The next morning, while the family was at breakfast, Belfield,
according to his promise, made his visit.
A high colour overspread his face as he entered the room, resulting
from a sensation of grief at his fallen fortune, and shame at his
altered appearance, which though he endeavoured to cover under an air
of gaiety and unconcern, gave an awkwardness to his manners, and a
visible distress to his countenance: Mr Monckton received him with
pleasure, and Cecilia, who saw the conflict of his philosophy with his
pride, dressed her features once more in smiles, which however faint
and heartless, shewed her desire to reassure him. Miss Bennet, as usual
when not called upon by the master or lady of the house, sat as a
cypher; and Lady Margaret, always disagreeable and repulsive to the
friends of her husband, though she was not now more than commonly
ungracious, struck the quick-feeling and irritable Belfield, to wear an
air of rude superiority meant to reproach him with his disgrace.
This notion, which strongly affected him, made him, for one instant,
hesitate whether he should remain another in the same room with her:
but the friendliness of Mr Monckton, and the gentleness and good
breeding of Cecilia, seemed so studious to make amends for her
moroseness, that he checked his too ready indignation, and took his
seat at the table. Yet was it some time before he could recover even
the assumed vivacity which this suspected insult had robbed him of,
sufficiently to enter into conversation with any appearance of ease or
pleasure. But, after a while, soothed by the attentions of Cecilia and
Mr Monckton, his uneasiness wore off, and the native spirit and
liveliness of his character broke forth with their accustomed energy.
“This good company, I hope,” said he, addressing himself, however, only
to Cecilia, “will not so much mistake the thing as to criticise my
dress of this morning; since it is perfectly according to rule, and to
rule established from time immemorial: but lest any of you should so
much err as to fancy shabby what is only characteristic, I must
endeavour to be beforehand with the malice of conjecture, and have the
honour to inform you, that I am enlisted in the Grub-street regiment,
of the third story, and under the tattered banner of scribbling
volunteers! a race which, if it boasts not the courage of heroes, at
least equals them in enmity. This coat, therefore, is merely the
uniform of my corps, and you will all, I hope, respect it as
emblematical of wit and erudition.”
“We must at least respect you,” said Cecilia, “who thus gaily can sport
with it.”
“Ah, madam!” said he, more seriously, “it is not from you I ought to
look for respect! I must appear to you the most unsteady and coward-hearted of beings. But lately I blushed to see you from poverty, though
more worthily employed than when I had been seen by you in affluence;
that shame vanquished, another equally narrow took its place, and
yesterday I blushed again that you detected me in a new pursuit, though
I had only quitted my former one from a conviction it was ill chosen.
There seems in human nature a worthlessness not to be conquered! yet I
will struggle with it to the last, and either die in the attempt, or
dare seem that which I am, without adding to the miseries of life, the
sting, the envenomed sting of dastardly false shame!”
“Your language is wonderfully altered within this twelvemonth,” said Mr
Monckton; “the worthlessness of human nature! the miseries of life!
this from you! so lately the champion of human nature, and the
panegyrist of human life!”
“Soured by personal disappointment,” answered he, “I may perhaps speak
with too much acrimony; yet, ultimately, my opinions have not much
changed. Happiness is given to us with more liberality than we are
willing to confess; it is judgment only that is dealt us sparingly, and
of that we have so little, that when felicity is before us, we turn to
the right or left, or when at the right or left, we proceed strait
forward. It has been so with me; I have sought it at a distance, amidst
difficulty and danger, when all that I could wish has been immediately
within my grasp.”
“It must be owned,” said Mr Monckton, “after what you have suffered
from this world you were wont to defend, there is little reason to
wonder at some change in your opinion.”
“Yet whatever have been my sufferings,” he answered, “I have generally
been involved in them by my own rashness or caprice. My last enterprise
especially, from which my expectations were highest, was the most ill-judged of any. I considered not how little my way of life had fitted me
for the experiment I was making, how irreparably I was enervated by
long sedentary habits, and how insufficient for bodily strength was
mental resolution. We may fight against partial prejudices, and by
spirit and fortitude we may overcome them; but it will not do to war
with the general tenor of education. We may blame, despise, regret as
we please, but customs long established, and habits long indulged,
assume an empire despotic, though their power is but prescriptive.
Opposing them is vain; Nature herself, when forced aside, is not more
elastic in her rebound.”
