Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth

'If you knew her, you would find it impossible to hold any doubts; impossible to resist admiring, compassionating, and loving her!'

'If my knowledge of her bribed an interest in her favour, without convincing me she deserved it, I ought, rather, to regret that you have not escaped falling into such a snare, than that I could have escaped it myself.'

'I believe her free, nay incapable of all ill!' cried Camilla warmly; 'though I dare not assert she is always coolly upon her guard.'

'Do not let me hurt you,' said Edgar, gently; 'I have seen how lovely she is in person, and how pleasing in manners. And she is so young that, were she in a situation less exposed, want of steadiness or judgment might, by a little time, be set right. But here, there is surely much to fear from her early possession of power… O, that some happier chance had brought about such a peculiar intercourse for you with Lady Isabella Irby! There, to the pleasure of friendship, might be added the modesty of retired elegance, and the security of established respectability.'

'And may not this yet happen, with Mrs. Berlinton? Lady Isabella, though still young, is not in the extreme youth of Mrs. Berlinton: a few more years, therefore, may bring equal discretion; and as she has already every other good quality, you may hereafter equally approve her.'

'Do you think, then,' said Edgar, half smiling, 'that the few years of difference in their age were spent by Lady Isabella in the manner they are now spent by Mrs. Berlinton? do you think she paved the way for her present dignified, though unassuming character, by permitting herself to be surrounded by professed admirers? by letting their sighs reach her ears? by suffering their eyes to fasten with open rapture on her face? and by holding it sufficient not to suppress such liberties, so long as she does not avowedly encourage them?'

Camilla was startled. She had not seen her conduct in this light: yet her understanding refused to deny it might bear this interpretation.

Charmed with the candour of her silence, Edgar continued, 'How wide from all that is open to similar comment, is the carriage and behaviour of Lady Isabella! how clear! how transparent, how free from all conjecture of blemish! They may each, indeed, essentially be equally innocent; and your opinion of Mrs. Berlinton corroborates the impression made by her beautiful countenance: yet how far more highly is the true feminine character preserved, where surmise is not raised, than where it can be parried! Think but of those two ladies, and mark the difference. Lady Isabella, addressed only where known, followed only because loved, sees no adulators encircling her, for adulation would alarm her; no admirers paying her homage, for such homage would offend her. She knows she has not only her own innocence to guard, but the honour of her husband. Whether she is happy with him or not, this deposit is equally sacred. – '

He stopt; for Camilla again started. The irrepressible frankness of her nature revolted against denying how much this last sentence struck her, and she ingenuously exclaimed: 'O that this most amiable young creature were but more aware of this duty!'

'Ah, my dear Miss Camilla,' cried Edgar, with energy, 'since you feel and own … and with you, that is always one … this baneful deficiency, drop, or at least suspend an intercourse too hazardous to be indulged with propriety! See what she may be sometime hence, ere you contract further intimacy. At present, unexperienced and unsuspicious, her dangers may be yours. You are too young for such a risk. Fly, fly from it, my dear Miss Camilla!.. as if the voice of your mother were calling out to caution you!'

Camilla was deeply touched. An interest so warm in her welfare was soothing, and the name of her mother rendered it awful; yet, thus united, it appeared to her more strongly than ever to announce itself as merely fraternal. She could not suppress a sigh; but he attributed it to the request he had urged, and, with much concern, added: 'What I have asked of you, then, is too severe?'

Again irresistibly sighing, yet collecting all her force to conceal the secret cause, she answered, 'If she is thus exposed to danger … if her situation is so perilous, ought I not rather to stay by, and help to support her, than by abandoning, perhaps contribute to the evil you think awaiting her?'

'Generous Camilla!' cried he, melted into tender admiration, 'who can oppose so kind a design? So noble a nature!..'

No more could be said, for all preliminaries had been settled, and the throwing being arranged to take place alphabetically, she was soon summoned to represent Mrs. Berlinton.

