Great was her astonishment at this note! no name to it, no conclusion, the characters indistinct, the writing crooked, the words so few, and those few scarce legible!
He desired to see her, and to see her alone; she could not hesitate in her compliance,--but whom could she dismiss?--her servants, if ordered away, would but be curiously upon the watch,--she could think of no expedient, she was all hurry and amazement.
She asked if any one waited for an answer? The footman said no; that the note was given in by somebody who did not speak, and who ran out of sight the moment he had delivered it.
She could not doubt this was Delvile himself,--Delvile who should now be just returned from the castle to his mother, and whom she had thought not even a letter would reach if directed any where nearer than Margate!
All she could devise in obedience to him, was to go and wait for him alone in her dressing-room, giving orders that if any one called they might be immediately brought up to her, as she expected somebody upon business, with whom she must not be interrupted.
This was extremely disagreeable to her; yet, contrary as it was to their agreement, she felt no inclination to reproach Delvile; the abruptness of his note, the evident hand-shaking with which it had been written, the strangeness of the request in a situation such as theirs,--all concurred to a.s.sure her he came not to her idly, and all led her to apprehend he came to her with evil tidings.
What they might be, she had no time to conjecture; a servant, in a few minutes, opened the dressing-room door, and said, "Ma"am, a gentleman;"
and Delvile, abruptly entering, shut it himself, in his eagerness to get rid of him.
At his sight, her prognostication of ill became stronger! she went forward to meet him, and he advanced to her smiling and in haste; but that smile did not well do its office; it concealed not a pallid countenance, in which every feature spoke horror; it disguised not an aching heart, which almost visibly throbbed with intolerable emotion!
Yet he addressed her in terms of tenderness and peace; but his tremulous voice counteracted his words, and spoke that all within was tumult and war!
Cecilia, amazed, affrighted, had no power to hasten an explanation, which, on his own part, he seemed unable, or fearful to begin. He talked to her of his happiness in again seeing her before he left the kingdom, entreated her to write to him continually, said the same thing two and three times in a breath, began with one subject, and seemed unconscious he wandered presently into another, and asked her questions innumerable about her health, journey, affairs, and ease of mind, without hearing from her any answer, or seeming to miss that she had none.
Cecilia grew dreadfully terrified; something strange and most alarming she was sure must have happened, but _what_, she had no means to know, nor courage, nor even words to enquire.
Delvile, at length, the first hurry of his spirits abating, became more coherent and considerate: and looking anxiously at her, said, "Why this silence, my Cecilia?"
"I know not!" said she, endeavouring to recover herself, "but your coming was unexpected: I was just writing to you at Margate."
"Write still, then; but direct to Ostend; I shall be quicker than the post; and I would not lose a letter--a line--a word from you, for all the world can offer me!"
"Quicker than the post?" cried Cecilia; "but how can Mrs Delvile--" she stopt; not knowing what she might venture to ask.
"She is now on the road to Margate; I hope to be there to receive her. I mean but to bid you adieu, and be gone."
Cecilia made no answer; she was more and more astonished, more and more confounded.
"You are thoughtful?" said he, with tenderness; "are you unhappy?--sweetest Cecilia! most excellent of human creatures! if I have made you unhappy--and I must!--it is inevitable!--"
"Oh Delvile!" cried she, now a.s.suming more courage, "why will you not speak to me openly?--something, I see, is wrong; may I not hear it? may I not tell you, at least, my concern that any thing has distressed you?"
"You are too good!" cried he; "to deserve you is not possible, but to afflict you is inhuman!"
"Why so?" cried she, more chearfully; "must I not share the common lot?
or expect the whole world to be new modelled, lest I should meet in it any thing but happiness?"
"There is not, indeed, much danger! Have you pen and ink here?"
She brought them to him immediately, with paper.
"You have been writing to me, you say?--I will begin a letter myself."
"To me?" cried she.
He made no answer, but took up the pen, and wrote a few words, and then, flinging it down, said, "Fool!--I could have done this without coming!"
"May I look at it?" said she; and, finding he made no opposition, advanced and read.
_I fear to alarm you by rash precipitation,--I fear to alarm you by lingering suspense,--but all is not well--_
"Fear nothing!" cried she, turning to him with the kindest earnestness; "tell me, whatever it may be!--Am I not your wife? bound by every tie divine and human to share in all your sorrows, if, unhappily, I cannot mitigate them!"
