‘May she always merit this generous warmth!’ cried he; ‘which must have excited my best wishes for her welfare, even if I had been insensible to her own claims upon every man of feeling. But I had meant, at this time, to confine my ungrateful annotations to another ... to the person who had just quitted the room.’
‘You do not mean to name her with Mrs. Berlinton? to imagine it possible I can have for her any similar regard? or any, indeed, at all, but such common good-will as all sorts and classes of people are entitled to, who are well meaning?’
‘Here, at least, then,’ said Edgar, with a sigh half suppressed, ‘our opinions may be consonant. No; I designed no such disgraceful parallel for your elegant favourite. My whole intention is to remonstrate ... can you pardon so plain a word?... against your appearing in public with a person so ill adapted to insure you the respect that is so every way your due.’
‘I had not the smallest idea, believe me, of appearing in public. I merely walked out to see the town, and to beguile, in a stroll, time, which, in this person’s society, hung heavy upon me at home, in the absence of Mrs. Berlinton.’
The concise simplicity of this innocent account, banished, in a moment, all severity of judgment; and Edgar, expressively thanking her, rose, and was approaching her, though scarcely knowing with what purpose, when Mrs. Mittin burst into the room, exclaiming: ‘Well, my dear, you’ll never guess how many things I have done since I left you. In the first place, there was never a wash-ball; in the next place, not a napkin nor a towel was in its proper place; then the tea-things were forgot; and as to spoons, not one could I find. And now, I’ve a mind to go myself to a shop I took good notice of, and get her a little almond powder for her nice white hands; which, I dare say, will please her. I’ve thought of a hundred things at least. I dare say I shall quite win her heart. And I’m sure of my money again, if I lay out never so much. And I don’t know what I would not do for such a good lady.’
During this harangue, Camilla, ashamed of her want of resolution, secretly vowed, that, if again left alone with him, she would not lose a moment in restoring him his liberty, that with dignity she might once more receive, or with fortitude for ever resign it. She thought herself, at this moment, capable of either; but she had only thought it, since his softened look and air had made her believe she had nothing to fear from the alternative.
Mrs. Mittin soon went, though her continued and unmeaning chattery made the short term of her stay appear long.
Each eager upon their own plan, both then involuntarily arose.
Camilla spoke first. ‘I have something,’ she cried, ‘to say, ...’ but her voice became so husky, the inarticulate sounds died away unheard, and blushing at so feeble an opening, she strove, under the auspices of a cough, to disguise that she had spoken at all, for the purpose of beginning, in a more striking manner, again.
This succeeded with Edgar at this moment, for he had heard her voice, not her words: he began, therefore, himself. ‘This good lady,’ he said, ‘seems bit with the rage of obliging, though not, I think, so heroically, as much to injure her interest. But surely she flatters herself with somewhat too high a recompence? The heart of Mrs. Berlinton is not, I fancy, framed for such a conquerer. But how, at the same time, is it possible conversation such as this should be heard under her roof? And how can it have come to pass that such a person....’
‘Talk of her,’ interrupted Camilla, recovering her breath, ‘some other time. Let me now inquire ... have you burnt ... I hope so!... those foolish ... letters ... I put into your hands?...’
The countenance of Edgar was instantly overclouded. The mention of those letters brought fresh to his heart the bitterest, the most excruciating and intolerable pang it had ever experienced; it brought Camilla to his view no longer artless, pure, and single-minded, but engaged to, or trifling with, one man, while seriously accepting another. ‘No, madam,’ he solemnly said, ‘I have not presumed so far. Their answers are not likely to meet with so violent a death, and it seemed to me that one part of the correspondence should be preserved for the elucidation of the other.’
Camilla felt stung by this reply, and tremulously answered, ‘Give me them back, then, if you please, and I will take care to see them all demolished together, in the same flames. Meanwhile....’
‘Are you sure,’ interrupted Edgar, ‘such a conflagration will be permitted? Does the man live who would have the philosophy ... the insensibility I must rather style it — ever to resign, after once possessing, marks so distinguishing of esteem? O, Camilla! I, at least, could not be that man!’
