“Poor gentlemen ought not to come to you,” said Philip, with indignation. “A barrister, a man in bad health—what has he to do with a small boy? Jock ought to have come to me. I proposed it before you went to London; it is the best thing for him. I think that your father meant him to be my successor in Kent’s Lane.”
“Oh, no, no! never that,” said Lucy.
“Is it so much beneath Jock?” Philip said, with a touch of natural bitterness. “But anyhow, it is I that ought to have the charge of him. I do not want to be unkind, Lucy; but I think I begin to see what Mrs. Ford means about your family.”
“Philip!” cried Lucy, indignant; and then she added, almost crying, “You are all so unjust; and if you say so, too, what am I to do?”
“I will not say anything; but it is what I can not help thinking,” said Philip, with the stateliness of offense. It seemed to him, he could scarcely tell how, that he was being defrauded, not of Jock, who was a trifle, but of all share or interest in Lucy’s future. He had come back on purpose to look after her, to keep her out of trouble. While he had been away it had been more and more clear to him that to share Lucy’s fortune was in a manner his right. It would save him at least ten years, it would secure his position at once, and he had a right. He had come to the Terrace that evening full of this idea; and he had played the fool—he could not but allow that he had played the fool. What were poetry and the stars and the mild influences of the Pleiades to him? He was a Rainy, and there was no one who had so much right to share the great Rainy fortune. The energy of opposition awoke him, which nothing else, perhaps, could have done. “You will forgive me,” he said, “but you are only a young girl, and you can not be expected to understand. And it is quite true what Aunt Ford said, there are always a herd of harpies after a young girl with a large fortune. You should take the advice of those who belong to you. You should first consult your true friends.”
Lucy was confounded; she did not know how to reply. Was not Sir Thomas her true friend? He had not been angry with her when she told him about that famous scheme for giving the money back. Some floating idea that Philip would have been able to help her in that respect, that he might have suggested what, for instance, she should give to St. Clair, had been in her mind. But Lucy promptly shut up her impulse of confession. She withdrew a little from his side. He was not ignorant like the Fords—he was a kind of natural adviser. “But what is the use of speaking to any one who does not understand?” Lucy said. So they traversed the rest of the way in silence, Philip occasionally making a severe remark in the same vein, yet feeling, as he did so, that every word he said was a sacrifice of his vantage-ground. He wanted to change his tactics when he saw the evident mistake of strategy he had made. But such matters are not within our own control; when a false key isstruck it is not easy to get free of it. Philip was ready to curse himself for his folly; but at the same time his folly and his wrong key-note and the misadventure of the evening altogether gave him a sense of almost aversion to his cousin. “What a contrast!” he said to himself. Thus Lucy, whose simplicity was captivating to such a man of the world as Sir Tom, made the Farafield schoolmaster indignant and impatient beyond measure. Sir Thomas would have been in no sort of danger from little Katie. Thus the world goes on, without any regard to the suitable or possible. They said “good-night” very coolly to each other, and Lucy ran upstairs vexed and troubled—for to be disapproved of wounded her. As for Mrs. Ford, she came out of the parlor, where she now seemed to lie in wait for occurrences, when she heard them come to the door. “Come soon again, Philip,” she whispered, “there’s a good lad. I think the whole town is after her. You are the one that ought to get it all. You will be kindly welcome if you come every day.”
“I have not a notion what it is you want me to get,” said Philip, crossly, as he strode away.
Theday on which these events occurred was the day of Mr. Frank St. Clair’s arrival at the White House, where he had come dutifully in answer to his aunt’s summons, to hear of “something to his advantage.” To do him justice, he was by no means delighted with the project; but he was dutiful and needy, and there was nothing for it but to submit. He went the next morning to pay his respects to the heiress and assume the charge of his pupil. It was not a long walk from the White House, but Mr. Frank St. Clair was warm when he arrived, being, according to the euphemism of the day, “out of training,” and glad to sit down and contemplate the little fellow who was to be the instrument of his fortune. Jock, who had resumed his position on the white rug, and lay there, cool and at his ease, while Lucy dutifully read her history, was by no means inclined to submit to any examination.
“Come and tell me what you can do, my little man,” Mr. St. Clair said; “let us see which of us knows the most; we are going to teach each other—you me, or I you. Come and let’s make out which it is to be.”
Jock raised his head from the rug and looked at his questioner with big eyes. The inspection did not seem to please him. “I know a lot,” he said, concisely, and dropped his head; his book was more interesting than the stranger. It was “Don Quixote,” with pictures, which he had in his hands; this deeply experienced reader had never encountered the work with these attractions before.
“I told you, Miss Trevor,” said St. Clair, “he sees through me, he knows my learning is antiquated. If a man has the misfortune to live before Madvig, what is he to do? Scholarship is the most progressive of all sciences; which is curious, considering that it is with dead languages it has to do.”
Lucy raised her mild eyes with no understanding in them. It was in vain to speak of dead languages to her. “Though he is so little,” she said, apologetically, “he has read a great many books. That is what he means; but he has had no education, Mr. St. Clair, except just a little at Hampstead. He has done nothing but read books—nonsense books,” said Lucy severely, thinking to reach the culprit, “that could not teach him anything or do him any good.”
“Reading books is, on the whole, not a bad kind of education,” said St. Clair. “I see you pursue that way yourself.”
“Oh—but this is history; it is not in the least amusing; sometimes it is very hard; I can’t remember it a bit; and sometimes I almost go to sleep: very different,” said Lucy, pointedly, “from the books that Jock reads; they make him laugh, they make him so interested that he can’t bear any one to speak to him. He won’t go to bed, he won’t play for them.Thatcan not be education at all.”
“Very true,” Mr. St. Clair said. “Medicine must be nasty. Might one know, my friend, what you are reading now?”
Jock raised himself from the rug once more. He did not lose a word either of the book or the conversation. “I’ve read it before; but this time I’ve just come to the windmills,” he said.
“The windmills? now what may they be?”
“I told you,” said Lucy, regretfully, “they are all nonsense books—nothing that is of any good.”
“Because you don’t know,” cried Jock, hotly. “You’ve no business to speak when you don’t know.Hedoesn’t think they’re windmills; he thinks they’re big giants, and they’re just like it—just like giants— I’ve thought so myself. He thinks they’ve got a lot of poor people carrying them off to be slaves, and there’s onlyhimupon his own horse—nobody more; but do you think he’ll let them carry off the poor people for slaves? He goes at them like adozen knights—he goes at them like an army,” cried Jock, his eyes flashing. “I wish I had been there, I’d have done it, too.”
“Ah, Don Quixote,” said St. Clair. “What! you, Jock! You that know such a lot—you’d have gone at the windmills, too?”
Jock grew red, for he did not like ridicule. “He didn’t know they were windmills,” he said.
“Didn’t I tell you, Mr. St. Clair,” said Lucy, “that is all he thinks about—windmills? what good can windmills do him? unless he were to learn all about the uses of them, and who began them, and the good they are to the country; that would be very different from a fairy tale.”
“It is not a bit a fairy tale,” Jock cried, indignant. “It’s a long time since I read any fairy tales—never any since Prospero and Ariel on the enchanted island. This is about a man. Fairy tales are very nice when you are quite little,” he added, with dignity, “just beginning to read plain; but when you are bigger you like the sense best, for you can think, I would do the same.”
