Chapter XIX

My Anah! let me call thee mine,
Albeit thou art not: ’tis a word I cannot
Part with; although I must from thee.
BYRON.

We’ll so bestow ourselves, that near, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge.
SHAKSPEARE.

’Tis true they are a lawless brood,
But rough in form, nor mild in mood;
And every creed, and every race,
With them hath found--may find a place.
BYRON.

Churchill and Lucy sat side by side on a projecting ledge which she pointed out to him on the face of the precipitous cliff; this position, for an admirer of the picturesque, was much better chosen than that which he had himself accidentally selected the night before, and of which, as a painter, he had so little availed himself. The intersections of the craggy cliffs, which rose one behind another, as they looked along the line of coast, were here bolder and more broken and varied. From the height of the point whereon they sat, all below was blended in that deep, purplish, hazy hue, which, in a painter’s eye, gave to indistinctness a charm. The sea-birds, Churchill’s unwelcome intruders of the evening before, now skimmed in silence the mid air far beneath them, the undulating motion of their white wings being the only sign of animation around. Not a sail was seen in the wide surface of the distant expanse: and along the deeply sheltered sides of the little bay beneath, the waters lay dead, and dark, and still. The next promontory of the succession of crags before them, less precipitous and lofty than that on which they were placed, had scattered over its face huge clumps of thriving brushwood, just then touched with the first mellow tint of autumn; whilst the heather, which grew in patches wherever the light soil clung to the interstices of the cliffs, contrasting its rich dark blue colour with the lighter grey of the broken rocks, gave sharpness to the fantastic shapes in which these were dispersed about. In the middle distance, looking rather inland, could be traced the valley down which ran the course of the little mountain stream, by whose side Castleton had first wound his way to Morden Bay. And this path he followed once again in his mind’s eye, and he recollected his then follies, and he thought of all his checkered life, his successive feelings--of his hopes--of his frivolous pursuits--which had all produced heart-burnings and disappointments since that evening when he had first beheld the lovely being who now sat beside him in matured beauty and still unsullied purity and innocence; and as he again looked on her with a long impassioned gaze, their eyes met, and she thought that it must have been thus Somers looked on Alice Darnell. More fondly she felt he could not look, and this feeling gave a sensibility to her own expression, which her lover had hitherto sought in vain; and they sat long while they fancied they were drawing. Though they did little the while, and said less, it seemed, for the first time, as if they understood each other, and all Churchill’s gestures were those of impassioned tenderness, and it was so that Lucy felt them; and it is certain, that at that moment she thought of no one else; and her glances, though timid and stolen at intervals, vied with his in tenderness, and had he then pleaded, a negative could hardly have found its way to her lips through the inward agitation of her frame.

But there had been throughout his whole scheme too much plan and method in Churchill’s romance, and now the moment had come which might fix his fate, and make her his wife--for it was with such an intention that he wooed her--incongruous doubts rose in his mind,--he hesitated,--he would not for the world have abandoned his object, yet he almost wished to delay the irrevocable step; but it was not without an effort that he could force himself to do so, for his feelings were much excited, and more than once the conclusive words trembled on his tongue, but he checked himself, and blurted forth an indifferent observation in an altered tone.

The effect of this was instantaneous: there is no female breast, however untutored and inexperienced, which does not feel, in its inmost recesses, the reaction caused by an opportunity slighted of profiting by its tenderness. In a moment, Lucy became aware that the evening shadows had redoubled their length; that the sun was on the point of setting; that it was already late for her to proceed to her aunt’s: rising for this purpose, Churchill eagerly offered to accompany her, but this she firmly opposed, naturally from not wishing to show that she had braved her aunt’s caution, the prudence of which the experience of her late sensations had confirmed.

She declined, therefore, his offer of help, even down the first winding track, where, indeed, from its narrowness, assistance would have been impracticable. This track led from the spot where they now were into the broader path, which conducted along a lower ledge round the point towards her aunt’s; and she proceeded to descend it with the secure and elastic step which is the combined result of habit and natural activity. Churchill watched her with an anxious eye through the first part of her progress, and afterwards with an admiring one, as her fine form gradually receded, whilst she pursued her way with an unconscious grace in every motion, which would have done honour to many in a more elevated rank in society. But the fact is, the drawing-room school, though it may improve, no more creates grace, than the _manège_ does the most admired paces of the horse.

Churchill watched her round the point, and knowing that she would again become visible in passing the next, which jutted farther into the sea, he stood there awaiting the moment in a state of mind in which were blended dissatisfaction with himself, with increased admiration of her. Whilst absorbed in these mingled reflections, he was startled by a large stone, which, detached from the cliff above, rolled close beside him, and striking the portfolio, in which he had been just loosely depositing the different half-finished productions of Lucy and himself, scattered them about; and the evening breeze, just then risen, catching them up as it swept by, they “soared, ducked, and dived in air,” and were soon carried far out of reach of recovery. Churchill, looking up to see what accident had caused this, beheld George at the distance of a few yards, standing between the edge of the cliff and the wall at its summit, against which he leaned, whilst one foot, which without doubt had been the means of propelling the stone, was still thrust forward. He had a broad grin on his face, and was evidently enjoying the mischief he had caused.