Cut to the soul by this question, which, though softened by the last phrase, she deemed severely cruel, she hastily exclaimed: ‘Philosophy I have no right to speak of ... but as to insensibility ... who is the man that ever more can surprise me by its display? Let me take, however, this opportunity....’
A footman, opening the door, said, his lady had sent to beg an answer to her letter.
Camilla, in whom anger was momentary, but the love of justice permanent, rejoiced at an interruption which prevented her from speaking, with pique and displeasure, a sentence that must lose all its purpose if not uttered with mildness. She would write, she said, immediately; and, bidding the man get her pen and ink, went to the window to read her letter; with a formal bow of apology to Edgar as she passed him.
‘I have made you angry?’ cried he, when the man was gone; ‘and I hate myself to have caused you a moment’s pain. But you must feel for me, Camilla, in the wound you have inflicted! you know not the disorder of mind produced by a sudden, unlooked-for transition from felicity to perplexity, ... from serenity to misery!...’
Camilla felt touched, yet continued reading, or rather rapidly repeating to herself the words of her letter, without comprehending, or even seeking to comprehend, the meaning of one sentence.
He found himself quite unequal to enduring her displeasure; his own, all his cautions, all Dr. Marchmont’s advice, were forgotten; and tenderly following her, ‘Have I offended,’ he cried, ‘past forgiveness? Is Camilla immoveable? and is the journey from which I fondly hoped to date the renewal of every hope, the termination of every doubt, the period of all suffering and sorrow....’
He stopt abruptly, from the entrance of the servant with pen and ink, and the interruption was critical: it called him to his self-command: he stammered out that he would not impede her writing; and, though in palpable confusion, took his leave: yet, at the street-door, he gave a ticket with his name, to the servant who attended him, for Mrs. Berlinton; and, with his best respects, desired she might be told he should do himself the honour to endeavour to see her in the evening.
The recollection of Edgar came too late to his aid to answer its intended purpose. The tender avowal which had escaped him to Camilla, of the view of his journey, had first with astonishment struck her ear, and next with quick enchantment vibrated to her heart, which again it speedily taught to beat with its pristine vivacity; and joy, spirit, and confidence expelled in a breath all guests but themselves.
CHAPTER III
A Pleasant Adventure
Camilla was again called upon for her note, before she had read the letter it was to answer; but relieved now from the pressure of her own terrifying apprehensions, she gave it complete and willing attention.
It contained four sides of paper, closely yet elegantly written in the language of romantic sentiment. Mrs. Berlinton said she had spent, as yet, only a few minutes with her aunt; but they had been awfully important; and since she had exacted from her a promise to stay the whole day, she could not deny her disappointed friendship the transient solace of a paper conversation, to sooth the lingering interval of this unexpected absence. ‘My soul pines to unburden the weight of its sorrows into thy sympathising bosom, my gentlest friend; but oh! there let them not sojourn! receive but to lighten, listen but to commiserate, and then, far, far thence dismiss them, retaining but the remembrance thou hast dismissed them with consolation.’ She then bew
ailed the time lost to soft communication and confidence, in their journey, from the presence of others; for though one was a brother she so truly loved, she found, notwithstanding the tenderness of his nature, he had the prejudices of a man upon man’s prerogatives, and her woes called for soothing not arguments; and the other, she briefly added, was but an accidental passenger. ‘’Tis in thee only, O my beauteous friend! I would trust the sad murmurs of my irreversible and miserable destiny, of which I have learnt but this moment the cruel and desperate secret cause.’ She reserved, however, the discovery for their meeting, and called upon her pity for her unfortunate brother, as deeply involved in his future views, as she in her past, by this mystery: ‘And have I written this much,’ she burst forth, ‘without speaking of the cherished correspondent whom so often I have described to thee? Ah! believe me not faithless to that partner of my chosen esteem, that noble, that resistless possessor of my purest friendship! No, charming Camilla, think not so degradingly of her whom fate, in its sole pitying interval, has cast into thy arms.’ Two pages then ensued with this exclusive encomium, painting him chief in every virtue, and master of every grace. She next expressed her earnestness to see Indiana, [who] Camilla had told her would be at Southampton. ‘Present me, I conjure thee, to the fair and amiable enslaver of my unhappy brother! I die to see, to converse with her, to catch from her lovely lips the modest wisdom with which he tells me they teem; to read in her speaking eyes the intelligence which he assures me illumines them.’ She concluded with desiring her to give what orders she pleased for the coach, and the servants, and to pass the day with her friends.
