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.