Chapter XI

This may be Nature: when our friends we lose,
Our altered feelings alter to our views;
What in their tempers teazed us, or distressed,
Is with our anger, and the dead, at rest.
And much we grieve, no longer trial made,
For that impatience which we then displayed.
Now to their love, and worth of every kind,
A soft compunction turns the afflicted mind;
Virtues neglected then, adored become,
And graces slighted, blossom on the tomb.
CRABBE.

Lucy had been standing at the window of her own apartment, watching for the return of the equestrians, and from hence she had first seen with amazement the pace at which Lady Gayland was returning; Castleton not, as usual, attending closely on her, but lingering some distance in the rear. It was not till she had seen the violent manner in which the horse had bolted for the stables, that the truth broke upon her. She then became dreadfully alarmed, and would have been at once upon the spot, but that her agitation impeded her tottering steps.

Castleton was, as may be supposed, painfully anxious to ascertain whether Lucy had heard the unguarded expressions which he had incautiously dropped, but there was nothing in her immediately subsequent conduct, from which he could form a guess whether this had been so or not. She assisted with zeal and alacrity in every thing that was necessary to be attempted to bring Lady Gayland to her senses, and arranged, in concurrence with Castleton, the manner in which she had best be conveyed to the house.

The servants had by this time collected, upon the alarm of seeing the two horses return without riders to the stables. The removal to the house was effected without difficulty, which seemed to confirm the hope that no limb was fractured; and in the shortest possible space of time, the best medical advice was procured. The surgeon expressed a fear, from the state of torpor in which she remained, that there might be a concussion of the brain, and, above all things, enjoined the strictest quiet, and that she should be left to the care of her own maid.

It was not till Lucy was thus dismissed from any further attendance, that she owned that she herself was far from well; though, indeed, her countenance (now first observed) showed that she was suffering acute pain; all that night she was in considerable danger, and the next morning produced the premature birth of a dead child.

Castleton, kind and affectionate in his nature, was, as may well be supposed, driven almost distracted by her fearful state; aggravated as his anxieties were, by the idea that he had himself been the cause of the calamity. During some of the moments in which it was thought most doubtful how it might end, Lucy kept constantly repeating to her husband, “It was only the fright--it was the fright. I thought she was killed, and that frightened me so--but that was all:” and this anxious disavowal of any other cause of agitation, made Castleton only the more fear that it was too probable she had heard the expressions into which his alarm had betrayed him.

Perhaps the perfect quiet in which Lady Gayland was necessarily left, contributed as much as any thing to her progressive recovery. Lucy was, of course, unable for some time to go near her, and she availed herself of the strict rules of English decorum, to exclude Castleton also, as long as she was confined to her own room.

As soon as she was sufficiently re-established to be able to move, Lady Gayland announced that circumstances prevented her from any longer delaying her departure. She took an affectionate leave of Lucy, and an unmarked farewell of Castleton. In answer to Lucy’s inquiries, whether she still felt any ill effects from her fall, she replied in the negative; professing, at the same time, that she had no particular recollection of the circumstances which accompanied the accident. This oblivion, if real, was fortunate; if assumed, was judicious.

Castleton and Lucy were thus once more left alone, and had she really been all in all to him, he could not more tenderly and anxiously have watched over her slowly returning strength. Before she was by any means restored to health, this tranquil state was broken in upon by a melancholy piece of intelligence, which, under present circumstances, affected Lucy more deeply, perhaps, than would be imagined by those of my gentle readers who have attended to the incidents of her early life. A letter arrived from her aunt Alice, announcing the sudden death of her mother.

The end of Mrs. Darnell had been in some respects characteristic. It will be recollected, that her neighbours were few and distant; and those she had, she did not often visit, excepting one, a farmer’s wife, who had, in the time of high prices, indulged in luxuries, which Mrs. Darnell had always thought sinful. Having heard that this woman’s daughter, a pretty boarding-school miss, had eloped from a country town with a cornet, Mrs. Darnell could not deny herself the satisfaction of going over, as she said, to condole with her; though in reality to impress upon her, how the _edication_ which _she_ had given _her_ daughter had just fitted her to be a lady of the land.

The length of this lecture, during the whole of which she had sat in wet clothes, brought on an inflammatory cold, in the early stages of which she had grudged herself a doctor, and in the more advanced period of the disease she had got up and gone down thrice to see the shamefu’ dinner that Richard had ordered Betty to dress for him, “which,” she said, “was just of a piece with all the rest.” This was her last grievance; for, by her ill-timed, economical imprudence, she had brought on a typhus fever, of which in a few days she had fallen the victim.

