Chapter X

It were all one
That I should love a bright, particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me.
SHAKSPEARE.

But several years elapsed since they had met;
Some people thought the ship was lost.
BYRON.

About a week had elapsed since Churchill’s arrival at Morden Bay, an interval which he had not failed to improve, by availing himself upon all occasions, whenever Mrs. Darnell permitted, of Lucy’s company, as a guide to the many picturesque scenes with which she was so well acquainted; and, as the principal maternal objection was the interference this caused with domestic avocations, the evening was generally chosen as the hour left most free for these romantic rambles.

Lucy’s taste for the beauties of nature had till now lain dormant, for want of any one to sympathize in her admiration. Her aunt, to whose disposition it would have seemed congenial, never wandered far from home; and of all the various picturesque spots with which the neighbourhood abounded, those only had hitherto been interesting to Lucy which she could animate as the mental scenery of those parts of Shakspeare which, as read to her by her aunt, she most admired. But since she had attended Churchill in his sketching expeditions, she had discovered new beauties in every spot they had together visited. From admiring his power of recording effects and imitating objects, she had become anxious to emulate the same herself, and upon the two last occasions, _she_ likewise had attempted the powers of the pencil.

It was quite an afternoon for a painter, with broad effects of light and shadow. Churchill and Lucy had perched themselves on a small ledge of rock, just above the shore, commanding a well-wooded bank of the Black Glen, with some bold and jutting crags rising out of the surface of the waters beyond, when Lucy, after a time, first looking over her shoulder at her companion’s work, and then comparing it with her own, said:

“Oh, Mr. Churchill! I shall never be able to do it like you. I can’t make two trees, which really touch on the paper, seem so far apart, and I meant this like your’s for the sea, with a ship on the horizon, but it looks much more like a wall, with a weed growing on the top; and then my paper is just as big as your’s, but I never shall be able to get half so much into it.”

“Because, my pretty pupil,” said Churchill, examining it, “you have made that distant cliff higher than this old boat-house.”

“And so it is, a hundred times higher,” said Lucy in a justificatory tone; “and if you were there, you would soon see the difference.”

“But now we are not there, and we are here,” answered Churchill smiling; “and in this world, objects, like events, appear to us, not according to their intrinsic importance, but in proportion to our own situation, and the manner in which they affect ourselves. For instance, dwelling in this retired spot, and in our humble rank of life, events that might convulse the country, and affright the great ones of the land, would be less observed by us, than the blight which injured your father’s corn; and battles might be won and lost, which we should feel less than the attack of a single fox upon your poultry-yard.”

“It is a very stupid and confused attempt this of mine,” said Lucy, tearing it in two; “and yet, separately, this is like the boat-house, and that is like the rock,” holding up the divided parts of her drawing.

“Yes, and may you learn to combine the simplicity of an humble foreground with the softened outline of greatness in the distance!”

“That is a little like some of aunt Alice’s speeches, which I do not always understand,” said Lucy: “perhaps it is, that you have both mixed in that world of which I had only previously heard from her how anxious she had been to leave it.”

“This aunt, of whom you so often speak, is it because she is unhappy that she lives so retired?”

“She never complains.”

“And shall I never see her?”

“I never knew her see a stranger, but she asked me about you, when I told her that I should have come to her before, but that I had been to show you up the burn side: and she wanted to know why you were staying at our house; and when I said I could not exactly tell, she begged me to bring you to visit her some day.”

“And why not now?” said Churchill, whose curiosity was roused.

“It is rather late,” Lucy replied; “and mother’s particular about tea-time,” looking at a little watch which her companion once well knew.

“And where did you get that little French watch?” asked he.

“And is it French? then I dare say that’s the reason George couldn’t abide it, for he hates every thing French, as it is right he should, seeing he’s a sailor. It was given me by a strange gentleman who came to see the bay,--and George tiffed about it, and thought some harm would come of it. But I don’t see how it’s to be, for I’ve never seen the gentleman since, as it wasn’t like I should.”

