Cecilia vol. 3

F >> Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d\'Arblay) >> Cecilia vol. 3

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"Forgive me," cried he, "I meant not a reproach; I meant but to state
my own consciousness how little I deserve from you. You talked to me of
going to my father? do you still wish it?"

"I think so!" cried she; too much disturbed to know what she said, yet
fearing again to hurt him by making him wait her answer.

"I will go then," said he, "without doubt: too happy to be guided by
you, which-ever way I steer. I have now, indeed much to tell him; but
whatever may be his wrath, there is little fear, at this time, that my
own temper cannot bear it! what next shall I do?"

"What next?" repeated she; "indeed I know not!"

"Shall I go immediately to Margate? or shall I first ride hither?"

"If you please," said she, much perturbed, and deeply sighing.

"I please nothing but by your direction, to follow that is my only
chance of pleasure. Which, then, shall I do?-you will not, now, refuse
to direct me?"

"No, certainly, not for the world!"

"Speak to me, then, my love, and tell me;--why are you thus silent?--
is it painful to you to counsel me?"

"No, indeed!" said she, putting her hand to her head, "I will speak to
you in a few minutes."

"Oh my Cecilia!" cried he, looking at her with much alarm, "call back
your recollection! you know not what you say, you take no interest in
what you answer."

"Indeed I do!" said she, sighing deeply, and oppressed beyond the power
of thinking, beyond any power but an internal consciousness of
wretchedness.

"Sigh not so bitterly," cried he, "if you have any compassion! sigh not
so bitterly,--I cannot bear to hear you!"

"I am very sorry indeed!" said she, sighing again, and not seeming
sensible she spoke.

"Good Heaven!" cried he, rising, "distract me not with this horror!--
speak not to me in such broken sentences!--Do you hear me, Cecilia?--
why will you not answer me?"

She started and trembled, looked pale and affrighted, and putting both
her hands upon her heart, said, "Oh yes!--but I have an oppression
here,--a tightness, a fulness,--I have not room for breath!"

"Oh beloved of my heart!" cried he, wildly casting himself at her feet,
"kill me not with this terror!--call back your faculties,--awake from
this dreadful insensibility! tell me at least you know me!--tell me I
have not tortured you quite to madness!--sole darling of my affections!
my own, my wedded Cecilia!--rescue me from this agony! it is more than
I can support!"---

This energy of distress brought back her scattered senses, scarce more
stunned by the shock of all this misery, than by the restraint of her
feelings in struggling to conceal it. But these passionate exclamations
restoring her sensibility, she burst into tears, which happily relieved
her mind from the conflict with which it was labouring, and which, not
thus effected, might have ended more fatally.

Never had Delvile more rejoiced in her smiles than now in these
seasonable tears, which he regarded and blest as the preservers of her
reason. They flowed long without any intermission, his soothing and
tenderness but melting her to more sorrow: after a while, however, the
return of her faculties, which at first seemed all consigned over to
grief, was manifested by the returning strength of her mind: she blamed
herself severely for the little fortitude she had shewn, but having now
given vent to emotions too forcible to be wholly stiffed, she assured
him he might depend upon her' better courage for the future, and
entreated him to consider and settle his affairs.

Not speedily, however, could Delvile himself recover. The torture he
had suffered in believing, though only for a few moments, that the
terror he had given to Cecilia had affected her intellects, made even a
deeper impression upon his imagination, than the scene of fury and
death, which had occasioned that terror: and Cecilia, who now strained
every nerve to repair by her firmness, the pain which by her weakness
she had given him, was sooner in a condition for reasoning and
deliberation than himself.

"Ah Delvile!" she cried, comprehending what passed within him, "do you
allow nothing for surprize? and nothing for the hard conflict of
endeavouring to suppress it? do you think me still as unfit to advise
with, and as worthless, as feeble a counsellor, as during the first
confusion of my mind?"

"Hurry not your tender spirits, I beseech you," cried he, "we have time
enough; we will talk about business by and by."

"What time?" cried she, "what is it now o'clock?"

"Good Heaven!" cried he, looking at his watch, "already past ten! you
must turn me out, my Cecilia, or calumny will still be busy, even
though poor Monckton is quiet."

"I _will_ turn you out," cried she, "I am indeed most earnest to have
you gone. But tell me your plan, and which way you mean to go?"

