Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress. Volume 3. Burney Fanny

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СКАЧАТЬ encreasing yet smothered agitation, called out “Why, why this condescension?—pray,—I entreat you, madam!—”

      “Heaven bless you, my love!” said Mrs Delvile, dropping a tear upon the hand she still held, “heaven bless you, and restore the tranquillity you so nobly deserve!”

      “Ah madam!” cried Cecilia, vainly striving to repress any longer the tears which now forced their way down her cheeks, “why will you break my heart with this kindness! why will you still compel me to love!—when now I almost wish to hate you!”—

      “No, hate me not,” said Mrs Delvile, kissing from her cheeks the tears that watered them, “hate me not, sweetest Cecilia, though in wounding your gentle bosom, I am almost detestable to myself. Even the cruel scene which awaits me with my son will not more deeply afflict me. But adieu,—I must now prepare for him!”

      She then left the room: but Cecilia, whose pride had no power to resist this tenderness, ran hastily after her, saying “Shall I not see you again, madam?”

      “You shall yourself decide,” answered she; “if my coming will not give you more pain than pleasure, I will wait upon you whenever you please.”

      Cecilia sighed and paused; she knew not what to desire, yet rather wished any thing to be done, than quietly to sit down to uninterrupted reflection.

      “Shall I postpone quitting this place,” continued Mrs Delvile, “till to-morrow morning, and will you admit me this afternoon, should I call upon you again?”

      “I should be sorry,” said she, still hesitating, “to detain you,”—

      “You will rejoice me,” cried Mrs Delvile, “by bearing me in your sight.”

      And she then went into her carriage.

      Cecilia, unfitted to attend her old friend, and unequal to the task of explaining to her the cruel scene in which she had just been engaged, then hastened to her own apartment. Her hitherto stifled emotions broke forth in tears and repinings: her fate was finally determined, and its determination was not more unhappy than humiliating; she was openly rejected by the family whose alliance she was known to wish; she was compelled to refuse the man of her choice, though satisfied his affections were her own. A misery so peculiar she found hard to support, and almost bursting with conflicting passions, her heart alternately swelled from offended pride, and sunk from disappointed tenderness.

      CHAPTER iv. – A PERTURBATION

      Cecelia was still in this tempestuous state, when a message was brought her that a gentleman was below stairs, who begged to have the honour of seeing her. She concluded he was Delvile, and the thought of meeting him merely to communicate what must so bitterly afflict him, redoubled her distress, and she went down in an agony of perturbation and sorrow.

      He met her at the door, where, before he could speak, “Mr Delvile,” she cried, in a hurrying manner, “why will you come? Why will you thus insist upon seeing me, in defiance of every obstacle, and in contempt of my prohibition?”

      “Good heavens,” cried he, amazed, “whence this reproach? Did you not permit me to wait upon you with the result of my enquiries? Had I not your consent—but why do you look thus disturbed?—Your eyes are red,—you have been weeping.—Oh my Cecilia! have I any share in your sorrow?—Those tears, which never flow weakly, tell me, have they—has one of them been shed upon my account?”

      “And what,” cried she, “has been the result of your enquiries?—Speak quick, for I wish to know,—and in another instant I must be gone.”

      “How strange,” cried the astonished Delvile, “is this language! how strange are these looks! What new has come to pass? Has any fresh calamity happened? Is there yet some evil which I do not expect?”

      “Why will you not answer first?” cried she; “when I have spoken, you will perhaps be less willing.”

      “You terrify, you shock, you amaze me! What dreadful blow awaits me? For what horror are you preparing me?—That which I have just experienced, and which tore you from me even at the foot of the altar, still remains inexplicable, still continues to be involved in darkness and mystery; for the wretch who separated us I have never been able to discover.”

      “Have you procured, then, no intelligence?”

      “No, none; though since we parted I have never rested a moment.”

      “Make, then, no further enquiry, for now all explanation would be useless. That we were parted, we know, though why we cannot tell: but that again we shall ever meet–”

      She, stopt; her streaming eyes cast upwards, and a deep sigh bursting from her heart.

      “Oh what,” cried Delvile, endeavouring to take her hand, which she hastily withdrew from him, “what does this mean? loveliest, dearest Cecilia, my betrothed, my affianced wife! why flow those tears which agony only can wring from you? Why refuse me that hand which so lately was the pledge of your faith? Am I not the same Delvile to whom so few days since you gave it? Why will you not open to him your heart? Why thus distrust his honour, and repulse his tenderness? Oh why, giving him such exquisite misery, refuse him the smallest consolation?”

      “What consolation,” cried the weeping Cecilia, “can I give? Alas! it is not, perhaps, you who most want it!—”

      Here the door was opened by one of the Miss Charltons, who came into the room with a message from her grandmother, requesting to see Cecilia. Cecilia, ashamed of being thus surprised with Delvile, and in tears, waited not either to make any excuse to him, or any answer to Miss Charlton, but instantly hurried out of the room;—not, however, to her old friend, whom now less than ever she could meet, but to her own apartment, where a very short indulgence of grief was succeeded by the severest examination of her own conduct.

      A retrospection of this sort rarely brings much subject of exultation, when made with the rigid sincerity of secret impartiality: so much stronger is our reason than our virtue, so much higher our sense of duty than our performance!

      All she had done she now repented, all she had said she disapproved; her conduct, seldom equal to her notions of right, was now infinitely below them, and the reproaches of her judgment made her forget for a while the afflictions which had misled it.

      The sorrow to which she had openly given way in the presence of Delvile, though their total separation but the moment before had been finally decreed, she considered as a weak effusion of tenderness, injurious to delicacy, and censurable by propriety. “His power over my heart,” cried she, “it were now, indeed, too late to conceal, but his power over my understanding it is time to cancel. I am not to be his,—my own voice has ratified the renunciation, and since I made it to his mother, it must never, without her consent, be invalidated. Honour, therefore, to her, and regard for myself, equally command me to fly him, till I cease to be thus affected by his sight.”

      When Delvile, therefore, sent up an entreaty that he might be again admitted into her presence, she returned for answer that she was not well, and could not see any body.

      He then left the house, and, in a few minutes, she received the following note from him.

      To Miss Beverley. You drive me from you, Cecilia, tortured with suspense, and distracted with apprehension, you drive me from you, certain of my misery, yet leaving me to bear it as I may! I would call you unfeeling, but that I saw you were unhappy; I would reproach you with tyranny, but that your eyes when you quitted me were swollen with weeping! I go, therefore, СКАЧАТЬ