No longer, however, quite so cautious, she stopt near the chamber of Sir Hugh, and convinced by the stillness it was empty, could not resist stepping into the apartment.

It looked despoiled and forsaken. Nothing was in its wonted order; his favourite guns hung not over the chimney-piece; the corners of the room were emptied of his sticks; his great chair was in a new place; no cushions for his dogs were near the fire; the bedstead was naked.

She now felt petrified; she sunk on the floor, to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e a prayer for his safety, but knew not how to rise again, for terrour; nor which way next to turn, nor what even to conjecture.

Thus she remained, till suspense grew worse than certainty, and she forced herself from the room to seek some explanation. It was possible the whole family residence might be changed to the back front of the house. She descended the stairs with almost equal apprehension of meeting any one or seeing no one. The stone pa.s.sage was now nearly dark.

It was always the first part of the house that was lighted, as its windows were small and high: but no preparations were now making for that purpose. She went to the house-keeper's room, which was at the foot of the stairs she had descended. The door was shut, and she could not open it. She tried repeatedly, but vainly, to be heard by soft taps and whisperings; no one answered.

Amazed, confounded, she turned slowly another away; not a soul was in sight, not a sound within hearing. Every thing looked desolate, all the family seemed to be vanished.

Insensibly, yet irresistibly, she now moved on towards the drawing-room.

The door was shut. She hesitated whether or not to attempt it. She listened. She hoped to catch the voice of her uncle: but all was inviolably still.

This was the only place of a.s.sembling in the evening; but her uncle might have dropt asleep, and she would not hazard startling him with her presence. She would sooner go to the hall at once, and be announced in the common way by a servant.

But what was her astonishment in coming to the hall, to find neither servant, light nor fire? and the marble pavement covered with trunks, packing mats, straw, ropes, and boxes? Terrified and astonished, she thought herself walking in her sleep. She could combine no ideas, either good or bad, to account for such a scene, and she looked at it bewildered and incredulous.

After a long hesitation, spent in wonder rather than thought, she at length determined to enter the breakfast parlour, and ring the bell: when the distant sound of a carriage, that was just entering the park, made her shut herself into the room, hastily, but silently.

It advanced rapidly; she trembled; it was surely, she thought, her Mother.

When it drove up to the portico, and she heard the house-bell ring, she instinctively barred her door; but finding no one approach to the call, while the bell was impatiently re-rung, her strong emotions of expectation were taking her again into the hall: but as her hand was upon the lock of the door, a light glimmered through the key hole. She heard some step advancing, and precipitately drew back.

The hall-door was now opened, and a man enquired for a young lady just come from Alresford.

'There's no young lady here at all,' was the answer, in the voice of Jacob.

Finding it only her own driver, she ventured out; crying 'O Jacob! where is my dear uncle?'

Jacob was, at first, incapable of all answer, through surprise at her strange appearance; but then said, 'O Miss Camilla! you'll go nigh to break your good heart when you knows it all! But how, you've got into the house is what I can't guess; but I wish, for my poor master's sake, it had been before now!'

Horrour crept through every vein of Camilla, in the explanation she awaited of this fearful mystery. She motioned to the driver to stay, returned back to the parlour, and beckoned, for she could not speak, to Jacob to follow her.

When he came, and, shutting the door, was beginning a diffuse lamentation, eagerness to avert lengthened suspense recovered her voice, and she pa.s.sionately exclaimed: 'Jacob! in two words, where is my uncle?--Is he well?'

'Why, yes, Miss Camilla, considering--' he began; but Camilla, whose fears had been fatal, interrupted him with fervent thanksgiving, till she was called back from joy by the following words:

'He's gone away Miss Camilla! gone Lord knows where! given up all his grand house-keeping, turned off almost all his poor servants, left this fine place, to have it let to whoever will hire it, and is going to live, he says, in some poor little lodging, till he can sc.r.a.pe together wherewithal to pay off every thing for your papa.'

A thunder-bolt that had instantly destroyed her, would gratefully have been received, in preference to this speech, by Camilla, who, casting up her hands and eyes, exclaimed: 'Then am I the most detestable, as well as the most wretched of human beings! My Father I have imprisoned!--my Uncle I have turned from his house and home! and for thee, O my Mother!--this is the reception I have prepared!'

Jacob tried to console her; but his account was only added torture.

The very instant he told her, that his master had received the news of the arrest of Mr. Tyrold, he determined upon this violent plan; and though the so speedy release, through the generosity of Mr. Westwyn, had exceedingly calmed his first emotions, he would not change his purpose, and protested he would never indulge himself in peace nor comfort more, till he had cleared off their joint debts; of which he attributed the whole fault to himself, from having lived up to the very verge of his yearly income, when he ought, he said, considering there were so many young people, to have always kept a few odd sums at hand for accidents.

'We all did what we could,' continued Jacob, 'to put him off from such a thing, but all to no purpose; but if you'd been here, Miss Camilla, you'd have done more with him than all of us put together: but he called Miss Lavinia and all of us up to him, and said to us, I won't have n.o.body tell this to my poor little girl, meaning you, Miss Camilla, till I've got somewhere settled and comfortable; because of her kind heart, says he.'

