CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DEDICATION.
A VERY short time after this Lucy received the parcel of books which had been promised her. The season was growing to its height, and no time had been lost in putting the three volumes into the flimsy cloth binding which places the English novel on a platform of respectability, elevated far above its contemporary of other nations. The author did not bring her the first copy with his own hands, as he had vowed to do. Bertie had been afraid—he had done a thing which was perhaps too daring, and he did not venture to appear in his own person, to meet, perhaps, the storm of Lady Randolph’s displeasure, perhaps the alarmed reproachfulness of Lucy herself. He sent it instead, and awaited the reply with a heart which could scarcely beat higher with any personal excitement than it did with the tumult of hope and fear with which he awaited the issue of his first publication. It seemed to the inexperienced young fellow that the issues of life and death were in it, and that his fate would be fixed one way or another, and that without remedy. His doubt of Lucy’s reception of his offering, therefore, added but a slight element the more to a tumult of feeling already almost too great to be controlled. He brought it himself to the door, but would not go in; leaving a message that the parcel was to be given to Miss Trevor at once. Lady Randolph and she, for a wonder, were dining alone, and the parcel was undone when the dessert was placed on the table, and lay there in a very fashionably artistic binding, of no particular color, with “Imogen” scrawled in large uneven letters on the side. The ladies both took it up with great interest. A new book, though so many of the community have ceased to regard it as anything but a bore, is still interesting more or less to every little feminine circle that knows the author. Lady Randolph was going out to a succession of parties after dinner, and among them to a great intellectual gathering, where all the wits were to be assembled. “I must tell Mrs. Montagu about it,” she said; “I must speak to everybody about it. It is very attentive of the young man to send it at once. We must do what we can for him, Lucy. We must ask for it at all the libraries, and tell everybody to ask for it, and I will speak to the critics. I will speak to Cecilia,” she said, taking up the first volume. But after a momentary interval, a change came over Lady Randolph’s face. She uttered the invariable English monosyllable “Oh!” in startled and troubled tones; then turned upon her companion hastily:
“Did you know of this, Lucy? My dear, my dear, how wrong! how imprudent! Why did not you mention it to me?”
Lucy was eating her strawberries very quietly, looking with a pleased expectation at the two other volumes of the book. It seemed to her a fine thing to be an author, to have actually written all that; and she was a little proud in her own person of knowing all about him, and felt that she would now have something to talk about when Lady Randolph’s visitors tried her, as they were in the habit of doing, on divers subjects. When they talked to her about Lady Mary’s small and early party, or the duchess’s great assembly, Lucy had often found it embarrassing to repeat her humble confessions of ignorance to one after another, and to admit that she had not been there or there; and did not understand the allusions which were being made; and she did not know enough about music to speak of the opera, nor about pictures to prattle about the Exhibitions, as she heard other girls do; but now she would have something to say. “Have you seen the new novel? It is written by a gentleman we know.” With that to talk about, Lucy felt that she might even take the initiative and begin the conversation with any one who did not look very clever and alarming, and this gave her a serene satisfaction. Also she was to spend the evening all by herself, and a new story was a nice companion. She was aroused from these agreeable thoughts by that “Oh-h!” uttered upon two or three notes by Lady Randolph, and looked up to see her friend’s countenance entirely changed, severe as she had never seen it before. “Did you know of this? Why did you not mention it to me?” Lady Randolph said. She was holding out the book for Lucy’s inspection, and the girl looked at it with instinctive alarm, yet all the calm of innocence. This was what she read:
TO THE ANGEL OF HOPE,
LUCY,
TO WHOSE NAME IN REVERENCE
I PREFIX NO TITLE.
THIS FIRST EFFORT OF A MIND
WHICH HER GENTLE ENCOURAGEMENT
HAS INSPIRED WITH CONFIDENCE
IS INSCRIBED.
Lucy’s eyes grew round with amazement, her lips dropped apart with consternation. She looked from the book to Lady Randolph, and then to the book again. After a moment, the color rushed to her face. “Lucy! Oh, you do not suppose he means me?” she said aghast.
“Whom could he mean else? Did you know anything about it? Lucy, don’t let me think I am deceived in you,” Lady Randolph said, with great vehemence. She was more excited than seemed necessary; but then, no doubt, she had a very serious sense of responsibility, in regard to a ward so precious.
“I am very sorry,” said Lucy; “I suppose I do know; he said he would dedicate the book to me, and I said, oh, no, don’t do that; but then we spoke of something else, and I thought of it no more.”
