“If you think that I am to be kept in order by a threat of what ‘parents’ will think!” said Mrs. Stone. “Do you suppose I will ever give in to parents? Why, it would be our destruction. But make your mind easy, I don’t mean to marry old Trevor, and he does not mean to ask me. Listen! you don’t know what you are talking about. That girl whom you think nothing of, that girl you are always taunting me about—and she is a very nice girl, as simple as a daisy and as true— Listen, Ellen! she will be the greatest heiress in England one of these days.”
Miss Southwood stood and listened with all her soul, her eyes and her mouth opening wider and wider, her imagination set suddenly on fire, for she had an imagination, and that of a most practical kind. The greatness of Lucy’s fortune had never been so plainly set before her. She was so much taken by surprise that she spoke with a gasp, as if all her breath and energy were thrown into the question.
“And what do you mean to do?”
“I mean to manage her, if I can, for her own good, and for the good of her fellow-creatures,” cried Mrs. Stone, excited too. “Power, that is what I have always wanted. I know I can use itwell, and Lucy is a good girl, good to the bottom of her heart. She will want to do good with her money; and money, money is power.”
Miss Southwood listened, but she did not share her sister’s enthusiasm. Her countenance fell into shades of disapproval and impatience. She shook her head.
“You were always so high-flown,” she said. “I never saw anything come of these heiresses. Manage her! you ought to know by this time girls are not such easy things to manage. But there is a much better thing you can do—marry her! and that will be good for her and us.”
Mrs. Stone looked at her sister with a smile which was somewhat supercilious.
“That is, of course, your first idea; and how, if I may ask, would such an expedient be good for us? if I thought of good for us—which is a thing that never entered my thoughts—”
“Because you have no family affection, Maria. I have always said it of you. You think of the girl more than of your own relations. How is it possible,” asked Miss Southwood, severely, “that you could have any hand in the disposal of an heiress and not think of Frank?”
Lucywent home a little impressed by what Mrs. Stone had said. It had never occurred to her before to think of anything but her father’s will and pleasure in the matter, or to suppose that she had anything to do but to acquiesce in his arrangements; but when the idea was put into her head, it commended itself to her reasonable mind. If he were, at least, to begin to do some of the things which he had by his will commanded her to do, what an ease and comfort it would be! and she could not but think that it would be a relief to himself, as well as for her, could he be made, as Mrs. Stone suggested, to see it in this way. In the first place, it would obviate on his part all necessity for dying, which, at present, was the initial requirement, the one thing needful, before any of his regulations could be carried out. Why should he die? She could not but perceive, as she thought over the whole subject dispassionately, according to her nature, that from his own point of view it would be a mistake if his life were prolonged. The whole scheme was basedupon his death. So long as he did not die it was a mere imagination. And why should this be? far better to get over this fundamental necessity by changing the construction of his plan altogether, and begin to carry out his wishes himself. When they were sitting together in the afternoon, which was wet and dull, the idea took a stronger hold upon her, and it was when Mr. Trevor was actually writing down something new that had occurred to him, that her thoughts came the length of speech. She looked up from her knitting, and he stopped, with the pen in his hand, and, looking round upon her, listened with a smile to what Lucy might have to say.
“Why should you take all this trouble, papa?” she said, suddenly. “I have been thinking; and this is what I feel sure of, that it should all be altered. You are not ill, or likely to die. Instead of writing out all these orders for me, would it not be much better if you would put that paper aside and do the things you have put into it yourself?”
He looked at her over the top of his spectacles with an air of consternation.
“Do the things myself! what things?” he said, then paused and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, and gazed at her almost fiercely with his small keen eyes. “That paper!” he repeated; “do you mean the will, my will, Lucy?” The tone in which he spoke was as if it had been the British Constitution which Lucy proposed to set aside.
“Yes,” she said. “You see, papa, I shall be very young, I shall not have very much sense.”
“You have a great deal of sense, Lucy,” he said, mollified, “far more than most girls. Providence has made you for the work you have got to do.”
“But, papa,” she said, “I shall be very young; it will be very hard upon me to decide what is to be done with all that money, and to give and not to give. It will be very hard. How should I know which are the right people? I should either want to give to everybody or to nobody. I should throw it away, or I should be too frightened to make any use of it at all.”
“That will be impossible,” said old Trevor, with a nod of satisfaction; “I have taken precautions about that.”
“Then I should give foolishly, papa.”
“Very likely, my dear, very likely; every one has to pay for his own experience. It is a very dear commodity, Lucy; I can’t give you mine, you must get it for yourself, and it has always, always to be paid for. There is no question about that.”
“But, papa, would it not be a great deal better—you who have this experience, who have paid for it and got it—instead of living quietly here as if you were nobody, to do it all yourself?”
The old man laughed.
“There you have hit it, Lucy,” he said, “there you have hit it, my dear. I live quietly, as if I were nobody—and I am nobody—that is exactly the state of affairs.”
“But,” she cried, with great surprise and indignation, “if you mean nobody in family, then neither am I, but the money, the money is all yours to do with it whatever you please.”
Once more he laughed, and chuckled, and lost his breath, and coughed before he could recover it again; and whether it was the laughing, or the coughing, or something else, Lucy could not tell, but the water stood in his eyes.
“You are mistaken, Lucy, you are mistaken,” he said. “You must understand the truth, my dear; neither am I any one to speak of, nor is the money mine. I have made a little in my life—oh, very little—a poor school-master’s earnings—what are they, nothing to make a fuss about. I’ve put my little savings away for Jock, you know that. A few thousand pounds, just as much as will give him a start in the world, if it is well taken care of.”
“Papa, you ought to give Jock the half,” said Lucy reproachfully; “it is not fair that he should have nothing, and that all should come to me.”
“Listen to her!” said the old man; “first telling me to spend it myself, and then to give half to the boy. Nothing of the sort, Lucy; I know what justice is, and I mean to do it. Do you think I could take poor Lucilla’s money to make that brat a gentleman? Why, it’s a kind of insult to her, poor thing, that he’s there at all. I don’t say a word against his mother, Lucy, but I always felt I never ought to have married her. I was not like a young man, I was middle-aged even before I married poor Lucilla, and I had no business to have the other; it was a mistake, it was an affront to your poor mother. People say that you show how happy you’ve been with the first when you get a second, but I don’t go in with that. When I think of facing these two women and not knowing which I belong to, I— I don’t like it, Lucy. Lucilla was always very considerate, and made great allowances, but there are things a woman can’t be expected to put up with, and I don’t like the thought.”
The humor and half-ludicrous pathos of this explanation, which was made between a laugh and a sob, was lost upon Lucy, who wasaltogether taken by surprise, and whose sense of humor was but little developed. She gazed at him with her eyes a little more widely opened than usual, not knowing what to say. Had she been a more experienced person, no doubt she would have consoled him with the reflection that husbands and wives, as we are told, do not stand exactly on the same footing in the next world. But she did not feel capable of saying anything in opposition to this matter-of-fact compunction; it has much in it which commends itself to the unsophisticated. She only gazed at her father, seeing difficulties in the way of his exit from the world which she had never thought of before.
