would think an escape such as yours, of all intellectual darkness, a compensation for every other evil!’
‘They could think so only, Sir, while, like me, they lived immured always in the same house, were seen always by the same people, and were total strangers to the sensations they might excite in any others.’
‘My dear Eugenia, grieved as I am at the present subject of your ruminations, I rejoice to see in you a power of reflection, and of combination, so far above your years. And it is a soothing idea to me to dwell upon the ultimate benevolence of Providence, even in circumstances the most afflicting: for if chance has been unkind to you, Nature seems, with fostering foresight, to have endowed you with precisely those powers that may best set aside her malignity.’
‘I see, Sir,’ cried she, a little moved, ‘the kindness of your intention; but pardon me if I anticipate to you its ill success. I have thought too much upon my situation and my destiny to admit any fallacious comfort. Can you, indeed, when once her eyes are opened, can you expect to reconcile to existence a poor young creature who sees herself an object of derision and disgust? Who, without committing any crime, without offending any human being, finds she cannot appear but to be pointed at, scoffed and insulted!’
‘O my child! with what a picture do you wound my heart, and tear your own peace and happiness! Wretches who in such a light can view outward deficiencies cannot merit a thought, are below even contempt, and ought not to be disdained, but forgotten. Make a conquest, then, my Eugenia, of yourself; be as superior in your feelings as in your understanding, and remember what Addison admirably says in one of the Spectators: ‘A too acute sensibility of personal defects, is one of the greatest weaknesses of self-love.’
‘I should be sorry, Sir, you should attribute to vanity what I now suffer. No! it is simply the effect of never hearing, never knowing, that so severe a call was to be made upon my fortitude, and therefore never arming myself to sustain it.’
Then, suddenly, and with great emotion clasping her hands: ‘O if ever I have a family of my own,’ she cried, ‘my first care shall be to tell my daughters of all their infirmities! They shall be familiar, from their childhood, to their every defect — Ah! they must be odious indeed if they resemble their poor mother!’
‘My dearest Eugenia! let them but resemble you mentally, and there is no person, whose approbation is worth deserving, that will not love and respect them. Good and evil are much more equally divided in this world than you are yet aware: none possess the first without alloy, nor
the second without palliation. Indiana, for example, now in the full bloom of all that beauty can bestow, tell me, and ask yourself strictly, would you change with Indiana?’
‘With Indiana?’ she exclaimed; ‘O! I would forfeit every other good to change with Indiana! Indiana, who never appears but to be admired, who never speaks but to be applauded.’
‘Yet a little, yet a moment, question, and understand yourself before you settle you would change with her. Look forward, and look inward. Look forward, that you may view the short life of admiration and applause for such attractions from others, and their inutility to their possessor in every moment of solitude or repose; and look inward, that you may learn to value your own peculiar riches, for times of retirement, and for days of infirmity and age!’
‘Indeed, Sir, — and pray believe me, I do not mean to repine I have not the beauty of Indiana; I know and have always heard her loveliness is beyond all comparison. I have no more, therefore, thought of envying it, than of envying the brightness of the sun. I knew, too, I bore no competition with my sisters; but I never dreamt of competition. I knew I was not handsome, but I supposed many people besides not handsome, and that I should pass with the rest; and I concluded the world to be full of people who had been sufferers as well as myself, by disease or accident. These have been occasionally my passing thoughts; but the subject never seized my mind; I never reflected upon it at all, till abuse, without provocation, all at once opened my eyes, and shewed me to myself! Bear with me, then, my father, in this first dawn of terrible conviction! Many have been unfortunate, — but none unfortunate like me! Many have met with evils — but who with an accumulation like mine!’
Mr. Tyrold, extremely affected, embraced her with the utmost tenderness: ‘My dear, deserving, excellent child,’ he cried, ‘what would I not endure, what sacrifice not make, to soothe this cruel disturbance, till time and your own understanding can exert their powers?’ Then, while straining her to his breast with the fondest parental commiseration, the tears, with which his eyes were overflowing, bedewed her cheeks.
Eugenia felt them, and, sinking to the ground, pressed his knees. ‘O my father,’ she cried, ‘a tear from your revered eyes afflicts me more than all else! Let me not draw forth another, lest I should become not only unhappy, but guilty. Dry them up, my dearest father — let me kiss them away.’
‘Tell me, then, my poor girl, you will struggle against this ineffectual sorrow! Tell me you will assert that fortitude which only waits for your exertion; and tell me you will forgive the misjudging compassion which feared to impress you earlier with pain!’
‘I will do all, every thing you desire! my injustice is subdued! my complaints shall be hushed! you have conquered me, my beloved father! Your indulgence, your lenity shall take place of every hardship, and leave me nothing but filial affection!’
Seizing this grateful moment, he then required of her to relinquish her melancholy scheme of seclusion from the world: ‘The shyness and the fears which gave birth to it,’ said he, ‘will but grow upon you if listened to; and they are not worthy the courage I would instil into your bosom — the courage, my Eugenia, of virtue — the courage to pass by, as if unheard, the insolence of the hard-hearted, and ignorance of the vulgar. Happiness is in your power, though beauty is not; and on that to set too high a value would be pardonable only in a weak and frivolous mind; since, whatever is the involuntary admiration with which it meets, every estimable quality and accomplishment is attainable without it: and though, which I cannot deny, its immediate influence is universal, yet in every competition and in every decision of esteem, the superior, the elegant, the better part of mankind give their suffrages to merit alone. And you, in particular, will find yourself, through life, rather the more than the less valued, by every mind capable of justice and compassion, for misfortunes which no guilt has incurred.’
