LADY RANDOLPH made haste to strike while the iron was hot. She was a clever woman, conscious enough (though, perhaps, no more than other people) of her own interests, and with schemes in her mind (as everybody had) of other interests to be served through the heiress, whom it had been one of the successes of her later life to obtain the charge of; but, having got this, she had no other intention than to treat Lucy kindly, and to make her life, which would add so many comforts to Lady Randolph’s, pleasant and happy to herself. The best way to do this was to win the girl’s heart. Lady Randolph had not been seized with love at first sight for her new charge; but she was rather prepossessed than otherwise by Lucy’s appearance, and she was anxious to get hold of her and secure her affections with as little delay as possible; and when she informed Mrs. Ford, as she sipped the cup of tea which that excellent woman prepared for her, that she was going to pass the night at the Hall, and that to return to that scene of her happier life was always “a trial” to her, she had already touched a chord of sympathy in Lucy’s heart.
“What I should like,” Lady Randolph said, “would be that you should come with me, my dear. It would be a great matter for me. The Hall belongs to Sir Thomas now, my nephew, you know. He is very kind to me, and I look upon him almost as a son, and his house is always open to me; but when you remember that I was once mistress there, and spent a happy life in it, and that now I am all alone, meeting ghosts in every room—”
Lucy’s heart came to her eyes. It was all true that Lady Randolph said, but perhaps no such statement, made for the purpose of calling forth sympathy, ever achieves its end without leaving a certain sense of half-aroused shame in the mind of the successful schemer. Lady Randolph was touched by the warmth of feeling in the girl’s eyes, and she was half ashamed of herself for the conscious exaggeration which had called it forth. Mrs. Ford was very sympathetic.
“I have never been so bad as that,” she said, “I have always had company; I have never lost an ’usband, like you, my lady; but I feel for your ladyship all the same.”
“And I shrink from going back,” said Lady Randolph, “and going all alone. I think if Lucy could come with me, it would be a great thing for me; and we should have time to make acquaintance with each other; and Mrs. Ford, I am sure, would look after all the things, and bring them and the little brother to meet us at the station to-morrow. Will you begin our life together by being kind to me, Lucy?” she said, with a smile.
There were difficulties, great difficulties, to be apprehended from Jock; but Lucy could not refuse such an appeal; and this was how it happened, that, to the great surprise of Farafield, she was seen in her little crape bonnet and veil (much too old for her, Lady Randolph at once decided) driving in the gray of the wintery afternoon, through the chilly streets—the day her father was buried! there were some people who thought it very unfeeling. When it was mentioned at dinner in the big house in the market-place inhabited by the town clerk, Mrs. Rushton was very much scandalized.
“The very day of the funeral!” she cried; “they might have let her keep quiet one day; for I don’t blame the girl—how was she to know any better? I always said it was a fatal thing for Lucy when that old fool of a father chose a fashionable fine old lady for her guardian. Oh, don’t speak to me, I have no patience with him. I think, from beginning to end, them never was such a ridiculous will. If it had been me, I should have taken it into court; I should have had it broke—”
“You might have found it difficult to do that. How would you have had it broke, I should like to know?” her husband said.
“Ladies’ law,” said Mr. Chevril, who was very busy with his dinner, and did not care to waste words.
“It is not my trade,” said Mrs. Rushton, “that’s your business. I can tell you I should have done it had it been in my hands. But it’s not in my hands; a woman never has a chance. You may talk of ladies’ law, but this I know, that if we had the law to make it would not be so silly. A woman would have known what was for the girl’s true advantage; we would have said to old Mr. Trevor, Don’t be such an old fool. We should have told him boldly, such and such a thing is not for your girl’s advantage. Had any of you men the courage to do that? And the result is, Lucy is in the hands of a fashionable lady who can’t live without excitement, and takes her out to drive on the day of her father’s funeral. I never heard anything like it, for my part.”