“You see, Mr. St. Clair, that is just like him; it is not education,” said Lucy, with mild despair.
“I am not quite clear about that,” said St. Clair, who knew a little more than Lucy; “but, Jock, you will find a great many more books to read and men to hear about if you come to me and learn. Leave your tall gentleman to overcome the windmills, and come and speak to me. Tell me what you have learned,” he said, holding the child within his arm as he stood up reluctantly by his side. Lucy looked on with pleased approval, yet many excuses. “He has never been to school; he was so delicate papa didn’t like him to be out of his sight,” she said, reddening with much shame and self-reproach as the real state of the case was elucidated. When the cross-examination was over Jock, though not at all ashamed, escaped as quickly as he could from Mr. St. Clair’s detaining arm. He snatched up his book from the rug, and made assurance sure by putting a flight of stairs and the closed door of Mrs. Ford’s room between him and the inquisitor, who laughed and shook his head as the little fellow bolted. “We must begin from the beginning, I fear,” he said. “He has been neglected; but after all, there has not been much time lost.”
“I am very sorry he is so ignorant,” said Lucy, deprecatingly; “but, Mr. St. Clair, papa was old, and I was very young.”
“Yes; no one could expect you to think of it; you are very young now, Miss Trevor, to have such a charge.”
“Oh, that is nothing,” Lucy said; “many people have had agreat deal more to do. I have heard of girls that have had to work for their brothers and sisters; indeed, I have been acquainted with some,” she said, thinking of Mary Russell. “But now that we know of it, it is not too late to mend it, Mr. St. Clair.”
“Not at all too late;” he was pleased that she should say we. Such a familiarity of association was all he thought that could be desired. “I will undertake to put him in the right way—for the moment.”
“Oh,” Lucy said, with disturbed looks, “will it be only for the moment, Mr. St. Clair? I know it is very good fortune, far more than we could have expected, to get you at all—and that you should take such a very little boy.”
“I am very happy to be able to be of any use to you,” St. Clair said, with a smile; “and if I am not called away—but you well understand that I can not be at all sure of my time, Miss Trevor. I may be called away.”
St. Clair was ready to laugh at the little formula, and this gave him an additional air of seriousness, which looked like feeling. “I wish I had done nothing in my life to be so little ashamed of,” he added, “as teaching a small boy.”
Lucy looked at him with great respect, and even a little awe. An innocent girl has a certain awe of a man so much older than herself, so much more experienced in every way, who perhaps has had mysterious wrong-doings in his life as well as other things, more momentous and terrible than any her imagination has ever realized. The things that St. Clair might have to be ashamed of loomed large upon her in the darkness of her ignorance, like gigantic shadows, upon which she looked with pity and a little horror, yet the same time an awful respect. “Mrs. Stone told me,” she said, with her serious face, “that you had not been well; that after all your studies and work you had not been well enough— I am very, very sorry. It must have been a great disappointment.”
“That is exactly what it was; it is very sweet to meet with some one who understands,” St. Clair said; “yes, it is not so much for myself, but they had all done so much for me, all believed in me so.”
“But, Mr. St. Clair, with rest and taking care, will it not all come right?”
“They say so,” he said; “but, Miss Trevor, though you don’t know much of the hardships of life, you will understand that this is exactly what it is most hard to do. To rest implies means and leisure, and I ought to be working night and day.”
“I am very, very sorry,” said Lucy; a great many waves of varying resolution were passing over her mind—what could she do? would it be most polite to take notice, to receive such a confidence as if it was nothing to her? or should she be bold and put forth her powers as a helper, a wrong-redresser? Jock’s story about the windmills had seemed very great nonsense to his unlettered sister, yet practically she was in a strait not dissimilar. She put her lance in rest with a very doubtful and unassured hand; but if they were giants, as they seemed, she, too, felt, like the great Spaniard, that to pass them by would be cowardly. She looked at him wistfully, faltering. “You will think it strange of me to say it,” she said, her serious face gradually crimsoning from chin to forehead; “but perhaps you know—that I am—not the same as other girls; if there were anything that I could do—”
St. Clair grew red too with surprise and mortification; what could the girl mean? he asked himself; but he answered suavely, “I am sure you are a great deal better and kinder than most girls—or men either, Miss Trevor. You have the divine gift of sympathy, which always does one good.”
“I don’t know if it is sympathy, Mr. St. Clair. Papa left me a great many directions. He said there were some things I was to try to do; and if it would be good for you to have leisure, and be able to rest for a year or two—”
St. Clair was reduced to the level of Raymond Rushton by the utter confusion which these words seemed to bring into the very atmosphere.
“Oh, by Jove!” he ejaculated faintly, in his dismay. He rose up hurriedly. She would offer him money, he felt, if he gave her another moment to do it, and though he was very willing and desirous, if he could, to get possession of her money as a whole, to have a little of it thus offered to him seemed the last indignity. “I expect to find Jock a very amusing pupil,” he said; “not at all like the average little boy. He shall give me a lesson in literature when I have given him his Latin. I suspect it is I who will profit the most. The little wretch seems to have read everything; I wonder if you have shared his studies. He must have got the taste from some one; it is not generally innate in small boys.”
“Oh, no,” said Lucy, “not I.” She was disappointed to have the subject changed so rapidly, and abandoned it with great reluctance, still looking at him to know why he should so cut her short. “Jock does not think much of me,” she added, “and all those story-books and plays and poetry can not be good for him surely.Papa never minded; he was old, and Jock seemed such a baby it did not seem to matter what he did; it was not his fault.”
“Oh, I don’t think it was anybody’s fault. But you are reading, I see, in a steadier way. What is it? history?” Mr. St. Clair approached her table where she was sitting and looked at Lucy’s book.
“Yes,” she said, with a soft little sigh. “Lady Randolph thought I ought; and I should be thinking of my French. It is so hard when one is not clever. I must ask Mr. Stone to let me go to mademoiselle when she comes back.”
“And may I help you with this?” Mr. St. Clair said. He drew a chair near her and sat down.
It had not occurred to good Mrs. Ford that any precautions were necessary, or that she should break up her mornings by being present during all the talk of the young people. If a girl had to be watched forever, Mrs. Ford thought, she must be a very poor sort of girl; so that Lucy’s pink drawing-room was practically open to the world; as entirely open as if she had been an American young lady, with asalonand visiting list of her own. She was very grateful to Mr. St. Clair when he sat down beside her. It was so kind. He took up the book, and asked her if she had seen this and that, other books more readable than the dry compendium Lucy was studying.
“If you will let me get them for you it will give me the greatest pleasure,” St. Clair said. “I consider history my great subject. I should like to help you, if you will let me.” Lucy accepted his offer with the greatest gratitude. She had found it very dry work by herself.