Camilla, whose own sensations were now revived to happiness, read the letter with all the sympathy it claimed, and felt her eyes fill with generous tears at the contrast of their situations; yet she highly blamed the tenderness expressed for the unknown correspondent, though its innocence she was sure must vanquish even Edgar, since its so constant avowal proved it might be published to all mankind. She answered her in language nearly as affectionate, though less inflated than her own, and resolved to support her with Edgar, till her sweetness and purity should need no champions but themselves. She was ashamed of the species of expectation raised for Indiana, yet knew not how to interfere in Melmond’s idea of her capacity, lest it might seem unkind to represent its fallaciousness; but she was glad to find her soft friend seemed to have a strict guardian in her brother; and wished eagerly to communicate to Edgar a circumstance which she was sure would be so welcome to him.
Impatient to see Eugenia, she accepted the offer of the carriage, and desirous to escape Mrs. Mittin, begged to have it immediately; but that notable person came to the door at the same time as the coach, and, without the smallest ceremony, said she would accompany her to the hotel, in order to take the opportunity of making acquaintance with her friends.
Courage frequently, at least in females, becomes potent as an agent, where it has been feeble as a principal. Camilla, though she had wished, upon her own account, to repress Mrs. Mittin in the morning, had been too timid for such an undertaking; but now, in her anxiety to oblige Edgar, she gathered resolution for declining her company. She then found, as is generally the case with the fearful, the task less difficult than she had expected; for Mrs. Mittin, content with a promise self-made, that the introduction should take place the next day, said she would go and help Mrs. Berlinton’s woman to unpack her lady’s things, which would make a useful friend for her in the house, for a thousand odd matters.
The carriage of Sir Hugh was just driving off as Camilla arrived at the hotel.
She hurried from Mrs. Berlinton’s coach, demanding which way the company was gone; and being answered, by a passing waiter, up stairs, ran on at once, without patience or thought for asking if she should turn to the right or left; till seeing a gentleman standing still upon the landing place, and leaning upon the bannisters, she was retreating, to desire a conductor, when she perceived it was Dr. Orkborne; who, while the ladies were looking at accommodations, and inquiring about lodgings, in profound cogitation, and with his tablets in his hands, undisturbed by the various noises around him, and unmoved by the various spectators continually passing and repassing, was finishing a period which he had begun in the coach for his great work.
Camilla, cheerfully greeting him, begged to know which way she should find Eugenia; but, making her a sign not to speak to him, he wrote on. Accustomed to his manner, and brought up to respect whatever belonged to study, from the studious life and turn of her father, she obeyed the mute injunction, and waited quietly by his side; till, tired of the delay, though unwilling to interrupt him, she glided softly about the passage, watching and examining if she could see any of the party, yet fearing to offend or mortify him if she called for a waiter.
While straying about thus, as far off as she could go without losing sight of Dr. Orkborne, a door she had just passed was flung open, and she saw young Halder, whose licentious insolence had so much alarmed her in the bathing-house, stroam out, yawning, stretching, and swearing unmeaningly, but most disgustingly, at every step.
Terrified at his sight, she went on, as she could not get to the Doctor without passing him; but the youth, recollecting her immediately, called out: ‘Ah, ha! are you there again, you little vixen?’ and pursued her.
‘Dr. Orkborne! Dr. Orkborne!’ she rather screamed than said, ‘pray come this way! I conjure — I beseech — I entreat — Dr. Orkborne!—’
The Doctor, catching nothing of this but his name, querulously exclaimed: ‘You molest me much!’ but without raising his eyes from his tablets; while Halder, at the appeal, cried: ‘Ay, ay, Doctor! keep your distance, Doctor! you are best where you are, Doctor, I can tell you, Doctor!’