“But that is neither here nor there,” he said, with his usual chuckle much subdued. “It is only to explain to you why I won’t give anything but my own savings to Jock. I have often told you so before, but now you know the reason why.”
Lucy was silent for a time, pondering over all this then she said, in the same serious tone. “But papa, I don’t see that what you have said is any answer to my question. I want to know why you should live here so quietly and save, and leave everything to me to do, when it would be so much better to do it yourself.”
“Some one has put this into your head.”
“No; only something set me thinking—why shouldn’t you, papa, take a great house instead of this; and have carriages and servants, and do all these things—giving and endowing, and building and setting up—that you want me to do—”
The old man laughed with less complication of sentiment than before. “I should make a fine country gentleman,” he said, “to sit down and hob and nob with the Earl and Lord Barrington, and Sir John and Sir Thomas. What should I do with grand carriages, that never go outside these four walls, or with men-servants, when I can’t bear the sight of ’em? No, no! and I shouldn’t like it, neither. I can put it all down on paper for you; but I shouldn’t like to do it myself. I like to stick to the money, Lucy. I like to lay it up, and see it grow—that’s my pleasure in life. It makes me happy when the stocks go up. Interest and compound interest, that’s what pleases me.”
“But, papa,” said Lucy, astonished, “thatis all quite different;” she nodded her head toward the will always lying in the blotting-case within reach of his hand. “There it is all spending and giving; over and over again you say there is to be no hoarding up, no putting by.”
“Ah!” said old Trevor, rubbing his hands with enjoyment, “that is for you; that is a different thing altogether. When I’ve had my own way all my life, down to the last moment, why, then you shall have yours.”
“How can you call it mine?” she said. “I don’t think I want to have my own way—except in some things. I am very willing to do what you tell me, papa; but it will not be my will—it will be your will. Why, then, shouldn’t you do it yourself, and have the pleasure of it, and not leave it to me?”
“The pleasure of it!” he said. And then paused and cleared his voice, and drew his chair nearer to hers. “Look here, Lucy,” he said, “you have heard something about your mother—not very much; but still you have heard something. She was a good woman, a very good woman. She was not of my kind. In the way of money, she let me manage—she never interfered. But still she was not of my kind. She was a woman that had little but trouble in this world, Lucy. She was what people call an old maid when we married. We were both old maids for that matter,” he added, with his usual chuckle, “and she had always had a hard life. She the old maid of the family; when anything was wrong, she was the one that was sent for. She was the one that nursed them all when they were ill. Father and mother—she closed both their eyes. She never had time to think what was going to become of her. When she came back to Farafield to live with poor Robert, nobody knew he was rich. It was the old story over again. She thought she was coming only to nurse him, and slave for him till he died. Your mother was a good woman—a very good woman, Lucy—”
His voice was a little thick, and the tears sprung into Lucy’s eyes.
“Oh, thank you, papa; thank you for telling me!” she said.
“That she was,” he went on after a little pause, “the best of women. And after we were married she had just as hard a life as ever. She was never well; and all your little brothers and sisters came—and went again. That’s very hard upon a woman, Lucy. A baby—who cares much about a baby? it does not seem anything to make a fuss about. There’s too many of them in the world; but to have them, and to lose them, is terrible work for a woman. We didn’t know about the money at first; and what’s money when things are going to the bad in that way? She never got what you may call the good of it. She was one of your giving people. Her hand was never out of her pocket as long as she had a penny in it: but she never rightly got the good of her money. In the first place,we didn’t know about it; and in the second place, why, you know there was me.”
“You?” Lucy looked at him with a question in her eyes.
“Yes,” said old Trevor, with a comical look of half real, half simulated penitence. “I wanted to tell you all this some time, to show you your duty—there was me, Lucy, I told you I was fond of money; and more still when I wasn’t used to it. I clutched it all, and wanted more; and she left it all to me, poor dear. She never even knew how much it was—she let me do whatever I pleased. I didn’t even always let her have what she wanted for her poor folks, Lucy,” he added ruefully, shaking his head; but there was something about the corner of his mouth which was not repentance. “I was a beast to her—that’s just what I was; but, poor thing, she never knew— She thought to the last we couldn’t afford any more. She left all the money matters to me.”
“She ought to have had her money for the poor, papa.”
“Yes, indeed; don’t I say so?” a half chuckle of triumph in his own successful craftiness mingled with the subdued tone appropriate to this confession. “And since she’s been dead,” he added, with a touch of complacency, “I’ve behaved badly by poor Lucilla. I acknowledge that I have behaved badly; and that is just why I am determined she shall have her revenge—”
“Her revenge!” Lucy looked at him aghast.
“Yes, her revenge; you, Lucy, a girl that shall be brought up a lady, that shall have everything of the best; that shall do as she pleases, and give with both hands. Ah, Lucilla, poor thing, would have liked that; she would have ruined me with giving,” he cried with a momentary tone of complaint; “but you, Lucy, you won’t be able to ruin yourself. You will always have plenty, you will be able to cut and come again as people say. Isn’t that what I have bred you up for since you were a baby? No, no, it isn’t I that could do it (and I wouldn’t if I could), nor Jock that shall have a penny. It is you that shall be the greatest heiress in England, and do the most for the poor, as Lucilla would have done. Please God she shall have her revenge.”
These strange words, which, though they were mixed with so quaint an admixture of comic self-consciousness, had yet passion in them, and odd kind of idealism and romance, passed over the placid head of Lucy without exciting any feeling but surprise. She was very much astonished. It was impossible to her to understand the vehemence of feeling, generous in its way, though checkered with so much that was not generous, in her father’s tone, andwas totally at a loss how to reply. They were alone, and when they were alone the conversation almost always turned on the will, which was not an enlivening subject to Lucy. Certainly the diversion she had made of their mutual thoughts from their ordinary channel had been more amusing; but it had been perplexing too. A little tea-table was set out in the middle of the room, the “massive” silver tea-service which had been one of the few gratifications got by Lucy’s mother out of her fortune shining upon it, in full display for the benefit of Mrs. Stone, who was expected. Mr. Trevor was in a garrulous mood; he had prepared himself to talk while he waited for his visitor, and Lucy’s questions had been all that were wanted to loosen the flood-gates. While she sat opposite to him, wondering, pondering, occasionally looking up at him over her knitting, taking into her mind as best she could the information she had got, but not knowing what to say, he proceeded as if unable to stop himself, with a little gesture of excitement, his hand sawing the air.
“No, she never had much comfort in her life—hard work, sick-nursing and trouble, one dying after another—poor Lucilla; but all she didn’t have her girl shall have. She was a governess one while. Always be kind to governesses, Lucy, wherever you see them. Your mother was a real good woman. She would have honored any station; she had the most unbounded confidence in me; she never asked a word of explanation.”
“Papa,” said Lucy, glad, in the disturbance of her mind, for any interruption, “I think I hear Mrs. Stone.”
