Few years have passed since brightly cross the way
Lights from each window shot the lengthened ray,
And busy looks in every face were seen,
Through the warm precincts of the reigning Queen.
There fires, inviting, blazed; and all around
Was heard the tinkling bell’s seducing sound:
The nimble waiters to that sound, from far,
Sprang to the call, then hastened to the bar,
Where a glad priestess of the temple swayed,
The most obedient, and the most obeyed.
CRABBE.
And first, by the way, to stop at the little town of Mayton. The
evening had begun to close in on the day of the events described
above, when the Widow Westbury, having, unfortunately, no guests
to occupy her within, was standing at her front door, the somewhat
narrow threshold of which the ample expanse of her spotless apron
now more completely filled than when on first taking up that
position, seven years back, she had been herself the most attractive
sign to stray travellers on an idle afternoon to induce them to slip
in beside her. She had, as usual on such occasions, been looking
listlessly up the street, and down the road, when, on turning her
head again in the direction of the road leading from Hornscliff, she
was struck with the uncommon spectacle of two carriages crowded with
persons, apparently both within and without, and attended by others
on horseback, coming into town. One short hopeful vision she had time
to form, of full bedrooms and an empty larder, before undeceived
by observing that they were two hack chaises, and, therefore, the
regular undoubted allies of her powerful rival, the Angel, to which,
of course, they therefore edged off.
The Widow Westbury was not an envious woman, but one pang she could
not suppress at the exuberance of her rival’s good fortune, whilst
her own house was literally empty, and she turned her head in the
opposite direction, to avoid seeing the actual unloading. But she
was as much surprised here as at what had met her view in the other
direction. It was not market-day, and yet it could be no other than
Farmer Darnell whom she beheld riding towards her, and pressing
George’s pony beyond its natural speed. The first impression of
pleasure which the Widow derived from recognising him was, however,
as completely destroyed, as had been the half-formed hopes in the
other direction, as soon as she made out the extraordinary state in
which he arrived. His first words were, as he kicked the pony towards
the stable gateway. “Hast seen her, Widow? Hast heard anything on
her? Oh! I’se lost her, she’s gone! She’s been kidnapped from us.”
“What’s fashed about, George? tell us, hinny. Is’t cart mare’s lost,
that ye’re come on t’ galloway?”
“The cart mare, indeed! she might gang and be d--d, for what I’d fash
myself about the likes of she. But I ax yer pardon, Widow. It’s na
th’ time for a sinfu’ mon to tak’ to profane swearing, when he’s in
sair trouble as I am now. What cared I for hard toimes, for rot i’
th’ flocks, or blight i’ th’ crops, so long as I had but her, my own
pet lamb, my pride, and my joy--my little Lucy?”
“And sure there won’t be any harm come to Miss Lucy, then?” asked the
Widow.
“Harm! I trust in mercy, none. But I’se sair flayed aboot her,”
replied he, in language that would have been hardly intelligible
to any but indigenous ears, his provincialism being, as is often
observed to be the case, redoubled by excitement. “And only to think
now that I slept so sound all through t’ night, when may be she was
struggling with them as have _spraited_ her away from us. But I made
sartain sure she were at her aunt’s, where she had boided the night
afore; but when morning came, and it were noised about that there
had been some fasheous doings on t’ beach, I took galloway and rode
down to sister Alice’s, and when I fooun’ my poor darling child had
never bin there, I were clean demented, and did not ken which way to
gang, but as all t’ turnpikes come through Mayton, I thought I’d may
be hear some tidings of her here; and I’ve lossen a good hour, for I
thought to come the gainest way straight by the salt-marshes--and t’
galloway was matched to get me throughf, as he was like to be--being
o’er small to bear me, even on canny groond.”
“And if you haven’t been bogged and are quite dripping wet up to your
waist!” interrupted the Widow--“Come in, Richard, I’ll see and get
you some tidings, and make you comfortable the while.”
“Comfort!” replied Richard, contemptuously; “comfort! and where’s the
comfort ever like to visit me again, but in the sight of my child?”
“But step in a wee bit, and tell me all about it, while Joe gives
a feed to the galloway, for he’s clean done at present. Is’t alone
she’s missing?”
“No: George never com’d back naither; but I don’t count much about
that, for he’s a messmate about in these parts; and he said maybe he
shouldn’t return last night. But Painter Churchill wasn’t to be found
naither.”
“Richard, I’d my misgivings when you took that man home with you
from here, that no good would come of it: he’s just the sort of
soft-spoken chap to take with a young girl. I wish it mayn’t be along
with he that she’s off.”
