MR. Tyrold was well aware that to keep from Sir Hugh the affliction of Camilla, he must keep from him Camilla herself: for though her sighs she could suppress, and her tears disperse, her voice had lost its tone, her countenance its gaiety; her eyes no longer sparkled, her very smiles betrayed anguish. He was the last to wonder at her sufferings, for Edgar was nearly as dear to him as herself; but he knew not, that, added to this annihilation of happiness, her peace was consumed by her secret knowledge of the blows yet impending for himself and for her uncle. Concealment, always abhorrent to her nature, had, till now, been unknown even to her thoughts; and its weight, from a species of culpability that seemed attached to its practice, was, at times, more dreadful to bear than the loss even of Edgar himself. The latter blackened every prospect of felicity; but the former, still more tremendous to the pure principles in which she had been educated, seemed to strike even at her innocence. The first wish of an ingenuous mind is to anticipate even enquiry; the feeling, therefore, that most heavily weighs it down, is any fear of detection.
While they were at breakfast the following morning, the servant brought in the name of Dr. Marchmont.
Camilla felt nearly fainting. Why he was come-whence-whether Edgar accompanied him-or sent by him any message-whether he were returned to Beech Park-or sailed for the Continent-were doubts that pressed so fast, and so vehemently upon her mind, that she feared to quit the room lest she should meet Edgar in the passage, and feared still more to continue in it, lest Dr. Marchmont should enter without him. Mr. Tyrold, who participated in all her feelings, and shared the same ideas, gently committed her to Lavinia, and went into his study to the doctor.
His own illusion was there quickly destroyed. The looks of Dr. Marchmont boded nothing that was happy. They wore not their customary expression. The gravity of Mr. Tyrold shewed a mind prepared for ill news, if not already oppressed with it, and the doctor, after a few general speeches, delivered the letter from Edgar.
Mr. Tyrold received it with a secret shuddering: ‘Where,’ he said, ‘is Mandlebert at present?’
‘I believe, by this time-at the Hague.’
This sentence, with the grieved, yet still air and tone of voice which accompanied it, was death at once to every flattering hope: he immediately read the letter, which, conceived in the tenderest terms of reverence and affection, took a short and simple, though touchingly respectful leave of the purposed connection, and demolished at once every distant view of future conciliation.
He hung his head a moment, and sighed from the bottom of his heart; but the resignation which he summoned upon every sorrow was never deaf to his call, and when he had secretly ejaculated a short and silent prayer for fortitude to his beloved wife, he turned calmly to the doctor, and began conversing upon other affairs.
Dr. Marchmont presumed not to manifest the commiseration with which he was filled. He saw the true Christian, enduring with humility misfortune, and the respectable parent supporting the dignity of his daughter by his own. To the first character, complaint was forbidden; to the second, it would have been degrading. He looked at him with veneration, but to spare further useless and painful efforts, soon took leave.
Mr. Tyrold, shaking hands with him, said as they were parting, ‘when you write to Mandlebert, assure him of my constant affection. The world, Dr. Marchmont is too full of real evil, for me at least, to cause one moment of unnecessary uneasiness to any of its poor pilgrims. ’Tis strange, my dear doctor, this is not more generally considered, since the advantage would be so reciprocal from man to man. But wrapt up in our own short moment, we forget our neighbour’s long hour! and existence is ultimately embittered to all, by the refined susceptibility for ourselves that monopolizes our feelings.’
Doctor Marchmont, who in this last sentence construed a slight reflection upon Edgar, expressively answered, ‘Our sensibility for others is not always dormant, because not apparent.–How much of worth and excellence may two characters separately possess, where yet there are disuniting particles which impede their harmonizing with each other!’
Mr. Tyrold, powerfully struck, saw now the general nature of the conceptions which had caused this lamented breach. He could not concur, but he would not attempt to controvert; opinion in this case must have even the precedence of justice. If Edgar thought his daughter of a disposition with which his own could not sympathise, it were vain to expatiate upon her virtues or her sweetness; that one doubt previously taken might mar their assimilating efficacy. Comprehending, therefore, the cause at large, he desired no detail; the words of Dr. Marchmont, though decisive, were not offensive, and they parted perfect friends, each perceiving, yet forgiving, that each cast upon the other the error of false reasoning; Edgar to the one, and Camilla to the other, appearing faultless in the separation.