"That;" he answered, "you shall decide for me yourself: whether to
Delvile Castle, to finish one tale, and wholly communicate another, or
to Margate, to hasten my mother abroad, before the news of this
calamity reaches her."

"Go to Margate," cried she, eagerly, "set off this very moment! you can
write to your father from Ostend. But continue, I conjure you, on the
continent, till we see if this unhappy man lives, and enquire, of those
who can judge, what must follow if he should not!"

"A trial," said he, "must follow, and it will go, I fear, but hardly
with me! the challenge was mine; his servants can all witness I went to
him, not he to me,--Oh my Cecilia! the rashness of which I have been
guilty, is so opposite to my principles, and, all generous as is your
silence, I know it so opposite to yours, that never, should his blood
be on my hands, wretch as he was, never will my heart be quiet more."

"He will live, he will live!" cried Cecilia, repressing her horror,
"fear nothing, for he will live;--and as to his wound and his
sufferings, his perfidy has deserved them. Go, then, to Margate; think
only of Mrs Delvile, and save her, if possible, from hearing what has
happened."

"I will go,--stay,--do which and whatever you bid me: but, should what
I fear come to pass, should my mother continue ill, my father
inflexible, should this wretched man die, and should England no longer
be a country I shall love to dwell in,--could you, then, bear to own,
--would you, then, consent to follow me?"

"Could I?--am I not yours? may you not command me? tell me, then, you
have only to say,--shall I accompany you at once?"

Delvile, affected by her generosity, could scarce utter his thanks; yet
he did not hesitate in denying to avail himself of it; "No, my
Cecilia," he cried, "I am not so selfish. If we have not happier days,
we will at least wait for more desperate necessity. With the
uncertainty if I have not this man's life to answer for at the hazard
of my own, to take my wife--my bride,--from the kingdom I must fly!--
to make her a fugitive and an exile in the first publishing that she is
mine! No, if I am not a destined alien for life I can never permit it.
Nothing less, believe me, shall ever urge my consent to wound the
chaste propriety of your character, by making you an eloper with a
duelist."

They then again consulted upon their future plans; and concluded that
in the present disordered state of their affairs, it would be best not
to acknowledge even to Mr Delvile their marriage, to whom the news of
the duel, and Mr Monckton's danger, would be a blow so severe, that, to
add to it any other might half distract him.

To the few people already acquainted with it, Delvile therefore
determined to write from Ostend, re-urging his entreaties for their
discretion and secrecy. Cecilia promised every post to acquaint him how
Mr Monckton went on, and she then besought him to go instantly, that he
might out-travel the ill news to his mother.

He complied, and took leave of her in the tenderest manner, conjuring
her to support her spirits, and be careful of her health. "Happiness,"
said he, "is much in arrears with us, and though my violence may have
frightened it away, your sweetness and gentleness will yet attract it
back: all that for me is in store must be received at your hands,--
what is offered in any other way, I shall only mistake for evil! droop
not, therefore, my generous Cecilia, but in yourself preserve me!"

"I will not droop," said she; "you will find, I hope, you have not
intrusted yourself in ill hands."

"Peace then be with you, my love!--my comforting, my soul-reviving
Cecilia! Peace, such as angels give, and such as may drive from your
mind the remembrance of this bitter hour!"

He then tore himself away.

Cecilia, who to his blessings could almost, like the tender Belvidera,
have exclaimed

O do not leave me!--stay with me and curse me!

listened to his steps till she could hear them no longer, as if the
remaining moments of her life were to be measured by them: but then,
remembering the danger both to herself and him of his stay, she
endeavoured to rejoice that he was gone, and, but that her mind was in
no state for joy, was too rational not to have succeeded.

Grief and horror for what was past, apprehension and suspense for what
was to come, so disordered her whole frame, so confused even her
intellects, that when not all the assistance of fancy could persuade
her she still heard the footsteps of Delvile, she went to the chair
upon which he had been seated, and taking possession of it, sat with
her arms crossed, silent, quiet, and erect, almost vacant of all
thought, yet with a secret idea she was doing something right.