“What, Widow! my own Lucy, that’s come of decent folk, and all along
been used to have a good roof-top over her head, and bide where she
was known and looked up to; she to bemean herself to give up all and
follow a vagabond stroller, of her own free mind! that’s the least
crediblest surmise of all. Hark! what’s that ere chap saying about
George Darnell?” overhearing the voices of those who were already
circulating in the street that it was George Darnell who had been
brought there in a chaise, on his way to the county gaol. This,
when explained, was sure to be a bitter aggravation of the troubles
of Farmer Darnell, who had always loved his nephew better than any
thing else in the world, except her whom he was then seeking; but
the first impression made on him by this news was only, that somehow
or another it must be connected with the absence of Lucy; and acting
upon the idea, he strode across to the Angel, to inform himself,
without stopping to ask any farther particulars, or to listen to the
Widow’s request that he wouldn’t show himself at “t’ other house” in
that unsightly gait. He was however much shocked, when, upon first
desiring to be shown to George Darnell, a difficulty was made by
the constables in whose custody he was, upon the ground that it was
not usual to allow any communication with a prisoner who was on his
way to gaol on so grave a charge as murder. This objection being
at last surmounted, and the Farmer admitted to George by one of
the constables, his parental anxiety again superseding every other
feeling, he blurted out, “Sad job indeed, George! but feyther before
uncle, after all. Hast seen her? Hast heard on her?”
George, who could make every allowance for any one, father or not,
considering Lucy before every thing else in the world, also forgot
for the moment, his own dreadful situation, in the pleasure he felt
in dissipating his uncle’s fear for his daughter, by informing him
of her safety, and that her return home might speedily be expected.
After this explanation, the more painful task remained, of detailing
to his uncle the particulars of the awful situation in which he had
involved himself. In the whole course of his life, George had never
known what it was to offend his uncle. Many faults he had certainly
committed from his earliest childhood, and scrapes he had got into
with his aunt and others about the house; but his uncle had always
rather taken his part on these occasions; that indulgence towards
venial errors, the result of a disposition not over-strict for
himself, and consequently easy for others, being confirmed by his
strong partiality for his nephew. This only made it more painful to
George to have to break to him the dreadful crime with which he was
now charged; of all the circumstances connected with which he gave
him a faithful account.
Richard Darnell wished, if possible, not to increase the anguish
which he saw his nephew suffered in the relation, but his own
disappointment would break through his endeavours to make the least
of it.
“It’s a baddish piece of work indeed, George,” he said; “that must
be confessed. I hope and trust you may be gettin’ well quit on’t,
and you’re not to doubt that we--that is, I--will do all in my power
to help you. But to think, George, how little I would have guessed
that the first sorrow I ever had about my poor child should be
of your making; I that always looked forward to your keeping her
out of harm’s way when I should be gone to my long rest; and that
it should be you brought her among all that unseemly society! But
I will not say now, how far I’d pushed my hopes that sometime the
name of Darnell might be left to share atween you two in peace and
honour; but to think that, through you, it should fall out that my
own innocent child should have been gaped at by the gentlefolk as a
wanton one, the tramping follower of a band of unlawful ruffians!”
“Don’t, I pray you, uncle,” said George, “don’t; no more o’ that;
it’s just the light in which I’ve been turning it over all this day
and night, and you can’t any how put that stronger in words than I’ve
had it in my thoughts; only from you it hurts me more, for it comes,
I know, strange to Richard Darnell to say an unkind word when his
back’s not up: and of myself you never did yet.”
The dialogue was here interrupted by the head constable, “Come,
gentlemen, the chaise be ready;” in the phrase of the minions of the
law, any one becoming a gentleman who is consigned to their custody
on any charge, however trivial or flagrant.
The other prisoners, who had been stowed in different apartments,
were then brought out, and, upon seeing them, and particularly
recognizing Kit Collett again, Richard Darnell, whose fears
immediately turned to the breeze all this would raise at home, though
anxious to avoid, of his own accord, giving George any farther pain,
could not help saying: “Lord! Lord! George, to think how my Missus
will fash herself when she hears tell how you brought a ruffian like
that ere to sit aside her and break her bread! I shall have a bad
time of it with her, George, all along of you; and if this bean’t
the very spot where I seed you off from last time! That were another
guess voyage you were a-bound on then, George: and who kens but I may
have been summut to blame myself? If I’d gi’en you some o’ that good
counsel your aunt said you needed, and had been a bit more minded
what I was after myself, who knows? But good b’ye, George,” added he,
as his nephew was put into the chaise, “you’ll be gettin’ through
yet, I’se sure.”
And, with a heavier heart, though with somewhat a steadier head
than when he last saw George drive off from the Angel, poor Richard
Darnell returned to the Queen’s Head.