But not in the tasks which succeeded were their offices as easily to be compared. Dr. Marchmont wrote to Edgar that all was quietly relinquished, and his measures were honourably acquitted; while Mr. Tyrold, shut up in his study, spent there some of the severest minutes of his life, in struggling for the equanimity he coveted to pronounce to his daughter this last doom. Pity for her suspence accelerated his efforts, and he then sent for her down stairs.
His utmost composure, in such an interview, was highly necessary for both. The pale and trembling Camilla advanced with downcast eyes; but when he took her in his arms, and kissed her, a sudden ray of hope shot across her quick imagination, and she looked up: an instant was now sufficient to rectify her mistake. The tenderness of her father wore no air of congratulation, it was the mere offspring of compassion, and the woe with which it was mixt, though mild, though patient, was too potent to require words for explanation.
The glance sufficed; her head dropt, her tears in torrents bathed his bosom; and she retired to Lavinia while yet neither of them had spoken.
Mr. Tyrold, contented with virtuous exertions, demanded not impossibilities; he left to nature that first grief which too early exhortation or controul rather inflames than appeases. He then brought her back to his apartment.
He conjured her, there, to remember that she grieved not alone; that where the tears flowed not so fast from the eyes, the sources were not dry whence they sprung, and that bridled sorrow was sometimes the most suffering.
‘Alas, my dearest father, to think you mourn too-and for me!-will that lessen what I feel?’
‘Yes, my dear child, by a generous duty it will point out to watch that the excess of one affliction involve you not in another.’
‘What a motive,’ she answered, ‘for exertion! If the smallest part of your happiness-of my honoured mother’s -depends upon mine, I shall be unhappy, I think, no more!’
A gush of tears ill accorded with this fond declaration; but Mr. Tyrold, without noticing them, kindly replied, ‘Let your filial affection, my child, check the inordinacy of your affliction, and I will accept with pleasure for your virtuous mother, and with thanks for myself, the exertion which, beginning for our sakes, may lead you to that self denial which is the parent of our best human actions, and approximates us the most to what is divine.’
Broken-hearted as was Camilla, her sorrows would, at least apparently, have abated from consolation so tender, if all she felt had been known; if no latent and lurking evil had hung upon her spirits, defeating all argument, and blighting all comfort, by the cruel consciousness of concealed mischief, which while incessantly she studied the best moment for revealing, accident might prematurely betray.
Upon this subject her thoughts were unremittingly bent, till, in a few days time, she received a letter from Mrs. Mittin, informing her she had just seen the money-lender, Mr. Clykes, who, finding her so much under age, would not undertake the business for less than ten per cent. nor without a free premium of at least twenty pounds.
The latter demand, so entirely out of her power to grant, gave to her the mental strength she had yet sought in vain; and determining to end this baneful secret, she seized her own first moment of emotion to relate to her father the whole of her distresses, and cast herself upon his mercy.
I shall be happier, she cried, much happier, as, with tottering steps, she hurried to the study; he will be lenient, I know;-and even if not, what displeasure can I incur so severe as the eternal apprehension of doing wrong?
But her plan, though well formed, had fixed upon an ill-timed moment for its execution. She entered the room with an agitation which rather sought than shunned remark, that some enquiry might make an opening for her confession: but Mr. Tyrold was intently reading a letter, and examining some papers, from which he raised not his eyes at her approach. She stood fearfully before him till he had done; but then, still not looking up, he leant his head upon his hand, with a countenance so disturbed, that, alarmed from her design, by the apprehension he had received some ill tidings from Lisbon, she asked, in a faint voice, if the foreign post were come in?
‘I hope not!’ he answered: ‘I should look with pain, at this moment, upon the hand of your unhappy mother!’
Camilla, affrighted, knew not now what to conjecture; but gliding into her pocket the letter of Mrs. Mittin, stood suspended from her purpose.
‘What a reception,’ he presently added, ‘is preparing for that noblest of women when her exile may end! That epoch, to which I have looked forward as the brightener of my every view upon earth-how is it now clouded!’
Giving her, then, the letter and papers; ‘The son,’ he said, ‘who once I had hoped would prove the guardian of his sisters, the honour of his mother’s days, the future prop of my own–See, Camilla, on how sandy a foundation mortal man builds mortal hopes!’
The letter was from a ve............