Cecilia; Or Memoirs of an Heiress — Volume 1, Page 2

  CHAPTER i

  A JOURNEY.

  "Peace to the spirits of my honoured parents, respected be theirremains, and immortalized their virtues! may time, while it moulderstheir frail relicks to dust, commit to tradition the record of theirgoodness; and Oh, may their orphan-descendant be influenced through lifeby the remembrance of their purity, and be solaced in death, that by herit was unsullied!"

  Such was the secret prayer with which the only survivor of the Beverleyfamily quitted the abode of her youth, and residence of her forefathers;while tears of recollecting sorrow filled her eyes, and obstructed thelast view of her native town which had excited them.

  Cecilia, this fair traveller, had lately entered into theone-and-twentieth year of her age. Her ancestors had been rich farmersin the county of Suffolk, though her father, in whom a spirit ofelegance had supplanted the rapacity of wealth, had spent his time as aprivate country gentleman, satisfied, without increasing his store, tolive upon what he inherited from the labours of his predecessors. Shehad lost him in her early youth, and her mother had not long survivedhim. They had bequeathed to her 10,000 pounds, and consigned her to thecare of the Dean of ------, her uncle. With this gentleman, in whom,by various contingencies, the accumulated possessions of a rising andprosperous family were centred, she had passed the last four years ofher life; and a few weeks only had yet elapsed since his death, which,by depriving her of her last relation, made her heiress to an estate of3000 pounds per annum; with no other restriction than that of annexingher name, if she married, to the disposal of her hand and her riches.

  But though thus largely indebted to fortune, to nature she had yetgreater obligations: her form was elegant, her heart was liberal; hercountenance announced the intelligence of her mind, her complexionvaried with every emotion of her soul, and her eyes, the heralds ofher speech, now beamed with understanding and now glistened withsensibility.

  For the short period of her minority, the management of her fortuneand the care of her person, had by the Dean been entrusted to threeguardians, among whom her own choice was to settle her residence: buther mind, saddened by the loss of all her natural friends, coveted toregain its serenity in the quietness of the country, and in the bosomof an aged and maternal counsellor, whom she loved as her mother, and towhom she had been known from her childhood.

  The Deanery, indeed, she was obliged to relinquish, a long repiningexpectant being eager, by entering it, to bequeath to another theanxiety and suspense he had suffered himself; though probably withoutmuch impatience to shorten their duration in favour of the nextsuccessor; but the house of Mrs Charlton, her benevolent friend,was open for her reception, and the alleviating tenderness of herconversation took from her all wish of changing it.

  Here she had dwelt since the interment of her uncle; and here, from theaffectionate gratitude of her disposition, she had perhaps been contentto dwell till her own, had not her guardians interfered to remove her.

  Reluctantly she complied; she quitted her early companions, the friendshe most revered, and the spot which contained the relicks of all shehad yet lived to lament; and, accompanied by one of her guardians, andattended by two servants, she began her journey from Bury to London.

  Mr Harrel, this gentleman, though in the prime of his life, though gay,fashionable and splendid, had been appointed by her uncle to be one ofher trustees; a choice which had for object the peculiar gratificationof his niece, whose most favourite young friend Mr Harrel had married,and in whose house he therefore knew she would most wish to live.

  Whatever good-nature could dictate or politeness suggest to dispelher melancholy, Mr Harrel failed not to urge; and Cecilia, in whosedisposition sweetness was tempered with dignity, and gentleness withfortitude, suffered not his kind offices to seem ineffectual; she kissedher hand at the last glimpse a friendly hill afforded of her nativetown, and made an effort to forget the regret with which she lost sightof it. She revived her spirits by plans of future happiness, dweltupon the delight with which she should meet her young friend, and, byaccepting his consolation, amply rewarded his trouble.

  Her serenity, however, had yet another, though milder trial to undergo,since another friend was yet to be met, and another farewell was yet tobe taken.

  At the distance of seven miles from Bury resided Mr Monckton, therichest and most powerful man in that neighbourhood, at whose houseCecilia and her guardian were invited to breakfast in their journey.

