University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
Mutual mistakes and deceptions. Mr. Lee meditates a most daring
exploit.

The exertions and emotions of Highfield, encountering
with his pains and weakness of body, in the
preceding conversation, brought on a dangerous
fever, which confined him several weeks. During
this period Lucia entirely intermitted her intercourse
with the azure coterie, and saw Mr. Goshawk but
once, when he came in a long beard, dishevelled locks,
neglected costume, and various other insignia of a
despairing lover. He talked of himself, his depression
of mind, his distress at the danger in which he
saw her at the time her horse was rearing and plunging.
But Lucia just now was deeply touched with
the danger of Highfield, and remembered while
Goshawk had only felt, the other was suffering for
his exertions to preserve her life. True feeling, and
real sorrows, open our eyes to the full detection of
those that are the spurious product of ennui or affectation,
and enable us to see distinctly into the hypocrisy
of others' hearts, by putting them to the test
of a comparison with our own. What Lucia felt
now, satisfied her that her former feelings were rather

reflected from the society to which she was accustomed,
and the false colouring in which their false
sentiment was enveloped, than from her own heart.
The subjection of her excellent understanding to a
long habit of associating with caricatures of literary
taste, and mawkish imitations of genius and sensibility,
was gradually undermined, by an estrangement
of some weeks, and a communion with those
who felt as nature dictated, and expressed their feelings
in the language of truth.

In addition to this, we hold it to be utterly impossible
for any woman, that ever claimed descent from
simple, tender hearted mother Eve, to behold a man
suffering pain and sickness, without feeling that sympathy
which renders woman, savage and civilized,
wherever and in whatever circumstances she may be
found, the assuager of sorrows; the nurse of calamity;
the angel spirit that watches over the dying
and the dead. If perchance it happens that this
heaven descended sympathy with suffering, is coupled
with a feeling of gratitude for some great benefit,
and a consciousness that their suffering is in consequence
of exertions made in her behalf, we confess
we can hardly believe it possible that this natural
tenderness of heart, and this feeling of gratitude,
should not in the end combine to produce a still
stronger sentiment, more especially in favour of a
young, handsome, and amiable man. We should
for these reasons, be inclined to discard our heroine
entirely and for ever from our good graces, had not

the present crisis of affairs, awakened her better self,
and recalled her in some degree back to the destiny
for which nature had intended her.

It was more than four weeks before Highfield
was decidedly convalescent. During this period
he had endured much, and nature occasionally took
refuge in that blessed delirium which, however painful
to the observer, is a heaven of oblivion to the
weary sufferer. It was at these times, when he
knew nobody, and could interpret nothing which
he saw or heard, that the pride and delicacy of
Lucia would yield to the impulses of her heart, and
she would watch for hours at his bedside, moisten
his parched lips, smooth his pillow, dispose his aching
head in easy postures, and once, only once, she
kissed his damp cold forehead. There was nothing
violent in his delirium; his wanderings were low
and disjoined murmurs, connected as far as they
could be understood, with the recollections of his
cousin. Sometimes he would pause and fix his unsteady
wandering eyes upon her, as if some remote
consciousness crossed his mind; but it was only a
momentary effort of memory, and died away in the
wild wanderings of a diseased imagination.

The crisis of the fever passed over, leaving Highfield
a wreck, just without the gates of death. But
youth and a good constitution at length triumphed,
and he became convalescent. As he recovered possession
of his reason, Lucia discontinued her watchings
and confined herself within the limits of ordinary

attentions. Highfield sometimes thought of a
confused dream, a vision of a distempered mind, representing
an angel hanging over his couch and
administering to his wants; but the impression gradually
passed away, and he remained ignorant of
the truth until long afterwards. Mr. Lee had been
in a passion during the whole period of Highfield's
danger, and the doctor had no peace day or night.
If he talked about bleeding or a warm bath, Mr.
Lee called him a Sangrado; if he suggested any of
the ordinary remedies, he was an empiric, and if he
thought of any experiment, he was a quack. In
short, the poor man led a terrible life, until his patient
got better, when the old gentleman grew into
vast good humour, and nothing could equal his conviction
of the Doctor's skill. Juba indeed insisted,
that he himself had a principal hand in the cure, by
concocting an African Obi of the most sovereign
virtue; but his master only called him an old block
head, and sent him about his business; whereupon
old Ebony went his way, muttering something that
sounded something like `calling massa out.'

