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Title: The contrast, Volume 1 (of 3)
Author: Marquess of Constantine Henry Phipps Normanby
Release date: May 15, 2026 [eBook #78688]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1832
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTRAST, VOLUME 1 (OF 3) ***
THE
CONTRAST,
BY THE AUTHOR OF “MATILDA,” “YES AND NO,”
&c. &c.
Take but degree away--untune that string,
And hark! what discord follows.
SHAKSPEARE.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1832.
ADVERTISEMENT.
“What’s in a name?” is a question to which, perhaps, a bookseller
would be apt to reply--“More than meets the eye.” With some suspicion
of this kind, I have hesitated much what Title to prefix to the
following pages.
I might, it is true, have been satisfied with the safe expedient of
any two or three mellifluous, though unmeaning syllables, in the
shape of a proper name; but I was anxious, if possible, rather to
explain the character than to record the family appellation of my
hero--if hero that person must be called whose failings and whose
errors occupy most of these pages.
If I had been writing in French, “L’Homme Difficile” would most
nearly have defined the character I meant to pourtray; but there is
no synonymous phrase in English. “The Fastidious Man” did not quite
please me. I am myself fastidious as to the use of the term, “the
Man,” in a title explanatory of character. “Fastidiousness” is not
euphonious, still less “Fastidiosity,” which Johnson passes current.
Under these difficulties I have left my hero to speak for himself,
without introduction; and taking what would, perhaps, at first have
been the more gallant course, I have attempted to draw the attention
of the reader to the diversity of female character arising, in great
part, from difference of situation, under the form, and with the
title, of “The Contrast.”
One word more, kind Reader, in the shape of an humble petition for
that general indulgence which no one can feel more than myself how
much I require.
THE CONTRAST.
CHAPTER I.
Will Fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach and no food
(Such are the poor in health), or else a feast
And takes away the stomach: such are the rich
That have abundance and enjoy it not.
SHAKSPEARE.
----Your servant and your friend;
One that attends your ladyship’s commands.
IBID.
She was not old, nor young, nor at the years
Which certain people call a certain age,
Which yet the most uncertain age appears.
BYRON.
In that iron age when Frenchmen marched “en masse” from Madrid to
Moscow; when Continental travelling was effected by drawing not
_bills_, but _swords_; when _cannon_, not _credit_, gave to strangers
the comforts of home in foreign lands, then were the locomotive
propensities of the peaceable portion of our countrymen necessarily
confined within the narrow limits of our sea-girt island. Impatient
at being thus temporarily dammed up, the stream of society annually
flowed outwards from the metropolis down to the extremest low-water
mark of the different bathing-places.
It was during this period, that a large party had assembled, at the
conclusion of the London season, at the hospitable mansion of Sir
North Saunders. Sir North’s father had been a great contractor in
those days when contracts were worth something; and, having realized
an immense sum in the course of the American war, he, in gratitude,
christened his son and heir after that minister, to whose persevering
profusion he owed all to which he would be heir. When the almost
unanimous voice of an indignant nation had closed the disastrous
struggle, Sir Simon Saunders (as the contractor and first baronet was
called) was, after a time, completely puzzled how to act.
During the first rapid succession of short and inconsistent
administrations, he stuck by the Treasury, with a tenacity as to
place, and versatility as to persons, worthy of that renowned vicar,
whose peculiar talents in that line have become proverbial. Yet, as
upon the permanent ascendancy of the Pitt party of that day, he found
that retrenchment and reform were the watch-words at head-quarters,
he, in disgust, threw up the whole concern, laid out some of his
previously-acquired spoil in the purchase of Hornscliff Abbey, and
retired to that beautiful retreat, thinking that, at any rate, a
country gentleman contractor was not a greater contradiction in
terms, than a patriot minister.
He was not, however, long condemned to pretend to enjoy a state
of existence so uncongenial to all his tastes and habits; and his
son and heir, Sir North, not only succeeded in full to all the
acquirements of his father’s later years, but also inherited, in all
its original freshness, that turn of mind which had in youth raised
Sir Simon from nobody.
It was not therefore to be expected that he would long bury himself
in the solitudes of Hornscliff Abbey, more especially as, coming
of age soon after the breaking out of the revolutionary war, and
having a great deal of parliamentary interest, the same minister who
had disappointed the expectations of the father, now acting upon a
different system, granted upon many occasions the utmost demands of
the son.
From this time for nearly twenty years, Sir North continued in
heart and soul nothing more nor less than a thorough-paced trading
politician; most anxious, nevertheless, to veil that character under
the reputation of a _bon vivant_, _bel esprit_, and _connoisseur_. To
these pretensions, since the last audit-day had given him a glimpse
of his beautiful property at Hornscliff, he had added an eager desire
to be thought an enthusiast in the picturesque. He had, in imitation
of some of his acquaintance, a service of china painted with views of
the romantic environs of his place: the beauties which the plates and
dishes thus displayed, were, during the season, the constant theme of
his conversation, coupled with pressing invitations to his various
acquaintance, that as his boasted property was upon the coast, they
would make Hornscliff Abbey their sojourning place during the ensuing
summer.
This many of them seemed nothing loth to do, particularly as they
ascertained that the other _artiste_, whose labours, in their
opinion, no less profitably adorned the plates and dishes, was to
continue his successful attempts to eclipse the performance of the
painter.
“What a beautiful place it must be!” said Lady Madelina Manfred to
her neighbour, young Lord Castleton, as she pensively dropped her
beautiful eyes on her plate, and continued in a sentimental tone,
“I hope that you are as passionately fond of the sea as I am. How
sublime its eternal sameness! How grand its boundless limits! Oh, I
could look on it for ever!” she added, as she completely covered the
German ocean with half a spoonful of bread sauce. “Shall we adjourn
there at the end of the season?” continued the lady, with a peculiar
emphasis on that comprehensive monosyllable _we_.
It was, indeed, to establish such an identity of interest between
her and young Lord Castleton, as would give her a common property in
the use of the first person plural, that she had been labouring all
through the season. Lady Madelina Manfred was born a fool, but had
through life cultivated that species of cunning which fools so often
display in the pursuit of an object, if they have one. The object
which she had been--I will not say for how many years, successfully
pursuing, was admiration. To be sure, nature had assisted her with a
pair of eyes which looked as if they could not but mean something,
and a voice, whose seductive tones could give a charm even to folly.
Her husband was one of those good, easy men, who seem as if only born
to give their wives a name, inasmuch as their own is never by any
chance heard after they have once accomplished that purpose. Seasons
had rolled on; and if Lady Madelina Manfred’s eye had lost some of
its brilliancy, her complexion some of its bloom, and her form some
of its freshness, there were still many who were wilfully blind to
such changes. As Lord Castleton will, in the course of these pages,
have much to say for himself, it is unnecessary to say any more for
him at present, than that he was but just nineteen; and whatever
opinion might then be entertained of the _liaison_ lately formed
between him and Lady Madelina, it was no scandal, when gossips said
that there _was a time_ when she had held him in her arms.
To the attractions of the invitation to Hornscliff Abbey, often urged
by Sir North, and so sweetly echoed by Lady Madelina, Lord Castleton
was not then in a frame of mind to be insensible, particularly as, in
addition to all other reasons for accepting it, his guardians were
very anxious that he should _not_; and he therefore longed to show
he was his own master, by putting himself completely at the disposal
of Sir North and Lady Madelina, who had both the most deliberate
designs, the one personal, the other political, upon his future
independence.
To Hornscliff Abbey, therefore, he transported himself, as soon as
he found that the waiters at the clubs monopolized the newspapers,
and sauntering hackney-coachmen elbowed him as they lounged along the
foot-pavement.
Lord Castleton was not by nature at all that sort of being which the
acquired habits of the last few months had made him appear, to all
who had never known him before. The parting jolt of his carriage
moving off the London pavement, seemed to shake from his nature much
of that affectation with which the season had encrusted it; and the
first breath of pure country air, as he cleared the last Cockney
villa, seemed to revive in their springy freshness, many of those
early feelings and tastes, which, however faded for a time, can at
nineteen hardly be irrecoverably seared and withered.
As he approached his destination, his spirit seemed to expand with
the bolder features of the mountain-scenery by which he found himself
surrounded. Though within the immediate limits of Sir North’s domain,
the effect was almost ludicrous of the attempts which had evidently
been hastily and recently made to cripple and confine the bold and
gigantic shapes which nature here displayed, in the scanty and
servile livery of a dress place. The contrasts thus produced were
quite comical. Rugged rocks were encircled by invisible railings;
cast-iron bridges swung across the wildest glens; Chinese pagodas
rose out of mountain heather; gilt wire aviaries were dotted about
in solitudes, where eagles might have stooped, or black game brooded;
and Thames wherries were moored by silken cords along the banks of
the shallow, but rapid torrent, which rushed over a rocky bed down to
the sea.
At the Abbey itself, these contradictions were more various and more
numerous, though perhaps not more striking. It requires nothing else
but an unlimited command of money to transport, in an incredibly
short space of time, all the contents of a London upholsterer’s
shop to the remotest and most uncivilized corner of the kingdom;
and due activity had been shown in attending to Sir North’s order,
that Hornscliff Abbey should, without delay, be furnished from
cellar to attic. The building itself, situated in one of those
snugly-sheltered, but romantic glens, where in former times the
monks had generally the good taste to fix, remained one of the best
preserved and most perfect specimens of the abbey-gothic style of
architecture: it was not to be expected that any furniture, thus
hastily huddled together, should be in perfect keeping with the walls
by which it was surrounded; less care was therefore taken that one
part should tally with the rest, and articles of every description
were crammed into all the rooms, with the same ill-assorted
propinquity in which they stood in the warehouses, whence they had
been removed wholesale.
But neither French paper on cedar panels, nor fragile wherries on
mountain torrents, seemed so much misplaced, as did some of the
company whom Sir North had collected to witness his installation as
a country gentleman. Many men, whose utmost previous pedestrian feat
had been daily gliding from their offices along the smooth flags of
Parliament-street to make a House, and ladies, who thought it an
exertion to step from their carriage across a broad _trottoir_ on
a morning visit, were now expected to thread tangled brakes, and to
climb over rugged rocks, in search of the picturesque.
Sir North was determined, however, to play what is called the whole
game; and the very day after the arrival of Lord Castleton, had been
fixed on for a distant excursion, to a romantic bay on the coast; the
beauties of which had been much vaunted by the Rev. Mr. Turner, the
picturesque-loving Rector of the adjoining parish; who, upon these
occasions, acted as guide, and wasted a great deal of intelligence,
taste, and enthusiasm, upon parties generally both indifferent
and ignorant; and took a considerable deal of useless trouble in
endeavouring to cultivate a mutual spirit of good-will between the
wild scenes he loved, and their present super-refined visitors, by
smoothing rugged inhospitalities on one side, and endeavouring to
cultivate a feeling of admiration on the other.
CHAPTER II.
There is a cliff whose high and beetling head
Looks fearfully in the confined deep:
Bring me to it.
SHAKSPEARE.
They were trained together in their childhood,
And there rooted between them such an
Affection as cannot choose but branch now.
IBID.
Lord Castleton, in accordance with the claim which we have seen Lady
Madelina had established to a common property with him in the use of
the monosyllable “we,” had passed the evening in hanging over the
sofa, on which she gracefully reclined, apart from the rest of the
world, within the recess of a roseate-draperied tent, into which a
ci-devant oriel window had been converted.
On the next eventful morning the ladies were to perform the
first part of the expedition in open carriages, the gentlemen on
horseback; when the road no longer admitted of such civilized modes
of conveyance, the ladies were to be transferred to donkeys, and
the men to try their pedestrian powers. Lord Castleton had escorted
Lady Madelina to her carriage, and had started, with one hand on the
barouche door, and the other promoting, through the medium of his
horse’s mouth, that sort of curveting canter which made conversation
during progress easy; but before they were even out of sight of the
abbey his attention was diverted by the oft-repeated cry, just behind
him, in his host’s voice, of “Soho! soho! quiet there!” and looking
back he caught occasional glimpses even of the highest _guérite_ of
Hornscliff, in short of the whole of poor Sir North’s _country seat_,
between his _equestrian seat_ and his saddle. The fact was that Sir
North’s stable, like his house, had been furnished wholesale and
indiscriminately; but as a _sofa_ is easier to sit than a horse, and
as Sir North’s figure and habits were much more adapted to the one
than the other, the want of proper selection was here infinitely
more inconvenient. Lord Castleton, seeing the imminent danger in
which his host was, could do no other than offer to change with him.
This proposal Sir North received without the slightest scruple,
which, considering that at the time he thought he was consigning
his young friend to the merciless power of the most terrific animal
in creation, was a conduct which nothing but an extreme case of
self-preservation could justify. Though his new rider did not find
much difficulty in managing the unruly beast, yet as Lady Madelina’s
nerves no longer allowed Lord Castleton to ride by the side of the
carriage, he was left, up to the time of quitting these vehicles,
more unoccupied than he otherwise would have been, to admire the
increasing beauty of the surrounding scenery.
A train of thoughts long neglected, and a tone of feeling of late
untouched, seemed to revive within him, under the impression of
outward objects, to which his eye had been now for some time a
stranger. The meditations into which he was thus insensibly led were
only occasionally interrupted by the bungling explanations attempted
by Sir North of the different objects they passed, as he mistook in
attempting to re-state the information he had received from the Rev.
Mr. Turner. These explanatory observations of Sir North became more
frequent, as his equanimity was by degrees revived by the confidence
he felt, after the change of steeds, in his restored safety: as he
himself technically expressed it, “His seat was now as secure as Old
Sarum.”
“Pray observe,” said Sir North, “the secluded situation of these
Druidical remains, which have withstood the changes of centuries,
there to your right.”
“The Druidical remains I showed you,” said Mr. Turner in an
under-tone, and as much in Sir North’s ear as the height of the
little white pony he was riding would enable him to reach, “are half
a mile farther to the left.”
“Pardon me, my good Sir,” said Sir North, “what is that which I see
to the right?”
“The remains of a windmill, pulled down by order of the magistrates,
for its neighbourhood to the high road,” replied the reverend
Cicerone.
This little mistake of Sir North’s rather checked the torrent of his
information, till, after passing a beautiful variety of highland
and lowland, in crossing a succession of ridges, they at length
arrived at the entrance of the rocky glen, through which they were
to wind their way down to the sea. Here they were obliged to leave
carriages and horses, as there was no longer any better road than the
timber-track by which the produce of Sir North’s woods was annually
taken to be shipped.
Lord Castleton, still in close attendance on Lady Madelina, after
smoothing many little difficulties, and soothing many affected alarms
in settling her upon her donkey, prepared to lead the animal down the
path, into the wild and romantic scene whose bold features at every
step became more striking.
He looked up on one side at the fantastic forms of the venerable
trunks whose roots had for centuries been entwined in the rocky
crags from which they grew, but whose wide-spreading branches then
luxuriated in the green vigour of a summer foliage; and he looked
down on the other at the clear unruffled surface of the brook, which
ran murmuring below them. He scented the freshness of the hitherto
untrodden fern, as his feet passed over it, and he then cast his eyes
upon the fascinating but _fané_ beauty by his side, and felt that
there was something uncongenial in visiting such a scene under the
protection of such a guardian genius, one certainly better adapted
to the artificial state in which he had been lately living than to
the freshness and nature of the present. Her personal charms, too, no
longer in their first bloom, suited better the softened light of the
shaded boudoir than the searching glance of the evening sun, to which
they were now exposed, as upon approaching the sea the wood no longer
afforded the same shelter from its rays, and against the effect of
which the utmost skill in the management of the pink parasol could
not always guard its mistress, thwarted as her efforts were by the
constant windings of the steep path by which they descended, and the
rough motions of the humble donkey on which she was mounted; and even
those graceful limbs, whose slightest movement had had its charm
when stretched with studied ease upon the luxurious sofa, were now
necessarily cramped into angles on an awkward side-saddle.
All these circumstances, though not embodied in the shape of distinct
doses towards effecting Lord Castleton’s cure, had not been without
their effect upon him. They had both been for some time silent, when,
just before the last angle in the glen was to open to them that
sea-view which was the object of their expedition, Lord Castleton
stopping to re-arrange some part of Lady Madelina’s dress, which the
uneasy motion of the donkey had discomposed, his ear caught for the
first time the soothing sound of the measured breaking of the waters
in their regular rise and fall against a sloping shore.
The very idea of eternal sameness with which this sound never fails
to impress a romantic fancy when unexpectedly heard, has in itself a
tendency to recall the different circumstances, to revive the faded
feelings, and to connect the distant spots in which its unvaried
monotony has met the ear.
It may already have been seen that Lord Castleton was by nature
sufficiently romantic, and therefore he was immediately involved in
a labyrinth of thick-coming recollections, which completely took off
his attention from the occupation which would lately not have been
without its interest, when all his pleasing reveries were dispelled
by that voice, whose tones he so much admired, jarring upon his ear
in _malapropos_ inquiry. “So, after all, Lady Waitfort could not get
asked to Lady Delacour’s ball?”
The disgust that he felt at this ill-timed turn to his thoughts, he
was not obliged to express; for just then they came within sight
of the beautiful Bay to which they had been destined, and even Lady
Madelina could not help exclaiming, “What a sweet spot!”
Now a sweet spot was not exactly the most appropriate expression for
admiration of such a scene; but Lord Castleton was too grateful to
her at the time for showing any feeling on the subject, to object to
the aptness of the terms in which she vented it.
The “sweet spot” was a deeply indented bay, surrounded with
perpendicular cliffs of a great height, which towards the two
extremities of the inlet, cut the water in the shape of boldly
jutting crags. In the centre they were intersected by the deep glen
through which the party had descended; at the bottom of which the
mountain-stream found its way to the sea; and even down to the beach,
the sides of this glen were covered with fine trees and thriving
shrubs; a rare circumstance in our northern latitudes.
There was in the solitude of the scene itself, and the grandeur of
the outlines by which it was enclosed, that which seemed to mark
it as a spot where, in one of her angry moods, Nature might choose
to threaten some of those more awful and sublime appearances which
she sometimes assumes; but at present, the gaiety of the season,
the mildness of the air, the splendour of the setting-sun, and the
calmness of the sea, the sameness of whose measured splash against
the shore was not broken by the slightest swell from without,
produced no more than a pleasing sensation of repose. There was no
human habitation visible from the sea-shore; but on one of the banks
which formed the sides of the glen, about half way from the summit to
the shore, just on the single spot where the slope was more gradual,
some smoke was seen curling from behind a grove of dwarf oaks;
and still higher, taking advantage of a southern exposure, there
appeared a garden, which ran upwards, till the cliff again becoming
too perpendicular, it only communicated with the top by means of some
steps cut in the rock, evidently with great attention to safety and
even convenience. Judging by the little that could be seen of the
environs of this dwelling, it might either be the residence of some
retired mariner, who chose to pass his latter days upon an acquired
competence, still within sight, though safe from the attacks of that
element which had been the scene of his earlier adventures; or it
might, on the other hand, be the dwelling of some opulent farmer, who
had sought the shelter of this southern slope, from that exposure to
which the upper land must there be subject.
At first, the party imagined that they were the only living
creatures that at present tenanted the semicircular shores of the
bay; but upon passing the angle of a rock which projected almost
to the water’s edge, Lord Castleton and Lady Madelina discovered
two youthful figures leaning against the gunwale of a solitary
fishing-boat, which was moored close up to the cliff. The eldest of
these two seemed a stout, healthy-looking lad of about sixteen, with
a well-made figure and rather a handsome head, though, for the age
which his general appearance indicated, his person was strong set and
square, and his countenance marked and decided. His dress evidently
bespoke a nautical calling, though it was of that indefinite
description which might belong to any rank in the service of the
sea; his dark-blue jacket and trowsers were, however, quite new, and
apparently put on with some attention to effect; in his right hand
he held by the middle a fresh-cut oaken staff, of that description
which, among the lower orders, generally indicates an impending
pedestrian journey, and which seemed equally well calculated to
lend its assistance to the legs in their regular labours, and upon
any extraordinary occasion, to give additional powers to the hand
that held it. The top of this staff he leaned against his mouth,
his eyes were intently fixed on the regular rise and fall of the
waters before him, whilst the fingers of his left hand, which hung
by his side, nervously grasped something, of which, as they half
closed upon it, only the end of a blue ribbon appeared. By his side
stood one of those figures, which occasionally and unexpectedly
cross our path, to put us again in good humour with human nature,
and prevent our being entirely disgusted with the endless varieties
of ugliness of which the mortal machine is capable, by showing, on
the other hand, the perfection of which the same conformation is
sometimes susceptible in every rank and all situations. Here, a
form, which among the nobly-born would have been said to bear the
stamp of high birth--which, in the land of ancient tradition and
sculptured authority, would have been said to show the signs of pure
classical extraction, was found lowly born in an obscure corner of
a rugged clime. Even the delicacy, which gave an unlooked-for charm
to the appearance of one in that situation, was enhanced by her
extreme youth. She was two years younger than her companion; and,
though tall of her age, slight, and still childish in her form: the
natural cheerfulness of her innocent countenance was then clouded by
some present sorrow, which added to the interest she was calculated
to inspire. Her right arm leaned lightly on the shoulders of her
companion, and her eye, in which a tear still trembled, was fixed
upon the hand which held the ribbon.
“What a perfect study for Gainsborough!” said Lord Castleton, as he
and Lady Madelina stopped to gaze on the youthful couple, of whom,
the angle of the rock had given them, unobserved, so near a view.
“Gainsborough!” said Lady Madelina, “I thought he made people with
waspish waists and powdered hair; I am sure I never saw such a
figure as he has made of Aunt Theodosia, in the picture-gallery at
Lumberhead-hall.”
“Alas, poor Gainsborough! the native offspring of his tasteful
imagination are no more like my aunt Theodosia, than that beautiful
girl is like----.” He did not finish the sentence, but the look
he gave might have said more than was either civil or welcome,
had not the horizontal sun at that moment fortunately caused the
interposition of the pink parasol.
CHAPTER III.
One of those forms which flit by us when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And oh the loveliness at times we see
In momentary gliding!
BYRON.
---- My love to Hermia
Melted as doth the snow; seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon.
SHAKSPEARE.
“I think this would be a good place to pick a bit,” gasped Sir North,
as he came up with Castleton and Lady Madelina, puffing in such a
manner, as showed that his fat sides felt the difference between the
smooth flags of Downing Street and the shingles of the sea beach.
“I advise no one,” he added, turning to the rest of the party, “to
spare the cold meat, for we have not the least chance of being back
for dinner. I told you last night, Lady Madelina, if we did not
breakfast before twelve, we could not do it; and Mr. Turner says,
that the lane where the carriages are to meet us, at the top of the
cliff, is fourteen miles from home. “Here, my lad,” said he, to the
seafaring youth, “run and call those servants with the baskets, and
your sister can get us some water from the brook.”
“She is not my sister,” said the lad, without stirring a step.
“Not his sister!” exclaimed Lady Madelina; “then upon my word, my
pretty girl, you begin in time; and, I declare, we interrupted a
flirtation.”
“But I am his cousin,” eagerly added the girl, as if instinctively
claiming the relationship, as a justification of what she could
not have known. For flirtation, that sickly creation of crowded
idleness, was equally unknown in name and in nature, on the silent
and solitary shores of Morden Bay.
The rest of the party having now come up, the servants also arrived
with the provisions, though the lad had disregarded Sir North’s
authoritative address to him to summon them. The guests, hardly
casting a glance around, certainly not wasting an inquiry about
the beautiful scene, where they found themselves, proceeded at
once to what appeared the real object of the expedition--the cold
collation which they had brought so many miles to eat in a peculiarly
uncomfortable manner. They might, perhaps, in the intervals of this
important occupation, have vented a few common-place expressions
of admiration; but, unfortunately for Mr. Turner’s feelings, who
endeavoured several times to lead the conversation that way, they
had met the post on the road, and as the newspapers of that day
contained the account of the long-expected demise of one of the
oldest supporters of the party to which they belonged, they found
ample food for conversation, not in lamenting his loss, but in
discussing the various pretensions of the probable claimants for his
Government, his Garter, his Regiment, and his Sinecure. At length,
after this had continued sometime, a “rising young man,” on the
ministerial side of the house, who had many years to look forward,
before he could hope to put in a claim for any thing of the sort they
were discussing, took advantage of a pause to make an abrupt turn in
the conversation, by saying, “Capital shooting, I should think, in
the covers up that glen, Sir North?”