Here she continued till Henrietta came to wish her good night; whose
surprise and concern at the strangeness of her look and attitude, once
more recovered her. But terrified herself at this threatened wandering
of her reason, and certain she must all night be a stranger to rest,
she accepted the affectionate offer of the kind-hearted girl to stay
with her, who was too much grieved for her grief to sleep any more than
herself.

She told her not what had passed; that, she knew, would be fruitless
affliction to her: but she was soothed by her gentleness, and her
conversation was some security from the dangerous rambling of her
ideas.

Henrietta herself found no little consolation in her own private
sorrows, that she was able to give comfort to her beloved Miss
Beverley, from whom she had received favours and kind offices
innumerable. She quitted her not night nor day, and in the honest pride
of a little power to skew the gratefulness of her heart, she felt a
pleasure and self-consequence she had never before experienced.

CHAPTER iii.

A SUMMONS.

Cecilia's earliest care, almost at break of day, was to send to the
Grove; from thence she heard nothing but evil; Mr Monckton was still
alive, but with little or no hope of recovery, constantly delirious,
and talking of Miss Beverley, and of her being married to young
Delvile.

Cecilia, who knew well this, at least, was no delirium, though shocked
that he talked of it, hoped his danger less than was apprehended.

The next day, however, more fatal news was brought her, though not from
the quarter she expected it: Mr Monckton, in one of his raving fits,
had sent for Lady Margaret to his bed side, and used her almost
inhumanly: he had railed at her age and her infirmities with incredible
fury, called her the cause of all his sufferings, and accused her as
the immediate agent of Lucifer in his present wound and danger. Lady
Margaret, whom neither jealousy nor malignity had cured of loving him,
was dismayed and affrighted; and in hurrying out of the room upon his
attempting, in his frenzy, to strike her, she dropt down dead in an
apoplectic fit.

"Good Heaven!" thought Cecilia, "what an exemplary punishment has this
man! he loses his hated wife at the very moment when her death could no
longer answer his purposes! Poor Lady Margaret! her life has been as
bitter as her temper! married from a view of interest, ill used as a
bar to happiness, and destroyed from the fruitless ravings of despair!"

She wrote all this intelligence to Ostend, whence she received a letter
from Delvile, acquainting her he was detained from proceeding further
by the weakness and illness of his mother, whose sufferings from
seasickness had almost put an end to her existence.

Thus passed a miserable week; Monckton still merely alive, Delvile
detained at Ostend, and Cecilia tortured alike by what was recently
passed, actually present, and fearfully expected; when one morning she
was told a gentleman upon business desired immediately to speak with
her.

She hastily obeyed the summons; the constant image of her own mind,
Delvile, being already present to her, and a thousand wild conjectures
upon what had brought him back, rapidly occurring to her.

Her expectations, however, were ill answered, for she found an entire
stranger; an elderly man, of no pleasant aspect or manners.

She desired to know his business.

"I presume, madam, you are the lady of this house?"

She bowed an assent.

"May I take the liberty, madam, to ask your name?'

"My name, sir?"

"You will do me a favour, madam, by telling it me."

"Is it possible you are come hither without already knowing it?"

"I know it only by common report, madam."

"Common report, sir, I believe is seldom wrong in a matter where to be
right is so easy."

"Have you any objection, madam, to telling me your name?"

"No, sir; but your business can hardly be very important, if you are
yet to learn whom you are to address. It will be time enough,
therefore, for us to meet when you are elsewhere satisfied in this
point."

She would then have left the room.

"I beg, madam," cried the stranger, "you will have patience; it is
necessary, before I can open my business, that I should hear your name
from yourself."

"Well, sir," cried she with some hesitation, "you can scarce have come
to this house, without knowing that its owner is Cecilia Beverley."

"That, madam, is your maiden name."

"My maiden name?" cried she, starting.

"Are you not married, madam?"

"Married, sir?" she repeated, while her cheeks were the colour of
scarlet.

"It is, properly, therefore, madam, the name of your husband that I
mean to ask."

"And by what authority, sir," cried she, equally astonished and
offended, "do you make these extraordinary enquiries?"

"I am deputed, madam, to wait upon you by Mr Eggleston, the next heir
to this estate, by your uncle's will, if you die without children, or
change your name when you marry. His authority of enquiry, madam, I
presume you will allow, and he has vested it in me by a letter of
attorney."

