Mrs. Tyrold entreated Camilla might be spared further conversation. Eugenia had already glided back to her chamber, and begged, this one solacing interview over, to be dispensed with from joining the family at present; Camilla was removed also to her chamber; and the tender Mother divided her time and her cares between these two recovered treasures of her fondest affection.
CHAPTER XIII
Questions and Answers
Mr. Tyrold did not return till the next day from Belfont, where, through the account he gave from his Daughter, the violent exit of the miserable Bellamy was brought in accidental death. Various circumstances had now acquainted him with the history of that wretched man, who was the younger son of the master of a great gaming-house. In his first youth, he had been utterly neglected, and left to run wild whither he chose; but his father afterwards becoming very rich, had bestowed upon him as good an education as the late period at which it was begun could allow. He was intended for a lucrative business; but he had no application, and could retain no post: he went into the army; but he had no courage, and was speedily cashiered. Inheriting a passion for the means by which the parental fortune had been raised, he devoted himself next to its pursuit, and won very largely. But as extravagance and good luck, by long custom, go hand in hand, he spent as fast as he acquired; and upon a tide of fortune in his disfavour, was tempted to reverse the chances by unfair play, was found out, and as ignominiously chaced from the field of hazard as from that of patriotism. His father was no more; his eldest brother would not assist him; he sold therefore his house, and all he possessed but his wardrobe, and, relying upon a very uncommonly handsome face and person, determined to seek a fairer lot, by eloping, if possible, with some heiress. He thought it, however, prudent not only to retire from London, but to make a little change in his name, which from Nicholas Gwigg he refined into Alphonso Bellamy. He began his career by a tour into Wales; where he insinuated himself into the acquaintance of Mrs. Ecton, just after she had married Miss Melmond to Mr. Berlinton: and though this was not an intercourse that could travel to Gretna Green, the beauty and romantic turn of the bride of so disproportioned a marriage, opened to his unprincipled mind a scheme yet more flagitious. Fortunately, however, for his fair destined prey, soon after the connexion was formed, she left Wales; and the search of new adventures carried him, by various chances, into Hampshire. But he had established with her, a correspondence, and when he had caught, or rather forced, an heiress into legal snares, the discovery of who and what he was, became less important, and he ventured again to town, and renewed his heinous plan, as well as his inveterate early habits; till surprised by some unpleasant recollectors, debts of honour, which he had found it convenient to elude upon leaving the Capital, were claimed, and he found it impossible to appear without satisfying such demands. Thence his cruel and inordinate persecution of his unhappy wife for money; and thence, ultimately, the brief vengeance which had reverberated upon his own head.
Camilla, whose danger was the result of self-neglect, as her sufferings had all flowed from mental anguish, was already able to go down to the study upon the arrival of Mr. Tyrold: where she received, with grateful rapture, the tender blessings which welcomed her to the paternal arms—to her home—to peace—to safety—and primæval joy.
Mr. Tyrold, sparing to her yet weak nerves any immediate explanations upon the past, called upon his wife to aid him to communicate, in the quietest manner, what had been done at Belfont to Eugenia; charging Camilla to take no part in a scene inevitably shocking.
Once more in the appropriate apartment of her Father, where all her earliest scenes of gayest felicity had passed, but which, of late, she had only approached with terrour, only entered to weep, she experienced a delight almost awful in the renovation of her pristine confidence, and fearless ease. She took from her pocket—where alone she could ever bear to keep it—her loved locket, delighting to attribute to it this restoration to domestic enjoyment; though feeling at the same time, a renewal of suspence from the return of its donor, and from the affecting interview into which she had been surprised, that broke in upon even her filial happiness, with bitter, tyrannical regret. Yet she pressed to her bosom the cherished symbol of first regard, and was holding it to her lips, when Mrs. Tyrold, unexpectedly, re-entered the room.
In extreme confusion, she shut it into its shagreen case, and was going to restore it to her pocket; but infolding it, with her daughter's hand, between each of her own, Mrs. Tyrold said, 'Shall I ever, my dear girl, learn the history of this locket?'