“Lucy is good in spite of it,” Mrs. Stone said, she too in all sincerity; “and I don’t think she lets her mind dwell upon it. But it is a very equivocal advantage for a girl,” she added, with a sigh.
All this Frank St. Clair listened to with a grin upon his good-looking countenance. What humbugs! he said to himself—not being capable of understanding that these women were much more interesting as well as more dangerous in not being humbugs at all. He, for his part, waited for an opportunity of making himself agreeable to the little heiress in perfect good faith—brutalementas the French say. He wanted to please her frankly for her fortune’s sake. Not that he could have been unkind to her had he happened to strike her fancy, or would waste her fortune, or do anything unbecoming an honest Englishman. But an honest Englishman with a light purse may surely look after a girl with money without compromising his character. When he asked her to marry him he would not let her see that her money had anything to do with it. He would fall in love with her as a matter of course. It is notdifficult to fall in love with a pretty young girl of seventeen. Well, perhaps, not strictly pretty—not nearly so pretty, for example, as that little Poverty by her side, the foil to her wealth; but still very presentable, and not unattractive in her own simple person. Thus the cautious eyes that surrounded Lucy, the hearts that beat with eagerness to entrap and seize her, did not recognize themselves as inflamed by evil passions. They were aware, perhaps, that a little casuistry would be necessary to make the outer world aware of the innocence of their intentions, but there was no aspect of the case in which they could not prove that innocence to themselves.
When the hour of tea was over Mr. Rushton walked home with Lucy to see his old friend. John Trevor was not Mr. Rushton’s equal, nor did he treat him as such. The old school master had taught him arithmetic, that neglected branch of education, thirty or forty years ago, before he went to the public school, where it was not taught; and the prosperous lawyer, who was town clerk, and one of the principal men in Farafield, had always shown a great regard for his old master. “I should never have known more than two times two but for you, Trevor,” he would say, patting the old man on the shoulder, not very respectful, yet with genuine kindness. He went into the blue and white drawing-room, and seated himself in front of the fire, and talked for an hour to old Trevor, liberating Lucy, who hurried away to Mrs. Ford’s parlor, and with enviable confidence in her digestion, had another cup of tea to please Jock, who had been watching for her eagerly from the window. Then she was made to sit down in a creaking basket-work chair beside the fire and tell him stories. Mrs. Ford’s parlor was not æsthetic, like that of Mrs. Stone; but its horse-hair and mahogany furniture produced an effect not much unlike. Mrs. Ford, in a black arm-chair, was elevated as high above the heads of the younger people as if she had been seated in a genuine Chippendale chair. And she crossed her hands on her black silk apron, and sitting back in the shadow, listened well pleased, but half in a drowse of comfort, to Lucy’s stories. She had a little rest in her own person when Lucy stepped into the breach; though Mrs. Ford was not at all certain that Lucy’s stories were Sunday stories worthy of the name.
Old Trevor had the will spread out before him when Mr. Rushton entered—not adding to it, however, which he would have certainly disapproved of as improper Sunday work—but reading it over, some times aloud, sometimes under his breath, sometimes with mutterings of criticism. He pushed it away a his visitor entered, and rose tottering to welcome him.
“Always going on with it, always going on with it,” the new-comer said, shaking his hand.
“Yes, I always go on with it,” cried old Trevor, with a chuckle; “it’s mymagnum opus, Mr. Rushton. I add a bit most days, and on Sunday I read over my handiwork, and study how I can mend it. I have put you in,” he added, with a great many nods of his head.
“What, for a legacy, Trevor?” said Mr. Rushton, with an easy laugh.
“For a legacy if you like,” said old Trevor, “though I don’t suppose a hundred pounds would be much to you. No, not for money, but for the care of my girl, who is money. Ford down-stairs is always dinning into my ears that somebody will marry her for her fortune. I hope Lucy has more sense; but still, in case of anything happening, I want her to have friends to advise her.”
“Oh, I will advise her,” said Mr. Rushton, lightly, “though I think perhaps my wife would do it better. Fortune-hunters, yes, there are always fortune-hunters after an heiress. Your best plan would be to choose some one for her yourself, and get her married off in your lifetime, Trevor. Lucy is a good girl, and would content herself with her father’s choice.”
“Do you think so?” said the old man, with a gleam of pleasure; “but, no, no,” he added, “I am not in the same world that Lucy will be in. I couldn’t choose for her; and besides she’s only seventeen, and I’m not long for this world.”
“Seventeen is not too young to be married; and you’re hale and hearty, my old friend,” said his visitor, once more slapping him on the shoulder. This demonstration of friendliness was almost too much for old Trevor, standing up feebly on his trembling old legs in honor of this distinguished acquaintance. He shook his head, but the voice was shaken out of him, and he was not capable of any further reply. When, however, Mr. Rushton encountered Ford outside at the gateway of the Terrace he took a much less jovial tone. “I hope he has got everything signed and sealed,” he said, “and all his affairs in order: these papers he is always pottering over—codicils, I suppose—you should get them signed, too, and made an end of. He is not long for this world, as he himself says.”
“I don’t see much difference,” said Ford, with that eagerness, half sorrow for the impending event, half impatience to have it over, which even the most affectionate of friends often feel in spiteof themselves, in respect to a long anticipated, often retarded ending. “But then I see him every day. Do you really think—”
“You should see that everything is settled and in order,” said the lawyer, as he walked away.
“Andso Christopher went away to look for the great strong man that King Maximus was afraid of; but I forgot, his name was not Christopher then, but only Offero, a heathen; you know what a heathen is, Jock?”
“I should think I did know; but go on, go on with the story, I never read this in any book.”