“Will you not then,” said Cecilia, “since your experiment has failed,
return again to your family, and to the plan of life you formerly
settled?”
“You speak of them together,” said he, with a smile, “as if you thought
them inseparable; and indeed my own apprehension they would be deemed
so, has made me thus fear to see my friends, since I love not
resistance, yet cannot again attempt the plan of life they would have
me pursue. I have given up my cottage, but my independence is as dear
to me as ever; and all that I have gathered from experience, is to
maintain it by those employments for which my education has fitted me,
instead of seeking it injudiciously by the very road for which it has
unqualified me.”
“And what is this independence,” cried Mr Monckton, “which has thus
bewitched your imagination? a mere idle dream of romance and
enthusiasm; without existence in nature, without possibility in life.
In uncivilised countries, or in lawless times, independence, for a
while, may perhaps stalk abroad; but in a regular government, ’tis only
the vision of a heated brain; one part of a community must inevitably
hang upon another, and ’tis a farce to call either independent, when to
break the chain by which they are linked would prove destruction to
both. The soldier wants not the officer more than the officer the
soldier, nor the tenant the landlord, more than the landlord the
tenant. The rich owe their distinction, their luxuries, to the poor, as
much as the poor owe their rewards, their necessaries, to the rich.”
“Man treated as an Automaton,” answered Belfield, “and considered
merely with respect to his bodily operations, may indeed be called
dependent, since the food by which he lives, or, rather, without which
he dies, cannot wholly be cultivated and prepared by his own hands: but
considered in a nobler sense, he deserves not the degrading epithet;
speak of him, then, as a being of feeling and understanding, with pride
to alarm, with nerves to tremble, with honour to satisfy, and with a
soul to be immortal!—as such, may he not claim the freedom of his own
thoughts? may not that claim be extended to the liberty of speaking,
and the power of being governed by them? and when thoughts, words, and
actions are exempt from controul, will you brand him with dependency
merely because the Grazier feeds his meat, and the Baker kneads his
bread?”
“But who is there in the whole world,” said Mr Monckton, “extensive as
it is, and dissimilar as are its inhabitants, that can pretend to
assert, his thoughts, words, and actions, are exempt from controul?
even where interest, which you so much disdain, interferes not,—
though where that is I confess I cannot tell!—are we not kept silent
where we wish to reprove by the fear of offending? and made speak where
we wish to be silent by the desire of obliging? do we not bow to the
scoundrel as low as to the man of honour? are we not by mere forms kept
standing when tired? made give place to those we despise? and smiles to
those we hate? or if we refuse these attentions, are we not regarded as
savages, and shut out of society?”
“All these,” answered Belfield, “are so merely matters of ceremony,
that the concession can neither cost pain to the proud, nor give
pleasure to the vain. The bow is to the coat, the attention is to the
rank, and the fear of offending ought to extend to all mankind. Homage
such as this infringes not our sincerity, since it is as much a matter
of course as the dress that we wear, and has as little reason to
flatter a man as the shadow which follows him. I no more, therefore,
hold him deceitful for not opposing this pantomimical parade, than I
hold him to be dependent for eating corn he has not sown.”
“Where, then, do you draw the line? and what is the boundary beyond
which your independence must not step?”
“I hold that man,” cried he, with energy, “to be independent, who
treats the Great as the Little, and the Little as the Great, who
neither exults in riches nor blushes in poverty, who owes no man a
groat, and who spends not a shilling he has not earned.”
“You will not, indeed, then, have a very numerous acquaintance, if this
is the description of those with whom you purpose to associate! but is
it possible you imagine you can live by such notions? why the
Carthusian in his monastery, who is at least removed from temptation,
is not mortified so severely as a man of spirit living in the world,
who would prescribe himself such rules.”
“Not merely have I prescribed,” returned Belfield, “I have already put
them in practice; and far from finding any pennance, I never before
found happiness. I have now adopted, though poor, the very plan of life
I should have elected if rich; my pleasure, therefore, is become my
business, and my business my pleasure.”
“And is this plan,” cried Monckton, “nothing more than turning Knight-errant to the Booksellers?”
“‘Tis a Knight-errantry,” answered Belfield, laughing, “which, however
ludicrous it may seem to you, requires more soul and more brains than
any other. Our giants may, indeed, be only windmills, but they must be
attacked with as much spirit, and conquered with as much bravery, as
any fort or any town, in time of war [to] be demolished; and though the
siege, I must confess, may be of less national utility, the assailants
of the quill have their honour as much at heart as the assailants of
the sword.”