“Yes, Sir,” interposed the lad, who had been still leaning against
the boat behind the party, and until now, a silent spectator of
their proceedings; “the surest place in all the country side, to find
the first woodcock, and so uncle says, before my time.”
“What do you know about woodcocks, my young friend?” said Sir North:
“do you know, I am afraid that you and your uncle are little better
than poachers?”
“Uncle rents the Bankside farm, as did his father afore him; and when
our south intack is in stubble, when I am staying with uncle, we go
out coursing sometimes, and of a fine afternoon, he takes his gun
with him up the glen, to look for birds.”
“Very wrong, very wrong, all this,” said Sir North. “Who is your
landlord?”
“I never seen him, but the Baronet Saunders, Esquire, I think they
call him.”
“Ay, ay, I was afraid so,” said Sir North. “This comes of neglecting
to give these poor creatures the blessing of a country gentleman’s
residence on his estate--totally disorganizes society,--turns the
farmers into poachers; this must not be so in future: no my friends,
I must do my duty in the country as well as in town. So, my lad, you
say, you never saw your uncle’s landlord, Sir North Saunders?”
“No; but once I saw lawyer Drainem, when he came to collect
half-year’s rent, and I suppose that be much the same thing.”
“Well, now you may tell your uncle that you have seen me, Sir North
Saunders; and tell him, that I mean to give my tenants the benefit of
my presence, to arrange all this upon the proper footing.”
“And you, my pretty girl,” said Lord Castleton, approaching the
object which, during this conversation, had been engrossing most
of his attention, “do you accompany your cousin on his sporting
excursions?”
“No, Sir,” said she. “I have seen much less of George since he has
taken to coursing, and now we are going to lose him entirely.”
“How so?”
“To-morrow he leaves us to serve his time in the seafaring line,
with another uncle, who is captain and part owner of a vessel in the
transport service.”
“And you are afraid that he will forget Morden Bay, and his favourite
cousin, and would therefore like to follow him?”
“If he forgets me, I should not so forget myself as to recollect
him,” said the little girl with a dignity which, from one of her
age and station, surprised Lord Castleton. She then continued, in a
more childish tone: “Nor would I leave my only home, my flowers, my
daisies, my daily occupations, and my shells, for to follow any one
friend.”
“Then I am sure, if I were your friend George, I would not leave
Morden Bay and the pretty prize which for him it contains, for all
the rest of the world.”
The language of flattery fell for the first time on the unpractised
ear to which it was addressed; for it never had been cousin George’s
way to say soft things. She knew not what the words meant, or indeed
that they meant any thing; but there is an instinct in every female
breast, which returns a responsive echo to tones, such as those
in which this otherwise common-place expression was uttered. One
moment she cast her eyes upwards on the face of him who unexpectedly
addressed her thus, then as suddenly withdrawing them, and striving
to hide the first conscious blush that had ever tinged her pure and
innocent countenance, she drew upwards the summer-bonnet, which had
slung across her shoulders, and pointing to the path by which most
of the party had already begun to ascend, she motioned Lord Castleton
to follow.
As they ascended the cliff, he made common-place inquiries as to what
her family consisted of, and learned that she was the only child of
a father, whom she named in a tone of true affection, and a mother,
whom she mentioned respectfully, but apparently with some degree of
restraint; beyond them her _kin_ (and as she would have said her
_ken_,) was confined to her aunt, a single woman, who lived in a lone
house round the next point, and of whom she spoke warmly, and “Cousin
George,” of whom her present questioner did not ask much, and she
answered less.
Whilst he still kept multiplying unnecessary inquiries, and giving
by his manner to the most trifling an air of interest, he purposely
lingered by the way, till his fair guide at length suggested that
they should either mend their pace, or lessen their distance, by
taking a short but steep cut, which in a direct line joined the
regular path again, after that, by an easy rise, had traversed two
long sides of an acute angle; “for,” said she, “if we do not mind,
Sir, the rest of your party will have passed our gate before we
reach it; and though mother is not much given to seeing company, I
am sure she would not like those ladies to go by her door, without
biding a bit to rest; and that poor lady looks as if she needed
it, and the lusty gentleman isn’t fit to help one so weak as her,”
pointing to Lady Madelina, who had been obliged to accept Sir North
as Lord Castleton’s substitute, in ascending the cliff,--an affair
for which he was peculiarly disqualified, the action of his _lungs_
being so much greater than that of his _limbs_. He had stopped at
the corner, really to recover breath, but under pretence of venting
his admiration of the prospect, of which he was gasping forth an
encomium, in most wheezy interjections. Lady Madelina’s eye, whilst
affecting to follow the different directions in which his cane was
pointed, had dropped upon the figure of Lord Castleton ascending from
below, and she was puzzling how to get up an attitude of interesting
languor, whilst leaning on Sir North, who was unfortunately some
inches shorter than herself, and of a figure which did not lend
itself readily to group into the line of grace.
“She seems dreadfully tired, that poor lady,” continued Lucy, (such
had Lord C. found his companion’s name to be,) “and no wonder she
should be; ’tis well enough for a young girl like me to run up and
down ten times a day, but ’tis rather a fashious step this, and I’ve
known mother be almost as bad as she is.”
This casual comparison to her mother did not give to Lord
Castleton’s imagination a turn calculated to assist Lady Madelina’s
attempts to excite his admiration at her present would-be interesting
exhaustion; and seeing that two more angles of the path would again
bring him where the irksome duties of a “patito” would be exacted
from him, he was disposed to remonstrate against his companion’s
anxiety to hurry upwards and do the honours of her humble roof, when
a loud voice exclaimed--
“Sir North!--Castleton! Where are you? make haste, pray; only think,
it wants but fifty minutes to the half-hour bell.”
This admonition came from a celebrated “diner-out,” who, except
once when he had passed a September on the “pavé” in London, never
remembered the day when his dinner had been in such danger.
“And are you really going so soon?” said Lucy to Lord Castleton,
observing that the above warning had accelerated the motion of every
one of the various groups on the sides of the cliff, and even induced
Sir North to give something like one effective tug to the arm of Lady
Madelina.
“You see it does not depend upon me,” said Lord Castleton, “I am
under orders, but shall certainly linger till the last.”
“I should like much to know why you came at all,” said Lucy, with an
archness which surprised her hearer. “I thought it had been to see
the Bubbling Well, or the Black Glen, or the Dead-man’s Crag; but
merely to walk down that burn side, to climb up this cliff, and bring
all that fine food, when there was not even a table to eat it off!
’Tis seldom we have seen a stranger here, but when some came once
before, they were two gentlemen painters.”
“Yes, yes, artists, I suppose,” said Lord Castleton; “and they were
the only strangers you have ever seen before?”
“Yes; but they stayed some days, and lodged at father’s; and when
they went away, they left him in return the likeness of the bay,
not as it is now, but all in a storm, done all over on a bit of the
finest mahogany wood, and it’s now at aunt Alice’s, for mother said
she did not like such vanities, much more to have, summer and winter,
to look on the sea in that dreadful state; ’twas bad enough when it
really came so.”
“Why any of us came, I can hardly tell, my pretty little friend; but
for myself, though I have not seen the Bubbling Well, or the Black
Glen, the walk up this cliff has been so pleasant, that I should be
glad to come again.”
“But you have been a long time about it,” said Lucy: “I wish you
could see cousin George, how he climbs the side of yonder crag above
our heads! when I call him, he is at the top before you can count
fifty; I don’t think, for all you like the cliff so much, you could
do that, Sir.”
There was something in this invidious comparison which did not please
Lord Castleton, though he ought to have been no more hurt at the
imputation of inferiority in such an accomplishment, than if he had
found six months afterwards, that he could not reef a main-topsail
as well as cousin George. He replied, however, “I believe I ought to
try that now, to have any chance of rejoining my party; but before I
go, though I have not stayed long enough to paint a picture like your
last visitors, may this,” said he, unslinging a small French watch,
which hung by a light gold chain round his neck, “may this serve to
remind you of these fleeting moments, and may it record for you many
hours, as happy as the few last minutes it has marked for me.”
“I am sure aunt Alice would say I ought not to take this,” said Lucy,
hesitatingly; “yet, perhaps, if you would not object, cousin George
will want a watch now he is going to leave us, and it had better
serve to remind him of me, than me of you; for I am afraid it is not
like I should see a gentleman like you again, Sir.”
“To you I give it,” said Lord Castleton, “’tis for you to dispose
of it as pleases you,” and throwing it round her neck, he rushed up
the cliff, with an activity, which she could not have denied would
have done credit to cousin George himself. Near the top he met that
individual descending from escorting the rest of the party; a mutual
“good evening!” varied only by “Sir!” on one side, and “my lad!” on
the other, and not in a very cordial tone on either, was all that
passed between them.
Lord Castleton found his horse left in the care of a groom at the top
of the cliff, with a request that he would follow the rest of the
party as soon as possible, their return having been much hurried
by the imminent danger to which they foresaw the various _entrées_
would be exposed by their flagrant unpunctuality, for they were
still fourteen hilly miles from Hornscliff Abbey. Lord Castleton,
in his present frame of mind, was not very anxious to rejoin the
party, and therefore, regulating his pace so as just to keep them
in sight at the opposite side of the various alternate ridges and
dales they had to pass, resigned himself to his reflections, which it
would be puzzling to present to the reader, in that connected form
which they never assumed. They began with a sigh to the charms of
unsophisticated nature, which nature immediately assumed the form,
and recalled the smile of Lucy Darnell. He then dwelt on the rare
union of beauty and of innocence, which brought up for a moment an
unpleasant recollection of how he first saw her, sitting on the boat
with cousin George; this he hastened to obliterate by imagining past
habits of childish familiarity, and then by fancying cousin George
tossing about for years to come in his transport-ship.
He then thought of the soothing sensation of repose which he had
embodied from the beautiful scenery of Morden Bay, and he invested
the residence of farmer Darnell with the character of the last chosen
retreat of peaceful content in this troubled world.
From that, as he caught a glimpse on the summit of the opposite
hill of Lady Madelina’s Sol-pleurants, fluttering in the evening
breeze, he recurred to his late ‘liaison’ with her; and his memory
immediately collected with astonishing fidelity, every incident which
had happened in its progress, which, at the time, rather _degouté’d_
him, but which he had, till then, almost forgotten. As he urged on
his horse to join some of the party, who he saw had perceived him,
and were waiting in consequence, he concluded with the determination,
that the first spare day he would again ride over alone to Morden
Bay. But “a spare day” is not so easily found in the midst of such a
party, by one whose actions none imagined to be at his own disposal,
and who, as the passive half of Lady Madelina’s constantly repeated
_we_, was supposed, of course, included in every arrangement she
suggested.
A country house is the most unfavourable opportunity for attempting
to break chains which habit has riveted. The party consequently
broke up, new prospects opened upon Lord Castleton, and new pursuits
were undertaken, without his having a second opportunity of visiting
Morden Bay.
CHAPTER IV.
----Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
SHAKSPEARE.
At one kind word their arms extending
To clasp the neck of him who blest
His child, caressing and carest.
BYRON.
In the romantic charm with which the fancy of the enthusiastic,
though casual admirer of Morden Bay, had invested all it contained,
he had considered the retired residence of the Darnell family as the
chosen abode of content. He judged hastily; and yet he might have
inquired farther, and reasoned more deeply without being undeceived.
His opinion was founded on the tranquil beauty of the scene; and
here he ran into the common error of attributing the same effect from
surrounding objects on those to “the manner born,” as had just been
awakened in himself, by recent comparison and contrast. It operated
as a tonic on his feelings, just then palled with dissipation. ’Twas
“medicine to a mind diseased;” but only daily food to those who
had never known any other: innocent and salubrious no doubt, but
producing no excitement, and having no other effect on the moral
system than regularly excluding many temptations to vice. He would
have thought, however, his hypothesis farther confirmed, if he had
learned that those who dwelt there were in most comfortable worldly
circumstances, removed alike from the fears of want and the desire of
ostentation; that they had not even a neighbour to envy; that, human
cares and ailings excepted, they were healthy alike in mind and
body. And yet was it not the abode of content.
That it was not so, arose entirely from one circumstance, which
would have been supposed incapable of having so much effect upon the
happiness of those around, by persons unaccustomed to observe by
what trivial causes the peace of families is sometimes disturbed.
Mrs. Darnell was a most worthy woman, correct in all her intentions,
exemplary in the discharge of all her duties, from the religious down
to the domestic; but she was a person of an unfortunately minute
mind, with a sort of clock-work regularity of sensations: with her,
each duty, of every degree, was, in its allotted succession, of
equal importance; and, undisturbed by any deviation into feeling,
she not only observed them herself, but, like the dial, pointed them
out to all about her. Any omission of the due decorum of any rule,
she treasured up, not till it had been obliterated by subsequent
punctuality, but till it was succeeded by some fresh deficiency;
by which means she contrived that she should never be without a
grievance: not that she was ever in consequence loud or angry;
this she would have thought wrong; but she put on a most provoking
appearance of patient endurance, which was exactly the sort of look
her husband could least bear, and which inducing, in consequence,
occasional violent ebullitions on his part, gave her the reputation
amongst those who knew little of both, of suffering meekly under his
violence, whilst the many more frequent occasions in which he had
yielded at length, for the sake of repurchasing a smiling face at his
domestic hearth, were unnoticed, because unknown.
Dick Darnell, as he was familiarly called by those who had known
him in his younger days, though now turned forty, had in character
much of the simplicity of a child, with warm affections, a cheerful
temper, and a disposition all whose natural bias was good, though
never much disciplined in the school of self-denial. It was lucky,
perhaps, that he was born in a situation where temptations did not
too much abound; for there were moments in which he was supposed not
to have been particularly successful in resisting those that had
occasionally crossed his path. Now that he was no longer very young,
his appearance would be best described by the epithet hearty. His
person had been handsome, and if its bulk had now increased beyond
the proper proportion, it had rather become portly than unwieldy; and
the good-humoured and cheerful expression of his laughing eye, seemed
to inspire sympathy at first sight.
He had become acquainted with his present wife at the county town,
during assize time. She was the daughter of a respectable tradesman,
who was known as one of that peculiarly strict class, who put forth
exclusive pretensions to monopolise righteousness; she had therefore
received a very serious and unexceptionable education. Richard
Darnell had done his best for many years to try to love her, and
would at that very hour have been very much surprised if anybody
had told him that he had not succeeded, for he always assured his
acquaintance at the market-town, to which he went once a week, “that
for sixteen years he had been married to his _Missus_, and he never
had had so much as one occasion to find fault with her.” He dropped
at these times all mention of those many occasions on which she had
found fault with him, which had led to those altercations mentioned
above. But there were few of his friends who had not remarked, that
of late years he never found the weather so bad as it used to be
when it frequently prevented his coming at all to market; but that,
on the contrary, he often found the distance in returning so much
longer than formerly, that when dark and wet, he could not possibly
reach home over night, but stayed till the next morning. His daughter
he loved better than all the rest of the world put together; and
when he returned from these excursions, and had not seen her for
four-and-twenty hours, he would like to sit in the chimney-corner,
with her slight form resting on his capacious knee, and picking out
those of his adventures by the way best suited to meet her ear, would
chat on for ever and ever, and ask no other reply than to see the
expression of his own laughing eye reflected in the softened likeness
of his daughter’s delicate features.
But these were, in Mrs. Darnell’s idea, moments of time most
completely wasted, and she would generally interrupt them by
demanding,--“why Richard would not stir himself, and look after
his men, whom he had left a whole day without a master’s eye,” and
by informing Lucy, she thought “her hands might be more profitably
employed at her needle, than in hanging idly about her father’s neck.”
Next to hanging about her father’s neck, her mother thought that the
most useless way in which Lucy’s hands were sometimes employed, was
holding a book. That is, to do her justice, she drew the distinction
between the use of a book as an amusement, or as a duty; as the
latter she not only very properly enjoined the lecture of the Psalms
and Lessons of the day, but enforced it so regularly, that one of
Lucy’s delinquencies, to which most frequent plaintive allusion
was made, was, that _once_ she had inadvertently read the Evening
Lesson in the morning, a fault which it was impossible to undo, but
by doubling it, and reading the Morning in the Evening. All reading
beyond this, whether history or fiction, she treated alike as vanity.
The duty of letters she did not consider as that of a standing army
to be sent abroad on the sea of knowledge, to extend the empire of
the mind; but merely as a sort of local militia, to be called out at
stated times on this one home service.
Such limitations as in this respect she put upon herself, she would
have exacted from Lucy, had not the latter been taught differently
in the course of the frequent visits she made to the aunt, mentioned
above. This aunt was an unmarried sister of Dick Darnell’s: some
years his junior, she had come to establish herself, within the
memory of Lucy, at a small but neat cottage round the next point,
which had originally been built as a house of occasional call in bad
weather, by a gentleman who had been sailing about in a yacht on that
coast.
She was a lone woman, who had evidently had her sorrows, not yet
forgotten by herself, though never obtruding their chilling contagion
on the spirits of her young visitors, who always found her anxious to
participate in their cheerfulness, though even at their thoughtless
years they sometimes noticed the effort that it required to enable
her to assume an appearance contradicted by the care-worn character
of her beauty, which, striking as that beauty still was, did not give
the idea of a person so much younger than her brother as she really
was.
It was curious to trace what is called a family likeness in two
persons so totally unlike. Her form was altogether of another mould,
and different habits had given the deportment of a different rank
in life. If the resemblance could be traced to any definite feature,
it lurked in the benevolent smile of the mouth, of which her’s was
the miniature copy of his, though that which gave to his its joyous
character, the sparkle of his laughing eye, if it ever had existed in
her’s, was now prematurely obscured. She lived entirely alone, with
the attendance only of one maid servant, and dependant for society,
(if she could be called dependant on that which she did not seem to
require) upon the frequent visits of her niece, the occasional calls
of her brother, or his nephew George, and those, luckily, more rare
occasions on which Mrs. Darnell found her way as far as her cottage,
mildly to murmur over her grievances. Though always cheerfully
receiving these separate visitors, the same disposition which, when
she first came into the neighbourhood, made her decline her brother
Richard’s hospitable offer, to lodge her under his roof, seemed
still to induce her to avoid the full family reunion at their own
house; and the only place where she met them altogether, (and this
she rarely missed,) was weekly in their common pew, at the Parish
Church, three miles off. It is impossible to conceive two persons
more different in the detail of their dispositions, than Mrs. Darnell
and this sister-in-law. The one with every thing to make a home happy
and comfortable, yet (one could almost as little tell how, as why,)
contriving to turn every thing into a grievance: the other, to whom
the world seemed to have done its worst, to have separated as an
isolated being from its interests, yet the chosen confidant even of
the changeful fancies of children, and occasionally sought as the
depositary of the complaints of her whom she so little resembled.
The fact was, that Alice Darnell had unconsciously assumed over her
sister-in-law that influence which a strong mind can hardly fail of
exerting over a weak one. This prevented her mother from objecting,
as she otherwise might have done, to the loss of time occasioned by
the frequent visits of Lucy to her aunt. There might, perhaps, be
another reason for this. Alice Darnell, though still young, was in a
precarious state of health, which had indeed been given by Richard
as the reason for his sister’s wishing to retire there; and, as
curiosity was not one of the flaws of his wife’s character, she had
always believed this to be the only cause of that measure; but Miss
Darnell’s fortune, for her rank in life, seemed considerable, and
whom was she to leave it to? This was a consideration which often
crossed Mrs. Darnell’s mind, as she had been educated in a school
in which, in the midst of pious contempt for the vanities of this
world, a beneficial distinction was always taken between its empty
pleasures and its solid advantages.
Alice Darnell had not what, in the enlarged sense, would have been
called a library, but she had some shelves well-stored with the
common editions of the English classics. Lucy generally found her
aunt occupied among these, but one thick octavo, she remarked, was a
constant favourite. It was a compendious volume, for it contained all
Shakspeare. In answer to her niece’s question, “Why she read it so
often?” she said, “This is the world in which alone I wish to live.
As long as this little book is left me, I am less alone, more in the
midst of human nature, than in the most crowded city.”
For once she spoke more according to her own feelings than to the
capacity of her she was addressing: she perceived her mistake. The
little girl could not understand her, but her curiosity was roused;
she anxiously listened to her aunt, who commenced reading to her
selected passages, in a manner which added all the charm of voice and
delivery to what was in itself so well calculated to interest; and
from that time forward one of the most eagerly anticipated pleasures
of her visits to her aunt was to cry with “Constance,” or to tremble
at “Lady Macbeth;” she never saw a storm without thinking of poor
“King Lear;” cultivated her _red roses_, out of sympathy for the
“House of Lancaster,” and neglected the _white ones_, out of mere
spite to “Richard III.”
CHAPTER V.
Adieu! I have too grieved a heart
To take a tedious leave.
SHAKSPEARE.
What other can she seek to see
Than thee, companion of her bosom,
The partner of her infancy?
BYRON.
Lucy Darnell was found by her cousin George, when he returned from
escorting the strangers to the top of the cliff, still leaning over
the little gate which led through the garden to the house, and still
curiously examining what she thought the extraordinarily small watch
the gentleman had given her: as soon as she perceived him she cried
out, “What do you think, cousin George?”
“What do I think?” said he a little out of humour, he hardly knew
why; “what do I think? why, that you made that gentleman loiter so in
coming up the cliff that he has missed his party.”
“Why, I did not make him loiter; he would not walk any faster; he did
not seem used to it, though I told him how quick you could climb to
the top.”
“I am sure he was going fast enough when I met him,” said George
doggedly.
“Well, it is very odd; to be sure he did jump along limber enough as
soon as he left me, but I could not make him try before. But what do
you think I have got for you?” added she, showing the watch.
“And how did you come by that thing?” demanded George.
“That gentleman gave it me; but I only took it for you, George,”
observing that he looked displeased.
“Thank you all the same, Lucy, but let it bide where it was meant it
should. He would never have given it to the like of me; there was
over many reasons why he might have done so to you.”
“I thought,” said Lucy, “it would serve to remember you of me
whenever you looked at it.”
“But I had rather not remember you and him both together, as that
thing would always be making me do.”
“I don’t know what’s come over you, George,” said Lucy puzzled, “but
it’s hard, when I hoped but to please you, you should speak so cross,
and this your last night too.”
“I did not mean to be cross,” answered George in an altered tone;
“but I can’t take that watch for another reason, for see, I’ve
already got one just like it,” fumbling in his fob, and tugging
out with some difficulty, at the end of a long stout steel chain,
which appeared as if it might have served for fetters, an immense
pinchbeck turnip-like time-piece, the recent gift of his uncle. As
this capacious and ponderous concern was displayed by the side of the
diminutive _Brequet_, Lucy, though unaware of the relative value of
their different dimensions, could not help smiling at the comparison,
and, with restored cheerfulness, said, “Just like it, George! yes,
just as like it as you are to the stranger gentleman.”
They were here interrupted by her mother’s voice calling Lucy from
the house.
The various additional avocations which the approaching departure
of her nephew, in Mrs. Darnell’s opinion, entailed on her daughter
during this evening, prevented the cousins again speaking together
that night. But Lucy was aware that her cousin would before breakfast
in the morning go over to take leave of his aunt; she had therefore
risen earlier than usual, and carefully executed, as she thought,
all the morning duties which maternal authority could exact before
any one was stirring, when George, having just come down as she was
preparing to cross the flower-garden with him, her mother’s window
opened, and in a precise tone, which indicated a succession of
questions, she asked,--
“Lucy, my dear, have you skimmed the milk?”
“Yes.”
“Have you looked to the bread?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Have you fed the poultry?”
“Yes, mother.”
“That’s right; then you’ll have time to hem your father’s new shirts
before breakfast, so I’ll bring them down.”
