September 25
I have sent the remains of my venerable parent down to Sidney-Castle, there to be interred with her ancestors. I wrote my brother an account of her death on the day it happened, but have as yet received no answer. Unnatural son! but I will not reproach him; some accident might have prevented his writing immediately on the receipt of my letter. He never intirely forsook the duty he owed his mother, but he has of late been quite estranged from us; his wife, vain, weak and imperious, governs him totally. I must now begin to look about me for a place of abode suited to my present circumstances. My whole income would not pay more than half the rent of these lodgings in which I have lived with my dear mother. My poor Patty! I am grieved for her. I begged of her to seek another mistress, who might be able to reward her merit, and provide for her as she deserves; but the worthy affectionate girl told me, it would break her heart, if I talked of parting with her. You must have a servant of some sort, Madam, said she, why may not I do as well as another? If I were able to make you a proper return, Patty, said I, you should not leave me; but I cannot afford to pay a servant of your abilities as you deserve; and I must be my own maid for the future. Never, never, Madam, cried the honest creature, bursting into tears, while I have hands to serve you. Let me but attend on you, and the two dear children; I desire nothing.—I want nothing. Your goodness has all along supplied me so, that I am sure I have clothes enough to serve me during my life; and if I could not put up with the same humble way of living that my mistress does, sure I should be a presumptuous wretch! My tears thanked the grateful girl; and taking her by the hand, I told her, that I would not talk of parting for the present, but when any thing worth her acceptance offered, I should then insist on her embracing it.
I am determined to retire to some village at a distance from London, and either to take a little cottage to myself, or board with my children at some farm-house, as I shall find most convenient. Fifty pounds a year will be but a slender support for three persons brought up in affluence. My little ones indeed will not now be sensible of the change, and by the time they are grown up, they will be so inured to their homely board, that they will not, I hope, aspire after what cannot consistently (perhaps,) with virtue, lie within their reach.
October 27
After paying the expences of my mother’s funeral, discharging our lodgings, and some other demands, I find my purse will be so extremely reduced, that I shall have but barely enough to keep out want, till my small income becomes due to me. I must therefore, for the present, defer putting my scheme into execution, as I am not qualified to undertake a journey with my little family; especially as I am as yet uncertain what place to fix on for my residence; neither will I afford my brother (though I have no reason to expect any thing from him), a farther pretence for reproaching me, by giving him room to say, I left London without consulting him, or waiting for his return to it. I shall therefore look out a lodging of a small price, where I will conceal myself from every body that knows me, and wait for Sir George’s arrival.
October 28
How happy you make me, my ever dear friend, by your approbation of my conduct; since my receiving your last packet, which came into my hand late last night, I am better reconciled to my present lot than I was before I heard from you. I could not do otherwise, you say, after my solemn promise given to Miss Burchell, than use my utmost endeavours to promote her marriage with Mr Faulkland. True; I could not: but I wish you had entered more into my sentiments, in regard to those punctilios, which, you tell me, you think might have been got over, if that young woman had been out of the question. I could not help smiling at your wish, unchristian as it was; but my dear, if that were to happen, do you think Mr Faulkland so void of reason, nay of feeling, as after all that has past to persevere? Or if he did, that I could be so mean as to owe the very bread that I and my children should eat, to his generosity? Would you, my Cecilia, wish to see your friend so humbled? ’Tis not in the power even of the cold, hard hand of poverty itself, to dash me so low as that would do. But where is the need of forming resolutions, or even making declarations about what never can happen? I see notwithstanding, that you think my heart has again done itself some violence: You know that heart too well for me to attempt to hide from you its secret workings. I own to you honestly I now feel my own unhappiness in its full extent. I look back, and take a survey of the past, and cannot help thinking that I have had the most wayward fate allotted me that ever woman had.
Disappointment in a first love, has, I think been ever accounted a grief scarce surmountable even by time: but this can only be the case, where the heart, extremely vulnerable by nature (like Miss Burchell’s) suffers itself to be so entirely immersed in that passion, that all other duties of life are swallowed up in it; and where an indolent turn of mind, a want of rational avocations, and perhaps of a new object, all contribute to indulge and confirm the disease. This you know was not my case. I loved, ’tis true; but it was with temperance; and though my disappointment afflicted me, it did not subdue me. I got the better of it, I think I got the better of it even before I married; but sure I am, I totally conquered all remembrance of it after I became a wife. I then laid down a new scheme of happiness, and was for a time in possession of it; how I was thrown from this is still bitter to remembrance. You well know what I suffered, when I found myself deprived of my husband’s love, and suspected of a crime at which my soul shrunk. But it pleased the just God to deliver me from this heavy misfortune, and I think the happiest days of my marriage were those which I passed with Mr Arnold after our reunion. Then it was, I was thoroughly sensible that the heart can love a second time, truly and ardently; but I was soon again plunged into affliction by the death of a husband endeared to me more than ever by his misfortunes. My grief for him was proportionate to my love. Yet, my friend, as time is an universal conqueror, it might have healed this wound as well as the former one; and a few, a very few years would perhaps have disposed me to return Mr Faulkland’s still unabated passion, if a variety of circumstances had not interposed, that strongly forbad our union. Convinced as I was of this, I acted agreeably to the dictates both of my reason, and my conscience, in persuading Mr Faulkland to make Miss Burchell his wife. I should have been grieved and mortified had he rejected her, and I had determined never to have seen him more. Yet how deceitful is the human heart! this very act which I laboured with so much assiduity to accomplish, and on the accomplishment of which, I had founded, I know not how, a sort of contentment for myself, has been the very means of destroying what little peace of mind I was beginning to taste before. Sure that man was born to torment me in a variety of ways! If I was disappointed in my early love, I had however duty, and a consciousness of what I then thought superior worth, to support me. If on his account I suffered cruel and injurious aspersions, the innocence of my own self-acquitted heart bore me up under it: but he has at length found the way to punish me without leaving me any resource. My pride is of no use, he has raised himself in my esteem superior to every thing! His whole behaviour so generous, so candid; a love so disinterested, so fervent; what noble, what uncommon proofs has he given me of it! and at length what a triumphant sacrifice has he made of that overruling passion, to the sober calls of reason and humanity! He has left me, my dear, to gaze after him with grateful admiration! and sometimes perhaps to sigh that our fates rendered it impossible for us to meet. But if I do sometimes sigh, it is not at the advantages of fortune, which I might have enjoyed with him; no, no, surrounded as I am with distress, I do not envy Miss Burchell’s affluence or splendor. If that motive could have had weight with me, I might have been mean enough not to have acted as I have done. ’Tis the qualities of the man’s mind I esteem; I think our souls have something congenial in them, and that we were originally designed for each other. And if I believed the doctrine which teaches us that there are little officious spirits that preside over the actions of men, I should think that our two evil geniuses laid their heads together in conjunction with Miss Burchell’s active demon, to thwart and cross all our measures.
I have nothing now left but to pray for the happiness of one whose lot in this life he has suffered me to determine; and to beseech Heaven that he may never stand in that fatal predicament which Sir George, with such outrageous barbarity, marked out in his vile letter.
I now return to myself, and to my present state; which I think I may say brings up the rear of my misfortunes. Let the chastisement stop here, and I shall bow me to it with resignation.