At the Vicarage of Elmsford, then occupied by our venerable host, Mr. Evelyn, Mrs. Lethvyn and her daughters were constant visitors; and there it was that Nevil Herbert, the young clergyman who had so deeply interested us, again met Lucy after a lapse of seven years. Formerly they had been frequent companions, from the near relationship of their parents; and Nevil had been accustomed to think of Lucy as the gentle, artless, affectionate little girl of ten summers, he had last beheld her. Her occasional letters, breathing the same fresh, child-like spirit, increased this illusion. She had called him brother, and often wished he had indeed been such; and he had laughingly acknowledged and promised to value the relationship. In those seven years of separation, however, Nevil’s lot had changed. At eighteen he lost his father, and the same stroke cast him and his mother penniless on the cold world. A rich relation promised to give him a collegiate education, preparatory to his taking orders, a living being in his gift. The offer, benevolently made as it was, might not be rejected; though to Nevil, the parting with his mother, for her also to endure the miseries of dependence, was fraught with such anguish, that he would willingly have worked for her in the meanest capacity, so that she might still feel free.
Mrs. Herbert was, however, much too unselfish to permit this; she soothed, urged, and in part comforted him, by the anticipation of the time when they might be once again together, assuring him that to contribute to that joyful end, much more painful alternatives could be borne than the one that she had chosen.
On all that Nevil Herbert had to endure in college, we have no space to linger. Suffice it he was poor—he was dependent; and however lavish may be the kindness and benevolence bestowed, it will not take away the sting contained in these two words, or permit the taking that station in the world for which such spirits pine. It is strange how often poverty will change to reserve, and bitterness, and pride, dispositions which in affluence would have been humble, and loving, and open as the day. And sad, oh! how bitterly sad it is that the cold, heartless world should fling such scorn and contempt upon that word, and shrink from the children of poverty, noble-gifted though they be, as they would from crime, and, by a thousand nameless slights and petty provocations, add a hundred-fold to the misery already theirs. Philosophy may preach, and religion soothe; but while such things are, poverty must ever be regarded as a doom of horror and of dread.
Nevil Herbert’s peculiarly sensitive nature caused him to feel these evils even more keenly than the multitude so situated; and therefore the rest and peace of the vicarage of Elmsford was, indeed, to him almost heaven upon earth. There nothing ever galled him, but all around breathed the balm of that true sympathy and appreciation, which, raising the drooping spirit to its proper level, restores its self-esteem, and consequently its happiness.
Nevil was just two-and-twenty when his ideal of female loveliness and innocence burst upon him in most exquisite reality, through the child-like loveliness and artlessness of Lucy. Alike the favourites of the vicar, he rejoiced to see them together, and never dreamed that to his petted Nevil danger might thence accrue. To him Lucy was still a child, as so she was to herself and all around her, but to one, and that one, unhappily, was Nevil. He guessed not her influence till he returned to his solitary studies, and then he felt, too keenly, that, despite his every resolution, he loved—and loved in vain; not only from their different stations, but that it was still only as a brother she regarded him.
The next recess found them again together, more closely than before, for Lucy was the old man’s guest equally with himself; but a change had come upon her—not towards Nevil, but in herself. The child had sprung into the woman—the incipient germs of thought and feeling burst into the full-blossomed flowers. There was a deeper tone in her sweet voice, a more intense light in her radiant eye, a fuller sentiment in her bright smile. Yet to Nevil’s eye alone these things were visible. None other, even of those who loved her best, saw the change; but Nevil read by the light of his own feelings, and they told him she, too, loved—and loved another.
It was even so, and from her own lips the artless tale was poured into his ear. She called and felt him brother, and claimed his sympathy as such; feeling that, did she conceal anything which concerned her happiness from one so true, and kind, and good as Nevil Herbert, she wronged him, and deserved to lose his friendship altogether; and even at such a moment Nevil’s martyr spirit did not forsake him. The hand, indeed, was cold and damp which pressed the fairy one held out to him, as she spoke, but the lip did not quiver, nor the voice falter, in which he assured her that her confidence was not misplaced—that her happiness and interest were dear to him as his own.
A few weeks brought Mr. and Mrs. Lethvyn and Mordaunt Lyndsey to the vicarage. Handsome, intelligent, and animated, there was much in the latter to possess and win. He had been Lucy’s partner at her first ball, and by the magic charm of his varied conversation, the magnetic power which fascinates at a first interview, and calling forth the yearning to know more, gradually changes into earnest and lasting love, fixed that evening indelibly on her mind and heart.
It is in vain to argue either on the birth, the nature or the duration of love. It may spring into existence unconsciously; becoming so completely part of our being, that it remains unknown until some sudden shock of joy or grief awakens us from our rest, and dooms us to an almost overpowering sense of joy or an equal intensity of grief; or one little hour may reveal depths within the human heart, whose existence was never known before—will awaken restless, baseless imaginings, that linger, strengthening with every interview, till the earthly fate is fixed for ever. And how may we argue on this, how seek its explanation? Yet who, that hath once opened the wide, mysterious volume of the human heart, will deny that so it is?
It was so with Lucy. She who had remained free and child-like in her intercourse with Nevil Herbert (though her character assimilated with his far more than with Lyndsey’s), was chained and bound for ever beneath the magic of Mordaunt Lyndsey’s voice and smile. The spell of their first interview lingered to the second, and each day, each week strengthened Lucy’s love.