The post of the morning after the events of our last chapter brought
Lucy a letter from her father. It was the first since his departure.
What chapters in life are these first letters after absence! How do
they open to us glimpses of not only new scenes and incidents, but of
emotions and sentiments which, while we had relied upon them, we had
never so palpably realized before! There is such ecstasy in thinking
that time and space are no barriers against love, and that, even as we
read, the heart that sent the message is beating with affection for us.
Lendrick's letter to his daughter was full of fondness; her image had
evidently gone with him through all the changes of the voyage, and their
old home mingled in every thought of the new life before him. It was
plain enough how unwillingly he turned from the past to the present, and
how far rather he would revel in the scenes around the Shannon than turn
to the solitary existence that awaited him beyond the seas.
“I console myself, dear Lucy,” wrote he, “as well as I may, by thinking
that in my great sacrifice I have earned the love of my father,--that
love from which I have lived so long estranged, and for which my heart
had never ceased to yearn; and I delight to think how by this time
you must have grown into his heart, soothed many a care for him, and
imparted to his solitary life the blessing of that bright hopefulness
which gave even to my own dull existence a glow of glad sunshine. Out
of my selfishness I cannot help asking you to remind him of all I have
given him. And now that my egotism is so fully aroused, let me tell of
myself. The voyage was less dreary than my fears had made it. I suffered
at first, it is true; and when at last use had inured me to the sea, I
fell into a sort of low feverish state, more the result of homesickness,
perhaps, than real malady. It was a condition of rather depression than
disease. Nothing could engage, nothing interest me. I could not read,
neither could I partake in any of the various pastimes by which my
fellow-voyagers beguiled the hours; and I found myself in that pitiable
state of sinking daily lower and lower, without what I could call a
cause for the depression.
“I have more than once in my experience as a doctor had to deal with
such cases, and I own now that I have neither valued their intensity
nor understood their importance. I did not, it is true, go to the vulgar
extent of calling them hippishness; but I did the next worse thing,--I
treated them as the offspring of an over-easy existence, of a placid
frictionless life.
“With much shame do I recall how often I have rallied these poor
sufferers on the vast space that separated them from real sorrow. There
is no unreality, dearest Lucy, in whatever so overcomes the brain that
thought is all but madness, and so pains the heart that the whole wish
is for death. There are subtler influences in our nature than those that
work by the brain or the blood, and the maladies of these have but one
physician.
“It was my great good-fortune to have a fellow-traveller who took the
kindest interest in me. If he could not cure, he certainly did much
to console me. He was a young man, lately gazetted on the
commander-in-chief's staff, and who came on board of us in the Downs
from a frigate bound for England. It was the merest accident that he did
not miss us and lose his passage.
“I am not a very attractive person, and it was with some astonishment
that I heard he desired to make my acquaintance; and on meeting he said,
'Though you have forgotten me, Dr. Lendrick, I had the honor of being
presented to you at Killaloe by my friend Sir Brook Fossbrooke;' and
I then remembered all about it, and how it was his features were so
familiar to me,--very good features, too, they were, with much candor
and manliness in the expression,--altogether a handsome young fellow,
and with an air of good birth about him just as distinctive as his good
looks.
“I am so unused to being singled out by a stranger as the object of
attentions, that I never fully got over the surprise which this young
man's attachment to me inspired; and I am not using too strong a word,
Lucy, when I call it attachment. There might have been, at least to his
eyes, something in our respective fortunes that suggested this drawing
towards me. Who knows whether he too might not have parted from a loved
home and friends!
“When he first came on board, his manner was wild,--almost incoherent;
he ran here and there, like one in search of something or of somebody,
but whose name he had forgotten. Indeed he actually startled me by the
eagerness with which he addressed me; and when I informed him that I was
alone, quite alone, and as friendles as himself on board, I thought he
would have fainted. In all this suffering and emotion I suspected that
I found what led him to a companionship with one as sorrow-stricken as
himself.