Tenderness so partial, at so suffering an instant, almost killed Camilla. 'O Jacob,' she cried, 'where is now my dear generous uncle? I will follow him in this chaise (rushing out as she spoke) I will be his servant, his nurse, and attend him from morning to night!'

She hurried into the carriage as she spoke, and bade him give directions to the postillion. But when she heard he was, at present, only at Etherington, whence he was seeking a new abode, her head drooped, and she burst into tears.

Jacob remained, he said, alone, to take care of all the things, and to shew the place to such as might come.

Miss Margland had been at the house about three hours ago; and had met Sir Hugh, who had come over, to give directions about what he would have packed up; and he had read a letter from Miss Indy that was, and had forgiven her; but he was sore vexed Miss Margland had come without Miss Camilla; only she said Miss Camilla was at Mrs. Bellamy's, and she did not call, because she thought it would be better to go back again, and see more about Miss Indy, and so bring Miss Camilla next time; so she wheedled his master to spare the chaise again, and let her go off directly to settle every thing to Miss Indy's mind.

Camilla now repented she had not returned to Mrs. Berlinton's, there, notwithstanding all objections, to have waited her recall; since there her parents still believed her, and thence, under the protection of Miss Margland, would in all probability summon her. To present herself, after this barbarous aggravation of the calamities she had caused, undemanded and unforgiven at Etherington, she thought impossible. She enquired if, by pa.s.sing the night at Cleves, she might have any chance of seeing her uncle the next day. Jacob answered, no; but that Mr.

Tyrold himself, with a gentleman from Winchester, who thought of hiring the house, were to be there early in the morning to take a survey of the premises.

A meeting, thus circ.u.mstanced, with her Father, at a moment when he came upon so direful a business, as parting with a place of which she had herself occasioned the desertion, seemed to her insupportable: and she resolved to return immediately to Belfont, to see there if her answer from Lavinia contained any new directions; and if not, to again go to London, and await final commands; without listening ever more to any hopes, projects, or judgments of her own.

Beseeching the worthy Jacob to pardon her non-payment, with every kind a.s.surance that her uncle should know all his goodness, she told the postillion to take her to Belfont.

He could go no further, he said, and that but a foot pace, than to Alresford. Jacob marvelled, but blessed her, and Camilla, ejaculating, 'Adieu, dear happy Cleves!' was driven out of the park.

CHAPTER VIII

_A Last Resource_

To leave thus a spot where she had experienced such felicity; to see it naked and forlorn, despoiled of its hospitality, bereft of its master,--all its faithful old servants unrewarded dismissed; in disgrace to have re-entered its pales, and in terrour to quit them;--to fly even the indulgent Father, whose tenderness had withstood every evil with which errour and imprudence could a.s.sail him, set her now all at war with herself, and gave her sensations almost maddening. She reviewed her own conduct without mercy; and though misery after misery had followed every failing, all her sufferings appeared light to her repentant sense of her criminality; for as criminal alone, she could consider what had inflicted misfortunes upon persons so exemplary.

She arrived at Alresford so late, with the return horses, that she was forced to order a room there for the night.

Though too much occupied to weigh well her lonely and improper situation, at an inn, and at such hours, she was too uneasy to go to bed, and too miserable for sleep. She sat up, without attempting to read, write, or employ herself, patrolling her chamber in mournful rumination.

Nearly as soon as it was light, she proceeded, and arrived at the house of Bellamy as the servants were opening the window-shutters.

Fearfully she asked who was at home; and hearing only their mistress, sent for Molly Mill, and enquired for the answer from Etherington; but the lad had not yet brought any. She begged her to run to the inn, to know what had detained him; and then, ordering the chaise to wait, went to her sister.

Eugenia was gently rejoiced to see her, though evidently with encreased personal unhappiness. Camilla would fain have spared her the history of the desertion of Cleves; but it was an act that in its own nature must be public; and she had no other way to account for her so speedy return.

Eugenia heard it with the most piercing affliction; and, in the fulness of her heart, from this new blow, acknowledged the rapacity of Bellamy, and the barbarity with which he now scrupled not to avow the sordid motives of his marriage; cruelly lamenting the extreme simplicity with which she had been beguiled into a belief of the sincerity and violence of his attachment. 'For myself, however,' she continued, 'I now cease to murmur. How can misfortune, personally, cut me deeper? But with pity, indeed, I think of a new victim!'

She then put into her sister's hand a written paper she had picked up the preceding evening in her room, and which, having no direction, and being in the handwriting of Mrs. Berlinton, she had thought was a former note to herself, accidentally dropt: but the first line undeceived her.

'I yield, at length, O Bellamy, to the eloquence of your friendship! on Friday,--at one o'clock, I will be there--as you appoint.'

Camilla, almost petrified, read the lines. She knew better than her sister the plan to which this was the consent; which to have been given after her representations and urgency, appeared so utterly unjustifiable, that, with equal grief and indignation, she gave up this unhappy friend as wilfully lost; and her whole heart recoiled from ever again entering her doors.

Retracing, nevertheless, her many amiable qualities, she knew not how, without further effort, to leave her to her threatening fate; and determined, at all risks, to put her into the hands of her brother, whose timely knowledge of her danger might rescue her from public exposure. She wrote therefore the following note:

'_To_ FREDERIC MELMOND, _Esq._

'Watch and save,--or you will lose your sister.

C.T.'