This indignation, however, was scarcely called for by the facts of the case; and yet, the event was very important for Lucy. There was not much excitement, from Mrs. Rushton’s point of view, in the afternoon drive along the wintery roads to the Hall, which was nearly five miles out of Farafield. The days were still short, and February afternoon was rainy and gloomy, and the latter part of the way was between two lines of bare and dusky hedge-rows, with here and there a spectral tree waving darkly against the unseen sky; not a cheerful moment, nor was the landscape cheerful; an expanse of damp and darkening fields, long lines of vague road, no light anywhere, save the glimpses of reflection in wet ditches or pools of muddy water. Lady Randolph shivered, wrapping herself close in her furs; but for Lucy all was full of intense sensation and consciousness, which might be called excitement, though its effect upon her was to make her quieter and more outwardly serious than usual. From the moment when she stepped into the carriage, Lucy felt herself in a new world. The life she had been used to lead wanted no comforts, so far as she was aware, but the rooms at the Terrace had possessed no charm, and the best vehicle with which Lucy was acquainted was the shabby fly of the neighborhood, which lived at the livery-stables round the corner, and served all the inhabitants of the Terrace for all their expeditions. Lucy felt the difference when she suddenly found herself in the soft atmosphere of luxury which surrounded her for the first time in Lady Randolph’s carriage, a little sphere by itself, a little moving world of wealth and refinement, where the very air was different from the muggy air of the commonplace world; and as they drove up the fine avenue, with all its tall trees rustling and waving against the faint grayness of the sky, and saw the great outline of the Hall dimly indicated by irregular specks of light, Lucy felt as if she were in a dream, but a dream that was more real than any waking certainty. She followed Lady Randolph into the great hall and up the wide spacious staircase, with these mingled sensations growing more and more strongly upon her. It was a dream: the noiseless servants, the luxurious carpets in which her foot sunk, the great pictures, the space and largeness everywhere, no single feature of the place escaped her observation. It was a dream, yet it was more real than all the circumstances of the past existence, which now had become dreams and shadows, things which were over. She stepped not into a strange house only, but into a new life, when she crossed the threshold. This was the life her father had always told her of; he had told her it would begin when he died, and had prepared her to take her place in it, always holding before her an ideal sketch of the position which was to be hers; and now it had come. The very fact that her entrance into this new world was made on his funeral day gave to the new life that aspect of springing out of the old which he had always impressed upon her. She had lost no time, not a day, and transition was natural, in being so sudden and so strange.
The Hall was a beautiful old house, stately in all its details, huge, and ample, and lofty. To go into it was like walking into a picture. There was a great mirror in the hall, which reflected her slim figure in its new crape and blackness stepping dubiously forward, making her think for a moment that it was some one else she saw, a girl with a pale face, strange to everything, who did not know which way to turn. Lady Randolph took her upstairs to a dim room, pervaded by ruddy firelight, and with glimmering candles lighted here and there. “You shall have this little room to-night, for it is near mine,” Lady Randolph said. Lucy thought it was not a little but a large room, bigger than any bedroom in the Terrace, and more comfortable than anything she had ever dreamed of. The badly built draughty rooms in the Terrace were not half so warm as this soft, silken-cushioned nook. Lucy lay down doubtfully on the sofa as her new friend ordained, but her mind was far too active and her imagination too hazy to permit her perfect rest. Lady Randolph’s maid, a soft-voiced, noiseless person, came to her and brought her tea, opening the little bag she had brought, and arranging everything she wanted, as Lucy’s wants had never been provided for before. All this had a bewildering, yet an awakening effect upon her. She lay for a little while upon the sofa warm and still, and cried a little, which relieved the incipient headache over her heavy eyes. Poor papa! he was gone as he had always planned and intended, and had left her to begin this new life, which he had drawn out and mapped before her feet. And how many things he had left her to do, things which it overawed her to think of! A flutter of anxiety woke in her heart, even now, as she wondered how she should ever be capable of doing them by herself without guidance, so ignorant as she was and inexperienced. But yet she would do them. She would obey everything, she would follow all his instructions, Lucy vowed to herself with a thrill of resolution, and a dropping of tears, which relieved and at the same time exhausted her. But the exhaustion was a land of refreshment. And after awhile Lady Randolph came back, after Lucy had bathed her eyes and smoothed back her fair hair, and took her down-stairs.
“I am glad Tom is away,” Lady Randolph said, “we will have it all to ourselves. To-morrow I will show you the house, and to-night we shall have a little quiet chat, and make friends.”
She gave Lucy’s hand a little pressure with her arm, and led her out of one softly lighted room into another, from the drawing-room, to the dining-room, where they sat down, in the midst of the surrounding dimness, at a shining table, all white and bright, with flowers upon it, unknown at this season in the Terrace. Lucy felt a thrill of awe when the family butler, most respectable of functionaries, put her chair close to the table as she sat down. Once more she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror which reflected her from head to foot, and wondered who it could be sitting there gazing at her with that little pale familiar face.