“As it was, there was no care he did not bestow on me. My own dear boy
himself could not have nursed me more tenderly, nor tried to rally my
spirits with more affectionate solicitude. He read for me, played chess
with me, he even lent himself to the sort of reading I liked best, to
become more companionable to me, withdrawing all this while from the gay
and pleasant society of young fellows like himself. In a word, Lucy, by
his devotion to me, he sent through my heart a lurking thought, almost
like a hope, that I must somehow have certain qualities for which the
world at large had not yet credited me, which could make me of
interest to a young, bright-natured creature, fresh to life and all its
enjoyments; and from the self-esteem of this notion I really believe I
drew more encouragement than from any amount of more avowed approbation.
“I feel I am not wearying you, my darling Lucy, by dwelling even with
prolixity on what beguiled the long hours of absence, the weary, weary
days at sea.
“When we landed, for a time at least, I only met him now and then;
he had his duties, and I had mine. I had to look out for a house. My
predecessor's family are still occupying the official residence, and
have begged of me leave to remain there a little longer. I had my visits
of duty or compliment to make, and a whole round of little courtesies to
perform, for which I well know I have all your sympathy. Every one was,
however, kind and polite; some were even friendly. Indeed, my very want
of manner, my awkward bashfulness and deficient tact, have, I can
see, not injured me in the esteem of those whose worldly breeding and
knowledge have taught them to be compassionate as well as courteous.
“Amongst the many persons to whom I was presented I made two
acquaintances of more than common interest to me,--I will not go
farther, and say of any great degree of gratification. In dining with
the Governor, yesterday week, he said, 'You will meet a relation to-day,
Dr. Lendrick. His ship has just put in to coal, and he and his wife dine
with us.' Though quite persuaded the Governor was laboring under some
mistake, I waited with anxiety as the different arrivals were announced,
and at last came Colonel and Mrs. Sewell,--the Colonel being Lady
Lendrick's son by her first marriage,--what relation to myself all my
skill in genealogy is unable to pronounce.
“We met, however, shook hands very cordially, and I had the honor to
conduct Mrs. Sewell to table. I am unfortunately terribly prone to first
impressions, and all those that I entertain regarding the Colonel
are adverse. He is a tall, handsome man, easy in manner, and with the
readiness in speech and address that shows familiarity with life. He
however will never suffer your eyes to meet his, never exchange a
frank look with you, and seems, from some cause or other, to be always
laboring under an impatient anxiety to be somewhere else than where he
stands at the moment.
“He asked about my father, and never waited for my reply; and he
laughingly said, with a bad taste that shocked me, 'My mother and he
never could hit it off together.'
“Mrs. Sewell interested me more than her husband. She is still very
handsome; she must at one time have been perfectly beautiful. She is
very gentle, low-voiced, and quiet, talking with a simplicity that even
I can detect only covers a deep knowledge of life and the world. The
dread of her husband seems, however, to pervade all she says or does.
She changes color when he looks at her, and if he addresses her, she
sometimes seems about to faint. His slightest word is accepted as a
command; and yet with all this terror--terror it was--I caught a
look that once passed between them that actually overwhelmed me
with amazement. It was the very look that two accomplices might have
interchanged in a moment when they could not communicate more freely.
Don't think that there is any exaggeration in this, Lucy, or that I
am assuming to possess a finer insight into human motives than my
neighbors; but my old craft as a doctor supplies me with a technical
skill that no acquaintance with the mere surface-life of the world could
have given; for the _Medico_ reads mankind by a stronger and steadier
light than ever shone out of conventionalities or social usages.