“Then go down and meet her,” said old Trevor, but he went on with his recapitulation of his wife’s virtues. “Never asked a question, was always satisfied whatever I said to her—”
Lucy heard his voice as she went down-stairs. She was still wondering, not knowing what to make of it, but self-possessed in that calm of youth which nothing disturbs. It was odd that her father should speak so. He had never been so confidential, or talked of himself so much before; altogether it was strange, tempting her half to laugh, half to cry; but that was all. She went down quite composedly to meet Mrs. Stone, who was untying her white Shetland shawl from her head in the hall. Lucy saw that Mrs. Ford was peeping from the parlor door at the visitor, with something like a scowl upon her face. Mrs. Ford distrusted and feared the school-mistress; she thought her capable of marrying old Trevor, notwithstanding his years, and of dissipating Lucy’s fortune, and perhaps raising up rivals to little Jock in his sister’s affections; for Lucy’s affections were all he had to look to, Mrs. Ford was aware, and she thought it was a wicked shame.
“I hope you are better than when I saw you last,” Mrs. Stone said, casting a quick glance around her. She knew everything very well by sight in Mr. Trevor’s not very comfortable room, the white silky mats, the blue curtains, the little table groaning under that tea-service, which was easy to see weighed as many ounces as a tea-service could be made to weigh. How much more comfortable, she could not but think, the rich old man might have been made; but then he did not know any better, and Lucy did not know any better; they were used to it; they liked this as well as the best. What a blessing for Lucy that as long as she was young enough to be trained she had fallen into good hands! Mrs. Stone took the big easy-chair which Lucy rolled forward to the other side of the fire, and sat down after that greeting. She saw more clearly than Lucy did the excitement in old Mr. Trevor’s eyes. What was it? An additional glass of wine after dinner, Mrs. Stone thought, a very small matter would be enough to upset an old man sedentary and crippled as old Trevor was.
“Never was better in my life,” he said; “that is, I am getting old, and my legs are not good for much, as you know, ma’am; but, thank God, I have plenty to keep my mind occupied and interested, and that is the great thing, that is the great thing—at my age.”
“Always thinking about Lucy,” Mrs. Stone said.
“Yes, always about Lucy. She is worth it, ma’am, a girl with her prospects is something worth thinking about. She has all the world before her, she has the ball at her foot.”
“Ah, Mr. Trevor, that is what we always think when we are young; everything that is good is going to happen to us, and nothing that is evil. We think we can choose for ourselves, and make our lives for ourselves.”
“And so she shall,” said old Trevor, “ay, that she shall. I beg your pardon, ma’am, but when I speak of Lucy it isn’t merely as a little bit of a girl with her life before her. I think of the place she is to take, and the power she will have in her hands.”
“You mean her fortune, Mr. Trevor. Dear child, give me a cup of tea. You think it is not a bad thing to talk so much to her about her fortune?”
“No, ma’am,” said the old man; “on the contrary, the very best thing possible. It would be too great a weight for any one not used to it. You know it fills my mind night and day. I’ve got to prepare her for it, and put all straight for her as far as I can. There ismany a great person that has not the weight on her shoulders that little thing will have, and that is why I sent for you.”
“Asked me to come and take tea,” said Mrs. Stone, smiling.
“No sugar, my dear. Yes, no doubt we have to train her for her future responsibilities. I do it by trying to make her a good girl, Mr. Trevor, and I think I have succeeded,” the lady added, putting her hand affectionately on the girl’s shoulder. Lucy, standing between the two, with the cup of tea in one hand and a plateful of cake in the other, looked as completely unexcited by all this talk about her, and as unlike a personage of vast importance, as personages of importance often contrive to do.
“She is a good girl by nature,” said her father somewhat sharply. “I want to tell, ma’am, of a trust I have appointed you to in my will along with others,” he added hastily—“along with others. I have arranged that in case of Lucy’s marriage—”
“Had not you better step down-stairs a little, my dear, and just see whether Jane is waiting in the hall?” Mrs. Stone said hurriedly. “Perhaps Mrs. Ford would allow her, as it is so cold, to go down-stairs.”
“You need not send her away,” said old Trevor grimly, “she knows all about it. I don’t want her to be taken by surprise when I die. I want her to know all that is in store for her.”
“But about her marriage, my dear Mr. Trevor; at seventeen these ideas come too quickly of themselves.”
“I’ll tell you, ma’am, Lucy is not like common girls,” he said testily; “when a woman’s in a great position, she has to learn many things that otherwise might be kept from her. What had the queen to do, I would like to know? Settle all her marriage herself, whatever any one might think.”
“Poor young lady! I used to hear my mother say that her heart bled for her. But you don’t compare our Lucy with her majesty, Mr. Trevor! Dear Lucy! though she were the richest girl in England, it would still be a little different from the queen.”
“Madame,” said old Trevor solemnly, “so far as I am aware, shewillbe the richest girl in England, and, therefore, surrounded by dangers: so I’ve devised a scheme for her safety, and I have put you on the committee. If you will wait a moment till I have got my spectacles I will read it all out to you here.”
Mrs. Stone was the third person to whom that wonderful paragraph had been read. She listened with surprise, gradually rising into consternation. When she saw, with the corner of her eye, Lucy coming softly from behind the shelter of the screen, she madean imperative gesture, without looking round, to send her away. The girl obeyed with a smile. Why should she be sent away? she had already heard it all.
She went outside and sat down on the stair to wait. The draught that swept up the well of the staircase did not affect Lucy; her blood, though it flowed so tranquilly through her veins, was young and kept her warm. She had given up easily the attempt she had made to influence her father, and now she half laughed to herself at the fuss they all made about herself. What were they making such a fuss about? The importance her father attached to all her future proceedings was to Lucy just about as sensible as Mrs. Stone’s precautions for preventing her hearing something she knew perfectly; but she could afford to smile at both.
What did it matter? Lucy felt that everything would go on all the same, that to-day would be as yesterday, and life quite a simple, easy business, whatever they might say.
Theimportant communication made to her by Mr. Trevor made a great impression upon the mind of Mrs. Stone, but it was an impression of a confusing kind, disturbing all her previous plans and thoughts. It had been her intention, ever since Lucy was placed in her care, to take a decided part in the shaping of the girl’s life. Her imagination had been roused by the situation altogether—a young creature, simple, pliable and unformed, with no relations who had any real right to guide her, and with a great fortune—what might not be made of such a charge! It was not with any covetous inclination to employ her pupil’s wealth to her own advantage that Mrs. Stone had determined by every means in her power to acquire an influence over Lucy. She was much too high-minded, too proud, for anything of the sort. No doubt there was an alloy, if not of selfishness, at least of self-regard, in her higher motive, but the worst she would have done would have been to carry out some pet projects of her own by Lucy’s help, not to enrich herself. She thought, perhaps, or rather, without thinking was aware, that her own importance would be increased by her influence over the heiress; but nothing in the shape of personal aggrandizement was present to her thoughts, even by inference. Mr. Trevor’s communication, however, disturbed her mind in the most uncomfortable way. When you are contemplating a vague influence of a general kind to be gradually and with trouble acquired, it is demoralizing to have a definite power suddenly thrust into your hands; and it is hardly possible to refrain from exercising that power were it but for the sake of the novelty and unexpected character of it,en attendantthe larger influence to be acquired hereafter. As Mrs. Stone sat in front of Mr. Trevor’s fire listening to him, with a ringing in her ears of sudden excitement, holding her cup of tea in her hand, with external calm, yet feeling every pulse flutter, there suddenly appeared before her bewildered eyes, not written on the wall like Belshazzar’s warning, but hanging in the air without any material support, like an illuminated scroll, in big luminous letters, the name which her sister had suggested; the name of Frank—FRANK—but bigger, a great deal bigger, than any capitals, dazzling her eyes with the glow in them. Her first feeling was alarm and a kind of horror. It was all she could do to restrain the outcry that rose to her lips. She started so that she spilled her tea, which was hot, so that she started still more; but upon this little accident she put the best face possible.
