Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan

“ How then can you persist in a cruel rejection of this lady? You own she is amiable; I am sure she has a thousand good qualities. Is her love for you, her unparalleled love, to be imputed to her as a crime? If it be one, long and bitter has been her punishment! On you it rests to recompence her sufferings. What may you not expect from a grateful heart that worships you? Such a fervent, such a faithful love (deserving as you are) you perhaps may never again meet with in woman. With her you may be happy, she will make it the study of her life to render you so. ”

“ I was not mistaken in my opinion, that he could find none worthy to succeed Mrs Arnold in his heart. He loves you still, madam; but you have declared you will never be his; he is still free; these are the circumstances that nourish my hope. My heart is in your hand; I have made you mistress of my dearest secret. Can you forgive me, madam? But you have an heroic soul! Remember, Mrs Arnold, to your generosity I now trust what is dearer to me than life. Should Mr Faulkland know, should lady Bidulph know, how I have abused their confidence, I think I could not outlive it. ”

“ What do you mean to do, my dear Mrs Arnold, said she? Do you think it is not possible, by the interposition of friends, to disabuse your unfortunate husband? For unfortunate he is, in a higher degree than yourself, as you have conscious innocence to support you. Oh madam, said I, it is in vain to think of it! Mrs Gerrarde has struck the blow effectually. Were Mr Arnold left to the workings of his own heart, he might, perhaps, relent; but that woman, like my evil genius and his, will take care to keep his suspicions alive. ”

“ I was much affected at the story of the amiable Mrs Vere. The sweet melancholy, which predominates in her countenance, shews that the spirits, when broken in the bud of youth, are hardly to be recovered. What a tyrant this lady Grimston is! I did not admire her before, but I now absolutely dislike her. What a wife and a mother has she been to a husband and a daughter, who might have constituted the happiness of a woman of a different temper! And yet she passes for a wonderful good woman, and a pattern of all those virtues of a religion, which meekness and forgiveness characterise. ”

“ I fear it will be impossible for my brother to overtake him—He will be lost forever—what then will be my portion? Happy had it been for me indeed, as my dear mother once said in the bitterness of her heart, that I had died in my cradle! Tuesday-night twelve o’clock Heaven be praised, they are returned! All returned; Mr Faulkland has been prevailed on to come back, Mr Warner has prevailed on him. He has saved his life; but, my Cecilia, thy friend’s temporal happiness, and peace of mind, is the only price that could ransom this desperate self-devoted victim! ”

“ You know my sentiments, you know your brother’s, and it rests on you to pronounce sentence of life or death (for your answer imports no less) on a man who is worthy of the greatest queen in the universe. What do you say, Mrs Arnold, must Faulkland die?
Heaven forbid, cried I, no, Sir; I should be inflexible indeed, if, after what you have told me, I were any longer to resist. I yield, Sir, to your request, to Mr Faulkland’s, and to my brother’s; and I will own at the same time that my heart strongly impels me to consent. ”

“ No, my sordid brother! if I could recompence Mr Faulkland as he deserves at my hands, I would do it; but, with such a mind as I bear, it cannot be done your way. I say nothing of the promise I made Miss Burchell; if I had never made her such, my sentiments would be the same from those other considerations; but such a promise, binding as it is, determined my conduct beyond the possibility of a doubt.
How unreasonable are Sir George’s prejudices with regard to this unhappy young creature! He is for ever throwing out some invective against her. ”

“ Poor Mrs Vere! that is the name of Lady Grimston’s daughter. I can now give you the cause of her mother’s coldness to her; I had it from herself; she told me her little history this evening in the garden, with a frankness that charmed me.
How happy you are, dear Miss Bidulph, said she! you seem to be blessed with one of the tenderest of parents. I am indeed, I answered; she is one of the best of mothers, and the best of women. She sighed, and a tear started into her eye; I too was happy once, said she, when my indulgent father lived. ”

“ But I will not call myself poor while I have an upright heart to support me; and the means, poor and despicable as they are, of sustaining life. But what do I call despicable? Have I not an estate, my dear, a whole fifty pounds a year, that I can call my own? This much was reserved to me out of my jointure when the rest was sold; and on this, whenever it pleases heaven to take my mother away, will I retire to some cottage in a cheap country, where my two children and I will live, and smile at the rich and the great. ”