After the meal was over they went back to a little inner drawing-room, to reach which they had to go through a whole suite of half-lighted, luxurious rooms, all softly warm with firelight. “This used to be my favorite room,” Lady Randolph said, sighing as she looked round. It was called the little drawing-room, and Lady Randolph spoke of it as a little nook; but it was bigger than the drawing-room at the Terrace. Here the girl was set down in a comfortable chair by the fire, and listened while Lady Randolph told of her former life here, and all she had done. “Tom is very kind,” she said; “but how can I come here without meeting ghosts, the ghosts of all my happy days?”
Lucy listened with that devout attention which only youth so innocent and natural as hers can give to the recollections of one who has “gone through” these scenes of actual life which are all mystery and wonder to itself. Lucy had no ghosts in her memory; her father was not far enough off from her, nor was her sense of loss so strong as to make her feel that the world was henceforward peopled with sad recollection; but there was enough enlightenment in the touch of natural grief to make her understand. She was glad to be allowed to listen quietly—to feel the ache in her heart softened and subdued, and the lull of great exhaustion falling over her. That ache of natural, not excessive sorrow, is almost an additional luxury in such a case. It justifies the languor, and gives an ennobling reason for it. And in a mind so young the very existence of sorrow, the first touches of experience, the sense of really experiencing in its own person those emotions which it has heard of all its life, which are the inspiration of all tragedies, and the theme of all stories, carry with them an exquisite consciousness, which is near enjoyment, though it is pain. Lucy was perhaps in her own constitution too simply matter-of-fact to feel all this, yet she did feel it vaguely. She was no longer a school-girl, insignificant and happy, but a pale young woman in deep mourning who had taken a first step into the experiences of life. She leaned back in her chair with that ache in her heart which she was almost proud of, yet with a sense of luxurious well-being round her, warmth, softness, kindness, and her hand in Lady Randolph’s hand. Her shyness had melted away under the kind looks of her new friend; Lucy was too composed to be very shy by nature, but even the silence was not embarrassing to her, which is the greatest test of all.
It was easy after that to go on to talk of herself a little. Lady Randolph had become honestly interested in her young companion; Lucy was in every way so much better than she had expected. Even the hand which she had taken into her own was, now she had time to think of it, an agreeable surprise. Lucy’s hand was small and soft, and as prettily shaped as if she had been born a princess. These indications of race, which are so infallible in romance, do not always hold in actual life. The old school-master’s daughter had no beauty to speak of; but her hand was as delicate as if the bluest blood in the world ran in her veins. Lady Randolph felt that Providence had been very good to her in this respect, for, indeed, she could not but feel that a large red coarse hand was what might have been expected in the little parvenue. But Lucy was not coarse in any particular; she would never come to the pitch of refinement which that princess reached who felt a pea through fifteen mattresses; but her quiet straightforwardness could never be vulgar. This certainty relieved her future chaperon from her worst fears.
“My house is not like this,” Lady Randolph said; “London houses are small; but I try to make it comfortable. I have partly arranged your rooms for you; but I have left you all the finishing touches. It will amuse you to settle your pretty things about you yourself.”
“I have not any pretty things,” said Lucy; “I have nothing but—” Jock, she was going to say; but she was not sure of the prudence of the speech, seeing Jock was her grand difficulty in life.
“Never mind,” said Lady Randolph, “nothing can be easier than to get them; and you must have a maid—unless indeed there is one that you would like to bring with you. I should prefer a new one, a stranger who would not make any comparisons, who would easily fall into the ways of my house.”
“I have no one,” said Lucy, eagerly; “I have never been accustomed to anything of the kind. I never had a maid in my life.”
“Well, my dear, it has not been a very long life. We must find you a nice maid. Of course you will not go out this year; but there will be plenty of things to interest you. Are you very fond of music? or anything else? You must tell me what you like best.”
“I can play—a little, Lady Randolph, not anything to speak of,” said Lucy, with the instinct of a school-girl. She did not even think of music in any higher sense.
“Then that is not your spécialité; have you a spécialité, Lucy? Perhaps it is art?”
“I can draw—a very little, Lady Randolph.”
Lucy’s questioner laughed. “Then I am in hopes,” she said, “great hopes, that you are a real, honest, natural, ignorant girl, like what we used to be. Don’t say you are scientific, Lucy; I could not understand that.”