This event was a severe shock to Lucy. Mrs. Darnell was in no respect a bad, though an unamiable woman; and in the endearing relation of mother and daughter, it was impossible that, with such a child as Lucy, there should not have been many moments which had left an impression stronger than that of her habitual irritation of temper. Besides, in these cases, the mind is a sort of intellectual virtuoso, collecting and treasuring up, in proportion to their rarity, any traits of kindness which death has stamped with the fictitious value of reliques. On more general grounds, this melancholy event depressed Lucy severely. The abrupt manner in which she had heard of the catastrophe, proved to her how complete was her isolation from the home of her childhood, how absolute her separation from all those to whom formerly her every hour had been devoted, and with whom every care had been divided. She had always considered her parting with her family as only temporary, but this showed that, whilst with so few interests in common, communications were so rare between them, their parting had been transformed into a final one, without that warning which might have enabled her to have been present at its termination, or, at any rate, have somewhat prepared her to meet the worst with fortitude.

It was on her mother that this first blow had fallen; the same might shortly be the case with her father. The letter, which announced her mother’s death, contained little more than a recital of the melancholy event, and of the circumstances which had attended it; in the next communication, however, which she received shortly after from her aunt, much mention was made of her father’s lonely situation, and she learned how frequently he dwelt upon the privation of his dear child’s society, a loss which he now so deeply felt. Feeble as Lucy still was, this excited an immediate and anxious desire to go to him without delay, and she pressed her request upon Castleton more earnestly than she had previously done any wish, of the favourable reception of which she was not certain. Castleton was too much touched with her present depression of spirits, and, consequently, too anxious to accede to any desire of hers, to start any other difficulty than his fears that her strength might not be equal to the undertaking.

Morden Bay, it will be recollected, was in a very remote and secluded situation: there was only one carriage road to it, the same by which the pic-nic party had returned to Hornscliff, and that, besides being very rough and difficult, was exactly in an opposite direction to the place at which they were at present residing. It was difficult, therefore, to arrange the method of putting her views into execution, whilst she was still so far from being perfectly recovered, that even an easy journey would not have been undertaken without fatigue.

As soon as she could bear the attempt, a plan occurred to Castleton, by which the difficult part of the undertaking might be overcome. There was a little sea-bathing place, called Sandford, at about forty miles distant from Morden Bay, considerably nearer to Somersby, and here his friend, Lord Stayinmore, had his yacht in waiting for him, in case he should come back that way from his grouse-shooting in Scotland.

Lord Stayinmore was one of those persons, who, with unlimited powers to multiply their luxuries, often find that there is one thing which they cannot purchase, which is, the time necessary to the successive enjoyment of them all. This was quite the case in the present instance. Whilst staying at Cowes, he had been seized with a sudden fancy to have a yacht, and belong to the Royal Yacht Club. He had immediately purchased, at an exorbitant price, the fastest sailer; but this year the grouse had tempted him into Scotland; and as his shooting-box is in the Central Highlands, whilst “he lies amongst the moors,” his yacht was ordered to anchor in some port in the north of England, in case he should wish for a sail, upon his return.

It was not very agreeable to Castleton to ask a favour from a man of Lord Stayinmore’s character; but the circumstances of the case induced him to get over his delicacy on this head, and he was rewarded by receiving for answer a most prompt acquiescence in his request, putting the vessel entirely under his command, with a profusion of assurances of the peculiar felicity it gave him to contribute in any way to Lady Castleton’s comfort. The journey to Sandford was accomplished by easy stages, though hastened by Lucy’s impatience to relieve her father’s lonely situation.

Since the second letter of her aunt, Richard Darnell’s solitude had been broken in upon by a most unexpected return: which had happened so recently that the event had not been notified in another letter to Lucy. The ship in which George had been placed had been homeward bound much sooner than had been contemplated; having been freighted with some ex-emperor, or potentate on half-pay. George, upon the receipt of the account of his aunt’s death, had immediately obtained leave; had started for home to see his uncle, and was at present staying at Morden Bay. He had hitherto conducted himself, in his new career, to the complete satisfaction of all his superiors, and his own merit, coupled with Castleton’s recommendation, had placed him near his captain, who had made him his clerk and employed him in a confidential manner.