Those who murder fame,
Kill more than life-destroyers.
Castleton, for the first few days at Sandford, led a listless,
lounging, watering-place kind of life. Lady Gayland was not yet come;
nor did he, among the many casual acquaintances that he encountered,
find any one calculated to be a resource. On the contrary, one
unexpectedly crossed his path here, the renewal of whose acquaintance
was most unwelcome; he would even have given much to avoid it. In
passing, at dusk one afternoon, by a trinket-shop on the cliff,
he heard his name uttered, inquiringly, out of a dark-coloured
chaise, with rose-coloured blinds. So summoned, he approached,
and, though the light was already too far gone to give more than
a general view of the features of the person who addressed him,
yet a disagreeable conviction at once occurred to him, through the
concurrent accumulation of rouge and wrinkles, that he once more
beheld Lady Madelina Manfred. She addressed him in the sickly tone of
resuscitated sentiment, and requested him to call upon her the next
day.
There was hardly any thing that he would not rather have done, and
yet there was hardly any thing that he could not better refuse to
do; and next morning saw him unwillingly winding his way towards a
cottage _orné_ on the cliff, which, with the dark-coloured chariot,
had been the produce of her recruited finances. Poor Manfred had, at
length, drank himself to death in the Bench; she had therefore come
upon the entailed property for her settled jointure; had quarrelled
with, and left Captain O’Connor in Connaught; and, with somewhat
diminished powers, was trying whom she could captivate here, to use
either as an agreeable _passe-temps_, or as a permanent settlement.
For Castleton she had always retained a lingering partiality; their
connexion, such as it was, had taken its date just at that period
of her life, when a woman of her description is peculiarly sensible
of the admiration of a very young man. He was since married, and
therefore she could not look forward to any renewal of their
_liaison_; but as she was not conscious of any other change, least of
all in herself, she still expected from him much devotion of manner.
But Castleton’s feelings towards her were now, on the contrary,
under the influence of that most powerful of all re-actions, the
thorough consciousness of having, with very little excuse, made a
very great fool of himself. He was now perfectly aware of all those
faults in her character, to which he had formerly been wofully
blind; and he could not even discover the traces of those personal
attractions which had alone been the cause of that blindness.
Therefore, though her reception of him was evidently studied;
her address to him tender and languishing; and the effect of her
appearance, assisted by the softened light that oozed through the
triply-folded curtains; yet, in spite of all this, his manner was as
cold as it was constrained.
Lady Madelina had always had a passion for presents; and on this
occasion, several trinkets, said to have been sent to her for choice,
were artfully displayed upon the table. Castleton could not mistake
the hint intended; but he hesitated at first, between a dislike to
take this particular method of checking her expectations, and the
danger of encouraging these too far, by acceding to her evident wish.
At last, as the best way of making good his retreat out of the room,
he begged her acceptance of the article which seemed most to have
tempted her fancy; accompanying his exit with an expression of his
regret that he was so much occupied at present, that he could have
but few opportunities of repeating his visit.
This occupation, which was imaginary at the time that it was so
pleaded, was soon afterwards realized; for Lady Gayland arrived the
next day, and was followed almost immediately by St. Clair and some
other young men; as well as by two or three families, who having
latterly been staying at the country-house where she has been on a
visit, near Somersby, had been principally tempted by her to take
Sandford in their way homewards.
Under these circumstances, Castleton found it very difficult now to
see her alone; a difficulty which she seemed by no means anxious to
remove. How wise would he have thought this determination in any
other case: how little justice did he do to its discretion in his
own. A man, under the influence of an unhappy passion, feeling the
obligation, but not having the power to resist it, is often the most
senseless animal in creation: always prone to misconstrue the actions
of the object of his devotion; unreasonable in his expectations of
demonstrations towards himself, and fastidiously criticising her
deportment towards any one else; equally ready to exact in the one
case, or exaggerate in the other.
In spite, however, of her previous determination to avoid it, the
intimate footing of society at a small watering place, and the tacit
acquiescence, if not expressed understanding, by which, on these
occasions, those two people are allowed to be most together whose
society is supposed to be the most agreeable to each other, led to
interviews which dangerously reminded them both of past times, and
produced some little gossip even beyond their immediate circle.
