Chapter VII

Few years have passed since brightly cross the way
Lights from each window shot the lengthened ray,
And busy looks in every face were seen,
Through the warm precincts of the reigning Queen.
There fires, inviting, blazed; and all around
Was heard the tinkling bell’s seducing sound:
The nimble waiters to that sound, from far,
Sprang to the call, then hastened to the bar,
Where a glad priestess of the temple swayed,
The most obedient, and the most obeyed.
CRABBE.

And first, by the way, to stop at the little town of Mayton. The evening had begun to close in on the day of the events described above, when the Widow Westbury, having, unfortunately, no guests to occupy her within, was standing at her front door, the somewhat narrow threshold of which the ample expanse of her spotless apron now more completely filled than when on first taking up that position, seven years back, she had been herself the most attractive sign to stray travellers on an idle afternoon to induce them to slip in beside her. She had, as usual on such occasions, been looking listlessly up the street, and down the road, when, on turning her head again in the direction of the road leading from Hornscliff, she was struck with the uncommon spectacle of two carriages crowded with persons, apparently both within and without, and attended by others on horseback, coming into town. One short hopeful vision she had time to form, of full bedrooms and an empty larder, before undeceived by observing that they were two hack chaises, and, therefore, the regular undoubted allies of her powerful rival, the Angel, to which, of course, they therefore edged off.

The Widow Westbury was not an envious woman, but one pang she could not suppress at the exuberance of her rival’s good fortune, whilst her own house was literally empty, and she turned her head in the opposite direction, to avoid seeing the actual unloading. But she was as much surprised here as at what had met her view in the other direction. It was not market-day, and yet it could be no other than Farmer Darnell whom she beheld riding towards her, and pressing George’s pony beyond its natural speed. The first impression of pleasure which the Widow derived from recognising him was, however, as completely destroyed, as had been the half-formed hopes in the other direction, as soon as she made out the extraordinary state in which he arrived. His first words were, as he kicked the pony towards the stable gateway. “Hast seen her, Widow? Hast heard anything on her? Oh! I’se lost her, she’s gone! She’s been kidnapped from us.”

“What’s fashed about, George? tell us, hinny. Is’t cart mare’s lost, that ye’re come on t’ galloway?”

“The cart mare, indeed! she might gang and be d--d, for what I’d fash myself about the likes of she. But I ax yer pardon, Widow. It’s na th’ time for a sinfu’ mon to tak’ to profane swearing, when he’s in sair trouble as I am now. What cared I for hard toimes, for rot i’ th’ flocks, or blight i’ th’ crops, so long as I had but her, my own pet lamb, my pride, and my joy--my little Lucy?”

“And sure there won’t be any harm come to Miss Lucy, then?” asked the Widow.

“Harm! I trust in mercy, none. But I’se sair flayed aboot her,” replied he, in language that would have been hardly intelligible to any but indigenous ears, his provincialism being, as is often observed to be the case, redoubled by excitement. “And only to think now that I slept so sound all through t’ night, when may be she was struggling with them as have _spraited_ her away from us. But I made sartain sure she were at her aunt’s, where she had boided the night afore; but when morning came, and it were noised about that there had been some fasheous doings on t’ beach, I took galloway and rode down to sister Alice’s, and when I fooun’ my poor darling child had never bin there, I were clean demented, and did not ken which way to gang, but as all t’ turnpikes come through Mayton, I thought I’d may be hear some tidings of her here; and I’ve lossen a good hour, for I thought to come the gainest way straight by the salt-marshes--and t’ galloway was matched to get me throughf, as he was like to be--being o’er small to bear me, even on canny groond.”

“And if you haven’t been bogged and are quite dripping wet up to your waist!” interrupted the Widow--“Come in, Richard, I’ll see and get you some tidings, and make you comfortable the while.”

“Comfort!” replied Richard, contemptuously; “comfort! and where’s the comfort ever like to visit me again, but in the sight of my child?”

“But step in a wee bit, and tell me all about it, while Joe gives a feed to the galloway, for he’s clean done at present. Is’t alone she’s missing?”

“No: George never com’d back naither; but I don’t count much about that, for he’s a messmate about in these parts; and he said maybe he shouldn’t return last night. But Painter Churchill wasn’t to be found naither.”

“Richard, I’d my misgivings when you took that man home with you from here, that no good would come of it: he’s just the sort of soft-spoken chap to take with a young girl. I wish it mayn’t be along with he that she’s off.”