Cecilia's distress and confusion were now unspeakable; she knew not
what to own or deny, she could not conjecture how she had been
betrayed, and she had never made the smallest preparation against such
an attack.

"Mr Eggleston, madam," he continued, "has been pretty credibly informed
that you are actually married: he is very desirous, therefore, to know
what are your intentions, for your continuing to be called _Miss_
Beverley, as if still single, leaves him quite in the dark: but, as he
is so deeply concerned in the affair, he expects, as a lady of honour,
you will deal with him without prevarication."

"This demand, sir," said Cecilia, stammering, "is so extremely--so--so
little expected--"

"The way, madam, in these cases, is to keep pretty closely to the
point; are you married or are you not?"

Cecilia, quite confounded, made no answer: to disavow her marriage,
when thus formally called upon, was every way unjustifiable; to
acknowledge it in her present situation, would involve her in
difficulties innumerable.

"This is not, madam, a slight thing; Mr Eggleston has a large family
and a small fortune, and that, into the bargain, very much encumbered;
it cannot, therefore, be expected that he will knowingly connive at
cheating himself, by submitting to your being actually married, and
still enjoying your estate though your husband does not take your
name."

Cecilia, now, summoning more presence of mind, answered, "Mr Eggleston,
sir, has, at least, nothing to fear from imposition: those with whom he
has, or may have any transactions in this affair, are not accustomed to
practice it."

"I am far from meaning any offence, madam; my commission from Mr
Eggleston is simply this, to beg you will satisfy him upon what grounds
you now evade the will of your late uncle, which, till cleared up,
appears a point manifestly to his prejudice."

"Tell him, then, sir, that whatever he wishes to know shall be
explained to him in about a week. At present I can give no other
answer."

"Very well, madam; he will wait that time, I am sure, for he does not
wish to put you to any inconvenience. But when he heard the gentleman
was gone abroad without owning his marriage, he thought it high time to
take some notice of the matter."

Cecilia, who by this speech found she was every way discovered, was
again in the utmost confusion, and with much trepidation, said, "since
you seem so well, sir, acquainted with this affair, I should be glad
you would inform me by what means you came to the knowledge of it?"

"I heard it, madam, from Mr Eggleston himself, who has long known it."

"Long, sir?--impossible! when it is not yet a fortnight--not ten days,
or no more, that---"

She stopt, recollecting she was making a confession better deferred.

"That, madam," he answered, "may perhaps bear a little contention: for
when this business comes to be settled, it will be very essential to be
exact as to the time, even to the very hour; for a large income per
annum, divides into a small one per diem: and if your husband keeps his
own name, you must not only give up your uncle's inheritance from the
time of relinquishing yours, but refund from the very day of your
marriage."

"There is not the least doubt of it," answered she; nor will the
smallest difficulty be made."

"You will please, then, to recollect, madam, that this sum is every
hour encreasing; and has been since last September, which made half a
year accountable for last March. Since then there is now added---"

"Good Heaven, Sir," cried Cecilia, "what calculation are you making
out? do you call last week last September?"

"No, madam; but I call last September the month in which you were
married."

"You will find yourself, then, sir, extremely mistaken; and Mr
Eggleston is preparing himself for much disappointment, if he supposes
me so long in arrears with him."

"Mr Eggleston, madam, happens to be well informed of this transaction,
as, if there is any dispute in it, you will find. He was your immediate
successor in the house to which you went last September in Pall-Mall;
the woman who kept it acquainted his servants that the last lady who
hired it stayed with her but a day, and only came to town, she found,
to be married: and hearing, upon enquiry, this lady was Miss Beverley,
the servants, well knowing that their master was her conditional heir,
told him the circumstance."

"You will find all this, sir, end in nothing."

"That, madam, as I said before, remains to be proved. If a young lady
at eight o'clock in the morning, is seen,--and she was seen, going into
a church with a young gentleman, and one female friend; and is
afterwards observed to come out of it, followed by a clergyman and
another person, supposed to have officiated as father, and is seen get
into a coach with same young gentleman, and same female friend, why the
circumstances are pretty strong!--"

"They may seem so, Sir; but all conclusions drawn from them will be
erroneous. I was not married then, upon my honour!"

"We have little, madam, to do with professions; the circumstances are
strong enough to bear a trial, and--"

"A trial!--"

"We have traced, madam, many witnesses able to stand to divers
particulars; and eight months share of such an estate as this, is well
worth a little trouble."