This was the scene upon which Raymond Rushton came in, very slowly, crushing his hat in his hands. His mother had prevented him from signifying the hour of his visit, with a natural fear of the precautions which Mrs. Stone would certainly have taken to occupy the ground beforehand; but this prudence, as it happened, did him no good. Raymond, to tell the truth, was as much relieved as he was annoyed by St. Clair’s presence. He had felt himself grow red and grow pale, hot and cold, all the way, as he came along the street, wondering how he was to manage to make himself agreeable as his mother had ordered him. The very fact that he was commanded to make himself agreeable hindered any natural effort he might have been capable of. He did not know how to talk to Lucy. Some girls saved you the trouble of talking, but she was not one of those girls, and he did not know how he was to manage to getupon such easy terms with her as would make flirtation possible—even if he had known how to flirt, which he did not—at least with Lucy. So, though he was so far sensible of the importance of the pursuit as to be slightly angry and alarmed by St. Clair’s presence, he was still more relieved, on the whole, to feel that he was thus protected, and that there would not be so much required of him. He came in looking very much embarrassed, crushing his hat between his hands.
“How d’ye do, Miss Trevor?” he said. “My mother thought I ought to come and see about our ride. We have fixed Thursday for the picnic, but don’t you think we might go out to-morrow to see how the horses go together? Mine,” said Raymond, with a blush, “is rather an old screw.”
“I should like to go—whenever you like. I am very fond of it,” said Lucy. “Jock and I thought of going a little way this evening, but only a little way.”
This put Raymond more and more out.
“I am afraid I can’t get my horse to-day. It is too late now to arrange it.”
“Do you get your horses from the Black Bull?” said St. Clair. “It must be difficult to make sure of anything there. I go to the Cross Keys, where you are much better served. The Black Bull,” he added, in an explanatory tone, “is the place where you get your flies, Miss Trevor. When the fine weather comes, and a great many people are driving about, all their horses are put into requisition.”
“Oh, not quite so bad as that,” cried Raymond, reddening; “you don’t suppose I ride a fly-horse.”
“I know I have done it,” St. Clair said; “when one has not a horse of one’s own, one has to be content with what one can get; but to feel that you are upon a noble steed which made his last appearance, perhaps, between the shafts of a hearse—”
“Oh, hold hard!” Raymond cried; he was sadly humiliated by the suggestion, and he now began to feel that the presence of this intruder made his visit of very little use, indeed; “you must not take all that for gospel, Miss Trevor. A joke is a joke, but a man may go too far in joking.”
“Which is more than you are likely to do on old Fryer’s horses,” St. Clair said, laughing. But then he got up, feeling that he had made an end of his young rival. He was bigger, broader, altogether more imposing than Raymond. He stood up, and expanded his large proportions, feeling that anybody with half an eye must see the difference—which, perhaps, on the whole, was an unwise step;for St. Clair was too much developed for a young man, and the merest suspicion of fatness, is not that a capital crime in a girl’s eyes? On the whole, when they stood up together, Raymond’s slim youthfulness carried the day; but there are no delusions so obstinate as those which concern our own personal appearance, and it was with a smile of conscious triumph that the larger young man spread himself out. As for Raymond he too felt outdone, and withdrew a little from the competition.
“Emmie has got her pony,” he said. “My mother thinks it will do her a great deal of good to see how you ride, Miss Trevor.”
“Oh, but I never was considered to ride very well,” Lucy said.
“We think down here that whatever you do is done well,” said St. Clair, taking the very words out of Raymond’s mouth, with this difference, that Ray would have uttered them seriously, and would have broken down, whereasthatfellow made a joke of it, and carried off the compliment with a laugh. “We are not much used to accomplished young ladies from town down here,” St. Clair added; “and whatever you do is a wonder to us. ‘When you speak we’d have you do so ever; when you sing we’d have you buy and sell so, so give alms—’”
From this it will be seen that Mr. Frank St. Clair was possessed of some of the graces of letters. But the young persons on either side of him opened their eyes. Ray had a suspicion that there was some sort of play-acting in it; but Lucy was simply amazed that any one should speak of her singing when she could not sing at all.
“Indeed,” she said, seriously, “I do not know a note. I never had a voice, and what was the use of having lessons?” which simple answer, though it made him laugh, entirely disconcerted St. Clair, and reduced him almost to the level of Raymond, who had now got one hand into his pocket and felt more comfortable and at his ease. It was thus that Ray was left master of the field, somewhat to his own surprise, but at the same time much to his gratification, too.
“I say, what a queer fellow that is,” Raymond said; “we all want to know about him. If he’s a barrister, as they say, why isn’t he at his chambers, or on circuit, or something? To be sure it’s the ‘Long’ just now; but he seems to be always here.”
“He has overworked himself; he is not able to do anything,” said Lucy with great sympathy, looking out from the window with a grave face as he went out through the big gate-way and crossed the road. When he had reached the edge of the common he looked back, and seeing her, took off his hat. It gave St. Clair a glow ofsatisfaction to see Lucy looking after him. He went on with a lighter step, and, if possible, a broader chest than ever.
“By Jove! isn’t he fat?” said Raymond, by Lucy’s side; and Lucy, full of sympathy as she was, could not help remarking the breadth of shadow which moved with him across the sunshine. She laughed in spite of herself. The observation was not witty, but Raymond was put into such high spirits by the laugh he elicited that he burst forth into scintillations of still more unquestionable wit. “That is because they pet him so at Mrs. Stone’s. Ladies always do pet one. I should like to know where he’d find a fly-horse up to his weight. Let us ask him to the picnic, Miss Trevor, and borrow a beast for him from the brewer. One elephant upon another,” said Ray.
But Lucy’s amusement did not last through so long an address. She ended by a sigh, looking after him sympathetically. “I wish one could do everything one wished!” she said.
“Ah!” Raymond echoed with a sigh. “But you can, I should think, pretty near. I wish I could do any one thing I wished,” the young man added, ruefully.
“And that is just my case, too,” Lucy said.
TheRushtons lived in a big old red brick house close to the town hall in what was still called the market-place of Farafield, though all the meaner hubbub of the market had long ago been banished to the square behind, with its appropriate buildings. It was a house of the time of Queen Anne, with rows of glittering windows surmounted by a pediment, and though it was in the center of the town a fine old walled garden behind. To Lucy this garden seemed the brightest place imaginable when she was led into it through the shady passages of the old house, the thick walls and rambling arrangement of which defended it from the blazing of the August skies, which penetrated with pitiless heat and glare the naked walls of the Terrace, built without any consideration of atmospheric changes. Mrs. Rushton’s drawing-room was green and cool—all the venetian blinds carefully closed on one side, and on the other looking out upon the trees and shady lawn where two or three young people, girls in light dresses and young men scarcely less summer-like in costume, were playing croquet. These were the days when croquet still reigned on all lawns and country places, and nobody had as yet discovered that it was “slow.” The party was of the usual orthodox kind. There was a young, a very young curate in a long black coat and a wide-awake, and a second young man in light clothes with his hands in his pockets, whom Lucy’s inexperienced eyes with difficulty distinguished from Raymond Rushton; and two or three girls, one of them the daughter of the house, Emma, a shy hoyden of sixteen. All these young people looked with great curiosity at Lucy as she followed Mrs. Rushton out of the house in her black frock, Jock clinging closely to her. Jock, though he had a great deal of self-possession on ordinary occasions, was shy in such an unusual emergency as this. He had never been at a garden party, he was not used to society, and he did not know how to play croquet, in all which points Lucy was almost as uninstructed as he. There was a tea-table set out under an old mulberry-tree, with garden-chairs and rugs spread out upon the grass. Nothing could be more pleasant, cool, leisurely, and comfortable. It was indeed a scene such as might be seen on a summer afternoon in almost every garden with a good-sized house attached to it, with a lawn and a mulberry-tree, throughout England. But then Lucy was not much acquainted with such places, and to her everything was new. They all stood and looked at her as she followed Mrs. Rushton across the grass—looked at her with inward sighs and wonderings. To think she should be so rich, while none of the others had anything to speak of. It did not perhaps go so far as actual envy; but it was certainly surprise, and a bewildered question why such good fortune should have fallen to an inconsiderable girl, and not at all to the others who might have been supposed able to make so much more use of it. The young men could not help feeling that the enjoyment which they could have extracted out of so much money would have been far more than anything a girl could derive from it. Not one of the three perhaps went any further, or at least went so far as to ask whether there were any means by which he could appropriate such a fortune, except indeed Raymond, who was in a most uncomfortable state, knowing that his mother intended him to begin at once to “pay attention” to Lucy, and not knowing in the least how to begin. Lucy was put into the most comfortable chair, as if she had been a dowager, and even Jock was wooed as he had never been wooed before.