“But what sort of gentleman was this?” asked Churchill.

“Why, from the little I can recollect of him, not so very unlike yourself, only that he had light curly hair, a more fresh florid cheek, and a more easy-like look, as it was natural, you know, he should; for I dare say he was a great gentleman, and had none of those cares about the coming day which mother says must always be felt by one with such an uncertain calling as yours; though, I’m sure, I think your drawings so pretty that, as long as there is money to throw away in the world, I should guess they would always be sure to fetch something.”

They had, in accordance with Lucy’s hint as to the time, concluded their sketching for that evening, and had begun to wind their way homewards, when Churchill, recurring to that part of their late conversation which had made the least pleasant impression on him, said,

“And this cousin George, to whose opinion, as to that watch, you seem to attach no little value, you have not seen much of him since?”

“He has not been at home again; that was the last evening he spent here, which is the reason, perhaps, that it made the more impression on me.”

“But you have heard continually of him, of course?”

“Not very often; when he left us, he was no very handy penman; he used to say that it took him less time to sail round the bay than to write its name, and that there was no such difficult navigation, as tacking through all the ins and outs of a capital B. But I hope he is improved in all that; though absent, he hasn’t thought any the less about us; in that, at least, he used to be apt enough.”

They had ascended the cliff by a different path from the one mentioned before, and were pursuing their way homewards through a shady lane, and had just reached as far in it as the point where, at right angles, a stile led to a footpath through a copse, known only to those acquainted with the country, as a short cut from the main road to Morden Bay. Upon coming in sight of this turn, they beheld two men in sailors’ dresses, who were threading the narrow path through the wood, at a brisk pace, the foremost of whom, looking up and seeing them, made a run at the stile, bounded over it, and almost at the same moment folded Lucy in his arms in an embrace, whose ardour was mixed a little with that alloy of roughness which is proverbially nautical.

The scream with which Lucy shrank from this unexpected salutation, though it partook more of the character of surprise than positive alarm, was sufficient to justify the ready interposition of Churchill, who, seizing the intruder by the collar of his jacket, pulled him with a sudden jerk away.

“Hands off, messmate!” said he in his turn, surprised, but good humouredly; “who the devil may you be? let’s see what colours you mean to hoist before you interpose between me and my pretty cousin here.”

“And is it indeed you, dear, dear Cousin George?” said Lucy, as she rushed again of her own accord into his arms, and kissed him affectionately; then drawing back abruptly and blushing deeply, she added, “But what a beard you have got, George, and how you’re grown and altered! I declare you’re quite a man now!”

“Such things will happen in four years, between sixteen and twenty, Lucy: you yourself are shot up wonderfully; why, you’d carry twice as much sail as formerly:--Lord love her sweet face!” he added, again kissing her now averted cheek: in shrinking from which second salute she met Churchill’s eye, and blushing more deeply, said in a confused manner,

“We were going home, you know, Mr. Churchill: you’d better come, George, and see father and mother.--This young man,” she added in a low tone, “is staying here a bit, painting the country, like those other two you remember once, George, some time before you left us.”

“Oh, that’s what he is, is it? To be sure, I remember the others well enough, and how you used to be sent out with one, and I with the other, and how I frightened my man one day, by stealing his own red paint, and smearing myself with it: I made believe to fall off a rock he was drawing; he took it for blood, and thought I lay there for dead. My friend here seemed to have had a mind to shed my blood in real earnest; however, as ye took me for a rude stranger, it was all right, and respectful like, interfering to protect a woman when she cried out; so here’s my hand, my man, and now just take my friend Captain Collett under your convoy, for you may guess I’ve many a thing to say to Lucy here, which won’t concern either of you two.”