“I am very sorry,” said Lucy, with confusion; “Mrs. Stone gave me every advantage, but I never was quick at learning. I am not even a great reader, Lady Randolph; I don’t know what you will think of me.”
“If that is all, Lucy, I think I can put up even with that.”
“But Jock is!” cried Lucy, seizing the opportunity with sudden temerity. “You would not believe what he has read—every kind of history and poetry, though he is so little. And he has never had any advantages. Papa always thought me the most important, because of my money; but now,” said Lucy, with a little excitement, “now! It is the only thing in which I will ever go against him— I told him so always; so I hope it is not wicked to do it now; what I want most is to make something of Jock.”
Now Lady Randolph was not interested in Jock. Her warmth of sympathy was a little chilled by this outburst, and the chill reacted upon her companion. “We shall have plenty of time to talk of this,” Lady Randolph said; “it is getting late; and you have had a very exhausting day. I think the first thing to be done is to have a good night’s rest.”
Next day there was a great gathering at Farafield station, when the carriage from the Hall drove up with Lady Randolph and her charge. The Fords had arrived, bringing Jock, a pallid little figure all black, in unimaginable depths of mourning, and with a most anxious little countenance; for Jock had spent a miserable night—not crying, as is the case generally with children, but framing a hundred terrors in his imagination, and half believing that Lucy had been spirited away, and would come back for him no more. The convulsive clutch which he made at her hand, and the sudden relaxation of all the lines of his eager little face as he recovered his sheet-anchor, his sole support and companion, went to Lucy’s heart. She was almost as glad to see him. It was natural to feel him hanging upon her, trotting in her very footsteps, not letting her go for a moment. Philip Rainy was also there to bid his cousin good-bye; and in the sight of everybody he took her by the arm and led her apart, and had a few minutes’ earnest conversation with Lucy. This talk was almost exclusively about Jock, but it was looked upon with great surprise and jealousy by several pairs of eyes. For Mrs. Stone had also come to the station to bid her pupil farewell, and she was accompanied by her nephew, Mr. St. Clair, who stood looking his handsomest, and holding his head high over the group in the pleasant consciousness of being much the tallest and most imposing personage among them. There was also a group of school-girls, under the charge of mademoiselle, all ready to bestow kisses and good-wishes, and a few easy tears upon Lucy. And Mr. Rushton had come to see his ward off, with his wife and their son Raymond in attendance. All the elder people looked on Philip Rainy with suspicion; but all the more did he hold Lucy by the sleeve, talking to her, and keeping the rest of her friends waiting. When she did get to the carriage at last it was through a tumult of leave-takings, which made the very guards and porters tearful. Mrs. Ford stood crying, saying, “God bless you!” at intervals; and Mrs. Stone folded her pupil in a close embrace. “Remember, Lucy, that you are coming back in six months, according to your good father’s will; and I hope you will not have forgotten your old friends,” she said, with a mixture of affection and authority. Mr. St. Clair stood with his hat off, smiling and bowing. “May I say good-bye, too? And good luck!” he said, enveloping Lucy’s black glove in his large soft white hand. He was the tallest and the biggest there, and that always makes an impression upon a girl’s imagination. Then the Rushtons came forward and took her into their group. “I felt that I must come to give you my very best wishes,” Mrs. Rushton said; “and here is Raymond, your old playfellow, who hopes you remember him, Lucy. He only came home last night, but he would come to see you off.” Then the girls all rushed at their comrade, whom they all envied, though some of them were sorry for her. “You will be sure to write,” they cried, with one voice and a succession of hugs. “And, oh, Lucy!” cried Katie Russell, “please go and see mamma!” It was with difficulty that she was helped into the carriage after all these encounters, a little disheveled; smiling and crying, and with Jock all hidden and wound up in her skirts. But the person who extricated her and put her into the carriage was Philip, who held steadily to his superior rights. He was the last to touch her hand, and he said, “Remember!” as the train began to move, as solemnly as did the solemn king on the scaffold. This cost Philip more than one dinner-party, and may almost be said to have damaged his prospects at Farafield. “Did you ever see such presumption,” Mrs. Rushton said, “pushing in before you, her guardian?” And he was not asked to the Rushtons for a long time after, not till they were in absolute despair for a stray man to fill a corner. It was like the dispersion of a congregation from some special service to see all the people streaming away. And Lucy was the subject of a hundred fears and doubts. They shook their heads over her, all but the school-girls, who thought it would be too delightful to be Lucy. It was thus that Lucy set out upon the world.