CHAPTER XXVII.
LUCY’S FIRST VENTURE.
WHILE Lucy’s mind was thus soothed and comforted by the consciousness of doing her duty, a very different effect was produced upon her father’s executors, who, it is scarcely necessary to say, regarded her attempt to fulfill the commands of the secret codicil with mingled consternation and fury. Mr. Chervil, who, being at hand, was the first representative of these legal authorities to be appealed to on the matter, had obeyed her first call with some surprise, and had been, as was not unnatural, driven nearly frantic by the quiet intimation given him by the little girl, whom he looked upon as a child, that she intended to use the power intrusted to her.
“What do you know about Codicil F?” he said. “I don’t know that there is any Codicil F. I don’t believe in it. You are under a mistake, Miss Lucy;” but when she made it apparent to him that her means of knowing were unquestionable, and her determination absolute, Mr. Chervil went a step further—he blasphemed. “It is against every law,” he said. “I don’t believe it would stand in any court. I don’t feel that I should be justified in paying any attention to it. I am sure Rushton would be of my opinion. It was a mere piece of folly, downright madness, delusion— I don’t know what to call it.”
“But whatever it is,” said Lucy, with great prudence, putting forth no theory of her own, “what papa said is law to me.” And though his resistance was desperate she held her own with a gentle pertinacity.
Lucy’s aspect was so entirely that of a submissive and dutiful girl; she was so modestly commonplace, so unlike a heroine, that it was a long time before he could believe that this little creature really meant to make a stand upon her rights. He could scarcely believe, even, that she understood what those rights were, or could stand for a moment against his denial of them. When he was driven to remonstrance, a chill of discouragement succeeded the first fury of his refusal. He tried every oratorical art by sheer stress of nature, denouncing, entreating, imploring all in a breath.
“It is like something out of the Dark Ages,” he cried. “It is mere demoralization. You will make a race of paupers, you will ruin the character of every person who comes near you. For God’s sake! Miss Lucy, think what you want to do. It is not to give away money, it is to spread ruin far and wide—ruin of all the moral sentiments; you will make people dishonest, you will take away their independence, you will be worse than a civil war! And look here,” cried the executor, desperate, “perhaps you think you will get gratitude for it, that people will think you a great benefactor? Not a bit of them! You will sow the wind and reap the whirlwind,” he cried, wrath and despair driving him to that great storehouse of poetry with which early training still supplies the most commonplace of Englishmen.
Lucy listened with great attention, and it was an effort for her to restrain her own awe and respect for “a gentleman,” and the almost terror with which his excitement, as he paced about her little dainty room, shaking the whole house with his hasty steps, filled her. To see her mild countenance, her slight little form, under the hail-storm of his passion, was half pathetic and half ludicrous. Sometimes she cried, sometimes trembled, but never gave in. Other stormy interviews followed, and letters from Mr. Rushton, in which every argument was addressed both to her “good sense” and “good feeling;” but Lucy had neither the good sense to appreciate their conscientious care of her money nor the good feeling to allow that her father had in this particular acted like a fool or a madman. She was wise enough to attempt no argument, but she never gave in; there were moments, indeed, when the two men were in hopes that they had triumphed; but these were only when Lucy herself was wavering and discouraged in regard to the Russells, and unable to decide what to do. The evening after her final interview with Mrs. Russell she sent for Mr. Chervil again; and it was not without a little panic and beating of her heart that Lucy looked forward to this conclusive meeting. She had to prop herself up by all kind of supports, recalling to herself the misery she had seen, and the efforts to conceal that misery, which were almost more painful still to behold, and, on the other hand, the precision of her father’s orders, which entirely suited the case: “If it is a woman, let it be an income upon which she can live and bring up her children;” nothing could be more decided than this. Nevertheless, Lucy felt her heart jump to her mouth when she heard Mr. Chervil’s heavy yet impetuous feet come hastily upstairs.