“Well! Then Christopher wandered about everywhere over all the country, asking for the strange man. He did not know whether it was a giant like himself, or a king like Maximus, or what it was; but he went over the seas and up among the hills and into all the towns, looking for him.”
“That is far too like a fairy tale for a Sunday,” said Mrs. Ford sitting behind in her big arm-chair. “My dear, if he had gone to the chief people in the country, the ways of the towns, or the authorities, they would soon have told him—that is, if he knew his name; and even in a fairy tale few people are so stupid as to set out in search of any one without knowing his name.”
Mrs. Ford was a trifle, just a trifle jealous. Lucy was not at all in the habit of interfering with her prerogative; but she did not like it. The “Pilgrim’s Progress” she felt was much better entertainment on a Sunday night for any child.
“Oh, but this was not a person that the mayors and the magistrates knew. Listen, Jock, his name was Satan. Now, do you know who that great strong man was?”
“I thought as much, and it’s all an allegory,” said Jock, who wasblaséand tired of parables. “I like a story best when it doesn’t mean anything; but go on, Lucy, all the same.”
“I don’t think it’s an allegory. Katie Russell read it out of a book about the saints. I believe it is a true story, only very, very long ago; many things happened long ago that don’t happen now. I don’t suppose the queen has a big giant like Christopher in all her armies; but still there was once a Christopher, Jock.”
Jock accepted the explanation with a little wave of his hand. He was glad, very glad, especially on Sunday, of anything new, but at the same time he was critical, and at the first suggestion of an allegory stood on his guard.
“Well,” said Lucy, resuming, “when Christopher had wandered about for a long time he met with a band of knights and their servants, traveling about as they used to do in those days, and at their head there was one all in black armor, with a helmet covering his head and his face.”
“You mean, I suppose,” said Jock, somewhat cynically, “with his visor down.”
“I suppose so,” said Lucy, a little confused, “but you know I am not so clever about these things as you are. I’m afraid you don’t care about my story, Jock.”
“Oh, yes, I care about it; but unless there were enemies about, and he was afraid, he never would have had his visor down; and if he were afraid, Christopher would have known he couldn’t be much; but I like your story all the same,” Jock added, with great politeness; and he liked therôleof critic, which was novel, too.
“He did not want to show his face,” said Lucy, considerably cowed, “because if people had seen him it would have been known what kind of a being he was, and he looked a very great prince with all his followers round him. So when Christopher heard that this was Satan he went to him and offered his service, and he was one of his soldiers for a long time, I can’t tell how long, but he did not like it at all, Jock, they did so many cruel things. At last one day, one very hot day in summer, they were all marching along, and there were two roads to the place where they were going; one road led through a wood, and that was a pleasant shady way, and the other was the high road, which was dusty and scorching, and not a bit of shelter; and you may suppose how astonished Christopher was when the captain refused to go by the pleasant way, though it was the shortest, too.”
“What was that for?” said Jock, excited mildly by an incident which he had not foreseen.
“He would not tell for a long time; first he said it was one thing and then another, but none of these reasons was the true one. At last Christopher so pressed and pressed that he got into a passion, and it all came out. ‘You great big blundering stupid giant,’ he cried, ‘don’t you know there is a cross in the wood?’ But Christopher did not know what the cross meant; and then the black knightwas obliged to tell him that he dared not pass the cross, because of One,” here Lucy’s voice sunk into reverential tones, “who had been crucified upon it, and had won the battle, and had made even that dreadful black spirit, that cruel Satan, tremble and fly.”
Jock was impressed, too, and there was a little pause, and in the ruddy twilight round the fire the two young creatures looked solemnly at each other; and a faint sound, something between a sigh and a sob, came from kind Mrs. Ford, over their heads, who was much touched and weeping-ripe at the turn, to her so unexpected, which the story had taken.
“And what did he do then?” asked Jock, not without awe.
“Oh, Jock! he dashed his great big fist in the black captain’s face, and shouted out, ‘I knew you were a coward, you are so cruel. The Man who hung upon the cross, He is my Master. I will go and seek Him till I die.’”
Then there was another little pause— Lucy, too, in the excitement of her story telling, having got a lump in her throat—and Mrs. Ford sobbed once more for pleasure.
“It is a beautiful story,” she said; “I am very glad that the poor giant is going to be converted at the last.”
“Ah, but now comes the difficult part,” said Jock, “how was he to find him? It was only a wooden image that was upon that cross; he might seek and seek, like the knights in the ‘Morte d’Arthur.’ but how was he to find Him? that is what I want to know.”
“Lucy, my dear, I think your papa wants you,” said Ford, coming in at this point, a little more uneasy than usual, by dint of Mr. Rushton’s warning. “He is sitting all alone, and he has just had his gas lighted.” He came out to the door of the parlor to wait for her, as she rose and disengaged herself from her little brother, who caught her dress to detain her. Ford, at the door, put his hand on Lucy’s arm. “Do you think he has been looking worse? don’t let me frighten you, Lucy, but can you see any appearance as if he were sinking?”
“Do you mean papa? No,” cried Lucy, with a start of alarm. “Is he ill? I will go to him directly. What is the matter?”
He had talked to her so much of his death that the girl’s heart leaped into the excited throbbing which accompanies every great rallying of the forces of nature. All her strength might be required now, at once, without preparation. Her throat grew dry, and the blood rushed to her face.
