Chapter III

One of those forms which flit by us when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And oh the loveliness at times we see
In momentary gliding!
BYRON.

---- My love to Hermia
Melted as doth the snow; seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon.
SHAKSPEARE.

“I think this would be a good place to pick a bit,” gasped Sir North, as he came up with Castleton and Lady Madelina, puffing in such a manner, as showed that his fat sides felt the difference between the smooth flags of Downing Street and the shingles of the sea beach. “I advise no one,” he added, turning to the rest of the party, “to spare the cold meat, for we have not the least chance of being back for dinner. I told you last night, Lady Madelina, if we did not breakfast before twelve, we could not do it; and Mr. Turner says, that the lane where the carriages are to meet us, at the top of the cliff, is fourteen miles from home. “Here, my lad,” said he, to the seafaring youth, “run and call those servants with the baskets, and your sister can get us some water from the brook.”

“She is not my sister,” said the lad, without stirring a step.

“Not his sister!” exclaimed Lady Madelina; “then upon my word, my pretty girl, you begin in time; and, I declare, we interrupted a flirtation.”

“But I am his cousin,” eagerly added the girl, as if instinctively claiming the relationship, as a justification of what she could not have known. For flirtation, that sickly creation of crowded idleness, was equally unknown in name and in nature, on the silent and solitary shores of Morden Bay.

The rest of the party having now come up, the servants also arrived with the provisions, though the lad had disregarded Sir North’s authoritative address to him to summon them. The guests, hardly casting a glance around, certainly not wasting an inquiry about the beautiful scene, where they found themselves, proceeded at once to what appeared the real object of the expedition--the cold collation which they had brought so many miles to eat in a peculiarly uncomfortable manner. They might, perhaps, in the intervals of this important occupation, have vented a few common-place expressions of admiration; but, unfortunately for Mr. Turner’s feelings, who endeavoured several times to lead the conversation that way, they had met the post on the road, and as the newspapers of that day contained the account of the long-expected demise of one of the oldest supporters of the party to which they belonged, they found ample food for conversation, not in lamenting his loss, but in discussing the various pretensions of the probable claimants for his Government, his Garter, his Regiment, and his Sinecure. At length, after this had continued sometime, a “rising young man,” on the ministerial side of the house, who had many years to look forward, before he could hope to put in a claim for any thing of the sort they were discussing, took advantage of a pause to make an abrupt turn in the conversation, by saying, “Capital shooting, I should think, in the covers up that glen, Sir North?”

“Yes, Sir,” interposed the lad, who had been still leaning against the boat behind the party, and until now, a silent spectator of their proceedings; “the surest place in all the country side, to find the first woodcock, and so uncle says, before my time.”

“What do you know about woodcocks, my young friend?” said Sir North: “do you know, I am afraid that you and your uncle are little better than poachers?”

“Uncle rents the Bankside farm, as did his father afore him; and when our south intack is in stubble, when I am staying with uncle, we go out coursing sometimes, and of a fine afternoon, he takes his gun with him up the glen, to look for birds.”

“Very wrong, very wrong, all this,” said Sir North. “Who is your landlord?”

“I never seen him, but the Baronet Saunders, Esquire, I think they call him.”

“Ay, ay, I was afraid so,” said Sir North. “This comes of neglecting to give these poor creatures the blessing of a country gentleman’s residence on his estate--totally disorganizes society,--turns the farmers into poachers; this must not be so in future: no my friends, I must do my duty in the country as well as in town. So, my lad, you say, you never saw your uncle’s landlord, Sir North Saunders?”

“No; but once I saw lawyer Drainem, when he came to collect half-year’s rent, and I suppose that be much the same thing.”

“Well, now you may tell your uncle that you have seen me, Sir North Saunders; and tell him, that I mean to give my tenants the benefit of my presence, to arrange all this upon the proper footing.”

“And you, my pretty girl,” said Lord Castleton, approaching the object which, during this conversation, had been engrossing most of his attention, “do you accompany your cousin on his sporting excursions?”

“No, Sir,” said she. “I have seen much less of George since he has taken to coursing, and now we are going to lose him entirely.”

“How so?”

“To-morrow he leaves us to serve his time in the seafaring line, with another uncle, who is captain and part owner of a vessel in the transport service.”

“And you are afraid that he will forget Morden Bay, and his favourite cousin, and would therefore like to follow him?”