It was now the beginning of June, when the
infamous easterly winds, that spoil the genial breath
of spring with chilling vapours, generally give place
to the southern airs of summer. Lucia and Highfield
had resumed their intercourse, but with no
great appearance of cordiality. Highfield remained
ignorant of the cares she had lavished and the tears
she had shed while he was unconscious of every

thing, and Lucia, fearful that he might possibly
know it, shrunk with a timid consciousness from
all appearance or indication of that deep feeling
which late events had wakened in her bosom. He
resolved, in the recesses of his mind, to refrain in
future from every attention to his cousin, but such
as their relationship demanded; and she secretly
determined to hide the strong preference she now
felt, under the impenetrable mask of cool indifference.
I will not, said Highfield mentally, I will
not appeal to her gratitude or pity, for what her
love denies; and I, thought Lucia, scorn to repay
with love a debt of gratitude to one who seems to
think that alone sufficient. Neither of them suspected
the other's feelings, and pride stepped in to complete
their blindness.

The consequence was, that, finding each other's
society mutually irksome and unsatisfactory, they
avoided all intercourse but such as was indispensable.
Highfield sought every opportunity of being from
home; and Lucia was more than ever in the company
of Mr. Goshawk, who became every day more
miserable and incomprehensible. He talked of
smothered feelings in a voice of thunder, and sighed
with such emphasis, that he on one occasion dislodged
a geranium pot from a front window, and
came very near breaking the head of a little chimney-sweep
who was sunning himself below. But
Lucia, though she encouraged his affectations, from
a mysterious, indefinite desire to be revenged on

Highfield for she knew not what, began to sicken a
little at his superlative azure. Of late she had
become too well acquainted with the substance of
feeling and passion to be deluded by the shadow,
and sometimes, amid the depression of her mind,
felt a great inclination to laugh at the mighty Goshawk
and his mighty verbosity. This heartless
intimacy contributed still more to estrange Highfield
from home and her society; for, unacquainted as
he was with her real feelings, he believed in his
heart that his cousin had a decided prepossession
for the empty sentimentalist. He had never altogether
recovered his strength or his colour; there
was a paleness in his face, a lassitude about his frame,
and a slow languor of motion, which gave to his
appearance a touching interest; and Lucia, as she
sometimes watched him without being seen, felt the
tears on her eyelashes, as she noticed the wreck of
his youth, and recalled to mind to what it was owing.
Thus matters remained; Highfield was only waiting
the return of his strength, to make a final effort to
disengage himself from the family and pursue his
fortune; Goshawk was daily meditating whether he
should sell the old gentleman's lands and buy stock
when he married Lucia and succeeded to the estate;
and Lucia was daily losing her vivacity in the desperate
attempt to be gay.

But what became of Mr. Lightfoot Lee all this
while? The old gentleman was in the finest quandary
imaginable. He grew so impatient there was

no living with him, and quarrelled with Juba forty
times a day. There was nobody else he could quarrel
with. Mrs. Coates had gone to pay a visit to
Hold Hingland, and renew her acquaintance with
Sir Richard Gammon and Sir Cloudesley Shovel;
Mr. Fairweather had gone to see the Grand Canal;
and to Highfield, he was bound by a solemn promise
not to say any thing on the subject nearest his
heart. Never was man so encumbered to the very
throat with vexations, that almost choaked him for
want of a vent; notwithstanding he had a most ingenius
way of letting off a little high steam now and
then. If he happened to encounter a beggar woman
at the door, he sent her about her business, with
a most edifying lecture on idleness, unthrift and intemperance;
if a dog came in his way he was pretty
sure of a kick; if a door interposed it might fairly
calculate upon a slam; and if the weather was any
way deserving of reproof, it might not hope to
escape a phillippic. Unfortunately for Mr. Lee he
had no wife, to become the residuary legatee of his
splenetic humours; but then he made himself amends
by falling upon the corporation for suffering the
swine to follow their instinct of wallowing in the
mud, and for furnishing mud for them to wallow in;
for not taking up the beggars, and for taking up so
much time in passing laws instead of seeing to the
execution of those already passed; for allowing the
little boys to fly kites in the street; for spending
money in monuments and canal celebrations, and
for every thing that ever occurred to the imagination
of a worthy old gentleman, who made amends
for his mouth being shut on one subject, by declaiming
upon a thousand others, about which he did not
care a fig.

