IT is not to be supposed that in the tête-à-tête dinner 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, and be 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 of the 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 Ford had 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, that I 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,” he said; “there’s one that has a real claim—just one. He’s may be too modest to speak for himself; but there is one, 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.