“ Ah, my Cecilia, what is that morrow to produce? it joins me for ever to Mr Faulkland! the chosen of my heart, my first love! the man who adores me; who deserves all my affection, who has obliged me beyond all recompence. Who has a claim to my warmest gratitude, to my esteem, to my whole heart. I save his life, I have the power to make him happy; my brother, my kinsman urge me; my own heart too prompts me. ”

“ Will no latent sparks of former unkindness ever rekindle and light up the fire of discord? How unwillingly do we repair the unprovoked injuries which we find we have done to others! Poor Mr Arnold; if I am so happy as to have my innocence cleared to him, how miserable will his own reflections make him! but if he is convinced (which has been my daily and hourly prayers) , he shall not be unhappy, if I can make him otherwise. Oh! my dear, it is the wish, the ardent longing of my soul, to recover the esteem, though I lose the love, of Mr Arnold! ”

“ To you I owe the vindicating of my suspected faith, and the being restored to the affection of my dear husband. For this goodness I have never ceased to bless and pray for you, and shall continue to do so while I live. But oh! Sir, while you have given me so much cause for gratitude and esteem, why will you leave one heart to sigh for your unkindness? a heart that admires, that loves, that adores you! a heart worthy of your acceptance, and which has a right to demand all your tenderness. ”

“ What, George! I answered I, a trivial matter for a man to ruin a fine young lady, forsake her, and dare to involve an innocent creature in his crimes! Do you call this a trivial affair? If you knew the circumstances, said he, you would not view it in so disadvantageous a light. Faulkland certainly gained the affections of a young lady, though without seeking to do so; he never courted her, never attempted to please her, much less to win her heart, and least of all to ruin her virtue. I know that is an action he is not capable of committing. ”

“ I have neither friends, fortune, or country! and do you talk to me of life on such conditions? No, Bidulph, it is a burden of which I will rid myself—Mr Warner, you are a generous man, you have an enlarged mind; may a stranger ask a favour of you?
I could have wept, continued my kinsman, to see such a frank noble fellow driven to such desperation. Command me, Sir, I replied, there is nothing I would not do to serve you.
I thank you, Sir; I have a little son; let me recommend the unhappy orphan to your protection. He will soon want a father: will you be one to him, Sir? ”

“ Oh, my dear, these are the stings of poverty! It is not the hard bed, nor the homely board, but the oppressive insolence of proud prosperity; ’tis that only which can inflict a wound on the ingenuous mind.
As for that mean woman, I despise her too much to suffer myself to be obliged to her. She will endeavour to prevail on my brother. If his own heart cannot prevail on him, I disclaim her influence; I know she means not to use it in my favour; on the contrary, I make no doubt but she will endeavour to irritate Sir George gainst me by misrepresentations. ”

“ Loving you as she did, almost to distraction, she yielded you up in silent anguish to a rival; a rival superior to herself in nothing. I acknowlege, Sir, I was to have been yours, and with my own consent; but was it not also with my own consent those bonds were cancelled, by which we were to have been united? I was then convinced Miss Burchell had a prior claim; I think so still, and ever shall. Miss Burchell’s family is not mean, her fortune is considerable; her beauty and personal accomplishments inferior to none; and, but for Mr Faulkland, she had been innocent. ”

“ Mr Faulkland approached me, and with a look of gloomy despair, You are both mute, said he; Bidulph, I always thought you loved me. Mrs Arnold I hoped did not wish my death; but I am deceived in you both—I have no farther business with life—The friend I most confided in betrays me; the woman whom my soul worships, and to whom I sacrificed all my hopes of happiness, repays me with ingratitude. Why should such a wretch any longer submit to life? ”

“ My heart is not in a disposition to love—Yet again and again I repeat it, Mr Faulkland has no interest there. What he once had he has lost; but I cannot compel it to like, and unlike, and like anew at pleasure. Fain would I bring myself chearfully to conform to my mother’s will, for I have no will of my own. I never knew what it was to have one, and never shall, I believe; for I am sure I will not contend with a husband.
I have told Mrs Vere what my mother said to me; she is intirely of her mind; every body is combined against me ”

