Chapter V

Adieu! I have too grieved a heart
To take a tedious leave.
SHAKSPEARE.

What other can she seek to see
Than thee, companion of her bosom,
The partner of her infancy?
BYRON.

Lucy Darnell was found by her cousin George, when he returned from escorting the strangers to the top of the cliff, still leaning over the little gate which led through the garden to the house, and still curiously examining what she thought the extraordinarily small watch the gentleman had given her: as soon as she perceived him she cried out, “What do you think, cousin George?”

“What do I think?” said he a little out of humour, he hardly knew why; “what do I think? why, that you made that gentleman loiter so in coming up the cliff that he has missed his party.”

“Why, I did not make him loiter; he would not walk any faster; he did not seem used to it, though I told him how quick you could climb to the top.”

“I am sure he was going fast enough when I met him,” said George doggedly.

“Well, it is very odd; to be sure he did jump along limber enough as soon as he left me, but I could not make him try before. But what do you think I have got for you?” added she, showing the watch.

“And how did you come by that thing?” demanded George.

“That gentleman gave it me; but I only took it for you, George,” observing that he looked displeased.

“Thank you all the same, Lucy, but let it bide where it was meant it should. He would never have given it to the like of me; there was over many reasons why he might have done so to you.”

“I thought,” said Lucy, “it would serve to remember you of me whenever you looked at it.”

“But I had rather not remember you and him both together, as that thing would always be making me do.”

“I don’t know what’s come over you, George,” said Lucy puzzled, “but it’s hard, when I hoped but to please you, you should speak so cross, and this your last night too.”

“I did not mean to be cross,” answered George in an altered tone; “but I can’t take that watch for another reason, for see, I’ve already got one just like it,” fumbling in his fob, and tugging out with some difficulty, at the end of a long stout steel chain, which appeared as if it might have served for fetters, an immense pinchbeck turnip-like time-piece, the recent gift of his uncle. As this capacious and ponderous concern was displayed by the side of the diminutive _Brequet_, Lucy, though unaware of the relative value of their different dimensions, could not help smiling at the comparison, and, with restored cheerfulness, said, “Just like it, George! yes, just as like it as you are to the stranger gentleman.”

They were here interrupted by her mother’s voice calling Lucy from the house.

The various additional avocations which the approaching departure of her nephew, in Mrs. Darnell’s opinion, entailed on her daughter during this evening, prevented the cousins again speaking together that night. But Lucy was aware that her cousin would before breakfast in the morning go over to take leave of his aunt; she had therefore risen earlier than usual, and carefully executed, as she thought, all the morning duties which maternal authority could exact before any one was stirring, when George, having just come down as she was preparing to cross the flower-garden with him, her mother’s window opened, and in a precise tone, which indicated a succession of questions, she asked,--

“Lucy, my dear, have you skimmed the milk?”

“Yes.”

“Have you looked to the bread?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Have you fed the poultry?”

“Yes, mother.”

“That’s right; then you’ll have time to hem your father’s new shirts before breakfast, so I’ll bring them down.”

This was known by both who heard it, however mildly expressed, to be a command from which there was no appeal; so George only said, “Before I come back, Lucy, they’ll all be down at breakfast, so I only wanted to say that last night you called me cross, and as I lay awake in bed afterwards, I thought of many more times I had been so, though you had not told me so; and what I wished to say is this: you know I’ve been to sea once before now, though only to try it, but enough to know it’s another sort of thing to think over the like of these in one’s warm bed here, when one has only but to come and say, Lucy, I ask your pardon, and see your sweet smile in return, than to have it come across one’s mind when one’s far away, walking the deck on a dark night, thinking of one’s distant home, that lies just in the wind’s eye, and a hurricane blowing one the Lord knows where another way, perhaps never to return. Nay, I did not mean to distress you, Lucy; only just say that if I’ve ever been kind to you you’ll think only of that, and not of t’other sort of conduct, whilst I am gone and away--”

“I never do--never can--never will, think of you but as my kind good cousin George,” hastily answered Lucy, hearing her mother’s measured tread descending the stairs, shirts in hand.

After George’s return, and the somewhat silent breakfast had been nearly despatched, Mrs. Darnell started up from the top of the table where she had been sitting, and enquired “And what will Jackie Pattison be doing there? sure, if he isn’t driving up the old mare and the pony from the low pasture.”

“And where’s Jackie Pattison? I don’t see him,” said the farmer, anxious to get a little time to prepare his defence for the attack which he foresaw.

“And will it be your bidding then, Richard, that he is doing?” who now guessed it all.

“I told him my mare and the pony would both be wanted; so if they were in the low pasture, it’s like he’s been to fetch them,” answered Richard, with a determination for once to face it boldly out; “I mean to see the lad as far as Mayton, where he takes coach; it would have been over far for him to have walked, and the pony will follow me back again like a dog.”

“But he meant to walk. He said so when I told him not to cut yon stick out of the oak-copse; and you to go away, Richard, and leave me lonely, to fret at George’s going, and to spend your silver idly by the way; and then to take away the mare that’s wanted in the draught, now we’re so throng in the hay-time; it’s just of a piece with a’ the rest.