This was known by both who heard it, however mildly expressed, to
be a command from which there was no appeal; so George only said,
“Before I come back, Lucy, they’ll all be down at breakfast, so I
only wanted to say that last night you called me cross, and as I lay
awake in bed afterwards, I thought of many more times I had been so,
though you had not told me so; and what I wished to say is this: you
know I’ve been to sea once before now, though only to try it, but
enough to know it’s another sort of thing to think over the like
of these in one’s warm bed here, when one has only but to come and
say, Lucy, I ask your pardon, and see your sweet smile in return,
than to have it come across one’s mind when one’s far away, walking
the deck on a dark night, thinking of one’s distant home, that lies
just in the wind’s eye, and a hurricane blowing one the Lord knows
where another way, perhaps never to return. Nay, I did not mean to
distress you, Lucy; only just say that if I’ve ever been kind to you
you’ll think only of that, and not of t’other sort of conduct, whilst
I am gone and away--”
“I never do--never can--never will, think of you but as my kind good
cousin George,” hastily answered Lucy, hearing her mother’s measured
tread descending the stairs, shirts in hand.
After George’s return, and the somewhat silent breakfast had been
nearly despatched, Mrs. Darnell started up from the top of the table
where she had been sitting, and enquired “And what will Jackie
Pattison be doing there? sure, if he isn’t driving up the old mare
and the pony from the low pasture.”
“And where’s Jackie Pattison? I don’t see him,” said the farmer,
anxious to get a little time to prepare his defence for the attack
which he foresaw.
“And will it be your bidding then, Richard, that he is doing?” who
now guessed it all.
“I told him my mare and the pony would both be wanted; so if they
were in the low pasture, it’s like he’s been to fetch them,” answered
Richard, with a determination for once to face it boldly out; “I mean
to see the lad as far as Mayton, where he takes coach; it would have
been over far for him to have walked, and the pony will follow me
back again like a dog.”
“But he meant to walk. He said so when I told him not to cut yon
stick out of the oak-copse; and you to go away, Richard, and leave me
lonely, to fret at George’s going, and to spend your silver idly by
the way; and then to take away the mare that’s wanted in the draught,
now we’re so throng in the hay-time; it’s just of a piece with a’ the
rest.
“It’s just of a piece with a’ the rest,” was, as her husband had
learned to his cost, a comprehensive allusion to all her former
grievances, some of which were to be ready to reinforce the present
attack, provided it was not in itself effective; but in this instance
he knew that all these names were rather put forward as heads of
chapters for future complaints on his return, than expected to
prevent his departure. He therefore thought it would be useless to
subject himself to have them twice repeated by answering them now; so
drawing his wife aside, he suggested, “that he only went in order to
keep the lad out of harm’s way at Mayton, till he saw him into the
coach which was to take him to the port where his other uncle’s ship
lay.”
“Well, if you must go, mind you do that,” said Mrs. Darnell, “and do
for once speak serious to the lad, and counsel him how he falls into
evil courses.”
The parting between George and Lucy, though public, was affectionate,
as indeed their near relationship in itself authorised.
Farmer Darnell, hardly believing as yet, that he could have got off
so easily, started at first at the steady pounding jog-trot of his
cart-mare; a pace which required unequal alternations of shambling,
walk, and canter, on the part of George’s pony, to keep up with.
At length the uncle thinking it was time to attempt to execute his
wife’s injunctions of a lecture to his nephew, pulled his mare up to
the pace she was used to go in draught, and began--
“It’s a bad world this you’re going into, George.”
“Is it indeed, uncle?” quaintly inquired George.
This abrupt questioning of what, without feeling its truth himself,
he had always considered an incontrovertible position, rather
disturbed the course of the uncle’s intended lecture, as he replied,
“Why, to be sure, it must be. Doesn’t the parson tell us so every
seventh day; and doesn’t my Missus, who is as good every bit as he
is, and therefore ought to ken as well, repeat it to us all the other
six? For my part, to be sure, I can’t say I find much fault with it.
’Tisn’t all made up of Sundays--that’s certain--but that one couldn’t
expect; and if there were but _two_ market-days in a week, I’d be
content with one Sunday in each.”
“And yet aunt says if you went to market once a fortnight only,
’twould be better.”
“Your aunt is----the best woman in the world,” continued the uncle
after a dubious pause; “how she’ll stay at home herself to save me
money! But between ourselves,” added he, lowering his tone, and
approaching his mare to the pony, “she’s a little apt to take it out
in fashing one. As you’re going to leave us, I may say to you, but
mind you don’t repeat it, that when she does get hold of a bone of
contention, she’ll never leave hold no more than my bull-bitch Bess
would. She certainly is,” he added, casting a look instinctively
behind him, though two ridges had interposed between his dwelling and
the part of the road where they then were,--“she certainly is enough
sometimes to worry one out of soul and body, and there’s truths out.
But what I wanted to tell you, George, is,--have a care of the women;
if they been’t over good, they’re over bad, and they’re a main deal
of dead weight for a man to carry either way.”
“I don’t think cousin Lucy would ever be a dead weight to any one,”
said George.
“She! bless her lightsome heart! no!” cried her father in a burst of
parental affection; “she’d be but a feather weight in the longest
course, and yet as good as gold too. But I didn’t think of her, and
was talking of you, and the nonsense of sweethearting a lad like you
might fall into when you may be ganging with some painted Jesabels,
who would pick your pocket first, and box your ears afterwards: have
nothing to say to the likes of them, George; show ’em your stern at
once; no one is safe from their arts: remember King Solomon,--not
that I mean that all women are alike, or that a man shouldn’t say
thank you, because she’s a woman, to a buxom kind-hearted person,
like our landlady, Widow Westbury, when she tries to make him welcome
all in a friendly way.”
As George had never before accompanied his uncle to Mayton, and had
always come the other road himself, he had never heard of the Widow
Westbury, and was puzzled to connect his uncle’s two cases of the
hostess and Solomon. But the honest farmer continued what he thought
his useful instructions.
“Another thing,--beware of drink, boy; it’s a filthy trick, and the
drunkard, after all, has but a sad time of it, for the reproaches of
wine, on the morrow, are worse than--than--my wife’s: not but that
it’s a hard thing to help taking another glass or two sometimes, when
one meets an old friend, and one feels to like him better and better
every sup, and each draught makes one’s stories tell the merrier, and
one’s laugh come the heartier.”
In this alternation of strict advice to be correct in conduct, and
over-ready excuses for being otherwise, in which, unintentionally,
the honest farmer followed the example of many _soi-disant_ moral
works, wherein a good word is given to virtue, whilst sympathy is
excited for error, they arrived at Mayton. It was a neat little
country-town; its broad, open, well-paved market-place, with
ancient cross in the middle, was surrounded by many tidy-looking
dwellings of various dimensions, beyond which the town extended in
the shape of streets, but a little way down the different roads
which here united. From the circumstance of the market-place being
evidently the centre of attraction, it appeared that Mayton derived
its principal consequence from being the mart of the surrounding
country; which might also be inferred from the number of second-rate
houses of public entertainment with which it abounded. Passing by
one of these, which boasted on its board the exclusive dignity
of “neat post-chaises,” Farmer Darnell made straight up to the
smartest of the others, before whose door swung the head of a most
formidable-looking female, with a little crown stuck on the top
of her head, and underneath was written, in gold letters, “Ann
Westbury;” an apparent appropriation of the portrait by the hostess,
which gave her the name of “Queen Anne” among many of her customers;
a dignity with which, coupled with the resemblance implied, she was
by no means flattered.
CHAPTER VI.
I’ll ne’er be drunk again but in honest and godly company,
for this trick.
SHAKSPEARE.
There was not the usual market-day bustle outside the Queen’s Head,
and Farmer Darnell dismounting, followed his old mare, who well knew
her way to her usual stable in the backyard through the passage,
which was so narrow as to limit its accommodation to equestrians.
“Call the hostler, lad,” said the farmer from the stable to George,
who had followed him into the yard; an injunction which George
vociferously complied with, thinking that now the sooner he and his
pony were separated the better for the indulgence of their mutual
appetites.
“Eh, Sally, and who will that be calling about him?--run and see,”
said a voice from the back of one of the outhouses, at the window
of which the person who had thus spoken immediately appeared, and
seeing George, continued, “And is it only you, my lad, making all
that clatter? who taught you to call about you like a lord? They say
patience saves many a pennyworth of lungs--what may you want, pray?”
“Uncle and I want our horses fed.”
“And who is your uncle?” inquired the landlady.
When, Richard Darnell presenting himself at the door of the stable,
his appearance answered the question.
“And is it indeed you, Mr. Darnell--and this not market-day?--and
of all days in the week that you should just look in upon me at
washing-up, and I a shame to be seen,” she added, half raising
her soap-suddy hands to pull her cap over her _papillotes_, till
recollecting that such a contact would not be advantageous.
However, no one of her time of life could better bear to be seen at
disadvantage than the Widow Westbury, for upon the whole surface
of the fair fresh skin which the _papillotes_ left unshaded, forty
winters had failed to leave a furrow, and during as many summers her
indoor avocations had saved her even from a freckle; whilst an active
disposition had prevented her full form swelling into corpulency.
On this occasion, the sleeves tucked-up almost to her shoulders,
displayed a well-rounded arm, and tidy habits had prevented the rest
of her dress from being discomposed, or even her apron splashed. “And
if that idle fellow Joe Hostler won’t be gone to the ’leatherplating
sporting on the Wold! but you know where the corn is kept, Richard,
and here is the key of the bin,” (throwing it to him,) “and I’ll go
and see after your dinner and the lad’s.”
Now, though this was a part of the establishment upon which she much
prided herself, yet, upon this occasion, with a special injunction
to be careful, she consigned it exclusively to Sally, preferring to
spend the next few minutes herself rather before the looking-glass
than the kitchen-fire; and when George, having fed his pony, was
seeking his room up-stairs, he found her coming out of hers, with
the cap changed, and the _papillotes_ removed. By the excessive
care she immediately took of all his comforts, she soon removed the
unfavourable impression at first made on his mind by the rebuke he
had received from her for his stentorian bellowing after the hostler.
During the savoury and substantial meal, George could not help
remarking, how all his uncle’s tastes were consulted, with a delicate
attention, which combined the zealous activity of the hostess
with the acquired tact of companionship; and as he observed the
exhilarating effect it had upon his spirits, and as he contrasted it
with the state of subjection he suffered under at home, he no longer
wondered at the fervent wish he had expressed, “that there were two
market-days in every week.”
Soon after dinner, which their long ride had made rather late, the
snug trio was swelled by the dropping in of two of the natives of
Mayton, upon whose hands, in consequence of their fellow townsmen
being more _healthy_ than _wealthy_, time occasionally hung a little
heavy. These were an extra apothecary, and a supernumerary attorney,
articles in which the market of Mayton had been overstocked.
They were both of them jovial companions over a bottle; an
accomplishment which they had the more opportunities of cultivating,
as, before their arrival, the supply of both physic and parchment
had in Mayton been fully equal to the demand; and whilst there
was another doctor or druggist in the neighbourhood, everybody
was convinced that the apothecary had neither skill enough to
write prescriptions, nor shop enough to make them up; and unless
there should be some _third_ party to lawsuit beside plaintiff
and defendant, no one would leave either of the two established
practitioners for the new attorney.
The consequence of all this was, that they had frequently met Farmer
Darnell at the Widow Westbury’s; one of which occasions had produced
almost the only case in which either had been employed; having, as
they walked home together late at night, literally _thrown_ into
their hands a common joint job, in the shape of a sleepy “outsider,”
who, swinging round the corner on the top of the very night-coach
by which George was going, was chucked off at the moment they were
passing by. The doctor bled the passenger, and the lawyer bled the
coachmaster, in the shape of an action for damages, and the jury
being more inflammable than the patient, they both succeeded beyond
what their professional merits fairly earned. Having soon heard, (as
what is not soon heard in a country town?) that Farmer Darnell was
stopping at the Queen’s Head with his nephew, who was to go that
night by the one o’clock coach, they stepped in to learn the why,
and the where; and upon hearing that he was about to commence his
career afloat, insisted upon drinking his future success in life in
a bottle of port, or a bowl of punch. This, at first, the farmer
declined, probably from not liking to exceed before his nephew, and
mistrusting himself enough to know that the first was the most
favourable moment for resistance, and that abstinence was easier
than temperance. The hostess, though professionally interested in
the affirmative of the proposal, seemed to regret, that by the
interruption of her chat with her friendly guest, and her own
necessary withdrawal from the drinking bout, she should pay in person
what she received in purse.
The question, when a decided negative was no longer possible, having
been put to Dick Darnell, in the amended form, “whether it should be
_port_ or _punch_?” with the zeal of a convert he voted for _both_.
George Darnell, in whose exclusive honour they were undertaken,
seemed not to participate in the pleasure the others took in these
mingled potations. In fact, there were many things he regretted
in the home he was leaving behind him, and it did not please him
that the image of “cousin Lucy,” on which his fancy liked to dwell,
should be whisked away in the rotatory evolutions of the apothecary’s
red nose, and the attorney’s bushy brow, which both seemed soon to
dance round him, as the mixture of _old wine_ and _new rum_ took a
speedy effect upon his unseasoned head. The last thing he recollected
distinctly was his kind hostess smoothing his pillow, and assuring
him that he should not be too late for the coach.
When he awoke from his heavy slumber, it might have been _five
hours_, or only _five minutes_ afterwards, all was perfectly stilled
around, and instead of his uncle’s mellow voice singing a hunting
song, and his two companions croaking in untuneful chorus, nothing
met his ear but the loud ticking of the kitchen clock.
He had an indistinct recollection of old Sally having been sent on
some such celestial embassy as “up to the Angel to let him know
when the Star stopped.” He still dreaded being too late, and the
ship sailing without him, when he found that, in spite of the wine,
he had, as is often the case, waked instinctively just at the proper
time, for the piercing notes of the guard’s horn were first heard
in the distance, and then, as it reached the pavement, the rattling
clatter of the coach echoing through the empty streets.
George hurried on his clothes, thinking, as he was left undisturbed
to do so, it was lucky that he did not trust to his hostess’s promise
to call him. He hastily huddled on his things, and making his way
down-stairs, by the first glimmer of dawn he perceived that the
door of the hostess’s room, through which he had seen her come the
day before, was open; he concluded that she had just then stepped
into his uncle’s to call him in time to take leave of him; as was
probably the case, for they very soon descended together, the hostess
ostensibly to let them out, and Darnell to escort his nephew to the
coach. George took a short farewell of the kind hostess, who, being
only hastily half dressed, ensconced herself behind the door she held
open.
The uncle’s faculties seemed still a little offuscated with the
effects of the last night’s debauch, as, after walking most of the
way to the Angel in silence, he said, “You’ll not forget, George, to
tell your aunt all the good advice I gave you yesterday.”
“You forget, Sir, that I am not going home, and that it will be long
before I see my aunt or any of you again.”
“True, true; and perhaps, when you do, it may be as well to have
clean forgotten all about this last night. Good bye, George; afore
you see your old uncle Richard again, you will have seen many more
men who preach better than they practise.”
Helping George up with one arm, and shaking his hand heartily with
the other, he did not relinquish his friendly gripe till the horses
began tugging hardly more powerfully the other. George soon lost
sight of his uncle’s portly figure in the indistinctness of the misty
dawn, and it was long before he again caught a glimpse of any of the
previously familiar forms of his early youth.
CHAPTER VII.
The villain! I believe a man to cozen somebody.
SHAKSPEARE.
----Give me any clothes;
I will some other be--some Florentine,
Some Neapolitan, or some mean man of Pisa.
IBID.
It was a little more than four years after the events of the last
chapter, that one evening the apothecary, mentioned above, was
sauntering listlessly along the smooth flags of the market-place at
Mayton. He had been lately more than ever puzzled how to pass his
time, for he had lost his former boon companion, the attorney. The
fact was, that, in one of their jovial bouts, in despair at the
world’s continued blindness to their respective merits, they had,
in an affectionate fit of inebriety, mutually sworn professionally
to employ each other. This was a bargain, of which the advantage
was clearly on the side of the doctor. He was not a rich man, and
therefore was no food for the lawyer, who, after he had drawn his
will, and had recorded in the most technical manner his medical
friend’s bequest of a few empty phials to himself, had done his
worst. But the attorney was not a healthy man, and, therefore, he
afforded at least practice for his friend. At last the lawyer took to
his bed, where his physical Pylades still followed him: and, whether
in consequence of the effects of the many draughts of which they
had previously partaken together, or of the last which the doctor
only prescribed,--the attorney died, and his medical friend was
left alone to wander up and down the streets of Mayton, and watch
the regular arrival and departure of the public conveyances, in the
vain hope of some such other lucky accident as once happened in the
lifetime of his companion.
On this evening, as he strolled by the “Queen’s Head,” he was
surprised to see a hack chaise, without horses, drawn up before the
door. Now, as it has been stated above, that the “Queen’s Head” was
not an inn of rank enough to reciprocate such modes of conveyance, it
was an unusual act of condescension for a vehicle of that kind to be
upon visiting terms with it.
This was, therefore, quite event enough to make the apothecary
inquisitive, and, as he strutted back again by the windows of the
little ground-floor parlour, where it was recorded in the last
chapter he had met Farmer Darnell, he peeped through an hiatus in the
blind, which he well knew of, and saw a young man sitting by himself
at the table, writing, with his back rather turned towards him.
“That’s the person it brought, and it’s not a wedding after all,”
thought he, obliged to give up the idea of the merry-making which
his first speculations had included. He, however, strolled into the
kitchen to inquire, and there finding the hostess said,
“So you’ve got some post-chaise company to-day, Mrs. Westbury: I
thought at first it had been a wedding? Perhaps it’s a husband for
yourself at last, widow. I often wonder whom you’ve been waiting so
long for.”
“For your first patient, doctor; only then I’m afraid you’d soon make
me a widow again.”
“Quite the contrary, perhaps, widow. I might promote population, ‘_in
utrumque paratus_.’”
The pedantic conclusion of this rejoinder on the part of the doctor,
who had been originally a man of grammar-school education, prevented
its being understood, or in consequence resented by the widow.
“And the person who came in the chaise is--?”
“A very civil-spoken sort of a decent young man,” interrupted
the widow. “I should at first almost have taken him for a great
gentleman, by the whiteness of his hands and the fineness of his
linen, for all his clothes were not over new or smart, and I might
have bustled about and made a to-do for him; but he told me at once,
without making believe to be what he was not, to take care of a large
book tied round with strings, full of drawings and paintings, for
that he lived by the sale of them, and he wanted to take some more
likenesses of the coast not far off from here.”
“And Jack brought him from the Cock at Moreby?--How d’ye do, Jack?”
turning to a post-boy whom Sally had just been supplying with a
beefsteak and a mug of ale. “What, I suppose with little blood
chesnut mare and bay gelding, I saw at the Angel, when you and Joe
Simmons brought Sir North in an hour and a quarter from Moreby. But
how come you at this house; the widow’s beefsteaks good, eh?”
“Why he said himsen, that he wouldn’t gang tift first inn, and when
he’d be gettin here he’d dun wi’ posting; and so I told un, if he’d
loike to bide a bit, the widow would keep in well, thof she couldn’t
forward un.”
“And he came in the same way to your house in which he left it?”
“He come’d in’t same way, but soa did another wid un, a much smarter
nor he, and yet the tother put all this’uns things in’t chaise for
him, and stood at door looking after him, till I driv off.”
“He’s been asking me about Morden Bay,” interrupted the widow, “and
I’m sure I didn’t know much about it myself; but I told him to-morrow
was market-day, and Richard Darnell would be sure to be here, and
he’d hear all about it from him; and he said that would just do, and
he would wait till then.”
“Let me go and talk to him,” said the Doctor, “I dare say I shall do
just as well as the farmer; and have a bottle of your oldest port
ready, in case I ask for it. You’re out of lemons, I’m afraid?”
The Doctor went, but returned sooner than he expected, evidently
disappointed, though at first he said nothing, but walked about,
took up the anticipated bottle of port, which had already at his
desire mounted thus far from the cellar, and was waiting at this
half-way-house, with the decanter by its side, in which it was to
pursue its journey to the parlour. He brushed off the sawdust, held
it wistfully to the light, and then told the landlady she might carry
it back again; but, “One word first, widow,” said the Doctor: “You
know I’ve a regard for you; look to your spoons, that’s all. A very
suspicious-looking person, believe me. When a man shuns good company,
it’s a very bad sign. I introduced myself in the civilest way, saying
that I understood he wanted to dispose of some drawings, and that I
might have an opportunity of recommending them in the course of my
professional practice. And when I was undoing the strings to look at
them, he took them from me, and said that they were already disposed
of. I then talked of Morden Bay, and began describing it at random,
like any other bay; and then he interrupted me by asking if I had
ever been there; and when I said, not that I could remember, he said
he thought as much; and just as I was chatting on about something
else, he told me that he was writing, and that if I considered that
a public room, he would ask for a private one. Depend upon it, when
a chap of that kind comes Captain Grand over one, and wants to be as
dull as a lord, he has some reason for it. It’s a very suspicious
story altogether. Who was that swell confidant Jack says he left at
Moreby? Who knows? they may be French spies, taking a survey of the
coast, and the portfolio he was so afraid I should see, may be chuck
full of treason.”
“But you forget, Doctor, we are at peace now, and have been for some
time; and I don’t know, whether he be French or English, that there
is any harm in his painting a few trees, whether they grow near the
sea or not.”
“I have it,” said the Doctor, but apparently the last suspicion
was too weighty to drop lightly, and, buttoning up his coat, he
only added, “A few days will show whether I am right,” muttering to
himself as he went out, “General Ludd, General Ludd, General Ludd!”
But few years have passed since the Doctor pronounced that then awful
name, and many of my readers have never heard of “General Ludd,” at
that time the dreaded object of the ephemeral fears of every loyal
Englishman. His fame, too recent for the stores of history, too
obsolete for the currency of conversation, is now less alive than
that of many a brother general, who swells the half-pay list under
the grateful denomination of “dead weight.”
Whatever suspicions the Doctor had at that moment instilled into the
mind of the Widow Westbury, they appeared to have been obliterated,
in a long conversation which she had the next morning with the
stranger; for when her friend the Farmer arrived, she told him there
was a _nice_ young man, who was very anxious to board at his house
for a few weeks, whilst he sketched the surrounding scenery. She
told the Farmer he must not be hard upon him for terms, for that he
said he was as poor as need be, though just able to earn a decent
subsistence by the labours of his pencil.
The Farmer, who had no objection to the daily presence of a stranger,
who he hoped would rather restrain his family discomforts, did not
anticipate much objection on the part of his wife, who, as she had
every year become more fond of money, and liked the coin itself,
rather than the comfort it could purchase, would welcome the pittance
of the stranger, however small; determined, at the same time, not to
augment, in any respect, the expenses on his account. One difficulty
only occurred to the Farmer: what in days of yore had been called the
“spare room,” was now tenanted by the hams hung up to dry. But there
was George’s room vacant, which had been empty ever since he left it;
he therefore made acquaintance with the stranger, and the bargain
was concluded between them with the facility which might be expected
from two easy people, mutually eager to be accommodating. One thing
only kept alive a sort of suspense in the hostess’s mind against the
stranger; whilst talking with her, he had folded up and directed the
letter he had been so long writing, and which she observed to be a
bulky packet. She had offered to put it in the post for him herself,
and, approaching it for that purpose with rather a curious feminine
eye, he had hastily turned the direction downwards, and declined
her services, saying, that he would put it in himself, which,
accordingly, he had stopped to do, whilst riding out of the town with
Farmer Darnell.
CHAPTER VIII.
Ay, mine own fortune is my misery.
SHAKSPEARE.
Go thither, and with unattainted eye
Compare her face with some that I shall show.
IBID.
His letters bear his mind.
IBID.
’Tis hatched and shall be so.
IBID.
The letter, which had been thus carefully forwarded by the stranger,
had by no means a treasonable exterior; it was directed to “The Right
Honourable ----, &c. &c. &c. &c., one of H. M. Principal Secretaries
of State,” and contained an inner envelope to “Wm. St. Clair, Esq.”