Observing her now to be softened, though not absolutely consoled, he rang the bell, and begged the servant, who answered it, to request his brother would order the coach immediately, as he was obliged to return home; ‘And you, my love,’ said he, ‘shall accompany me; it will be the least exertion you can make in first breaking through your averseness to quit the house.’
Eugenia would not resist; but her compliance was evidently repugnant to her inclination; and in going to the glass to put on her hat, she turned aside from it in shuddering, and hid her face with both her hands.
‘My dearest child,’ cried Mr. Tyrold, wrapping her again in his arms, ‘this strong susceptibility will soon wear away; but you cannot be too speedy nor too firm in resisting it. The omission of what never was in our power cannot cause remorse, and the bewailing what never can become in our power cannot afford comfort. Imagine but what would have been the fate of Indiana, had your situations been reversed, and had she, who can never acquire your capacity, and therefore never attain your knowledge, lost that beauty which is her all; but which to you, even if retained, could have been but a secondary gift. How short will be the reign of that all! how useless in sickness! how unavailing in solitude! how inadequate to long life! how forgotten, or repiningly remembered in old age! You will live to feel pity for all you now covet and admire; to grow sensible to a lot more lastingly happy in your own acquirements and powers; and to exclaim, with contrition and wonder, Time was when I would have changed with the poor mind-dependent Indiana!’
The carriage was now announced; Eugenia, with reluctant steps, descended; Camilla was called to join them, and Sir Hugh saw them set off with the utmost delight.
CHAPTER VI
Strictures on Beauty
To lengthen the airing, Mr. Tyrold ordered the carriage by a new road; and to induce Eugenia to break yet another spell, in walking as well as riding, he proposed their alighting, when they came to a lane, and leaving the coach in waiting while they took a short stroll.
He walked between his daughters a considerable way, passing, wherever it was possible, close to cottages, labourers, and children. Eugenia submitted with a sigh, but held down her head, affrighted at every fresh object they encountered, till, upon approaching a small miserable hut, at the door of which several children were playing, an unlucky boy called out, ‘O come! come! look! — here’s the little hump-back gentlewoman!’
She then, clinging to her father, could not stir another step, and cast upon him a look of appeal and reproach that almost overset him; but, after speaking to her some words of kindness, he urged her to go on, and alone, saying, ‘Throw only a shilling to the senseless little crew, and let Camilla follow and give nothing, and see which will become the most popular.’
They both obeyed, Eugenia fearfully and with quickness casting amongst them some silver, and Camilla quietly walking on.
‘O, I have got a sixpence!’ cried one; ‘and I’ve got a shilling!’ said another; while the mother of the little tribe came from her wash-tub, and called out, ‘God bless your ladyship!’ and the father quitted a little garden at the side of his cottage, to bow down to the ground, and cry, ‘Heaven reward you, good madam! you’ll have a blessing go with you, go where you will!’
The children then, dancing up to Camilla, begged her charity; but when, seconding the palpable intention of her father, she said she had nothing for them, they looked highly dissatisfied, while they redoubled their blessings to Eugenia.
‘See, my child,’ said Mr. Tyrold, now joining them, ‘how cheaply preference, and even flattery, may be purchased!’
‘Ah, Sir!’ she answered, recovered from her terrour, yet deep in reflection, ‘this is only by bribery, and gross bribery, too! And what pleasure, or what confidence can accrue from preference so earned!’
‘The means, my dear Eugenia, are not beneath the objects: if it is only from those who unite native hardness with uncultured minds and manners, that civility is to be obtained by such sordid materials, remember, also, it is from such only it can ever fail you. In the lowest life, equally with the highest, wherever nature has been kind, sympathy springs spontaneo
usly for whatever is unfortunate, and respect for whatever seems innocent. Steel yourself, then, firmly to withstand attacks from the cruel and unfeeling, and rest perfectly secure you will have none other to apprehend.’
The clear and excellent capacity of Eugenia, comprehended in this lesson, and its illustration, all the satisfaction Mr. Tyrold hoped to impart; and she was ruminating upon it with abated despondence, when, as they came to a small house, surrounded with a high wall, Mr. Tyrold, looking through an iron gate at a female figure who stood at one of the windows, exclaimed— ‘What a beautiful creature! I have rarely, I think seen a more perfect face.’
Eugenia felt so much hurt by this untimely sight, that, after a single glance, which confirmed the truth of what he said, she bent her eyes another way; while Camilla herself was astonished that her kind father should call their attention to beauty, at so sore and critical a juncture.
‘The examination of a fine picture,’ said he, fixing his eyes upon the window, and standing still at the iron gate, ‘is a constant as well as exquisite pleasure; for we look at it with an internal security, that such as it appears to us to-day, it will appear again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow; but in the pleasure given by the examination of a fine face, there is always, to a contemplative mind, some little mixture of pain; an idea of its fragility steals upon our admiration, and blends with it something like solicitude; the consciousness how short a time we can view it perfect, how quickly its brilliancy of bloom will be blown, and how ultimately it will be nothing.—’
‘You would have me, Sir,’ said Eugenia, now raising her eyes, ‘learn to see beauty with unconcern, by depreciating its value? I feel your kind intention; but it does not come home to me; reasoning such as this may be equally applicable to any thing else, and degrade whatever is desirable into insignificance.’
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 185