“What, Widow! my own Lucy, that’s come of decent folk, and all along been used to have a good roof-top over her head, and bide where she was known and looked up to; she to bemean herself to give up all and follow a vagabond stroller, of her own free mind! that’s the least crediblest surmise of all. Hark! what’s that ere chap saying about George Darnell?” overhearing the voices of those who were already circulating in the street that it was George Darnell who had been brought there in a chaise, on his way to the county gaol. This, when explained, was sure to be a bitter aggravation of the troubles of Farmer Darnell, who had always loved his nephew better than any thing else in the world, except her whom he was then seeking; but the first impression made on him by this news was only, that somehow or another it must be connected with the absence of Lucy; and acting upon the idea, he strode across to the Angel, to inform himself, without stopping to ask any farther particulars, or to listen to the Widow’s request that he wouldn’t show himself at “t’ other house” in that unsightly gait. He was however much shocked, when, upon first desiring to be shown to George Darnell, a difficulty was made by the constables in whose custody he was, upon the ground that it was not usual to allow any communication with a prisoner who was on his way to gaol on so grave a charge as murder. This objection being at last surmounted, and the Farmer admitted to George by one of the constables, his parental anxiety again superseding every other feeling, he blurted out, “Sad job indeed, George! but feyther before uncle, after all. Hast seen her? Hast heard on her?”

George, who could make every allowance for any one, father or not, considering Lucy before every thing else in the world, also forgot for the moment, his own dreadful situation, in the pleasure he felt in dissipating his uncle’s fear for his daughter, by informing him of her safety, and that her return home might speedily be expected. After this explanation, the more painful task remained, of detailing to his uncle the particulars of the awful situation in which he had involved himself. In the whole course of his life, George had never known what it was to offend his uncle. Many faults he had certainly committed from his earliest childhood, and scrapes he had got into with his aunt and others about the house; but his uncle had always rather taken his part on these occasions; that indulgence towards venial errors, the result of a disposition not over-strict for himself, and consequently easy for others, being confirmed by his strong partiality for his nephew. This only made it more painful to George to have to break to him the dreadful crime with which he was now charged; of all the circumstances connected with which he gave him a faithful account.

Richard Darnell wished, if possible, not to increase the anguish which he saw his nephew suffered in the relation, but his own disappointment would break through his endeavours to make the least of it.

“It’s a baddish piece of work indeed, George,” he said; “that must be confessed. I hope and trust you may be gettin’ well quit on’t, and you’re not to doubt that we--that is, I--will do all in my power to help you. But to think, George, how little I would have guessed that the first sorrow I ever had about my poor child should be of your making; I that always looked forward to your keeping her out of harm’s way when I should be gone to my long rest; and that it should be you brought her among all that unseemly society! But I will not say now, how far I’d pushed my hopes that sometime the name of Darnell might be left to share atween you two in peace and honour; but to think that, through you, it should fall out that my own innocent child should have been gaped at by the gentlefolk as a wanton one, the tramping follower of a band of unlawful ruffians!”

“Don’t, I pray you, uncle,” said George, “don’t; no more o’ that; it’s just the light in which I’ve been turning it over all this day and night, and you can’t any how put that stronger in words than I’ve had it in my thoughts; only from you it hurts me more, for it comes, I know, strange to Richard Darnell to say an unkind word when his back’s not up: and of myself you never did yet.”

The dialogue was here interrupted by the head constable, “Come, gentlemen, the chaise be ready;” in the phrase of the minions of the law, any one becoming a gentleman who is consigned to their custody on any charge, however trivial or flagrant.

The other prisoners, who had been stowed in different apartments, were then brought out, and, upon seeing them, and particularly recognizing Kit Collett again, Richard Darnell, whose fears immediately turned to the breeze all this would raise at home, though anxious to avoid, of his own accord, giving George any farther pain, could not help saying: “Lord! Lord! George, to think how my Missus will fash herself when she hears tell how you brought a ruffian like that ere to sit aside her and break her bread! I shall have a bad time of it with her, George, all along of you; and if this bean’t the very spot where I seed you off from last time! That were another guess voyage you were a-bound on then, George: and who kens but I may have been summut to blame myself? If I’d gi’en you some o’ that good counsel your aunt said you needed, and had been a bit more minded what I was after myself, who knows? But good b’ye, George,” added he, as his nephew was put into the chaise, “you’ll be gettin’ through yet, I’se sure.”

And, with a heavier heart, though with somewhat a steadier head than when he last saw George drive off from the Angel, poor Richard Darnell returned to the Queen’s Head.