_A Demander_
The next night, as the carriage was at the door, and the party preparing
for the Rooms, the name of Mr. Tyrold was announced, and Lionel entered
the parlour.
His manner was hurried, though he appeared gay and frisky as usual;
Camilla felt a little alarmed; but Mrs. Arlbery asked if he would
accompany them.
With all his heart, he answered, only he must first have a moment's chat
with his sister. Then, saying they should have a letter to write
together, he called for a pen and ink, and was taking her into another
apartment, when Mr. Dennel objected to letting his horses wait.
'Send them back for us, then,' cried Lionel, with his customary ease,
'and we will follow you.'
Mr. Dennel again objected to making his horses so often mount the hill;
but Lionel assuring him nothing was so good for them, ran on with so
many farrier words and phrases of the benefit they would reap from such
light evening exercise, that, persuaded he was master of the subject,
Mr. Dennel submitted, and the brother and sister were left
_tête-à-tête_.
At any other time, Camilla would have proposed giving up the Rooms
entirely: but her desire to see Edgar, and the species of engagement she
had made with him, counterbalanced every inconvenience.
'My dear girl,' said Lionel, 'I am come to beg a favour. You see this
pen and ink. Give me a sheet of paper.'
She fetched him one.
'That's a good child,' cried he, patting her cheek; 'so now sit down,
and write a short letter for me. Come begin. Dear Sir.'
She wrote--Dear Sir.
'An unforeseen accident,--write on,--an unforeseen accident has reduced
me to immediate distress for two hundred pounds....'
Camilla let her pen drop, and rising said, 'Lionel! is this possible?'
'Very possible, my dear. You know I told you I wanted another hundred
before you left Cleves. So you must account it only as one hundred, in
fact, at present.'
'O Lionel, Lionel!' cried Camilla, clasping her hands, with a look of
more remonstrance than any words she durst utter.
'Won't you write the letter?' said he, pretending not to observe her
emotion.
'To whom is it to be addressed?'
'My uncle, to be sure, my dear! What can you be thinking of? Are you in
love, Camilla?'
'My uncle again? no Lionel, no!--I have solemnly engaged myself to apply
to him no more.'
'That was, for me, my dear; but where can your thoughts be wandering?
Why you must ask for this, as if it were for yourself.'
'For myself!'
'Yes, certainly. You know he won't give it else.'
'Impossible! what should I want two hundred pounds for?'
'O, a thousand things; say you must have some new gowns and caps, and
hats and petticoats, and all those kind of gear. There is not the least
difficulty; you can easily persuade him they are all worn out at such a
place as this. Besides, I'll tell you what is still better; say you've
been robbed; he'll soon believe it, for he thinks all public places
filled with sharpers.'
'Now you relieve me,' said she, with a sort of fearful smile, 'for I am
sure you cannot be serious. You must be very certain I would not deceive
or delude my uncle for a million of worlds.'
'You know nothing of life, child, nothing at all. However, if you won't
say that, tell him it's for a secret purpose. At least you can do that.
And then, you can make him understand he must ask no questions about the
matter. The money is all we want from him.'
'This is so idle, Lionel, that I hope you speak it for mere nonsense.
Who could demand such a sum, and refuse to account for its purpose?'
'Account, my dear? Does being an uncle give a man a right to be
impertinent? If it does, marry out of hand yourself, there's a good
girl, and have a family at once, that I may share the same privilege. I
shall like it of all things; who will you have?'
'Pho, pho!'
'Major Cerwood?'
'No, never!'
'I once thought Edgar Mandlebert had a sneaking kindness for you. But I
believe it is gone off. Or else I was out.'
This was not an observation to exhilarate her spirits. She sighed: but
Lionel, concluding himself the cause, begged her not to be low-spirited,
but to write the letter at once.
She assured him she could never again consent to interfere in his
unreasonable requests.
He was undone, then, he said; for he could not live without the money.
'Rather say, not with it,' cried she; 'for you keep nothing!'
'Nobody does, my dear; we all go on the same way now-a-days.'
'And what do you mean to be the end of it all, Lionel? How do you
purpose living when all these resources are completely exhausted?'
'When I am ruined, you mean? why how do other people live when they're
ruined? I can but do the same; though I have not much considered the
matter.'
'Do consider it, then, dear Lionel! for all our sakes, do consider it!'
'Well,--let us see.'