Lady Madelina had, ever since Castleton’s visit, and consequent
_cadeau_, pestered him with incessant pointedly-expressed
rose-coloured notes; which, after a time, he was rather apt to leave
unanswered. The cause of this she was anxious to discover. Her
position in the world was a doubtful one; she had been avoided, never
excluded; no record had ever appeared against her: Captain O’Connor,
and Connaught, were equally distant and unknown. She, therefore,
at a watering place, hovered sufficiently within the outskirts of
society to have occasional opportunities of observing Castleton. At
a raffle, which was held at one of the libraries, she met him with
Lady Gayland hanging on his arm, and addressing him with an easy
assurance, which she probably had acquired in the western province of
the sister country, said,
“Introduce me to your _new_ friend.”
“Excuse me;” was the laconic reply, pointedly expressed.
“This from _you_ to _me_!” was the equally concise retort, as she
floated by.
There is nothing in the world so vindictive as an irritated fool; and
an unexpected opportunity occurred of venting, in a congenial manner,
her spiteful feelings.
The maid whom Lucy had been obliged to dismiss from Morden Bay, was
landed at Sandford, and sought what might for her too truly be
termed a suitable service with Lady Madelina Manfred. It had always
been Lady Madelina’s custom to confide much in her maid, though the
services which she had required had generally been in aid of a softer
passion than hatred. The information that her new attendant had been
living with Lady Castleton, gave her an immediate clue to all the
discoveries that she most wished to make; and she was not a little
surprised to find, upon inquiry, that his present wife could be no
other than the little girl whom they had together seen, during their
excursions on the shores of Morden Bay. The details given by Mrs.
Jenkins, of the state of the establishment during the time that she
lived with the Castletons, and particularly of the present family
union at Bankside Farm, furnished ample food for mischief, had Lady
Madelina possessed powers equal to her desire, to wield the weapons
thus placed in her hands.
But there is one device, the attempt of which is open to the poorest,
the effects of which may content the most rancorous spirit. An
anonymous letter is a mode of moral murder, which, using only a
pen for a poniard, and an inkstand for a bowl, poisons confidence,
and stabs characters without fear of detection. A man who thus
“filches from me my good name,” is free from any dread of having
the stolen goods found upon him; and malignity, thus refined by
cowardice, feasts satisfactorily upon the mere distant imagination
of the success of its designs. This was the sort of revenge which
it occurred to Lady Madelina to take; and, collecting some topics
for mischief from her maid, she concocted the following epistle for
Lucy in a feigned hand; a disguise by no means complete, since the
highly-scented vellum paper, which was made use of, would have
suggested to any one less artless than Lucy, the sort of person
from whom it came. It began with those assurances with which every
anonymous letter abounds.
“_A friend_, deeply _interested_ in the welfare of Lady Castleton,
begs most anxiously to warn her of the doubly dangerous precipice on
which she at present stands. On one side her character is cruelly
traduced, and spies set over her to endeavour to collect proofs of
her criminal attachment to _one_ whom it is unnecessary to name, but
for whom the person who thus cautions her, feels assured that she
only entertains an innocent regard. At the same time attempts are
carrying on here by the same artful woman, who is thus working her
ruin, to rob her of her husband’s affections. This object, the friend
who now writes is afraid will be more likely to be accomplished than
the first part of the scheme. At any rate, why is Lady Castleton
not here? In regard alike for her reputation and her happiness, she
ought not to delay her return another instant: already her absence
is represented as arising from indifference to Lord Castleton, and
partiality for another. She is young in the world, and has much to
learn; and will not suffer by taking this hint from her sincere
friend,--Experience.”
Whatever might be the extent of the malice with which this was
written, the degree of misery which it inflicted on the poor girl
to whom it was addressed, must have excited some compunction if it
could have been witnessed by its author; especially as Lucy was not
herself so much the object, as the means, of attack upon the other
two intended victims.
Lucy, with this death-warrant of her happiness, as she considered
it, in her hand, felt as solitary in the centre of her family, as
she had done in the midst of the strange society to which she had
been transplanted. To whom could she willingly confide insinuations
so degrading to herself, so injurious to her husband? The experience
of the short time that had elapsed since her return to Bankside, had
served to convince her how little the greater part of what she had
lately learnt, could be understood by those amongst whom she had
previously lived. She could not, therefore, for the world acknowledge
to her father, still less to her cousin, that she could believe
that there was any foundation in that which was asserted about her
husband: and as little, she knew, would they credit what was said
about herself. Nay, she even shrunk from showing the odious letter to
her aunt, with whom she felt that she could have no half confidences.
And yet to herself she could not deny, that she thought she ought, if
possible, to follow the advice it contained, of an immediate return
to her husband--but on what grounds to explain to her family such a
previously unmentioned design?
An occasion, however, offered the very next day, while she was
repining in secret over the contents of the hateful communication,
which enabled her to attribute to the peculiar convenience of the
opportunity, her intention to avail herself of it.