And Mr. Chervil, as was natural, made a desperate stand, feeling it to be the last. He made Lucy cry, and gave her a great deal of very unpleasant advice; he went further, he bullied her, and made her blush, asking, coarsely, whether it was for the son’s sake that she was so determined to pension the mother? for she had been obliged to give him full particulars of the Russell family and their distresses. It was a terrible morning for the poor little girl. But if the executor ever hoped to make Lucy swerve, or to bully her into giving up her intention, no mistake could be greater. She blushed, and she cried with shame and pain. All the trouble of a child in being violently scolded, the hurts and wounds, the mortification, the sense of injustice, she felt, but she did not yield an inch. Lucy knew the power she had, and no force on earth would have turned her from it. He might hurt her, that was not hard to do, but change her mind he could not; her gentle obstinacy was invincible; she cried, but she stood fast; and naturally the victory fell to her, after that battle. From the beginning Mr. Chervil knew well enough that if she stood out there was nothing to be done, but it seemed to him that fifty must be more than a match for seventeen; and in this he was mistaken, which is not unusual. When, however, all was over, the capitulation signed and sealed, and Lucy, though tearful, intrenched with all her banners flying upon the field of battle, a new sensation awaited the discomfited and angry guardian of her possessions. He thought he had already put up with as much as flesh and blood could bear, but it may be imagined what Mr. Chervil’s feelings were when his ward thus addressed him, putting back a little lock of hair which had got out of its usual tidiness during the struggle (for though there was no actual fighting—far be it from us to insinuate that the angry guardian went the length of blows, though he would have clearly liked to whip her, had he dared—agitation itself puts a girl’s light locks out of order), and pursuing a last tear into the corner of her eyes:
“I want a hundred pounds, if you please, directly; I borrowed it yesterday,” said Lucy, with great composure, “from Sir Thomas, and I said I would pay it back to-day.”
“You—borrowed a hundred pounds—from Sir Thomas!” His voice gurgled in his throat. It was a wonder that he did not have a fit; the blood rushed to his head, his very breath seemed arrested. It was almost as much as his life—being a man of full habit and sanguine temperament—was worth.
“Yes,” said Lucy’s calm, little soft voice. There was still occasionally the echo of a sob in it, as in a child’s voice after a fit of crying, but yet it was quite calm. “Will you write a check for him, if you please?”
“You will drive me mad, Miss Lucy, before you have done!” cried the excited executor, “all for this woman, this young fellow’s mother, this object of your— And you go and borrow from another man, borrow, actually—money—from another man, you, an unmarried girl! Oh, this is too much! I must put your affairs in Chancery! I must wash my hands of you! borrow money—from a man!”
“But I don’t know who else I—could have borrowed it from. Sir Thomas is not just a man; he is a friend. I like him very much, there is nobody so kind. If I had asked Lady Randolph she would have insisted upon knowing everything; but Sir Thomas understands me—a little,” Lucy said.
“Understands you—a little? Well, it is more than I do,” cried her guardian; but when he came to think of it, this complication silenced him, for if the young fellow at Hampstead had been the object of any childish infatuation Sir Thomas could not have been brought into it in this way; and if she had a fancy for Sir Thomas, it was clear the young fellow at Hampstead must be out of it. She could not possibly, at her age, be playing off the one against the other. So Mr. Chervil concluded, having just as little confidence in the purity and simplicity of Lucy’s motives, as everybody else had; and he gave the check with groans of suppressed fury, yet bewilderment. “You don’t know the world, Miss Lucy,” he said, “though you are very clever. I advise you not to borrow from gentlemen; they are apt to fancy, when a girl does that sort of thing— And I will not have it!” he added, with some violence. “You are my ward and under age, notwithstanding that mad codicil. If it were not that a great part of the money would go to your little brother in case we broke the will, by George, I should try it!” the outraged executor said.
“Would it—to Jock? Oh, that would be a blessing!” cried Lucy, clasping her hands; then she added, the light fading from her face, “But that would be to go against everything papa said, for Jock is no relation to my Uncle Rainy. Of course,” said Lucy, with delightful inconsistency, “when I can do what I like, in seven years’ time, Jock shall have his full share, and if I were to die he would be my heir; you said so, Mr. Chervil, that made my mind quite easy. But I shall not be able to borrow from Sir Thomas again,” she added, with a laugh, “because he will not be here.”