“It is nothing, my love, nothing,” she said, when Lucy hastened to her rescue; “only a little awkwardness on my part, and my old black silk won’t hurt.” She looked up with a smile in Lucy’s face, when lo! the appearance sailed into the air over Lucy’s head, and hung there magically, almost touching the girl’s fair hair. “How awkward I am,” Mrs. Stone cried, looking quite pale and spilling more tea. She thought it was something diabolical, a piece of witchcraft; but it can not be supposed that it was an easy matter to drive it out of her thoughts. She scarcely knew what happened afterward, till she had bidden the Trevors good-night, and found herself in the muddy bit of road which led to the White House, and got rid, in the darkness, of that startling legend. Was it diabolical, or was it a suggestion from heaven? Perhaps it would have been more near the mark if she had remembered that it was a suggestion from Miss Southwood, which she had crushed with infinite scorn when it was made; but Mrs. Stone did not, or would not, remember this. The night was damp and foggy, and the lights of her own house appeared to her all blurred and hazy, with prismatic halos round them, like so many sickly moons, and the intermediate bit of road was fitfully lighted by the lantern carried by her maid, which shone in the dark puddles and glistening wet herbage.But Mrs. Stone was scarcely conscious where she was, as she picked her way lightly from one bit of solid path to another; her mind was so full that she might have been in Regent Street, or on a Swiss mountain. Frank! was it a diabolical suggestion, or a revelation from heaven?
All was quiet in the White House when its mistress got in. It was ten o’clock, and the doves were in their nests, which, to be sure, is but an ornamental way of saying that all the girls had gone to bed. The light burned low in the hall, as it burned all night, for Miss Southwood thought light was “a protection” to a lonely house; and the open door of the drawing-room, in which it was the custom of the ladies to sit with their pupils after tea, showed something of the disorderly look of a room deserted for the night, notwithstanding the tidiness with which all the little work-baskets were put out of the way. Besides that open door, however, was another still shining with firelight and lamplight, where a little supper-tray had just been placed on the table, and a pretty silver cover and crystal decanter, not to speak of a delicate fragrance of cooking, showed that the mistress of the house was pleasantly provided for. No mystery was made of this little supper, which everybody knew was Mrs. Stone’s favorite meal; but all the girls had a curiosity about it, and the governesses felt themselves injured that they were not privileged to share its delights. Mrs. Stone, however, stoutly defended her privacy at this hour of repose. She sat down with a sigh of relief, opposite to her sister, who presided at the little white-covered table.
“You are tired,” said Miss Southwood, sympathetically, “and that girl has forgotten as usual to put the claret to fire. But this bird is very well cooked, and the bread-crumbs are brown and crisp, just as you like them. Why was it he sent for you? something quite trifling, I suppose. I wonder how parents can reconcile themselves to the trouble they give.”
“It was not a trifle, it was about Lucy’s marriage,” said the other, “or rather about preventing Lucy’s marriage, I think. I am to have a finger in the pie.”
“You!Old Mr. Trevor is very queer, I know; is he going to take up that odious French system, and arrange it without any reference to the girl? But surely, Maria, you would never countenance an iniquity like that?”
“Iniquity! are you sure it is an iniquity? In some points of view I approve of it greatly. Do you think I could not choose better husbands for the girls than they will ever choose for themselves? How is a girl to exercise any judgment in the matter? Shetakes the first man that comes, perhaps, or the first fool she thinks nice-looking, and what is there sacred in that?”
“I thought you were always the one to stand up for love,” said Miss Southwood. “I never pretend to know anything about it myself.”
“Oh, when there islove,” said Mrs. Stone, “that is another thing. But what do they know about love? It is fancy, it is not love; how should they know?”
“I am sureIcan’t tell,” answered the unmarried sister, very demurely, “don’t ask me to give any opinion; you are the one that ought to know; and I have always heard you say, and understood you to uphold—”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried the other, impatiently; “when a thing has been said once, one is held to it forever, in this unintelligent way. You never consider how unlike one case is to another, or take the circumstances into account. Besides, all I said referred to a sentiment already formed. I would never tear two young people asunder that were fond of each other, because one was rich and the other poor; that is a thing I could never be guilty of. But this is a very different matter. To take care that a girl like Lucy Trevor does not make a foolish choice, or even,” said Mrs. Stone, with a certain solemnity and deliberateness of utterance, “to direct her thoughts to some one eminently suitable—”
Miss Southwood looked at her with eager eyes. After the manner in which her suggestion had been received at their former interview, she did not venture to repeat it; but she knew by experience that a suggestion is sometimes very badly received to-day, and accepted, as a matter of course, or even energetically acted upon, to-morrow; so she said nothing, but with eager though concealed scrutiny watched her sister’s looks. Finding, however, that Mrs. Stone said nothing more, but pensively eat her chicken, she resumed, after awhile, her inquiries.
“I suppose Mr. Trevor has been consulting you,” she said, “and I am sure it was the very best thing he could do. But, after all, Lucy is only seventeen, poor little thing! and a good girl, with no nonsense about her. Does he want to marry her off so young, the poor child?”
“I think,” said Mrs. Stone, reflectively, turning her chair to the fire, “he does not want her to marry at all.”
“Oh!” cried Miss Southwood in dismay. She had not married herself, she professed at once, when the subject was mentioned, her entire incompetence to give any opinion; but the idea that a girl’s friends should wish hernotto many filled her mind with amazement beyond words. Thenaïvetéof her conviction on this point betrayed itself in her unfeigned wonder. She could not believe it. “I suppose,” she said, “that he wants to keep the money in the family; and that means that he will marry her to her cousin, that young man, that Mr. Rainy.”
“Her cousin! you mean the certificated school-master, the Dissenter.”
“Oh, he is not a Dissenter; we met him at the rectory; he is a very rising young man, and clever, and—”
“You may save yourself, the trouble of enumerating his good qualities. I can’t tell how you know them; but Lucy shall never marry the school-master. I will refuse my consent.”
“You will refuse your consent? and what will that matter?” Miss Southwood said.
Mrs. Stone made no particular answer. She put her feet upon the comfortable velvet cushion before the fire, and smiled. She did not care to enter upon explanations, but she had made up her mind. The fire was bright, the bird had been good, and her modest glass of claret was excellent. She was altogether in a balmy humor, willing to enjoy the many comforts of her life, and to feel benevolently toward her neighbor.
“I think you are right,” she said, “and perhaps I am prejudiced. He is a rising young man. We have met him two or three times at the rectory, so he can not be a Dissenter; but he is not a gentleman either. How should he be, being one of those Rainys? I shouldn’t wonder if it was to keep him out.”