“Oh, you will soon learn how to play,” all the young people said in a chorus; “it is very easy.”
Lucy thought they were all very kind, and she thought the lawn a kind of little paradise, with all the sights and sounds of the ruder world shut out.
“Emmie and I almost live here,” Mrs. Rushton said. “We bring out our work in the morning; you can’t think how pleasant it is. I wish, my dear Lucy, that it could have been arranged that you should live with your guardian instead of those good relations of yours. They are very nice, but it is always more cheerful where there are young people. I wish it could be managed. The Fords are excellent people; but they are in a different rank of society. I was speaking to Mr. Rushton about it, but he does not seem to think anything can be done; men are so entirely without resources. You may depend upon it I should find some way in which it could be done, if it depended on me.”
“I don’t think it could be done, Mrs. Rushton; it is all very exact in the will.”
“Then I suppose you stand up very firmly by the will—in every particular, my dear?” Mrs. Rushton said, with a significant look.
“How could I help it?” said Lucy. She preferred looking at the croquet to discussing the will, and she wished Raymond would go and play, and not stand by her chair, looming over her. His mother looked at him from time to time, and when these appeals were made he took his hands out of his pockets and grew red and cleared this throat. But nothing ever came of it. Lucy did not know what to say to this embarrassed young man; he seemed so much further off from her by being so much nearer than Sir Tom. At length, she asked with some diffidence, “Are you not going to play?”
“Oh, my mother thought you would like—to walk round the garden.”
“You goose!” cried his mother. “The fact is, Lucy, Ray thought you would like to see all the old-fashioned corners. They are not like the gardens at the Hall. Oh, we don’t pretend to anything so fine; but we have heaps of flowers, and I think that is the chief thing. Ray is devoted to the garden—he wants so much to show you round.”
And a few minutes after Lucy found herself walking by Ray, who was very shy, and had not a notion what to say to her, nor had she what to say to him. He took her along a commonplace path, and showed her the flower-beds—that is to say, he intimated, with a wave of his hand and a blush, that here were the roses, and there—“I’m sure I don’t know what you call these things,” Ray said.
“Are you not very fond of flowers, then? I thought Mrs. Rushton—”
“Oh, yes, I’m very fond of them—some, you know; but I never can remember the names; it is like songs— I’m very fond of music, but I never can remember the words.”
This was a long speech, and he felt better after it. However little inclined you may feel to do your duty, there is a sense of satisfaction in having done it. “Do you sing?” he added, emboldened by his own success.
“No,” Lucy said; and then the poor young fellow was balked, and the path which seemed to be opening before him was cut suddenly short. He gave a sigh of disappointment, and plunged his hands deeper than ever into his pockets to seek inspiration there.
“Mamma thinks we should go out to-morrow,” he said.
“Yes?” This monosyllable was interrogative, and gave him encouragement. He cleared his throat again.
“I could show you some very nice rides—the way to the picnic on Thursday is very pretty. Were you ever at the old abbey at Burnside? Quantities of people go—”
“I have passed it,” said Lucy, “when we rode at school.”
“Oh, did you ride at school? I don’t think that could be much fun—all girls. Picnics are not very much fun either.”
“I never saw one. I should think it would be nice,” said Lucy, with some doubt.
“Oh, well, perhaps if you were never at one before— I dare say it will be nice when—whenyouare there, Miss Trevor,” said Ray, growing very red; “but then you see I never went with you before.”
Lucy looked at him with some surprise, totally unable to divine why he should flourish so wildly the croquet-mallet he was carrying, and blush and stammer so much. She was entirely unaware that she had assisted at the production of Raymond’s first compliment. She took it very quietly, not knowing its importance.
“My mother thinks Emmie can ride,” he went on, after a confused pause; “but she can’t a bit. Some girls are famous—take fences, and everything you can put before them. There are the Morton girls— I suppose you know the Mortons?”
“I don’t know any one—except the girls who were at school.”
“Oh, there were some great swells, were there not,” said Raymond, “at that school?”
Perhaps for the first time Lucy felt a little pleasure in repeating the names of her school-fellows, information which Raymond received with awe.
“That’s a cut above us,” he said; “they were all awfully angry at home because the old ladies wouldn’t have Emmie. I suppose you were different.”
“It was because of my having so much money,” said Lucy, calmly. “Oh, but you need not laugh. Mrs. Stone said a girl with a great deal of money wanted more training.”
“I can’t see that,” cried Raymond; “not a bit. It doesn’t take much education to spend a great fortune, when a fellow has to make his own way like me; I should think there was nothing so jolly as to have a lot of money, so much that you never could get through it; by Jove! I wonder how it feels,” he said, with a laugh. To this question, if it was a question, Lucy made no reply. It was the subject upon which she could talk best; but she was not a great talker, and Raymond was a kind of being very far off from her, whom she did not understand.
“I don’t think there is much more to see,” he said; “there is not much. I can’t think what my mother meant to show you in the garden. Would you like to go back and try a game? I’ll teach you, if you like. I suppose I may say you will ride to the picnic? Emmie will go (as well as she knows how), and I—”
“If Jock may come, too.”
“Oh,” cried Raymond, “there will be no want of chaperons, you know. My mother is coming, and no doubt some more old ladies. It will be all right, you know,” said the youth with a laugh. This speech made Lucy ponder, but confused her mind rather than enlightened it. She went back to the lawn with him into the midst of the croquet-players, with very little more conversation, and Mrs. Rushton, looking on anxiously, gnashed her teeth behind the tea-urn. “He did not seem to me to find a word to say to her,” she lamented afterward; “what’s the good of spending all that money on a boy’s education, if at the end of it he can’t say a word for himself.” And her husband answered with those comforting words which husbands have the secret of. “You had much better let scheming alone,” he said. “You will put me in a false position if you don’t mind, and you’ll never do any good to yourself.” We are ashamed to say the monosyllable was “Stuff!” which Mrs. Rushton replied.