What could the guardian do more? There was no telling what might happen in seven years; before seven years were over, please God, she would be married, and trust her husband to guard against the dividing of the fortune! It would be better, Mr. Chervil concluded, to put up with the loss of a few thousand pounds than to risk the cutting up of the whole property, and the alienation of a great part of it from poor Rainy’s race. Besides, the executor knew that to break the will would not be an easy matter. The codicil might be eccentric, but old Trevor was sane enough. He growled, but he wrote the check, and submitted to everything, though with an ill grace. Lady Randolph offered luncheon to the gentleman from the city, and was pointedly ceremonious, though civil.
“Miss Trevor is rather too young to have such lengthened conferences with gentlemen,” she said, “though I have no doubt, Mr. Chervil, I can trust you.”
“Trust me, my lady! Why, I am a man with a family!” cried the astonished executor. “I have daughters as old as Miss Lucy.” He was confused when Sir Tom’s large laugh (for Sir Tom was here again, much amused with the little drama, and almost making his aunt angry by the devotion with which he carried out her scheme) showed him the folly of this little speech, and added awkwardly, “I don’t suppose she will come to any harm in your hand, but she’s a wild madcap, though she looks so quiet, and as obstinate—”
“Are you all that?” Sir Thomas said, looking at Lucy with the laugh still in his eyes. “You hide it under a wonderfully innocent exterior. It is the lion in lamb’s clothing this time. I think you must require my help, aunt, to manage this dangerous young lady.”
“Oh, I can dispense with your help,” Lady Randolph said, with a little flush of irritation. Decidedly things were going too fast and too far; under the very nose of the executor, too, who, no doubt, kept a most keen outlook upon all who surrounded his precious ward. “I am not afraid of Lucy, so long as she is let alone and left to the occupations suitable to her age.” And with this her ladyship rose from the table, and with some impatience bade her young companion get ready for their drive; though, as everybody could see, even through the closed blinds which kept the dim dining-room cool, it was hours too early for any drive.
“Just, a word to you, Sir Thomas, if you’ll permit me,” Mr. Chervil said. “That dangerous young lady, as you call her, will run through every penny she has, if she is allowed to have her own way. If you would be so kind as to not encourage her it would be real friendship, though she mightn’t think so. But as long as any one backs her up—”
Sir Thomas opened his eyes wide. “Ah, I see! you took what I said au pied de la lettre,” he said, with languid contempt. Now the executor was little experienced in the French or any foreign tongue, and he did not know what the foot of the letter meant. He cried, “Oh, no, not at all!” apologetically, shocked by his own boldness; and went away bewildered all round, and much troubled in his mind about the stability of the Rainy estate. Mr. Chervil was the most honorable of trustees—his own interest had nothing at all to do with his opposition. But prodigality in business matters was, to him, the master sin, above all those of the Decalogue. There was, indeed, no commandment there which ordained, “Thou shalt not waste thy money, or give it injudiciously away.” But Mr. Chervil felt that this was a mere oversight on the part of the great lawgiver, and one which prudent persons had a right to amend on their own account. Mr. Chervil, who here felt an unexpressed confidence that he was better informed (on matters of business) than the Almighty, was very sure that he knew a great deal better than old Trevor. He scouted the old man’s ideas as preposterous. That craze of his about giving it back was evident madness. Give it back! the thing to be done was exactly the contrary. He himself knew the way of doubling every pound, and building up the great Rainy fortune into proportions colossal and magnificent. But he did not think of any advantage to himself in all this. He was quite content that it should be the little sedate figure of the girl which should be raised, ever higher and higher into the blazing heaven of wealth upon that golden pedestal, heaped with new and ever-renewed ingots. And not only was this, his ambition, perfectly honest, but there was even in a way something visionary in it, an ideal, something that stood in the place of poetry and art to Mr. Chervil. It was his way of identifying the highest good, the most perfect beauty.