There was nobody in the world from whom Churchill could at that moment so ill have borne a joke, if indeed it really was a joke. Without a moment’s reflection he sprang upwards, and finding himself beside his unprovoked aggressor, whom he still found forcing a laugh, though evidently only to suppress some less pleasant feeling to himself which lurked beneath, said,--

“I don’t ask you whether you did that, but why?”

“I wanted to put up that brood of cormorants that roost below yonder, and cared not what other birds of ill omen I frightened by the way. As for your trash, I’ll buy you better, printed and painted too, at any pedlar’s stall for a penny apiece.”

“You mischievous imp of a cabin boy,” retorted Churchill enraged, and lifting at the same time a small slight cane which, from habit, he always carried, even on these inappropriate excursions, “you ought to be turned over to your own boatswain for chastisement; it would be too much honour to touch you with this.”

It is probable that Churchill did not intend really to assault his antagonist, but as he had raised his cane as if with that view, George, whose passions were just as much raised, and whose experience had not taught him to consider such threats as figurative, grasped firmly the bludgeon with which he was described on the eve of his first departure from home, and which, in all his vicissitudes, had never been farther from him than where it was still within reach of his cot. He gave it one masterly flourish over his own head, and then allowed it to descend with its full swing upon that of Churchill, who fell senseless at his feet.

Lucy in the mean time had reached the farther projecting point, from which this foremost part of the cliff was again visible, just at the moment when the stone which had struck the portfolio, had scattered Churchill’s drawings to the winds; and this she had witnessed, for upon arriving at that point she had paused a moment, and cast “one lingering look behind,” to the spot where she had left her late companion, scarcely conscious herself that that action was prompted by feelings for him at the time, which, could George have interpreted, would have given additional force to that jealousy, of which he had just shown such a violent symptom. She had been unable at first to account for the cause of the loss of the drawings, but though the distance was great, and the light becoming more uncertain, she too well knew the figures of both of the combatants not to see only too plainly the progress of the scuffle above; and observing the violent action of George’s powerful arm followed by the dead stiff fall of him whom he struck, she was riveted to the spot with dumb horror at the idea that the tender companion whom she had but just left, who had so lately all but spoken the assurance that he lived only for her, had been even at that moment murdered by her earliest friend; whilst her conscience whispered that she herself had been the unhappy subject of dispute.

Whilst still deprived by the horrific sight of any power to move, she beheld three or four other men approach the scene of the late conflict, and her first impression was, that they were both ministers of the law and witnesses of the deed, and that George, arrested by their authority, and condemned upon their evidence, would pay the penalty of that act to which perhaps he had been driven by her cruel caprice; and she thought of their early inseparable years, and their former parting, and how different that was from the dreadful final one which such a state of things would too surely bring, and she pressed her hand against her eyes in mute despair;--but when again she looked, it was obvious that the men approached George with no hostile intent, but on the contrary, that, evidently acting under his direction, they had raised the body of Churchill from the ground--and George’s hand pointed downwards over the edge of the cliff, and the men bore their burthen towards the brink of the precipice, and she, shuddering, thought that in another moment she should behold the mangled limbs dashing from rock to rock, as they fell; and the dreadful idea rousing her from her previous stupor, she gave one piercing shriek, but was answered only by the startled wild fowl screaming discordantly as they whirled round her head. But in one minute more her immediate fears as to the intentions of those who bore the body, were relieved, when she saw them take a steep and winding path which descended the side of the cliff to the shore.

She then guessed that they were conveying their burthen to a well-known cave, close to which the path conducted, and which she remembered from its having been the point of some of her early rambles with George. A moment she hesitated, from dislike to trust herself amongst such apparently lawless men; but depending upon George not being so changed but that he would be both willing and able to give her protection, she determined to try her influence over him, with a faint hope that Churchill might not actually be dead, and that she might still be the means of preventing further danger to him.

By the faint indistinct glimmering of twilight which yet remained, as she descended the cliff and approached the small bay into which the cave opened, she could perceive a large boat which had been run ashore, whilst on the shingles beside it were scattered several barrels or kegs, and a little farther out at sea, yet sheltered by an abrupt projecting cliff from the more inhabited line of coast, a small vessel lay moored, and several figures appeared engaged in conveying the kegs from the open shore into the concealment of the cave. The wild air of these men, as far as the increasing darkness allowed her to distinguish them, and the rough blasphemous oaths of which almost their whole communication seemed to consist, as far as the suppressed tone in which they spoke allowed her to make out what they said, both conspired to make her shrink from advancing nearer, or presenting herself to their notice; but being detected even where she stood aloof and trembling, by the quick and restless eyes of one of the party, ever on the look-out against surprisal, and being rudely dragged forward, she was almost at the same time recognised and rescued by George, who, upon hearing a noise, came forward from the interior of the cave, accompanied by Captain Collett, whose command to unhand her, backing the more manual interference of George, the men muttering oaths, and, to her, unintelligible ribaldry, returned to their labours, and she found herself at the mouth of the cave with George and his Captain.