But the afternoon was very pleasant to Lucy; and Jock enjoyed it too, after awhile, learning the game much more quickly than his sister, and getting into an excitement about it which she did notshare. The little fellow remained in the foreground brandishing a mallet long after the party had melted away, and took possession of the lawn altogether, tyrannizing over the little Rushtons, when Lucy was taken in to dinner with the grown-up members of the family. “Mrs. Rushton says you may come with me, Jock,” Lucy said; but Jock resisted strenuously. “It is only when you go we can have a real game; you are all duffers,” said the little boy, with a contempt which he was much in the habit of showing to his sister. Thus they were launched upon life and society in Farafield. Mrs. Rushton proposed the brougham to Lucy when the time came to go home, but, on hearing that she would prefer to walk, declared that she too was dying for a little fresh air, and that the cool of the evening was delightful. Then they sallied forth in a body, Raymond by Lucy’s side. It was all very pleasant. He was not a brilliant talker, indeed, but Lucy did not want anything very brilliant, and what with the little pricks and stimulants provided by his mother, who walked behind, Raymond excelled himself. It was cheerful even to see the little party making its way along the cool twilight ways, with soft interchange of voices and laughter, little Jock again holding his sister’s hand, while Raymond was skillfully poked and bantered into talk. If it was a scheme it was not very deeply laid, and meant nothing cruel. Would not Raymond Rushton be a perfectly good match for her, should it come to pass? and why should not Raymond have the great fortune as well as another? His mother felt all the glow of virtuous consciousness in her breast. He was a good son, and would make a good husband. In every way, even in respect to family and position, old Trevor’s daughter in marrying Raymond would do very well for herself.
Lucyfound the picnic very amusing. She had never known any of the delights of society; and the gay party in the Abbey ruins, and the ride—though Emmie did not know in the least how to sit her pony, and Raymond rode a tall and gaunt animal of extremely doubtful race, which might have drawn a fly, or a hearse, for anything his appearance said to the contrary—was pleasant all the same. The party was not very large, but it included the best people in Farafield; and among others the rector and his family, who were all very gracious to Lucy. “You must not forget that I am partiallyyour guardian,” the rector said. “If you flirt I have a right to pull you up. If you distinguish one young fellow more than another I shall probably ask what are your intentions? So beware,” he cried, laughing and holding up a finger of warning. And all the rectory girls were as friendly as if they had possessed a brother, which unfortunately was not the case. “If there had been a boy among us, of course he should have tried for the prize,” they all said with cheerful frankness, which Mrs. Rushton did not relish.
Lucy, however, had a guardian who was more alarming than the rector. Out of civility to her, Philip had been asked, and Philip conducted himself in a way which called forth the dire displeasure of all who had any intentions upon Lucy’s peace. He was always appearing wherever she went, stalking continually across the scene, like a villain in a theater, appearing suddenly when least expected. “What was the fellow afraid of?” the rector said; “he had no chance; he was not even in the running.” But he was Lucy’s cousin, and in this capacity he was privileged to push forward, to make his way through a group, to call to her familiarly to “come and see” something, or even to persuade her that the thing she was invited to do on the other hand was impossible. “You can’t go there, Lucy, the mud would be up to your knees; come this way and I’ll show you all you want;” or, “You never will be able for that climb, I will show you an easier way.” Thus Philip, who had been so irreproachable and popular, made himself disagreeable in society for the first time. Perhaps the chief cause of it was that Katie was there. He had taken himself sharply to task after that, one evening of enchantment, which was so new and so unusual that he had given way to it without an effort. The more delicious it was, the more Philip had taken himself to task. He tried to analyze it, and make out how it was that he had been so deeply affected. A reasonable man, he said to himself, must be able to give an account of all the mental processes he passed through; but here was a mental process which was inexplicable. Every interest, every argument, pointed to Lucy as the object of his thoughts. And now that he saw Lucy among other people, and observed the court that was paid to her, it became intolerable to Philip to think of a stranger who had had nothing to do with the family, carrying her off and her fortune, which belonged to the Rainys. He could not think of such a thing with composure. For himself he liked Lucy well enough, and probably the most suitable arrangement in the circumstances for both of them would have been themariage de convénance, which is not allowed as a natural expedient in England, in name at least.But when he remembered the evening at the Terrace, when he had been so foolish, Philip could not understand himself. On various occasions he had attempted to analyze it—what, was it? Lucy had blue eyes as well as Katie Russell, she was about the same height. To be sure her hair did not curl, and during the course of his analysis he recollected with dangerous distinctness the blowing out of the curls in the soft evening breeze. But who could analyze a curl, or understand how such an insignificant detail could give softness to the air, and melody to the wind, and make the very stars in heaven look their best? One of the rector’s daughters had a great many curls, far more complete articles than the curls of Katie, but they did not produce the same effect.
After this unsuccessful attempt at analysis, Philip kept himself away from Katie, and kept watch upon his cousin. He was determined to appropriate the one, and if he could help, not so much as to see the other. It was the easiest way. But these two objects together made the picnic a very harassing and painful pleasure to the young school-master. When Raymond Rushton was pushed by his mother’s exertions to Lucy’s side, Philip did not fail to do his best to hustle him politely away. He was constantly at hand with an appeal to Lucy. At least he was determined that everybody should see he had a claim upon her, and a prior claim to all the rest of the world. But still he could not but remain conscious of the presence of the other girl. In all the guarded and careful intercourse which he had previously had with society in Farafield, as a man on his promotion, and anxiously attentive to rules, Philip had never asserted himself, never put himself into undue prominence, never presumed upon the kindness of the friends who were at the same time his patrons, before. But it could not be denied that he made himself disagreeable about Lucy that afternoon; her name was continually on his lips. He would let her have no rest. He stepped in front of everybody, broke up all the groups of which she formed a part, and followed her with vigilant watch everywhere. Had his relationship to the heiress turned his head, or was it possible that he thought himself worthy of all that fortune, that he thought she would choose him for the partner of her splendor, the company asked each other? “I am sure it is a thing to which Mr. Rushton for one wouldnevergive his consent,” said the giver of the feast. The rector was not quite so certain. “After all it would be nomésalliance, for they are exactly in the same position,” he said; but then it was well known the rector looked upon his association with Lucy’s other guardians as more a joke than a seriousduty. Talks were going on about her in almost every group, everybody was interested in the great heiress; people wished to be introduced to her, as if the poor little girl had been a notability, and so to be sure she was.
The riding party went off rather earlier than the others, and before the whole party was got under way a considerable time elapsed. Philip had insisted upon putting his cousin into her saddle himself; he was not clever at so unusual an office, and he could not help feeling, when she was gone, that he had not done himself any good by his assiduities. He was as sensitive as a thermometer to the fluctuation of public opinion, and he perceived at once that he had done himself harm. The company in general were not unwilling to let him see that nobody particularly wanted him, and that though they were kind and invited him, they did not expect any very great advantage from his presence. Thus Philip spent the interval in wandering about in a somewhat vague manner, not sought by any one. He could never tell how it was that, at last he found himself in one of the carriages by Katie Russell’s side. He had not done it, nor had she done it, for Katie was greatly piqued by the persistent way in which he had avoided her, and her pride was up in arms; but when he turned his head and saw, in the gathering dusk, the little twist of the curl which he had been so utterly unable to analyze, a sudden change of sentiment, still farther beyond the reach of analysis, came over Philip. How was it? nothing more illogical, more unreasonable, ever happened to a philosophical school-master. Instead of the uncomfortable state of effort in which he had spent the day, the young man’s soul glided back in a moment into that curious lull of enchantment which had come over him at the Terrace. Once more the very air grew balmy and caressing, the earth smelled sweet, the night wind blew in his face like a caress, and all the individual sounds about ran into one hum of happiness, and satisfaction, and peace. No cause for it! only the fact, that it wasthatgirl, and not another who sat, next him in the break, among all the chattering and the laughter. Was there ever any cause so inadequate? but this was how it was. The carriage stopped opposite the Terrace to put down Katie. She had only a little way to walk from that point to the White House, which shone faintly through the darkness with a few lights in the windows. Philip did not quite know how, but somehow he had made his peace with Katie, and he it was who jumped down to help her out, and constituted himself her escort. They walked again side by side down the same enchanted road.
