Mordaunt Lyndsey was an orphan, and not rich enough to wed a portionless bride; but, unlike Nevil, as he knew not the privation and bitterness of dependence, so was he utterly ignorant of those finely organized feelings which could debar his association with the wealthier than himself. He made his way in the world, for he had good connections, well-sounding friends, and so was courted and received. It was some little time before Mr. Lethvyn could give his consent to their union, his ambition looking higher for his Lucy, but his paternal affection was stronger than his ambition; and perceiving how completely her happiness was bound up with Mordaunt’s, for whom he himself felt prepossessed, he not only gave unqualified approval, but settled on his darling a portion almost startling in its profuseness, and promised his influence to get Mordaunt entered as partner in the firm. Lucy was still so young, that her parents prevailed on Lyndsey, though very much against his inclination, to wait six months, and celebrate their nuptials with the completion of her eighteenth year.
It had been with perfect sincerity that Nevil Herbert had promised Lucy to comply with her artless entreaty; and, like Mordaunt, not only for her dear sake, but from the same honourable and religious principles which actuated all his conduct. Why, he asked himself, should he hate and shun a fellow-creature because he was happier than himself? and could he have esteemed as he wished, and hoped to do, young Lyndsey, this principle would have been followed by a friendship as disinterested as was felt by man.
But this could not be. Rendered watchful and penetrative by his pure and most unselfish affection, a very, very brief interval of intimate association convinced him that Mordaunt was not a character worthy of one like Lucy. She would need, as a wife, tenderness as unvarying as it was exclusive, sympathy in all her high, pure feelings, as in detestation of all worldliness and art; encouragement in her simple duties and tastes; in a word, love as faithful, as clinging, as constant as her own, and this Nevil saw Mordaunt could not give. Even now, Lucy was not the world to him as he was to her, and Herbert could not argue that such difference was but in nature, that man could not love as woman; for his own aching spirit told him the creed was false.
Time passed. The Lethvyns and Mordaunt returned to their city homes, and Nevil to his solitary studies. Weeks sped on to months, the eventful day was near at hand, and Lucy’s bridal attire nearing its completion. The nuptials were to be on a scale almost princely; for as princes did Lethvyn’s ambitious spirit regard the merchants of England, forgetting, in his vast schemes and golden visions, that the wealth of yesterday may be poverty the morrow. The expected bridal was the talk of the city; anxiety for her child’s happiness the only thought of the mother; love for Mordaunt the sole existence of Lucy; and therefore it was not very strange that by these severally interested parties Lethvyn’s unusually harassed countenance and excited manner were unnoticed. Ten days before that appointed for the bridal, however, the blow fell—the firm failed. Lethvyn was utterly and irretrievably ruined, unable, by the dishonest conduct of one of the partners, even to pay one shilling in the pound.
The usual excitement which such events in provincial cities always create, was heightened by the universal sympathy for the principal sufferers. Lethvyn’s profuse benevolence and affability having made him generally beloved, many pressed forward eager to prove what they felt; but the unfortunate man turned from them with a heart-sickness, a loathing of himself and the whole world, which no human consolation could remove.
That her father should be so prostrated by his failure was a matter of grief, but scarcely of surprise, to Lucy; but that it could in any way affect Mordaunt, was a mystery she could not solve. Loving him, and him alone, with such love that she cared not how lowly was their dwelling—nay, rejoicing that she could now prove her love in a hundred little caressing ways, which in a wealthier and more influential station would be denied her—how could the thought enter her pure mind, that in his affection her wealth had equal resting with herself?—that his ardent desire for the speedy celebration of their marriage originated as much to possess her dowry as herself? the insecure tenure of merchants’ wealth never having for one instant faded from his mind.
To Elmsford, at the earnest entreaty of Mr. Evelyn, the ruined family retired; but vain were all exertions of his friends to rouse Mr. Lethvyn from his despondency; he drooped and drooped, and there were times when he would fix his eyes on his Lucy with such an expression of intense suffering, of foreboding misery, that she would fly to him, fold her arms about his neck, and weep, and then conjure him to tell her what he feared; and then he would fold her closer and closer, the big tears rolling down cheeks on which the furrows of age had been hollowed in a single week, but the cause of such emotion never found a voice.
Too soon, however, did the cause reveal itself. With every manifestation of strong feeling and real affection, Mordaunt Lyndsey confessed that to give Lucy the home and comforts which he felt she so deserved and needed, he had not the adequate means. They were both still young, and he would go abroad, seek his fortune in India, where a lucrative situation had been offered him; and if, indeed, his Lucy would love him still, through absence, and distance, and time, he would in a few brief years either send for her to join him, or return for her himself, as circumstances would permit.
Pale, rigid, almost breathless, Lucy sat while her lover spoke, her hands pressed tightly one over the other, and every feature still almost to sternness; but as he fixed the full glance of his eyes on hers—and they seemed to glisten in tears as he called her name in that accent of love which ever thrilled through her heart and frame—she fell upon his bosom, and, with a passionate burst of weeping, besought him not to leave her. Were there not some sweet spots in England—oh! surely there were—where they might live, even with his moderate means, in comparative affluence? Solitude, privation—all more welcome, rather than part with him.
“And so sacrifice your first bloom, your glowing youth my Lucy, and struggle on through life, wasting your best years, buried in a wild, amid rude boors, who could neither understand nor love you.”