It began as follows:--
“MY DEAR ST. CLAIR:
“When I consider the official atmosphere in which this will be
opened, and that it is to be read by a person now filling a
situation with such a dry unromantic name as _précis_ writer, I
can hardly hope for that sympathy in some of the feelings it wall
describe, which, even in earlier days, your more worldly mind was
sometimes inclined either to withhold, or to mix up with a little
unwelcome ‘persiflage.’ You have often told me, that with every
kind disposition to pity the peculiar hardships of high rank, and
the severe burthen of a large fortune, still I was the friend
whose misfortunes you would the most readily share. But the very
circumstance of your quizzing me a little on this head, by showing me
that you cannot flatter, makes me believe that you may feel for me,
when I complain of those irksome advantages of wealth and situation
which have prevented my being ever convinced that any one really
cared for me for myself alone. With men, I do not so much mind that:
the sterling ore of friendship is too weighty for the exchange of
every-day intercourse, and the paper-currency of popularity passes
just as well. But with women, from my earliest acquaintance with
them, I have always been haunted with the consciousness that true
love is not to be bought, and by the constant idea that I could
not be loved for myself; a distrustful suspicion that, I grieve
to say, experience has hitherto only tended to confirm. In every
situation, wherever I have been known, I have always had the same
fear, but too often the same conviction of its justice. I have
fancied I could trace the same expression in every female face, from
the hacknied smiles of venal beauty, in whose profusion one could
plainly read ‘he pays well,’ up to the would-be attractive simper
of the shy debutante, which had been already tutored to follow the
maternal whisper. I have tried in foreign countries to escape the
unfortunate fame of my wealth and liberality, but in vain: many
half-formed illusions of the ‘grand passion’ have been dispelled by
the exclamation, ‘_Milor qui est si riche_.’
“The first severe lesson of this kind I received, you will have
heard in the world told in different ways. During my minority, I was
induced to raise money to pay the debts of Lady Madelina Manfred,--I
don’t like trusting the post with names, but about her there can
be no scandal. The demand staggered me. I believe I was half cured
before; however, I paid the money, and dropped the connexion. She
affected indignation at my fickleness and desertion, which at her
time of life was rather a blow, but secured at the same time the
whole sum, (ten thousand pounds, I think it was,) and then eloped to
spend it with a Captain O’Connor, in Connaught, and poor Manfred is
still in the rules for her debts.
“I did not think so much of this at the time; I was then very young,
and attributed it to my own folly in having allowed myself to be
inveigled by a woman old enough to be my mother, all whose better
feelings had been hardened by an habitual disregard of her marriage
vow.
“The next year I was very much in love with----you may, perhaps, have
heard the story in the scandal of the world, but I will not here
publish the name, because still unchanged, for she is yet unmarried.
“My guardians asserted, which was the only reason why I doubted it,
that I was then much too young to marry. But I was at that time sick
of intrigue; I thought it would be a glorious thing to monopolize for
ever the first affections of one then so universally admired.
“Her mother, Lady ----, was always talking to me of her daughter’s
youth and innocence, to which I attributed the reserve with which my
attentions had been at first received, pleased as I was to find it
gradually lessening during their continuance.
“The newspapers had already hinted, in unmistakable initials, at a
marriage in high life; I had as yet said nothing, but was determined,
as I knew the paragraph must have been seen, to observe first what
effect that had produced. The paragraph went the round of the papers
uncontradicted: perhaps I ought to have contradicted it; but as I
observed no diminution of cordiality in consequence, I believe I
should instead have declared myself, but that just at this time a
military cousin of mine returned with despatches from the Peninsula.
He was a _very, very younger_ brother, that is, one of a very large
family, with very little fortune to divide. I had not seen much of
him lately, but as we had been together as children, and I was one
of his nearest collateral relations, he came to consult me on an
engagement which he said he had formed previous to his joining the
army in Spain, and upon the possibility of procuring the consent
of the family of the young lady, at whose house it appears he had
visited from country quarters.
“He owned that he had nothing but his profession, in which, however,
his hope of promotion was now great. But the young lady had herself
some money, and to prove that her affections were sufficiently
engaged to justify him in venturing, he showed me some letters he
had received, full of assurances and unutterable attachment from the
nameless beauty, who had since been receiving my addresses! The
letters, it is true, were not of a very recent date, but this the
time occupied in his voyage homewards had prevented his remembering.
“Here, then, was a more complete explanation of the coldness with
which I had been at first received, than the mother’s palliations
of youth and innocence, and an utter extinction of my own dream
of monopolizing the first affections of a virgin heart. I would
willingly have persuaded myself that it was sensibility to my own
superior merits which had sufficed to obscure a former transient
impression; but when I looked at my cousin’s handsome, sunburnt
features, and thought of his honourable distinctions obtained in
the field-of-battle, and compared it with my own useless, lounging
life, I could not deny that the real nature of the change must have
been the worldly advantages of one “_parti_,” as compared with the
imprudence of the other connexion; for in no personal attractions
could I flatter myself that I surpassed my cousin.
“This conviction operated as a summary cure of my passion, and left
in its stead mingled feelings of disgust, at the deceit which had
been practised on myself, and pity for my cousin.
“Poor fellow! when I saw how deeply his happiness was involved, I
could not bear to take on myself the task of destroying his hopes;
I therefore, without explaining my motives to him, hastened that
departure for the Continent, which my guardians had long been
anxious I should not delay, and left him master of the field to try
his chance. I heard afterwards, that his suit was rejected by her
friends, with an abruptness, probably increased by his being supposed
to have prevented my proposals. I have reason to believe also, that
he was more regretted by the girl herself than would have been
expected from one whose actions were so much those of an automaton;
but however that may be, the first rejection was final, for the next
year my poor cousin was killed at Waterloo, where he was supposed
unnecessarily to have sought danger, not unwilling to close an
irksome existence with a glorious death.
“The whole of these events made a deep impression on me; and,
confirming preconceived opinions, gave me a decided distaste for a
London-bred wife, and extended my distrust of the disinterestedness
of the affections of women in the world in general; which last
feeling you have occasionally remarked upon at some of the many
places abroad, when in the course of your professional attaché-ship,
during the last few years, we have so often met. You will say,
perhaps, that it arose from a determination to judge motives with a
jaundiced eye; but I am every day more convinced, that worldliness
is at the bottom of every woman’s heart whom I have known, of every
country, and in all states, whether maid, wife, or widow--ay! widow
worse than any. Since your return home, I have met on the Continent
one of that class, perhaps at first one of the most fascinating
creatures in the world. I think it very probable you may have met
her. Young Lady Gayland, married at seventeen to an old man, a friend
of her father’s; a widow at nineteen; and now, at one-and-twenty, her
own mistress, with the vivacity of a child, and the wit of a woman of
the world.
“I did hope that her’s was a situation where the affections might
have fair play. Neither perverted by vicious habits, like Lady
Madelina--for Lady Gayland made an excellent wife to old Sir Joseph;
nor warped by maternal manœuvring--for she had no one to please but
herself, and was left with a large fortune, which put her above
prudential considerations,--I was in hopes that she might at once
merit and appreciate that admiration which her beauty excited; but
I was deceived again. I will not enter into particulars, as I have,
I trust, completely escaped from her fascinations; though even at
this distance I think too often of her to feel quite confident on
that head. If you had seen the sudden jerk with which I dashed
away my pen, which had been the instrument of conveying to you in
the last sentence that profession of indifference, you might have
been sceptical as to its sincerity; but a few paces up and down the
smallest of country-inn parlours have brought me to my senses. It is
sufficient to say she deceived me. I was fool enough to think that
I had inspired her with a feeling pure and fervent as my own, when,
in the midst of this vain dream, I was suddenly awakened. Within a
week after the arrival of that confident coxcomb, Frank Melmoth, who
only courted her for her fortune, the melodious tones of her musical
laugh chiming in with all his flippant nonsense, rang on my ears as
the knell of all my hopes. Perhaps, after all, I was too hasty; she
might not really care for him; but I had every reason at the time
to think so, and now it is all over. It is sufficient to say, that
she is spoilt by the world, and can have no real feeling, for she is
disposed to laugh at every thing, and to receive even sentiment with
a smile. Upon one occasion--but I said I would not particularize, nor
will I, because among other reasons, at this distance of time, I do
not feel quite sure but that you might smile likewise. Suffice it to
say, I am at length convinced, that in our rank in life, the feelings
are too early perverted by the world, to hold out to a person, who
thinks like me, any real prospect of happiness.
“No; I will seek something as different as possible from all that
I have hitherto described. No bad second-rate copy of Lady Gayland
could I tolerate; and if I am to be sustained in my fixed resolution
of forgetting her, it must be by seeking contrast, and not imitation,
that I must hope to succeed.
“What my present plan exactly is, I will not say; but once in my
earlier days a vision crossed my path, of a simple child of nature,
fresh and beauteous as the morn. Think of the delight of first
winning her pure affections, as one not elevated above her own rank
in life, (the case is certainly not without precedent,) and then
the pleasure of declaring myself afterwards, and the consciousness
thus derived, that whatever additional gratification may arise from
the advantages of rank and fortune, they could not be the cause of
the connexion, but from their subsequent disclosure were matter of
surprise, not speculation. Now, will you be anxious to find out the
scene of this plot; but even if you get hold of the cover directed
to your ‘chef,’ you will be only misled by the postmark, as that is
intended purposely to deceive.
“But be satisfied with a degree of confidence, such as it is--quite
unusual in these close and uncommunicative days--and pardon the
length to which it is fine-spun; for bulky as the packet is, the
privilege of your place will prevent your paying for it, and the
duties of your office will, I am sure, leave you complete leisure to
read it.
“Your’s,
“CASTLETON.”
CHAPTER IX.
----You are welcome, Sir;
But not so well apparelled as I could
Wish you were.
SHAKSPEARE.
Go to my chamber; put on clothes of mine.
IBID.
All impediments in fancy’s course
Are motions of more fancy.
IBID.
Lord Castleton, or rather Mr. Churchill, as we must in future call
the “_soi-disant_” itinerant limner, felt a little awkwardness at
the publicity of his first appearance in his assumed character, as
he rode out of Mayton by the side of Farmer Darnell,--a mode of
transferring himself to his new residence which he had preferred
to the alternative of being consigned to one of the farmer’s return
teams, which had that morning brought there, as he assured his new
acquaintance, “the finest load of upland meadow hay which had come
to market that season.” Mr. Churchill had therefore hired for the
purpose, at the Queen’s Head, the hostler’s own pony, which besides
the advantage of his paces, a low straight shoulder, and somewhat of
a string-halt, had a mouth with about as much feeling as a well-worn
pulley, through which a smooth snaffle ran without the least effect:
added to these qualifications, being of a domestic turn, he had an
invincible dislike to wander far from home, which he did not show
by violent resistance, but by the patient endurance with which
he reluctantly yielded, step by step, to the incessant hints of
Churchill’s unarmed heel.
As Richard Darnell was in consequence obliged frequently to pull up
for him, during the first mile or two, it could not be concealed,
that the painter did not look very comfortable, or much at his ease,
and Darnell addressed him with:
“More used to handle the brush than the whip, I take it, Master
Painter. Pretty nearly the first time you were a horseback, maybe?
Lord, man, I hope that a’n’t the way you would paint St. George, as I
suppose you have done afore now; the dragon wouldn’t have much ado to
pull you off.”
And the farmer chuckled good-humouredly at what he conceived a
harmless joke upon a subject on which he could not imagine that his
companion could have any vanity.
But it may be recollected that Lord Castleton had very early been
rather proud of any opportunity for the display of his horsemanship;
he had indeed for two seasons been a crack-rider in Leicestershire;
but for all that it is very true, that no tailor could have looked
more out of his element on Joe Hostler’s rough ill-broken pony.
During the greater part of their way the dialogue was confined to
the qualities of different soils, the prices of different years, the
proper succession of crops, and the measures of various markets;--if,
indeed, that could be called a dialogue, which consisted in a
profusion of unasked information on the one side, and exclamations of
mechanical assent on the other.
As they approached the coast, the afternoon, which had hitherto
been fine, became gradually overcast; a creeping mist, by degrees,
enveloped the surrounding country, and, thickening as it advanced,
was accompanied by a mizzling rain. Lord Castleton, completely wet
to the skin, arrived at the top of the cliff, which they were
to descend to Farmer Darnell’s dwelling, without being able to
distinguish a feature of the scene which had so enchanted him the
last time he had seen it. Churchill was received at the door of the
house, not by her he longed to see, but by her mother. Mrs. Darnell
greeted him courteously, for now that he was again separated from
the pony there was something in his air and appearance which, until
his story contradicted it, rather betrayed his real rank in life.
Supposing him to be a gentleman, to whom her husband had offered
shelter, the hostess expressed great solicitude about his catching
cold, and begged him to put on some of her Richard’s clothes whilst
his own were drying.
To this, as his own things were not yet come over from Mayton by the
waggon, he at once consented, and was escorted to what was to be
his, and which had been, George’s room, to effect the change. He was
aware that it had not yet been explained to Mrs. Darnell who he was,
and his intended temporary residence in her household; and, as he
could overhear, without distinguishing the words, the alternate tones
of a gruff and a sharp voice in the room beneath, he concluded the
explanation was then going on, and, by the increasing preponderance
of the “Alto” over the “Basso” notes of the duet, he was afraid it
was not taking a favourable turn.
His toilet was the sooner concluded, as the difficulty consisted,
in his case, not so much in getting into Farmer Darnell’s clothes,
as in keeping them on afterwards. He could not help thinking that
his appearance must be rather ludicrous, though there was no
looking-glass in the room by which to ascertain the fact. He had,
previously to adopting his assumed character, cut short his own
lighter hair, and superinduced a black wig as a sort of disguise;
but, as personal disfigurement was no part of his plan, the wig was
not of that homely make which would suit the cut of the borrowed
garments he now had on.
As he entered the room down-stairs he heard the female voice end
the argument with, “It’s just of a piece with a’ the rest;” and
then, turning to him, she said, “So, young man, I hear Richard has
been settling with you to stay and board with us a bit: there’s not
another man in the country, but him, would bring a stranger at once
into a decent family; no offence to you, who, I dare say, are a quiet
well-behaved body, that won’t give us any fash; but it was so like
Richard, that’s all. However, I have no doubt you wouldn’t have come
if you hadn’t the money to pay for your board, for, after all, ’tis
but an idlish uncertain sort of calling your’s.”
“I’ve no objection to pay the first week in advance, and, though far
from rich, have no doubt that I shall be able to continue to do so,
therefore make yourself easy on that head, my good woman.”
“Good woman, indeed!” muttered she; “Mrs. Darnell’s my name, Mr.
Churchill, as I hear that’s yours. And what may you get by this
vagabond sort of life? ’tis a pity you didn’t fix in some town and
stick to painting houses and signs.”
“The different ranks in our profession are as various as the colours
in which we deal, from those whose genius elevates them to the
society of the great, to the hacknied drudge, to whose wholesale
daubing you would confine me: but though I can never aspire to
emulate the first, yet I find that by indulging my fancy in sketching
on the coast in summer, and making drawings for cheap engravings in
the winter, I can maintain myself, with care and economy, above all
dread of want.”
Churchill meant by this last speech accurately to describe the sort
of indefinite situation in society which he intended to assume. But
much of it was unintelligible to Mrs. Darnell, who, satisfied by his
offering to pay his board and lodging in advance, that he was not a
swindler, turned to answer her husband’s inquiry, “Why he had not
seen his dear Lucy?” by telling him that the girl had been over to
see her aunt, where she had probably been detained by the weather,
and might not come home that night. Churchill therefore made up his
mind that he should not be gratified with the sight of the object
which had brought him there till the next morning, which, considering
his present grotesque appearance in her father’s clothes, he did
not much regret; and, having sufficient topic for reflection as to
his future conduct in the situation he had so abruptly assumed, he
remained comparatively silent, whilst Darnell and his wife so far
made him at home as to discuss together domestic details, without the
least regard to his presence.
But just as they were about to separate for the night, the latch
of the garden-gate was heard to click, and a light step quickly to
cross the gravel without. The imagination of Churchill had already
anticipated what it was to produce, when almost at the same instant
the door hastily opened, and Lucy rushed in. The first impression on
the mind of the stranger was, upon the door opening, that her figure
appeared some inches higher whilst standing in the threshold than his
recollection had led him to expect. His next remark, however, was
the perfect symmetry of her form, which the last few years’ progress
towards maturity had confirmed; and as she threw off her bonnet,
and shook back the locks of her rich brown hair, which had been
disordered by the storm she had just braved, Churchill thought he
had never seen a countenance in which innocence and intelligence were
so happily combined.
“And what do you come back for in this gait, spoiling all your
clothes?” said her mother.
“Nay, mother, I’m sure you’re glad to see me safe at home,” said Lucy
in a deprecating tone, at the same time kissing her: “I never slept
from under this roof in my life before, and I did not like to begin
now, for all aunt wanted me to bide with her all night.”
The tone in which this was said disarmed even Mrs. Darnell’s
fault-finding disposition,--Churchill would have wondered if it had
not,--and Lucy threw herself into her father’s arms, whom she had not
seen before to-day, and then drew back upon observing the stranger.
He had risen upon her entrance, but felt an awkwardness, which was
visible in his deportment, as to how to present himself: this was
increased by the unfitness of his present costume: he felt that to
attempt a pretty speech or courteous greeting would be absurd, and
he was not sufficiently assured what sort of deportment would be
befitting his present appearance. The consequence was, that he stood
sheepish and abashed; and he, who had scattered his smiles with a
feeling of condescension round the most brilliant ball-rooms, and
had dropped unasked, with a certainty of welcome, into the choicest
“boudoirs,” blushed with a sense of shame beneath the enquiring gaze
of a simple country girl. So easily does disguise or deceit entail
with it a consciousness of inferiority.
“’Tis a young man in the painting line,” said her father, seeing he
would not answer for himself, “who is going to stay here a bit, and
paint the country: you must show him the Black Glen and Deadman’s
Crag, and some of your favourite spots.”
Lucy gave him, in answer, a smile of welcome, which Churchill fancied
was changed to one of a more satirical character, as she examined
his dress and figure: this, however, was checked by her mother,
who insisted upon her no longer remaining in her wet clothes, but
retiring to bed. The whole party then separated for the night.
Lord Castleton was left alone in the occupation of George’s garret.
The first thing he did, as he walked along the floor by the dim light
of his farthing candle, was to knock his head against the beam which
ran across its low ceiling; the next was to sit himself down in the
only chair in the room, and reflect upon the novelty of his present
situation, when, spite of his efforts to resist it, a general sense
of discomfort stole across him. Planned at a distance, his scheme had
comprised only the great outlines of “disinterested attachment,”
“simplicity of nature,” “unconscious beauty,” and “freedom from the
trammels of rank;” but the details had either escaped him altogether,
or had worn a different shape, when fancied from afar, than that
which they now assumed in practice. He had expected to receive from
the cordiality of hearty hospitality, all those attentions which he
scorned to accept as the servile offerings of dependent inferiors;
and he had not been at all prepared for the occasional contemptuous
jocularity, and generally protecting tone of the farmer; or for the
half-hinted suspicions, and cautious bargaining of his wife; both
which were carrying the absence of undue deference to him, farther
than he had anticipated.
On one subject only he had not been disappointed,--that was, in the
appearance of Lucy.
“And, after all,” thought he, “what does any thing else signify? I
ought rather to be pleased with the rest, however disagreeable in
itself, as the best proof that my scheme works well, and that if I
should, as the unsuspected Churchill, treated in this unceremonious
manner, succeed in winning her affections, I need, through all my
after-life, never have a moment’s mistrust that I was loved for
myself alone.”
Consoled with this reflection, he proceeded with less dissatisfaction
to make a survey of the various “désagrémens” of his present confined
chamber, which was as uncomfortable as possible consistent with
perfect cleanliness. An inventory of the furniture might have been
contained in one line, and the walls presented one unbroken surface
of whitewash, except where, over the chest of drawers, three bits
of paper were pinned up for ornament: the centre a wood-cut of Lord
Nelson’s funeral car; on one side of it a roaring sea song, and on
the other a sentimental ballad, whose only possible merit was that
the heroine’s name was Lucy. These relics of George’s fairings had
remained here undisturbed ever since his departure.
The bed on which its present tenant prepared to stretch himself,
was not very well calculated for the literal fulfilment of that
operation, being in length better adapted for the then height of its
last owner than that of its present occupier.
It was upon this uncomfortable couch that Lord Castleton now fell
asleep, lulled by the wind whistling through the low casement, and
the rain pattering on the roof; and dreamed confusedly, that he
broke to Lucy his real rank, and that she first burst into tears,
and then changed suddenly to Lady Gayland and began laughing at
him. When he awoke in the morning, with a sort of indistinct doubt
as to where he was, the first object which met his half-open eyes
was, the initials G. and L. D., combined in a sort of cipher, and
cut in the soft deal-board just by his head; no doubt by the last
occupier of that bed. This he did not think a good omen, and hastily
rising, he gave way to a momentary feeling of discomfort, at finding
his clothes still in the confusion in which he had last night left
them, and not carefully arranged for his toilet, as the habits of
his life accustomed him to expect; but banishing this as unworthy
consideration, he was restored, by the contemplation of the brilliant
prospect which the fine morning showed him from his window, to that
state of mind which made him enjoy the happiness of his first meeting
with Lucy, whom he found alone in the breakfast-room.
CHAPTER X.
It were all one
That I should love a bright, particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me.
SHAKSPEARE.
But several years elapsed since they had met;
Some people thought the ship was lost.
BYRON.
About a week had elapsed since Churchill’s arrival at Morden Bay,
an interval which he had not failed to improve, by availing himself
upon all occasions, whenever Mrs. Darnell permitted, of Lucy’s
company, as a guide to the many picturesque scenes with which she was
so well acquainted; and, as the principal maternal objection was
the interference this caused with domestic avocations, the evening
was generally chosen as the hour left most free for these romantic
rambles.
Lucy’s taste for the beauties of nature had till now lain dormant,
for want of any one to sympathize in her admiration. Her aunt, to
whose disposition it would have seemed congenial, never wandered far
from home; and of all the various picturesque spots with which the
neighbourhood abounded, those only had hitherto been interesting to
Lucy which she could animate as the mental scenery of those parts of
Shakspeare which, as read to her by her aunt, she most admired. But
since she had attended Churchill in his sketching expeditions, she
had discovered new beauties in every spot they had together visited.
From admiring his power of recording effects and imitating objects,
she had become anxious to emulate the same herself, and upon the two
last occasions, _she_ likewise had attempted the powers of the pencil.
It was quite an afternoon for a painter, with broad effects of light
and shadow. Churchill and Lucy had perched themselves on a small
ledge of rock, just above the shore, commanding a well-wooded bank of
the Black Glen, with some bold and jutting crags rising out of the
surface of the waters beyond, when Lucy, after a time, first looking
over her shoulder at her companion’s work, and then comparing it with
her own, said:
“Oh, Mr. Churchill! I shall never be able to do it like you. I can’t
make two trees, which really touch on the paper, seem so far apart,
and I meant this like your’s for the sea, with a ship on the horizon,
but it looks much more like a wall, with a weed growing on the top;
and then my paper is just as big as your’s, but I never shall be
able to get half so much into it.”
“Because, my pretty pupil,” said Churchill, examining it, “you have
made that distant cliff higher than this old boat-house.”
“And so it is, a hundred times higher,” said Lucy in a justificatory
tone; “and if you were there, you would soon see the difference.”
“But now we are not there, and we are here,” answered Churchill
smiling; “and in this world, objects, like events, appear to us,
not according to their intrinsic importance, but in proportion to
our own situation, and the manner in which they affect ourselves.
For instance, dwelling in this retired spot, and in our humble rank
of life, events that might convulse the country, and affright the
great ones of the land, would be less observed by us, than the blight
which injured your father’s corn; and battles might be won and lost,
which we should feel less than the attack of a single fox upon your
poultry-yard.”