After awhile Lady Randolph found herself capable of smiling, when she was fully convinced of the girl’s innocence. “What a good thing you are not out, my dear. I can’t be sufficiently thankful you are not out. You see by this, Lucy, what a dangerous thing it is to be kind to anybody. You, with your prospects, can not be sufficiently careful. Have you ever thought that you are different from other girls? that there are reasons why I must take a great deal more care of you— I, who think girls ought always to be taken care of?” Lady Randolph said.
“I know that I have a great deal of money,” said Lucy quietly. “I suppose, Lady Randolph, that is what you mean?”
“My dear, if it were only in novels, you must have read that girls who have great fortunes are run after by all sorts of unworthy people; and innocent girls like you are apt to be deceived when people are civil. Lucy, my love, this is a great deal too broad a compliment,” said Lady Randolph, very solemnly, laying her hand upon the book; “you must not be taken in. No man who really cared for you, no nice man, would have held you up to the notice of society in this way.”
“Cared for me?” said Lucy, “but I never supposed he did that. Why should he care for me?”
Lady Randolph looked at her charge with great perplexity of mind. Was this innocence, or was such simplicity credible? Had the girl never heard of fortune-hunters? All girls in society were aware of the dangers which attended an heiress; but Lucy had not been brought up in society. She did not know what to think; finally, however, she determined that it was better, if they did not already exist there, to put no such ideas into the head of her ingénue. For Lady Randolph, who had no clew to the graver cares which occupied Lucy’s mind, had not thought of her, as yet, in any character except that of ingénue. She stopped herself in the half-completed sentence which she had begun before this reflection came to her aid. “He must want you to think he cares—it is a beginning of—” Here she stopped, and laughed uneasily. “No, no, I dare say I am wrong. It is my over-anxiety. Let us say it is only an indiscretion. Young men are always doing things which are gauche and inappropriate. And you have so much good sense, Lucy—” Lady Randolph got up and came behind Lucy’s chair, and gave her a hasty kiss. “I have perfect confidence in your good sense. You will not let your head be turned by fine words, as so many girls do?”
Lucy looked up with surprise: at the haste and almost agitated impulse of her careful guardian. Lady Randolph was dressed for her parties in black velvet and lace, with the rivière of diamonds which Lucy admired. She was a stately personage, imposing to behold, and yet, as she stood, somewhat excited, anxious, and deprecating by the side of the little fair-haired girl in her black frock, Lucy felt a conviction of her own superior importance which was painful and humiliating to her. The uneasy sparkle in the eye, the glance of anxiety in the face of the lady; who, in every natural point of view, was so much above herself, made her unhappy. How much money can do! Was it this, and this only which disturbed the balance between them, and made Lady Randolph’s profession of faith in her sound as apologetic? She rose to follow upstairs with a confused sensation of pain. She had been trained, indeed, to think her fortune the chief thing in the world, but not in this point of view. The drawing-room was dim and cool, the windows all open, the night air blowing in over the boxes of mignonette and geranium in the balconies. The sounds from without came softened through the soft air, but yet furnished a distant hum of life, an intimation of the great world around, the mass of human cares and troubles and enjoyments which were in full career. Lady Randolph placed Lucy in her own chair by the little table with the reading-lamp, and gave her Bertie’s book, with a smile. “No, I don’t think it will turn your head,” she said; “read it, my love, and you will tell me to-morrow what you think of it. How I wish I could take you with me! and how much more I shall enjoy going out next year when you are able to go with me, Lucy!” She gave her another kiss, with a little nervous enthusiasm, and left the girl seated there in the silence with many wonderings in her mind. Lucy sat and listened with the novel in her hand while the carriage came to the door, and Lady Randolph drove away. Other carriages passed, drew up in the street below, took up and set down other fine people going here and there into the sparkling crowds of society. Many an evening before, Lucy had stolen behind the curtain to watch them with a country-girl’s curiosity, pleased even to see the billowing train visible through a carriage-window, which betrayed the fine evening toilettes within. But this evening she did not move from her chair. There was so little light in the room that the windows mysteriously veiled in filmy drapery added something from the dim skies outside to the twilight within. A shaded lamp stood in the back drawing-room, making one spot of brightness on a table. Her reading-lamp, with its green shade, condensed all the light it gave upon her hand with the book in it, resting upon her knee. But her face was in the dimness, and so were her thoughts. She was not so angry with Bertie as Lady Randolph had been for his dedication. It was intended to be kind—what could it be but kind? Perhaps he had divined the attitude which, in intention at least, she had taken toward his family. Lucy’s thoughts had never turned the way of love-making. She had not as yet encountered any one who had touched her youthful fancy. It was no virtue on her part; she sat like one on the edge of the stream musing before she put her foot into the boat which might lead her—whither? But, in the meantime, the thoughts in her heart were all serious. Was she not pausing too long, lingering unduly upon the margin of her life—not doing the work which had been put into her hands to do?
