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.