'O, I don't mean so; I don't mean just now; in this mere idle manner.--'
'O, yes, I'll do it at once, and then it will be over. Faith I don't
well know. I have no great _gusta_ for blowing out my brains. I like the
little dears mighty well where they are. And I can't say I shall much
relish to consume my life and prime and vigour in the king's bench
prison. 'Tis horribly tiresome to reside always on the same spot. Nor I
have no great disposition to whisk off to another country. Old England's
a pretty place enough. I like it very well; ... with a little rhino
understood! But it's the very deuce, with an empty purse. So write the
letter, my dear girl.'
'And is this your consideration, Lionel? And is this its conclusion?'
'Why what signifies dwelling upon such dismalties? If I think upon my
ruin beforehand, I am no nearer to enjoyment now than then. Live while
we live, my dear girl! I hate prophesying horrors. Write, I say, write!'
Again she absolutely refused, pleading her promise to her uncle, and
declaring she would keep her word.
'Keep a fiddlestick!' cried he, impatiently; 'you don't know what
mischief you may have to answer for! you may bring misery upon all our
heads! you may make my father banish me his sight, you may make my
mother execrate me!--'
'Good Heaven!' cried Camilla interrupting him, 'what is it you talk of?
what is it you mean?'
'Just what I say; and to make you understand me better, I'll give you a
hint of the truth; but you must lose your life twenty times before you
reveal it--There's--there's--do you hear me?--there's a pretty girl in
the case!'
'A pretty girl!--And what has that to do with this rapacity for money?'
'What an innocent question! why what a baby thou art, my dear Camilla!'
'I hope you are not forming any connexion unknown to my father?'
'Ha, ha, ha!' cried Lionel laughing loud: 'Why thou hast lived in that
old parsonage-house till thou art almost too young to be rocked in a
cradle.'
'If you are entering into any engagement,' said she, still more gravely,
'that my father must not know, and that my mother would so bitterly
condemn,--why am I to be trusted with it?'
'You understand nothing of these things, child. 'Tis the very nature of
a father to be an hunks, and of a mother to be a bore.'
'O Lionel! such a father!--such a mother!--'
'As to their being perfectly good, and all that, I know it very well.
And I am very sorry for it. A good father is a very serious misfortune
to a poor lad like me, as the world runs; it causes one such confounded
gripes of the conscience for every little awkward thing one does! A bad
father would be the joy of my life; 'twould be all fair play there; the
more he was choused the better.'
'But this pretty girl, Lionel!--Are you serious? Are you really engaging
yourself? And is she so poor? Is she so much distressed, that you
require these immense and frequent sums for her?'
Lionel laughed again, and rubbed his hands; but after a short silence
assumed a more steady countenance, and said, 'Don't ask me any thing
about her. It is not fit you should be so curious. And don't give a hint
of the matter to a soul. Mind that! But as to the money, I must have it.
And directly: I shall be blown to the deuce else.'
'Lionel!' cried Camilla, shrinking, 'you make me tremble! you cannot
surely be so wicked ... so unprincipled.... No! your connexions are
never worse than imprudent!--you would not else be so unkind, so
injurious as to place in me such a confidence!'
The whole face of Lionel now flashed with shame, and he walked about the
room, muttering: ''Tis true, I ought not to have done it.' And soon
after, with still greater concern, he exclaimed: 'If this appears to you
in such a heinous light, what will my father think of it? And how can I
bear to let it be known to my mother?'
'O never, never!' cried she emphatically; 'never let it reach the
knowledge of either! If indeed you have been so inconsiderate, and so
wrong--break up, at least, any such intercourse before it offends their
ears.'
'But how, my dear, can I do that, if it gets blazed abroad?'
'Blazed abroad!'
'Yes; and for want, only, of a few pitiful guineas.'
'What can you mean? How can it depend upon a few guineas?'
'Get me the guineas;--and leave the how to me.'
'My dear Lionel,' cried she, affectionately, 'I would do any thing that
is not absolutely improper to serve you; but my uncle has now nothing
more to spare; he has told me so himself; and with what courage, then,
in this dark, mysterious, and, I fear, worse than mysterious business,
can I apply to him?'
'My dear child, he only wants to hoard up his money to shew off poor
Eugenia at her marriage; and you know as well as I do what a ninny he is
for his pains; for what a poor little dowdy thing will she look, dizened
out in jewels and laces?'
'Can you speak so of Eugenia? the most amiable, the most deserving, the
most excellent creature breathing!'