“ What excuse can you offer for being her destroyer? Dear madam, don’t use so severe an expression—Sir, I can use no other: How can you extenuate the fault, by which you merit so severe an appellation? To a lady of your rigid delicacy, madam, said he, perhaps what youth could offer, in extenuation of the fault, might appear but a weak plea: yet ’tis most certain, that I was surprized into the fatal error: I am under no promises, no ties, no engagements whatsoever to the lady. No ties, Sir! (interrupting him) Is your own honour no tie upon you, supposing you free from any other obligation? ”

“ You know not what you say, answered my brother; the merit of an angel could not secure the fidelity of such a heart as her’s. Her love is gross; a new object will always have charms for her. Had I been as credulous as Faulkland, I should have thought myself the idol of her soul, so lavish was she in her expressions of tenderness.
Is it not strange though, I asked, that with so loose a mind, she should have so long preserved an attachment to Mr Faulkland? for most certainly her affection to him has at least been sincere. ”

“ Destitute as I am of happiness myself, or even of a possibility of ever attaining it here, I look for no other comfort in this life, but what must arise from seeing those whom I most esteem in possession of that tranquillity of mind, which I can never hope to enjoy. If Mr Faulkland were happy, if Miss Burchell were happy, I should be less miserable. Remember, Sir, it was not this lady’s fault that you were disappointed in your former hope. She did not try, by female wiles, to engage a heart which you refused her. She used no ungenerous arts to cross your wishes. ”

“ How can a mind like yours, susceptible as it is of pity for the woes of others, condemn such a woman to perpetual sorrow? How can that generosity, which has been so active on other occasions, droop and languish where there is such a cause to call forth all its exertions?
Do, Mr Faulkland, permit pity to plead in your bosom for the dear Miss Burchell. I should urge paternal affection too; but to the voice of nature you cannot be deaf. Your sweet little son calls upon you to do him and his mother justice; the injured lady herself implores your compassion ”

“ My mother, who till now had been silent, caught the alarm. Let me intreat you, son, said she, to drop the thoughts of any violent methods with Mr Arnold. If you value your sister’s peace, or have any regard to the obedience you owe me, I insist on it, that you neither see him nor write to him, without our knowlege and consent; and if you do not promise me this, I renounce all ties of kindred or affection to you: your mother has as just a sense of the honour of her family as you can have; but it is not on so hot a head, and so weak an arm, that she depends to see it justified to the world. ”

“ That which was ever the terror of my thoughts is come upon me—Mr Arnold—Ah! my dear Cecilia! Mr Arnold is no longer the same! Coldness and indifference have at length succeeded to love, to complacency, and the fondest attention—What a change! but the cause, my dear, that remains a secret locked up in his own breast. It cannot be that a whisper, an idle rumour should affect him thus. What if he has heard that Mr Faulkland loved me once? ”

“ Her passion for Faulkland, whether real or pretended, gave a colour to her preserving that liberty, in the licentious use of which she placed her happiness: nor would she in the end have confined herself within the bounds of marriage, if an immense fortune had not sweetened the restraint.
I pray heaven it may, answered I; ’tis all we have now to trust to. You have given me an idea of a character, which I thought was not in the female world.
I own, replied Sir George, I live in perpetual fears of her relapsing into vice. A woman without principle, Sidney, is not to be relied on. ”

“ I have not a doubt remaining of Mr Arnold’s infidelity; but let me not aggravate my own griefs, nor to a vicious world justify my husband’s conduct, by bringing any reproach on my own. The silent sufferings of the injured, must, to a mind not ungenerous, be a sharper rebuke than it is in the power of language to inflict.
But this is not all: I must endeavour, if possible, to skreen Mr Arnold from censure. I hope his own imprudence may not render these endeavours ineffectual. I am resolved not to drop my acquaintance with Mrs Gerrarde. ”

“ Stay Mr Faulkland, said I, again laying hold of his hand, and I here swear to you by every thing that is sacred, that if you will suffer me to conduct you back into Mrs Arnold’s presence, I will insist on her immediately accepting of you for her husband, or I will for ever renounce all friendship with her: I know she esteems and values you above all men, I am therefore sure, I do no violence to her inclinations; and if she perseveres in her obstinate punctilios, I swear to you by the same oath, that I will no longer oppose you in your resolutions, let them be what they will. ”