“If what was to keep him out?”
“By the way,” said Mrs. Stone, “I have a letter to write. Don’t let me keep you out of bed, Ellen. I am very much behind in family correspondence. Have any of the St. Clairs ever been at the White House since we came here? I can’t recollect.”
“Not one,” said Miss Southwood, with a beating heart. “Not one; and I have often thought, Maria, considering all things, and that they have no father, poor things, and are not very well off—and so nice, both sisters and brothers—”
“One does not want so many arguments. Frank may come and pay us a visit if he likes,” said Mrs. Stone, with much amiability. But it was not till the morning, when she came down first, as she always did, and put the letter, which had been left on Mrs. Stone’s private writing-table, ready for the early post, in the letter-bag, that Miss Southwood had the satisfaction of seeing that it was addressed to the favorite nephew, whose name she had not ventured to pronounce for a second time. Mrs. Stone had not been inattentive to the vision, the intimation, whether from heaven or the other place. He was to come and try his fortune in those lists.
Miss Southwood went about her occupations all day as if she trod on air; but she kept her lips tightly shut, and never asked a question. She was discretion itself. As for Mrs. Stone, after she had done it, many doubts suggested themselves. It was not for nothing, not by mere vice of temperament that she obeyed her own impulses so readily. Like all impulsive people, she was subject to cold fits as well is hot; but like many other impulsive people, she had learned that it was her best policy to obey the first imperious movement of nature. The thing was done, at all events, before the struggle of judgment began. And the answer she made to her own objections was a mysterious one. “Why not I as well as Lady Randolph?” was what she said to herself.
“Doyou know,” said Katie Russell, “there is a gentleman in the house? None of us have seen him; but he came yesterday. He is young, and tall, and nice-looking. He is their nephew. Mademoiselle says it is quite improper. Of course she oughtn’t to say so; and the girls don’t know what to think; for you know it is queer.”
“Why is it queer?” said Lucy. “If he is their nephew, he may surely come to see them. If they had a son, he would live here.”
“I don’t think so,” said Katie promptly. “Oh, no! if they had a dozen sons, not while the girls are here. It would never do. I have been at other schools, and I know. I have spent my life at schools, I think,” the girl said, with an impatient shrug of her shoulders, “and I know mademoiselle is quite right, though she oughtn’t to say so. I wonder, Lucy, if I will be as governessy when I am old? They almost always are.”
Lucy could not follow this quick digression. She gazed at her friend with wondering eyes. “You always jump so,” she said. “Which am I to answer—about the gentleman, or about—”
“Oh, never mind the gentleman. I only told you—it can’t matter very much to me,” said Katie. “It is for Maud and Lily, and girls of that set, that it is not right, or you— Is it true that youare to have a great fortune, Lucy? I always wanted to ask you, but I did not like—”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Lucy quietly; “why shouldn’t you like? Papa takes a great deal of trouble about it: but it does not matter so much to me. One is just the same one’s self, whether one is rich or poor; it will give a great deal of trouble. So I don’t care for it for my part.”
“Oh, I should care for it,” cried Katie. “I should not mind the trouble. How delightful it must be to be really, really rich! I should give— I should do—oh, I don’t know what I shouldn’t do! The use of being rich,” Katie added sententiously, “is that you can do as you please—go where you please, be as kind to everybody as you please; help people, enjoy yourself, buy everything you like, and yet always have something. Oh,” she said, clasping her hands, “to have to think and think whether you can buy yourself a pair of gloves—not to be able to get a cab when your mother is tired; and to grow old, and to grow governessy, like mademoiselle—”
“Mademoiselle is very nice, Katie. Don’t say anything against her.”
“Isay anything against her! I adore her! but she is governessy, how can she help it, poor old darling? Her mind is full of the girls’ little ways, and what they mean by this and by that, Lucy,” said the girl, stopping short to give greater emphasis to her words. “If we ever see each other when I am an old governess like mademoiselle—be sure you remember to tell me when you see me worrying, that the girls meannothingby it—nothing!This is the 21st of February. It is my birthday— I am nineteen. Tell me to recollect that I said they meant nothing—and that it’s true.”
“Are you really nineteen to-day?” said Lucy. “Older than I—”
“More than a year older. I wonder,” said Katie, with that patronage and superiority which the poor often show to the rich, “whether, when you are fifty, you will know as much of the world as I do now?”
Lucy’s companion was the governess-pupil, the one among the band of girls whose society her father had counseled her not to seek. Perhaps there was something of the perversity of youth in the preference which, notwithstanding this advice, Lucy felt for the girl whose friendship old Mr. Trevor had decided could be of no use whatever to her. Lucy was not nearly so clever as Katie Russell, who was already a great help in the school, and earning the lessons which she shared with the more advanced pupils. But Lucy was by no means so sure of her inferiority in point of experience asher companion was. She knew, if not the expedients of poverty, yet of economy through Mrs. Ford’s example, and she knew many details of a lower level of existence, lower than anything Katie was acquainted with; and even the shadow of her own future power which had lain upon her from her childhood had stood in the stead of knowledge to Lucy, teaching her many things; but she was a quiet person, thinking much more than she spoke; and she made no reply to this imputation of ignorance, though she thought it a mistake. She replied, with a little closer pressure of her friend’s arm, “Why are you so sure of being an old governess? You will marry—most likely the first of all of us.”
“Oh, no, no; don’t you know there are a million more women in England than men? It is in all the papers. Some of us will marry—you, for instance; but there must be a proportion—say five out of twenty, that’s not much,” said Katie, knitting her soft brows, “who never will, and I shall be one of them. For fun,” she said, throwing gravity to the winds, “let us guess who the other four will be.”
“Me,” said Lucy, with a gentle composure and indifference alike to matrimony and to grammar. “I think that is what papa would like best—”
“That is absurd,” said Katie; “you! You will have a hundred proposals before you are out a year. You will be the very first.”
“Put me down, however,” Lucy repeated. “It will be rather a good thing to be kept from getting married, if it is as you say. It will help to set the balance straight. There will be my gentleman for one of you.”
“You do not mean that you are to bekeptfrom marrying,” Katie cried, aghast. This made a still greater impression on her mind than it had done on Miss Southwood’s, and it suggested to her a sudden chivalrous idea of rescue. Katie too had a Frank, a cousin, between whom and herself there had existed from the earliest tiny a baby tenderness. If ever she was married, Katie had tacitly concluded that he would be “the gentleman.” They might set up a school together; they might work together in various ways. It was a vague probability, yet one in which most of the light of Katie’s future lay. But suddenly it flashed upon her, all in a moment, what a chance, what an opening was this for any man. Frank was poor; they were all poor; but if he could be persuaded to step in and save Lucy from the celibacy to which she seemed to think herself condemned, Frank’s fortune would be made. It was the basest calculation in the world; and yet nothing could have been more innocent—nay, generous. It blanched Katie’s cheeks for the moment, but filled her mind with a whirl of thoughts. What a thing it would be for him and all the family! If the dream should come to pass, Katie felt that she herself might give in at once, and make up her mind to grow old and governessy like mademoiselle; but what did that matter, she asked herself heroically. For a second, indeed, she paused to think whether her brother Bertie might not answer the purpose without costing herself so much; but anticipated sacrifice is the purest delight of misery at nineteen, and she rather preferred to think that this great advantage to her cousin and her friend would be purchased at the cost of her happiness. And Frank himself might not like the idea at first; her great consolation was that it was almost certain Frank would not like it. But he must learn to subdue his inclinations, she thought, proudly; would not she do so for his sake? Ifother peoplewere content to make that sacrifice, why should not he? And what a difference it would make, if a stream of comfort—of money and all that money can buy, ease of mind and freedom from debt, and power to do what one would—came suddenly pouring into the family, setting everything right that was wrong, and smoothing away all difficulties! To despise money is a fine thing; but how few can do it! Katie did not despise it at all. She forgot her companion while she walked on dreamily by her side, thinking of her fortune. Mercenary little wretch, the moralist would say; and yet she was not mercenary at all.
