This may be Nature: when our friends we lose,
Our altered feelings alter to our views;
What in their tempers teazed us, or distressed,
Is with our anger, and the dead, at rest.
And much we grieve, no longer trial made,
For that impatience which we then displayed.
Now to their love, and worth of every kind,
A soft compunction turns the afflicted mind;
Virtues neglected then, adored become,
And graces slighted, blossom on the tomb.
CRABBE.
Lucy had been standing at the window of her own apartment, watching
for the return of the equestrians, and from hence she had first
seen with amazement the pace at which Lady Gayland was returning;
Castleton not, as usual, attending closely on her, but lingering some
distance in the rear. It was not till she had seen the violent manner
in which the horse had bolted for the stables, that the truth broke
upon her. She then became dreadfully alarmed, and would have been
at once upon the spot, but that her agitation impeded her tottering
steps.
Castleton was, as may be supposed, painfully anxious to ascertain
whether Lucy had heard the unguarded expressions which he had
incautiously dropped, but there was nothing in her immediately
subsequent conduct, from which he could form a guess whether this
had been so or not. She assisted with zeal and alacrity in every
thing that was necessary to be attempted to bring Lady Gayland to her
senses, and arranged, in concurrence with Castleton, the manner in
which she had best be conveyed to the house.
The servants had by this time collected, upon the alarm of seeing the
two horses return without riders to the stables. The removal to the
house was effected without difficulty, which seemed to confirm the
hope that no limb was fractured; and in the shortest possible space
of time, the best medical advice was procured. The surgeon expressed
a fear, from the state of torpor in which she remained, that there
might be a concussion of the brain, and, above all things, enjoined
the strictest quiet, and that she should be left to the care of her
own maid.
It was not till Lucy was thus dismissed from any further attendance,
that she owned that she herself was far from well; though, indeed,
her countenance (now first observed) showed that she was suffering
acute pain; all that night she was in considerable danger, and the
next morning produced the premature birth of a dead child.
Castleton, kind and affectionate in his nature, was, as may well be
supposed, driven almost distracted by her fearful state; aggravated
as his anxieties were, by the idea that he had himself been the cause
of the calamity. During some of the moments in which it was thought
most doubtful how it might end, Lucy kept constantly repeating to her
husband, “It was only the fright--it was the fright. I thought she
was killed, and that frightened me so--but that was all:” and this
anxious disavowal of any other cause of agitation, made Castleton
only the more fear that it was too probable she had heard the
expressions into which his alarm had betrayed him.
Perhaps the perfect quiet in which Lady Gayland was necessarily left,
contributed as much as any thing to her progressive recovery. Lucy
was, of course, unable for some time to go near her, and she availed
herself of the strict rules of English decorum, to exclude Castleton
also, as long as she was confined to her own room.
As soon as she was sufficiently re-established to be able to move,
Lady Gayland announced that circumstances prevented her from any
longer delaying her departure. She took an affectionate leave of
Lucy, and an unmarked farewell of Castleton. In answer to Lucy’s
inquiries, whether she still felt any ill effects from her fall, she
replied in the negative; professing, at the same time, that she had
no particular recollection of the circumstances which accompanied
the accident. This oblivion, if real, was fortunate; if assumed, was
judicious.
Castleton and Lucy were thus once more left alone, and had she really
been all in all to him, he could not more tenderly and anxiously
have watched over her slowly returning strength. Before she was by
any means restored to health, this tranquil state was broken in
upon by a melancholy piece of intelligence, which, under present
circumstances, affected Lucy more deeply, perhaps, than would be
imagined by those of my gentle readers who have attended to the
incidents of her early life. A letter arrived from her aunt Alice,
announcing the sudden death of her mother.
The end of Mrs. Darnell had been in some respects characteristic. It
will be recollected, that her neighbours were few and distant; and
those she had, she did not often visit, excepting one, a farmer’s
wife, who had, in the time of high prices, indulged in luxuries,
which Mrs. Darnell had always thought sinful. Having heard that this
woman’s daughter, a pretty boarding-school miss, had eloped from a
country town with a cornet, Mrs. Darnell could not deny herself the
satisfaction of going over, as she said, to condole with her; though
in reality to impress upon her, how the _edication_ which _she_ had
given _her_ daughter had just fitted her to be a lady of the land.
The length of this lecture, during the whole of which she had sat in
wet clothes, brought on an inflammatory cold, in the early stages
of which she had grudged herself a doctor, and in the more advanced
period of the disease she had got up and gone down thrice to see the
shamefu’ dinner that Richard had ordered Betty to dress for him,
“which,” she said, “was just of a piece with all the rest.” This was
her last grievance; for, by her ill-timed, economical imprudence, she
had brought on a typhus fever, of which in a few days she had fallen
the victim.
