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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78688 ***
+
+
+
+
+                                  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
+this_. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
+hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged, as were
+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.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78688 ***