Volume 55 / Part 11 — CHAPTER V.

When I recovered my consciousness, I was in my own room at Rayleigh Court. I looked round, and gradually a recollection of all that had happened dawned upon me. I thought of my journey down—the conversation between Mr Jeeks and Shookers—the new light that had been thrown on the behaviour of the once cherished, but now, for the second time, detested Lucy Ashton; and I turned round on the bed, and wished to relapse into insensibility for ever. A light step at the side of the couch attracted my notice. "Thank God," I heard a voice say, "my boy will live!" It was my father. I turned round, and opened my eyes. He took my hand, and looked at me a long, long time, with an expression of interest and affection that I had not seen for many years.

"You are better, Henry, but don't exert yourself to speak. The slightest effort may be fatal; therefore, for my sake, for all our sakes, be quiet."

He sat down, and put his finger on his lips.

"In a day or two, now that your health has taken a favourable turn, you will be able to able as many questions as you choose. In the mean time be perfectly composed, and all will be well."

My father was in mourning.

"You are dressed in black," I whispered.

"We have lost a relation," he answered, "a distant relation; and we must pay him the compliment of a black coat—but hush! my dear boy; if you utter another word I must leave the room."

Under the care and uninterrupted attentions of my father, I rapidly got well. In a week I could sit up; in a fortnight I moved into the library. The sun was clear and warm. I sat at the open window, and looked out upon the park, and beyond it to the tops of the trees in the Wilderness. It gave me a blow that I could scarcely bear. I rose up and tottered to the sofa. The weekly newspaper was lying on the table. I took it up, and the first paragraph that met my eyes was this—"Married at Verbena Lodge, on Wednesday last, Alfred Shookers, Esq. of Singapore, to Elizabeth, third daughter of Jeremiah Juffles, Esq., late of Ryleigh Grange."

I thought I had banished her from my heart for ever; but the suddenness of the announcement was too much for me. The paper fell from my hand, and I fainted.

"Poor boy, the change is too much for him!" I heard my father say. "He must not leave his room again till he is stronger."

I soon returned to my senses, and by a great effort recovered my spirits at the same time. I laughed and talked, and listened well pleased to my father's glowing picture of the possibility of our retrieving our fortunes by a marriage. I promised him I would sacrifice myself on the hymeneal altar for the good of my family; that I would marry the ugliest, oldest widow he could fix on; that I was anxious to be a benedict on favourable terms; and at all my protestations my father laughed aloud, and patted me on the shoulder. I could not believe it was the same man who had snubbed and bullied me all my life. All of a sudden he looked at his watch.

"Excuse me, my dear boy," he said, "I have engaged to dine with poor Jeeks at five o'clock."

"With whom?" I asked, shuddering at the sound of the name.

"With our neighbour, poor Jeeks," he said. "He has had a terrible dispensation, and is very much softened and improved."

"What dispensation?"

"Ah! I forgot: I was not to let you know. His poor son! he never recovered the accident. Two or three of Mr Shookers's teeth fastened in his head. He has been dead these five weeks: a most promising young man."

I was amazingly shocked at the intelligence.

"Is it for him we are in mourning?" I enquired.

My father nodded.

"Then he was our cousin, after all?"

"There certainly seems to have been a relationship in the Temp. of some of the Geos., as he called it. At all events the acknowledgment of it does not cost much, and poor old Jeeks is delighted. Good-by. Take care of yourself."

And so saying, he left me to my cogitations.

When once a favourable crisis, as it is called, takes place, the amendment in the health of a man of twenty-two is very speedy. I was aided also by seeing my father in such spirits. From day to day I picked up strength, and at the end of a week I felt I could venture out.

It was June again—the poet's leafy month of June—the anniversary of the very day on which I had so heroically enacted the part of the Master of Ravenswood against the pigs. I sauntered through the park; a fate was upon me; and I directed my steps, by some secret impulse against which I struggled in vain, to the Wilderness. "I may as well see the spot where I was so deluded," I thought, and recognized every object—alas! with what different feelings—as I drew near the trysting-tree.

"It was there," thought, "I saw Amy for the first time, as she was flying for protection; it was there I rushed forward to save her; it was there, under the oak"——As I directed my eyes to the spot, my heart leaped as if I had seen a spirit; for there, on the identical turf, with a work-basket on her lap, sat Lucy Ashton, or rather Mrs Shookers.

"So you've come at last!" she said. "Well, better late than never. Here's your seat all ready. I have expected you a long time."

"Are you a woman, or a fiend in human shape?" I began.

