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.”