The last chapter was parenthetical, this takes up the broken thread
of the story.
Breakfast over, and her sisters gone their several ways, Lucy
Charlmont seized the ‘Times’ Supplement and read the Hartley-Durham
paragraph over to herself:—‘On Monday the 13th, at the parish church,
Fenton, by the Rev. James Durham, uncle of the bride, Alan Hartley,
Esq., of the Woodlands, Gloucestershire, to Everilda Stella, only
child and presumptive heiress of George Durham, Esq., of Orpingham
Place, in the same county.’
There remained no lurking-place for doubt. Mr. Hartley,—‘her’ Mr.
Hartley, as Jane dubbed him,—had married Everilda Stella, a
presumptive heiress. Thus concluded Lucy’s one romance.
Poor Lucy! the romance had been no fault of hers, perhaps not even a
folly: it had arisen thus. When Miss Charlmont was twenty-one Lucy
was eighteen, and had formally come out under her sister’s wing;
thenceforward going with her to balls and parties from time to time,
and staying with her at friends’ houses in town or country. This
paying visits had entailed the necessity of Jane’s having a
governess. Miss Drum had by that time ‘relinquished tuition,’ as she
herself phrased it, and retired on a comfortable competence earned by
her own exertions; therefore, to Miss Drum’s school Jane could not
go. Lucy, when the subject was started, declared, with affectionate
impulsiveness, that she would not pay visits at all, or else that she
and Catherine might pay them separately; but Catherine, who
considered herself in the place of mother to both her sisters, and
whose standard of justice to both alike was inflexible, answered, ‘My
dear’—when Miss Charlmont said ‘my dear’ it ended a discussion—‘My
dear, Jane must have a governess. She shall always be with us in the
holidays, and shall leave the schoolroom for good when she is
eighteen, and old enough to enter society; but at present I must
think of you and your prospects.’ So Jane had a fashionable
governess, fresh from a titled family, and versed in accomplishments
and the art of dress, whilst Catherine commenced her duties as
chaperone. Lucy thought that her sister, handsomer than herself and
not much older, might have prospects too, and tried hard to discover
chances for her; but Catherine nursed no such fancies on her own
account. Her promise to her dying mother, that some one of them
should always be on the spot at Brompton-on-Sea, literally meant at
the moment, she resolved as literally to fulfil, even whilst she felt
that only by one not fully in her right mind could such a promise
have been exacted. Grave and formal in manner, dignified in person,
and in disposition reserved, though amiable, she never seemed to
notice, or to return, attentions paid her by any man of her
acquaintance; and if one of these ever committed himself so far as to
hazard an offer, she kept his secret and her own.
Lucy, meanwhile, indulged on her own account the usual hopes and
fears of a young woman. At first all parties and visits were
delightful, one not much less so than another then a difference made
itself felt between them; some parties turned out dull, and some
visits tedious. The last year of Lucy’s going everywhere with
Catherine, before, that is, she began dividing engagements with
Jane,—for until Lucy should be turned thirty, self-chaperoning was an
inadmissible enormity in Miss Charlmont’s eyes, in spite of what she
had herself done; as she said, her own had been an exceptional
case,—in that last year the two sisters had together spent a month
with Dr. Tyke, whose wife had been before marriage another Lucy
Charlmont, and a favourite cousin of their father’s: concerning her,
tradition even hinted that, in bygone years, she had refused the
penniless army surgeon.
Be this as it may, at Mrs. Tyke’s house in London, the sisters spent
one certain June, and then and there Lucy ‘met her fate,’ as with a
touch of sentiment, bordering on sentimentality, she recorded in her
diary one momentous first meeting. Alan Hartley was a nephew of Dr.
Tyke’s—handsome, and clever on the surface, if not deep within. He
had just succeeded his father at the Woodlands, had plenty of money,
no profession, and no hindrance to idling away any amount of time
with any pretty woman who was pleasant company. Such a woman was Lucy
Charlmont. He harboured no present thoughts of marriage, but she did;
he really did pay just as much attention to a dozen girls elsewhere,
but she judged by his manner to herself, and drew from it a false
conclusion. That delightful June came to an end, and he had not
spoken; but two years later occurred a second visit, as pleasant and
as full of misunderstanding as the first. Meanwhile, she had refused
more than one offer. Poor Lucy Charlmont: her folly, even if it was
folly, had not been very blameable.
The disenchantment came no less painfully than unexpectedly: and
Lucy, ready to cry, but ashamed of crying for such a cause, thrust
the Supplement out of sight, and sitting down, forced herself to face
the inevitable future. One thing was certain, she could not meet
Alan—in her thoughts he had long been Alan, and now it cost her an
effort of recollection to stiffen him back into Mr. Hartley—she must
not meet Mr. Hartley till she could reckon on seeing him and his wife
with friendly composure. Oh! why—why—why had she all along
misunderstood him, and he never understood her? Not to meet him, it
would be necessary, to decline the invitation from Mrs. Tyke, which
she had looked forward to and longed for during weeks past, and
which, in the impartial judgment of Miss Charlmont, it was her turn,
not Jane’s, to accept; which, moreover, might arrive by any post.
Jane she knew would be ready enough to pay a visit out of turn, but
Catherine would want a reason; and what reason could she give? On one
point, however, she was determined, that, with or without her reasons
being accepted as reasonable, go she would not. Then came the
recollection of a cracker she had pulled with him, and kept in her
pocketbook ever since; and of a card he had left for her and her
sister, or, as she had fondly fancied, mainly for herself, before the
last return from Mrs. Tyke’s to Brompton-on-Sea. Treasures no longer
to be treasured, despoiled treasures,—she denied herself the luxury
of a sigh, as she thrust them between the bars of the grate and
watched them burn.