Churchill, still bewildered at the unexpected turn which events seemed to have taken, looked round mechanically, to examine the stranger thus unceremoniously introduced to him. He was standing on the other side of the stile, leaning his elbows upon it. He had remained in this attitude during the whole of the preceding scene, an amused, though uninterested spectator of its incidents. He had chuckled aloud at the momentary scuffle between George and Churchill, but had not stirred a step to take part with either; and now as his eye met Lucy’s, just as she and George were about to move on, he assented to the arrangement proposed, by a familiar nod and grin, without, however, removing his elbows from the stile, or his hands from his chin. He was a short thick-set man, with that fresh, though not youthful appearance, which the eye generally registers at about five-and-forty, unless the parish annals give some more precise date as to age. The expression of his countenance was the reverse of serious; but a physiognomist would have said that the lines were rather the joint production of cunning and conviviality, than the impression of natural, quiet cheerfulness. His dress, like George’s, consisted of a sailor’s blue jacket and trowsers; but his waistcoat, which was ornamented with many little buttons and some lace, had rather a foreign appearance, and was not unlike those usually worn by couriers. He eyed Churchill curiously, as the latter looked first at him and then after Lucy, feeling not the less disgusted at the turn things had unexpectedly taken, that he did not know of what to complain, or why to resent it. Nothing could be more natural than that Lucy should be glad to welcome home her cousin, the favourite companion of her childhood; or, upon his sudden return, that she should neglect at the moment one, to whom she was bound by no ties; an itinerant painter--the acquaintance of a week.

Yet during that week, Churchill had thought he was every day making great progress in her regard; she had appeared to take a new sort of pleasure in his society,--had been delighted either to hear him talk, or see him draw; and even now, he thought, when her cousin had attempted a second time to kiss her, her eye had sought his, and upon meeting it she had blushed, and avoided the kindred embrace. Yet now, as they walked away, George’s arm was round her waist, and his profile looked offensively happy. “Come, Sir, if you please,” said Churchill, rather hastily to his new companion, thinking that the others had already got sufficiently far in advance.

“No hurry,” said Captain Collett, as George called him, getting even more deliberately over the stile than the square cut of his figure required; “we are only to keep within hail, you know. I’m sorry for you; it is but a poor exchange to have only Kit Collett for your consort, instead of yon gay pinnace. But it can’t be helped; you’re clean cut out, that I can see. A nice tight little prize too. Is it that you’ve been over slow in making her your own, or have you stayed long enough for her to get tired of you?”

“Come, Sir,” repeated Churchill again, loud and angrily, his attention having been a little taken off from the last speech by watching George and Lucy, who had now disappeared round a corner in the lane: “I desire you won’t talk to me in that manner. As that young lady seemed to wish me to show you the way to her father’s, I am ready to do it, provided you don’t take advantage of that circumstance to speak impertinently of her; if you do, I shall consider that you would be an improper guest, and take the liberty of leaving you behind.”

“Well, no offence, man; I meant none. Young lady! Lord, how grand all that is!” still speaking with a half suppressed chuckle; “however, move on, my friend; it’s all one to Kit Collett what he talks about, or indeed whether he talks at all, as long as he has one of these to stop his mouth,” taking a cigar out of a case and deliberately lighting it.

This being satisfactorily deposited in his mouth, and his two hands in the side pockets of his jacket, he, without attempting any farther conversation, rolled on, following Churchill as fast as he could, whose impatient strides soon brought them inconveniently near to the couple in advance. However much Churchill might have wished to join company with them, he did not feel authorized to do so, unless he had been more sure that such an intrusion would be welcome; and of this he could see no symptoms; for though once Lucy looked round, and, upon seeing him, appeared to wish to stop, and to require urging on by her companion, yet, except at that one moment, she seemed completely and satisfactorily occupied with her newly restored cousin, and Churchill felt therefore unwillingly obliged to slacken his pace, much to the relief of Kit Collett; and it was in two separate detachments that they arrived at home.