CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
“When I was only two years old, my real mamma died,” Lucy commenced, “and papa’s sister, who was a great deal older than papa, came to take care of us. I had a brother five years older than I. Aunt Mabel was so kind to us, and let us do just as we pleased about everything. I don’t see why things could not have gone on like that always, because as soon as I grew up I intended to take charge of the house and run it for papa. I am thirteen now so it wouldn’t have been long before I could have done it. But when I was ten years old, my brother died, and after that, papa stayed away from the house all he could, although Auntie Mabel was always talking to him about his duty to me.
“Well, one day, when I was eleven years old, papa came home, and the very minute I saw his face I knew something had happened.
“‘Goodness, papa,’ I said, ‘you look as though you had had good news!’ ‘I have, my dear,’ he said, and then somehow as I looked at him I had such a funny feeling. All at once I didn’t want toknowwhat made him look so glad. So I just sat there and said nothing.
“‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’ he said, and I said, ‘I don’t know whether I do or not.’
“Papa came over and put his head down on my shoulder the way he used to when he called me his little comforter, and said, ‘Oh, yes, Lucy, you want to know! Please say you want to know what your daddy has to tell you.’
“So I said, ‘All right,’ and Elise, he was going to get married! Oh, I just hated it! He told me lots about the lady. She was from Boston, and that was why I had never seen her, and had never heard about it. She had never been in Louisville. He said she was beautiful, and she did look nice in the picture he had in his pocket case, and he said she was just as lovely as she could be. I just sat there and let him talk, and finally he said, ‘Well, chicken, what do you think about it?’ I don’t know what made me say what I did. Somehow it popped out before I thought. I said, ‘Are you sure she isn’t marrying you for your money?’
“And papa sort of stiffened up and looked hard at me, and finally he said in a queer voice, ‘Good Lord, how old are you?’ I said, ‘I am eleven,’ and he said, ‘Well, you sound like Mrs. Worldly Wiseman, aged fifty. I suppose you will feel better if I say that the lady has more money than I have, and that I will be lucky if people do not claim thatIhave been the fortune hunter.’
“‘Well, whatisshe going to marry you for?’ I asked. ‘She says she loves me,’ papa said. Isaid, ‘We don’t want her here! We are getting along all right.’ Oh, I didn’t mean to be so ugly, but somehow Ihatedto have papa marry anyone, and I didn’t know this lady. So papa went off awfully cross at me and the next person was Auntie Mabel. Papa had told me first; he thought he ought to, and then he went up and told Aunt Mabel. She came down pretty soon. I was right there in the big chair, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a stranger in the house.
“Auntie said, ‘Well, Lucy, what do you think of the news?’ I said, ‘It is nothing to us; we can keep in our rooms most of the time.’
“‘I can’t,’ said Aunt Mabel, ‘because I shall leave when she comes. Not that I have the slightest objection, but all the same off I go. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but Henry waited so long that I hoped he was going to let well enough alone. But men are all alike!’ And shedidgo, Elise, the very day before papa brought the lady home. And Icouldn’tgo because there was no place for me to go and Auntie wouldn’t take me with her because she said it would make papa angry. So I had to stay whether I wanted to or not. It was perfectly awful!”
“Poor, poor Lucee!” murmured Elise, patting the hand she held.
“I was expecting to see a lady ’most as old as Auntie, and papa came up the steps with somebodyyoung. Why, she wasawfullyyoung, and had asmuch powder on her nose as anybody. I was looking through the curtains, and when I saw them coming, I ran upstairs and hid. Papa hunted and called, but I wouldn’t answer, and I heard him getting angry, and then she said, ‘Don’t mind, Henry; it is the most natural thing in the world. Let me find her, I know just where to look,’ and papa said in the silliest way, ‘Go ahead, darling, the house is yours, and the child too if you will have such a bad one.’
“Well, Elise, she came up those stairs and straight to the table I was under, as though someone had told her! The cover went down to the floor, and she lifted it up, and said ‘Coop!’ but I came out crosser than ever, and we had a horrid time.
“So that is the way it went. Worse and worse all the time. Papa was not cross with me because she wouldn’t let him be, and I felt pretty mean to think a stranger had to tell my own father how to treat me. At first she tried to act so sweet to me, and used to want to play with me. I told her I thought it was silly, but she said she had lots of brothers and sisters, and they always romped around together and had a fine time, and she said if I would only be friends we could have such larks. I told her I hoped I was polite and all she said was to wonder where I got my disposition.