“If he forgets me, I should not so forget myself as to recollect him,” said the little girl with a dignity which, from one of her age and station, surprised Lord Castleton. She then continued, in a more childish tone: “Nor would I leave my only home, my flowers, my daisies, my daily occupations, and my shells, for to follow any one friend.”

“Then I am sure, if I were your friend George, I would not leave Morden Bay and the pretty prize which for him it contains, for all the rest of the world.”

The language of flattery fell for the first time on the unpractised ear to which it was addressed; for it never had been cousin George’s way to say soft things. She knew not what the words meant, or indeed that they meant any thing; but there is an instinct in every female breast, which returns a responsive echo to tones, such as those in which this otherwise common-place expression was uttered. One moment she cast her eyes upwards on the face of him who unexpectedly addressed her thus, then as suddenly withdrawing them, and striving to hide the first conscious blush that had ever tinged her pure and innocent countenance, she drew upwards the summer-bonnet, which had slung across her shoulders, and pointing to the path by which most of the party had already begun to ascend, she motioned Lord Castleton to follow.

As they ascended the cliff, he made common-place inquiries as to what her family consisted of, and learned that she was the only child of a father, whom she named in a tone of true affection, and a mother, whom she mentioned respectfully, but apparently with some degree of restraint; beyond them her _kin_ (and as she would have said her _ken_,) was confined to her aunt, a single woman, who lived in a lone house round the next point, and of whom she spoke warmly, and “Cousin George,” of whom her present questioner did not ask much, and she answered less.

Whilst he still kept multiplying unnecessary inquiries, and giving by his manner to the most trifling an air of interest, he purposely lingered by the way, till his fair guide at length suggested that they should either mend their pace, or lessen their distance, by taking a short but steep cut, which in a direct line joined the regular path again, after that, by an easy rise, had traversed two long sides of an acute angle; “for,” said she, “if we do not mind, Sir, the rest of your party will have passed our gate before we reach it; and though mother is not much given to seeing company, I am sure she would not like those ladies to go by her door, without biding a bit to rest; and that poor lady looks as if she needed it, and the lusty gentleman isn’t fit to help one so weak as her,” pointing to Lady Madelina, who had been obliged to accept Sir North as Lord Castleton’s substitute, in ascending the cliff,--an affair for which he was peculiarly disqualified, the action of his _lungs_ being so much greater than that of his _limbs_. He had stopped at the corner, really to recover breath, but under pretence of venting his admiration of the prospect, of which he was gasping forth an encomium, in most wheezy interjections. Lady Madelina’s eye, whilst affecting to follow the different directions in which his cane was pointed, had dropped upon the figure of Lord Castleton ascending from below, and she was puzzling how to get up an attitude of interesting languor, whilst leaning on Sir North, who was unfortunately some inches shorter than herself, and of a figure which did not lend itself readily to group into the line of grace.

“She seems dreadfully tired, that poor lady,” continued Lucy, (such had Lord C. found his companion’s name to be,) “and no wonder she should be; ’tis well enough for a young girl like me to run up and down ten times a day, but ’tis rather a fashious step this, and I’ve known mother be almost as bad as she is.”

This casual comparison to her mother did not give to Lord Castleton’s imagination a turn calculated to assist Lady Madelina’s attempts to excite his admiration at her present would-be interesting exhaustion; and seeing that two more angles of the path would again bring him where the irksome duties of a “patito” would be exacted from him, he was disposed to remonstrate against his companion’s anxiety to hurry upwards and do the honours of her humble roof, when a loud voice exclaimed--

“Sir North!--Castleton! Where are you? make haste, pray; only think, it wants but fifty minutes to the half-hour bell.”

This admonition came from a celebrated “diner-out,” who, except once when he had passed a September on the “pavé” in London, never remembered the day when his dinner had been in such danger.

“And are you really going so soon?” said Lucy to Lord Castleton, observing that the above warning had accelerated the motion of every one of the various groups on the sides of the cliff, and even induced Sir North to give something like one effective tug to the arm of Lady Madelina.

“You see it does not depend upon me,” said Lord Castleton, “I am under orders, but shall certainly linger till the last.”

“I should like much to know why you came at all,” said Lucy, with an archness which surprised her hearer. “I thought it had been to see the Bubbling Well, or the Black Glen, or the Dead-man’s Crag; but merely to walk down that burn side, to climb up this cliff, and bring all that fine food, when there was not even a table to eat it off! ’Tis seldom we have seen a stranger here, but when some came once before, they were two gentlemen painters.”

