Chapter XVIII

Your sorrow was too sore laid on,
Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,
So many summers dry. Scarce any joy
Did ever live so long; no sorrow
But killed itself much sooner.
SHAKSPEARE.

Is passion to be learned then? wouldst thou make
A science of affection? guide the heart,
And lead it where to fix?

Such was the sad tale of her own blighted hopes which Alice Darnell forced herself to reveal to her beloved niece, with the fond hope that so striking a proof of the danger of unguardedly pledging the affections, where evident incongruity of station was combined with mystery and apparent concealment, might operate as a check upon that growing partiality for Churchill, which she dreaded had already taken root in Lucy’s heart. With this view, when the next morning she had in a great degree recovered her usual composure, she dwelt more on how much she had herself suffered from her imprudence, in having admitted a stranger, and one obviously her superior, into an intimacy, without due caution in previously ascertaining what his actual situation was. Had she but been timely informed of Colonel Somers’ marriage, how much would have been spared them both, and how dearly had he paid for his tacit deceit on this subject.

She farther proceeded to affirm her own conviction that Churchill was not exactly what he pretended to be: in this opinion she owned that she might be rather biassed by the extraordinary resemblance, though more in air and expression than in form and features, which he bore to one, the recollection of whom she had never ceased to cherish since his untimely loss. But though this coincidence might rather influence her judgment, yet, independent of this, she had had opportunities, in the best society at Mrs. Nesbit’s, just at that age when outward impressions are more strongly distinguished, of exercising her talents as a close observer of manners; and the peculiar tact which she had on this subject, had very much contributed to make her efforts in comedy rival her success in tragedy, during her short theatrical career. It has, too, been remarked throughout, that Castleton was by no means a skilful actor of the part he had assumed; and to a person of Alice Darnell’s discrimination, the evident constraint with which one of his rank in life assumed the manners of an inferior station, though distinct in its nature, was not less remarkable, than the awkward assumption of refinement by a vulgar person. The obvious embarrassment, too, with which he avoided her searching observation, could only be explained by there existing some reason for concealment.

But the penetration with which Alice Darnell had discovered her niece’s danger, was more conspicuous than the judgment of the course which she took to avoid it. For though Alice Darnell had been a faithful and interesting representative of the outward aspect of human passion, as described by others; though in her own person she had internally felt as strongly as any one its devastating power; she had, perhaps, for that very reason, never examined closely or coolly the various causes to which it sometimes owes its origin, or traced to their sources the crooked channels through which, in its earlier stages, flow some of those springs which all combine in the end to give irresistible power to its headlong course.

True, even in this age of mixed and mitigated feelings, there does sometimes rise, pure and powerful at its fountain-head, the sympathetic impulse of “love at first sight;” but for one instance of this kind, how many may be found where that passion, instead of ripening regularly from original sympathy, has been unaccountably grafted on habitual indifference; and of this might be cited instances, even amongst those who, once under its influence, have given most decided proofs of its power, in braving disgrace and ruin. It seems sometimes as if the heart only then acquired a predisposition to infection, when every human motive of action, prudent as well as virtuous, had combined against it. Lovely girls have been known to bloom unnoticed in the same society with him who, when they have become the wife of another, has urged elopement with all the energy of passion; this, be it observed, not from any selfish distinction of the different requisites of a wife and a mistress,--for grant he succeeds in his suit, and, by every tie of honour, his wife she must become, not as she might formerly have assumed that character, richly endowed in good name and wealth,--the ornament of society,--but dragging him forth an outcast, impoverished by the very price at which he is forced to purchase her blighted fame. How, then, shall we account for such early misplaced indifference, and subsequent ill-timed susceptibility, but upon the endless and unaccountable perversity of the human passions?

But though Alice Darnell need not have been expected to enter into these abstract reflections, yet she made two mistakes, which might have been obvious even to her, in the influence she expected to produce upon her niece.

In the first place, no one in love is ever diverted from their course by the recital of the sufferings of others, under similar circumstances, if these sufferings, however great, are invested with interest. She had also, by what she had said, inadvertently disposed her niece’s feelings much more favourably towards Churchill, for she had flattered her vanity; and the breast which beats under the modest tucker of the country maiden, is not less accessible to the influence of vanity, than is that which openly swells with the pride of conquest in sight of the crowded ball-room.

In all her intercourse with Churchill, there had been something which she could not understand; she was never quite at her ease, and this had produced a consciousness of constraint, which had left a feeling of humiliating inferiority, not improving her favourable opinion of her companion. But now she had been given some intelligible ground on which to place that superiority on his part, which she had felt without acknowledging, and, at the same time, she was taught to suppose that he was willing to forego all that very superiority for her sake. This placed him in a light much more dangerous to her peace of mind, than that in which she had been accustomed to consider him. If, therefore, his influence over her was still far from being certain or confirmed, her defence rested on quite different grounds from those on which her aunt had been inclined to place reliance; and her best protection arose from the nature of her early attachment to her cousin George.

Many circumstances had combined to keep her inexperienced mind in doubt as to her feelings towards him during all their early intercourse, the constant intimacy of childhood had swallowed up the first symptoms of courtship; to this had succeeded protracted absence, and apparent neglect on his part. He had at length returned, as we have seen, with undiminished affection; but many things had conspired to prevent its appearing in his manner to her, not the least of which was the evidence of those assiduous attentions in another, which, whenever preference is sought in the “checkered shade,” or in the “gala glare,” never fail in producing some effect, and mostly succeed in attaining their object.

The fact was, therefore, that at this moment Lucy was herself, if not in a delusion, at least, in doubt, as to how much she cared about her “cousin George.”

She, however, listened most attentively to all her aunt’s cautions as to the danger of encouraging her other admirer, and bowed assent to her parting advice.

“I do not wish you abruptly to show distrust; but above all, avoid as much as possible being alone with him.”

To this tacit promise Lucy meant to adhere, but the state of things she that day found upon her return home did not favour her immediately acting up to her intention. George had left home early in the morning, as he said, upon business, professing an intention not to return in the course of the day--perhaps not even at night. Her father and mother had just revived some well-contested point in dispute, which, from long experience, she knew would, like some of the fights of the middle ages, be conducted without loss of blood, and only end in a drawn battle at close of day. This did not render the prospect of remaining at home during the afternoon very inviting, and therefore she could not resist Churchill’s gentle suggestion, that she should accompany him to the cliff, on a sketching expedition. She again put on her bonnet, announcing to the parental combatants, during one of those pauses in the fight which Mrs. Darnell never allowed to be of long continuance, “That her object was to see whether her aunt, whose illness had been the cause of her absence the night before, was better that evening.”