“It is a very stupid and confused attempt this of mine,” said Lucy,
tearing it in two; “and yet, separately, this is like the boat-house,
and that is like the rock,” holding up the divided parts of her
drawing.
“Yes, and may you learn to combine the simplicity of an humble
foreground with the softened outline of greatness in the distance!”
“That is a little like some of aunt Alice’s speeches, which I do not
always understand,” said Lucy: “perhaps it is, that you have both
mixed in that world of which I had only previously heard from her how
anxious she had been to leave it.”
“This aunt, of whom you so often speak, is it because she is unhappy
that she lives so retired?”
“She never complains.”
“And shall I never see her?”
“I never knew her see a stranger, but she asked me about you, when I
told her that I should have come to her before, but that I had been
to show you up the burn side: and she wanted to know why you were
staying at our house; and when I said I could not exactly tell, she
begged me to bring you to visit her some day.”
“And why not now?” said Churchill, whose curiosity was roused.
“It is rather late,” Lucy replied; “and mother’s particular about
tea-time,” looking at a little watch which her companion once well
knew.
“And where did you get that little French watch?” asked he.
“And is it French? then I dare say that’s the reason George couldn’t
abide it, for he hates every thing French, as it is right he should,
seeing he’s a sailor. It was given me by a strange gentleman who came
to see the bay,--and George tiffed about it, and thought some harm
would come of it. But I don’t see how it’s to be, for I’ve never seen
the gentleman since, as it wasn’t like I should.”
“But what sort of gentleman was this?” asked Churchill.
“Why, from the little I can recollect of him, not so very unlike
yourself, only that he had light curly hair, a more fresh florid
cheek, and a more easy-like look, as it was natural, you know, he
should; for I dare say he was a great gentleman, and had none of
those cares about the coming day which mother says must always be
felt by one with such an uncertain calling as yours; though, I’m
sure, I think your drawings so pretty that, as long as there is money
to throw away in the world, I should guess they would always be sure
to fetch something.”
They had, in accordance with Lucy’s hint as to the time, concluded
their sketching for that evening, and had begun to wind their way
homewards, when Churchill, recurring to that part of their late
conversation which had made the least pleasant impression on him,
said,
“And this cousin George, to whose opinion, as to that watch, you seem
to attach no little value, you have not seen much of him since?”
“He has not been at home again; that was the last evening he spent
here, which is the reason, perhaps, that it made the more impression
on me.”
“But you have heard continually of him, of course?”
“Not very often; when he left us, he was no very handy penman; he
used to say that it took him less time to sail round the bay than to
write its name, and that there was no such difficult navigation, as
tacking through all the ins and outs of a capital B. But I hope he
is improved in all that; though absent, he hasn’t thought any the
less about us; in that, at least, he used to be apt enough.”
They had ascended the cliff by a different path from the one
mentioned before, and were pursuing their way homewards through a
shady lane, and had just reached as far in it as the point where, at
right angles, a stile led to a footpath through a copse, known only
to those acquainted with the country, as a short cut from the main
road to Morden Bay. Upon coming in sight of this turn, they beheld
two men in sailors’ dresses, who were threading the narrow path
through the wood, at a brisk pace, the foremost of whom, looking up
and seeing them, made a run at the stile, bounded over it, and almost
at the same moment folded Lucy in his arms in an embrace, whose
ardour was mixed a little with that alloy of roughness which is
proverbially nautical.
The scream with which Lucy shrank from this unexpected salutation,
though it partook more of the character of surprise than positive
alarm, was sufficient to justify the ready interposition of
Churchill, who, seizing the intruder by the collar of his jacket,
pulled him with a sudden jerk away.
“Hands off, messmate!” said he in his turn, surprised, but good
humouredly; “who the devil may you be? let’s see what colours you
mean to hoist before you interpose between me and my pretty cousin
here.”
“And is it indeed you, dear, dear Cousin George?” said Lucy, as
she rushed again of her own accord into his arms, and kissed him
affectionately; then drawing back abruptly and blushing deeply, she
added, “But what a beard you have got, George, and how you’re grown
and altered! I declare you’re quite a man now!”
“Such things will happen in four years, between sixteen and twenty,
Lucy: you yourself are shot up wonderfully; why, you’d carry twice as
much sail as formerly:--Lord love her sweet face!” he added, again
kissing her now averted cheek: in shrinking from which second salute
she met Churchill’s eye, and blushing more deeply, said in a confused
manner,
“We were going home, you know, Mr. Churchill: you’d better come,
George, and see father and mother.--This young man,” she added in a
low tone, “is staying here a bit, painting the country, like those
other two you remember once, George, some time before you left us.”
“Oh, that’s what he is, is it? To be sure, I remember the others
well enough, and how you used to be sent out with one, and I with
the other, and how I frightened my man one day, by stealing his own
red paint, and smearing myself with it: I made believe to fall off a
rock he was drawing; he took it for blood, and thought I lay there
for dead. My friend here seemed to have had a mind to shed my blood
in real earnest; however, as ye took me for a rude stranger, it was
all right, and respectful like, interfering to protect a woman when
she cried out; so here’s my hand, my man, and now just take my friend
Captain Collett under your convoy, for you may guess I’ve many a
thing to say to Lucy here, which won’t concern either of you two.”
Churchill, still bewildered at the unexpected turn which events
seemed to have taken, looked round mechanically, to examine the
stranger thus unceremoniously introduced to him. He was standing
on the other side of the stile, leaning his elbows upon it. He had
remained in this attitude during the whole of the preceding scene,
an amused, though uninterested spectator of its incidents. He had
chuckled aloud at the momentary scuffle between George and Churchill,
but had not stirred a step to take part with either; and now as his
eye met Lucy’s, just as she and George were about to move on, he
assented to the arrangement proposed, by a familiar nod and grin,
without, however, removing his elbows from the stile, or his hands
from his chin. He was a short thick-set man, with that fresh, though
not youthful appearance, which the eye generally registers at about
five-and-forty, unless the parish annals give some more precise
date as to age. The expression of his countenance was the reverse
of serious; but a physiognomist would have said that the lines were
rather the joint production of cunning and conviviality, than the
impression of natural, quiet cheerfulness. His dress, like George’s,
consisted of a sailor’s blue jacket and trowsers; but his waistcoat,
which was ornamented with many little buttons and some lace, had
rather a foreign appearance, and was not unlike those usually worn
by couriers. He eyed Churchill curiously, as the latter looked first
at him and then after Lucy, feeling not the less disgusted at the
turn things had unexpectedly taken, that he did not know of what to
complain, or why to resent it. Nothing could be more natural than
that Lucy should be glad to welcome home her cousin, the favourite
companion of her childhood; or, upon his sudden return, that she
should neglect at the moment one, to whom she was bound by no ties;
an itinerant painter--the acquaintance of a week.
Yet during that week, Churchill had thought he was every day making
great progress in her regard; she had appeared to take a new sort
of pleasure in his society,--had been delighted either to hear him
talk, or see him draw; and even now, he thought, when her cousin had
attempted a second time to kiss her, her eye had sought his, and upon
meeting it she had blushed, and avoided the kindred embrace. Yet
now, as they walked away, George’s arm was round her waist, and his
profile looked offensively happy. “Come, Sir, if you please,” said
Churchill, rather hastily to his new companion, thinking that the
others had already got sufficiently far in advance.
“No hurry,” said Captain Collett, as George called him, getting even
more deliberately over the stile than the square cut of his figure
required; “we are only to keep within hail, you know. I’m sorry for
you; it is but a poor exchange to have only Kit Collett for your
consort, instead of yon gay pinnace. But it can’t be helped; you’re
clean cut out, that I can see. A nice tight little prize too. Is it
that you’ve been over slow in making her your own, or have you stayed
long enough for her to get tired of you?”
“Come, Sir,” repeated Churchill again, loud and angrily, his
attention having been a little taken off from the last speech by
watching George and Lucy, who had now disappeared round a corner in
the lane: “I desire you won’t talk to me in that manner. As that
young lady seemed to wish me to show you the way to her father’s,
I am ready to do it, provided you don’t take advantage of that
circumstance to speak impertinently of her; if you do, I shall
consider that you would be an improper guest, and take the liberty of
leaving you behind.”
“Well, no offence, man; I meant none. Young lady! Lord, how grand all
that is!” still speaking with a half suppressed chuckle; “however,
move on, my friend; it’s all one to Kit Collett what he talks about,
or indeed whether he talks at all, as long as he has one of these
to stop his mouth,” taking a cigar out of a case and deliberately
lighting it.
This being satisfactorily deposited in his mouth, and his two hands
in the side pockets of his jacket, he, without attempting any farther
conversation, rolled on, following Churchill as fast as he could,
whose impatient strides soon brought them inconveniently near to the
couple in advance. However much Churchill might have wished to join
company with them, he did not feel authorized to do so, unless he
had been more sure that such an intrusion would be welcome; and of
this he could see no symptoms; for though once Lucy looked round,
and, upon seeing him, appeared to wish to stop, and to require urging
on by her companion, yet, except at that one moment, she seemed
completely and satisfactorily occupied with her newly restored
cousin, and Churchill felt therefore unwillingly obliged to slacken
his pace, much to the relief of Kit Collett; and it was in two
separate detachments that they arrived at home.
CHAPTER XI.
He was a man as dusky as a Spaniard,
Sunburnt with travel, yet a portly figure;
Though colour’d, as it were, within a tanyard,
He was a person both of sense and vigour--
A better seaman never yet did man yard.
BYRON.
George’s unexpected arrival that night, produced in all the family
that sort of intoxicating exhilaration of spirits, which, whenever
the natural feelings are allowed to show themselves, is the effect of
the restored presence of a long-lost inmate.
Even Mrs. Darnell suppressed, for the moment, her desire to complain
of his protracted silence, and of the ignorance in which he had left
them as to how he had spent his time since his engagement in his
uncle’s ship had been out--which was now twelve months since.
As for the farmer, he was so delighted to see his favourite, that he
hardly knew what he did, and went about shaking hands with everybody,
and even asked the painter, with a cordial gripe, whether he wasn’t
d----d happy: a question, the repetition of which Churchill contrived
to evade, as it would have puzzled him to answer it heartily in the
affirmative. Captain Collett, the farmer pronounced, after they had
had two glasses together, to be a man after his own heart, and was
rather disappointed when, in answer to his enquiry whether he had
been George’s last Captain, George replied, “that he had sometime
sailed with him, and added, that he was known to be the best seaman
between the Thames and the Tweed.”
“And, as my voyages are not now very distant, George will have more
opportunities of seeing his friends here, as he is about to engage
with me.”
“I am not quite sure about that,” answered George gravely, and a
cloud, for a moment, came over his brow, which was, however, as soon
dispelled by the eager attentions of all around, by which he was
overwhelmed. George was soon much excited by finding himself the
great man of the party. Thus encouraged, he rattled away merrily,
sometimes boisterously, stringing one story on another with much
humour, not always confined within the narrow limits of fact, nor
scrupulously restrained by the bounds of decorum; once or twice,
even on this night of licence, he incurred the displeasure of his
aunt, and raised a blush on the cheek of Lucy, who was seated at the
supper board between him and Churchill.
During this time it would be difficult to analyze the conflicting
feelings of Lucy. Certain it is, that she did not attempt to do so
herself. If she had, she would have been aware that the sensations
with which she had welcomed the return of George were of a warmer
nature than would have sprung from the mere renewal of childish
companionship; and in the course of their walk homewards, whilst
listening to his passionate expressions of delight at his return,
she had admired more than it was necessary for a mere cousin to
do, the improvement the interval of absence had made in his fine
manly figure; and during that time, if her thoughts wandered from
the happiness of the present moment, it was to distant days, and
not to recent scenes. But now, when an inadvertent coarseness in
one of George’s expressions made her avert, a moment, her head, and
she beheld the displeased but enduring character of Churchill’s
countenance, and then, as her eye met his, she read in it, more
plainly expressed than it had yet been, that feeling towards herself
which woman cannot long mistake; and as she combined with that her
recollections of his many gentle and delicate attentions to her in
the course of their recent rambles, her wishes became rather confused
and bewildered; but perhaps the predominant one was, that George
should be rather different from what he was. She could not, at the
same time, but be aware that Churchill had been much neglected during
the evening; and it was as much regret at this, springing from that
considerate good-nature which in her rank of life supplies with the
interest of sincerity the place of good breeding, which made her say
to him in a tone and with an expression which amply compensated for
the previous neglect which it acknowledged:
“I am afraid all this must have been very tiresome to you.”
As the breaking up of the supper-party at that moment prevented other
answer, he took advantage of that circumstance to reply to her by a
gentle squeeze of the hand.
Immediately after supper was finished, Captain Collett signified
his intention to depart, resisting the entreaties with which he
was pressed to share with his friend George the best spare room,
from which, for their reception, the hams, &c. had just been
unceremoniously rejected, as it was not thought hospitable to disturb
the stranger, and his drawings and portfolios, from the room formerly
George’s, which he at present occupied.
“But, Captain,” said the farmer, “it’s a double-bedded room, and
you’d better bide to-night with your friend George, for the night’s
dark and murky, and if it had been as light as day, one’s way is
never somehow so canny to find after supper as afore.”
“Thank’ee the same, but I can’t stay,” replied the Captain. “As for
the night, I’m rather partial to dark nights; a’n’t I, George?”
chuckling: “and as for supper, if it’s along of the grog you mean,
Kit Collett would drink as much again, and walk as steady as on the
quarter-deck in a calm.”
“But it’s rather an awkwardish road to the Lobster near Placeden
Point, for a stranger, if that’s where you’re going.”
“Stranger! why nothing comes strange to me, that’s within three miles
of the coast from Beechy Head to Berwick Ness.”
“But,” said Mrs. Darnell, “you know it must depend on the time of the
tide whether you can cross Newland Creek.”
“It’s just now half-ebb, and by the time I’m down there, there won’t
be half-fathom water within a quarter of a league of the shore of
Newland Creek, and be hang’d to it.”
“That friend of your’s is a man that knows his business well, I
should say, George,” said Farmer Darnell, as he bolted the door after
him.
“Good reason he should,” answered George rather gravely.
CHAPTER XII.
Oh, Childhood--blessed time of hope and love,
When all we knew was Nature’s simple law,--
How may we yearn again that time to prove
When we looked round, and loved whate’er we saw.
* * *
When Churchill retired to bed, he in vain attempted to think of the
events of the day as of no importance to him,--merely the return
of a relation of the family, whom it was natural that warm-hearted
amiable people should be very glad to see again, and who would soon
again depart to follow his precarious profession, perhaps only to
return after another such long interval, to be once more received in
the same manner. But still, whenever he thought he had succeeded in
closing his eyes upon this idea, the image of George walking away
with his arm round Lucy’s waist would disagreeably intrude itself:
true, she considered him as a near relation,--had been educated as
a sister; but was that the way he considered the matter, and was it
likely that this innocent illusion would long continue if he chose to
enlighten her? He could not at the same time help flattering himself
that he had made a favourable impression on her; and, confirmed as
this hope was by her deportment towards him, at the conclusion of
the supper, he believed that if he made up his mind then to press
his suit he might bear off the prize. Yet there was something in
this manner of effecting that object which did not altogether
satisfy him. In his project of being loved for himself alone, he had
always anticipated that, whilst abandoning the outward advantages
of rank and fortune, he presented himself as an equal to a person
like Lucy; still he would retain the power of inspiring her with a
decided passion, and he had never looked forward to any thing like
competition with such a rival as George Darnell.
I am afraid it must also be allowed that there were some things in
Lucy’s deportment that evening which, desperately in love as he
found himself, charmed as he was with her beauty, fascinated with
her simplicity, had not quite pleased him. In their _tête-à-tête_
rambles, there had never any thing occurred to weaken the illusion
of her perfections; on the contrary her soft and gentle manners,
animated only by an attractive freshness of character, which was
brought into play by the workings of natural good sense, were
constantly strengthening his attachment. But the unrestrained
ebullition of high spirits is a terrible touchstone by which to try
the want of conventional refinement, either of mind or manners; and
there were many moments in the course of the evening, whilst she was
enjoying to the utmost some of her “cousin George’s” nautical jokes,
when her lover could not help thinking “Is that exactly the way in
which I should like Lady Castleton to behave?”
Churchill rose the next morning with one conviction impressed
strongly on his mind, as the result of the contradictory reflections
with which he had been perplexed during the night, and this was that
at any rate he had no longer any time to lose in inaction; that
either his visit to Bankside Farm must now draw to a conclusion, or
it must assume the more decided and permanent character with which he
had meant before long to invest it.
As a mere itinerant artist, his stay had now been prolonged enough
for any assumed object which in that character he could put forward.
And if as such only, he meant to be recollected by the inmates of
farmer Darnell’s, it was now high time that he should pack up his
portfolios, already superabundantly stored with sketches, in every
variety of light, close studies, and distant effects, of every object
worth commemorating, within the reach of a walk with Lucy.
He had his misgivings too, that even if this did not occur to himself
as a reason for shortening his stay, it would, ere long, be hinted to
him in no very indirect terms by Mrs. Darnell, with whom he had never
been a great favourite, as being, as she said, “at best, but a bit of
a vagabond, only better than a stroller or a mountebank, inasmuch as
he daubed his nasty paint on paper, instead of on his own person.”
His taking Lucy gadding about with him, was also a great waste of
time: but his worst offence in the eyes of this orderly housewife
was, that by occupying George’s room, he had caused the ejection of
the hams from the spare bed-room. All these reasons made it evident
that it would not be entirely optional to himself to prolong his
stay indefinitely. On the other hand, he could not but be aware
that if he had, as he flattered himself, already made a favourable
impression on Lucy, it was very desirable now, that he should confirm
and strengthen that, without allowing time for any _retour_ of her
earlier partiality for her cousin and playmate to arise and occupy
even a corner of that heart which was to love him exclusively and
for himself alone. Still that it should be necessary, in regulating
his future conduct, to guard against such a possibility, grated
unpleasantly against his feelings, and gave a dissatisfied and
undecided turn to his thoughts, and when he had slowly descended the
stairs to breakfast, even whilst he had the latch of the parlour-door
in his hand, the question rose unbidden in his mind, “Am I really in
love?”
The next moment, however, the effect of the first sight of Lucy
answered that question beyond a shadow of doubt, as he thought, in
the affirmative. It was Sunday morning, and Lucy was dressed for
church. There is, perhaps, no costume, however studied, so attractive
as the unaffected assumption, in simplicity and good taste, of their
best attire on this day of rest, by persons in that rank of life to
whom Sunday really makes a distinction of dress; utterly perverted
and lost as that effect is, when it causes an awkward and exaggerated
imitation of the already _outré_ fashions of their betters. But Lucy
was simplicity itself, and fresh and radiant and lovely as she looked
in the maiden purity of her snowy robe, so did she always present
herself on this day of thanksgiving, coming out with as little alloy
of coquetry as the flowers of nature, which greet in their gayest and
most brilliant colouring the spring which gives them birth.
So dilatory had Churchill’s complicated reflections made his toilet,
that the breakfast was far advanced when he entered, and the
conversation, which he only for a moment interrupted, was one not
calculated to please him; for he found George arranging, apparently
very much to his satisfaction, a _tête-à-tête_ walk with Lucy to
church; whilst it was suggested that Churchill should go bodkin
between Mr. and Mrs. Darnell in the taxed-cart.
From this uninviting mode of conveyance he was, however, opportunely
relieved by a declaration on the part of Farmer Darnell, that he was
unfitted for service by a touch of lumbago, which he had caught
riding home that stormy evening from Mayton, instead of staying
there quietly till morning. The excuse having been admitted by
Mrs. Darnell, with the qualification, that this was the first she
had heard of it, and the prospective consolation that he certainly
ought not to go to Mayton at all next week, it became necessary to
arrange some other division of march, as, luckily for Churchill,
Mrs. Darnell decidedly objected to trusting her precious person to
his charioteering powers. “How should he know how to drive? he was
never like to have had a chay, a poor _predistinarian_ painter!” as
she called him: “No; her dear George must come with her in the cart.”
George, however little he liked the change, did not make any decided
objection, probably recollecting enough of earlier days to know
that, if his aunt chose it, objection would be of no use; and also a
little tickled by the decided superiority over Churchill, which this
preference marked, as he already began to entertain an indefinite
feeling of jealousy of the other’s position in the family.
He therefore undertook with confidence to “pilot” his aunt to
church, though he professed that of late his hands had been more
used to manage the “rudder” than the “ribbons.” It was impossible
for the most practised woman of the world to have shown less by
her manner than Lucy did whether this ultimate arrangement was or
was not agreeable to her. “After all,” thought Churchill, as they
started together from the front door, “her natural manner is easy and
unembarrassed, and it is only while in actual collision with what is
coarse and uncongenial around her, that a momentary taint is breathed
upon its purity; when I shall have removed her from the reach of
contagion, that innocent simplicity will alone remain, upon which I
may engraft what impression I like, and I shall learn to think of her
only as a being whose whole existence is comprised in my happiness.”
“Lucy,” screamed Mrs. Darnell at the extent of her voice, just as
they had cleared the garden-gate, and Churchill had closed the
foregoing reflections, “Lucy, have you minded that the crust to
George’s pie is made of short paste, as he used to like it?”
“Oh yes, mother, I wasn’t like to forget that,” answered Lucy, with
an eagerness which Lord Castleton thought was not very appropriately
applied to another’s pie-crust, by a being whose whole existence he
had just settled was to be devoted to his happiness.
CHAPTER XIII.
If ever been where bells have knolled to church.
SHAKSPEARE.
All things are well digested for the purpose;
Then, throwing off the title of a duke, I will
Appear to her a low-born peasant.
TOBIN.
This unfortunate episode rather deranged the train of ideas by which
Churchill had determined to probe the real state of Lucy’s feelings.
Instead of availing himself, as he had intended, of the whole of
this two-mile walk artfully to ascertain her real sentiments, and
attempt to regulate his own accordingly, he spoke not at all at
first, then asked her three times abstractedly the different lengths
of the footpath by which they were going, and the carriage-road, to
church; and at last blurted out the question point-blank, “Whether
she thought her cousin George improved?”
“Oh, so much! that is, in some respects,” she answered, the first
words eagerly, then checking herself, added, “I am sorry to see you
didn’t like him, Mr. Churchill; I think I should have liked him much
better if you had.”
“Why, my dear Miss Darnell, should you fancy I do not like him? It
is true, that our different modes of life may prevent my perfectly
understanding all his stories. The poor painter, who has nothing but
daubing colours on canvass to show as the labour of a lifetime, can
never compete in interest with him who has soul-stirring adventures
by sea and land to boast.”
“And fearful dangers he has had, poor dear George! has he not? The
embarking the troops there--at what’s the name of the place, among
the Yankees--Old Orleans? New Orleans was it? and that frightful
hurricane in latitude--; he told us what latitude it was in. But
it wasn’t that I was going to say. Do you know, Mr. Churchill, you
sometimes made me ashamed of cousin George?”
“How? Explain yourself, I pray you, Lucy,” said Churchill eagerly.
“Why, for all what you say about a poor painter, and having
nothing to tell of, I like so much to hear you talk, whatever it
is about, and you speak to one so soft and kind, just like one of
the gentlefolk; and I have been always trying to answer you the
same, and somehow, I’ve got used to your ways lately; but last
night, when cousin George talked rather rude like, I looked at you,
and I saw by your face that you were fashed, and then I felt so
uncomfortable--and, don’t be angry!”
“Angry! no--why?” asked Churchill.
“And then I wished you away with all my heart.”
This was not exactly the conclusion to which Churchill had hoped to
hurry Lucy; but still there were many circumstances in the foregoing
conversation favourable to him. In the first place, it was evident
that she cared for his opinion, and also that he had awakened in her
mind a sense of what was, or was not offensive in manner. Yet, from
the tone in which she had spoken the last sentence, he could not but
draw the conclusion, that situated as she was last night, it was his
presence that she had felt as a restraint--it was to his absence she
would have looked as a relief. He would have liked to ascertain
whether this merely arose from considering George’s return--a
return as of right to the home of his childhood, which would have
prevented her imagining it possible that he could be removed from
thence, though he might be superseded in her affections. But just
as, intending to pursue this inquiry, he approached his companion
with a tender earnestness in his manner, which was certainly not
intended to meet the comments of a third person; he was interrupted
by the unwelcome apparition of Captain Collett, who meeting them at
the narrowest part of the path, Churchill was obliged to draw back
in order to let him pass by Lucy, which as he did, he said with a
leer, meant to be full of meaning, “Sorry to separate you!” and as he
brushed by Churchill, he hummed the burthen of a nautical ballad then
in vogue.