“Oh, I don’t think there is anything more than ordinary,” said Ford; “but Mr. Rushton thought him looking bad. He gave me a fright; and then, of course, my dear, at his time of life—”
Lucy drew her arm away, and went softly upstairs. Many daughters before now have had to smooth the way before a dying father, and there was nothing required of her in this way that was above her strength; but it was not with her in other things as with others. She was aware how great the change was which would open upon her the moment this aged life had reached its term and all the strange unknown conditions which would surround her. It was not possible for Lucy to thrust away the thought, and comfort herself with indefinite hopes. For years her thoughts had been directed to the catastrophe which was to be so momentous for her; she had never been allowed to ignore it. Her heart still beat loudly at the thought of that which might be coming now—which certainly must come before long. Her father was the center of all her present living—beyond him lay the unknown; but when she went upstairs he was sitting quite cheerfully, as he had been sitting any time these ten years—almost since ever Lucy could remember—in his arm-chair, neither paler nor sadder, nor with any tragical symptoms in him, looking over, with the same air of satisfaction, the same large manuscripts in which, with his own small neat handwriting, he had written down his whole mind. He looked up as she came in, and gave her his usual little nod of welcome; and Lucy’s heart immediately settled down in to its usual calm. She took her usual seat beside him. All was as it had been for years in the familiar room; it was not, however, the familiar room which took any character from its inmates—or rather perhaps it embodied too entirely the character of its old master, who required nothing except his chimney-corner, and had no eye or taste for those niceties which reign in a lady’s sitting-room, even when not a Queen Anne parlor of the newest old-fashion, like that of Mrs. Stone. Lucy had never been used to anything else, yet it repressed all emotion in her when she came into this unemotional place. Die! why should any one ever die? Would not to-day be as yesterday forever, and every hour the same?
“I have had Rushton here,” said the old man; “how fat that man is getting at his age! I don’t suppose he’s fifty yet. I am glad I am not one of the fat kind, Lucy; it must be such a trouble. And to think I remember him a slim boy, not much higher than you are. Hasn’t he got a son?”
“Yes, papa; Raymond. I used to play with him when I waslittle. He is quite grown up now. Mrs. Rushton was telling me about him—”
“Take my advice, Lucy,” said her father, interrupting her, “and don’t, however it may be pressed upon you, marry a man out of Farafield. Plenty will try for you—very likely Raymond himself. I thought there was something in Rushton’s eye—it was that made me think of it. Don’t marry a man from here. There’s nothing but paltry sort of people here.”
“Yes, papa,” said Lucy, calmly. She had given a great many other promises on this question of her marriage, with the same composure. There was no excitement in her own mind about the question. She did not care what pledges she gave. Her father, who was not without humor, perceived this, and fixed his eyes upon her with his usual chuckle.
“Yes, papa,” he said, mimicking her small voice. “Anything for a quiet life; you would promise me not to marry the mayor, or to marry the bishop, if I asked you, just in the same tone.”
“No, papa; I will promisenotto marry anybody you choose to mention, but the other thing would be more difficult. In the first place, I don’t know the bishop,” she added, with a smile.
“That is all very well,” said the old man; “but don’t you know, Lucy, that in a year or two your mind may change on that subject? You might fall in love, not with the bishop, but why not with Raymond Rushton, or any other boy about the place? And this is what I want to say to you, my dear. Don’t! That is to say, keep them at a distance, Lucy. Don’t let them come near enough to get hold of you. Take my word for it, though they may be nice enough in their way, Farafield people are small. They are petty people. They don’t know the world; and you, with your fortune, my dear, you belong to the world, not to a little place like this.”
“But you have lived all your life in Farafield.”
“Oh, yes; that is quite true. And I am just the same kind—petty, that is the word, Lucy—small. That is why I am living like this, making no change till it all comes into your hands. Living in a grand house, spending a deal of money, would go against me— I should not like it. I should grudge every penny— I should say to myself, ‘You old fool, John Trevor! what do you mean by spending all this upon yourself?’ I couldn’t do it. Carriages, and horses, and a number of servants would be the death of me.”
“I don’t think I shall like them any better, papa; and if it is waste for you it would also be waste for me.”
“Not at all, not at all,” he said; “you have been brought up toit; and it will be your duty, for property has duties, Lucy. It is just as necessary that you should spend a great deal on your living, and keep up a great show, as it is that you should give a great deal to the poor.”
“But why then, papa, if you think that am I to live here with the Fords, who do not understand anything of the kind, half of the year?”
“Aha, Lucy!” he said, “that is just my principle, you know; that is what you don’t understand as yet. You are to live with Lady Randolph and the Fords six months each for—unless you can get them all to consent to let you marry somebody before that time—as long as you are a girl, my dear; this is the very crown of my plan, Lucy, without which the other would not be good for much,” he said, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, and pausing to tantalize her. As it was Sunday Lucy had not her knitting, so that she had nothing to do but to look at him, with perfect placid composure as usual, showing no scrap of excitement.
“Do you mean it is to be only for a time, papa?”
“For—seven years,” he said, “seven years from the time of my death. It is to be hoped that my death will not be very long of coming, or you will be too old to enjoy your freedom. But there is not much fear of that; even if you were thirty before it came, thirty is the finest time of life. You know a great deal by that time, you are not so easily taken in, and you are still fresh and in all your glory. Never mind if fools begin to call you an old maid; a woman is not an old maid at thirty, she is at her best. She can pick and choose, especially when she has a fortune like yours. And by that time you will have got out of the young set—the ball-room set; you will have learned to know people of importance. Yes,” he said, chuckling, “that is the crown of my plan for you, Lucy—for seven years you will be under a little restraint; Mrs. Ford on one hand, Lady Randolph on the other, two people. I flatter myself, just as unlike as can be; and all the men that have a chance will be after you; but none of them will be able to marry you without the consent, you know,” he went on, chuckling once more, “of all these people; which I confess, Lucy, I take to be next to impossible. And then, my dear—then, in seven years complete freedom—freedom to do whatever you like—to marry whom you like—to be your own guardian—your own adviser. It is worth waiting for, Lucy—well worth waiting for. What a prospect!” cried the old man, in an ecstasy, “a well-trained mind used to control, an inexhaustible fortune, nothing to do but to pick and choose among the best people, and still under thirty years of age! By that time you will have learned to be content with nothing less than the best.”