This event was a severe shock to Lucy. Mrs. Darnell was in no respect
a bad, though an unamiable woman; and in the endearing relation of
mother and daughter, it was impossible that, with such a child as
Lucy, there should not have been many moments which had left an
impression stronger than that of her habitual irritation of temper.
Besides, in these cases, the mind is a sort of intellectual virtuoso,
collecting and treasuring up, in proportion to their rarity, any
traits of kindness which death has stamped with the fictitious value
of reliques. On more general grounds, this melancholy event depressed
Lucy severely. The abrupt manner in which she had heard of the
catastrophe, proved to her how complete was her isolation from the
home of her childhood, how absolute her separation from all those to
whom formerly her every hour had been devoted, and with whom every
care had been divided. She had always considered her parting with her
family as only temporary, but this showed that, whilst with so few
interests in common, communications were so rare between them, their
parting had been transformed into a final one, without that warning
which might have enabled her to have been present at its termination,
or, at any rate, have somewhat prepared her to meet the worst with
fortitude.
It was on her mother that this first blow had fallen; the same might
shortly be the case with her father. The letter, which announced
her mother’s death, contained little more than a recital of the
melancholy event, and of the circumstances which had attended it;
in the next communication, however, which she received shortly
after from her aunt, much mention was made of her father’s lonely
situation, and she learned how frequently he dwelt upon the privation
of his dear child’s society, a loss which he now so deeply felt.
Feeble as Lucy still was, this excited an immediate and anxious
desire to go to him without delay, and she pressed her request upon
Castleton more earnestly than she had previously done any wish, of
the favourable reception of which she was not certain. Castleton
was too much touched with her present depression of spirits, and,
consequently, too anxious to accede to any desire of hers, to start
any other difficulty than his fears that her strength might not be
equal to the undertaking.
Morden Bay, it will be recollected, was in a very remote and secluded
situation: there was only one carriage road to it, the same by which
the pic-nic party had returned to Hornscliff, and that, besides being
very rough and difficult, was exactly in an opposite direction to
the place at which they were at present residing. It was difficult,
therefore, to arrange the method of putting her views into execution,
whilst she was still so far from being perfectly recovered, that even
an easy journey would not have been undertaken without fatigue.
As soon as she could bear the attempt, a plan occurred to Castleton,
by which the difficult part of the undertaking might be overcome.
There was a little sea-bathing place, called Sandford, at about forty
miles distant from Morden Bay, considerably nearer to Somersby, and
here his friend, Lord Stayinmore, had his yacht in waiting for him,
in case he should come back that way from his grouse-shooting in
Scotland.
Lord Stayinmore was one of those persons, who, with unlimited powers
to multiply their luxuries, often find that there is one thing which
they cannot purchase, which is, the time necessary to the successive
enjoyment of them all. This was quite the case in the present
instance. Whilst staying at Cowes, he had been seized with a sudden
fancy to have a yacht, and belong to the Royal Yacht Club. He had
immediately purchased, at an exorbitant price, the fastest sailer;
but this year the grouse had tempted him into Scotland; and as his
shooting-box is in the Central Highlands, whilst “he lies amongst the
moors,” his yacht was ordered to anchor in some port in the north of
England, in case he should wish for a sail, upon his return.
It was not very agreeable to Castleton to ask a favour from a man
of Lord Stayinmore’s character; but the circumstances of the case
induced him to get over his delicacy on this head, and he was
rewarded by receiving for answer a most prompt acquiescence in
his request, putting the vessel entirely under his command, with
a profusion of assurances of the peculiar felicity it gave him to
contribute in any way to Lady Castleton’s comfort. The journey to
Sandford was accomplished by easy stages, though hastened by Lucy’s
impatience to relieve her father’s lonely situation.
Since the second letter of her aunt, Richard Darnell’s solitude had
been broken in upon by a most unexpected return: which had happened
so recently that the event had not been notified in another letter
to Lucy. The ship in which George had been placed had been homeward
bound much sooner than had been contemplated; having been freighted
with some ex-emperor, or potentate on half-pay. George, upon the
receipt of the account of his aunt’s death, had immediately obtained
leave; had started for home to see his uncle, and was at present
staying at Morden Bay. He had hitherto conducted himself, in his new
career, to the complete satisfaction of all his superiors, and his
own merit, coupled with Castleton’s recommendation, had placed him
near his captain, who had made him his clerk and employed him in a
confidential manner.