Camilla, then, too much scared to be aware she ran a far greater risk than she escaped, desperately sought refuge by opening the nearest door; though by the sudden noises upon the stairs, and in all the adjoining passages, it seemed as if Dr. Orkborne were the only one not alarmed by her cries.
No one, however, could approach so soon as the person of whose chamber she had burst the door; who was an old gentleman, of a good and lively countenance, who promptly presenting himself, looked at her with some surprise, but good humouredly asked her what she was pleased to want in his room.
‘That gentleman,’ she cried, panting and meaning to point to Dr. Orkborne; ‘that gentleman I want, sir!’ but such a medley of waiters, company, and servants, had in a moment assembled in the space between them, that the Doctor was no longer to be discerned.
‘Do you only open my door, then,’ said he, drily, ‘to tell me you want somebody else?’
Yet when Halder, vowing he owed her an ill turn for which she should pay, would have seized her by the hand, he protected with his own arm, saying: ‘Fie, boy, fie! let the girl alone! I don’t like violence.’
A gentleman now, forcing himself through the crowd, exclaimed: ‘Miss Camilla Tyrold! Is it possible! what can you do here, madam?’
It was Dr. Marchmont, whom the affrighted Camilla, springing forward, could only answer in catching by the arm.
‘Tyrold!’ repeated the old gentleman; ‘Is her name Tyrold?’
Sorry now to have pronounced it in this mixt company, Dr. Marchmont evaded any answer; and, begging her to be composed, asked whither, or to whom, he might have the honour of conducting her.
‘Almost all my family are here,’ cried she, ‘but I could not make Dr. Orkborne shew me the way to them.’
The old gentleman then, repeating ‘Tyrold! why if her name is Tyrold, I’ll take care of her myself;’ invited her into his apartment.
Dr. Marchmont, thanking him, said: ‘This young lady has friends, who in all probability are now uneasily seeking her; we must lose no time in joining them.’
‘Well, but, well,’ cried the old stranger, ‘let her come into my room till the coast is clear, and then take her away in peace. Come, there’s a good girl, come in, do! you’re heartily welcome; for there’s a person of your
name that’s the best friend I ever had in the world. He’s gone from our parts, now; but he’s left nothing so good behind. Pray, my dear, did you ever hear of a gentleman, an old Yorkshire Baronet, of your name?’
‘What! my uncle?’
‘Your uncle! why are you niece to Sir Hugh Tyrold?’
Upon her answering yes, he clapped his hands with delight, and saying: ‘Why then I’ll take care of you myself, if it’s at the risk of my life!’ carried, rather than drew her into his room, the Doctor following. Then, loudly shutting his door in the face of Halder, he called out: ‘Enter my castle who dare! I shall turn a young man myself, at the age of seventy, to drub the first varlet that would attack the niece of my dear old friend!’
They soon heard the passage clear, and, without deigning to listen to the petulant revilings with which young Halder solaced his foolish rage, ‘Why, my dear,’ he continued, ‘why did not you tell me your name was Tyrold at once? I promise you, you need carry nothing else with you into our parts, to see all the doors fly open to you. You make much of him, I hope, where he is? for he left not a dry eye for twenty miles round when he quitted us. I don’t know how many such men you may have in Hampshire; but Yorkshire’s a large county, yet the best man in it would find it hard to get a seat in Parliament, where Sir Hugh Tyrold would offer himself to be a candidate. We all say, in Yorkshire, he’s so stuffed full of goodness and kindness, that there’s no room left in him for anything else; that’s our way of talking of him in Yorkshire; if you have a better way in Hampshire, I shall be glad to learn it; never too late for that; I hate pride.’
No possible disturbance could make Camilla insensible to pleasure in the praise of her uncle, or depress her spirits from joining in his eulogy; and her attention, and brightening looks, drew a narrative from the old gentleman of the baronet’s good actions and former kindnesses, so pleasant both to the speaker and the hearer, that the one forgot he had never seen her before, and the other, the frightful adventure which occasioned their meeting now.
Complete Works of Frances Burney Page 223