Nothing could be more curious than the pleased excitement of the old man, looking forward to this climax of mortal felicity which he had carefully arranged for his child, and the perfect calm of the child herself, who neither realized nor appreciated that blessedness. She said, after awhile, with a soft little sigh, which was half weariness and half a sense of the dreariness of the prospect,
“I should think it would be very nice—for a man, papa.”
“For a man! nonsense, Lucy; that is just an old fashioned notion. A woman who is thirty, and has a great fortune, and is free to please herself, is as good as any man.”
This was not exactly Lucy’s point of view, but she had no gift for argument. She thought it was time to take refuge in a little harmless gossip, which was the only thing that now and then gave her the possibility of an escape from the will.
“Mrs. Stone has a visitor,” she said, “a gentleman come to see her. Mademoiselle thinks it very wrong to have a gentleman where there are so many girls. He is Mrs. Stone’s nephew; his name is Mr. Frank St. Clair. It is quite a pretty name, isn’t it, papa? and he is good-looking, though Katie says it is the barber’s-stock style. How I know is, that Katie and I went to Mrs. Stone’s parlor to tea. She never asks more than two girls on Sunday, and it shows she is pleased with you when she asks you. We all like to be asked to the parlor to tea.”
“Ah!” said old Trevor. He laughed, and looked at Lucy with a great many nods of his gray head. “Mrs. Stone is generally pleased withyou, eh, Lucy? She is a sensible woman; she knows what’s what, as well as any one, I know. And so she has had her nephew downalready. She is a clever woman, a prompt woman. I have a great opinion of Mrs. Stone.”
“Do you know him, then?” said Lucy, with a little surprise. “She said she could not pretend to entertain him at the White House, which is given up to education, and that it would be nice for him to be able to come and talk to you.”
At this Mr. Trevor chuckled more and more; he rubbed his hands with glee.
“She is quite capable of it,” he cried, delighted, “quite capable of it. She is a clever woman, Lucy. I have always had a great admiration for Mrs. Stone.”
“Capable of what?” said Lucy, almost angry. She, for her part, had a great admiration for Mrs. Stone. She had a girl’s belief inand loyalty to, the elder woman, who yet was not too old to be out of sympathy with girls. She admired her mature beauty, her dress, everything about her, and to hear Mrs. Stone laughed at was painful to Lucy. It affected thatesprit de corpswhich is next to self-regard, or sometimes even goes before it. She fell, her own moral standing involved when any one questioned, or seemed to question, the superiority of her leader. It was almost the only occasion on which any latent gleam of temper came to Lucy’s mild eyes.
Mr. Trevor laughed again.
“You don’t understand it, my dear,” he said, “it’s a joke between Mrs. Stone and me. She is capable of making me a party to my own defeat,” he said, with a new series of chuckles, “of bringing me into the conspiracy against myself. That’s what I call clever, Lucy; oh, she’s a very able woman! but let us hope this time she won’t be so successful as she deserves. Forewarned is forearmed; I know now what I’ve got to look forward to, and I hope she won’t find me an easy prey, my dear, thanks to you.”
“I can not in the least, tell what you mean, papa,” said Lucy, with dignity, “and if it is anything against Mrs. Stone, I don’t want to know; andIhope she will be successful, whatever she wishes to do—though I don’t know what it is,” the girl added, with vehemence quite unusual to her. It brought the color to her usually pale cheek. She got up from her chair with angry haste. “I am going to get ready for dinner,” she said, “and if I have said anything to set you against Mrs. Stone, I did not mean it, and I am very sorry. It must be my fault, for I am quite sure there is nothing wrong in anythingshewants to do.”
It was as if Lucy flounced out of the room, so different was it from her usual calm, though even now her demeanor was quiet enough. But her father was not much affected by the girl’s vehemence. He sat looking after her, and chuckled, watching her gray gown whisk—nay, almost whisk—the word was too violent to be employed to any movement of Lucy’s—round the corner of the big screen, and thought to himself how wise he had been, and how clever in choosing an instructress for Lucy of whom she thought so well. Mrs. Stone’s design, which he thought he had found out, amused, and, indeed, pleased him, too. He liked to see that this fortune, of which he thought so much, produced a corresponding effect upon others, and, indeed, would have been disappointed if there had been nobody “after” it during his life-time. This was the first, and he chuckled over the advent of the suitor, whom he determined to play and amuse himself with. That Mrs. Stoneshould have begun to scheme already did not displease, rather flattered him, especially as it gave him a fresh evidence of his penetration in finding her out, and confidence in his own power of baffling her. Another man might have been taken in, but not he. There he sat complacent, while Lucy changed her gray gown for a blue one.
All these habits and customs of a life more refined than his own, the old man had done his best to train his daughter into. For a time he had even gone so far as to put himself into an evening coat for Lucy’s sake, but increasing weakness had persuaded him to give up that penitential ceremony. Still he exacted, rigorously and religiously, that she should dress for dinner, and would indeed have made her come down with bare shoulders every evening to the homely meal, but for the interference of Mrs. Stone, who had declared it “old-fashioned,” with great energy, to the complete annihilation of poor old Trevor, who had thought himself certain of this important special feature of high life.
