The Complete Novels of Fanny Burney (Illustrated). Frances Burney
as a visitor to Cecilia, to whom she immediately advanced with the intimacy of an old acquaintance, taking her hand, and assuring her she could no longer defer the honour of waiting upon her.
Cecilia, much amazed at this warmth of civility from one to whom she was almost a stranger, received her compliment rather coldly; but Miss Larolles, without consulting her looks, or attending to her manner, proceeded to express the earnest desire she had long had to be known to her; to hope they should meet very often; to declare nothing could make her so happy; and to beg leave to recommend to her notice her own milliner.
“I assure you,” she continued, “she has all Paris in her disposal; the sweetest caps! the most beautiful trimmings! and her ribbons are quite divine! It is the most dangerous thing you can conceive to go near her; I never trust myself in her room but I am sure to be ruined. If you please, I’ll take you to her this morning.”
“If her acquaintance is so ruinous,” said Cecilia, “I think I had better avoid it.”
“Oh, impossible! there’s no such thing as living without her. To be sure she’s shockingly dear, that I must own; but then who can wonder? She makes such sweet things, ’tis impossible to pay her too much for them.”
Mrs Harrel now joining in the recommendation, the party was agreed upon, and accompanied by Mr Arnott, the ladies proceeded to the house of the milliner.
Here the raptures of Miss Larolles were again excited: she viewed the finery displayed with delight inexpressible, enquired who were the intended possessors, heard their names with envy, and sighed with all the bitterness of mortification that she was unable to order home almost everything she looked at.
Having finished their business here, they proceeded to various other dress manufacturers, in whose praises Miss Larolles was almost equally eloquent, and to appropriate whose goods she was almost equally earnest: and then, after attending this loquacious young lady to her father’s house, Mrs Harrel and Cecilia returned to their own.
Cecilia rejoiced at the separation, and congratulated herself that the rest of the day might be spent alone with her friend.
“Why, no,” said Mrs Harrel, “not absolutely alone, for I expect some company at night.”
“Company again to-night?”
“Nay, don’t be frightened, for it will be a very small party; not more than fifteen or twenty in all.”
“Is that so small a party?” said Cecilia, smiling; “and how short a time since would you, as well as I, have reckoned it a large one!”
“Oh, you mean when I lived in the country,” returned Mrs Harrel; “but what in the world could I know of parties or company then?”
“Not much, indeed,” said Cecilia, “as my present ignorance shews.”
They then parted to dress for dinner.
The company of this evening were again all strangers to Cecilia, except Miss Leeson, who was seated next to her, and whose frigid looks again compelled her to observe the same silence she so resolutely practised herself. Yet not the less was her internal surprise that a lady who seemed determined neither to give nor receive any entertainment, should repeatedly chuse to show herself in a company with no part of which she associated.
Mr Arnott, who contrived to occupy the seat on her other side, suffered not the silence with which her fair neighbour had infected her to spread any further: he talked, indeed, upon no new subject; and upon the old one, of their former sports and amusements, he had already exhausted all that was worth being mentioned; but not yet had he exhausted the pleasure he received from the theme; it seemed always fresh and always enchanting to him; it employed his thoughts, regaled his imagination, and enlivened his discourse. Cecilia in vain tried to change it for another; he quitted it only by compulsion, and returned to it with redoubled eagerness.
When the company was retired, and Mr Arnott only remained with the ladies, Cecilia, with no little surprise, inquired for Mr Harrel, observing that she had not seen him the whole day.
“O!” cried his lady, “don’t think of wondering at that, for it happens continually. He dines at home, indeed, in general, but otherwise I should see nothing of him at all.”
“Indeed? why, how does he fill up his time?”
“That I am sure I cannot tell, for he never consults me about it; but I suppose much in the same way that other people do.”
“Ah, Priscilla!” cried Cecilia, with some earnestness, “how little did I ever expect to see you so much a fine lady!”
“A fine lady?” repeated Mrs Harrel; “why, what is it I do? Don’t I live exactly like every body else that mixes at all with the world?”
“You, Miss Beverley,” said Mr Arnott in a low voice, “will I hope give to the world an example, not take one from it.”
Soon after, they separated for the night.
The next morning, Cecilia took care to fill up her time more advantageously, than in wandering about the house in search of a companion she now expected not to find: she got together her books, arranged them to her fancy, and secured to herself for the future occupation of her leisure hours, the exhaustless fund of entertainment which reading, that richest, highest, and noblest source of intellectual enjoyment, perpetually affords.
While they were yet at breakfast, they were again visited by Miss Larolles. “I am come,” cried she, eagerly, “to run away with you both to my Lord Belgrade’s sale. All the world will be there; and we shall go in with tickets, and you have no notion how it will be crowded.”
“What is to be sold there?” said Cecilia.
“Oh, every thing you can conceive; house, stables, china, laces, horses, caps, everything in the world.”
“And do you intend to buy any thing?”
“Lord, no; but one likes to see the people’s things.”
Cecilia then begged they would excuse her attendance.
“O, by no means!” cried Miss Larolles; “you must go, I assure you; there’ll be such a monstrous crowd as you never saw in your life. I dare say we shall be half squeezed to death.”
“That,” said Cecilia, “is an inducement which you must not expect will have much weight with a poor rustic just out of the country: it must require all the polish of a long residence in the metropolis to make it attractive.”
“O but do go, for I assure you it will be the best sale we shall have this season. I can’t imagine, Mrs Harrel, what poor Lady Belgrade will do with herself; I hear the creditors have seized every thing; I really believe creditors are the cruelest set of people in the world! they have taken those beautiful buckles out of her shoes! Poor soul! I declare it will make my heart ache to see them put up. It’s quite shocking, upon my word. I wonder who’ll buy them. I assure you they were the prettiest fancied I ever saw. But come, if we don’t go directly, there will be no getting in.”
Cecilia again desired to be excused accompanying them, adding that she wished to spend the day at home.
“At home, my dear?” cried Mrs Harrel; “why we have been engaged to Mrs Mears this month, and she begged me to prevail with you to be of the party. I expect she’ll call, or send you a ticket, every moment”
“How unlucky for me,” said Cecilia, “that you should happen to have so many engagements just at this time! I hope, at least, there will not be any for tomorrow.”
“O yes; tomorrow we go to Mrs Elton’s.”
“Again tomorrow? and how long is this to last?”
“O, heaven knows; I’ll shew you my catalogue.”
She then produced a book which contained a list of engagements for more than three weeks. “And as these,” she said, “are struck off, new ones are made; and so it is we go on till after the birth-day.”
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