The girls were walking across the common by themselves. It was part of Mrs. Stone’s enlightened system that she allowed them to do so, in cases where the parents did not interfere. And so far as these two were concerned, even the consent of the parents was unnecessary; for was not Katie Russell, though only eighteen, a governess in the bud? and, accordingly, quite capable of acting as chaperon when necessary. Poor little Katie! this was one of the mild indignities of her lot that she felt most. Her lot was not at all a bad one at Mrs. Stone’s, where the head of the establishment backed her up quietly as indeed the one of her inmates with whom she was most in sympathy—and when the girls were “nice.” Girls are not all “nice,” any more than any other class of the community, and Katie had known what it was to be snubbed and scorned, and even insulted. But happily this was not the fashion at the White House. Still one mark of her inferior position remained in the fact that Katie, though so young, and one of the prettiest, of the band, was, being half a governess, qualified to accompany her peersin the character of chaperon. It was not quite clear that she might not be at that moment taking care of Lucy, who was less than a year her junior; but happily this idea had not crossed her mind. It was Sunday, which was a day of great freedom at the White House—a day given over (after due attention to all religious duties, need it be said? for Mrs. Stone knew what was expected of her, and you may be sure took all her doves to church with the most undeviating regularity) to confidences, to talks, to letter-writings. Some of the girls were covering sheets of note-paper with the most intimate revelations, some were chattering in corners, some reading story-books. Story-books are not necessarily novels— Mrs. Stone made a clever distinction. There was nothing in three volumes upon her purified and dignified shelves; but a book in one volume had a very good chance of coming within her tolerant reading of the word story. And some were out, perambulating about the garden, where the first crocuses were beginning to bloom, or crossing the common by those devious little paths half hidden in heather and all kinds of wild plants which were bad for boots and dresses, but very pleasant otherwise. It was along one of these that Lucy Trevor and her companion were wandering. The mossy turf was very green, betraying the moisture beneath; and the great bushes of heather, with all the withered bloom stiffened upon them, stood up like mimic forests from the treacherous grass. Wild bushes of gorse, with here and there a solitary speck of yellow, a premature bud upon them, interspersed their larger growth here and there. The frost had all melted away. In the little marshy pools, the water was clear and caught glimpses of a sky faintly blue. One willow on the very verge of the common had hung out its tassels, those prophecies of coming life.
There was a scent of spring in the air. “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to—” love, the poet says; and so, perhaps, does a girl’s. But before either is warmly awakened to that interest, spring touches them thrilling with a profusion of thought and planning and anticipation, not so distinct as love. The young creatures feel the sap of life mounting within them. Oft-times they know nothing more, and have formed no definite idea either of what they want, or why; but their minds are running over with the flood of living. Their plans go lightly skimming through the air, now poising on a branch, and again flashing widely on devious wings to all the points of the compass like so many birds. There was no immediate change necessary in the placid course of their school-girl existence; but they leaped forward to meet the future with all the force of their energies. Yet, perhaps, it was only one of them who did this. Lucy was too calm in the certainty of the changes that sooner or later would happen to her—changes already mapped out and arranged for her, as she was well aware—to be able to give herself up to these indefinite pleasures of imagination. But Katie leaped at her future with the fervor of a fresh imagination. She made up her mind to sacrifice herself, and give Lucy her cousin in less time than many would take to decide whether they should give up a ribbon. She sunk into silence for a little time while she was pondering it, but never from any indecision; only because, in her rapid foresight of all that was necessary, she did not quite see how the first step, the introduction of these two to each other, was to be brought about.
Just then the girls became aware of two other figures, bearing down upon them from the other side of the common—two larger personages making their slight youth look what it was, something not much more than childish. There was Mrs. Stone and the unknown gentleman who had arrived at the White House, to the scandal of the old governess, last night. When the girls perceived this they mutually gave each other’s arms a warning pressure. “Oh, look, here he is!” said Katie, and, “Is that the gentleman?” Lucy said. The encounter brought to the former a quick flush of excitement. She wondered a little, on her own account, who the gentleman was; for an apparition of such an unusual description in a girl’s school had naturally excited all the inmates. A man under Mrs. Stone’s roof! Men were common enough, things at home, and aroused no feelings of curiosity or alarm. But here it was quite different. Whence came he, and what had he come for? But besides this, there was another source of interest in Katie’s thoughts. As she conceived her own plot, a glimmering sense of the other came upon her by instinct. Why had this wonderful occurrence, this arrival of a gentleman, happened at Mrs. Stone’s? Mrs. Stone knew all about Lucy’s fortune, and the wicked scheme invented by her father (of which Katie knew nothing except by lively guesses) to keep her unmarried. And straightway the gentleman had come! She watched him anxiously as he approached. He was like Mrs. Stone, and he was not unlike the smiling and gracious face in a hairdresser’s window, complacent in wax-work satisfaction. He was large, tall, with fine black hair, whiskers and mustache, and a good complexion. He had something of that air of self-display—not vanity or conceit, but simply expansion and spreading out of himself which is characteristic of large men used to the companyof many women. Katie pressed her friend’s arm more and more closely as they approached.
“What do you think of him?” she said. “I wonder if they will speak to us. Will Mrs. Stone introduce us? If she does I know what I shall think.”
“What shall you think?” said Lucy, across whose mind no glimmering of the cause of this unusual visit had flown. She watched him coming very placidly. “Mrs. Stone will not stop. She never does when she has any stranger with her. Who is it, Katie? I never heard that they had any brother.”
“It is their nephew,” Katie said, with something of that knowledge which is what she herself called governessy; that minute acquaintance with all the details of a family which people in any kind of dependence are so apt to attain. Mademoiselle was her authority—mademoiselle, who, though she was “nice,” had yet the foibles of her position, and a certain jealous interest, not altogether unkind, yet too curious to be entirely benevolent, about all her employers’ works and ways. “He was brought up for the Church, but he has not gone into the Church. Doesn’t he look like a parson? When a man has been brought up in that way he never gets the better of it. He always looks like a spoiled clergyman.”
“I don’t think he looks like a clergyman at all,” said Lucy, “nor spoiled either.”
