Chapter XIV

Oh, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!
SHAKSPEARE.

Alice Darnell had made good and sufficient use of the interval left her, to execute the task of explaining the past, and opening the future to the parties concerned. For before that time next day, she had succeeded in clearing the coast, not only of her brother, but, what was perhaps more difficult, of her nephew George, whose acquittal the day before upon both charges, had, thanks to the clumsiness of Mr. Spencer, been complete. With some little difficulty Alice had persuaded him, as well as his uncle, that it would be better for them to keep out of the way; and Castleton had been for some time established with Lucy, in undisturbed possession of the little lodging-house parlour.

Whilst he was opening to her, by degrees, the brilliant prospects which he proposed to her to share with him, she sat on the sofa beside him, holding one hand in both of hers, and looking up at him with an expression of innocent adoration, such as could only be pourtrayed upon a countenance of such unrivalled sweetness. As, after detailing his views for their own future, he turned to describe what he proposed to do for the different members of her own family, she interrupted him with--

“Oh, my dear Lord! but that you are even much more good than great, I should wonder at your kindness to poor George, not only to bear him no ill-will for daring to lift his lowly hand against your life, but even to propose to serve him so effectually, and exactly in the way he would like best. To procure him a birth in a king’s ship, by which, in time, he may become an admiral, for George is very clever in that line, though rude and unlettered in others--think of that, aunt Alice!” addressing her aunt, who had then entered the room, which she occasionally quitted. “Think of that, that George may live to be an admiral, and all through the kind forgiving goodness of my own dear Lord here,” added she, pressing his hand, which she held against her heart, and then dropping her head, and looking up timidly from under her brows, as if she thought she had been too demonstrative; then turning the subject, she said, “But George is to go away then, to-day? and didn’t he wish to see me?”

“Yes, he shall see you, when my Lord is obliged to go and arrange his other necessary matters,” replied Alice; part of whose plan was, in every possible way to avoid flurry to her niece, whose spirits were hardly yet settled. She therefore decided that she should not see more than one person at a time; and, as restored composure was her great object, she determined, that least of all ought Lucy to see Castleton and George together.

Lord Castleton, whose intimate friend had just taken the command of a frigate commissioned for Halifax, and under sailing orders, had written the strongest recommendation of George, begging his friend to take him as a supernumerary midshipman, and, if occasion should occur, to promote him. As it is not always necessary to analyze motives for liberal actions, so, certainly, no one of the parties who were to benefit either directly or otherwise by this recommendation, estimated how much the peculiar value of the arrangement, in Lord Castleton’s eyes, was enhanced, by the ship taking so immediate a departure for so distant a station.

Alice Darnell had, upon a consideration of all the bearings of the case, been disposed to acquiesce in what was rather the suggestion offered, than the condition proposed by Lord Castleton, that the marriage should be strictly private; and that, indeed, it need never be exactly known what had been the previous condition in life, where the previous residence, of his future wife. She was as much justified by her own early experience of the great world, as she was guided by her partiality for her niece, in imagining, that there was a natural unaffected grace in Lucy’s manner, which would prevent her former very humble state from being suspected, if not promulgated. Her early recollections of the world, at the same time, served to remind her that, if that humble origin was known, defects, supposed inseparable from it, would be imagined, even though they did not exist.

On the other hand, concealment on this head, if desirable, was rendered peculiarly practicable, from the utter solitude in which Lucy had been brought up, never having had even an acquaintance out of her own thinly-scattered and secluded neighbourhood. Her brother, too, Alice felt, however well calculated to fill with credit the state to which he was born, would be unfit, as he would be unwilling, to be placed in any other; and his wife, however willing she might be to make the experiment, would be infinitely more unfit than Richard Darnell to accompany her daughter into that exalted sphere in which she was now to move.

Alice Darnell could not help rejoicing that the absence of her sister-in-law upon this occasion, removed any difficulty that might have been expected from her not being so well aware as every body who was acquainted with her was, how impossible it would be that she should share with Lucy all the advantages of her new situation.

“I should have thought,” said Alice, addressing Castleton, “that you of all men would have been least likely to persuade me to overlook all the ills that sometimes spring from mystery in the married state. But mystery, where it affects the character of the connexion to be formed, or where it only relates to circumstances which that connexion itself supersedes, is quite distinct; and therefore I am inclined to agree with you, that it is better the marriage should take place here privately, and as soon as the special licence can be procured, that when my brother and I return home, we may announce it to her mother as an event completed.”