“There is no mist to-night, and not so many stars,” he said; and Katie answered, “No, not half so many stars,” showing, as he said to himself afterward, that she remembered too. She was more serious now than after that first evening at the Terrace, walking along very demurely by his side, and owning that she was tired. “But we have had a very pleasant day; don’t you think so, Mr. Rainy?” Katie asked; to which Philip answered, “Ye-es,” with a little doubt.
“The drive back has been delightful,” he said, “the air is so soft. I don’t know that I enjoyed so much the first part. It irritates me, perhaps foolishly, to see the fuss all those people make about Lucy. It was really too much for me to-day; I felt bound to put a stop to it as far as I could. Lucy is a very nice girl, but to see them, you would think there was nobody like her. It makes me angry. I dare say it is very foolish, for Lucy is sensible enough to know that it is not herself but her money that so much court is paid to. But the drive home was worth all the rest put together,” Philip said, with fervor. This made Katie’s head droop a little with shyness and pleasure.
“It was very nice,” she said, in more guarded tones, and with a little sigh of content. “But, Mr. Rainy, you must not vex yourself about Lucy. That is what she has to go through, just as I must go through my governessing. She is sure to have everybody after her wherever she goes, but she is so sensible it never makes any difference; she is not spoiled a bit.”
“Do you think so? do you really think so? that will make my mind much more easy about her,” said Philip. As if Katie was a judge! This was the reflection she herself made: and Katie could scarcely help laughing, under the shadow of night, at the sudden, importance of her own judgment. But, after all, however young one may be, one feels that there is a certain reasonableness in any reliance upon one’s opinion, and she answered with a gravity that was not quite fictitious, that she was sure of it, and did all she could to comfort Philip, who, on his part, exaggerated his anxiety, and carefully refrained from all allusion to that secret unwillingness to let the great Rainy fortune go to any one else, which had moved him powerfully during the day. They took leave at the door of the White House, as they had done before, but not till after a pause and a lingering talk, always renewed upon some fresh subject by Philip just as she held out her hand to say good-night. He had held that hand quite two minutes in his, on the strength of some new and interesting subject which suddenly occurred to him at the last moment, when Katie, seized with a little panic, suddenlywithdrew it and darted away. “Good-night,” she said, from the door-step, nodding her head and waving her hand as before, and once more Philip felt as if a curtain had dropped, shutting out heaven and earth, when the door opened and shut, and a gleam of light shone out, then disappeared. Analyze it! he could not analyze it. He had never been so happy before, nor so sad, nor so fortunate, nor so desolate; but how he could be so ridiculous as to be moved in this way, Philip could not tell. He went back along the dark road, going over every word she had said, and every look she had looked. Lucy’s window shone all the way before him, the light in it glimmering out from the dark front of the Terrace. It seemed to Philip that he could not get rid of Lucy. He felt impatient of her, and of her window, which seemed to call him, shining as with a signal-light. Its importunity was such, that he decided at last to cross the road and call at the door, and ask if she had got home in safety. It was an unnecessary question, but he was excited and restless, half hating Lucy, yet unable to overcome the still greater hatred he had, and terror, of seeing her fall into some one else’s hands. When his voice was heard at the door, Mrs. Ford rushed out of her parlor with great eagerness.
“Come in, Philip, come in,” she cried; “I heard the carriage stop, but what have you been doing all this time? I just hoped it might be you;” then she came close up to him and whispered, “Lucy came in in such good spirits. She said you had been there; she said you had been very attentive. If you would like to have a horse to ride to go with them, to cut out that Raymond Rushton, don’t you hesitate, Philip; tell them to send the bill to me.”
“Is that Philip?” Lucy asked from the stairs, almost before the whisper was over. He was half flattered, half angry at the cordiality of his reception. He walked upstairs to the drawing-room, feeling himself drawn by a compulsion which annoyed him, yet pleased him. The room was very bright with gaslight, the windows shut, as Mrs. Ford thought it right they should always be at such a late hour. Lucy had been superintending Jock, who was audible in his little room behind humming himself to sleep. “I thought it was your voice, Philip,” she said. “Did you like it? Thank you for being so kind to me, but I thought sometimes you did not like it yourself.”
“I liked it well enough, but what I did not like was to see what a position you have been put into, Lucy,” said her cousin; “that was why I took so much trouble. It makes one think worse of human nature.”
“Because they are kind to me?” said Lucy, with surprise.
“Because they are—absurd,” said Philip. “You must see very well they can not mean all that. I should think a sensible girl would be disgusted. I wanted to show you what nonsense it all was, as if their whole happiness depended on showing you that water-fall, or the abbey tower or something. That was why I interfered.”
“I thought,” said Lucy, “it was out of kindness; and that everybody was kind as well as you.”
“Kindness—that is all nonsense;” Philip felt, as he spoke, that of all the mistakes of the day none was so great as his attempt to make Lucy uncomfortable, and to throw suspicion upon all the attention she had received, including his own; but he could not help himself. “You will find out sooner or later what their motives are, and then you will remember what I have said.”
Lucy looked at him very wistfully. “You ought to help me, Philip,” she said, “instead of making it harder.”
“How do I make it harder? I only tell you that all that absurd adulation must conceal some purpose or other. But I am always very willing to help you, Lucy,” he said, softening; “that is what I tried to do to-day.”
When he had administered this lecture, Philip withdrew, bidding her good-night, without saying anything about the other good-night which had preceded this. “You may always rely upon me,” he said, as he went away. “Thank you,” said Lucy, a little ruefully. He was her relation, and her natural counselor; but how unlike, how very unlike to Sir Tom! She sighed, discouraged in her enjoyment of this moment, feeling that Philip was the best person to whom she could venture to confide any of those Quixotic projects which her father’s will had made lawful and necessary. He was the very best person who could tell her how much was necessary to give ease of mind and leisure to a sick young barrister. Philip was the only individual within her reach who could possibly have satisfied her, or helped her on this point. She sighed as she assisted at the putting out the gas. There was nobody but Sir Tom.