“From our night-caps so clean,
Our fresh laurel was torn,
And the prize of the e’en
Was recaptur’d at morn.”
Ere they could recover the thread of their discourse, thus
disagreeably broken in upon, they had come within sight of the parish
church, and as the last loitering groups gradually disappeared within
the porch, whilst the lingering tones of the slowly-stopping bell
died away upon the ear, they felt that they were late, and Lucy
quickened her steps, and led the way to their family seats.
The sacred building was one of the humblest of its kind; for
centuries (necessary repairs excepted) it had remained much in
its present state, the weekly resort of the simple and secluded
neighbourhood: there never had been any opulent landed proprietors
within the parish; no _squirearchial_ elevation broke the regular
equality of the divided aisle, or claimed distinction or superiority
from the height of its railing or the colour of its lining.
There was here no appearances at variance with those professions of
equality in the sight of Him they came to address, which the service
they came jointly to engage in, alike places in the mouths of the
rich and of the poor, of the high-born noble and the humble peasant,
sentiments which the unadorned simplicity of the sacred edifice was
so well calculated to awaken in every mind. Hence, as Lord Castleton
cast a look around upon the simple single-hearted groups who came
there, without disguise or reservation, to confess their errors, the
falsity of his own position struck him more forcibly than it had
ever done before, accompanied with a sense of shame at the deception
he had been practising. True, there was no unworthy motive at the
bottom of that deception; those upon whose credulity he was imposing,
it could not be denied, would in every worldly consideration gain
immensely by his being other than he seemed. But still no candid
mind, and such was Lord Castleton’s naturally, can satisfy itself
with the practice of deceit or artifice in any serious affair. Was
it so certain, after all, that the splendid elevation he designed
for Lucy must necessarily insure her happiness? He had found her
satisfied with herself, contented with all around her--the centre of
a little world, which knew no other. What had been the effect which
his society had already produced upon this tranquil state of mind?
It was evident that it had lowered cousin George in her estimation;
this was an effect, which, if it had stood alone, perhaps he might
not so much have regretted; but was it not accompanied by a feeling
of dissatisfaction at herself, at her involuntary participation in
many former sources of pleasure? and if this was produced merely as
the consequence of adopting his views when listening to him only as
the poor painter Churchill, how much would such a painful sense of
unfitness be aggravated, when bewildered with the strangeness of that
world to which he meant to transplant her; and what could he offer
in compensation, for inflicting that constantly-corroding sense of
self-inferiority, where all had previously been peace and content?
Not only her gentleness would prevent her braving the difficulties of
such a situation, but her very sensibility, which she possessed in
a degree unusual in her rank of life, would make her more alive to
painful sensations.
All these reflections, vague and half-formed, but generally
unsatisfactory, floated through Castleton’s mind in the intervals
of the service, and gave to his deportment a restless air, as if he
feared impending discovery. This vague consciousness of insecurity
arose principally from the disorder of his own mind, but was not a
little increased by the anxiously inquiring expression on the face
of the person immediately opposite to him, whose penetrating eyes he
found at intervals fixed intently upon him with a searching, though
not an unkind gaze: this he rightly imagined to be Alice Darnell. It
was a countenance which, though it had already lost the freshness
of youth, none could have beheld without interest, even if she had
not appeared in some degree to reciprocate that interest, as was the
case in the present instance. He could not conceal from himself, that
though this must have been the first time she had seen her nephew
George since his long absence, most of her attention was bestowed
upon himself, the stranger. Yet, though her expression was rather
that of melancholy interest than of reproof, the feeling it excited
in his mind was principally dread of her penetration, which caused
him instinctively to drop his eyes beneath her gaze.
When the service was concluded, and the family party left the church
together, Alice Darnell addressed a few words to him, in which he
could not help fancying that some feeling of interest lurked beneath
a form of studied coldness, and through the guise of commonplace
inquiry; and when the tones of his voice in reply first struck her
ear, the arm which held Lucy trembled violently; and, turning away,
she addressed him no more, but drawing Lucy closely towards her,
after some lengthened whispering between the two, the niece begged
that he would announce to her family, that in consequence of her aunt
not feeling well, she had returned home with her, and they were not
to expect her back to dinner; and turning together down one path,
they left him to pursue his solitary way by that which he had come.
CHAPTER XIV.
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles.
SHAKSPEARE.
For many fathoms doth the beetling rock
Rise o’er the breaker’s surge.
MATURIN.
Churchill found that George and his aunt had already returned some
time, as the young sailor’s anxiety to rejoin his fair cousin had
induced him to apply repeated hints, as to the rate of progress, upon
the fat quarters of the cumbrous quadruped before him, which were the
more readily attended to, as that experienced beast knew that his
head was now turned homewards.
The announcement with which Churchill was charged of Lucy’s absence,
made him very ill received by all the party. Farmer Darnell always
missed his daughter’s affectionate attentions most when labouring
under a fit of lumbago; Mrs. Darnell liked particularly to be
assisted in the arrangement of the Sunday’s repast by some one
more handy than big Betsey, as George always called the Patagonian
maid-of-all-work. And as for George himself, he had been thinking all
the way home how very agreeable he was going to make himself, and how
he meant to show off and amuse his cousin after her dull walk with
that prig of a painter. He therefore looked upon this interloper,
when he appeared alone, as a bird of ill omen to him, and he began to
owe him a grudge for this second separation, though it was not like
the first one, by which the object of his increasing antipathy had
himself profited.
With such a state of feeling shared amongst the party assembled, the
substantial meal of which they were about to partake was not likely
to be a very lively one, and contrasted singularly with the heartfelt
merriment of the supper of the night before. Indeed, as the majority
of those assembled were not of a rank in life who make conversation
for civility sake, but who, strange as it may appear, literally say
nothing when they have nothing to say, not a word would have been
spoken, had not habit rendered this inveterate silence so irksome to
Lord Castleton, that he could not help hazarding a trite observation
or two on the weather, which, if dropped elsewhere, would have been
taken up, and handed back, and led to reply and rejoinder, but which
were here considered such undeniable truisms, that they were only
received with an unencouraging “humph,” and all again relapsed into
silence, broken only by the clattering of the knives on the plates;
and even this was muffled, when, instead of tearing asunder slices of
beef, they dived in smoother intersections through thick portions of
plum-pudding.
After dinner the society, if such it could be called, seemed mutually
anxious to separate,--Farmer Darnell to his easy-chair and pipe, Mrs.
Darnell to her household avocations; and as to George and Churchill,
though they probably had the same object and destination in view, one
went out at the back-door merely because the other went out at the
front.
Churchill bent his way towards the part of the cliff by which he knew
Lucy must return, with no other pretence for lingering there till
her appearance, than that furnished by his small pocket sketch-book;
having got into a great scrape with Mrs. Darnell, on that day
week, by sallying forth, portfolio in hand, as he was considered
so completely as a professional person, that it was reckoned a
profanation of the Lord’s day for him thus to labour in his vocation
on it. The ledge upon the side of the cliff, from which he could
best command the prospect of Lucy’s return, was, however, too much
of a bird’s-eye point of view to be advantageous to a draftsman:
this circumstance, joined to the imperfect implements with which he
was upon this occasion provided, induced him soon to relinquish even
the attempt to exercise his assumed “metier,” and abandon himself to
those reflections which the singularity of the situation in which he
had placed himself, and the events of the last four-and-twenty hours,
had rendered more than ever striking.
Though sitting with his book open before him, and his pencil in his
hand, so completely had the inward bent of his thoughts shut out the
consciousness of any external objects, that he felt startled when he
heard a voice some paces above him, exclaim, “There she is at last.”
Instinctively, his eyes followed the path by which Lucy must return;
the more natural was this direction, as he recognised the voice above
to be George’s. But he could discern no moving object in the whole
length of the track. Another voice from above, which reminded him of
the harsh tones of Captain Collett, now rejoined,
“Yes; there, that’ll do; I see you, that’s near enough to show her to
us; now, about with her, you lubbers, there she goes, that’s right.”
Churchill’s eye dropping from the path on which it had been fixed,
to find out what else these remarks could apply to, he now observed,
for the first time, what under other circumstances would have struck
him merely from its picturesque appearance. Unnoticed by him, a
lugger had neared the point of the cliff, the sun shining gaily on
its light sails, and sparkling in the foam which was dashed back from
its side as it was pressed close up against the wind. Now, however,
even whilst these words were spoken from above, confirming him in the
idea that it was to this vessel the allusion was made, she was on the
sudden put about, more sails were set, and with a fresh breeze from
the land, she dashed rapidly out into the open sea.
The projecting ledge of rock, which formed rather an awful sort of
canopy to the niche within which Churchill was sitting, effectually
prevented his being seen by those who might be leaning against the
stone-wall at the top of the cliff; as he rightly conjectured the
two persons whose observations he had just heard now were. Provided
with so unsuspicious an excuse as his sketch-book for continuing
where he was, he determined to take his chance for overhearing some
more communications which (he hardly knew why) powerfully excited his
curiosity.
But though only separated by a few paces from those who spoke, in
spite of straining his attention, which the more he listened the
more he felt inclined to do, he could but very imperfectly catch the
purport of what was said; sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, a
louder and a longer wave would break, roaring on the shingle beneath;
sometimes a screaming seabird would hover round his head, as if on
purpose to baulk him.
“Well, Darnell, my lad,” said Captain Collett, “so all’s right. Jack
Dawkins has not mistaken the land-marks. And you were not more glad
to see again your friends of last night, not even the tight little
Lucy, than I am to see heave in sight my first of favourites, ‘_La
Pie voleuse_.’”
“And I should see her with much more pleasure if she were not so near
my friends of last night. She’s not the right sort of company for
them; and between ourselves, Captain, now it’s come to the point, I
dread their becoming better acquainted with each other.”
“And since when has the wind set in that quarter, lad? Didn’t you,
yourself, remind me, who know the whole line of coast, what a snug
place to land----”
Here the screaming of the sea-gulls above Churchill’s head, and
the roar of the breakers beneath his feet, combined to prevent his
catching the remainder of Collett’s answer; and when these noises
were again comparatively calmed, he heard George protesting--“Nay,
never say I’m ungrateful, or that I can forget the ugly scrape you
helped me out of this time three years; or that I repent the merry
period of adventure we passed together the last months of the war in
our privateering cruises; but that was other-guess work, when, if one
did chance to get knocked of the head, no one knew or cared whether
the venture we were engaged in chimed in with the exact letter of the
law. Who thought of George Darnell then? and whether he was washed
overboard with a bullet in his body or without, no one would grieve
about his death more or less for the manner of it. But somehow,
coming back here amongst kith and kin, and finding them all the same,
I can’t help wishing I was so myself.”
“Oh, certainly!” rejoined Captain Collett with a sneer, “they must
seem all the same to you: above all, Lucy; she has thought of no
one else since you first left home, and she’s only had that painter
chap here on purpose to meet you, that he may paint her your picture
against your next cruise. He was a studying her face pretty closely,
you’ll be glad to hear, when I met them going to church this morning.”
Churchill could only hear, in reply to this, the immortal part
of himself condemned to everlasting perdition in the emphatic
monosyllable usually applied to such a purpose. Whether the very
vehemence with which this was uttered warned the speaker himself
afterwards to drop his voice, or the surrounding noises again
conspired to drown it, but it was some time before the listener
could again make out what was said; when he did, George was saying,
apparently in answer to some remonstrance of the other, “Never fear,
you have my word, and you shall find me as faithful here as if I
was still on the smooth white sands of Cherbourg or the shingles of
Sussex; all I meant was, that when this morning I paced along the
churchyard amongst the tombstones, that told of those who had borne
the name of Darnell in peace and good-will to all around them, and
now seemed to meet my eye on all sides as if to remind me of that
with honest pride, I felt----But what signifies explaining to you
feelings which are not at all in your line; they may be between me
and my rest, but they shall not come between my word and you.”
The conference seemed here to be interrupted, for George halloed out
suddenly in a louder voice, “Avast, Mary! whither away so fast?”
“To Bankside, to say that mistress is but poorly, and Miss Lucy will
stay with her aunt to-night.”
“All goes contrary,” muttered George in reply.
“Well, Mary, say you spoke me by the way, and I bore the message for
you;” and George and his companion upon this prepared to return
homewards.
Churchill remained a few minutes behind, absorbed in reflections
upon what he had so imperfectly collected. It appeared, though he
could not exactly make out in what enterprise they were at present
engaged, that Captain Collett was a very dangerous companion for
his young friend, and that he had, perhaps, already involved him in
some scrape which would effect his future respectability in life.
There was nothing which he could distinctly gather in the shape of an
accusation from the conversation he had just heard; but he determined
to be upon the watch, and, should any thing further happen to confirm
his suspicions, to communicate them to Farmer Darnell, and in the
mean time to watch the next apparition on the coast of the “Pie
Voleuse,” which he now saw, after having run about a mile before the
wind straight out from the land, was standing to the southward: he
felt, at the same time, much disappointed at the protracted absence
of Lucy; and, anticipating nothing but discomfort in the present
state of the Darnell family, returned to Bankside Farm.
CHAPTER XV.
Out of thy long experienced time
Give me some counsel.
SHAKSPEARE.
A faint, but faithful, portraiture of one
Most dearly loved, and now for ever lost.
The agitation of Alice Darnell, which had struck Churchill as
remarkable, was not seen without surprise by her niece, who had never
previously, in all their intercourse, observed any break in her
usually composed demeanour, or a ruffle in her equable manners. She
said no more in the course of their hurried return to her cottage,
but occasionally pressed affectionately Lucy’s arm, on which she
leaned, and gazed earnestly in her face with an expression of
anxious tenderness.
Upon reaching home, she drew her niece into her snug little
neatly-furnished parlour, and throwing herself upon the sofa, covered
her face for some minutes with her hands, seeming not to hear Lucy’s
repeated requests to know what she could do to comfort her. At last,
raising herself, as if with an effort, and looking up in Lucy’s face
with a countenance strongly marked with the expression of inward
suffering, she asked abruptly--“And you say his name is Churchill?”
Her niece answering in the affirmative, she continued--“But what can
the name tell, which may easily be an assumed one? It is not that
the features, or even the countenance, are the same; but there is
something in the air and manner which too strongly recall---- And
oh, above every thing, the expression of those eyes, when he looked
tenderly on her--I had hoped that I had forgotten that of which they
renew the recollection with the freshness of yesterday. In the last
few minutes I have lived over again months of suffering, which I had
hoped, in vain, subsequent years of repose and resignation had almost
effaced from my too vivid recollection. It is but one effort more,
and for your sake I will make the attempt. Those events, which, by
constantly refusing to dwell upon, I had hoped the obliterating hand
of time was gradually glossing over, I now find as distinctly scarred
as ever in the deeply-cut tablets of my memory. It will but cost me
one more pang, that they should assume the tangible shape of words,
and operate as a warning to my beloved niece, in the danger which I
think at present threatens her. Lucy, Churchill loves you, and you
must cease to love him.’”
The poor girl, whose youth, innocence, and ignorance of the world
would have prevented her being able to define the nature of her own
feelings towards Churchill, had that habitual deference for her
aunt’s judgment, that she would never have supposed that she could
be mistaken in any opinion so oracularly delivered, and, therefore,
never thought of disputing what she seemed to take for granted,
that she had already begun to love Churchill; though she could not
account why, if this was the case, the idea of George should rise at
the same moment in her mind. She made no reply, but seating herself
at her aunt’s feet, and hiding her face on her knees, waited some
explanation of the last sentence.
“I feel assured,” continued Alice Darnell, “as of my own existence,
that he is elevated far above your rank in life; and trust me, I
speak from my own experience, when I say there are no sufferings at
all to compare with those which arise from unequal attachments.
Whether the resemblance which so strongly struck my imagination is
other than a strange coincidence, I have no means of judging; but
that Churchill is other than that which he here passes himself to
be, I feel I cannot be mistaken.--Lucy, it is necessary that, in
what I am about to say, I should speak to you much of myself; that I
should disclose many parts of my early life, which have been hitherto
concealed, not only from you, but from those of your relations nearer
my own age, with whom you have been living. My brother is only
partially informed of much of what I am going, without reserve, to
lay before you. Much I shall have to speak of feelings which neither
his habits nor his disposition would have enabled him to understand.
The principal facts I felt it my duty to confide to him, and it was
at his desire that no mention whatever was made of them to your
mother; for though blame might not be attachable to me, there were
circumstances which, he said, her peculiar mode of thinking might
make subject of reproach. If now I speak more openly to you than I
have ever done to any one, it is because, in spite of that complete
ignorance of the world, which your position has implanted, I have
always observed in you a fund of natural good sense, which will
induce you to make the right use of that practical warning which I am
urged to try as an experiment, from the similarity, in many respects,
of the position in which you at present are, to that whence I derived
every misery except disgrace.
“Your father and I were early left orphans. George’s father had
already been some time at sea when our parents died, therefore the
loss to him was not so great as to myself and my elder brother. An
old bachelor, relative of ours, undertook the management of the
farm, and the instruction of your father in the art by which he was
to live. It was more difficult to decide what was to become of me.
But it was at length determined nominally, upon the authority of
our guardian, but in reality by the advice of the gossips in the
neighbourhood, and my own wish, that I should be placed at what
was called a finishing-establishment for young ladies, at a small
sea-bathing place thirty miles from hence. I had not, however,
long been there, before, at one of the exhibitions for which this
school was celebrated, I attracted the attention of an excellent
and talented, but eccentric elderly lady of the name of Nesbit, who
happened to be staying at ---- for the season. Mrs. Nesbit had long
been left a widow with a large fortune, the greater part of which she
spent in the encouragement of the fine arts. In most of these, in her
younger days, she had herself been no indifferent proficient; but
latterly, her increasing infirmities had confined the exercise of her
taste to admiration of the skill of others. Frequent attacks of gout
in the hand had prevented her continuing her pencil, of the previous
success of which her boudoir still showed some favourable specimens;
and the same cause deprived the world of many records of her playful
imagination, in which she had formerly indulged, when still able to
write as quickly as she could think. Perhaps, of all the trials to
which the progress of physical infirmities subject us, there is none
so melancholy as when they produce the forced inaction of previously
well exercised faculties.
“Yet, though my acquaintance with Mrs. Nesbit only commenced after
she was already suffering in a cruel degree from manifold privations
of this nature, I never saw her temper the least ruffled by any
feeling of envy at the happier state of others; her kind disposition,
and her still fresh feelings, enabled her to derive unalloyed
pleasure from the success of others. When in London, her house was
always full of those who had most recently exerted themselves in any
line with distinction; and even when I have known her to have been
suffering acute bodily pain, I have seen her benevolent countenance
light up, as if the triumph was her own, when any new aspirant for
fame has been brought to one of her choice little evening reunions,
to hear from her own lips the acknowledgment of the pleasure she
had derived from his successful efforts. At the period when I first
became an inmate in her house, she had just acquired the afflicting
consciousness that she could not, without risking the total loss
of eyesight, indulge as formerly in reading for any time together
to herself. This was, to a person of her tastes, the most cruel
privation with which she had as yet been threatened, and one which it
required all her resignation to bear with equanimity.
“It was to alleviate her loss in this respect, that having been
pleased with something she observed in my voice and elocution at one
of our school exhibitions, she easily persuaded me to accompany her
to London as a companion, whose principal duty was to be reading
aloud to my benefactress,--most sincerely may I so style her. For
though I know that generally there is no fate more deplored than that
of a dependant companion, yet, whilst I was in that much stigmatized
situation, I experienced nothing but kindness, and I derived nothing
but pleasure from the occupation which it entailed on me.
“Our readings generally consisted of the best works of the day, and
when not satisfactorily supplied with those, selections from the
first poets and dramatists. Mrs. Nesbit was an enthusiast about many
of these, but Shakspeare was her idol; and it was in my endeavours
to please her, by showing that I really felt the beauties which I
was the medium of conveying, that I first cultivated that taste for
elocution, which, as you will see, I afterwards exercised in a wider
field. The first feelings of gratified vanity I had upon the subject,
was when Mrs. Nesbit would half raise herself upon her sofa, and
after gazing at me intently for some time, interrupt me with,
“‘My dear Alice, what an actress you would make!’
“Amongst the many distinguished persons of every profession who
used then to frequent my friend’s select circle, was often to be
found that great actor, whose name you have often heard me mention
with enthusiasm, when we have been reading together either Hamlet
or Macbeth;--I mean the head of that family who have for nearly
half a century upheld the character of the stage, as much by their
virtues, as they have supported its attraction by their talents.
He was, indeed, a noble creature; perhaps only too exalted and
abstracted in his view of human nature for the matter-of-fact age
in which he finished his career. But the revival of recollections
of that time is leading me from the point on which I wish to speak,
even had I no other and graver object in what I am saying. It is not
with you, who never beheld him, that I should vindicate my opinion
of the professional pre-eminence of the person in question. I only
alluded to him, because my partial benefactress often led this great
artist to participate, apparently with warmth and sincerity, in her
favourable opinion of my uninstructed attempts at recitation; and
as enthusiasm, real or assumed, was not his characteristic, this
testimony gave us both the greater pleasure.
“In the midst of all this, and whilst my friend was getting every day
more attached to me, I was unexpectedly deprived of her invaluable
protection, by a sudden attack of gout in the stomach, which proved
fatal to her in the nighttime, and before assistance could be
procured.
“One moment I must pause upon the awakened recollections of my
earliest friend and benefactress, whose awfully sudden end exercised
so great an influence on my future fate, and I will then proceed.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit?
SHAKSPEARE.
When and where and how we met, we wooed
And made exchange of vows, I’ll tell thee.
IBID.
“It had not been in Mrs. Nesbit’s power to provide adequately for me;
the whole of her income having been derived from a handsome jointure,
which, at her death, reverted to her husband’s heir-at-law. A codicil
to her will conferred on me, as a legacy, the small sum in ready
money which her liberal, though not extravagant style of living,
had left at her banker’s; it also conveyed to me all her library of
books, most of which you now see round you. Utterly unprotected as I
was, thus once again left, and still only eighteen, it was necessary
that I should determine without delay upon the course which, under
these circumstances, I wished to pursue.
“Perhaps it was a natural defect in my character, only elicited by
the situation in which I had been lately placed, that made me shrink
instinctively from returning once more amongst the kind, but rude
and uncivilized companions of my earlier days. Combined with this
dislike to that which was the obvious course for a young girl like me
to pursue, recollections arose continually of Mrs. Nesbit’s evidently
sincere opinion--‘My dear Alice, what an actress you would make!’
which gradually produced an uncontrollable longing to embark in that
precarious profession: the exercise of which, in my unpractised
mind, as yet only associated with the idea of such partial encomiums
and kind criticisms as had hitherto met my ear from the friendly
circle in Mrs. Nesbit’s drawing-room.
“Once having made up my mind, I determined to consult the great
actor, whom I have before mentioned, upon the best manner of putting
my project into execution. He seemed much embarrassed at the nature
of my appeal. It appeared as if it never had occurred to him, from
the sort of society in which he had heard me give specimens of my
abilities, that it was likely I should ever be called upon thus to
exert them professionally.
“He told me, that he should be deficient in candour, if he did not
repeat what he had formerly said, ‘that he thought me eminently
qualified to succeed should I really be determined to try the stage;
but,’ he added, ‘in spite of those brilliant prospects, he could
never dispassionately advise any one so young and unprotected to
take such a step; and if the advice which I sought from him was not
as to the best means of doing that upon which I had already decided,
but that I would consult him as to the expediency of doing so at all,
he would do all in his power to dissuade me, at least at present,
from thinking of such a thing.’ I thanked him sincerely for his
kindness, and expressed no more gratitude than I felt towards him,
but still adhered to my determination, representing to him how little
I knew what else to do with myself, and how sanguine I felt at being
able and willing to surmount all the difficulties and inconveniences
of the first steps of the profession. Seeing me determined, he gave
me letters of introduction and recommendation to some connexions of
his, then in the management of one of the first provincial circuits.