A fortune does not appeal to the eye like a statue or picture; but sometimes it appeals to the mind in a still more superlative way. Old Trevor’s executor felt himself capable of working at it with an enthusiasm which Phidias, which Michael Angelo could not have surpassed. “Anch’ io pittore.” I too have made something all beautiful, all excellent, all but divine, he would have said, had he known how. And when he contemplated the possibility of having his materials taken from him piecemeal, and scattered over the country to produce quite inappreciable results in private holes and corners, his pain and rage and disappointment were almost as great as the sentiments which would have moved the fierce Buonarotti had some wretched bungler got into his studio, and cut knobs off the very bit of marble in which already he saw his David. Therefore it was not altogether a sordid sentiment which moved him. There was in it something of the desperation of a sincere fanatic, as well as the regret of a man of business over opportunities foolishly thrown away.
And Lucy, if the truth must be told, got no particular satisfaction out of the proceeding. She thought it right to suggest, though very timidly, that instead of the bigger house which poor Mrs. Russell’s desperation had been contemplating, a smaller house, where she could herself be comfortable, would be the best; and the suggestion was not graciously received. The family indeed which she had so greatly befriended contemplates her with a confusion and embarrassment which made poor Lucy wretched. Mary, the one of them whom she had always liked best, avoided the sight of the benefactor who had saved them all from destruction. When she appeared reluctantly, her cheeks red with shame, and her eyes with crying, she could scarcely look Lucy in the face. “Oh, Miss Trevor! I wish you had not done it. We should have struggled through and been honest,” Mary exclaimed, averting her eyes; and then she fell a-crying and begged Lucy’s pardon with half-angry vehemence, declaring she hated herself for her ingratitude. Wondering, bewildered, and sad, Lucy stole away as if she had been a guilty creature from the house to which she had given a little fortune, ease, and security, and comfort. Had she made enemies of them instead of friends? Instead of making them happy she seemed to have destroyed all family accord, and put everything wrong. Nor was this all the trouble the poor girl had. She had scarcely got back from that mission of uncomfortable beneficence, when she saw, by the general aspect of affairs in Lady Randolph’s drawing-room that something was wrong. Lady Randolph herself sat bending, with quite unaccustomed energy, over a piece of work, which Lucy had got to know was her refuge when she was annoyed or disturbed—with a flush under her eyes, which was also a sure sign of atmospheric derangement. Sir Thomas was pacing about the room behind backs, and as Lucy came in she saw him (which even in a moment of violent commotion disturbed her orderly soul) tear a newspaper in several pieces, and throw it into the basket under the writing-table—a new newspaper, for it was Saturday. What could he mean? Near Lady Randolph was seated old Lady Betsinda full in the light, and looking more like a merchant of old clothes than ever; while Mrs. Berry-Montagu had her usual place in the shadow of the curtains; the two visitors had the conversation in their hands.
“My dear Mary Randolph,” Lady Betsinda was saying, “you ought to have taken my advice. Never have anything to do with authors; I say it to everybody, and to you I am sure if I have said it once I have said it a hundred times. They are a beggarly race; they don’t print by subscriptions nowadays, but they do far worse. If they can not get as much out of you as they want they will make you suffer for it. Have not I told you? When you’re good to them, they think they pay you a compliment by accepting it. A great many people think it gives them importance to have such persons about their house; they think that is the way to get a salon like the French, but there never was a greater mistake. Authors, so far as I’ve seen, are the very dullest people going; if they ever have an idea in their heads they save it up carefully for their books.”
“What would you have them to do with it, Lady Betty? Waste it upon you and me? Most likely we should not understand it,” said the other lady, with her soft little sneer. “Come in, come in, Miss Trevor, and sit and learn at Lady Betty’s feet.”
Lady Randolph bent toward the speaker with a rapid whisper.
“Not a word to Lucy about it, for heaven’s sake!” she said.
Mrs. Berry-Montagu made no reply; almost all that could be seen of her was the malicious gleam in her eyes.