'I speak it in pure friendship. I would not have her exposed. I love
dear little Greek and Latin as well as you do. Only the difference is I
don't talk so like an old woman; and really when you do it yourself, you
can't think the ridiculous effect it has, when one looks at your young
face. However, only write the request as if from yourself, and tell him
you'll acquaint him with the reason next letter; but that the post is
just going out now, and you have time for no more. And then, just coax
him over a little, with, how you long to be back, and how you hate
Tunbridge, and how you adore Cleves, and how tired you are for want of
his bright conversation,--and you may command half his fortune.--My dear
Camilla, you don't know from what destruction you will rescue me! Think
too of my father, and what a shock you will save him: And think of my
mother, whom I can never see again if you won't help me!'
Camilla sighed, but let him put the pen into her hand, whence, however,
the very next moment's reflection was urging her to cast it down, when
he caught her in his arms in a transport of joy, called her his
protectress from dishonour and despair, and said he would run to the
Rooms while she wrote, just to take the opportunity of seeing them, and
to un-order the carriage, that she might have no interruption to her
composition, which he would come back to claim before the party
returned, as he must set off for Cleves, and gallop all night, to
procure the money, which the loss of a single day would render useless.
All this he uttered with a rapidity that mocked every attempt at
expostulation or answer; and then ran out of the room and out of the
house.
* * * * *
Horrour at such perpetual and increasing ill conduct, grief at the
compulsive failure of meeting Edgar, and perplexity how to extricate
herself from her half given, but wholly seized upon engagement to write,
took for a while nearly equally shares in tormenting Camilla. But all
presently concentred in one domineering sentiment of sharp repentance
for what she had apparently undertaken.
To claim two hundred pounds of her uncle, in her own name, was out of
all question. She could not, even a moment, dwell upon such a project;
but how represent what she herself so little understood as the necessity
of Lionel? or how ask for so large a sum, and postpone, as he desired,
all explanation? She was incapable of any species of fraud, she detested
even the most distant disguise. Simple supplication seemed, therefore,
her only method; but so difficult was even this, in an affair so dark
and unconscionable, that she began twenty letters without proceeding in
any one of them beyond two lines.
Thus far, however, her task was light to what it appeared to her upon a
little further deliberation. That her brother had formed some unworthy
engagement or attachment, he had not, indeed, avowed clearly, but he had
by no means denied, and she had even omitted, in her surprise and
consternation, exacting his promise that it should immediately be
concluded. What, then, might she be doing by endeavouring to procure
this money? Aiding perhaps vice and immorality, and assisting her
misguided, if not guilty brother, to persevere in the most dangerous
errors, if not crimes?
She shuddered, she pushed away her paper, she rose from the table, she
determined not to write another word.
Yet, to permit parents she justly revered to suffer any evil she had the
smallest chance to spare them, was dreadful to her; and what evil could
be inflicted upon them, so deeply, so lastingly severe, as the
conviction of any serious vices in any of their children?
This, for one minute, brought her again to the table; but the next, her
better judgment pointed out the shallowness and fallacy of such
reasoning. To save them present pain at the risk of future anguish, to
consult the feelings of her brother, in preference to his morality,
would be forgetting every lesson of her life, which, from its earliest
dawn, had imbibed a love of virtue, that made her consider whatever was
offensive to it as equally disgusting and unhappy.
To disappoint Lionel was, however, terrible. She knew well he would be
deaf to remonstrance, ridicule all argument, and laugh off whatever she
could urge by persuasion. She feared he would be quite outrageous to
find his expectations thus thwarted; and the lateness of the hour when
he would hear it, and the weight he annexed, to obtaining the money
expeditiously, redoubled at once her regret for her momentary
compliance, and her pity for what he would undergo through its failure.
After considering in a thousand ways how to soften to him her
recantation, she found herself so entirely without courage to encounter
his opposition, that she resolved to write him a short letter, and then
retire to her room, to avoid an interview.
In this, she besought him to forgive her error in not sooner being
sensible of her duty, which had taught her, upon her first reflexion,
the impossibility of demanding two hundred pounds for herself, who
wanted nothing, and the impracticability of demanding it for him, in so
unintelligible a manner.
Thus far only she had proceeded, from the length of time consumed in
regret and rumination, when a violent ringing at the door, without the
sound of any carriage, made her start up, and fly to her chamber;
leaving her unfinished letter, with the beginnings of her several essays
to address Sir Hugh, upon the table, to shew her various efforts, and to
explain that they were relinquished.