“By them I was, in consequence, most cordially received, and offered
a choice of any character I chose for my _debut_. Long before that
night arrived, I found out how differently my exertions were likely
to be estimated here, and at Mrs. Nesbit’s. There, in the absence of
all competition, praise excited no envy, and captious criticism would
have been avoided as ill-breeding. Here my arrival had disturbed
long-established claims to admiration, and had excited, first dismay,
and then dislike. I had chosen Juliet for my first appearance, a
choice most young ladies have made before me, and probably will do
as long as ‘debutantes’ of eighteen each season succeed one another.
I was not aware of the offence this was likely to give till after
it was all settled; when I found I had displaced a majestic-looking
widow lady, whose name appeared upon the prompter’s books as having
been in undisputed possession of the part for nearly twenty years; a
prescriptive right upon which she rested her claims, perhaps rather
technically than judiciously. Had it been a young girl, like myself,
with whom I interfered, she might have relied upon the anticipation
of my failure, and upon the part then reverting to her; but this lady
felt that her hitherto uninterrupted tenure once broken in upon, it
was not likely it would ever be revived.
“Under her auspices, therefore, was organized a party to cry down my
inexperienced attempts, and, with my eyes thus officiously opened to
my own defects, I felt, as much as they could impress upon me, how
very far from perfect I then was.
“It was all so different to me from the dining-room of Mrs.
Nesbit--the mere walking the stage was a difficulty which I thought
I should never get over, particularly when, at each of the wings, I
always found during my rehearsals, some of my new friends to explain
to me, solely for my good, how ridiculous something which I had done
had been. The contrast between my present mortified feelings and my
previously over-sanguine expectations was so great, that I should
have been completely disheartened, and, perhaps, abandoned the stage
in despair, but for the good-natured encouragement of many others
of the company. All the effect, therefore, which this attempt had
upon me, was to determine me to defer, till we removed to the next
town in the circuit, my first appearance; and in the mean time, to
study hard to acquire technical facilities, and to conquer those
defects, of which I ought to thank my rival for having taken such
pains to make me aware. The play had been announced, and therefore
was not withdrawn, but an apology was made for the non-appearance of
the _debutante_, and my matronly substitute once more “strutted and
fretted” with ill-concealed triumph through the childish sorrows of
Juliet. This exhibition was also a useful preparation for me, as it
taught me many practical tricks to avoid.
“The company removed to a fashionable watering-place, then in full
season, and at length my first appearance was positively fixed. And
here let me do justice to the general kindly feelings of fellowship
which I found to exist amongst the members of a profession, which
by no means creates evil passions, though it may occasionally
concentrate into a strong focus the causes which usually excite their
display. That constant and close collision of pretensions, in which
self-love must receive daily wounds, may naturally have a tendency to
produce that envy and spirit of detraction, from which no society is
free, not even that, where the contests of vanity are for the most
unimportant objects, and between the most independent persons. But
amongst my brethren of the stage, I generally found these feelings as
fleeting as the passing pageant which had excited them; and in all
essentials they might challenge a comparison with any of those whose
own means were most assured, in their eagerness to extend from their
own precarious provision, encouraging sympathy to the efforts of the
inexperienced, and substantial support to the decay of the aged.
“In my own case, the interested attempt to crush a young beginner,
excited in many of the company a strong feeling in my favour; and the
interval which had elapsed had certainly been of considerable service
to me, perhaps not a little in destroying that ill-grounded feeling
of self-confidence, in which the partial panegyrics of friends had
previously nursed me. But the want of this very much increased the
terrors of the awful approaching trial.
“Perhaps the time I had now unassumingly passed amongst them had
predisposed the company in my favour; but during the last day
or two before my attempt, it is impossible to do justice to the
almost paternal interest shown for me by nearly every member, from
the amiable manager himself, down to the apothecary of the night.
Still, nothing could alleviate the overpowering sensation which I
experienced when the anxious moment I so long anticipated actually
arrived. The house was crowded in every part. The cheering welcome
with which I was received upon my first entrance did not dispel my
fears, as I felt that it was only so much advanced in trust that,
by my exertions, I would afterwards repay it. But as the play
proceeded, and I recovered my confidence, the first spontaneous
burst of applause which rang from every part of the house caused a
consciousness of triumph, quite unlike any thing I had ever before
experienced. It proclaimed a mysterious command over the unsuspecting
sympathies of a mixed multitude, which was immeasurably superior to
the finest compliment that had ever gratified my ear in Mrs. Nesbit’s
drawing-room. My success was complete; I may now, without vanity,
refer to it as unparalleled.
“Amongst the most enthusiastic of my supporters was a party of
officers in the stage-box. The period to which I refer was that
during the late war, when the militia was quartered about the
country, the officers of which often contained in their number many
men of rank and fortune; of this party the greater number were
uniform in their acclamations. But even on that night of agitating
triumph I could not help remarking the evident admiration of one
officer, who did not join in the vehement demonstrations of his
companions, but sat in the corner nearest the stage, with his
speaking eyes fixed upon me with an expression which, perhaps,
derived some of its intensity from the strong glare of the foot
lights, which cast a pale hue over the rest of his features.
Overpowered with congratulations on all sides, I retired to rest
after my triumph, and slept soundly, only that in a confused dream
of happiness the one distinct object that presented itself was the
expressive countenance in the stage-box.
“My _debut_ had been so beyond expectation successful, and the
crowded houses every night I played was such an unquestionable
proof of increasing attraction, that the very excess of my triumph
destroyed at once every spirit of rivalry, as it became obvious
that my stay there could not extend beyond the little probationary
practice, and that before many months elapsed I should be on the
metropolitan boards. Even my _ci-devant_ rival, whose term was just
up, accepted a re-engagement, subject to the condition of her
exchanging for the present the girlish white satin of Juliet for the
motherly black velvet of Lady Capulet.
“Still, upon every succeeding night of my appearance, the same young
officer, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied, was always in the
same corner of the stage-box.
“This had continued for some weeks without our ever becoming
acquainted, and thus his admiration appeared purely professional.
The fame I had acquired, and whatever personal attractions I then at
eighteen could boast, caused me, whenever I stirred out, to be much
followed by many of the idlers of the public walks, but never by him;
and the wise regulations of the manager, considering the mixed nature
of the company at a watering-place, put many difficulties in the way
of the intrusion of strangers into the green-room.
“One evening, however, under some pretence or other, two of the
brother officers of my unknown admirer had contrived to introduce
themselves there in a state that evidently showed they had rendered
themselves unfit for any society. But, at the period to which I
refer, it was not so well established, as now I hear it is, that,
to appear drunk, was ‘unbecoming the character of an officer and
a gentleman.’ The most noisy of these made me the object of his
loathsome addresses; the disturbance he created had reached the front
of the house, and my brother actors were endeavouring, by quiet
remonstrances, to induce him to withdraw, when my unknown friend
entered the room, and seizing him by the arm, with an authoritative
movement of the head, motioned him to retire with him.
“The offender seemed awed for the moment, and did as he was desired.
Being called at that moment to the wing, I overheard, at the distance
of a few paces from me, the continuance of their conference.
“‘What d----d nonsense,’ said the offender, ‘why, she’s only an
actress.’
“‘If you had any of your senses left,’ retorted the other, in an
impassioned tone which went to my heart, ‘you would see that there
could be no reason that a person who, by the display of every grace,
and the exercise of consummate talent, commands the sympathies of the
most refined, should, on that very account, tolerate the disgusting
approaches of such a beast as you have made of yourself.’
“‘A very fine sermon for a soldier; so, amen! and I shall go back to
my beauty.’
“‘Hold!’ said my defender, stopping him, ‘I am most serious--if you
will listen to my advice, so much the better; but I am determined by
foul means, if I cannot by fair, to prevent your returning.’
“A short scuffle, and but a short one, ensued; for my defender,
though much the slighter of the two, was perfectly steady, an
advantage of which the other had deprived himself, and, seizing his
athletic antagonist by the nape of the neck, with one push he sent
him from the top of the stairs to the bottom.
“Persons, in the state in which he then was, are said not to be
easily hurt, or else I should have thought he must have been killed;
however, he rose without injury, and departed, very angry, and
determined to take ulterior measures.
“Just at the moment this occurred, I was obliged to appear upon
the stage, which I did in a state of agitation that was afterwards
remarked upon. The consequence of this altercation was a meeting
between the two officers; my champion received a ball through his
right arm; but his antagonist, from his conduct in the whole brawl,
suffered, like Cassio, such a wound in his reputation, that his
brother officers visited his fault with the same punishment as
Othello did that of his lieutenant, and compelled him to quit the
regiment.
“That all this could not occur in a small gossiping watering-place,
without being recounted in a thousand different ways, and not all
to my advantage, you may well imagine;--though when I say _you_ may
well imagine, I forget my poor dear child, that, up to this moment,
you are happily ignorant how peculiarly prone that ever-changing
compound, called the world, is to decry any one who has previously
excited its admiration. Many stories that were then circulated
never wounded my ears; but they had been widely diffused: for one
morning, some days after this had happened, I was sitting in my
room with my fellow-lodger, an excellent elderly lady, the DUENNA on
the stage, but off it the Lady Bountiful of our company, with whom
I had arranged to keep house, as a sort of protectress to my youth,
when the maid brought in a card with the name of Captain Somers,
who begged to be admitted. The publicity which had been given to
the late affair, had, of course, made me acquainted with the name
of my declared defender and previously unknown admirer. Gratitude,
of course, required that I should admit him. He looked dangerously
interesting, with the arm which had been wounded in a black sling
over his uniform, and his countenance still showing traces of his
late confinement. He appeared embarrassed at first, as he apologized
for his intrusion, which he said was to hope I would excuse any
unpleasant construction which might be put upon his unauthorised
interference in my behalf, which, he said, had arisen unintentionally
out of the circumstances of the case: that he felt at the time he
could not do otherwise; but that he much regretted the publicity of
the whole affair. I could not do less than thank him most warmly for
his generous interposition to save me from insult; and I, in my turn,
felt embarrassed in doing so: an awkwardness which was not diminished
by my fellow lodger taking advantage of that opportunity to rise and
leave the room.
“If Captain Somers and I then were lovers, we were not perfect in
our parts, for the conversation was by no means easy or animated,
now we were left alone; indeed it was many weeks before he spoke of
love, and so imperceptibly did we arrive at that point, that when
he first pleaded his passion, so far from falling strangely on my
ears, it seemed to me as if he had never previously spoken on any
other subject. But where is the woman who requires to be told she
is beloved? and how much more precious are the moments, when that
consciousness is derived from any other source than that of the
tongue?
“The innocent intercourse which from this time subsisted between us,
so far from detracting from my profession, gave me an additional
stimulus to exertion. Somers was an accomplished critic; and no
indifferent praise, however unqualified, is half so sweet as
little improving suggestions softly hinted by an admiring lover.
Yet ignorant as I then was of the world, and wrapped up in my own
day-dreams of love and fame, I had my misgivings that Somers’s was
not an unmingled happiness; indeed, sometimes it was with pain I
beheld the occasional fits of despondency to which he seemed subject,
without my being able to divine the cause. During all this time
he never mentioned his family, and I knew nothing of it beyond the
reports amongst the company, to which I listened little, and did not
attach much credit. Months passed over, and the time arrived when
we were to remove to our next quarters, a large seaport town in the
south, whilst the ****shire militia were to continue in their present
station.”
CHAPTER XVII.
A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away;
Thy husband in thy bosom lieth dead.
SHAKSPEARE.
“The prospect of this separation appeared to be anticipated with
much dread by Somers, and he sighed over each succeeding day that
diminished the interval that remained to us. Having always beheld
in him this desire to linger over each departing moment, I was much
surprised, two days before the time that I was to have left, to
receive a note from him, announcing his own departure. It was short,
and only, ‘I dare not say more, till farther assured of the truth of
what I have heard, than that I trust this temporary absence will, in
the end, lead to the reverse of separation.’ I endeavoured to rest
satisfied with this mysterious consolation, and contrive to keep up
my spirits during our own removal; but when week after week passed
over at our new quarters, without my hearing farther from Somers, the
secret anxiety which preyed upon me began to affect my professional
exertions, and diminish my popularity. At length Somers returned: he
was in deep mourning, and from his manner had evidently something to
communicate, whilst the warmth of his affection for me seemed to have
gained strength from absence.
“The whole mystery of his conduct was now unravelled. It appeared
that he was the only son of Lord Castleton; that whilst yet scarcely
of age, he had been induced by his father, whose estates were much
embarrassed, to marry a rich heiress; that she, well knowing for
what he had married her, never thought it necessary to give him
that affection which he did not seem to require; that after the
birth of one son, they lived little together. The peace of Amiens
happening about that time, she had, under the pretence of ill health,
obtained his ready permission to go with some of her own family to
the Continent, whilst his parliamentary duties, which were then new
to him, gave him, on his side, as ready an excuse for remaining in
England.
“At the sudden breaking out of the war, Mrs. Somers, with many others
of her countrymen and women, became a _detenue en France_. As long
as she had been allowed to remain at Paris, this forced detention
had not appeared to be unpleasant to her, but when, for some reason
not explained, she had forfeited the favour which had procured her
that indulgence, and had been exiled to a small provincial town in
France, she had become very anxious to return to her own country. But
reports which had reached Somers of her levity, had not caused him
to regret more than he would have done at the period of their former
separation, that it was utterly out of his power to facilitate such
an event. He owned that upon first becoming acquainted with me, he
had looked forward to that sort of temporary connexion, which would
have thrown a gleam of happiness over his at present solitary home;
but that as a more intimate knowledge of my character showed him
the purity of my unsuspecting innocence, he at the same time began
to entertain doubts both as to the propriety of acting upon such
an intention, and the probability of succeeding in it. Hence all
his inward struggles and ill-concealed fits of despondency. Just as
he had almost brought himself to determine that the period of my
removing from * * * * * should terminate our connexion, he received
a report of the death of Mrs. Somers in France. His first impression
was merely the shock of the sudden removal of one so young from the
world, with whom he had been so closely connected: and though he had
never loved her, all his own faults towards her now crowded upon
his recollection. Oppressed with these feelings, though he already
began to cherish half-formed hopes for the future, he would not see
me before leaving * * * * *; especially as he wished first that the
intelligence which lie had heard should receive farther confirmation.
This had been obtained in London to the full extent that could be
expected, from the imperfect communication between two countries in a
state of war.
“He now pressed for an immediate and private marriage. That it
should be immediate, he pleaded only too strongly the excess of his
passion: that it must be private, he at the same time owned, to allow
him to remove the opposition of an aged parent, and from a feeling
of delicacy on account of the deep mourning he still wore for Mrs.
Somers. Almost wild as I was with the prospects of happiness which
were thus opening to me, I still felt shocked at the suddenness of
the proposal; but so unlimited had become his influence over me, that
he could have proposed nothing, consistent with honour, to which I
would not have readily acceded. I pleaded for delay, I fear feebly--I
know ineffectually. Somers had brought with him an old college
friend, to perform the ceremony, upon whose secrecy he could rely,
and who was to leave the town immediately after. Fatal precipitancy!
We were married the next morning. So anxious was Somers that nothing
should occur on which to hang a suspicion of the event which had
taken place, that he even recommended my performing as usual
that night at the theatre. His will was law to me, and I made no
objection, though I own, a presentiment of evil oppressed my spirits,
when the prompter gave out ‘Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage,’ as the
performance of that evening.
“My husband, with what pride I then thought of him as such, occupied
his usual place in the stage-box. In the first act, whilst kneeling
before Count Baldwin, I could not help fancying that the words were
addressed to that obdurate father-in-law, whose forgiveness was
necessary to the acknowledgment of our marriage; this gave a peculiar
energy to my appeal, which added much to the effect of the scene,
and crowned my exertions with a success, much beyond that which had
latterly attended my more languid efforts.
“In the midst of the thunder of applause which followed, a party of
naval officers entered the box where Somers sat, accompanied by a
lady, dressed in the height of the French fashion, which, as there
was then little communication between the countries, was never worn
without exciting much attention. The eyes of the whole house were
in consequence turned on the lady. Somers rose upon their entrance;
but upon turning round to observe them, it appeared to me as if he
staggered, and leant for support against the side of the box; in
this position, the light of the stage-lamps fell strongly upon his
features, and showed to me his whole face, even his very lips, of a
deadly paleness. Before rushing out of the box he cast one long look
of utter despair on me. I could not then comprehend its meaning, but
it was the last I ever received from my husband. _My_ husband did I
say? He was HER’S. It was Mrs. Somers who had entered the box!
“Yet even in the dreadful suspense in which I was left, my surmises
never reached the horrible truth. What agony it was to go on
acting--acting through five long acts; yet I forced myself to
proceed, with the recollection that Somers had wished me to avoid
anything that might lead to the premature discovery of our marriage.
Yet, what a night was that on which to assume fictitious woe! And
there she sat, and at such a moment ’twas I that was pampering her
morbid sensibilities. Even then she wept in torrents at my ideal
sorrows, and was carried out in convulsions, unable to bear the sight
of my assumed madness and despair--she whose unlooked-for appearance
in the world was about to bereave me of every earthly hope. And even
in those moments thus trifled away in such wretched mockery of grief,
what fatally real horrors were preparing for me!
“Somers had rushed homewards in a state approaching to delirium; he
locked himself in his dressing-room. Fatal chance! His pistol-case
lay on the table beside him. He was alone. His state was desperate.
The sudden revulsion from the height of expectant happiness had been
too much for him. Look which way he might, he saw no opening for
hope; and there was no friendly hand to stay his frantic purpose.
Where was I then? Which way employed? I never can bear to think
of it. Hurrying impatiently homewards the moment I was free to do
so. All was then over. Amidst a crowd which was already collected,
I found Mrs. Somers, who had left the theatre, overpowered by her
sensibility, which my fictitious sufferings had excited; now bending
over the remains of what had been _her_ husband, and, I still
thought, _mine_. But the mouth which that morning had breathed its
vows to me, was now distorted in death---shattered by the desperate
aim of the pistol. Oh, Lucy, even I endeavoured in vain to recognize
those loved features as I pushed aside every one,--yes, even _her_,
to assume for the last time that position by him which I thought mine
by right.
“Mrs. Somers rose indignantly, and the dreadful cause of this horrid
scene broke fearfully upon me, through a torrent of the most vehement
abuse which she launched upon my devoted head, such as an irritated
woman thinks herself justified in venting upon the most degraded
of her own sex. I could have submitted meekly to all she said--I
hardly heeded it, till she called me her husband’s murderess. Was I
that?--Yes, at that moment I felt myself a guilty creature; for what
precious moments had I not wasted in the unmeaning garb of mimic woe,
whilst he was left alone in his despair to do the horrid deed! Had I
but been there, I would have suffered shame, I fear even dishonour,
to have saved him; nay, more, I would have renounced him for ever,
I would have restored his newly-plighted faith, to have preserved
his precious life, and to have been allowed to offer prayers for his
happiness.”
Alice Darnell forced herself to gasp forth these last words, and
then sunk back senseless. When Lucy had succeeded in restoring her
to herself, she said, “I thought I never could have brought myself
to revive in words these harrowing recollections. You see to what a
state it has reduced me, and how unfit I am now to draw from the sad
tale that practical warning I had wished, as to the danger of unequal
attachments,--above all, of surrendering the affections where any
mystery involves the object. One word I may as well now add, that you
may understand the events which I have detailed. I said that Somers
had one infant son, but it had remained with his grandfather, Lord
Castleton, from the time its mother first went abroad. The rumour of
Mrs. Somers’ death had been purposely circulated to facilitate her
attempt to escape: so anxious had she latterly been to leave that
country which she had sought for pleasure, that she embarked in an
open boat, and had been taken up by an English cruiser, the captain
of which paid her every attention. It was accompanied by him that,
upon landing, she had gone to the theatre, and within a twelvemonth
from that time she became his wife. To-morrow, dearest Lucy, I shall
be calm, and better able to speak farther, but you must stay here
with me to-night.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Your sorrow was too sore laid on,
Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,
So many summers dry. Scarce any joy
Did ever live so long; no sorrow
But killed itself much sooner.
SHAKSPEARE.
Is passion to be learned then? wouldst thou make
A science of affection? guide the heart,
And lead it where to fix?
Such was the sad tale of her own blighted hopes which Alice Darnell
forced herself to reveal to her beloved niece, with the fond hope
that so striking a proof of the danger of unguardedly pledging the
affections, where evident incongruity of station was combined with
mystery and apparent concealment, might operate as a check upon
that growing partiality for Churchill, which she dreaded had already
taken root in Lucy’s heart. With this view, when the next morning
she had in a great degree recovered her usual composure, she dwelt
more on how much she had herself suffered from her imprudence, in
having admitted a stranger, and one obviously her superior, into an
intimacy, without due caution in previously ascertaining what his
actual situation was. Had she but been timely informed of Colonel
Somers’ marriage, how much would have been spared them both, and how
dearly had he paid for his tacit deceit on this subject.
She farther proceeded to affirm her own conviction that Churchill
was not exactly what he pretended to be: in this opinion she owned
that she might be rather biassed by the extraordinary resemblance,
though more in air and expression than in form and features, which
he bore to one, the recollection of whom she had never ceased to
cherish since his untimely loss. But though this coincidence might
rather influence her judgment, yet, independent of this, she had
had opportunities, in the best society at Mrs. Nesbit’s, just at
that age when outward impressions are more strongly distinguished,
of exercising her talents as a close observer of manners; and
the peculiar tact which she had on this subject, had very much
contributed to make her efforts in comedy rival her success in
tragedy, during her short theatrical career. It has, too, been
remarked throughout, that Castleton was by no means a skilful actor
of the part he had assumed; and to a person of Alice Darnell’s
discrimination, the evident constraint with which one of his rank in
life assumed the manners of an inferior station, though distinct in
its nature, was not less remarkable, than the awkward assumption of
refinement by a vulgar person. The obvious embarrassment, too, with
which he avoided her searching observation, could only be explained
by there existing some reason for concealment.
But the penetration with which Alice Darnell had discovered her
niece’s danger, was more conspicuous than the judgment of the course
which she took to avoid it. For though Alice Darnell had been a
faithful and interesting representative of the outward aspect of
human passion, as described by others; though in her own person she
had internally felt as strongly as any one its devastating power; she
had, perhaps, for that very reason, never examined closely or coolly
the various causes to which it sometimes owes its origin, or traced
to their sources the crooked channels through which, in its earlier
stages, flow some of those springs which all combine in the end to
give irresistible power to its headlong course.
True, even in this age of mixed and mitigated feelings, there
does sometimes rise, pure and powerful at its fountain-head, the
sympathetic impulse of “love at first sight;” but for one instance
of this kind, how many may be found where that passion, instead of
ripening regularly from original sympathy, has been unaccountably
grafted on habitual indifference; and of this might be cited
instances, even amongst those who, once under its influence, have
given most decided proofs of its power, in braving disgrace and
ruin. It seems sometimes as if the heart only then acquired a
predisposition to infection, when every human motive of action,
prudent as well as virtuous, had combined against it. Lovely girls
have been known to bloom unnoticed in the same society with him
who, when they have become the wife of another, has urged elopement
with all the energy of passion; this, be it observed, not from
any selfish distinction of the different requisites of a wife and
a mistress,--for grant he succeeds in his suit, and, by every tie
of honour, his wife she must become, not as she might formerly
have assumed that character, richly endowed in good name and
wealth,--the ornament of society,--but dragging him forth an outcast,
impoverished by the very price at which he is forced to purchase her
blighted fame. How, then, shall we account for such early misplaced
indifference, and subsequent ill-timed susceptibility, but upon the
endless and unaccountable perversity of the human passions?
But though Alice Darnell need not have been expected to enter into
these abstract reflections, yet she made two mistakes, which might
have been obvious even to her, in the influence she expected to
produce upon her niece.
