Chapter VIII

O’er all within, the lady-hostess rules,
Her bar she governs, and her kitchen schools;
To every guest the appropriate speech is made,
And every duty with distinction paid.
CRABBE.

Why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on.
SHAKSPEARE.

In the mean time there had been an arrival at the Queen’s Head. At the desire of Lady Gayland, Lucy Darnell had been sent as far as Mayton, in Sir North’s pony-phaeton, accompanied by her own maid, Mam’selle Angelique, or Angel-leek, as Mrs. Jones called her. Lucy’s companion was a gay-hearted, good-humoured little Parisian girl, recently imported by her mistress; and she thought she best accomplished the purpose for which she was sent, and whiled away the tedium of the way, by singing to her in succession scraps of little French chansons; and occasionally, when Lucy seemed most depressed, assuring her in a tone of sympathy, but half in English, half in French, both equally unintelligible to her to whom it was addressed, that she was to take “courage,” for that it was impossible they could ever be so cruel as to hang a “_si joli garçon de contrabandist_,” as that “_amour_” whom she had seen pass the windows.

In this opinion she was more kind and courteous than sincere; for though George was a fine, handsome, well-made lad, he certainly at no time, and least of all then, accurately answered the definition of the sort of man a French girl frequently styles “_un amour_.” Sir North’s coachman had found, that though the Widow Westbury’s ale sometimes, for the time being, got the better of memory, memory was always in favour of making another attack upon it, and therefore he drove straight, without asking any questions, to the Queen’s Head. Mrs. Westbury having found out who the two ladies were, met Richard Darnell on his return with one of her sweetest smiles, “And what do you think I’ve got for you now?”

But Richard, who was not at that moment in the most amiable frame of mind towards his hostess, from the compunctious recollections which his parting with George had awakened, only replied, making straight for the stable, “It’s of nae use now, Widow, I’ll not tak’ a drop of aught you’ve gotten, or touch aught you could give till I’ve seen my child again.”

“And what if it should be just your child herself I’ve got to offer you?”

“What! what, Lucy?” and Richard Darnell, pushing past the Widow, rushed into the front parlour, when, upon finding her, the sudden transition from despondency had a most powerful effect upon him. His athletic frame actually shook with agitation, and he blubbered outright, whilst he buried his daughter in his capacious arms.

At this extraordinary spectacle, even Mam’selle Angelique was not a little touched, though still more astonished at what she thought a wonderful natural phenomenon, and lifting up her hands in amazement, unmixed however with ridicule, exclaimed, “_Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! que les ours de ce pays-ci jouent le grand sentiment!_”

The widow having followed our friend into the room, was very anxious, as it was rather late, that they should stay there all night; but the Farmer would not hear of it.

“It’s all very well, Widow; I am always agreeable, you know, when I’m by myself, but this is my child, whom I’ve only just gettin’ back out o’ the hands of the Philistines, as my Missus would speak it, and home’s the most seemly place for the likes o’ she; and besides, Anne, you know this house wouldn’t be altogither quite entirely fitting like, you understand.”

This being said in a manner that was quite intelligible to the hostess, as conveying a negative of her proposal, she bestirred herself with real zeal to procure them a conveyance homewards, which was speedily obtained in the shape of a taxed cart; and Angelique, after kissing Lucy on both cheeks with the fervour of an old friend, prepared to resume her seat in the phaeton, attended by the coachman alone, and whom she treated, on her return, to the same scraps of the same little “vaudeville airs,” to which he occasionally ventured to attempt a somewhat incongruous accompaniment; Mrs. Westbury’s ale having made such a breach in his habitual respectful deference for the steward’s room, as would have been resented by any other member of that upper house, but which the light-hearted French girl easily put up with, as adding to the amusement of the moment.

In the mean time the Farmer, with one arm guiding the reins, and the other still round his recovered treasure, partly as if to be sure he should not again lose her, and partly to save her delicate limbs from some of the dislocating effects of this rough conveyance, pursued his way homeward. And if we once see him safe, we will promise that the story shall not linger long there at present; for Mrs. Darnell, it may be imagined, had not been rendered more companionable by all the late events, and though her fault-finding disposition had been so long used to pick out petty errors, as not to be able at once to stretch itself so as to comprehend the enormity of George’s present offences, yet, perhaps, she was more intolerable when perpetually fishing for minor accompanying grievances, which would have escaped the other parties, in the overpowering disgrace of George’s approaching trial.

But Mrs. Darnell was, as her husband had anticipated, particularly indignant upon a ruffian like Collett having sat at her board. “Only to think, if he’d slept here too! as Richard was daft enough to ask him; it’s just of a piece wi’ all the rest.” And in succession, “George’s having left Lucy on the shore alone of such a night, to catch her death of cold, and spoil all her clothes; and Lucy having been never minded that she’d lost her bonnet there, and having come home at last with that queer Frenchified thing instead; and Richard, when he returned from Mayton, having left George’s pony behind, and Joe Hostler having broken his knees in bringing him over the next day;”--all these were enumerated, and each in turn pronounced to be “just of a piece wi’ all the rest.” The effect of all this upon her husband was to make him enter into a warm and angry defence of himself upon points on which, if the contrite feelings with which he had returned from Mayton had been sustained, he would undoubtedly have pleaded guilty, and sued for mercy.

The peril in which Lucy had lately been, and the alarm which that peril had occasioned to her father, had left so strong an impression on the minds of both as to draw forth more than ever their mutual feelings of affection, and to multiply more than ever little offices of attachment on one side, and protection on the other: there never was a better daughter or a kinder father. For many days after Lucy’s return, Richard Darnell could not bear, without uneasiness, to see her stray beyond the garden gate; and when he went out to his work, she employed almost all the time, till she saw him come back, in devising and arranging his choicest comforts, and endeavouring how to welcome him home with his favourite little indulgences. The result of all this was, that Mrs. Darnell very soon reckoned them a useless pair of idle _do-noughts_; and after many vain attempts to propitiate her mother on that head, Lucy finding that her presence seemed only to open an additional ground of dispute, the effect of these altercations between her parents was to drive her more from home, to seek comfort, where she never sought it in vain, in the society of her aunt. From this in itself she could derive nothing but benefit; but it is matter of doubt whether she, in her present frame of mind, was the better for those solitary rambles by which these interviews were necessarily both preceded and followed.

During the course of her short acquaintance with Churchill, she had, she hardly knew why, been led gradually to think of him more with the anxious deference due to a superior being, than with the easy consciousness of equality. This feeling, since the melancholy thoughts that he was now no more, had hallowed the memory of their interviews, had increased in intensity to a degree amounting to reverence, almost to adoration, and with it she would have shrunk from mixing any alloy of feminine tenderness; whilst, on the other hand, the shame that George, her cousin, the playmate of her infantine years, should have so fallen, was mixed up with the deepest anxiety for his impending fate, constantly recurring, and as constantly checked by the idea that its indulgence was an injury to Churchill’s murdered shade, whom her excited imagination often pictured to be hanging about her in these much-loved spots in her rambles, which they had together so lately visited.