Itis not to be supposed that in thetête-à-têtedinner that followed Lucy was set free from the interminable subject of that fortune which occupied all her father’s thoughts. The idea of perfect freedom in seven years had but newly dawned upon him—though, as soon as he had thought of it, he felt it to be, as he had said, the natural crown of his plan, and climax of his thoughts. Up to the moment the great idea had dawned upon him, there had been a little sense of imperfection in his plans. They were elaborate preparations for—nothing. But now he had seized the end to which all the preparations led. Neither the Fords nor Lady Randolph could be expected to live forever in order to keep Lucy under subjection, nor would she always be under the superintendence of the matrimonial committee. The absurdity became apparent to the framer of the scheme just as he found the deliverance from it. And now that the climax had been attained, all the parts fell into due subordination. Restraint until she had fully tried all the preliminaries of life and learned to estimate the worth of time, and then full freedom and the control of herself and all that belonged to her. It seemed to old Trevor, as he thought it over, a beautiful scheme;to-morrow he would put fully on record these last stipulations, and when that was done there would be no more to do but to gather his garments round him and go out of the way. It must not be supposed, however, that any real idea of getting out of the way was in the old man’s mind. He could not doubt that somehow he would still be in the midst of it, though he professed to be quite sure of dying and passing into another life—that was a matter of course; but when he rubbed his hands with satisfaction over the completeness of this plan, there was no feeling in his mind that completeness involved conclusion. On the contrary, he seemed to see the prospect widening out before him. He enjoyed in anticipation not only the admirable wisdom of all his own stipulations, but even the amusing complications to which they would give birth; and then with a thrill of pride and satisfaction looked forward to the time of her freedom and happy reign, and power of self-disposal, nor ever once said to himself, “I shall be out of it all—what will it be to me?”
However, Mr. Trevor’s mind was so full of this new idea that he could do nothing but show, over and over again, how beautifully it fitted in with every previous arrangement, and how naturally everything led up to this.
“Of course,” he said, “to keep you under control all your days was what I never thought, my dear. What I intended all along was to train you to a right use of your liberty. Only when you are able to bear the burden, Lucy—when you have seen a great many fancies drop off and a great deal that you have believed in fail you, and when you have learned to know what is the best.”
“Do you think that is so hard, papa?” said Lucy, quietly, yet with a faint half gleam of a smile. No doubt it was natural that at his age he should make “a fuss” about everything Lucy felt, though she was so sensible that, of course, she would choose nothing but the best.
“Yes, it is very hard,” said the old man; “one tries a great many things before one comes to that. A good-looking fellow, perhaps, for a lover, or a nice mannered girl for a friend—till you find out that they are naught, neither one nor the other, and that you have got to begin again; that’s the way of the world. Then perhaps you will choose some others quite different, and they will cheat you, too. You get a little more and a little more experience at every step, and then at the end you will find somebody, as I found poor Lucilla, that is really the best.”
Lucy looked up at him aghast. The idea made her tremble; first one bad and then another, and at last a Lucilla who would die, andbe in her turn succeeded by another, who was not the best. This gave the girl a shudder.
“I would rather put up with the bad ones,” she cried, “if I am fond of them, than go from one to another; it is horrible what you are saying, papa.”
“Well, perhaps it is,” said old Trevor, “life’s not so very beautiful, whatever you may think just now; but what I am saying is right, that is one thing I am certain of. You may content yourself with what’s inferior if you like, Lucy; but you can’t expect any encouragement from me—”
She looked at him with a little alarm in her eyes. “It would be better to have nothing to do with anybody, to live all alone by one’s self, and never care for anybody,” she cried.
“Many people do that,” said old Trevor, “but I don’t approve of it, Lucy. Take example by me. I had seen a many before I saw your mother, but I never had got any satisfaction to my mind till I met with Lucilla. I used to say to myself, this one won’t do, and that one won’t do. You see I kept my wits about me, and my head clear. Now that’s the plan you must go upon, both with friends and with a husband if you marry. You don’t need to marry unless you like— I don’t say one thing or the other—you are to please yourself. But don’t take the first that comes, don’t take any one till you’ve tried him and tested him. And the same with your friends—take ’em and leave ’em, and choose again till you have found the best.”
“It is horrible, papa!” cried Lucy, almost with tears. Then, though she was not an imaginative girl, there suddenly came across her mind the story which she had been telling to little Jock. She had denied stoutly that it was an allegory, as Jock’s more experienced imagination had at once feared; but there was something in the course of this conversation which chimed in with it, which brought it to her mind. Just so had the giant in that story sought his strongest and greatest. The end of the tale which she had not told to Jock was very incomprehensible to Lucy herself. She had not understood it when it was “read out loud,” but it did not trouble her mind much. She thought it would do for a story to tell Jock, that was all. Now she thought of it again as she sat over the almonds and raisins opposite to her father and listened to him, and shrunk from the map of life which he opened out before her. His revelations went up to just about the same point as the story she had told to Jock. And after that came the incomprehensible part, how to discern the best, how to get to the acquaintance ofthe mysterious conqueror of all. Jock had said that was the difficult bit. In the story it was all a confusion to Lucy, and she could not understand it at all.
While she was thinking thus her father was talking on, but she had lost a good deal of what he was saying when she suddenly came to herself again, and began to hear him as if his voice came out of a mist.
“And when that has happened once or twice,” old Trevor was saying, “you get sharp, oh, you get sharp! you are up to their devices—you can not be taken in any more.”
“You speak as if everybody tried to take you in, papa.”
“Very near everybody,” said old Trevor, grinning, with a chuckle; “not all, I don’t say all—but very near: and the hard thing is to find out the ones that don’t want to take you in. That is a thing which you have to learn by experience, Lucy. First you trust everybody—then you trust nobody; but after awhile the sight comes back to your eyes, and you know who to trust. That is about the best lesson you can have in this world. I was over fifty before I met with your mother; that is to say, I had known her when we were younger, but I had not given any attention to her, not having learned then to discriminate. We saw a deal of each other for two years before we married; so you see I was a long time before I got hold of my best, and yet I did get it at the end.”