Lord Stayinmore had had his yacht down to Scotland, to convey him
Southward, but having, before its arrival, changed his mind, and
being anxious to give some plausible reason for so doing, he had sent
it back, with an elaborately civil note to Lady Castleton, saying
that “he had desired his vessel might call at the Bay where she had
landed, (he had forgotten its name,) to express his hope that she
would do him the honour to avail herself of it to return home again,
to gladden the sight of the living world.”
Lucy, considering this arrival as almost providential, signified her
intention of immediately availing herself of the offer. In vain her
father and her aunt endeavoured to dissuade her, she showed a fixed
determination to abide by her intention, for which they could not
account. She, who was generally so gentle and pliable, was on this
occasion positive and unalterable. She refused, even, to detain the
vessel till the next morning; merely urging as a reason that, as it
was a convenience offered, and a favour conferred, she felt it right
to avail herself of it, without delay, if at all.
George had stood by in silence during the time that this little
family debate was carried on in the garden in the front of the house,
not wishing to obtrude his opinion in opposition to what appeared
to be Lucy’s decided intention; but he watched the while, with some
inquietude, indications of the weather, which his general nautical
experience, and previous knowledge of the signs to be remarked on
that particular spot, combined to make him fear promised but a rough
and disagreeable passage for a delicate female.
The season was now far advanced: autumn, though still gleaming
with an insidious smile, appeared generally in its own blustering
nakedness. As they stood in the little garden, amongst the now bare
and lifeless bushes, the fallen leaves rustled round them in fitful
eddies. The wind, though not loud or high, was unsteady. The little
vessel, although moored within the sheltered bay, in smooth, and
apparently unruffled waters, heaved slowly and solemnly under the
influence of a heavy ground swell from without; and though, with the
exception of some light, fleecy clouds, whose fantastic shapes seemed
to sport in the sunshine, the sky was generally clear, yet a low,
thick bank at sea, which lingered in the offing, appeared to George
to threaten some unpleasant weather at night, should the little skiff
not be able to make the port of Sandford before dark. Danger he did
not himself contemplate; and he wished not to prognosticate evil,
when she seemed so determined not to be dissuaded from starting;
he therefore merely urged that, if she intended to depart that
day, there would be no unnecessary delay. She thanked him, with an
expressive glance, for not having opposed himself to her wishes.
“One night more, dear Lucy,” said her father, as she turned to
prepare for her departure.
“My dear father, trust me, I would not refuse what I should myself
so much wish, had I not reasons, which I cannot explain, but which
convince me of the necessity of no delay.”
“You will at least, though, allow me to accompany you as far as
Sandford,” said George. “Quite alone with strange sailors, you cannot
think of undertaking the voyage.”
Lucy hesitated how to reply to this request. The perfect purity of
her own mind, and the correctness of her conduct, made it difficult
for her to fancy that any one could believe the insinuation in
the anonymous letter, of her continued attachment to her cousin.
Sometimes the recollection of past feelings would, perhaps, raise
a sigh to what might have been; but she never had thought of those
times and her cousin, but as referring to prospects which her conduct
had closed for ever against her; still if such reports had been
spread, the idea of returning to her husband in company with George,
caused her more fear than the alternative of braving the dangers
of the voyage alone. She therefore answered, “I had rather go by
myself, dear George.”
But her father was not so easily satisfied: the experience of an
unexpected bereavement, to one previously so prosperous, had made
him, for the present, morbidly alive to danger. “I’m not now,” he
said, “the fool-hardy swaggerer that I used to be; who just thought
no harm could happen, because it hadn’t happened afore. Yet even now
Richard Darnell’s fears are not to be slighted; and I shall jist have
no rest, unless you take George wi’ you.” To the desire thus urged by
her father, and seconded by her aunt’s entreaties, Lucy gave way, and
consented that George should accompany her. He immediately proceeded
to facilitate preparations for their departure; but even with his
exertions they were rather tardy, and it was much later than he could
have wished before they embarked.
Richard Darnell, and his sister, once more stood side by side to
watch the departure of their beloved Lucy, though under different
circumstances. Their fears were complicated, and their hopes were
chastened, since they had marked her borne away from the church by
her noble bridegroom. They had ascended the cliff, and reached the
ledge on which the farm-house was situated, just as the little bark
cleared the promontory of the bay; and as the freshening breeze met
them on their ascent to the upper land, they turned again to watch
the progress of a vessel that bore a freight so precious to them
both; and they observed, with no little anxiety, that she, at the
same moment began to pitch sharply and violently as she cut through
the increasing foam of the now unsheltered waters.