Chapter XIV

The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so gross as beetles.
SHAKSPEARE.

For many fathoms doth the beetling rock
Rise o’er the breaker’s surge.
MATURIN.

Churchill found that George and his aunt had already returned some time, as the young sailor’s anxiety to rejoin his fair cousin had induced him to apply repeated hints, as to the rate of progress, upon the fat quarters of the cumbrous quadruped before him, which were the more readily attended to, as that experienced beast knew that his head was now turned homewards.

The announcement with which Churchill was charged of Lucy’s absence, made him very ill received by all the party. Farmer Darnell always missed his daughter’s affectionate attentions most when labouring under a fit of lumbago; Mrs. Darnell liked particularly to be assisted in the arrangement of the Sunday’s repast by some one more handy than big Betsey, as George always called the Patagonian maid-of-all-work. And as for George himself, he had been thinking all the way home how very agreeable he was going to make himself, and how he meant to show off and amuse his cousin after her dull walk with that prig of a painter. He therefore looked upon this interloper, when he appeared alone, as a bird of ill omen to him, and he began to owe him a grudge for this second separation, though it was not like the first one, by which the object of his increasing antipathy had himself profited.

With such a state of feeling shared amongst the party assembled, the substantial meal of which they were about to partake was not likely to be a very lively one, and contrasted singularly with the heartfelt merriment of the supper of the night before. Indeed, as the majority of those assembled were not of a rank in life who make conversation for civility sake, but who, strange as it may appear, literally say nothing when they have nothing to say, not a word would have been spoken, had not habit rendered this inveterate silence so irksome to Lord Castleton, that he could not help hazarding a trite observation or two on the weather, which, if dropped elsewhere, would have been taken up, and handed back, and led to reply and rejoinder, but which were here considered such undeniable truisms, that they were only received with an unencouraging “humph,” and all again relapsed into silence, broken only by the clattering of the knives on the plates; and even this was muffled, when, instead of tearing asunder slices of beef, they dived in smoother intersections through thick portions of plum-pudding.

After dinner the society, if such it could be called, seemed mutually anxious to separate,--Farmer Darnell to his easy-chair and pipe, Mrs. Darnell to her household avocations; and as to George and Churchill, though they probably had the same object and destination in view, one went out at the back-door merely because the other went out at the front.

Churchill bent his way towards the part of the cliff by which he knew Lucy must return, with no other pretence for lingering there till her appearance, than that furnished by his small pocket sketch-book; having got into a great scrape with Mrs. Darnell, on that day week, by sallying forth, portfolio in hand, as he was considered so completely as a professional person, that it was reckoned a profanation of the Lord’s day for him thus to labour in his vocation on it. The ledge upon the side of the cliff, from which he could best command the prospect of Lucy’s return, was, however, too much of a bird’s-eye point of view to be advantageous to a draftsman: this circumstance, joined to the imperfect implements with which he was upon this occasion provided, induced him soon to relinquish even the attempt to exercise his assumed “metier,” and abandon himself to those reflections which the singularity of the situation in which he had placed himself, and the events of the last four-and-twenty hours, had rendered more than ever striking.

Though sitting with his book open before him, and his pencil in his hand, so completely had the inward bent of his thoughts shut out the consciousness of any external objects, that he felt startled when he heard a voice some paces above him, exclaim, “There she is at last.” Instinctively, his eyes followed the path by which Lucy must return; the more natural was this direction, as he recognised the voice above to be George’s. But he could discern no moving object in the whole length of the track. Another voice from above, which reminded him of the harsh tones of Captain Collett, now rejoined,

“Yes; there, that’ll do; I see you, that’s near enough to show her to us; now, about with her, you lubbers, there she goes, that’s right.”

Churchill’s eye dropping from the path on which it had been fixed, to find out what else these remarks could apply to, he now observed, for the first time, what under other circumstances would have struck him merely from its picturesque appearance. Unnoticed by him, a lugger had neared the point of the cliff, the sun shining gaily on its light sails, and sparkling in the foam which was dashed back from its side as it was pressed close up against the wind. Now, however, even whilst these words were spoken from above, confirming him in the idea that it was to this vessel the allusion was made, she was on the sudden put about, more sails were set, and with a fresh breeze from the land, she dashed rapidly out into the open sea.

