Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress. Volume 3. Burney Fanny
my advising a journey, he understood me properly. His openness to counsel, and the manly firmness with which he behaved in quitting you, made me hope the danger was blown over. But last week, when I was at the Castle, where I have for some time attended Mr Delvile, who has had a severe fit of the gout, I found him in an agitation of spirits that made me apprehend it would be thrown into his stomach. I desired Mrs Delvile to use her influence to calm him; but she was herself in still greater emotion, and acquainting me she was obliged to leave him, desired I would spend with him every moment in my power. I have therefore almost lived at the Castle during her absence, and, in the course of our many conversations, he has acknowledged to me the uneasiness under which he has laboured, from the intelligence concerning his son, which he had just received.”
Cecilia wished here to enquire how received, and from whom, but had not the courage, and therefore he proceeded.
“I was still with the father when Mr Mortimer arrived post at my house to fetch me hither. I was sent for home; he informed me of his errand without disguise, for he knew I was well acquainted with the original secret whence all the evil arose. I told him my distress in what manner to leave his father; and he was extremely shocked himself when acquainted with his situation. We agreed that it would be vain to conceal from him the indisposition of Mrs Delvile, which the delay of her return, and a thousand other accidents, might in some unfortunate way make known to him. He commissioned me, therefore, to break it to him, that he might consent to my journey, and at the same time to quiet his own mind, by assuring him all he had apprehended was wholly at an end.”
He stopt, and looked to see how Cecilia bore these words.
“It is all at an end, Sir;” said she, with firmness; “but I have not yet heard your commission; what, and from whom is that?”
“I am thoroughly satisfied it is unnecessary;” he answered, “since the young man can but submit, and you can but give him up.”
“But still, if there is a message, it is fit I should hear it.”
“If you chase it, so it is. I told Mr Delvile whither I was coming, and I repeated to him his son’s assurances. He was relieved, but not satisfied; he would not see him, and gave me for him a prohibition of extreme severity, and to you he bid me say—”
“From him, then, is my message?” cried Cecilia, half frightened, and much disappointed.
“Yes,” said he, understanding her immediately, “for the son, after giving me his first account, had the wisdom and forbearance not once to mention you.”
“I am very glad,” said she, with a mixture of admiration and regret, “to hear it. But, what, Sir, said Mr Delvile?”
“He bid me tell you that either he, or you must see his son never more.”
“It was indeed unnecessary,” cried she, colouring with resentment, “to send me such a message. I meant not to see him again, he meant not to desire it. I return him, however, no answer, and I will make him no promise; to Mrs Delvile alone I hold myself bound; to him, send what messages he may, I shall always hold myself free. But believe me, Dr Lyster, if with his name, his son had inherited his character, his desire of our separation would be feeble, and trifling, compared with my own!”
“I am sorry, my good young lady,” said he, “to have given you this disturbance; yet I admire your spirit, and doubt not but it will enable you to forget any little disappointment you may have suffered. And what, after all, have you to regret? Mortimer Delvile is, indeed, a young man that any woman might wish to attach; but every woman cannot have him, and you, of all women, have least reason to repine in missing him, for scarcely is there another man you may not chuse or reject at your pleasure.”
Little as was the consolation Cecilia could draw from this speech, she was sensible it became not her situation to make complaints, and therefore, to end the conversation she proposed calling in the Miss Charltons.
“No, no,” said he, “I must step up again to Mrs Delvile, and then be-gone. To-morrow morning I shall but call to see how she is, and leave some directions, and set off. Mr Mortimer Delvile accompanies me back: but he means to return hither in a week, in order to travel with his mother to Bristol. Mean time, I purpose to bring about a reconciliation between him and his father, whose prejudices are more intractable than any man’s I ever met with.”
“It will be strange indeed,” said Cecilia, “should a reconciliation now be difficult!”
“True; but it is long since he was young himself, and the softer affections he never was acquainted with, and only regards them in his son as derogatory to his whole race. However, if there were not some few such men, there would hardly be a family in the kingdom that could count a great grand-father. I am not, I must own, of his humour myself, but I think it rather peculiarly stranger, than peculiarly worse than most other peoples; and how, for example, was that of your uncle a whit the better? He was just as fond of his name, as if, like Mr Delvile, he could trace it from the time of the Saxons.”
Cecilia strongly felt the truth of this observation, but not chusing to discuss it, made not any answer, and Dr Lyster, after a few good-natured apologies, both for his friends the Delviles and himself, went up stairs.
“What continual disturbance,” cried she, when left alone, “keeps me thus for-ever from rest! no sooner is one wound closed, but another is opened; mortification constantly succeeds distress, and when my heart is spared; my pride is attacked, that not a moment of tranquility may ever be allowed me! Had the lowest of women won the affections of Mr Delvile, could his father with less delicacy or less decency have acquainted her with his inflexible disapprobation? To send with so little ceremony a message so contemptuous and so peremptory!—but perhaps it is better, for had he, too, like Mrs Delvile, joined kindness with rejection, I might still more keenly have felt the perverseness of my destiny.”
CHAPTER vii. – A PARTING
The next morning Dr Lyster called early, and having visited Mrs Delvile, and again met the two gentlemen of the faculty in whose care she was to remain, he took his leave. But not without contriving first to speak a few words to Cecilia in private, in which he charged her to be careful of her health, and re-animate her spirits. “Don’t suppose,” said he, “that because I am a friend of the Delvile family, I am either blind to your merits, or to their foibles, far from it; but then why should they interfere with one another? Let them keep their prejudices, which, though different, are not worse than their neighbours, and do you retain your excellencies, and draw from them the happiness they ought to give you. People reason and refine themselves into a thousand miseries, by chusing to settle that they can only be contented one way; whereas, there are fifty ways, if they would but look about them, that would commonly do as well.”
“I believe, indeed, you are right,” answered Cecilia, “and I thank you for the admonition; I will do what I can towards studying your scheme of philosophy, and it is always one step to amendment, to be convinced that we want it.”
“You are a sensible and charming girl,” said Dr Lyster, “and Mr Delvile, should he find a daughter-in-law descended in a right line from Egbert, first king of all England, won’t be so well off as if he had satisfied himself with you. However, the old gentleman has a fair right, after all, to be pleased his own way, and let us blame him how we will, we shall find, upon sifting, it is for no other reason but because his humour happens to clash with our own.”
“That, indeed,” said Cecilia, smiling, “is a truth incontrovertible! and a truth to which, for the future, I will endeavour to give more weight. But will you permit me now to ask one question?—Can you tell me from whom, how, or when the intelligence which has caused all this disturbance–”
She hesitated, but, comprehending her readily, he answered “How they got at it, I never heard, for I never thought it worth while to enquire, as it is so generally known, that nobody I meet with seems ignorant of it.”
This was another, and a cruel shock to Cecilia, and Dr Lyster, perceiving it, again attempted to comfort her. “That the affair is somewhat spread,” said he, “is now not to be helped, and therefore little worth thinking of; every body will