“I suppose then,” said Monckton, archly, “if a man wants a biting
lampoon, or an handsome panegyric, some newspaper scandal, or a sonnet
for a lady—”
“No, no,” interrupted Belfield eagerly, “if you imagine me a hireling
scribbler for the purposes of defamation or of flattery, you as little
know my situation as my character. My subjects shall be my own, and my
satire shall be general. I would as much disdain to be personal with an
anonymous pen, as to attack an unarmed man in the dark with a dagger I
had kept concealed.”
A reply of rallying incredulity was rising to the lips of Mr Monckton,
when reading in the looks of Cecilia an entire approbation of this
sentiment, he checked his desire of ridicule, and exclaimed, “spoken
like a man of honour, and one whose works may profit the world!”
“From my earliest youth to the present hour,” continued Belfield,
“literature has been the favourite object of my pursuit, my recreation
in leisure, and my hope in employment. My propensity to it, indeed, has
been so ungovernable, that I may properly call it the source of my
several miscarriages throughout life. It was the bar to my preferment,
for it gave me a distaste to other studies; it was the cause of my
unsteadiness in all my undertakings, because to all I preferred it. It
has sunk me to distress, it has involved me in difficulties; it has
brought me to the brink of ruin by making me neglect the means of
living, yet never, till now, did I discern it might itself be my
support.”
“I am heartily glad, Sir,” said Cecilia, “your various enterprizes and
struggles have at length ended in a project which promises you so much
satisfaction. But you will surely suffer your sister and your mother to
partake of it? for who is there that your prosperity will make so
happy?”
“You do them infinite honour, madam, by taking any interest in their
affairs; but to own to you the truth, what to me appears prosperity,
will to them wear another aspect. They have looked forward to my
elevation with expectations the most improbable, and thought everything
within my grasp, with a simplicity incredible. But though their hopes
were absurd, I am pained by their disappointment, and I have not
courage to meet their tears, which I am sure will not be spared when
they see me.”
“‘Tis from tenderness, then,” said Cecilia, half smiling, “that you are
cruel, and from affection to your friends that you make them believe
you have forgotten them?”
There was a delicacy in this reproach exactly suited to work upon
Belfield, who feeling it with quickness, started up, and cried, “I
believe I am wrong!—I will go to them this moment!”
Cecilia felt eager to second the generous impulse; but Mr Monckton,
laughing at his impetuosity, insisted he should first finish his
breakfast.
“Your friends,” said Cecilia, “can have no mortification so hard to
bear as your voluntary absence; and if they see but that you are happy,
they will soon be reconciled to whatever situation you may chuse.”
“Happy!” repeated he, with animation, “Oh I am in Paradise! I am come
from a region in the first rude state of nature, to civilization and
refinement! the life I led at the cottage was the life of a savage; no
intercourse with society, no consolation from books; my mind locked up,
every source dried of intellectual delight, and no enjoyment in my
power but from sleep and from food. Weary of an existence which thus
levelled me with a brute, I grew ashamed of the approximation, and
listening to the remonstrance of my understanding, I gave up the
precipitate plan, to pursue one more consonant to reason. I came to
town, hired a room, and sent for pen, ink and paper: what I have
written are trifles, but the Bookseller has not rejected them. I was
settled, therefore, in a moment, and comparing my new occupation with
that I had just quitted, I seemed exalted on the sudden from a mere
creature of instinct, to a rational and intelligent being. But when
first I opened a book, after so long an abstinence from all mental
nourishment,—Oh it was rapture! no half-famished beggar regaled
suddenly with food, ever seized on his repast with more hungry
avidity.”
“Let fortune turn which way it will,” cried Monckton, “you may defy all
its malice, while possessed of a spirit of enjoyment which nothing can
subdue!”
“But were you not, Sir,” said Cecilia, “as great an enthusiast the
other day for your cottage, and for labour?”