The projecting ledge of rock, which formed rather an awful sort of canopy to the niche within which Churchill was sitting, effectually prevented his being seen by those who might be leaning against the stone-wall at the top of the cliff; as he rightly conjectured the two persons whose observations he had just heard now were. Provided with so unsuspicious an excuse as his sketch-book for continuing where he was, he determined to take his chance for overhearing some more communications which (he hardly knew why) powerfully excited his curiosity.

But though only separated by a few paces from those who spoke, in spite of straining his attention, which the more he listened the more he felt inclined to do, he could but very imperfectly catch the purport of what was said; sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, a louder and a longer wave would break, roaring on the shingle beneath; sometimes a screaming seabird would hover round his head, as if on purpose to baulk him.

“Well, Darnell, my lad,” said Captain Collett, “so all’s right. Jack Dawkins has not mistaken the land-marks. And you were not more glad to see again your friends of last night, not even the tight little Lucy, than I am to see heave in sight my first of favourites, ‘_La Pie voleuse_.’”

“And I should see her with much more pleasure if she were not so near my friends of last night. She’s not the right sort of company for them; and between ourselves, Captain, now it’s come to the point, I dread their becoming better acquainted with each other.”

“And since when has the wind set in that quarter, lad? Didn’t you, yourself, remind me, who know the whole line of coast, what a snug place to land----”

Here the screaming of the sea-gulls above Churchill’s head, and the roar of the breakers beneath his feet, combined to prevent his catching the remainder of Collett’s answer; and when these noises were again comparatively calmed, he heard George protesting--“Nay, never say I’m ungrateful, or that I can forget the ugly scrape you helped me out of this time three years; or that I repent the merry period of adventure we passed together the last months of the war in our privateering cruises; but that was other-guess work, when, if one did chance to get knocked of the head, no one knew or cared whether the venture we were engaged in chimed in with the exact letter of the law. Who thought of George Darnell then? and whether he was washed overboard with a bullet in his body or without, no one would grieve about his death more or less for the manner of it. But somehow, coming back here amongst kith and kin, and finding them all the same, I can’t help wishing I was so myself.”

“Oh, certainly!” rejoined Captain Collett with a sneer, “they must seem all the same to you: above all, Lucy; she has thought of no one else since you first left home, and she’s only had that painter chap here on purpose to meet you, that he may paint her your picture against your next cruise. He was a studying her face pretty closely, you’ll be glad to hear, when I met them going to church this morning.”

Churchill could only hear, in reply to this, the immortal part of himself condemned to everlasting perdition in the emphatic monosyllable usually applied to such a purpose. Whether the very vehemence with which this was uttered warned the speaker himself afterwards to drop his voice, or the surrounding noises again conspired to drown it, but it was some time before the listener could again make out what was said; when he did, George was saying, apparently in answer to some remonstrance of the other, “Never fear, you have my word, and you shall find me as faithful here as if I was still on the smooth white sands of Cherbourg or the shingles of Sussex; all I meant was, that when this morning I paced along the churchyard amongst the tombstones, that told of those who had borne the name of Darnell in peace and good-will to all around them, and now seemed to meet my eye on all sides as if to remind me of that with honest pride, I felt----But what signifies explaining to you feelings which are not at all in your line; they may be between me and my rest, but they shall not come between my word and you.”

The conference seemed here to be interrupted, for George halloed out suddenly in a louder voice, “Avast, Mary! whither away so fast?”

“To Bankside, to say that mistress is but poorly, and Miss Lucy will stay with her aunt to-night.”

“All goes contrary,” muttered George in reply.

“Well, Mary, say you spoke me by the way, and I bore the message for you;” and George and his companion upon this prepared to return homewards.

Churchill remained a few minutes behind, absorbed in reflections upon what he had so imperfectly collected. It appeared, though he could not exactly make out in what enterprise they were at present engaged, that Captain Collett was a very dangerous companion for his young friend, and that he had, perhaps, already involved him in some scrape which would effect his future respectability in life. There was nothing which he could distinctly gather in the shape of an accusation from the conversation he had just heard; but he determined to be upon the watch, and, should any thing further happen to confirm his suspicions, to communicate them to Farmer Darnell, and in the mean time to watch the next apparition on the coast of the “Pie Voleuse,” which he now saw, after having run about a mile before the wind straight out from the land, was standing to the southward: he felt, at the same time, much disappointed at the protracted absence of Lucy; and, anticipating nothing but discomfort in the present state of the Darnell family, returned to Bankside Farm.