“Yes, yes, artists, I suppose,” said Lord Castleton; “and they were the only strangers you have ever seen before?”

“Yes; but they stayed some days, and lodged at father’s; and when they went away, they left him in return the likeness of the bay, not as it is now, but all in a storm, done all over on a bit of the finest mahogany wood, and it’s now at aunt Alice’s, for mother said she did not like such vanities, much more to have, summer and winter, to look on the sea in that dreadful state; ’twas bad enough when it really came so.”

“Why any of us came, I can hardly tell, my pretty little friend; but for myself, though I have not seen the Bubbling Well, or the Black Glen, the walk up this cliff has been so pleasant, that I should be glad to come again.”

“But you have been a long time about it,” said Lucy: “I wish you could see cousin George, how he climbs the side of yonder crag above our heads! when I call him, he is at the top before you can count fifty; I don’t think, for all you like the cliff so much, you could do that, Sir.”

There was something in this invidious comparison which did not please Lord Castleton, though he ought to have been no more hurt at the imputation of inferiority in such an accomplishment, than if he had found six months afterwards, that he could not reef a main-topsail as well as cousin George. He replied, however, “I believe I ought to try that now, to have any chance of rejoining my party; but before I go, though I have not stayed long enough to paint a picture like your last visitors, may this,” said he, unslinging a small French watch, which hung by a light gold chain round his neck, “may this serve to remind you of these fleeting moments, and may it record for you many hours, as happy as the few last minutes it has marked for me.”

“I am sure aunt Alice would say I ought not to take this,” said Lucy, hesitatingly; “yet, perhaps, if you would not object, cousin George will want a watch now he is going to leave us, and it had better serve to remind him of me, than me of you; for I am afraid it is not like I should see a gentleman like you again, Sir.”

“To you I give it,” said Lord Castleton, “’tis for you to dispose of it as pleases you,” and throwing it round her neck, he rushed up the cliff, with an activity, which she could not have denied would have done credit to cousin George himself. Near the top he met that individual descending from escorting the rest of the party; a mutual “good evening!” varied only by “Sir!” on one side, and “my lad!” on the other, and not in a very cordial tone on either, was all that passed between them.

Lord Castleton found his horse left in the care of a groom at the top of the cliff, with a request that he would follow the rest of the party as soon as possible, their return having been much hurried by the imminent danger to which they foresaw the various _entrées_ would be exposed by their flagrant unpunctuality, for they were still fourteen hilly miles from Hornscliff Abbey. Lord Castleton, in his present frame of mind, was not very anxious to rejoin the party, and therefore, regulating his pace so as just to keep them in sight at the opposite side of the various alternate ridges and dales they had to pass, resigned himself to his reflections, which it would be puzzling to present to the reader, in that connected form which they never assumed. They began with a sigh to the charms of unsophisticated nature, which nature immediately assumed the form, and recalled the smile of Lucy Darnell. He then dwelt on the rare union of beauty and of innocence, which brought up for a moment an unpleasant recollection of how he first saw her, sitting on the boat with cousin George; this he hastened to obliterate by imagining past habits of childish familiarity, and then by fancying cousin George tossing about for years to come in his transport-ship.

He then thought of the soothing sensation of repose which he had embodied from the beautiful scenery of Morden Bay, and he invested the residence of farmer Darnell with the character of the last chosen retreat of peaceful content in this troubled world.

From that, as he caught a glimpse on the summit of the opposite hill of Lady Madelina’s Sol-pleurants, fluttering in the evening breeze, he recurred to his late ‘liaison’ with her; and his memory immediately collected with astonishing fidelity, every incident which had happened in its progress, which, at the time, rather _degouté’d_ him, but which he had, till then, almost forgotten. As he urged on his horse to join some of the party, who he saw had perceived him, and were waiting in consequence, he concluded with the determination, that the first spare day he would again ride over alone to Morden Bay. But “a spare day” is not so easily found in the midst of such a party, by one whose actions none imagined to be at his own disposal, and who, as the passive half of Lady Madelina’s constantly repeated _we_, was supposed, of course, included in every arrangement she suggested.

A country house is the most unfavourable opportunity for attempting to break chains which habit has riveted. The party consequently broke up, new prospects opened upon Lord Castleton, and new pursuits were undertaken, without his having a second opportunity of visiting Morden Bay.