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.”