Lucy was disturbed out of her usual composure by all this alarming and discouraging talk, and she was slightly irritated, she could scarcely have told why, by all she had heard about her mother. She could not avoid a little retaliation. “But afterward,” she said, “after—when poor mamma died—was that the best too?”
He had been discoursing as from a pulpit upon his own wisdom and success, and received this thrust full in his face with astonishment that was comic. After the first confusion of surprise old Trevor laughed and chuckled himself out of breath. “You have me there,” he said, “Lucy, you have me there. I have not got a word to say. We won’t say anything on the subject at all, my dear. I told you before that was a mistake.”
But he was half-flattered, half-amused by this return blow. During the rest of the evening he would drop into ceaseless chuckles, recalling the sudden boldness of the assault. A man of many wives is always more flattered than disconcerted by any allusion to his successes. It was a mistake, but still he was not ashamed of his achievement. When, however, he had taken his glass of port, which had more effect upon him than usual in his growing weakness,the old man grew penitential. “It was a great mistake,” he said again, “and I can’t help wondering, now and then, how Lucilla will take it. She was a very considerate person; but there are flings the best of women can’t be expected to put up with. I will confess to you, Lucy, that it makes me a little uneasy sometimes. Oh, yes, it was a mistake.”
Lucy had been quite reassured when she had joined her father in the afternoon after Ford’s warning, and had seen no difference in his looks; but before the evening was over a vague uneasiness had crept over her. He talked more than usual and sat longer than usual before he could be persuaded to go to bed. And now and then there was something disjointed in his talk. He stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and forgot to finish it. He introduced one subject into the midst of another. He gave her the same advice several times over. After awhile she ceased to notice what he was saying altogether, out of anxiety about him. He was not like himself; but he would not allow her to leave him. He was more intent on having her companionship than she had ever known him. “Don’t go away,” he said, when she did but stir in her chair. As she sat and looked at him, having no knitting (as it was Sunday), the spectacle of the feeble old figure, garrulous, holding forth from his chair, scarcely waiting for a reply, struck the girl as if she had seen it for the first time. His old cheeks were suffused with a feverish red, his eyes were gleaming, his head had a tremble in it, his lean old hand, so often used to emphasize what he said, shook when he held it up. There are moments when the aspects of a familiar figure change to us, when we see it as strangers see it, but with a still keener insight, perceiving in a moment, the wreck which we may have seen without seeing it, falling into decay for years. This was the revelation which all at once came upon Lucy. She had seen nothing unusual about him a few hours ago—now, quite suddenly, she came to see him as Mr. Rushton had seen him, as he appeared to strangers; but in a guise so much the more alarming as it concerned her much more closely. She held her breath as this revelation flashed upon her, feeling as if she must cry out and call for help, she who was so composed and unexcitable. It seemed to Lucy, in her sudden alarm and ignorance, that he might die before her eyes.
This, of course, was an entirely false alarm. Next morning he was exactly like himself again, no special feebleness in his aspect, and much energy in his mind. As soon as he got settled in his chair Mr. Trevor got his big manuscript out, took a fresh pen which Fordhad mended for him, and began to work with great energy and pleasure. Never had he more enjoyed his work; he was putting on the corner-stone—finishing the fabric. It took him all the morning to put everything down as he had planned it. And it pleased him so much that he smiled and chuckled to himself as he wrote, and said special phrases over and over under his breath. All the morning through he sat at his table working at it, while little Jock occupied his habitual position stretched out upon the white rug before the fire, his shoulders raised a little, his head bent over his book. Jock was too much absorbed to be aware of anything that was going on. The book he had lighted upon that day was Defoe’s “History of the Plague,” and the little fellow was altogether given over to its weird fascinations. It was more entrancing even than “Robinson Crusoe.” Thus the child and the old man kept each other company for hours together; the one betraying his presence occasionally by a little flicker of two small blue legs from the white rug, and of the pages of his book, itself half buried in the silky whiteness; while the other chuckled and muttered as he wrote, delighted with himself and his latest conception. They were both living by the imagination, though in phases so different; the boy carried out of himself, lost in the wonderful dream-history which was so much, more real than anything else round him; the old man throwing himself forward into a future he should never see, enacting a dream-life, which was to be when his should be ended and over, but which in its visionary distance was also a thousand times more real than the dull day to which it gave a fictitious charm.
When the clause was finished Mr. Trevor once more called up Ford, and made him acquainted with his new conception. Ford studied him attentively while he read it, but he also listened with benevolent attention; and he gave his approval to the new plan. Seven years! Ford was just about so much the junior of his friend and patron. He said to himself, as he listened, that by that time he would no longer care to have the responsibility of superintending Lucy’s actions; and he graciously concurred in the expediency of her liberation. “If she can not manage her own affairs at thirty or so she never will,” he said, “and I think, Mr. Trevor, that you’re in the right.
“If I go soon,” said the old man, “she’ll be five-and-twenty, and no more; and I think I’ll go soon; but nobody can answer for a year or two. Yes, I think it’s a pretty will as it stands; I don’t think, without any partiality, that you’ll find many like it. There’s nothing that can happen to her, so far as human insight goes, thatI have not foreseen and left directions for. I hope I have not been insensible to my responsibilities, Ford. I’ve tried to be father and mother both. If you can point out anything that I’ve neglected—”
“Mr. Trevor,” said the other; “you’ve thought of a many more things than would ever have come into my head. You’ve discharged your duties nobly; and I and Susan will do our part. You need not be afraid; we’ll take your example for our guide, and we’ll do our part.”
“Just so, just so,” said the old man, not so much interested. It was essential, no doubt, that his will should be carried out; but he did not realize so clearly, and perhaps he did not wish to realize, that he would himself have no hand in carrying it out. When the question was put as to how the Fords were to do their part, his attention flagged. “You are not to be the first, you know,” he said, brusquely; “there’s my Lady Randolph that comes first.”