He could not help seeing that his favourite project
was in a most backsliding condition, and that
every day Lucia was less with Highfield and more
with Goshawk. Whereupon he gathered himself together,
and uttered a tremendous libel upon literary
pretenders, rhyming fops, empty declaimers, and sentimental
puppies. Nay he spared not the azures themselves,
but pronounced their condemnation in words
of such horrible atrocity, that I will not dare the responsibility
even of putting them on record. I will
not deny, however, that in the midst of his blasphemies
he said some things carrying with them a remote
affinity with common sense. He affirmed that there
was among the women of the present fashionable
world, a hollow affectation of literature; an admiration
of affected sentiment and overstrained hyperbole;
that they placed too little value on morals,
and too much on manners; that an amiable disposition,
together with all the qualities essential to
honourable action, were held in little consideration,
while they paid their court to the most diminutive
dwarf of a genius, and listened with exclusive delight
to frothy declamations, the product of empty
heads and hollow hearts, alike devoid of manly
firmness or the capacity to be uselful in any honourable

rank or situation. He reproached them in his
heart, with being the dupes of false sentiment and
affected sorrow; and finally concluded his blasphemies
by giving it as his settled opinion, that the present
system of female education was admirably calculated
to make daughters extravagant, wives ridiculous,
and mothers incapable of fulfilling their duties.
But I entreat my beloved female readers to recollect,
that all this was soliloquized in a passion by an elderly
gentleman, born long before the invention of
steam engines and spinning jennies, and that I only
place it on record for the purpose of showing what
a prodigious “developement of mind,” has taken
place in the world, since Mr. Lee received his early
impressions.

The good gentleman sat himself down in his library,
and fell into a deep contemplation on the
course proper to be pursued in this perplexing state
of his domestic affairs; which lasted at least half an
hour. At length he started up with almost youthful
alacrity and rung the bell. In due time, that is, in
no very great haste, king Juba made his appearance.

“Juba,” said Mr. Lee, “bring out my best blue
coat, buff waistcoat, and snuff coloured breeches. I
am going to dress.”

“No time yet, massa, to dress for dinner—” said
Juba.

“I tell you bring out my best suit, you obstinate
old snowball—I am going to pay a visit to a lady.”

“A lady sir, massa!”

“Ay, a lady—is there any thing to grin at, in
my visiting a lady, you blockhead?”

“Juba,” quoth Mr. Lee while dressing himself,
“Juba, how old am I?”

“Massa, fifty-eight, last grass.”

“No such thing, sir, I'm just fifty-five, not a day
older. How should you know any thing about it?”

“Why I only saw massa, de berry day he born—
dat was—ay let me see, was twenty-second day
of—”

“Hold your peace, sir—you've lost your memory,
as well as all the five senses, I believe.”

“Well, well, no great matter if massa, two, tree
year older or younger—all de same a hundred years
hence.”

“But it is matter I tell you, sir—I'm going to be
married.”

“Married!” echoed Juba, his white eyes almost
starting out of his ebony head—“married!” He
saw at a glance such a resolution would be fatal to
his supremacy.

“Ay, married; is there any thing so extraordinary
in that?”

“But what Miss Lucy say to dat, massa?”

“I mean to disinherit her.”

Juba's eyes opened wider than ever, and he
thought to himself the debil was in his massa.

“What young massa Highfield say to dat?”

“I don't care what he says; I mean to disinherit
him too.”

“Whew—whew!” was the reply of old ebony.
“Massa tell me what lady he hab in he eye?”

“Miss Appleby.”

“Miss Applepie too young for old massa.”

Juba had been long accustomed to call Mr. Lee
“old massa,” without giving offence, but now the
phrase was taken in high dudgeon.

“Old master—you blockhead, who gave you the
liberty of calling me old? I'm only fifty-five, and
Miss Appleby is twenty-two; the difference is not
great.”

“Yes, but when Miss Applepie fifty-five, where
old massa be den?” quoth Juba.

This was a home question. Mr. Lee dismissed
Juba, and sat down to calculate where he should be
when Miss Appleby attained to the age of fifty-five.
The result was altogether unsatisfactory. He again
rung for Juba, and directed him to put up his best
suit again.

“I have put off my visit till to-morrow.”

“Massa better put him off till doomday.” quoth
Juba to himself; and so massa did.