"I am amazed, sir! surely Mr Eggleston never desired you to make use of
this language to me?"

"Mr Eggleston, madam, has behaved very honourably; though he knew the
whole affair so long ago, he was persuaded Mr Delvile had private
reasons for a short concealment; and expecting every day when they
would be cleared up by his taking your name, he never interfered: but
being now informed he set out last week for the continent, he has been
advised by his friends to claim his rights."

"That claim, sir, he need not fear will be satisfied; and without any
occasion for threats of enquiries or law suits."

"The truth, madam, is this; Mr Eggleston is at present in a little
difficulty about some money matters, which makes it a point with him of
some consequence to have the affair settled speedily: unless you could
conveniently compromise the matter, by advancing a particular sum, till
it suits you to refund the whole that is due to him, and quit the
premises."

"Nothing, sir, is due to him! at least, nothing worth mentioning. I
shall enter into no terms, for I have no compromise to make. As to the
premises, I will quit them with all the expedition in my power."

"You will do well, madam; for the truth is, it will not be convenient
to him to wait much longer."

He then went away.

"When, next," cried Cecilia, "shall I again be weak, vain, blind enough
to form any plan with a hope of secresy? or enter, with _any_ hope,
into a clandestine scheme! betrayed by those I have trusted, discovered
by those I have not thought of, exposed to the cruellest alarms, and
defenceless from the most shocking attacks!--Such has been the life I
have led since the moment I first consented to a private engagement!--
Ah Delvile! your mother, in her tenderness, forgot her dignity, or she
would not have concurred in an action which to such disgrace made me
liable!"

CHAPTER iv.

A DELIBERATION.

It was necessary, however, not to moralize, but to act; Cecilia had
undertaken to give her answer in a week, and the artful attorney had
drawn from her an acknowledgment of her situation, by which he might
claim it yet sooner.

The law-suit with which she was threatened for the arrears of eight
months, alarmed her not, though it shocked her, as she was certain she
could prove her marriage so much later.

It was easy to perceive that this man had been sent with a view of
working from her a confession, and terrifying from her some money; the
confession, indeed, in conscience and honesty she could not wholly
elude, but she had suffered too often by a facility in parting with
money to be there easily duped.

Nothing, however, was more true, than that she now lived upon an estate
of which she no longer was the owner, and that all she either spent or
received was to be accounted for and returned, since by the will of her
uncle, unless her husband took her name, her estate on the very day of
her marriage was to be forfeited, and entered upon by the Egglestons.
Delvile's plan and hope of secresy had made them little weigh this
matter, though this premature discovery so unexpectedly exposed her to
their power.

The first thought that occurred to her, was to send an express to
Delvile, and desire his instructions how to proceed; but she dreaded
his impetuosity of temper, and was almost certain that the instant he
should hear she was in any uneasiness or perplexity, he would return to
her, at all hazards, even though Mr Monckton were dead, and his mother
herself dying. This step, therefore, she did not dare risk, preferring
any personal hardship, to endangering the already precarious life of
Mrs Delvile, or to hastening her son home while Mr Monckton was in so
desperate a situation.

But though what to avoid was easy to settle, what to seek was difficult
to devise. She bad now no Mrs Charlton to receive her, not a creature
in whom she could confide. To continue her present way of living was
deeply involving Delvile in debt, a circumstance she had never
considered, in the confusion and hurry attending all their plans and
conversations, and a circumstance which, though to him it might have
occurred, he could not in common delicacy mention.

Yet to have quitted her house, and retrenched her expences, would have
raised suspicions that must have anticipated the discovery she so much
wished to have delayed. That wish, by the present danger of its
failure, was but more ardent; to have her affairs and situation become
publicly known at the present period, she felt would half distract
her.--Privately married, parted from her husband at the very moment of
their union, a husband by whose hand the apparent friend of her
earliest youth was all but killed, whose father had execrated the
match, whose mother was now falling a sacrifice to the vehemence with
which she had opposed it, and who himself, little short of an exile,
knew not yet if, with personal safety, he might return to his native
land! To circumstances so dreadful, she had now the additional shock of
being uncertain whether her own house might not be seized, before any
other could be prepared for her reception!

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