Here Ford began to shake his head. “If you took my opinion, I’d say that was the one weak point,” he said; “I make bold to say it, though I know you will be offended, Mr. Trevor. That’s the weak point. It’s well intended, very well intended; but that’s the weak point.”
“You blockhead!” said the other; but he kept his temper. “You would keep her in Farafield all her life, I shouldn’t wonder, and have all the little cads in the place after her, and never let her have a glimpse of the world.”
“I don’t know what you call the world,” said Ford. “Human nature is the same everywhere. We are just the same lot wherever you take us; and as for cads, there’s Sir Thomas— I thank the Lord I don’t know anybody in Farafield—nobody in my own class of life—that has been so tiresome, that has been as wild—”
“You let Sir Thomas alone,” said old Trevor; “he never was a cad.”
Upon which Ford continued to shake his head. “It may be a word that I don’t fathom,” he said; “I don’t know one in Farafield that has given as much trouble; and he’s always in want of money; it’s like putting the lamb into the clutches of the wolf.”
“There are plenty of wolves,” said the old man. “That’s my policy: I set one to fight the other, and I wish them joy of it. One here and one there, that’s better than a single candidate. And while they’re pulling each other to pieces, my little lamb will get off scot-free.”
Ford shook his head persistently, till it seemed doubtful if it ever would recover its steadiness. “If I were to speak my mind,” hesaid; “there’s one that has a real claim—just one. He’s may be too modest to speak for himself; but thereisone, if I were to speak my mind—”
“Then don’t!” said old Trevor, with a fiercer gleam in his eyes; “that’s my advice to you, Richard Ford. Don’t! I want to hear nothing of your one that has a claim. Who has any claim! not a soul in the world! Lucy’s fortune is her own—she’s obliged to nobody for it. It comes to her, not from me, that I should take upon me to pick and choose. She does not get a penny from me; all I have I’ve given to the other, and a very good nest-egg for his position in life. But Lucy’s fortune is none of my making; Lucy is Lucilla’s daughter.”
“Susan’s cousin!” said Ford, instinctively. He regretted it the next moment, but he could not withhold this protest. To think that all the money should be Lucilla’s, and none of it come to Susan, though she was Lucilla’s cousin! It is hard, it must be allowed, to see fortunes come so near, yet have no share in them. In the family, yet not yours, not the smallest bit yours, save by grace and favor of a stranger, a man who is your cousin’s husband, indeed, but has no claim otherwise to belong to the family. The Fords were not at all ungrateful to old Trevor; but still there were moments when this struck them in spite of themselves.
Theprophets of evil were not deceived; when a kind of general impression arises in respect to an invalid that a crisis is approaching, it almost always is justified by the event. During that very night there was a sudden alarm; Mr. Trevor’s bell rang loudly, awakening all the house. Lucy flew from her room, hastily gathering her dressing-gown round her, with her light hair hanging about her shoulders, and Mrs. Ford appeared in a night-cap, which was an indecorum she recollected long afterward. The maids naturally, being less interested, were harder to rouse, and it was Mr. Ford himself who issued forth in the penetrating chill of the early morning, still quite dark and silent, not a soul astir, and buttoning himself into his warmest overcoat, went out in the cold to seek a doctor, who, for his part, was just as unwilling to be roused out of his slumbers in the middle of the night. Jock, roused by the sounds,sat up in his little bed, with wide-awake eyes, hearing the bell still jar and tinkle, and sounds of people running up-and down-stairs, which half frightened, half reassured him. To hear other people moving about is always a comfort to a child, and so was the reflection of the lamp at the gateway of the Terrace, which shone into his room and kept it light. Jock sat up and gazed with big eyes, and wondered, but was too much awed and alarmed by the nocturnal disturbance to move; and, indeed, as it turned out after, there was not much need for any one to be disturbed. Old Trevor’s explanation was that he had woke up with a loud singing in his ears and a sense of giddiness, and he could not articulate at first when, they rushed to his bedside, so that everybody believed it to be a “stroke.” But when the doctor came he declared that, though the patient’s blood was running like a river in flood, yet there was nothing very particular the matter, and that a day or two’s quiet would make him all right. Mrs. Ford, in her night-cap, remained by the newly lighted fire in Mr. Trevor’s room to take care of him, but the rest were all sent back to bed, and when the breakfast-hour arrived the patient pronounced himself as well as ever. He got up at his usual hour, and would not even allow that, as Mrs. Ford suggested, he felt “shaky.”
“Not a bit shaky,” he declared, putting out one shrunken shank to show how steadily he stood on the other; “but I thought my time was come,” he said. “I’ll allow I thought I had reached it, after looking for it so long. It was a queer feeling. I am just as well pleased to put it off a bit, though it must come soon.”
“That is true,” Ford said, shaking his head; “we must all die; but the youngest may go off before the oldest, as happens every day.”
These were the words that little Jock heard as they came into the drawing-room, the old man leaning on the arm of the other. Where was the youngest to go off to? He understood vaguely, and a momentary thrill ran through his little veins. Was it he that might “go” before his father? it was a thing which seemed to lie between the eldest and the youngest Jock’s mind was full of the plague and all its horrible details, and the wonder and mystery of thus going “off” chimed in with this gloomy yet fascinating study; the recollection of the bell tinkling through the streets, the dead-cart stopping at the door, scared yet excited him. But there was no plague, no dead-cart, no tinkling bell at Farafield. After awhile the impression died out of the child’s mind, but scarcely so quickly as it did out of the mind of his old father, who already chuckled tohimself over the fright he had given the house. Mr. Trevor did justice to the people who surrounded him.