"Oh! a fiend by all means, if you like; but what has kept you all this time from Bushy Park? I am afraid your father won't give his consent; you would have come to me sooner if he had. But come, sit down and tell me all."

So saying, she went on with her knitting. She was lovelier than ever. She was dressed in a black silk gown, and wore a long black mantilla over her head. I had never heard any thing so musical as her voice, nor seen any thing so beautiful as her smile.

"I shall certainly not be your dupe any longer," I said; "and, believe me, the coquetry that might be captivating in Miss Elizabeth Juffles, is simply disgusting in Mrs Shookers of Singapore."

"Had not you better send out your opinion by the next India mail? Betsy has sailed by this time, and will just get out in time to receive your letter."

"Then, if you are not Betsy Juffles, tell me, in Heaven's name, who and what you are?"

"I'm a young girl of nineteen, who promised once to accept the hand of a young gentleman of the name of Rayleigh, who told me a hundred times he did not care about my family—that it was myself only he cared for: and he even went down to tell his father of the resolution he had taken, without making enquiry as to either my birth, parentage, or education. A wild young man he was, and rather changeable; for sometimes he would have made sonnets to my eyebrows, if he had had the gift of verse; sometimes he would have stabbed me to the heart, if he had had a dagger; sometimes I was his adorable Lucy Ashton; then his tantalizing Miss Poggs; then his hated Betsy; whereas, all the time, I was nothing but the selfsame anonymous but fascinating creature, who under all these names, and in spite of all these variations in his humour, loved him very truly, and has no doubt whatever of being his wife."

"You!—it would be safer to marry an incarnate demon!"

"Ah, safer perhaps; but not so respectable! Come, do sit down; what's the use of ceremony among friends and neighbours? Has your father consented to the match?"

"Do you think I asked him?"

"Why not? you don't like Gretna Green better, do you?"

"By no means—my intentions are changed."

"But you forget that I am neither Betsy Juffles nor Miss Poggs; I am nothing but Lucy Ashton."

"I wish you had never been any thing else," I said, beginning to soften; for who could resist such a voice and such eyes?

"Well, I tell you I am not changed—will that not satisfy you? Imagine that all that has passed since we parted here is a dream; that Verbena Lodge has no existence, and that Mr Dobble is an ass! Won't you sit down beside me, Edgar?"

I threw myself upon the turf, and she went on.

"I grant I have been a little capricious, Edgar, but there were reasons for it, believe me."

"What reason could there be for all these mysteries?"

"Why, in the first place, it was very amusing; in the next place, you did not know your own mind; in the next place, it was romantic; in the next place, I wanted to try you if your love was really sincere."

"And you found it wanting," I said in a tone of self-reproach.

"Not a bit," she replied, with a look that showed she knew my heart a great deal better than I did myself.

"At this moment I believe your affection for me rises triumphant above the horrors of Betsy Juffles or Miss Poggs; and so I think I shall reward you at last with an open explanation of who I am."

"No, dearest Lucy Ashton!" I said, taking her hand, "not before I swear that it is yourself only I care for—that I love you more than words can tell."

"Then you'll marry the gal of course," said a voice; and at the same moment the head of old Mr Jeeks was popped round from the other side of the tree. I sprang to my feet in a moment; and beside Mr Jeeks, scarcely able to restrain his laughter, stood my father.

"Matters have certainly gone too far," he said in his usual grave and sombre tones, "for either party to recede."

"Nobody wants it, I'm sure," replied old Jeeks.

"And I have no wish of the kind," returned my father.

"Then, if the young ones are agreed, I don't see what there is to forbid the bans," remarked Mr Jeeks.

"The sooner the better," returned the other; while, in a state of intense wonder, I looked at the speakers.

"What is the meaning of all this?" I asked Lucy Ashton, who had returned very sedulously to her knitting.

"The truth is this, Henry," said my father; "my friend and relative, Mr Jeeks, having lost his only son, has determined on making his eldest daughter Harriet, the young lady before you, the heiress of his house. By marrying her to you, the object of his ambition—the reunion, namely, of the divided portions of our ancestral estate—is gained; and as it appears you have no personal objection to the fair Harriet herself, I don't see why the addition of the Rayleigh manors should make her disagreeable."

A month settled every thing to the satisfaction of all parties. Mr Jeeks has settled himself in London; my father resides in Hartley Mead; and every day my wife and I go over to see the progress of the alterations and improvements we are making in the old house, which we are restoring to its original grandeur under the superintendence of Mr Barry.