In the first place, no one in love is ever diverted from their
course by the recital of the sufferings of others, under similar
circumstances, if these sufferings, however great, are invested with
interest. She had also, by what she had said, inadvertently disposed
her niece’s feelings much more favourably towards Churchill, for
she had flattered her vanity; and the breast which beats under the
modest tucker of the country maiden, is not less accessible to the
influence of vanity, than is that which openly swells with the pride
of conquest in sight of the crowded ball-room.
In all her intercourse with Churchill, there had been something which
she could not understand; she was never quite at her ease, and this
had produced a consciousness of constraint, which had left a feeling
of humiliating inferiority, not improving her favourable opinion
of her companion. But now she had been given some intelligible
ground on which to place that superiority on his part, which she had
felt without acknowledging, and, at the same time, she was taught
to suppose that he was willing to forego all that very superiority
for her sake. This placed him in a light much more dangerous to her
peace of mind, than that in which she had been accustomed to consider
him. If, therefore, his influence over her was still far from being
certain or confirmed, her defence rested on quite different grounds
from those on which her aunt had been inclined to place reliance; and
her best protection arose from the nature of her early attachment to
her cousin George.
Many circumstances had combined to keep her inexperienced mind
in doubt as to her feelings towards him during all their early
intercourse, the constant intimacy of childhood had swallowed up
the first symptoms of courtship; to this had succeeded protracted
absence, and apparent neglect on his part. He had at length returned,
as we have seen, with undiminished affection; but many things had
conspired to prevent its appearing in his manner to her, not the
least of which was the evidence of those assiduous attentions in
another, which, whenever preference is sought in the “checkered
shade,” or in the “gala glare,” never fail in producing some effect,
and mostly succeed in attaining their object.
The fact was, therefore, that at this moment Lucy was herself, if not
in a delusion, at least, in doubt, as to how much she cared about her
“cousin George.”
She, however, listened most attentively to all her aunt’s cautions as
to the danger of encouraging her other admirer, and bowed assent to
her parting advice.
“I do not wish you abruptly to show distrust; but above all, avoid
as much as possible being alone with him.”
To this tacit promise Lucy meant to adhere, but the state of
things she that day found upon her return home did not favour her
immediately acting up to her intention. George had left home early
in the morning, as he said, upon business, professing an intention
not to return in the course of the day--perhaps not even at night.
Her father and mother had just revived some well-contested point in
dispute, which, from long experience, she knew would, like some of
the fights of the middle ages, be conducted without loss of blood,
and only end in a drawn battle at close of day. This did not render
the prospect of remaining at home during the afternoon very inviting,
and therefore she could not resist Churchill’s gentle suggestion,
that she should accompany him to the cliff, on a sketching
expedition. She again put on her bonnet, announcing to the parental
combatants, during one of those pauses in the fight which Mrs.
Darnell never allowed to be of long continuance, “That her object
was to see whether her aunt, whose illness had been the cause of her
absence the night before, was better that evening.”
CHAPTER XIX.
My Anah! let me call thee mine,
Albeit thou art not: ’tis a word I cannot
Part with; although I must from thee.
BYRON.
We’ll so bestow ourselves, that near, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge.
SHAKSPEARE.
’Tis true they are a lawless brood,
But rough in form, nor mild in mood;
And every creed, and every race,
With them hath found--may find a place.
BYRON.
Churchill and Lucy sat side by side on a projecting ledge which
she pointed out to him on the face of the precipitous cliff; this
position, for an admirer of the picturesque, was much better chosen
than that which he had himself accidentally selected the night
before, and of which, as a painter, he had so little availed himself.
The intersections of the craggy cliffs, which rose one behind
another, as they looked along the line of coast, were here bolder and
more broken and varied. From the height of the point whereon they
sat, all below was blended in that deep, purplish, hazy hue, which,
in a painter’s eye, gave to indistinctness a charm. The sea-birds,
Churchill’s unwelcome intruders of the evening before, now skimmed
in silence the mid air far beneath them, the undulating motion of
their white wings being the only sign of animation around. Not a
sail was seen in the wide surface of the distant expanse: and along
the deeply sheltered sides of the little bay beneath, the waters lay
dead, and dark, and still. The next promontory of the succession of
crags before them, less precipitous and lofty than that on which they
were placed, had scattered over its face huge clumps of thriving
brushwood, just then touched with the first mellow tint of autumn;
whilst the heather, which grew in patches wherever the light soil
clung to the interstices of the cliffs, contrasting its rich dark
blue colour with the lighter grey of the broken rocks, gave sharpness
to the fantastic shapes in which these were dispersed about. In the
middle distance, looking rather inland, could be traced the valley
down which ran the course of the little mountain stream, by whose
side Castleton had first wound his way to Morden Bay. And this path
he followed once again in his mind’s eye, and he recollected his then
follies, and he thought of all his checkered life, his successive
feelings--of his hopes--of his frivolous pursuits--which had all
produced heart-burnings and disappointments since that evening
when he had first beheld the lovely being who now sat beside him
in matured beauty and still unsullied purity and innocence; and
as he again looked on her with a long impassioned gaze, their eyes
met, and she thought that it must have been thus Somers looked on
Alice Darnell. More fondly she felt he could not look, and this
feeling gave a sensibility to her own expression, which her lover
had hitherto sought in vain; and they sat long while they fancied
they were drawing. Though they did little the while, and said less,
it seemed, for the first time, as if they understood each other, and
all Churchill’s gestures were those of impassioned tenderness, and it
was so that Lucy felt them; and it is certain, that at that moment
she thought of no one else; and her glances, though timid and stolen
at intervals, vied with his in tenderness, and had he then pleaded,
a negative could hardly have found its way to her lips through the
inward agitation of her frame.
But there had been throughout his whole scheme too much plan and
method in Churchill’s romance, and now the moment had come which
might fix his fate, and make her his wife--for it was with such an
intention that he wooed her--incongruous doubts rose in his mind,--he
hesitated,--he would not for the world have abandoned his object,
yet he almost wished to delay the irrevocable step; but it was not
without an effort that he could force himself to do so, for his
feelings were much excited, and more than once the conclusive words
trembled on his tongue, but he checked himself, and blurted forth an
indifferent observation in an altered tone.
The effect of this was instantaneous: there is no female breast,
however untutored and inexperienced, which does not feel, in its
inmost recesses, the reaction caused by an opportunity slighted of
profiting by its tenderness. In a moment, Lucy became aware that the
evening shadows had redoubled their length; that the sun was on
the point of setting; that it was already late for her to proceed
to her aunt’s: rising for this purpose, Churchill eagerly offered
to accompany her, but this she firmly opposed, naturally from not
wishing to show that she had braved her aunt’s caution, the prudence
of which the experience of her late sensations had confirmed.
She declined, therefore, his offer of help, even down the first
winding track, where, indeed, from its narrowness, assistance would
have been impracticable. This track led from the spot where they now
were into the broader path, which conducted along a lower ledge round
the point towards her aunt’s; and she proceeded to descend it with
the secure and elastic step which is the combined result of habit and
natural activity. Churchill watched her with an anxious eye through
the first part of her progress, and afterwards with an admiring one,
as her fine form gradually receded, whilst she pursued her way with
an unconscious grace in every motion, which would have done honour
to many in a more elevated rank in society. But the fact is, the
drawing-room school, though it may improve, no more creates grace,
than the _manège_ does the most admired paces of the horse.
Churchill watched her round the point, and knowing that she would
again become visible in passing the next, which jutted farther into
the sea, he stood there awaiting the moment in a state of mind in
which were blended dissatisfaction with himself, with increased
admiration of her. Whilst absorbed in these mingled reflections, he
was startled by a large stone, which, detached from the cliff above,
rolled close beside him, and striking the portfolio, in which he had
been just loosely depositing the different half-finished productions
of Lucy and himself, scattered them about; and the evening breeze,
just then risen, catching them up as it swept by, they “soared,
ducked, and dived in air,” and were soon carried far out of reach
of recovery. Churchill, looking up to see what accident had caused
this, beheld George at the distance of a few yards, standing between
the edge of the cliff and the wall at its summit, against which he
leaned, whilst one foot, which without doubt had been the means of
propelling the stone, was still thrust forward. He had a broad grin
on his face, and was evidently enjoying the mischief he had caused.
There was nobody in the world from whom Churchill could at that
moment so ill have borne a joke, if indeed it really was a joke.
Without a moment’s reflection he sprang upwards, and finding himself
beside his unprovoked aggressor, whom he still found forcing a
laugh, though evidently only to suppress some less pleasant feeling
to himself which lurked beneath, said,--
“I don’t ask you whether you did that, but why?”
“I wanted to put up that brood of cormorants that roost below yonder,
and cared not what other birds of ill omen I frightened by the way.
As for your trash, I’ll buy you better, printed and painted too, at
any pedlar’s stall for a penny apiece.”
“You mischievous imp of a cabin boy,” retorted Churchill enraged, and
lifting at the same time a small slight cane which, from habit, he
always carried, even on these inappropriate excursions, “you ought to
be turned over to your own boatswain for chastisement; it would be
too much honour to touch you with this.”
It is probable that Churchill did not intend really to assault his
antagonist, but as he had raised his cane as if with that view,
George, whose passions were just as much raised, and whose experience
had not taught him to consider such threats as figurative, grasped
firmly the bludgeon with which he was described on the eve of his
first departure from home, and which, in all his vicissitudes, had
never been farther from him than where it was still within reach of
his cot. He gave it one masterly flourish over his own head, and then
allowed it to descend with its full swing upon that of Churchill, who
fell senseless at his feet.
Lucy in the mean time had reached the farther projecting point, from
which this foremost part of the cliff was again visible, just at the
moment when the stone which had struck the portfolio, had scattered
Churchill’s drawings to the winds; and this she had witnessed,
for upon arriving at that point she had paused a moment, and cast
“one lingering look behind,” to the spot where she had left her
late companion, scarcely conscious herself that that action was
prompted by feelings for him at the time, which, could George have
interpreted, would have given additional force to that jealousy, of
which he had just shown such a violent symptom. She had been unable
at first to account for the cause of the loss of the drawings, but
though the distance was great, and the light becoming more uncertain,
she too well knew the figures of both of the combatants not to see
only too plainly the progress of the scuffle above; and observing the
violent action of George’s powerful arm followed by the dead stiff
fall of him whom he struck, she was riveted to the spot with dumb
horror at the idea that the tender companion whom she had but just
left, who had so lately all but spoken the assurance that he lived
only for her, had been even at that moment murdered by her earliest
friend; whilst her conscience whispered that she herself had been the
unhappy subject of dispute.
Whilst still deprived by the horrific sight of any power to move,
she beheld three or four other men approach the scene of the late
conflict, and her first impression was, that they were both ministers
of the law and witnesses of the deed, and that George, arrested
by their authority, and condemned upon their evidence, would pay
the penalty of that act to which perhaps he had been driven by her
cruel caprice; and she thought of their early inseparable years, and
their former parting, and how different that was from the dreadful
final one which such a state of things would too surely bring, and
she pressed her hand against her eyes in mute despair;--but when
again she looked, it was obvious that the men approached George
with no hostile intent, but on the contrary, that, evidently acting
under his direction, they had raised the body of Churchill from
the ground--and George’s hand pointed downwards over the edge of
the cliff, and the men bore their burthen towards the brink of the
precipice, and she, shuddering, thought that in another moment she
should behold the mangled limbs dashing from rock to rock, as they
fell; and the dreadful idea rousing her from her previous stupor,
she gave one piercing shriek, but was answered only by the startled
wild fowl screaming discordantly as they whirled round her head. But
in one minute more her immediate fears as to the intentions of those
who bore the body, were relieved, when she saw them take a steep and
winding path which descended the side of the cliff to the shore.
She then guessed that they were conveying their burthen to a
well-known cave, close to which the path conducted, and which she
remembered from its having been the point of some of her early
rambles with George. A moment she hesitated, from dislike to trust
herself amongst such apparently lawless men; but depending upon
George not being so changed but that he would be both willing and
able to give her protection, she determined to try her influence over
him, with a faint hope that Churchill might not actually be dead, and
that she might still be the means of preventing further danger to him.
By the faint indistinct glimmering of twilight which yet remained,
as she descended the cliff and approached the small bay into which
the cave opened, she could perceive a large boat which had been run
ashore, whilst on the shingles beside it were scattered several
barrels or kegs, and a little farther out at sea, yet sheltered by
an abrupt projecting cliff from the more inhabited line of coast,
a small vessel lay moored, and several figures appeared engaged in
conveying the kegs from the open shore into the concealment of the
cave. The wild air of these men, as far as the increasing darkness
allowed her to distinguish them, and the rough blasphemous oaths of
which almost their whole communication seemed to consist, as far as
the suppressed tone in which they spoke allowed her to make out what
they said, both conspired to make her shrink from advancing nearer,
or presenting herself to their notice; but being detected even where
she stood aloof and trembling, by the quick and restless eyes of
one of the party, ever on the look-out against surprisal, and being
rudely dragged forward, she was almost at the same time recognised
and rescued by George, who, upon hearing a noise, came forward
from the interior of the cave, accompanied by Captain Collett,
whose command to unhand her, backing the more manual interference
of George, the men muttering oaths, and, to her, unintelligible
ribaldry, returned to their labours, and she found herself at the
mouth of the cave with George and his Captain.
CHAPTER XX.
But my sins
No more the pleasure from the stripling wins;
And such, if not yet hardened in their course,
Might be redeemed, nor ask a long remorse.
The hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us. Oh! and is all forgot--
Our schoolday friendship--childhood innocence?
SHAKSPEARE.
Do you remember all the sunny places
Where in bright days, long past, we played together?
Do you remember all the old home faces
That gathered round the hearth in wintry weather?
This cave, which had two arched openings, both leading to the same
interior, and supported by a colossal rocky pillar, was at low water
nearly dry, excepting near the centre, where a clear pool of brackish
water was left from one spring-tide to the next, surrounded by a bed
of the finest white sand. All this outer cave was entirely the work
of Nature, and had probably been progressively scooped out to its
present size, by the whirling eddy of water, which, during high tides
and storms, rushed in through one opening, and out at the other,
according as it was driven by the directing force of the wind. Within
this outer cave was another large recess at right angles to it, which
had at some time been assisted by the hand of man. The narrow, low
opening to this, was generally choked up by a bank of the white sand,
which, as the waters rolled round, they dashed against it; and as the
small passage behind, thus concealed, gradually rose as it opened
into the inner cave, that part was itself quite dry; and the entrance
to it being thus unsuspiciously closed from observation, it had been
thought by George, who had accidentally dug through the bank with
his fingers when a boy, that along the whole line of coast, a better
spot could not be selected, in which to stow their kegs, till an
opportunity occurred of by degrees disposing of them inland.
It appeared to Lucy as if her arrival had interrupted for the moment
a dispute between George and his Captain; and in this she was
confirmed by Collett saying, as soon as the men had returned to their
work,--
“It is true, it can’t be helped now; but it is a d---d foolish scrape
you’ve got us into: why couldn’t you leave the man alone? It’s true,
I begin to doubt his dying. Perhaps it would be better if he would,
for we can’t leave him here to blow us; and anyhow, there’ll be such
a hue-and-cry raised, that, hang me! if I know when we shall be able
to look after the cargo. The tide’s ebbing over-fast, or I’d chuck
’em in again, and take a long last leave of Morden Bay, and be d---d
to it, for an unlucky hole; but there’s not time to think of that,
so the kegs must even stay here, and we must stow this lumber in the
hold in the place of them.”
Touching Churchill’s body with his foot, and finding him still
insensible from loss of blood, he added,--
“But let me tell you, that to exchange all these _spirits_ for one
_body_ is a losing trade, either for this world or the next;” and
chuckling complacently at this last idea, as a man who thought that
the mere scoffing at serious matters in itself constitutes a good
joke, he retired towards the inner cave, calling out to George, “to
take the girl in tow, and drop down out of sight of their job.”
But George seemed stupified by the conflicting feelings which
struggled for mastery within him, and allowed himself to be silently
drawn by Lucy on to the beach, through the opposite opening of the
cave to that through which the smugglers were carrying the kegs.
“And is it come to this then, George!” she said: “these are then your
companions,--that is your friend, your master! And has all sense of
shame left you, that you could bring such a ruffian under my dear
father’s peaceful roof? And then to finish all by murdering that
poor good gentleman! Heaven, in its mercy, preserve him!” added Lucy
fervently, in a low tone.
“He’s not good--no more are you, and he’s no more a gentleman than
I am,” answered George, doggedly, his good feelings being for the
moment overpowered by the evident sympathy of Lucy for his rival.
“And it’s all along of you both, that I’ve come to this.”
“How can you say so, George? The poor man, since it offends you to
call him gentleman, never saw you till two days ago; and your present
courses you must have adopted, with these associates, long since;
and for me, it’s now more than four years since we have met at all.
And think of this spot, George--this cave. The last time we were here
together, who would have thought that it would be thus we should meet
again? Do you remember the smuggler we then saw chased by the King’s
ship; it was the last vessel of that sort, till to-night, that had
ever appeared on this coast; and the running fight, and the sound of
the guns gradually dying away in the distance, and then our suspense;
and we heard no more, till you brought that printed paper of the
travelling pedlar, which you read to me, and which told how they were
all hanged: George, dear George! why did you ever forget that paper?”
“’Tis too late to think of all that now, Lucy; though I thank you for
still caring for me, if it’s ever so little. There was a time when
you might have saved me, when I wrote to you, about my first scrape,
before I got from bad to worse.”
“You wrote to me, George! When? Never from the day you went away have
I heard once.”
“Ah, there was the mischief, then. But I wrote all about it, when I’d
lost all my money, like a fool as I then was, and am still; and how
it was a girl like you--no, not like you--but a girl, who had taken
it all; and that’s what it was, and I was rather ashamed at first to
own so to you. Yet I was easier, when I had done it, for I never felt
so much how I loved you better than all the world. And as we were a
long way off at the time, and the Atlantic rolled between us, I was
rather matched how to make sure of your getting it; but though I was
never much of a scholar, I took a sight of pains with the direction.
And I wouldn’t put Mayton on it, as they used to do on most of our
letters here; for I found, when I had got to London even, most
people there had never heard of Mayton, so I argued that a-tother
side of that great water they warn’t like to know it: so, instead,
I put ‘Lucy Darnell, Bankside Farm, England,’ for I made sure, at
least, they must have heard of England. And long I waited there in
the Indies, in hopes of an answer--and none ever came, as indeed it
wasn’t like, if you never received the letter. And so at last I took
up with the offer of this here Messmate, though at the time I had but
half a mind, for I thought you’d never approve of the like.”
“But, George, how came you in this distress? Where was the uncle with
whom you sailed?”
“Oh, he and I agreed that we suited each other best at a distance,
so he got me swapped to another ship, which I liked well enough, for
I got double wages; but I soon found that the more money I had, the
less I could keep it; and when I landed in the Indian Islands, it
went in more ways than I like to tell, or think of myself now. And
then Captain Collett spoke me fair, and a merry time we had together
in the privateering line, in which he then was; and when the Peace
came, we had been too used to dangers and their reward, to take to
carrying coals along the coast. So we’ve been dodging backwards
and forwards across the Channel ever since, in defiance of the
revenue Sharks. But being a bit over-well known there now, we got a
correspondent at Flushing, and popped over here unexpected like.”
“Unexpected indeed!” said Lucy, “and that it should be most unwelcome
too; for I had rather never have seen you again, though Heaven knows
how I’ve longed to do so! than that you should come back to bring
shame on us all. And my poor father too, who was as fond of you as if
you’d been his own son. He’ll feel this more than all the rest of the
world put together--except me!” she added falteringly.
“It needed not to speak so to make me feel,” said George: “all along,
my fear has been the loss of your good thoughts; and when I came back
the other day, I had made up my mind to ask all your pardons, to give
over the connexion, and stay at home; but it maddened me to see that
you had clear forgotten your poor cousin George, for that plausible
painting chap!”
“Shame on me!” interrupted Lucy, “that I have now so long forgotten
him, whilst listening to your bad tale of yourself. That I could do
so at such a moment, may prove to you what now you shall never hear
from me, unless you learn to deserve it better, how long and how much
I have thought of you. But if you would not have me hate you, George,
instantly rescue from these ruffians, this poor person, whom your
own mad violence has placed in their power.”
George, touched by her manner, and rendered docile by shame,
instantly repaired to Collett, who was himself much puzzled to know
what to do with their prisoner, and consented to leave him behind,
provided he would bind himself solemnly not to disclose what he knew
of their proceedings; to which George, for his own sake, added the
condition, that he should instantly leave that part of the country,
and particularly Bankside Farm.
Lucy in the mean time entered the cave, to observe in what state
poor Churchill then was. She found one of the smugglers bending
over him and holding a dark-lantern close to his features, which he
appeared to be examining, and which were still fixed and insensible.
The man had undone both waistcoat and neckcloth, and evidently was
searching about his breast, as she thought, for plunder; though, as
he pretended, to find out whether he had any other wound. There was,
however, an appearance of care and attention in this man’s manner,
which she could not reconcile with his purpose. He stated that the
sufferer had shown some signs of returning animation; had called,
as he fancied, on her name, but had relapsed. Now he again began to
move, and with the first symptoms of consciousness, George made the
offer of liberation, coupled with the conditions mentioned above.
The wounded man seemed to make an effort to give force to the
articulation of his reply, as he answered,
“Never! I will make no bargain with such as you: ruffians! do your
worst, and at your peril be it.”
The smugglers, who had now finished their work, and were anxious to
depart, enraged at this untractable answer, became clamorous to
shove off with him, and Captain Collett gave the orders to bear him
to the boat; Lucy clinging wildly to George, implored him, “Oh, leave
him! leave him, for my sake leave him!”
George’s bad feelings were again roused by the manner of this appeal;
he roughly replied, shaking her from him, “For thy sake!--never!
What! that he may stay behind to hang us, and bless you!” He then
jumped into the boat, already filled with his companions, one of
whom, who had secretly helped himself too freely to one of the kegs
which had been opened that its contents might encourage them at their
work, cried out, “Oh, if the land-lubber stands in the way of our
messmate George, I’ll soon settle his business.”
He then presented a pistol to Churchill’s head. Lucy thought she
saw George spring forward and knock the pistol out of the fellow’s
hand, but neither that nor any thing afterwards could she recollect
distinctly, such had been the agitation of this dreadful evening;
and as she endeavoured to fix her eyes on the boat as it heaved
unsteadily through the surf, her brain seemed to reel responsively
within her. She fell powerless on the beach, and tearing up the
sand convulsively with her outstretched hand, she cried wildly for
help, till her senses completely abandoned her, and she lay there in
unconscious exhaustion much of that awful night.
At times she partially awoke to confused visions of Churchill’s
mangled form, and the last moments of George’s disgraceful career;
and more than once she raised herself and endeavoured to strain her
sight through the intense darkness, and to collect her scattered
senses to decide whether it was fancy only made her imagine that
another sail rose on the waters, still nearing the smugglers; but a
sound which followed, like the roar of cannon, vibrated so painfully
on her shattered nerves, that she raised her hands to her ears,
again pressed her head against the sand, and when the first dawn of
the morning found her still on the beach, with partially returning
consciousness, the first object she plainly distinguished was a crowd
of men moving towards her, in the midst of which were the crew of
smugglers, Captain Collett and George, handcuffed two and two, and
guarded by some men of the Preventive Service, and a file of soldiers.
Still half bewildered, she rushed amongst them, screaming in vain for
some one, and crying, “Where, where is the body?”
“The body!” exclaimed the man, who seemed in command of the party,
“then it was as we suspected, and a murder has been committed. Come,
my young woman, you must along with us; you will be an important
witness, I guess;” and the whole party moved on towards Hornscliff
Abbey, the seat of the nearest resident magistrate, Sir North
Saunders.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset-street, Fleet-street.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
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dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings. One misspelled word was
corrected, one upside down letter was righted, and two words were
added where they appeared as blotches on the printed page. Single
quotation marks were used for quotes within quotes.
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