  Mr Monckton, who was the younger son of a noble family, was a man ofparts, information and sagacity; to great native strength of mind headded a penetrating knowledge of the world, and to faculties the mostskilful of investigating the character of every other, a dissimulationthe most profound in concealing his own. In the bloom of his youth,impatient for wealth and ambitious of power, he had tied himself to arich dowager of quality, whose age, though sixty-seven, was but amongthe smaller species of her evil properties, her disposition beingfar more repulsive than her wrinkles. An inequality of years soconsiderable, had led him to expect that the fortune he had thusacquired, would speedily be released from the burthen with which it wasat present incumbered; but his expectations proved as vain as they weremercenary, and his lady was not more the dupe of his protestations thanhe was himself of his own purposes. Ten years he had been married toher, yet her health was good, and her faculties were unimpaired; eagerlyhe had watched for her dissolution, yet his eagerness had injured nohealth but his own! So short-sighted is selfish cunning, that in aimingno further than at the gratification of the present moment, it obscuresthe evils of the future, while it impedes the perception of integrityand honour.

  His ardour, however, to attain the blessed period of returning liberty,deprived him neither of spirit nor inclination for intermediateenjoyment; he knew the world too well to incur its censure byill-treating the woman to whom he was indebted for the rank he held init; he saw her, indeed, but seldom, yet he had the decency, alike inavoiding as in meeting her, to shew no abatement of civility and goodbreeding: but, having thus sacrificed to ambition all possibilityof happiness in domestic life, he turned his thoughts to those othermethods of procuring it, which he had so dearly purchased the power ofessaying.

  The resources of pleasure to the possessors of wealth are only to becut off by the satiety of which they are productive: a satiety which thevigorous mind of Mr Monckton had not yet suffered him to experience; histime, therefore, was either devoted to the expensive amusements of themetropolis, or spent in the country among the gayest of its diversions.

  The little knowledge of fashionable manners and of the characters of thetimes of which Cecilia was yet mistress, she had gathered at the houseof this gentleman, with whom the Dean her uncle had been intimatelyconnected: for as he preserved to the world the same appearance ofdecency he supported to his wife, he was everywhere well received, andbeing but partially known, was extremely respected: the world, withits wonted facility, repaying his circumspect attention to its laws, bysilencing the voice of censure, guarding his character from impeachment,and his name from reproach.

  Cecilia had been known to him half her life; she had been caressed inhis house as a beautiful child, and her presence was now solicited thereas an amiable acquaintance. Her visits, indeed, had by no means beenfrequent, as the ill-humour of Lady Margaret Monckton had rendered thempainful to her; yet the opportunities they had afforded her of mixingwith people of fashion, had served to prepare her for the new scenes inwhich she was soon to be a performer.

  Mr Monckton, in return, had always been a welcome guest at the Deanery;his conversation was to Cecilia a never-failing source of information,as his knowledge of life and manners enabled him to start those subjectsof which she was most ignorant; and her mind, copious for the admissionand intelligent for the arrangement of knowledge, received all new ideaswith avidity.

  Pleasure given in society, like money lent in usury, returns withinterest to those who dispense it: and the discourse of Mr Moncktonconferred not a greater favour upon Cecilia than her at
tention to itrepaid. And thus, the speaker and the hearer being mutually gratified,they had always met with complacency, and commonly parted with regret.

  This reciprocation of pleasure had, however, produced differenteffects upon their minds; the ideas of Cecilia were enlarged, while thereflections of Mr Monckton were embittered. He here saw an object who toall the advantages of that wealth he had so highly prized, added youth,beauty, and intelligence; though much her senior, he was by no meansof an age to render his addressing her an impropriety, and theentertainment she received from his conversation, persuaded him that hergood opinion might with ease be improved into a regard the most partial.He regretted the venal rapacity with which he had sacrificed himselfto a woman he abhorred, and his wishes for her final decay became dailymore fervent. He knew that the acquaintance of Cecilia was confined toa circle of which he was himself the principal ornament, that she hadrejected all the proposals of marriage which had hitherto been made toher, and, as he had sedulously watched her from her earliest years,he had reason to believe that her heart had escaped any dangerousimpression. This being her situation, he had long looked upon her as hisfuture property; as such he had indulged his admiration, and as such hehad already appropriated her estate, though he had not more vigilantlyinspected into her sentiments, than he had guarded his own from asimilar scrutiny.

  The death of the Dean her uncle had, indeed, much alarmed him; hegrieved at her leaving Suffolk, where he considered himself the firstman, alike in parts and in consequence, and he dreaded her residingin London, where he foresaw that numerous rivals, equal to himselfin talents and in riches, would speedily surround her; rivals, too,youthful and sanguine, not shackled by present ties, but at liberty tosolicit her immediate acceptance. Beauty and independence, rarelyfound together, would attract a crowd of suitors at once brilliant andassiduous; and the house of Mr Harrel was eminent for its elegance andgaiety; but yet, undaunted by danger, and confiding in his own powers,he determined to pursue the project he had formed, not fearing byaddress and perseverance to ensure its success.