Chapter XI

He was a man as dusky as a Spaniard,
Sunburnt with travel, yet a portly figure;
Though colour’d, as it were, within a tanyard,
He was a person both of sense and vigour--
A better seaman never yet did man yard.
BYRON.

George’s unexpected arrival that night, produced in all the family that sort of intoxicating exhilaration of spirits, which, whenever the natural feelings are allowed to show themselves, is the effect of the restored presence of a long-lost inmate.

Even Mrs. Darnell suppressed, for the moment, her desire to complain of his protracted silence, and of the ignorance in which he had left them as to how he had spent his time since his engagement in his uncle’s ship had been out--which was now twelve months since.

As for the farmer, he was so delighted to see his favourite, that he hardly knew what he did, and went about shaking hands with everybody, and even asked the painter, with a cordial gripe, whether he wasn’t d----d happy: a question, the repetition of which Churchill contrived to evade, as it would have puzzled him to answer it heartily in the affirmative. Captain Collett, the farmer pronounced, after they had had two glasses together, to be a man after his own heart, and was rather disappointed when, in answer to his enquiry whether he had been George’s last Captain, George replied, “that he had sometime sailed with him, and added, that he was known to be the best seaman between the Thames and the Tweed.”

“And, as my voyages are not now very distant, George will have more opportunities of seeing his friends here, as he is about to engage with me.”

“I am not quite sure about that,” answered George gravely, and a cloud, for a moment, came over his brow, which was, however, as soon dispelled by the eager attentions of all around, by which he was overwhelmed. George was soon much excited by finding himself the great man of the party. Thus encouraged, he rattled away merrily, sometimes boisterously, stringing one story on another with much humour, not always confined within the narrow limits of fact, nor scrupulously restrained by the bounds of decorum; once or twice, even on this night of licence, he incurred the displeasure of his aunt, and raised a blush on the cheek of Lucy, who was seated at the supper board between him and Churchill.

During this time it would be difficult to analyze the conflicting feelings of Lucy. Certain it is, that she did not attempt to do so herself. If she had, she would have been aware that the sensations with which she had welcomed the return of George were of a warmer nature than would have sprung from the mere renewal of childish companionship; and in the course of their walk homewards, whilst listening to his passionate expressions of delight at his return, she had admired more than it was necessary for a mere cousin to do, the improvement the interval of absence had made in his fine manly figure; and during that time, if her thoughts wandered from the happiness of the present moment, it was to distant days, and not to recent scenes. But now, when an inadvertent coarseness in one of George’s expressions made her avert, a moment, her head, and she beheld the displeased but enduring character of Churchill’s countenance, and then, as her eye met his, she read in it, more plainly expressed than it had yet been, that feeling towards herself which woman cannot long mistake; and as she combined with that her recollections of his many gentle and delicate attentions to her in the course of their recent rambles, her wishes became rather confused and bewildered; but perhaps the predominant one was, that George should be rather different from what he was. She could not, at the same time, but be aware that Churchill had been much neglected during the evening; and it was as much regret at this, springing from that considerate good-nature which in her rank of life supplies with the interest of sincerity the place of good breeding, which made her say to him in a tone and with an expression which amply compensated for the previous neglect which it acknowledged:

“I am afraid all this must have been very tiresome to you.”

As the breaking up of the supper-party at that moment prevented other answer, he took advantage of that circumstance to reply to her by a gentle squeeze of the hand.

Immediately after supper was finished, Captain Collett signified his intention to depart, resisting the entreaties with which he was pressed to share with his friend George the best spare room, from which, for their reception, the hams, &c. had just been unceremoniously rejected, as it was not thought hospitable to disturb the stranger, and his drawings and portfolios, from the room formerly George’s, which he at present occupied.

“But, Captain,” said the farmer, “it’s a double-bedded room, and you’d better bide to-night with your friend George, for the night’s dark and murky, and if it had been as light as day, one’s way is never somehow so canny to find after supper as afore.”

“Thank’ee the same, but I can’t stay,” replied the Captain. “As for the night, I’m rather partial to dark nights; a’n’t I, George?” chuckling: “and as for supper, if it’s along of the grog you mean, Kit Collett would drink as much again, and walk as steady as on the quarter-deck in a calm.”

“But it’s rather an awkwardish road to the Lobster near Placeden Point, for a stranger, if that’s where you’re going.”

“Stranger! why nothing comes strange to me, that’s within three miles of the coast from Beechy Head to Berwick Ness.”

“But,” said Mrs. Darnell, “you know it must depend on the time of the tide whether you can cross Newland Creek.”

“It’s just now half-ebb, and by the time I’m down there, there won’t be half-fathom water within a quarter of a league of the shore of Newland Creek, and be hang’d to it.”

“That friend of your’s is a man that knows his business well, I should say, George,” said Farmer Darnell, as he bolted the door after him.

“Good reason he should,” answered George rather gravely.