“I was, madam; but there my philosophy was erroneous: in my ardour to
fly from meanness and from dependence, I thought in labour and
retirement I should find freedom and happiness; but I forgot that my
body was not seasoned for such work, and considered not that a mind
which had once been opened by knowledge, could ill endure the
contraction of dark and perpetual ignorance. The approach, however, of
winter, brought me acquainted with my mistake. It grew cold, it grew
bleak; little guarded against the inclemency of the ——, I felt its
severity in every limb, and missed a thousand indulgencies which in
possession I had never valued. To rise at break of day, chill,
freezing, and comfortless! no sun abroad, no fire at home! to go out in
all weather to work, that work rough, coarse, and laborious!—unused
to such hardships, I found I could not bear them, and, however
unwillingly, was compelled to relinquish the attempt.”
Breakfast now being over, he again arose to take leave.
“You are going, then, Sir,” said Cecilia, “immediately to your
friends?”
“No, madam,” answered he hesitating, “not just this moment; to-morrow
morning perhaps,—but it is now late, and I have business for the rest
of the day.”
“Ah, Mr Monckton!” cried Cecilia, “what mischief have you done by
occasioning this delay!”
“This goodness, madam,” said Belfield, “my sister can never
sufficiently acknowledge. But I will own, that though, just now, in a
warm moment, I felt eager to present myself to her and my mother, I
rather wish, now I am cooler, to be saved the pain of telling them in
person my situation. I mean, therefore, first to write to them.”
“You will not fail, then, to see them to-morrow?”
“Certainly—I think not.”
“Nay, but certainly you must not, for I shall call upon them to-day,
and assure them they may expect you. Can I soften your task of writing
by giving them any message from you?”
“Ah, madam, have a care!” cried he; “this condescension to a poor
author may be more dangerous than you have any suspicion! and before
you have power to help yourself, you may see your name prefixed to the
Dedication of some trumpery pamphlet!”
“I will run,” cried she, “all risks; remember, therefore, you will be
responsible for the performance of my promise.”
“I will be sure,” answered he, “not to forget what reflects so much
honour upon myself.”
Cecilia was satisfied by this assent, and he then went away.
“A strange flighty character!” cried Mr Monckton, “yet of uncommon
capacity, and full of genius. Were he less imaginative, wild and
eccentric, he has abilities for any station, and might fix and
distinguish himself almost where-ever he pleased.”
“I knew not,” said Cecilia, “the full worth of steadiness and prudence
till I knew this young man; for he has every thing else; talents the
most striking, a love of virtue the most elevated, and manners the most
pleasing; yet wanting steadiness and prudence, he can neither act with
consistency nor prosper with continuance.”
“He is well enough,” said Lady Margaret, who had heard the whole
argument in sullen taciturnity, “he is well enough, I say; and there
comes no good from young women’s being so difficult.”
Cecilia, offended by a speech which implied a rude desire to dispose of
her, went up stairs to her own room; and Mr Monckton, always enraged
when young men and Cecilia were alluded to in the same sentence,
retired to his library.
She then ordered a chair, and went to Portland-street, to fulfil what
she had offered to Belfield, and to revive his mother and sister by the
pleasure of the promised interview.
She found them together: and her intelligence being of equal
consequence to both, she did not now repine at the presence of Mrs
Belfield. She made her communication with the most cautious attention
to their characters, softening the ill she had to relate with respect
to Belfield’s present way of living, by endeavouring to awaken
affection and joy from the prospect of the approaching meeting. She
counselled them as much as possible to restrain their chagrin at his
misfortunes, which he would but construe into reproach of his ill
management; and she represented that when once he was restored to his
family, he might almost imperceptibly be led into some less wild and
more profitable scheme of business.
When she had told all she thought proper to relate, kindly
interspersing her account with the best advice and best comfort she
could suggest, she made an end of her visit; for the affliction of Mrs
Belfield upon hearing the actual situation of her son, was so clamorous
and unappeaseable, that, little wondering at Belfield’s want of courage
to encounter it, and having no opportunity in such a storm to console
the soft Henrietta, whose tears flowed abundantly that her brother
should thus be fallen, she only promised before she left town to see
her again, and beseeching Mrs Belfield to moderate her concern, was
glad to leave the house, where her presence had no power to quiet their
distress.
She passed the rest of the day in sad reflections upon the meeting she
was herself to have the next morning with Mr Delvile. She wished
ardently to know whether his son was gone abroad, and whether Mrs
Delvile was recovered, whose health, in her own letter, was mentioned
in terms the most melancholy: yet neither of these enquiries could she
even think of making, since reasonably, without them, apprehensive of
some reproach.
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