Philip did not feel much more comfortable as he went away; he felt that he had done nothing but scold Lucy, and indeed his inclination was to find fault with her, to punish her if he could for the contradiction of circumstances. That she should be capable of taking away all that fortune and bestowing it upon some one who was a stranger, who had nothing to do with the Rainys and who would probably condescend to, if he did not despise, the head ofthat family, Philip himself, was intolerable to him. He felt that he ought to interfere, he ought to prevent it, he ought to secure this wealth to himself. But then something gave him a tug exactly in the opposite direction. If it had but been Katie Russell who was the heiress! She was nobody; it would be madness for him, a young man on his promotion, to marry thus as it were in his own trade, and condemn himself to be nothing but a school-master forever. Indeed it would be folly to marry at all—unless he married Lucy. A young man who is not married has still metaphorically all the world before him. He is very useful for a dinner-party, to fill up a corner. In most cases he is more or less handy to have about the house, to make himself of use. But a man who is married has come out from among the peradventures, and has his place fixed in society, whatever it may be. He has come to what promotion is possible, so far as society is concerned—unless indeed he has the power to advance himself without the aid of society. Katie Russell was a simple impossibility, Philip said to himself angrily, and Lucy—she was also an impossibility. There seemed nothing to be done all round but to rail against fate. When he had settled this with a great deal of heat and irritation, he suddenly dropped all at once into the serenest waters, into an absolute lull of all vexation, into that state of semi-trance in which, though walking along Farafield Streets, toward Kent’s Lane, he was at the same time wandering on the edge of the common, with a soft rustle beside him of a muslin dress, and everything soft, from the stars in the sky, and the night air blowing in his face, to his own heart, which was very soft indeed, melting with the tenderest emotion. It could not do any one any harm to let himself go for this night only upon such a soft delightful current. And thus after all the agitations of the day, he ended it with his head in the clouds.
Itwill be seen from all this that Mrs. Ford was but an indifferent guardian for an heiress. Her ideas of duty were of a peculiar kind. She had newly furnished the drawing-room. She had sweetbreads and other dainties for dinner. If Lucy had been fond of cake, or muffins, or buttered toast, she might have reveled in them; but it did not occur to the careful housekeeper to give herself much trouble about Lucy’s visitors. When Mrs. Rushtoncalled, indeed, Mrs. Ford would sail into the room in her stiffest silk (which she kept spread out upon her bed, ready to put on at a moment’s notice) and take her part in the conversation; but she saw the young men come and go with the greatest indifference, and did not disturb herself out of her usual habits for them. Though she entertained the worst suspicions in respect to Mrs. Stone’s motives, she did not object to St. Clair, neither did she dislike Raymond Rushton, though she saw through (as she thought) all his mother’s devices. We will not attempt to explain this entirely feminine reasoning. It was the reasoning of a woman on a lower level of society than that which considers chaperons necessary. She saw no harm in St. Clair’s appearance in the morning to teach Jock, though Lucy, not much better instructed than Mrs. Ford, was always present at the lessons, and profited too in a mild way. Mr. St. Clair came every morning, turning the pink drawing-room into a school room, and pursuing his work with so much conscience that Lucy herself began to learn a little Latin by listening to Jock’s perpetual repetitions. She was very anxious that Jock should learn, and consented to hear all the story about the gentleman and the windmills, in order to bribe him. “I think he must have been cracked all the same,” Lucy said. “Oh, I don’t say, dear, that he was not a very nice gentleman; and after you have learned your lessons, you can tell me a little more.” Mr. St. Clair made himself of great use to Lucy too. He brought, her books in which she could read her history at much less cost than in her dry text-books: and helped her on in a way for which she was unfeignedly grateful. And after the intercourse of the morning there was the meeting afforded by that evening stroll in the half light after tea, which Jock considered his due. Mrs. Stone too loved that evening hour, and the soft dusk and rising starlight, and was always to be found on the common with her light Shetland shawl over her handsome head, under the dutiful escort of her nephew. The two little parties always joined company, and a great deal of instructive conversation went on. On one of these evenings, Lucy had been waylaid by a poor creature with a pitiful story which went to the girl’s heart. It had already become known in Farafield that there was in the Terrace a young lady who had a great deal of ready money, and a very soft heart.
“Who was that woman, Lucy?” said Mrs. Stone, as they met at the door of the White House. They had been standing there, waiting for her, aunt and nephew both, watching for her coming. “I suppose she was a beggar; but you must take care not to give toomuch in that way, or to get yourself a reputation among them; you will be taken in on every side, and it will vex you to be deceived.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, simply. “It would vex me very much, more than anything else I can think of. I would rather be beaten than deceived.”
This made Mrs. Stone wince for a moment, till she reflected that she had no intention of deceiving Lucy, but, in reality, was trying to bring about the very best thing for her, the object of every girl’s hopes.
“Then who was this woman?” she said.
“Indeed, I did not ask her name. She was—sent to me. What do you think is right?” said Lucy, “to give people money, or a little pension, or—”
“A little pension, my dear child! a woman you know nothing about. No, no, give me her name, and I will have her case inquired into, and if she is deserving—”
“I don’t think it is anybody that is deserving, Mrs. Stone.”
“Lucy! my dear, you must not—you reallymustnot, act in this independent way. What do you know about human nature? Nobody who is not deserving should be allowed to come near a child of your age.”
St. Clair laughed. “That might cut a great many ways,” he said. “Perhaps, in that case, you would have to banish most of the people Miss Trevor is in the habit of seeing.”
“You, for example.”
“That was what I was about to suggest,” he said, folding his hands with an air of great humility. This beguiled Lucy into a smile, as it was meant to do; and yet there was a certain sincerity in it—a sincerity which seemed somehow to make up for, and to justify in the culprit’s own eye, a good deal of deceit; though, indeed, St. Clair said to himself, like his aunt, that he was using no deceit; he was trying to get the love of a good and nice girl, one who would make an excellent wife; and what more entirely warrantable, lawful, laudable action could a young man do?
“You are making fun,” said Lucy, “but I am in great earnest. Papa, in his will, ordered me to give away a great deal of money. He did not say anything about deserving: and if people are in great want, in need—is it not as hard, almost worse, for the bad people than for the good?”
“My dear, that is very unsafe, very dangerous doctrine. In this way you would reward the bad for having ruined themselves.”
“Or make up to them,” said St. Clair, “a little—as much asany one can make up for that greatest of misfortunes—for being bad.”
Lucy looked from one to another, bewildered, not knowing which to follow.
“Yes, it is the greatest of all misfortunes; but still that is sophistry; that argument is all wrong. If the good and the bad got just the same, why should any one be good?”
“Oh!” said Lucy, with a heave of her breast; but though her heart rose and the color came to her cheeks, she had not sufficient power of language to communicate her sentiments, and she was grateful to St. Clair, who interposed.
“Do you think,” he said, “that any one is good, as you say, for what he gets? One is good because one can’t help it—or for the pleasure of it—or to please some one else if it does not please one’s self.”
“For shame, Frank, you take all the merit out of goodness,” his aunt said.
“Oh, no!” Lucy breathed out of the bottom of her heart. She could not argue, but her soft eyes turned upon St. Clair with gratitude. Perhaps he was not quite right either, but he was far more right than Mrs. Stone.
“Miss Trevor agrees with me,” he said quietly, as if that settled the question; and Lucy would not have been human had she not been gratified, and flattered, and happy. She looked at him with a silent glow of thanks in her eyes, even though in her heart she felt a slight rising of ridicule, as if it could matter whether she agreed or not!
“This is all very fine,” said Mrs. Stone, “but practically it remains certain that the people who merit your kindness are those to whom you ought to give it, Lucy. I did not know your father had left instructions about your charities.”
“He did not quite mean charities,” said Lucy; “it was that I should help people who wanted help. He thought we—owed it, having so much: and I think so too.”
