MRS. NORFIELD, a lady whom circumstances had brought into some intimacy with Mrs. Berlinton upon her marriage, had endeavoured, from the first of her entrance into high life, to draw her into a love of play; not with an idea of doing her any mischief, for she was no more her enemy than her friend; but to answer her own purposes of having a Faro table under her own direction. She was a woman of fashion, and as such every-where received; but her fortune was small, and her passion for gaming inordinate; and as there was not, at this time, one Faro table at Southampton, whither she was ordered for her health, she was almost wearied into a lethargy, till her reiterated intreaties prevailed, at length, with Mrs. Berlinton to hold one at her own house.
The fatigue of life without view, the peril of talents without prudence, and the satiety of pleasure without intermission, were already dangerously assaulting the early independence and the moment of vacancy and weariness was seized by Mrs. Norfield, to press the essay of a new mode of amusement.
Mrs. Berlinton’s house opened, failed not to be filled; and opened for a Faro table, to be filled with a peculiar set. To game has, unfortunately, always its attractions; to game with a perfect novice is not what will render it less alluring; and to see that novice rich and beautiful is still less likely to be repelling.
Mr. Berlinton, when he made this marriage, supposed he had engaged for life a fair nurse to his infirmities; but when he saw her fixed aversion, he had not spirit to cope with it; and when she had always an excuse for a separation, he had not the sense to acquaint himself how she passed her time in his absence. A natural imbecility of mind was now nearly verging upon dotage, and as he rarely quitted his room but at meal times, she made a point never to see him in any other part of the day. Her antipathy rendered her obdurate, though her disposition was gentle, and she had now left him at Tunbridge, to meet her aunt at Southampton, with a knowledge he was too ill to follow her, and a determination, upon various pretences, to stay away from him for some months. The ill fate of such unequal alliances is almost daily exemplified in life; and though few young brides of old bridegrooms fly their mates thus openly and decidedly, their retainers have seldom much cause to rejoice in superior happiness, since they are generally regarded but as the gaolers of their young prey.
Moderation was the last praise to which Mrs. Berlinton had any claim; what she entered upon through persecution, in an interval of mental supineness, she was soon awake to as a pleasure, and next pursued as a passion. Her beloved correspondent was neglected; her favourite authors were set aside; her country rambles were given up; balls and the rooms were forgotten; and Faro alone engrossed her faculties by day, and her dreams during the short epoch she reserved for sleep at night. She lost, as might be expected, as constantly as she played; but as money was not what she naturally valued, she disdained to weigh that circumstance; and so long as she had any to pay, resigned it with more grace than by others it was won.
That Camilla was not caught by this ruinous fascination, was not simply the effect of necessity. Had the state of her finances been as flourishing as it was decayed, she would have been equally steady in this forbearance: her reason was fair, though her feelings frequently chaced it from the field. She looked on, therefore, with safety, though not wholly with indifference; she had too much fancy not to be amused by the spirit of the business, and was too animated not to take part in the successive hopes and fears of the several competitors; but though her quick sensations prompted a readiness, like that of Mrs. Berlinton, to enter warmly into all that was presented to her, the resemblance went no further; what she was once convinced was wrong she was incapable of practising.
Upon Gaming, the first feeling and the latest reflection are commonly one; both point its hazards to be unnecessary, its purposes rapacious, and its end desperate loss, or destructive gain; she not only, therefore, held back; she took the liberty, upon the privilege of their avowed friendship, to remonstrate against this dangerous pastime with Mrs. Berlinton. But that lady, though eminently designed to be amiable, had now contracted the fearful habit of giving way to every propensity; and finding her native notions of happiness were blighted in the bud, concluded that all which now remained for her was the indulgence of every luxury. She heard with sweetness the expostulation of her young friend; but she pursued her own course.
In a very few days, however, while the blush of shame dyed her beautiful cheeks, she inquired if Camilla could lend her a little ready money.
A blush of no less unpleasant feelings overspread the face of her fair guest, in being compelled to own she had none to lend; but she eagerly promised to procure some from Mrs. Mittin, who had a note in her hand to exchange for the payment of some small debts contracted at Tunbridge. Mrs. Berlinton, gathering, from her confusion, how ill she was stored, would not hear of applying to this resource, ‘though I hate,’ she cried, ‘to be indebted to that odious old cousin, of whom I was obliged to borrow last night.’
Glaring imprudence in others is a lesson even to the most unthinking; Camilla, when she found that Mrs. Berlinton had lost every guinea she could command, ventured to renew still more forcibly her exhortations against the Faro table; but Mrs. Berlinton, notwithstanding she possessed an excellent capacity, was so little fortified with any practical tenets either of religion or morality, that where sentiment did not take the part of what was right, she had no preservative against what was wrong. The Faro table, therefore, was still opened; and Lord Valhurst, by the sums he lent, obtained every privilege of intimacy in the family, except that of being welcome.
Against this perilous mode of proceeding Camilla was not the only warner. Mrs. Ulst saw with extreme repugnance the mode of life her niece was pursuing, and reprimanded her with severe reproach; but her influence was now lost; and Mrs. Berlinton, though she kindly attended her, and sought to alleviate her sufferings, acted as if she were not in existence.
It was now Mrs. Mittin gained the highest point of her ambition; Mrs. Berlinton, tired of remonstrances she could not controvert, and would not observe, was extremely relieved by finding a person who would sit with her aunt, comply with her humours, hear her lamentations, subscribe to her opinions, and beguile her of her rigid fretfulness by the amusement of gossiping anecdotes.
Mrs. Mittin had begun life as the apprentice to a small country milliner; but had rendered herself so useful to a sick elderly gentlewoman, who lodged in the house, that she left her a legacy, which, by sinking into an annuity, enabled her to quit her business, and set up, in her own conception, for a gentlewoman herself; though with so very small an income, that to sustain her new post, she was frequently reduced to far greater dependence and hardships than she experienced in her old one. She was good-humoured, yet laborious; gay, yet subservient; poor, yet dissipated. To be useful, she would submit to any drudgery; to become agreeable, devoted herself to any flattery. To please was her incessant desire, and her rage for popularity included every rank and class of society. The more eminent, of course, were her first objects, but the same aim descended to the lowest. She would work, read, go of errands, or cook a dinner; be a parasite, a spy, an attendant, a drudge; keep a secret, or spread a report; incite a quarrel, or coax contending parties into peace; invent any expedient, and execute any scheme... all with the pretext to oblige others, but all, in fact, for simple egotism; as prevalent in her mind as in that of the more highly ambitious, though meaner and less dangerous.
Camilla was much relieved when she found this officious person was no longer retained solely upon her account; but still she could neither obtain her bills, no answers ever arriving, nor the money for her twenty pound note, Mrs. Mittin always evading to deliver it, and asserting she was sure somebody would come in the stage the next day for the payment she had promised; and when Camilla wanted cash for any of the very few articles she now allowed herself to think indispensable, instead of restoring it into her hands, she flew out herself to purchase the goods that were required, and always brought them home with assurances they were cheaper than the shopkeepers would let her have them for herself.
Camilla resisted all incitements to new dress and new ornaments, with a fortitude which must not be judged by the aged, nor the retired, who weighing only the frivolity of what she withstood, are not qualified to appreciate the merit of this sort of resignation; the young, the gay, the new in life, who know that, amongst minor calamities, none are more alarming to the juvenile breast than the fear of not appearing initiated in the reigning modes, can alone do justice to the present philosophy of Camilla, in seeing that all she wore, by the quick changes of fashion, seemed already out of date; in refusing to look at the perpetual diversity of............