The Adventures of David Simple (1904)/Chapter 24
CHAPTER III
a short chapter, but which contains surprising matter
The next conversation David had with Camilla, after some observations on her own story, he was naturally led into a discourse on Cynthia. The moment Camilla heard her name (from a suspicion that she was her former companion) she showed the utmost eagerness in her inquiries concerning her, which opened David's eyes, and he immediately fancied she was the person whom Cynthia had mentioned in so advantageous a light. This, considering what he then felt for Camilla, gave him a pleasure much easier felt than described; and which can only be imagined by those people who know what it is to have a passion, and yet cannot be easy unless the object of it deserves their esteem.
David was too much concerned, while Camilla was telling her own story, with the part she herself bore in it, to observe what she said of any other person, and overlooked the circumstance of her friend's going abroad with a lady of fashion, who had taken a fancy to her; but now they were both soon convinced that she was the very person whom Camilla had been so fond of.
David therefore related to her Cynthia's story; the distresses of which moved Camilla in such a manner, she could not refrain from weeping. David was melted into tenderness at the sight of her tears; and yet inwardly rejoiced at the thoughts of her being capable of shedding them on so just an occasion. He then said, he thought it would be proper to acquaint Valentine with the hopes she had of seeing her friend again. Camilla, with a sigh, replied, she never concealed anything from her brother which gave her pleasure. This sigh, he thought, arose from reflecting on Cynthia's misfortunes; but in reality something that more nearly concerned her was at the bottom of it. For she remembered enough of Valentine's behaviour to Cynthia before she went abroad, to be well assured he could not hear of any probability of seeing her again without great perturbation of mind: however, the next time they met, she by degrees opened to him what David had told her. But the paleness of his countenance, and the anxiety which appeared in his looks, while she was speaking, cannot be expressed. David, who, from his own goodness of heart, required the strongest proofs to convince him of any ill in another, from the same goodness easily perceived all the emotions which arise in the mind from tenderness; and consequently was not long in suspense at Valentine's extraordinary behaviour on this occasion.
Camilla had acted with great honour; for although she had told David, as her benefactor and friend, the whole history of her own life, she had said no more of her brother than what was necessary; thinking she had no right, on any account, to discover his secrets, unless by his permission.
Valentine, after several changes of countenance, and being in such a situation he could not utter his words, at last recovered himself enough to beg David to tell him all he knew of Cynthia, which he generously complied with, even so far as to inform him of her adventure with my Lord ———, and her refusal of himself; but as I think it equally as unnecessary as it is difficult to attempt any description of what Valentine felt during David's narration, I shall leave that to my reader's own imagination.
The result of this conversation was, Valentine's earnest request to his sister immediately to write to Cynthia: she knew where Cynthia's cousin lived; and as she was perfectly a stranger to the refusing her brother anything he desired, it was no sooner asked than complied with; but when David, Valentine, and Camilla separated that night to go to bed, various were their reflections, various were their situations. Camilla's mind was on the rack at the consideration that David had offered himself to Cynthia; he was pleasing himself with the thoughts of the other's refusing him, since he was now acquainted with Camilla; and Valentine spent the whole night in being tossed about between hopes and fears. Cynthia's refusal of my Lord ——— and David, sometimes gave him the utmost pleasure, in flattering his hopes that he might be the cause of it; but the higher his joy was raised on this account, the greater was his torment when he feared some man she had met with since he saw her might possess her heart. In short, the great earnestness with which he wished to be remembered by her, made him but the more diffident in believing he was so; and his pains and pleasures were increased or lessened every moment by his own imagination, as much as objects are to the natural eye, by alternately looking through a magnifying glass and the other end of the perspective. But here I must leave him to his own reflections, to look after the object of them, and see what became of Cynthia since her leaving David.
On her arrival in the country, where she proposed to herself the enjoying a pleasure in seeing her old acquaintance, and a little to recruit her sunk spirits, after all the uneasiness she had suffered; the first news she heard was, that her cousin had been buried a week, having lost her mother half a year before. However, she went to the house where she had lived. Here she was informed that the young woman had left all the little she was worth, amounting to the sum of thirty pounds a year, to a cousin of hers, who was gone abroad with a woman of fashion. Cynthia soon found by the circumstances that this cousin was herself. This, instead of lessening, increased her affliction for her death; for the consideration that neither time nor absence could drive from the poor young creature's memory the small kindnesses she had received from her formerly, made the good-natured Cynthia but the more sensible of her loss.
She could bear the house no longer than was just necessary to settle her affairs, and then took a place in the stage coach, with a resolution of returning to London; being like people in a burning fever, who, from finding themselves continually uneasy, are in hopes by every change of place to find relief.