“Come and learn wisdom,” she said, “at the feet of Lady Betsinda. When we have a university like the men, there shall be a chair of social experience, and she shall be voted into it by acclamation,” Lady Betsinda was a little deaf, and rarely caught all that was said, but she made no show of this imperfection, and went on without asking any questions.
“I have met a great many authors in my day,” she said; “they used to be more in society in my time. Now it has become a sort of trade, I hear, like cotton-spinning. Oh, yes, cotton-spinners, my dear, get into society—when they are rich enough—and so do the people that write, but not as they used to do. They are commoner now. It seemed so very clever once to write a book; now, I hear, it’s a great deal more clever not to write. I don’t give that as my opinion; ask Cecilia Montagu, it is she who tells me all the new ideas.”
“Have I said so? It is very likely,” said that lady, languidly. “It repays one for a great deal of ingratitude on the part of the world, to have a friend who remembers all one says.”
“Oh, I have the best of memories,” said Lady Betsinda; “and, as I was saying, if you don’t go down on your knees to them they punish you. I was reading somebody’s life the other day— I remember her perfectly well, one used to meet her at Lady Cheddar’s, and one or two other places—rather pretty and lackadaisical, and very, very civil. Poor thing! one saw she was there on sufferance; but if you will believe me—perhaps you have read the book, Cecilia Montagu? you would think she was the center of everything, and all the rest of us nowhere! And so poor Lady Cheddar, a really nice woman, will go down to posterity as the friend of Mrs. So-and-so, whom she asked out of charity! It is enough,” said Lady Betsinda, with indignation, “to make one vow one will never read another book as long as one lives.”
“Mrs. So-and-so!” said Lady Randolph, “I remember her very well. I think everybody was kind to her. There was some story about her husband, and poor Lady Cheddar took her up and fought all her battles—”
“And has been rewarded,” said Mrs. Berry-Montagu, softly satirical, “with immortality. Good people, what would you have more? Fifty years hence who will know anything about Lady Cheddar except from the life of Mrs. So-and-so? And so it will be in—another case we know of. After all, you see that, though you make so little account of them, it is the poor authors who hold the keys of fame.”
“As for the other case, that is not a parallel case at all,” Lady Betsinda cried. “Mrs. So-and-so was bad enough, but she did not put poor dear Lady Cheddar in the papers. No, no, she never put her in the papers; and Lady Cheddar was a woman of a certain age, and people did not need to be told what to think about her. These papers are a disgrace, you know; they are dreadful, nobody is safe.”
“But what should we do without them?” said Mrs. Berry-Montagu, lifting up her languishing eyes.
“That’s true enough,” said Lady Betsinda, softening; “one must know what is going on. But about a young girl, you know; I really think about a young girl—”
Here Lady Randolph interposed with rapid and alarmed dumb-show, and Sir Thomas made a stride forward, with such a lowering brow as Lucy had never seen before. What could be the matter? she wondered; but there the discussion stopped short, and she heard no more.
This was the matter, however: that one of the newspapers of which society is so fond had taken up the romantic dedication of “Imogen,” and with an industry that might have been praiseworthy (as the police reports say) if employed in a better cause, had ferreted out a still more romantic edition of the story. It was not true, but what had that mattered? It gave a fancy sketch of Lucy, and her heiress-ship, and her rusticity, and described how the young novelist was to be rewarded with the hand of the wealthy object of his devotion, a devotion which had begun while she was still poor. Lucy had not learned to care for newspapers, and it was not at all difficult to keep it from her. But Sir Thomas gave all belonging to him a great deal of trouble to soothe him down, and persuade him that nobody cared for such assaults.
“It is quite good-natured; there is no harm intended,” Lady Randolph said; “we all get a touch now and then.”
“If that is no harm a punch on the head is still more innocent,” said Sir Thomas, savagely, and it was almost by force, and solely because of the fact that this would be still worse for Lucy, that he was restrained. But Lucy never heard of it, and the article sold off at once, before a month was out, the whole edition of “Imogen.”