From this time, Edgar could speak to her no more: even the Major could scarcely make way to her: the two men of the ton would not quit her, and Sir Sedley Clarendel appeared openly devoted to her.

Edgar looked on with the keenest emotion. The proof he had just received that her intrinsic worth was in its first state of excellence, had come home to his heart, and the fear of seeing her altered and spoilt, by the flatteries and dangers which environed her, with his wavering belief in her engagement with Major Cerwood, made him more wretched than ever. But when, some time after, she was called upon to throw for herself, the recollection that, from the former raffle, her half-guinea, even when the prize was in her hand, had been voluntarily withdrawn to be bestowed upon a poor family, so powerfully affected him, that he could not rest in the shop; he was obliged to breathe a freer air, and to hide his disturbance by a retreat.

Her throw was the highest the dice had yet afforded. A Miss Williams alone came after her, whose throw was the lowest; Miss Camilla Tyrold, therefore, was proclaimed to be the winner.

This second testimony of the favour of fortune was a most pleasant surprise to Camilla, and made the room resound with felicitations, till they were interrupted by a violent quarrel upon the Pantiles, whence the voice of Macdersey was heard, hollooing out: 'Don't talk, I say sir! don't presume to say a word!' and that of Mr. Dubster angrily answering, he would talk as long as he thought proper, whether it was agreeable or not.

Sir Sedley advanced to the combatants, in order to help on the dispute; but Edgar, returning at the sound of high words, took the Ensign by the arm, and prevailed with him to accompany him up and down the Pantiles; while Mrs. Mittin ran to Mr. Dubster, and pulling him into the shop, said: 'Mr. Dubster, if I'm not ashamed of you! how can you forget yourself so? talking to gentlemen at such a rate!'

'Why what should hinder me?' cried he; 'do you think I shall put up with every thing as I used to do when you first knew me, and we used to meet at Mr. Typton's, the tallow chandler's, in Shug-lane? no, Mrs. Mittin, nor no such a thing; I'm turned gentleman myself, now, as much as the best of 'em; for I've nothing to do, but just what I choose.'

'I protest, Mr. Dubster,' cried Mrs. Mittin, taking him into a corner 'you're enough to put a saint into a pet! how come you to think of talking of Mr. Typton here? before such gentlefolks? and where's the use of telling every body he's a tallow chandler? and as to my meeting with you there once or so, in a way, I desire you'll mention it no more; for it's so long ago, I have no recollection of it.'

'No! why don't you remember – '

'Fiddle, faddle, what's the good of ripping up old stories about nothing? when you're with genteel people, you must do as I do; never talk about business at all.'

Macdersey now entered the shop, appeased by Edgar from shewing any further wrath, but wantonly inflamed by Sir Sedley, in a dispute upon the passion of love.

'Do you always, my dear friend,' said the Baronet, 'fall in love at first sight?'

'To be sure I do! If a man makes a scruple of that, it's ten to one but he's disappointed of doing it at all; because, after two or three second sights, the danger is you may spy out some little flaw in the dear angel, that takes off the zest, and hinders you to the longest day you have to live.'

'Profoundly cogitated that! you think then, my vast dear sir, the passion had more conveniently be kindled first, that the flaws may appear after, to cure it?'

'No, sir! no! when a man's once in love, those flaws don't signify, because he can't see them; or, if he could, at least he'd scorn to own them.'

'Live for ever brave Ireland!' exclaimed Mrs. Arlbery; 'what cold, phelgmatic Englishman would have made a speech of so much gallantry?'

'As to an Englishman,' said Macdersey, 'you must never mind what he says about the ladies, because he's too sheepish to speak out. He's just as often in love as his neighbours, only he's so shy he won't own it, till he sees if the young fair one is as much in love as himself; but a generous Irishman never scruples to proclaim the girl of his heart, though he should have twenty in a year.'

'But is that perfectly delicate, my dearest sir, to the several Dulcineas?'