“Oh, you admire him! I ought to have known you are just the kind of girl to like a barber’s block man. Our Frank,” said Katie, with some vehemence, “is not so big—he has not half such a shirtfront; but I am sure he has more strength. You should see him throwing things. He won two cups for that, and one for running,” she added, with a sigh. She already felt something of the pang with which these cherished cups would be put, with their owner, into another’s possession. In imagination she had sometimes seen them arranged on an humble sideboard in a little house, with which she herself, Katie, had the closest connection. But that was the merest dream, and not to be considered for a moment when the interest of one and the happiness of the other were concerned.
“Frank! who is Frank?” said Lucy; “you never told me of him before.”
“Oh, Frank is my cousin. There never was any occasion,” said Katie, with a slightly querulous tone, which Lucy did not understand. She looked with a little wonder at her friend, then set down her perturbation to the score of Mrs. Stone, who was now very near. The girls withdrew from each other to make room, leaving the narrow path clear between. Mrs. Stone answered this courtesy by stepping forward in front of the gentleman with a gracious smile upon her face.
“Where are you going?” she said. “I think, my dear children, it is going to rain. You must soon turn back; and the common is very wet. After you have got back and changed your boots, come to my room to tea.” And then she passed on with little amical nods and smiles. The gentleman was not introduced to them, but he took off his hat as he followed behind Mrs. Stone, a courtesy which is always agreeable to girls who have only lately ceased to be little girls, and come within the range of dignified salutations. Even Lucy’s tranquil soul owned a faint flutter of pleasure. It was a distinct honor too to be asked to Mrs. Stone’s room to tea, and to know that they were to be introduced into the society of the “gentleman” added a little additional excitement. They walked only a very little way further, mindful at once of the advice and the invitation.
“I wonder if any of the others will be there,” said Katie. She was somewhat elated, although she was suspicious, and in a state of half resistance to Mrs. Stone and the rival Frank, whose rivalry the little schemer felt by instinct. As for Lucy, the object of all this plotting, she suspected nothing. She even felt a little guilty in the pleasure to which she looked forward. To be asked to Mrs. Stone’s room to tea on Sunday evening was a distinction of which all the girls were proud. It was like an invitation from the queen, a command which was not to be disregarded; but yet she had a little uneasiness in her mind, thinking of her little brother, who would be disappointed. Even for Mrs. Stone, the sovereign of this small world, she did not like to break faith with little Jock.
Mrs. Stone’sroom was fitted up in the latest, which I need not say is far from being the newest fashion. It would indeed have been an insult to her to say that anything in it was new. Mr. Morris had only just begun to reign over the homes of the æsthetic classes; but Mrs. Stone was well in advance of her age, and her walls were covered with a very large pattern of acanthus-leaves in several shades of green, with curtains as nearly as possible the samein design and color. She had a number of plates hung about the walls instead of pictures, and here and there gleaming shelves and little cabinets full of china, which were a great relief and comfort to the eye. Her chairs were Chippendale, need it be said? and held her visitors upright in a dignified height and security. The room had but one window, which was large, but half-filled with designs in glass, and half overshadowed with a great lime-tree, which was delightful in summer, but in February not so delightful. The fire was at the end of the room, and the room was somewhat dark, especially in the afternoon. When the two girls went in several persons were dimly visible seated in those large and solemn Chippendalian chairs, with hands reposing upon the arms of them, ranged against the walls like Egyptian gods. The color of one of those figures, though faint in the gloom, was that of Miss Southwood’s gray velveteen, her ordinary afternoon dress, and therefore recognizable; but the others in masculine black clothes, with only a vague whiteness for their faces, were mysterious as Isis and Osiris; and so was a lady with her veil over her face, who sat at the other side of the fireplace, with the air of a chairwoman at a meeting, high and stately; though she caught a little of the pale afternoon daylight upon her, yet her dark dress and seal-skin coat and veil prevented any distinctness of revelation. In this correct and carefully arranged parlor there was one weak point. A woman who is without caprice is unworthy of being called a woman. Instead of herself occupying a Chippendale chair, and having her tea-tray placed upon the tall slender-limbed Queen Anne table, which stood in readiness against the wall, Mrs. Stone chose to make herself the one anachronism in the place. Her chair was a low one in front of the fire; her teatable was in proportion—a bit of debased nineteenth-century comfort in the midst of the stately grace which she professed to think so much more delightful. Why was this? It was Mrs. Stone’s pleasure, and there was no more to be said. She, with her pretty white cap upon her handsome head, seated at the feet of all her silent guests in their high chairs, was not only the central light in the picture, but a kind of humorous commentary upon it; but whether this proceeded from any sense of the joke in her, or was merely the expression of her own determination to please herself, were it even in flat rebellion to her own code, no one could tell.
“You are just in time,” she said, “Lucy and Katie, to give our friends some tea. Don’t interfere, Frank. I like girls to hand tea. It comes within their province; and it is a pretty office, which they do far more prettily than you can.”
“That I don’t dispute for a moment,” said a large round manly barytone, enthroned on high in one of the Chippendale chairs, “and I don’t deny that I like to be served by such hands when it is permitted.”
“That is one of the popular fallacies about women,” said Mrs. Stone, “and involves the whole question. Our weak surrender of our rights for the pleasure of being waited upon in public, was, I suppose, one of the consequences of chivalry. According to my theory, it is the business of women to serve. You shoot the birds or kill the deer, Mr. Rushton, as you best can, and we cook it and carve it, and serve it up to you.”
“If this beatitude depends upon my ability to kill the deer or shoot the birds, my dear lady!” said another good-natured voice, which added immediately, “Why, this is Lucy Trevor! I am very glad to see you. My dear, this is Lucy Trevor. Since she has been at the White House we have scarcely seen her. You girls are made too happy when you get under the charge of Mrs. Stone.”
“Is it you, Lucy?” said the lady with the veil; “come and speak to me, dear. I think it is a year since I have seen you. You have grown up, quite grown up in the time. How these young creatures change! A year does not make much difference in us; but this child has shot up! And Raymond—you remember your playfellow, Lucy—why, he is a man, as old as his father, giving us advice, if you please! It is something wonderful. I catch myself laughing out when I hear him discoursing about law. Raymond giving his opinion, my little boy, my baby! And I dare say little Lucy has begun to give her opinion, too.”
“Lucy is a very good girl,” said Mrs. Stone; “she never takes anything upon her. Katie now and then favors us with her ideas as to how the world should be governed.”
“That is right,” said Mr. Rushton, from the darker side. “I like to know what the young people think. It is they who will have it all in their hands one day.”
“But, thank Heaven, they will have changed their minds before that time.”
This was from Miss Southwood, who emphasized her exclamation by getting up to sweep off into the fire-place a few crumbs from her gray velveteen gown.
“Do you think it is a good thing they should have changed their minds? It seems to me rather a pity. That is why we never have anything new. We all fall into the same jog-trot about the same age.”
“The new is always to be avoided. Don’t tell me about jog-trot— I wish I were half as sensible as my mother.”