“At first they used to make me stay down with them at night after dinner, but by and by I wasallowed to go upstairs. I said I wanted to study. I always kept a study book open on the table, and would go to reading it as soon as they came up. Papa used to come in once in awhile, and she was always asking me if she could help me with my lessons. She said she used to help her brothers.
“After a year, one of the brothers came to visit. He was a real nice boy, and I would have liked him only he was so silly about her; used to want to be with her all the time, and put his arm around her and all that! We had a real good time though, and I thought that I had been real nice to her before him until the day he went home. I was in the library, and he came in. I was just going to ask him to put his autograph in my album when he said: ‘Gee, you are a disagreeable little mutt! My sister would half kill me for saying it, but honest, I don’t see how she stands you!’
“Of course I just walked out of the room. I knew then that she had been telling things about me. And I knew that must be the reason why papa was so different to me.”
“Butwashe?” asked Elise wonderingly.
“Yes, he was, and Miss Hooker says it is all my fault. I had been coldly polite to her for a good while before that. I read about a girl who was abused by a stepmother and the girl was too noble to abuse her in return. She was just ‘coldly polite,’ the book said, and so was I. But after thathorrid boy went home I let myself be as mean as I could.”
Elise nodded. “I saw it in your face,” she said.
“And the more I thought of it, the more I was able toactugly. It is so funny, Elise, the way she makes everybody like her. Papa just gets worse all the time, and the servantsadoreher, and she is so popular with all the people who come to the house. She makes them all like her—all but me.”
“We will talk about that later,” said Elise.
Lucy sighed. “Well, things have been getting worse and worse, but I think we have both tried to keep it from papa. We hate each other, but we don’t want him to know how bad things are in the house. Papa is not happy, though. Oh, he has talked and talked to me and threatened to send me to school, and I always tell him I wish he would. But the other day the worst happened. Papa had gone to the office, and I was reading in the library, and she was walking around and around, fussing and singing under her breath and sort of acting happy. It made me so mad. Presently she saw me looking at her, and she said, ‘Don’t you wonder why I am singing?’ and I said, ‘No, I had not noticed.’ She went right on: ‘I have had some good news, wonderful news, and I wonder if you would like to hear it, Lucy?’
“I said, ‘I am not at all interested,’ and went right on looking at my book. She came over and leaned down on the table close to my face, andstared and stared at me. She said, ‘Look at me, you bad, difficult, cruel child, look at me and tell me why you are bound to hate me so!’ I never saw anyone look so angry. Then her face changed and got pleasant again, and she said, ‘What have Idone? Your own mother, if she can see this house and its unhappy inmates, knows that I have tried to make friends with you.’
“I remembered how furious the girl in the book was when her stepmother spoke of her mother, and I raised my hand and slapped her.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Elise, covering her eyes. “The poor, poor lady!”
Lucy went doggedly on.
“Of course I had no business to do that. She went to her room, and stayed there all day, and when papa came home he went right up. I was on my way to my room, and I heard him say, ‘I don’t believe it is a headache at all. I think Lucy must have been annoying you,’ and she said, ‘No,’ and papa said, ‘I shall send that child away to school.’ And she said, ‘No, give us one more chance. I am going to see Miss Hooker, her Scout Captain, and see if her influence is strong enough to make Lucy see things in the right way.’ As soon as I heard that I made up my mind to see the Captain first, so I went over and that was the day I saw you on the steps. We had had a long, long talk and she said I was all wrong and took away my trefoil. So here I am a dead Scout, and I amso unhappy that I don’t know what to do and I am going to run away. I want you to have my pony. I am going to send it over to your house tomorrow.”
“No, no, no!” cried Elise. “Everything is wrong; so wrong! Oh, let me think! That poor, poor lady! I am so, so sorry for her.”
“Sorry forher!” cried Lucy. “There is no need to be sorry forher! I am the one to be sorry for.Shehas everything.”
“Why has she?” asked Elise. “She has nothing that you have not. She has your most dear papa; so have you. You both have a most lovely home, everything beautiful, friends, comfort. You are safe in a great land, where no enemy may come and keel all you love. You have both the same things. You share them.” She sat thinking. “Yes, she is the one to be sorry for, because she is so disappoint. When she go to marry yourpère, she have something promised that she never gets and so she is full of mournsomeness.”
“She has everything papa can get for her,” said Lucy bitterly. “I wish you could see the pearls he gave her the other day.”
“Pearls!” said Elise scornfully. “What are pearls? He promised her something onlyyoucould give her, and now she has it not, and she is sad, and you are sad; everybody sad. What do you call her?”