'Perfectly! your Irishman is the delicatest man upon earth to the fair sex; for he always talks of their cruelty, if they are never so kind. He knows every honest heart will pity him, if it's true; and if it i'n't, he is too much a man of honour not to complain all one; he knows how agreeable it is to the dear creatures; they always take it for a compliment.'

'Whether avowedly or clandestinely,' said Mrs. Arlbery, 'still you are all in our chains. Even where you play the tyrant with us, we occupy all your thoughts; and if you have not the skill to make us happy, your next delight is to make us miserable; for though, now and then, you can contrive to hate, you can never arrive at forgetting us.'

'Contrive to hate you!' repeated Macdersey; 'I could as soon contrive to turn the world into a potato; there is nothing upon earth, nothing under the whole firmament I value but beauty!'

'A cheerful glass, then,' said Sir Sedley, 'you think horridly intolerable?'

'A cheerful glass, sir! do you take me for a milk-sop? do you think I don't know what it is to be a man? a cheerful glass, sir, is the first pleasure in life; the most convivial, the most exhilarating, the most friendly joy of a true honest soul! what were existence without it? I should choose to be off in half an hour; which I should only make so long, not to shock my friends.'

'Well, the glass is not what I patronise,' said Sir Theophilus; 'it hips me so consumedly the next day; no, I can't patronise the glass.'

'Not patronise wine?' cried Lord Newford; 'O hang it! O curse it! that's too bad, Offy! but hunting! what dost think of that, little Offy?'

'Too obstreperous! It rouses one at such aukward hours; no, I can't patronise hunting.'

'Hunting!' cried Macdersey; 'O, it leaves everything behind it; 'tis the thing upon the earth for which I have the truest taste. I know nothing else that is not a bauble to it. A man is no more, in my estimation, than a child, or a woman, that don't enjoy it.'

'Cards, then,' said Sir Sedley, 'you reprobate?'

'And dice?' – cried Lord Newford —

'And betting?' – cried Sir Theophilus.

'Why what do you take me for, gentlemen?' replied Macdersey, hotly; 'Do you think I have no soul? no fire? no feeling? Do you suppose me a stone? a block? a lump of lead? I scorn such suspicions; I don't hold them worth answering. I am none of that torpid, morbid, drowsy tribe. I hold nobody to have an idea of life that has not rattled in his own hand the dear little box of promise. What ecstasy not to know if, in two seconds, one mayn't be worth ten thousand pounds! or else without a farthing! how it puts one on the rack! There's nothing to compare with it. I would not give up that moment to be sovereign of the East Indies! no, not if the West were to be put into the bargain.'

'All these things,' said Mr. Dennel, 'are fit for nothing but to bring a man to ruin. The main chance is all that is worth thinking of. 'Tis money makes the mare to go; and I don't know any thing that's to be done without it.'

'Money!' exclaimed Macdersey, 'tis the thing under heaven I hold in the most disdain. It won't give me a moment's concern never to see its colour again. I vow solemnly, if it were not just for the pleasures of the table, and a jolly glass with a friend, and a few horses in one's stable, and a little ready cash in one's purse, for odd uses, I should not care if the mint were sunk under ground to-morrow; money is what I most despise of all.'

'That's talking out of reason,' said Mr. Dennel, walking out of the shop with great disgust.

'Why, if I was to speak,' said Mr. Dubster, encouraged to come forward, by an observation so much to his own comprehension and taste as the last; 'I can't but say I think the same; for money – '

'Keep your distance, sir!' cried the fiery Ensign, 'keep your distance, I tell you! if you don't wish I should say something to you pretty cutting.'

This broke up the party, which else the lounging spirit of the place, and the general consent by which all descriptions of characters seem determined to occupy any spot whatever, to avoid a moment's abode in their lodgings, would still have detained till the dinner hour had forced to their respective homes. To suppress all possibility of further dissention, Mrs. Arlbery put Miss Dennel under the care of Macdersey, and bid him attend her towards Mount Pleasant.