Lucy had got so deep in these thoughts that she did not hear the noise and jar with which a hansom cab came to the door; or, at least, hearing it, paid no attention; for it is very difficult to discriminate in a street whether a carriage is stopping at number ten or number eleven, and hansom cabs were not commonly heard at Lady Randolph’s at night. Even the movement in the house did not rouse her; she had not the ease of a child in the family, though she was of so much importance in the house. She sat quite still, feeling by turns a refreshing breath steal over her from the windows, watching the flutter of the curtains, and the glimmer of the stars, which she could see through them, through the upper panes of the long windows; and vaguely amused by the suggestion furnished to her mind by the passing carriages, the consciousness of society behind. She was so well entertained by this, and by her own thoughts, which were many, that she had scarcely opened the book. She held it in her hand; she had looked again at the dedication, feeling half flattered, half annoyed, and had read a page or two. Then, more interested, as yet, in her own story, or in this pause, so full of meaning and suggestion, before it began, had closed again upon her fingers the new novel. Could anything in it be so wonderful as her own position, so full of that vague question which, in Lucy’s mind, was more a state than a query? She dallied with the book, feeling herself a more present and a more important heroine than any imaginary Imogen.
Lucy did not even hear the door open. It was opened very quietly far away in the dimness, at the other end of the room, and the new arrival stood looking in for at least a minute before he could make out whether any one was there. There was no light to show his own figure in the dark doorway, and he saw nothing except the lamp in the first room and the smaller one with its green shade, by which Lucy in her black dress was almost invisible. He paused for a minute, for he had been told that there was some one there. Then, with a bold step, he came in and closed the door audibly behind him. “Nobody, by Jove!” he said, an asseveration quite unnecessary; then threw himself into a chair which stood in front of the table on which was the larger lamp. The sensation with which Lucy woke up to the discovery that a stranger, a gentleman! had come into the room, not seeing her, any more than till the moment when he became audible she had seen him, was one of the most extraordinary she had ever experienced. She raised herself bolt upright in her chair, half in alarm; but Lady Randolph’s chairs, it need scarcely be said, did not creak, and Lucy’s dress was soft, with no rustle in it. “Nobody, by Jove!” the individual said; and nothing contradicted him. It seemed to Lucy that she instantly heard her own breathing, the beating of her watch, her foot upon the footstool, as she seemed to hear in exaggerated roundness and largeness of sound the thud with which he threw himself into that chair, the movement with which he drew it to the table, the grab he made across the table at a newspaper that lay there.
“Well, here’s the news at all events,” the stranger said. As he stooped over the newspaper, his head came within the circle of the lamp. Lucy scarcely dared to turn hers to look at him. There was the outline of a head, a mass of hair, a large well-defined nose, a couple of large hands grasping the paper. Lucy’s first impulse was half, but only half alarm; but she was not at all nervous, and speedily reminded herself that it was very unlikely any dangerous or unlawful stranger should be able thus to make his way past Robinson, the butler, and George, the page, into Lady Randolph’s drawing-room. There could not be anything to fear in him; but who was he, and how came he there? And what was Lucy to do? She sat as still as a mouse in Lady Randolph’s chair and watched. Was it quite honorable to watch a man who was not aware of your presence? But then how to get away? Lucy did not know what to do. She felt more disposed to laugh than anything else, but dared not. Perhaps after awhile he would go away. She held her breath and sat as still as a mouse. A gentleman! utterly unknown and appearing so suddenly in a feminine house—it was embarrassing; but certainly it was rather amusing too.