“I don’t call her anything,” said Lucystubbornly. “I wait until she looks at me and then I say what I want to say.”
“Foolish, foolish one,” said Elise, “That is what no one likes. Besides, it is what you call rude not to speak the name. Most rude!” She saw a frown deepen on Lucy’s brow and gently pressed her hand.
“You wanted to tell me, did you not?” she said softly. “Now I want to tell you what I have not so many times told because I cannot speak of it unless my heart feels like it does bleed. I have hadsuchsorrows, and have seen such dreadfulness; I have been so cold, and hongry, and frightened. I have lived in the wet underground for so long time that all this makes a differentness in me from you. Something in me feels most old and weary. I keep it shut up because my darling Maman Hargrave wants me a happy child, and I want it for myself, but I do feel the oldness when I see others unhappy when they could so easily be full of joy. No, let me talk!” she added, as Lucy tried to speak.
“I must say this, I feel it on me, to save that poor lady her happiness. I shall be sorry for you some other day, but now I am most sad for her. When she marry your papa, she think all the time that she is going to have a most sweet daughter because that is how your dear papa would tell her of you, and then what happens? You know.
“Oh, Lucee, dear,dearLucee, there is one thing you must give to her, right now today quick.”
“What is that?” said Lucy, startled by Elise’s vehemence.
“LOVE!” cried Elise, her sweet voice thrilling. “Love! So easy, so sweet! Please, my Lucee, do not turn away. I know I am right on account of the oldness in my heart. That tells me. Think how most glad your own mother is to have the pretty one taking such good care of your papa and of you. Does she select your clothes?”
“Yes,” said Lucy.
“They are always the prettiest,” said Elise. “No other girl is so chic—what you call stunning. And so modest, so quiet. And you yourself say everyone but you loves her. You too must love her, and the best of all. Youmust! You are a Scout, and so you do always the right thing. Where is she now?”
“Home, I suppose. I came down to bring some of my last winter’s dresses. Oh, Elise, even if I could, it is too late. Ican’tgo back to the beginning again and start over.”
“Of course not,” said Elise wisely. “It is a most bad waste of time when we try going back to beginnings. It is better to start right from here.Anywhereis the best place to start. When you go home you start then! You start here by making some new sweet thoughts in your heart. Dear Lucee, please try! Please, for the sake of your Elise who also has to try to be always happy and not remember those blackness behind her. Won’tyou, please? I know I am right. Will you try to give her love?”
Lucy, the tears pouring down her cheeks, leaned her head against the shoulder near her.
“I don’t see how Ican,” she said huskily. “But I will try. I am so sick of everything the way it is.”
“Of course you are!” said Elise. “One is always seek of wrong. It makes a blackness over everything.”
“What will I do? How will I begin?”
“I cannot tell you,” said Elise. “You will know what to do. Something will tell you. Something always tells. I think it isle bon Dieu. Just trust and you will know what to do and to say. Come, let us go. I hear the meeting talking itself down the stairs. Is your car waiting?”
“Yes,” said Lucy dully as she allowed Elise to lead her through the store. “Oh, Elise, Idon’tlove her, and I don’t know what to do!”
“It is because of the hatefulness you put in your heart long ago that you do not love her,” said the wise, sad little girl who had suffered beyond her years. She stood at the door of the limousine and smiled at the little girl who sank back so wearily.
“Don’t forget it isnowwe make those beginnings. And you owe her what your dear papa promised her, your love.” She stepped back with a wave of her hand as the machine started away.
Lucy’s heart throbbed violently as sheapproached her home. Her one hope was that Mrs. Breen was out, so the moment might be delayed. But as she passed the door of the library she saw Mrs. Breen lying in a low lounging chair. How pale she looked! Lucy was quite startled to see the look of suffering and weakness on the beautiful young face. She had been too blind to notice what had been worrying her father of late. Was itherfault? Hadheractions brought her self-made enemy so low? Lucy was shocked.
She went up and put away her wraps. Still she did not know what to do or what to say. Twice she passed the library door. No thought came to her. She went in, not speaking, and selected a book at random from the nearest shelf. Mrs. Breen did not speak but her great blue eyes seemed to follow Lucy appealingly. Then Lucy found her courage. What she said was rough and crude but it came from the heart—an honest statement and appeal for tolerance and understanding. She came, clutching her book, and stood facing Mrs. Breen.
Her voice sounded so husky and shaken that she did not know it for hers.
“Mamma,” she said, stumbling over the unfamiliar word. “Mamma, you know I do not like you, but I am going to try to love you!”
And then, clasping her book with both hands, she fled.