“And therefore you were meditating a pension to the first beggar that came in your way. My dear child! you will be eaten up by beggars if you begin with this wild liberality.”
“It was not exactly—a beggar; it is not that I mean.”
“I will tell you what to do,” said Mrs. Stone, “take the names of the people who apply to you, and bring them to me. I will have the cases thoroughly sifted. We have really a very good organization for all that kind of thing in Farafield, and I promise you, Lucy,that if there is any very hard case, or circumstances which are very pitiful, even though the applicant be not quite deserving, you shall decide for yourself and give if you wish to give; but do let them be sifted first.”
Lucy said nothing; to have “cases” which should be “sifted” by Mrs. Stone, did not seem at all to correspond with her instructions; and again it was St. Clair who came to her aid.
“The holidays are very nearly over,” he said, “and we have a little problem of our own to settle. Do you know, Miss Trevor, my aunt meditates sending me away.”
“Oh!” cried Lucy, with alarm. She turned instinctively to Jock, who was roaming about the common before them. “But what should we do then?” she said, with simplicity. The guardians had not yet interfered about Jock’s training; they had left the little fellow in her hands; and Lucy was very much solaced and comforted by the arrangement in respect to her little brother which St. Clair’s delicate health had permitted her to make.
“You forget that I am a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I am a ravening lion, seeking whom I may devour. I am an enemy in the camp.”
“Is that all because he is a gentleman?” said Lucy to Mrs. Stone, with wondering eyes.
It was not Mrs. Stone who replied, but Miss Southwood, who had now come out to join them, and who had heard St. Clair’s description of himself. She nodded her head, upon which was a close “cottage bonnet” of the fashion of thirty years ago.
“Yes, yes,” she said, “it is quite out of the question, it is not to be permitted; not one of the parents would consent to it if they knew.”
“The parents do not trouble me much,” Mrs. Stone said, raising her head; “when I think a thing is right, I laugh at parents. They are perfectly free to take the girls away, if they object; I judge for myself.”
“But you must not laugh at parents,” said the timid sister. “Maria! you make me shiver. I don’t like you to say it even on the common, where there is nobody to hear. There is that child with his big eyes; he might come out with it in any society. Laugh at—parents! You might as well say you don’t believe in the— British Constitution, or the— Reformation, or—even the House of Commons or the Peerage,” Miss Southwood said hurriedly, by way of epitomizing everything that is sacred.
“The Reformation is quite out of fashion, it is vulgar to profess any relief in that; and at all times,” said Mrs. Stone, “popular institutions are to be treated with incredulity, and popular fallacies with contempt. Frank is not a ravening lion, he wants to devour nobody but— Jock. Yes, when you do bad exercises he would like to swallow you at one gulp.”
“Is he going away?” said Jock, whom this reference to himself had roused to attention. Then he said with authority, “He had better come and live with us, there’s a spare room; Lucy wants him as much as me. I know there is something she wants, for she looks at him when nobody is noticing, like this—” And Jock gave such an imitation of Lucy’s look as was possible to him.
This strange speech made an extraordinary commotion in the quiet group. The two sisters and St. Clair sent each other rapid telegraphic messages by some kind of electricity, which went through them all. It was one look of wonder, satisfaction, consternation, delight that flashed from one pair of eyes to the other, and brought a sudden suffusion to all their faces. As for Lucy, she took it a great deal more quietly. They had the look of having made a discovery, but she did not betray the consciousness of one who has been found out.
“Indeed, I hope Mr. St. Clair will stay, I don’t think it would make any difference to the girls,” she said; and then she added, with a little excitement, “How strange it will be to see them all back again, and me so different!”
Grammar had never been Lucy’s strong point.
“Shouldn’t you like to come back?”
Lucy laughed and shook her head.
“I can’t tell,” she said. “I should—and yet how could I? I am so different. And by and by I should have to go away again. How strange it is that in such a little time, that has been nothing to them, so much should have happened to me.”
There passed rapidly through Lucy’s mind as she spoke a review of the circumstances and people who had furnished her with so many varied experiences. First and greatest stood the Randolphs, and that other world of life in London, which she knew was waiting for her in the shut-up rooms, all shutters and brown-holland, in Lady Randolph’s house. She seemed to see these rooms, closed and dim, with rays of light coming in through the crevices, and everything covered up, in which her life was awaiting her. The other scenes flitted across her mind like shadows, the episode of the Russells, the facts of her present existence—all shadows; but Grosvenor Street was real, though all the shutters were shut. While this was passing through her mind, the others were giving her creditfor visions very different. They glanced at each other again, and Mrs. Stone took her nephew’s arm and gave it a significant pressure. She was too much elated to be capable of much talk.
“We must see Lucy home,” she said. “It is getting late, and dear little Jock ought to be in bed. I am always glad to see my girls come back; but there is one thing I shall grudge, these evening strolls; they have been very sweet.”
“Then you have made up your mind, notwithstanding Miss Trevor’s intercession (for which I thank her on my knees), to send me away?”
“I can not send you away while you are necessary to the comfort of—these dear children,” Mrs. Stone said. There was a little break of emotion in her voice, and Lucy listened with some surprise. She was scarcely aware that she had interceded, yet in reality she was very glad that Mr. St. Clair should stay. She observed that he held her hand a moment longer than was necessary, as he bade her good-night, but she did not attach any meaning to this. It was an accident; she was too greatly indifferent to notice it at all.
And thus the tranquil days went on; the girls came back, but Mr. St. Clair did not go away. He was faithful to Jock and his lessons, and very sympathetic and kind to Lucy, though he did not at all understand the semi-abstraction into which she sometimes fell in his presence, and which was due to her anxious self-inquiries how she could propound to him the question of permanent help. Indeed this abstraction deceived St. Clair as much as his devotion was intended to deceive her. He was taken in his own toils, or, rather, he fell into the trap which little Jock had innocently laid for him. When Lucy looked at him, he thought that he could see the keen interest which the child had discovered in her eyes; and when she did not look at him, he thought she was averting her eyes in maiden bashfulness for fear of betraying herself; and he permitted himself to watch her with more and more tender and close observation. He was far cleverer and more experienced than Lucy, but her simplicity deceived him; and as he gave Jock his lesson and watched the tranquil figure of the girl sitting by, St. Clair felt, with a throb of excitement, that he was approaching a sort of fabulous termination, a success more great than anything he had ever actually believed in. For, as a matter of fact, he had never really believed in this chance which his aunt had set before him. He had “gone in for” Lucy as he would have “gone in for” any other temporary pursuit which furnished him with something to do, and satisfied the relatives on whom he was more dependentthan was agreeable. But now suddenly the chase had become real, the chance a possibility, or more than a possibility. In such circumstances, what suitor could avoid a growing excitement? The moment the thing became possible, it became wildly exciting, a hurrying pursuit, a breathless effort. Thus while Lucy’s thoughts were gravely fixed upon what she considered the chief business of her life, St. Clair, on his side, pursued the object of his with an ardor which increased as the end of the pursuit seemed to draw near. His voice took tender inflections, his eyes gave forth glowing glances, his aspect became more and more that of a lover; but Lucy, preoccupied and inexperienced, saw nothing of this, and there was no one else to divine what the unlucky wooer meant, unless, indeed it might be Jock, who saw and heard so much more than any one supposed, so much more than he himself knew.