Chapter XV

Out of thy long experienced time
Give me some counsel.
SHAKSPEARE.

A faint, but faithful, portraiture of one
Most dearly loved, and now for ever lost.

The agitation of Alice Darnell, which had struck Churchill as remarkable, was not seen without surprise by her niece, who had never previously, in all their intercourse, observed any break in her usually composed demeanour, or a ruffle in her equable manners. She said no more in the course of their hurried return to her cottage, but occasionally pressed affectionately Lucy’s arm, on which she leaned, and gazed earnestly in her face with an expression of anxious tenderness.

Upon reaching home, she drew her niece into her snug little neatly-furnished parlour, and throwing herself upon the sofa, covered her face for some minutes with her hands, seeming not to hear Lucy’s repeated requests to know what she could do to comfort her. At last, raising herself, as if with an effort, and looking up in Lucy’s face with a countenance strongly marked with the expression of inward suffering, she asked abruptly--“And you say his name is Churchill?” Her niece answering in the affirmative, she continued--“But what can the name tell, which may easily be an assumed one? It is not that the features, or even the countenance, are the same; but there is something in the air and manner which too strongly recall---- And oh, above every thing, the expression of those eyes, when he looked tenderly on her--I had hoped that I had forgotten that of which they renew the recollection with the freshness of yesterday. In the last few minutes I have lived over again months of suffering, which I had hoped, in vain, subsequent years of repose and resignation had almost effaced from my too vivid recollection. It is but one effort more, and for your sake I will make the attempt. Those events, which, by constantly refusing to dwell upon, I had hoped the obliterating hand of time was gradually glossing over, I now find as distinctly scarred as ever in the deeply-cut tablets of my memory. It will but cost me one more pang, that they should assume the tangible shape of words, and operate as a warning to my beloved niece, in the danger which I think at present threatens her. Lucy, Churchill loves you, and you must cease to love him.’”

The poor girl, whose youth, innocence, and ignorance of the world would have prevented her being able to define the nature of her own feelings towards Churchill, had that habitual deference for her aunt’s judgment, that she would never have supposed that she could be mistaken in any opinion so oracularly delivered, and, therefore, never thought of disputing what she seemed to take for granted, that she had already begun to love Churchill; though she could not account why, if this was the case, the idea of George should rise at the same moment in her mind. She made no reply, but seating herself at her aunt’s feet, and hiding her face on her knees, waited some explanation of the last sentence.

“I feel assured,” continued Alice Darnell, “as of my own existence, that he is elevated far above your rank in life; and trust me, I speak from my own experience, when I say there are no sufferings at all to compare with those which arise from unequal attachments. Whether the resemblance which so strongly struck my imagination is other than a strange coincidence, I have no means of judging; but that Churchill is other than that which he here passes himself to be, I feel I cannot be mistaken.--Lucy, it is necessary that, in what I am about to say, I should speak to you much of myself; that I should disclose many parts of my early life, which have been hitherto concealed, not only from you, but from those of your relations nearer my own age, with whom you have been living. My brother is only partially informed of much of what I am going, without reserve, to lay before you. Much I shall have to speak of feelings which neither his habits nor his disposition would have enabled him to understand. The principal facts I felt it my duty to confide to him, and it was at his desire that no mention whatever was made of them to your mother; for though blame might not be attachable to me, there were circumstances which, he said, her peculiar mode of thinking might make subject of reproach. If now I speak more openly to you than I have ever done to any one, it is because, in spite of that complete ignorance of the world, which your position has implanted, I have always observed in you a fund of natural good sense, which will induce you to make the right use of that practical warning which I am urged to try as an experiment, from the similarity, in many respects, of the position in which you at present are, to that whence I derived every misery except disgrace.