“And so do I, Ellen,” said Mrs. Stone, taking up the discussion in her own manner with that soft little half blow to begin with. Nobody could tell whether it was directed at her sister, or was an echo of her wish, not even Lucy, who knew her so well, and who stood between her and Mrs. Rushton, listening to their talk, but without any impulse on her own part to rush into it as Katie would have done. Katie in the meantime had got out of that graver circle. She had given the large barytone his cup of tea, and now was holding the cake-basket while he selected a piece. Katie was in the light, so much light as there was. She was a fair-haired girl, with just the touch of warmth and color that Lucy wanted—a little gold in her hair, a deeper blue in her eyes, a tinge of rose on her cheeks; and she had a far warmer sense of fun than Lucy, who would have carried the cake-basket quite demurely without any smile.
“I hope you will not think this is my fault,” Mrs. Stone’s nephew said in a low tone. “I am bound to obey, as I suppose every one is here; otherwise I should not sit still and allow myself to be served; it is not my way, I assure you. And I keep you standing so long. I can not make up my mind which piece to take. This has the most plums, but that is the larger piece. It always turns out so in this life; I wonder if you have found that out in your experience, or if things are better managed here.”
“We are not supposed to have any experience at school,” said Katie, demurely. It was pretty to see her holding the cake-basket. And the rest of the company was occupied with their own conversation. Besides, how was he to know which of them was the heiress?
“We met you on the common just now with your friend. It is not a very amusing walk, but it is better than going out in procession, I suppose. Does my aunt make you do that? is it part of a young lady’s education, as cricket is of a man’s?”
“Yes,” said Katie. “We are trained to put up with everything that is disagreeable, just as boys are trained to everything that is pleasant.”
“Do you think cricket then so pleasant?”
“Not to me, but I suppose it is to boys; and boating and everything of the kind. On our side we are taught quite differently. If there is anything more tiresome than another, more tedious, less likely to please us, that is what we are made to do.”
“My poor aunt! is she a tyrant then with her pupils? She is nota tyrant for her relations; or at least a very charming, delightful tyrant.”
“I did not mean Mrs. Stone; she is very kind—even to me; but I have been at other schools. I suppose it is for our good,” said Katie, with a sigh; “everything that is very disagreeable is for our good; though I wonder sometimes why the boys should not have a little trial of the same—for I suppose they too have got to put up with things that are disagreeable in their life.”
“We are supposed,” said the barytone, who was becoming quite visible to her, enthroned in his Chippendale chair, “to have most of the disagreeables of life, while you ladies who dwell at home at ease—”
“Ah!” cried Katie, setting down the cake-basket, “if you would but quote correctly. The man who wrote the song knew a great deal better. It is the gentlemen who live at home at ease. ‘To all you ladies now on land,’ is what he says; he knew better. We don’t go out to sea like him, but we go through just as much on land, you may be sure,” cried the girl with a sudden flush over her face; “it was not to us he said, ‘How little do you think upon the dangers of the seas.’ I have got a little brother a sailor,” she added, half under her breath.
“I have evidently chosen my illustration badly,” said the other, with prompt good-humor and a sympathetic tone. “If you have a little brother I have a big one at sea, so here is something to fraternize upon. Mine is the captain of a big merchantman, an old salt and does not mind the dangers of the sea.”
“Ah, but mine is a little middy,” said Katie, with a smile in her eyes and a tear trembling behind it, “he minds a great deal. He does not like it at all. And mamma and I feel the wind go through and through us whenever it blows.”
“I see,” said the gentleman, “these are the disagreeables of life you speak of—imaginary. Probably when he is in a gale you know nothing about it, and the winds that make you tremble have nothing to do with him; but these are very different, you must acknowledge, from real troubles.”
Katie did not condescend to answer this speech. She gave him a look only, but that spoke volumes. The superiority of experience in it was beyond words. How could he know, a man, well dressed, and well off apparently, with a heavy gold chain to his watch, and handsome studs, how could he know one tithe of the troubles that had come her way in that poverty which only those who know itcan fathom? She withdrew behind the tea-table, just as Mrs. Stone called to her nephew.
“Frank,” she said. (“So he is Frank,too,” said Katie to herself.) “I have not presented you to my young friends. Mr. Frank St. Clair, Miss Russell (I see you have made acquaintance already), and Miss Trevor. Lucy, do you remember I once told you of a boy who was to me what your little Jock is to you? There he stands,” for Frank had risen to bow to his new acquaintance, and stood with his back to the window, shutting out what little light there was.
“You were a very young aunt, certainly,” he said, “but I refuse to believe that Miss Trevor has anything to do with a second generation.”
“Youth does not matter in that respect,” said Mrs. Rushton. “I was an aunt when I was three. There are a great many younger aunts than Lucy; but, as it happens, it is a little brother we are thinking of. Andà propos, my dear, howislittle Jock? has he gone to school? it must be time he were at school.”
“When you are ready, Lucy,” said Mr. Rushton, “I am going with you to see your father. Not to say a word against my good old friend Trevor, he is full of whims. Now, what is his fancy about that child? He will not bring him up as you have been brought up, Lucy.”
“Because he has nothing to do with the money,” said Lucy, simply. “Papa thinks that a very good reason. I wish you would persuade him, Mr. Rushton; I can’t.”
“And he tells you so!” said Mrs. Rushton, shaking her head; “he talks to you about your money, Lucy?”
“Oh, yes, a great deal,” said Lucy. She spoke with perfect calm and composure, and they all looked at her with subdued admiration. Six pairs of eyes thus turned to her in the partial gloom. An heiress! and not ashamed of it, nor excited by it—taking it so calmly. Sighs that were all but prayers burst from, at least, three bosoms. Oh, that she but knew my Raymond! thought one; and, if Frank will but play his cards as he ought! breathed another; while Mr. St. Clair himself said within himself robustly and without any disguise, I wish I had it! There was no sentiment in the latter aspiration. Katie, for her part, looked across the tea-table at her friend with one of her sudden blushes, feeling her cheeks tingle. What were her feelings in respect to Lucy? In her case the wonder and interest were dashed with contempt, yet warmed by affection. Katie thought she despised money—not the abuse of it, nor the prideof it—but itself. Her soft little lip curled (or, at least, she tried to make it curl) with disdain at this meretricious advantage. She had said a hundred times that Lucy would be a very nice girl, the nicest girl in the school, if it were not for that money. She looked at her with a kind of angry love—half disposed to cry out, in Lucy’s defense, that she was far better than her fortune; and half to throw a gibe at her because she was rich. If they had been alone she would have done the latter. As it was, amid this party of people, with Mrs. Stone close by, and Miss Southwood’s little dark eyes twinkling at her out of the shadows, Katie was prudent and said nothing at all. As for Lucy, she did not in the least perceive the covetousness which—in some instances, so mingled with other feelings that its baseness was scarcely visible—flamed in the eyes of the irreproachable people who surrounded her. Mrs. Rushton was a kind, good woman, who would not have harmed a fly. Mrs. Stone was better even, she was high-minded, generous in her way. And yet they both devoured Lucy in their thoughts—gave her over to the destroyer. How fortunate that she never suspected them as she stood there tranquilly between the two, acknowledging that she knew a great deal about her money! Mrs. Rushton was still shaking her head at that avowal.
“My dear,” she was saying, and with perfect sincerity, “you must not let it turn your head. Money can do a great deal, but there are many things it can not do. It can not make you happy—or good.”