This being settled, Castleton said to Lucy, “I must leave you now to take steps for the licence. Farewell for the present, and only for the _present_, for it is a word that the future shall teach _us_ to forget to use.”

Castleton having left the room, Alice desired George to come in, to take leave of his cousin, as he was to depart that afternoon. He was dressed in a manner better calculated to suit his new character of gentleman; but never looked so awkward, or seemed so little at his ease. He walked first straight for the window, then half towards Lucy, but turned to the fireplace, and from thence back to the window, without saying a word. From thence he was gently drawn away by his cousin, who said, “Come, dear cousin George, have you nothing pretty to say to your poor little Lucy? I am sure I wish _you_ joy of your promotion with all my heart.”

“And I am as sure that in all mine, there is no other wish than that your promotion, if you like so to call it, may be attended with every earthly happiness. Perhaps I’d better go at once. Good b’ye.”

“Nay stay, dear George, it is not enough that we should separate with these wishes, without settling how we may be informed whether they are fulfilled or not. I can never forget those days, when we neither of us ever formed a thought that the other didn’t know; and believe me, till we meet again, I shall have no greater pleasure than hearing from you, and how you are getting on;--and now you may put a direction that will easier reach its mark, than poor Lucy Darnell, Bankside Farm, England. Wasn’t that the way you wrote to me last, you said? You’ll try again, won’t you, dear?”

“No, I think I’d better not; it wouldn’t be altogether suitable, I think, with your new situation. When you get accustomed to all these fine folk, there will be much in George Darnell you’ll wish altered; and I shouldn’t like to bring shame on you, Lucy.”

“Bring shame on me! that you could never do, but by such courses as you have lately followed; and to these I have no fear you will turn again. Do not bring shame on yourself by such means, and you can never bring shame on me. If you mean that, because I’m a lady, shame could spring from the homeliness of true and tried affection, that would be shame of my own making; ay, and worse than I could bear.”

“Ay, you speak all this out of kindness, and like yourself, dear Lucy: and so you feel now, I’m sure. But a time will come--and what’s more, it ought to come--when the less you see, or even perhaps hear of me, the better. I will not bring up now all about our former parting, and all that. I was much older than you were then, and things you said made more impression on me than they were like to do on yourself; but it’s all for the best. He that’s won you, has done his taste credit, to find you out, quite out of his line as you were, and I’m bound to speak well of him, for he’s behaved nobly to me; and I’ve no doubt he’ll try and make you happy, and he ought to succeed, for he’s plenty of helps to try with; but all I can say is, that you can’t want to hear of ME, and I shouldn’t like to intrude.”

“Why shouldn’t I want to hear of you? You talk of the helps he has, by which I suppose you mean power and wealth. But what would be one’s first wish to put them to, but to assist one’s friends? And who would be the first of friends whom one would seek out at the end of the world to serve? Why, who but you, dear George.”

“Ay, all that’s as you feel now; and I don’t mean to say that any change could ever make you hard or unfeeling, but I can’t but think that it an’t in nature that this should always remain the same. I dare say you judge me a little altered now; so I am, perhaps. I have turned more things over in my head lately, than I did in all my life before. A prison’s quite the school of thought. You’re going, on t’other hand, to one perpetual holiday of the mind,--and every thing else if you like. It will be an existence of which you’ve no idea. Well! it mayn’t suit after all. But if so, it’s no short voyage you’re bound on. You’ll never have Bankside Farm and Morden Bay to leeward again; and, therefore, you had better not have cousin George to pilot your thoughts the way they must never turn. But as it’s much more like you’ll find all sunshine around you, I would not like to be the one black spot on your horizon; and when not in sight, you must soon forget to care about the humble playmate of your youth, who feels even in parting from you so completely that your unhappiness must make his, that he heartily prays that this last may be the case. Prosper in your new line of life, and that you may do so, take not with you a thought of your old one. Once more, a long good b’ye.”

“Good b’ye, dearest George,” said Lucy, throwing herself for the last time into his arms.

“No, Lucy; that’s more than I can bear,” cried George, tearing himself away, and rushing from her presence.