The stranger was not a quiet gentleman, whatever else he might be. How he pushed his chair about! how he flung the paper from one side to another, turning it over with resounding hums and hems! How could any one be so noisy? Lucy, who was afraid to stir, watched him, ever more and more amused. At last he tossed the paper back upon the table. “News! not a scrap!” he said to himself, and suddenly throwing a large pair of arms over his head, gave such a yawn as shook the fragile London house. Did Lucy laugh? She feared that the smallest ghost of a giggle did burst from her in spite of herself. It seemed to have caught his ear. He suddenly squared himself up, turned his chair round, and put on an aspect of listening. Lucy held her breath; he turned straight toward her and stared into the dimness. “By Jove!” he said again, to himself. The soft maze of curtains fluttered, the night air blew in. No doubt he thought it was these accidental sounds that had deceived him. But suspicion had evidently been roused in his mind. After a minute he rose, a large figure, making the house creak, and cautiously approached the window. He passed Lucy, who had shrunk back into her chair, and went beyond her to look out. One or two carriages were rolling along the street, and Lucy felt this was her opportunity, the way of retreat being now clear. She got up softly, with the utmost precaution, while he stood with his back to her, then turned to flee.
Alas! Lucy’s calculations failed her; her foot caught the footstool, her book fell out of her hand with a noise that sounded like an earthquake, the stranger turned upon her as quick as lighting; and there she stood, blushing, laughing, confused, prettier than Lucy Trevor had ever looked in her life before.
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” she cried; and he said, “by Jove!” taking out of his pockets the hands which had been thrust down to their depths.
“It is I who ought to beg your pardon,” he said. “I am afraid I have frightened you. Robinson told me I should find—some one here; but the room seemed empty. I hope you will begin our acquaintance by giving me your forgiveness. I am Tom Randolph, the nephew of the house.”
“Thank you,” said Lucy, regaining her composure and seriousness, “and I am Lucy Trevor, whom Lady Randolph is so kind as to take care of. It is I who ought to apologize, for I saw you— I saw you directly; but I did not know what to do.”
“You must have thought it very alarming, a savage like myself coming in and taking possession. I am much obliged to you for taking it so quietly. My aunt is out, I hear. I wonder when she has you to bear her company, Miss Trevor, that now and then she can’t make up her mind to stay at home.”
“Oh, but society has claims,” said Lucy, repeating the words she had heard so often with matter-of-fact and quite believing simplicity. To her horror and surprise the new-comer replied with a laugh:
“We have all heard that, and let us hope, Miss Trevor, that the votaries of society are rewarded for their devotions. You don’t share the culte?” he said.
“I! I am not out, and besides I am in mourning,” said Lucy, looking at her crape.
“I beg your pardon; won’t you take your seat again, and let me feel my sins forgiven? Did I interrupt your reading? A new novel is much more interesting than an old—or, let us say, a middle-aged savage.”
Sir Thomas Randolph saw Lucy look at him when he said this: already did she want to make sure that the savage was not more than middle-aged? He thought so, and he was satisfied.
“It is not that I care for the novel; I had not begun it yet. It is written,” said Lucy, trying her new subject, “by a—gentleman we know; but, perhaps, as you have just come home, you may want dinner, or something, Mr.— I mean Sir Thomas?”
“You have heard of me, I see.”
“Oh, yes; Lady Randolph so often speaks of you; but I am not much used to people with titles,” Lucy said.
“Do you call mine a title? not much of that. We are commoners, you know; and I hear that whenever there is anything very wicked wanted in a novel, it is always found in a baronet; that is hard upon us, Miss Trevor. I wonder if there is a wicked baronet in the novel you have got there.”
“I have not read it yet; it is written,” said Lucy, hesitating, “by a gentleman we know. Lady Randolph is going to speak to everybody about it, and we hope it will be very successful.”
Lucy could not keep herself from showing a little consciousness. He took it up and she was very much alarmed lest he should see the dedication. She had never thought it would affect her, yet here, already, she had quite entered into Lady Randolph’s feelings. Fortunately he did not see it, though he turned over the volume in his large hands. He was large, all over, as different as it was possible to conceive from Bertie, who was slight and dainty, almost like a girl. Lucy was not sure that she had ever seen a man before so near, or spoken to one of this kind. He was so unlike the other people of her acquaintance that she could not help giving curious looks at him under the shade of the lamp. He did not keep still for a moment, but threw his bigness about so that it filled the room, sometimes getting up and walking up and down, taking up the chairs as if they were toys. He was a creature of a new species. She did not feel toward him as Miranda did to Ferdinand, who was probably an elegant stripling of the Bertie kind, but she was interested in the new being, who was not beautiful; he was so unlike anything she had ever seen before.