“'We are on our way to England, to Ireland, perhaps,' he said to me, in
a careless way; but she, not aware of his speech, told me they had been
invited to the Priory,--a piece of information which I own startled
me. First of all, they are not by any means like people who would be
agreeable to my father, nor, so far as I can guess, are they persons who
would easily sacrifice their own modes of life and habits to the wishes
of a recluse. Least of all, dearest Lucy, do I desire this lady to be
your companion. She has, I see, many attractive qualities; she may have
others as good and excellent; but if I do not greatly err, her
whole nature and being are in subjection to a very stern, cold, and
unscrupulous man, and she is far from being all that she should be with
such gifts as she possesses, and farther again from what she might have
been with a happier destiny in marriage.
“If it were not that you are so certain to meet, and not improbably see
much of these people, I should not have filled so much of my letter with
them; but I confess to you, since I saw them they have never been out
of my thoughts. Our relationship--if that be the name for it--led us
rapidly into considerable intimacy; he brought his children--two lovely
girls, and a little cherub of a boy of three years old--to see me
yesterday, and Mrs. Sewell comes to take me to drive every day after
luncheon. She expresses the most ardent desire to meet you, and says she
knows you will love each other. She carried off your picture t' other
day, and I was in real terror till I got it back again. She seemed in
ecstasy on being told you were living with your grandfather; but I saw a
look she shot across to her husband as I told it, and I saw his reply by
another glance that revealed to me how my tidings had caused surprise,
and something more than surprise.
“You must not set me down as fanciful or captious, dear Lucy; but the
simple truth is, I have never had a quiet moment since I knew these
people. They inspire me with the same sort of anxiety I have often felt
when, in the course of my profession, some symptom has supervened in
a case not very grave or startling in itself, but still such as I have
always found heralding in very serious combinations. It is therefore the
doctor as much as the father that takes alarm here.
“It is just possible--mind, I say possible--that I am a little jealous
of these Sewells, for they have already seduced from me my young friend
Lionel, who was so kind to me on the voyage. I scarcely see him now, he
is always with them; and yesterday I heard--it may not be true--that
he is already weary of Cape Town, and means to return home by the next
ship,--that is, along with the Sewells, who are to sail on Friday.
“I am certain that Sewell is neither a good nor a safe companion for a
young fellow so bashful and unsuspecting as Lionel Trafford.
“There are men who read the world the way certain dishonest critics
quote a book or an article, by extracting all that is objectionable,
and, omitting context and connection, place passage after passage in
quick sequence. By such a process as this, human life is a pandemonium.
I half suspect Sewell to be one of this scornful school; and if so, a
most dangerous intimate. The heartfelt racy enjoyment of his manner, as
he records some trait of rascality or fraud, is not more marked than the
contemptuous sneer with which he receives a story that bears testimony
to generosity or trustfulness, throwing over his air in each that tone
of knowledge of life and the world that seems to say, 'These are
the things we all of us know well, though only a few have either the
manliness or the honesty to declare them openly.'
“I may have tired you with this long tirade, my dear Lucy, but I am
pouring out to you my thoughts as they come,--come, too, out of the
fulness of much reflection. Remember, too, my sweet child, that I have
often told you, 'It is just some half-dozen people with whom we are
intimate who make or mar our fate in life.' Big as the world is, we play
a very small game in one corner of the board, and it behoves us to look
well to those with whom we are to play it.
“If I am jealous of the Sewells for having robbed me of my young friend,
I am envious of himself also, for he is going back to England,--going
back to the loved faces and scenes he has left,--going back to Home.
There 's the word, Lucy, that gathers all that we come to live for, when
life really is a blessing.
“It would seem too early to pronounce, but I think I can already see
this is not a place to which I would like to bring you; but I will not
prejudge it. It may be that time will reconcile me to some things I
now dislike; it may be, too, that the presence of my own around me will
dispose me to take a cheerier view of much that now depresses me. I have
a great deal to do; I am employed during the whole day, and never really
free till evening, when society claims me. This latter is my only severe
burden. You can imagine me daily dining out, and fancy the martyrdom it
costs me.