"Since you allow me," cried he, gratefully, "so sweet a claim, a claim to which all others yield, and which if you repent not giving me, will make all others nearly immaterial to me,--I will own to you that all, indeed, is not well! I have been hasty,--you will blame me; I deserve, indeed, to be blamed!--entrusted with your peace and happiness, to suffer rage, resentment, violence, to make me forego what I owed to such a deposite!--If your blame, however, stops short of repentance--but it cannot!"
"What, then," cried she with warmth, "must you have done? for there is not an action of which I believe you capable, there is not an event which I believe to be possible, that can ever make me repent belonging to you wholly!"
"Generous, condescending Cecilia!" cried he; "Words such as these, hung there not upon me an evil the most depressing, would be almost more than I could bear--would make me too blest for mortality!"
"But words such as these," said she more gaily, "I might long have coquetted ere I had spoken, had you not drawn them from me by this alarm. Take, therefore, the good with the ill, and remember, if all does not go right, you have now a trusty friend, as willing to be the partner of your serious as your happiest hours."
"Shew but as much firmness as you have shewn sweetness," cried he, "and I will fear to tell you nothing."
She reiterated her a.s.surances; they then both sat down, and he began his account.
"Immediately from your lodgings I went where I had ordered a chaise, and stopped only to change horses till I reached Delvile Castle. My father saw me with surprise, and received me with coldness. I was compelled by my situation to be abrupt, and told him I came, before I accompanied my mother abroad, to make him acquainted with an affair which I thought myself bound in duty and respect to suffer no one to communicate to him but myself. He then sternly interrupted me, and declared in high terms, that if this affair concerned _you_, he would not listen to it. I attempted to remonstrate upon this injustice, when he pa.s.sionately broke forth into new and horrible charges against you, affirming that he had them from authority as indisputable as ocular demonstration. I was then certain of some foul play."--
"Foul play indeed!" cried Cecilia, who now knew but too well by whom she had been injured. "Good heaven, how have I been deceived, where most I have trusted!"
"I told him," continued Delvile, "some gross imposition had been practiced upon him, and earnestly conjured him no longer to conceal from me by whom. This, unfortunately, encreased his rage; imposition, he said, was not so easily played upon him, he left that for _me_ who so readily was duped; while for himself, he had only given credit to a man of much consideration in Suffolk, who had known you from a child, who had solemnly a.s.sured him he had repeatedly endeavoured to reclaim you, who had rescued you from the hands of Jews at his own hazard and loss, and who actually shewed him bonds acknowledging immense debts, which were signed with your own hand."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Cecilia, "I believed not such guilt and perfidy possible!"
"I was scarce myself," resumed Delvile, "while I heard him: I demanded even with fierceness his author, whom I scrupled not to execrate as he deserved; he coldly answered he was bound by an oath never to reveal him, nor should he repay his honourable attention to his family by a breach of his own word, were it even less formally engaged. I then lost all patience; to mention honour, I cried, was a farce, where such infamous calumnies were listened to;--but let me not shock you unnecessarily, you may readily conjecture what pa.s.sed."
"Ah me!" cried Cecilia, "you have then quarrelled with your father!"
"I have!" said he; "nor does he yet know I am married: in so much wrath there was no room for narration; I only pledged myself by all I held sacred, never to rest till I had cleared your fame, by the detection of this villainy, and then left him without further explanation."
"Oh return, then, to him directly!" cried Cecilia, "he is your father, you are bound to bear with his displeasure;--alas! had you never known me, you had never incurred it!"
"Believe me," he answered, "I am ill at ease under it: if you wish it, when you have heard me, I will go to him immediately; if not, I will write, and you shall yourself dictate what."
Cecilia thanked him, and begged he would continue his account.
"My first step, when I left the Castle, was to send a letter to my mother, in which I entreated her to set out as soon as possible for Margate, as I was detained from her unavoidably, and was unwilling my delay should either r.e.t.a.r.d our journey, or oblige her to travel faster.
At Margate I hoped to be as soon as herself, if not before her."
"And why," cried Cecilia, "did you not go to town as you had promised, and accompany her?"
"I had business another way. I came hither."
"Directly?"