Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth. Burney Fanny
no doubt all will be over; and then – '
'And is that the time, Camilla, to speak to your best friends? would it not be more judicious to be explicit with them, while what affects you is still depending?'
Camilla, hiding her face on her mother's bosom, burst afresh into tears.
'Alas!' cried Mrs. Tyrold, 'what new evil is hovering? If it must invade me again through one of my children, tell me, at least, Camilla, it is not wilfully that you, too, afflict me? and afflict the best of fathers?'
Mr. Tyrold, dropping his pen, looked at them both with the most apprehensive anxiety.
'No, my dearest mother,' said Camilla, endeavouring to meet her eyes; 'not wilfully, – but something has happened – I can hardly myself tell how or what – but indeed Cleves, now – ' she hesitated.
'How is my brother?' demanded Mr. Tyrold.
'O! all that is good and kind! and I grieve to quit him – but, indeed, Cleves, now – ' Again she hesitated.
'Ah, my dear child!' said Mrs. Tyrold, 'I always feared that residence! – you are too young, too inconsiderate, too innocent, indeed, to be left so utterly to yourself. – Forgive me, my dear Mr. Tyrold; I do not mean to reflect upon your brother, but he is not you! – and with you alone, this dear inexperienced girl can be secure from all harm. Tell me, however, what it is – ?'
Camilla, in the extremest confusion changed colour, but tried vainly to speak. Mr. Tyrold, suspended from all employment, waited fearfully some explanation.
'We have no time,' said Mrs. Tyrold, 'for delay; – you know I am going abroad, – and cannot ascertain my return; though all my heart left behind me, with my children and their father, will urge every acceleration in my power.'
Camilla wept again, fondly folding her arms round her mother; 'I had hoped,' she cried, 'that I should have come home to peace, comfort, tranquillity! to both of you, my dearest father and mother, and to all my unbroken happiness under your roof! – How little did I dream of so cruel a separation!'
'Console yourself, my Camilla, that you have not been its cause; may Heaven ever spare me evil in your shape at least! – you say it is nothing wilful? I can bear everything else.'
'We will not,' said Mr. Tyrold, 'press her; she will tell us all in her own way, and at her own time. Forced confidence is neither fair nor flattering. I will excuse her return to my brother, and she will the sooner be able to give her account for finding herself not hurried.'
'Calm yourself, then,' said Mrs. Tyrold, 'as your indulgent father permits, and I will proceed with my preparations.'
Camilla now, somewhat recovering, declared she had almost nothing to say; but her mother continued packing up, and her father went on with his letter.
She had now time to consider that her own fears and emotion were involving her in unnecessary confessions; she resolved, therefore, to repress the fulness of her heart, and to acknowledge only the accusation of Miss Margland. And in a few minutes, without waiting for further enquiry, she gathered courage to open upon the subject; and with as much ease and quietness as she could command, related, in general terms, the charge brought against her, and her consequent desire to quit Cleves, 'till, – till – ' Here she stopt for breath. Mr. Tyrold instantly finished the sentence, 'till the marriage has taken place?'
She coloured, and faintly uttered, 'Yes.'
'You are right, my child,' said he, 'and you have acted with a prudence which does you honour. Neither the ablest reasoning, nor the most upright conduct, can so completely obliterate a surmise of this nature, from a suspicious mind, as absence. You shall remain, therefore, with me, till your cousin is settled in her new habitation. Do you know if the day is fixed?'
'No, sir,' she answered, while the roses fled her cheeks at a question which implied so firm a belief of the union.
'Do not suffer this affair to occasion you any further uneasiness,' he continued; 'it is the inherent and unalienable compact of Innocence with Truth, to hold themselves immovably superior to the calumny of false imputations. But I will go myself to Cleves, and set this whole matter right.'
'And will you, too, sir, have the goodness – ' She was going to say, to make my peace with Edgar; but the fear of misinterpretation checked her, and she turned away.
He gently enquired what she meant; she avoided any explanation, and he resumed his writing.
Ah me! thought she, will the time ever come, when with openness, with propriety, I may clear myself of caprice to Edgar?
Less patient, because more alarmed than her husband, Mrs. Tyrold followed her to the window. She saw a tear in her eye, and again she took both her hands: 'Have you, my Camilla,' she cried, 'have you told us all? Can unjust impertinence so greatly have disturbed you? Is there no sting belonging to this wound that you are covering from our sight, though it may precisely be the spot that calls most for some healing balm?'
Again the cheeks of Camilla received their fugitive roses. 'My dearest mother,' she cried, 'is not this enough? – to be accused – suspected – and to fear – '
She stammered, and would have withdrawn her hands; but Mrs. Tyrold, still holding them, said, 'To fear what? speak out, my best child! open to us your whole heart! – Where else will you find repositories so tender?'
Tears again flowed down the burning cheeks of Camilla, and dropping her eyes, 'Ah, my mother!' she cried, 'you will think me so frivolous – you will blush so for your daughter – if I own – if I dare confess – '
Again she stopped, terrified at the conjectures to which this opening might give birth; but when further and fondly pressed by her mother, she added, 'It is not alone these unjust surmises, – nor even Indiana's unkind concurrence in them – but also – I have been afraid – I must have made a strange – a capricious – an ungrateful appearance in the eyes of Edgar Mandlebert.'
Here her voice dropt; but presently recovering, she rapidly continued, 'I know it is very immaterial – and I am sensible how foolish it may sound – but I shall also think of it no more now, – and therefore, as I have told the whole – '
She looked up, conscience struck at these last words, to see if they proved satisfactory; she caught, in the countenance of her mother, an expression of deep commiseration, which was followed by a thousand maternal caresses of unusual softness, though unaccompanied by any words.
Penetrated, yet distressed, she gratefully received them, but rejoiced when, at length, Mr. Tyrold, rising, said, 'Go, my love, upstairs to your sister; your mother, else, will never proceed with her business.'
She gladly ran off, and soon, by a concise narration, satisfied Lavinia, and then calmed her own troubled mind.
Mr. Tyrold now, though evidently much affected himself, strove to compose his wife. 'Alas!' cried she, 'do you not see what thus has touched me? Do you not perceive that our lovely girl, more just to his worth than its possessor, has given her whole heart to Edgar Mandlebert?'
'I perceived it through your emotion, but I had not discovered it myself. I grieve, now, that the probability of such an event had not struck me in time to have kept them apart for its prevention.'
'I grieve for nothing,' cried she, warmly, 'but the infatuated blindness of that self-lost young man. What a wife would Camilla have made him in every stage of their united career! And how unfortunately has she sympathised in my sentiments, that he alone seemed worthy to replace the first and best protector she must relinquish when she quits this house! What will he find in Indiana but a beautiful doll, uninterested in his feelings, unmoved by his excellencies, and incapable of comprehending him if he speaks either of business or literature!'
'Yet many wives of this description,' replied Mr. Tyrold, 'are more pleasing in the eyes of their husbands than women who are either better informed in intellect, or more alive in sensation; and it is not an uncommon idea amongst men, that where, both in temper and affairs, there is least participation, there is most repose. But this is not the case with Edgar.'
'No! he has a nobler resemblance than this portrait would allow him; a resemblance