“It’s just of a piece with a’ the rest,” was, as her husband had learned to his cost, a comprehensive allusion to all her former grievances, some of which were to be ready to reinforce the present attack, provided it was not in itself effective; but in this instance he knew that all these names were rather put forward as heads of chapters for future complaints on his return, than expected to prevent his departure. He therefore thought it would be useless to subject himself to have them twice repeated by answering them now; so drawing his wife aside, he suggested, “that he only went in order to keep the lad out of harm’s way at Mayton, till he saw him into the coach which was to take him to the port where his other uncle’s ship lay.”

“Well, if you must go, mind you do that,” said Mrs. Darnell, “and do for once speak serious to the lad, and counsel him how he falls into evil courses.”

The parting between George and Lucy, though public, was affectionate, as indeed their near relationship in itself authorised.

Farmer Darnell, hardly believing as yet, that he could have got off so easily, started at first at the steady pounding jog-trot of his cart-mare; a pace which required unequal alternations of shambling, walk, and canter, on the part of George’s pony, to keep up with. At length the uncle thinking it was time to attempt to execute his wife’s injunctions of a lecture to his nephew, pulled his mare up to the pace she was used to go in draught, and began--

“It’s a bad world this you’re going into, George.”

“Is it indeed, uncle?” quaintly inquired George.

This abrupt questioning of what, without feeling its truth himself, he had always considered an incontrovertible position, rather disturbed the course of the uncle’s intended lecture, as he replied, “Why, to be sure, it must be. Doesn’t the parson tell us so every seventh day; and doesn’t my Missus, who is as good every bit as he is, and therefore ought to ken as well, repeat it to us all the other six? For my part, to be sure, I can’t say I find much fault with it. ’Tisn’t all made up of Sundays--that’s certain--but that one couldn’t expect; and if there were but _two_ market-days in a week, I’d be content with one Sunday in each.”

“And yet aunt says if you went to market once a fortnight only, ’twould be better.”

“Your aunt is----the best woman in the world,” continued the uncle after a dubious pause; “how she’ll stay at home herself to save me money! But between ourselves,” added he, lowering his tone, and approaching his mare to the pony, “she’s a little apt to take it out in fashing one. As you’re going to leave us, I may say to you, but mind you don’t repeat it, that when she does get hold of a bone of contention, she’ll never leave hold no more than my bull-bitch Bess would. She certainly is,” he added, casting a look instinctively behind him, though two ridges had interposed between his dwelling and the part of the road where they then were,--“she certainly is enough sometimes to worry one out of soul and body, and there’s truths out. But what I wanted to tell you, George, is,--have a care of the women; if they been’t over good, they’re over bad, and they’re a main deal of dead weight for a man to carry either way.”

“I don’t think cousin Lucy would ever be a dead weight to any one,” said George.

“She! bless her lightsome heart! no!” cried her father in a burst of parental affection; “she’d be but a feather weight in the longest course, and yet as good as gold too. But I didn’t think of her, and was talking of you, and the nonsense of sweethearting a lad like you might fall into when you may be ganging with some painted Jesabels, who would pick your pocket first, and box your ears afterwards: have nothing to say to the likes of them, George; show ’em your stern at once; no one is safe from their arts: remember King Solomon,--not that I mean that all women are alike, or that a man shouldn’t say thank you, because she’s a woman, to a buxom kind-hearted person, like our landlady, Widow Westbury, when she tries to make him welcome all in a friendly way.”

As George had never before accompanied his uncle to Mayton, and had always come the other road himself, he had never heard of the Widow Westbury, and was puzzled to connect his uncle’s two cases of the hostess and Solomon. But the honest farmer continued what he thought his useful instructions.

“Another thing,--beware of drink, boy; it’s a filthy trick, and the drunkard, after all, has but a sad time of it, for the reproaches of wine, on the morrow, are worse than--than--my wife’s: not but that it’s a hard thing to help taking another glass or two sometimes, when one meets an old friend, and one feels to like him better and better every sup, and each draught makes one’s stories tell the merrier, and one’s laugh come the heartier.”

In this alternation of strict advice to be correct in conduct, and over-ready excuses for being otherwise, in which, unintentionally, the honest farmer followed the example of many _soi-disant_ moral works, wherein a good word is given to virtue, whilst sympathy is excited for error, they arrived at Mayton. It was a neat little country-town; its broad, open, well-paved market-place, with ancient cross in the middle, was surrounded by many tidy-looking dwellings of various dimensions, beyond which the town extended in the shape of streets, but a little way down the different roads which here united. From the circumstance of the market-place being evidently the centre of attraction, it appeared that Mayton derived its principal consequence from being the mart of the surrounding country; which might also be inferred from the number of second-rate houses of public entertainment with which it abounded. Passing by one of these, which boasted on its board the exclusive dignity of “neat post-chaises,” Farmer Darnell made straight up to the smartest of the others, before whose door swung the head of a most formidable-looking female, with a little crown stuck on the top of her head, and underneath was written, in gold letters, “Ann Westbury;” an apparent appropriation of the portrait by the hostess, which gave her the name of “Queen Anne” among many of her customers; a dignity with which, coupled with the resemblance implied, she was by no means flattered.