“Your father and I were early left orphans. George’s father had already been some time at sea when our parents died, therefore the loss to him was not so great as to myself and my elder brother. An old bachelor, relative of ours, undertook the management of the farm, and the instruction of your father in the art by which he was to live. It was more difficult to decide what was to become of me. But it was at length determined nominally, upon the authority of our guardian, but in reality by the advice of the gossips in the neighbourhood, and my own wish, that I should be placed at what was called a finishing-establishment for young ladies, at a small sea-bathing place thirty miles from hence. I had not, however, long been there, before, at one of the exhibitions for which this school was celebrated, I attracted the attention of an excellent and talented, but eccentric elderly lady of the name of Nesbit, who happened to be staying at ---- for the season. Mrs. Nesbit had long been left a widow with a large fortune, the greater part of which she spent in the encouragement of the fine arts. In most of these, in her younger days, she had herself been no indifferent proficient; but latterly, her increasing infirmities had confined the exercise of her taste to admiration of the skill of others. Frequent attacks of gout in the hand had prevented her continuing her pencil, of the previous success of which her boudoir still showed some favourable specimens; and the same cause deprived the world of many records of her playful imagination, in which she had formerly indulged, when still able to write as quickly as she could think. Perhaps, of all the trials to which the progress of physical infirmities subject us, there is none so melancholy as when they produce the forced inaction of previously well exercised faculties.

“Yet, though my acquaintance with Mrs. Nesbit only commenced after she was already suffering in a cruel degree from manifold privations of this nature, I never saw her temper the least ruffled by any feeling of envy at the happier state of others; her kind disposition, and her still fresh feelings, enabled her to derive unalloyed pleasure from the success of others. When in London, her house was always full of those who had most recently exerted themselves in any line with distinction; and even when I have known her to have been suffering acute bodily pain, I have seen her benevolent countenance light up, as if the triumph was her own, when any new aspirant for fame has been brought to one of her choice little evening reunions, to hear from her own lips the acknowledgment of the pleasure she had derived from his successful efforts. At the period when I first became an inmate in her house, she had just acquired the afflicting consciousness that she could not, without risking the total loss of eyesight, indulge as formerly in reading for any time together to herself. This was, to a person of her tastes, the most cruel privation with which she had as yet been threatened, and one which it required all her resignation to bear with equanimity.

“It was to alleviate her loss in this respect, that having been pleased with something she observed in my voice and elocution at one of our school exhibitions, she easily persuaded me to accompany her to London as a companion, whose principal duty was to be reading aloud to my benefactress,--most sincerely may I so style her. For though I know that generally there is no fate more deplored than that of a dependant companion, yet, whilst I was in that much stigmatized situation, I experienced nothing but kindness, and I derived nothing but pleasure from the occupation which it entailed on me.

“Our readings generally consisted of the best works of the day, and when not satisfactorily supplied with those, selections from the first poets and dramatists. Mrs. Nesbit was an enthusiast about many of these, but Shakspeare was her idol; and it was in my endeavours to please her, by showing that I really felt the beauties which I was the medium of conveying, that I first cultivated that taste for elocution, which, as you will see, I afterwards exercised in a wider field. The first feelings of gratified vanity I had upon the subject, was when Mrs. Nesbit would half raise herself upon her sofa, and after gazing at me intently for some time, interrupt me with,

“‘My dear Alice, what an actress you would make!’

“Amongst the many distinguished persons of every profession who used then to frequent my friend’s select circle, was often to be found that great actor, whose name you have often heard me mention with enthusiasm, when we have been reading together either Hamlet or Macbeth;--I mean the head of that family who have for nearly half a century upheld the character of the stage, as much by their virtues, as they have supported its attraction by their talents. He was, indeed, a noble creature; perhaps only too exalted and abstracted in his view of human nature for the matter-of-fact age in which he finished his career. But the revival of recollections of that time is leading me from the point on which I wish to speak, even had I no other and graver object in what I am saying. It is not with you, who never beheld him, that I should vindicate my opinion of the professional pre-eminence of the person in question. I only alluded to him, because my partial benefactress often led this great artist to participate, apparently with warmth and sincerity, in her favourable opinion of my uninstructed attempts at recitation; and as enthusiasm, real or assumed, was not his characteristic, this testimony gave us both the greater pleasure.

“In the midst of all this, and whilst my friend was getting every day more attached to me, I was unexpectedly deprived of her invaluable protection, by a sudden attack of gout in the stomach, which proved fatal to her in the nighttime, and before assistance could be procured.

“One moment I must pause upon the awakened recollections of my earliest friend and benefactress, whose awfully sudden end exercised so great an influence on my future fate, and I will then proceed.”