“When it really comes they will be sorry,” he said; “but it was a disappointment.”
He liked to think he had disappointed them; even in getting better, a man can not but feel that his own superior sense and strength of character have something to do with it. Another man would not have rallied, would have been capable of dying perhaps, and cutting short all the interest of his story; but not John Trevor, who knew better what he was about.
The night alarm, however, soon became known over Farafield, and many people had sufficient interest in the old man and his daughter to come or send, and make inquiries. Among these he had one visitor who amused and one who angered him. The first was a stranger, who sent up a card with the name of Mr. Frank St. Clair, and a message from Mrs. Stone, who begged to have the last news of the sufferer. “Show him up, show him up,” old Trevor said, his keen eyes twinkling with malice and humor; but when the large figure of the young barrister (for that was Mr. Frank St. Clair’s profession) entered the room, the old man was impressed, in spite of himself, by the solidity and imposing proportions of Mrs. Stone’s nephew and candidate; there was an air of respectability about him which compelled attention. He was handsome, but he was also serious, and had that air of a man who has given hostages to society, which nothing confers so surely as this tendency to a comfortable and respectable fullness of frame. Old Trevor acknowledged to himself that this was no young dandy, but a man, possibly, of weight of character as well as person; his very tendency (to speak politely) toembonpointconciliated the old man. Schemers are seldom fat. Mr. Frank St. Clair looked respectable to the tips of his well-brushed boots, and as he looked at him, old Trevor was mollified in spite of himself.
“Yes, I gave them a fright,” he said. “I thought myself that matters were coming to a crisis; but it was a false alarm. You may tell your aunt that I am as well as ever, and as clear in my intellects as ever—such intellects as I have.”
“Nobody would doubt that, I think,” said St. Clair; and indeed Mr. Trevor flattered himself that nobody could doubt it. He was as clearly aware of the effect upon a stranger of his own keen eyes and vivacious wide-awake aspect as any one could be.
“There’s no telling,” said the old man; “some people think theycan take me in—which is a mistake, Mr. St. Clair—a great mistake.”
“I should think so,” said St. Clair, with easy composure. “If you will let me, I will sit down,” he said; “if there is nothing to occupy you for the moment, I wonder if you will let me ask your advice about a little money I have?”
Again the malicious gleam awoke in old Trevor’s eyes, a mixture of suspicion, admiration, and interest moved him. Every man who had money interested him more or less; but if this was a dodge on Mrs. Stone’s part, the move was one which might have filled any like minded artist with admiration. He chuckled as he invited the confidence of his visitor; yet though he thought he saw through the deceit, he respected St. Clair all the same for having money to invest, even if it were not his own, but lent to him for the occasion; it threw a halo of interest round him in old Trevor’s eyes.
“So that’s the first of them,” he said to himself, when St. Clair took his departure; “that’s number one of the pack. Women are quick about it, they don’t let the grass grow under their feet. Rushton will keep quiet, he won’t let his lad show in my sight. But the women are bold—they’re always bold. And I wonder who my lady will bring forward?” The old man laughed; he was pleased by the thought of the coming struggle. It did not give him any concern that his young daughter should be left alone in the midst of it, to be competed for by so many hungry aspirants. “I’d like to be there to see the wolves at it,” he said aloud, with a grin on his face. At the sound of the voice over his head, little Jock turned round upon his rug. Wolves were in his way; from Red Riding-hood upward, he knew a great deal about them; he had heard them in the forest pursuing the travelers, and knew what the howl meant when it occurred in a story in the midst of the black winter night. He turned right round, with the “History of the Plague” in his arms, and faced his father, looking upward from the rug. “What is it about wolves?” said Jock.
No question could have surprised old Trevor more; he looked round him first in suspicion, to see where the voice came from then looked down upon the child with a gape of wonder. “Eh! do you know anything about wolves, my lad?” he said.
“Oh, a great deal!” said Jock, calmly; “I could tell you heaps of stories about them; the worst of all is that one about the woman and her children. I told it to Lucy, and she would not let me tell it out. Would you like me to tell it to you?”
Jock spoke to his father on very much the footing of an equal.They did not, as a rule, take much notice of each other; but the curious way in which they pursued their lives together had given the old man and the little boy a sort of tacit fellowship, not at all like the usual relation between father and child. Not once in two or three months was there any conversation between them, and this gave all the more importance to their occasional intercourse. “There was once a woman,” said Jock, “traveling through a wild, wild forest, and she had her three little children with her—quite little, little things, littler than me a great deal; when all of a sudden she heard pad, pad, something coming behind her. It wasn’t quite night, but it was getting dark, darker and darker every moment; and the old white horse got awfully frightened, and the forest was miles and miles long. She knew she couldn’t come to a village, or a house, for ever so long. And she heard them coming on faster and faster, sniffing and panting, and all after her, hundreds and hundreds of them; they’re like dogs, you know,” said Jock parenthetically, looking up from the rug, where he lay on his back, with the “History of the Plague” laid open on his breast; “they bark and they howl, just like dogs when you hear them far off in the woods; but when they’re after you, they go straight before them, like the wind blowing, and never make any sound.”
“And what became of the woman and the children?” said old Trevor, partly amused, partly impressed.
“The white horse[A]galloped on and on,” said Jock, with the instinct of a story-teller; “and the wolves came after, pad, pad, all like one, though there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and the woman in the sleigh (did I tell you it was a sleigh? but I don’t know rightly myself what a sleigh is) got wild with fright, and the three little things cried, and the trees made a noise against the sky; and the wood got deeper and deeper, and the night darker and darker; and then she heard them all panting behind her, and their breath hot upon her, and every moment she thought they would jump up behind and crunch her with their teeth—”