“I am most anxious to hear of you, and how you like your new life,--I
mean how you bear it. Liking is not the word for that which entails
separation. I feel assured that you will love my father. You will be
generous towards those traits which the host of mere acquaintanceship
took pleasure in exaggerating, and you will be fair enough not to
misjudge his great qualities because of certain faults of temper. He has
great gifts, Lucy; and as you will see, the two pendulums of his nature,
heart and head, swing together, and he is as noble in sentiment as he is
grand in action.
“It almost consoles me for separation when I think that I have
transferred to him the blessings of that presence that made my own
sunshine. Mind that you send me a diary of your life. I want your whole
day; I want to see how existence is filled, so that whenever my
mind flies back to you I may say, 'She is in her garden,--she is
working,--she is at her music,--she is reading to him.'
“It was a mistake to send me here, Lucy. There are men in scores who
would rejoice in the opportunities of such a place, and see in it
the road to rapid fortune. I only look at one feature of it,--the
banishment. Not that by nature I am discontented,--I hope and believe
this is not so,--but I feel that there are many things in life far worse
than poverty. I have not the same dread of narrow means most men have.
I do not feel depressed in spirit when I lie beneath a very humble roof,
and sit down to a coarse meal; nor has splendor the power to exhilarate
or elevate me. I am essentially humble, and I need nothing that is not
generally within the reach of the humble; and I vow to you in all truth,
I 'd rather be your grandfather's gardener than be the governor of this
great colony. There 's an ignoble confession, but keep it for yourself.
“I have written a long letter to Tom by this post, and addressed it to
Mr. Dempster, who will forward it if he should have left before this. It
distresses me greatly when I think that I have not been able to give him
any definite career in life before we parted. Mere aptitude has no value
with the world. You may be willing and ready to do fifty things, but
some fourth-rate fellow who _knows_ how to do one will beat you. The
marketable quality in life is skill; the thing least in request is
genius. Tom has this harsh lesson yet to learn, but learn it he must,
for the world is a schoolmaster that will stand no skulking, and however
little to our taste be its tasks, we must come up when called on, and go
on with our lesson as well as we may.
“In many respects Sir Brook Fossbrooke was an unfortunate companion
for him to have chanced upon. A man of considerable resources, who has
employed them all unprofitably, is a bad pilot. The very waywardness of
such a nature was exactly the quality to be avoided in Tom's case; but
what was to be done? Poverty can no more select its company than its
climate; and it would have been worse than ungracious to have rejected a
friendship so generously and freely offered.
“I am curious--I am more than curious, I am anxious--to know if Tom
should ever have met my father. They are so intensely alike in many
things that I fear me their meeting could not lead to-good. I know well
that Tom resents, and would like to show that he resents, what he
deems the harsh treatment evinced towards me, and I dread anything
like interchange of words between them. My whole hope is that you would
prevent such a mischance, or, if it did occur, would take measures to
obviate its dangers.
“Tell me particularly about this when you write. Tell me also, have
you met Lady Lendrick, and if so, on what terms? I have ever found her
obliging and good-natured, and with many qualities which the world has
not given her credit for. Give her my most respectful regards when you
see her.
“It is daybreak; the hot sun of Africa is already glancing into the
room, and I must conclude. I cannot bear to think of the miles these
lines must travel ere they meet you, but they will be with you at last,
and they are in this more fortunate than your loving father,
“T. Lendrick.”
Lucy sat long pondering over this letter. She read it too, again and
again, and by a light which was certainly not vouchsafed to him who
wrote it. To _her_ there was no mystery in Trafford's conduct. It
was plain enough he had gone out, expecting to find her as his
fellow-passenger. His despair--his wretchedness--his devotion to
her father, the last resource of that disappointment he could not
subdue--were all intelligible enough. Less easy, however, to read the
sudden attachment he had formed for the Sewells. What did this mean? Had
it any meaning; and if so, was it one that concerned her to know?