FOUR persons in a fly on a hot August day, one of them large, and warm, and “worrited,” another very tall, with knees up to his chin, do not make a very agreeable party. Lucy, unaccustomed to traveling, had the whirl of the railway still in her head, and its dust oppressing her lungs and spirits; and she had the sensation of rush, and hurry, and crowding, which was peculiarly disagreeable to her orderly mind, and the uncomfortable consciousness of having abandoned her kind companion without a word. Indeed she seemed suddenly to have ceased to be a free agent. She had lost her independence, and even her personality, and had been carried off like a bale of goods, like a boy long-lost and suddenly found again, but no way consulted as to what was to be done with it. Was it this, or was it the mere vulgarity and discomfort of her surroundings, that made her heart sick? The fly had been the only vehicle she had known until six months ago, and the Fords her constant companions, and friendly notice from Mrs. Rushton, a thing highly prized and thought of. And she had only been six months away! But as Lucy drove in at the gloomy gateway of the little inclosure, which separated the Terrace from the road, and saw the well-known door open, and looked up wistfully at the well-known windows, there was no revulsion of happier feeling. “Here we are at home, Jock,” she said faintly, trying to feel as happy as she ought to do. “Is it?” said Jock indifferently. His little face was blank too; they had both fallen out of the clouds, down from the heights, and the contact with mother earth was hard. Lucy felt ashamed of herself that this should be, but she could not help it. It was all so different. Was it possible that the “Aunty Ford” of old was like this? Mrs. Ford was still wearing her mourning. She had crape flowers upon her bonnet, awful counterfeits of nature, corn flowers with stamens of prickly jet. Her shawl was huddled up about her neck, she had taken off her black gloves, as it was so warm, and her face was of a fine crimson. As for Ford, on the contrary, he was neatness itself. He wore a little checked tie very stiffly starched, and his waistcoat, and the thin legs which were so prominent, were of checked black and white in a large pattern. Mourning is not so necessary for a man as for a woman. Mrs. Ford’s crape flowers, with which her bonnet bristled, were intended for the highest respect. Lucy’s depressed sensations were enlivened by a wondering doubt whether she could prevail upon the good woman to abandon these unearthly flowers. Mrs. Ford was talking all the way. “Did you see those Rushtons,” she said, “making a dead set at Lucy the very first moment? one would have thought they would have had more pride, and that Raymond, that son of theirs! as if Lucy, with the best in London at her feet, would look twice at a Raymond? Oh, yes, you’ll see, they’ll be all down upon you like locusts, Lucy; not a young man in the town that won’t be thrown at your head. It is your money they’re after—only your money. What is that carriage following behind us? It is coming here, I declare; it’s somebody that has got scent of you already—that’s what it is to be an heiress; but it can’t be so bad as what you’ve gone through in London.”
“It is only Elizabeth,” said Lucy; “Oh, how like Sir Tom! he has put her in the carriage; Elizabeth—that is my maid. Would you rather I had not brought a maid, Aunt Ford?”
“A maid— I never see the use of them. You could have had Jane to help you when you wanted any extra dressing,” said Mrs. Ford, with gloom on her countenance. “What did I tell you, Ford? I said Lady Randolph would be sending some spy to keep a watch upon us. Do you call that a maid? sitting up as grand as possible in the carriage, as if she were the lady and you the servant. It’s like Sir Tom, is it? I don’t doubt but it’s like Sir Tom, he’s well enough known about here. He’s not one you should ever have spoken to, or sat down in the same room with him, if my consent had been asked. Many’s the story I could tell about Sir Tom, as you call him; oh, I don’t doubt it’s quite like him! and many a one he has ruined with his smiling ways.”
Jock had not been able so much as to open his book while he rattled along the Farafield streets in the fly, but he had not paid much attention to what was going on; now, however, moved by the practical necessity of getting out of the carriage, he awoke to what was going on around him. He had heard the voice of Mrs. Ford in this same key before. And he looked up suddenly with a surprised but serious countenance.
“Why is Aunty Ford scolding, and us just come? Is it you, or is it me, Lucy?” the little fellow said.
“Me scolding! God forbid!” cried the excited woman, and instead of getting out of the fly, she cried, and then, in a voice broken with sobs, entreated their pardon. “It’s all my anxiety,” she said, “I can’t abide that anything but what’s good should come to you. I’d like to keep you safe, like the apple of my eye; and that’s what Ford thinks too.”
This scene was rather an unpleasant beginning to the second chapter of life on which Lucy was now entering. She stood on the pavement before the familiar door, and tried to occupy the attention of Elizabeth, and keep her from observing Mrs. Ford’s agitation and tears. Elizabeth was too refined a person to take any notice. She was the very last improvement in the way of a maid, and could have written her mistress’s letters had that been desirable, a most useful attendant to ladies “whose education had been neglected.” Lady Randolph had not been at all sure of Lucy’s grammar or her h’s when she secured such a treasure. But fortunately Elizabeth’s superiority went so far as to have convinced her of the inexpediency of taking any notice of her employer’s private affairs. She turned her back upon the fly, where Mrs. Ford was sobbing. She had the air of seeing nothing.
“Sir Thomas made me come in the carriage, Miss Trevor. I could not help it,” she said.
“It makes me so happy to see you at home again,” Mrs. Ford said, commanding herself. “It is silly, I know, but I can’t help crying when I am happy. Come and carry in Miss Lucy’s things, Jane. Isn’t it a pleasure to see her back again? And you follow me, my darling, and I’ll let you see what we have done for you,” she said, with some triumph. Lucy went upstairs with a serious face. She thought she knew what she would find there, everything the same, no difference except in one thing—the old man sitting by the chimney-corner, with the big blue folios open on the writing-table, spreading the “Times” on his knees, rubbing his hands as she came in, looking up at her with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. He would not be there, but the place would be full of him and of his image. She took Jock’s hand into hers, and led him upstairs. It was a pilgrimage upon which the two orphan children were going. “Come and see where papa used to sit,” she said. She had never made great demonstrations of sorrow, but her heart was full of her father and tears were in her eyes.
Mrs. Ford received them at the door with a look of triumph; but it was with consternation that Lucy saw what had happened. The whole room had been transmogrified. The Fords had given all their minds, and a great deal of money, which was of more immediate value, to the great work. Wherever it had been blue now it was pink. White curtains, very stiff with starch fluttered at the windows. There was a great deal of gilding about—gilt cornices, gilt chairs, gilt cabinets, and over the mantel-piece an enormous gilt frame inclosing a portrait of old Trevor, which the good people had caused to be painted by a local artist from an old daguerreotype, all with the kind intention of giving pleasure to Lucy. She gave a cry of dismay as she came in. Her father’s chair and his writing-table—objects which would have recalled him so much more tenderly than this portrait—had been carried away. In their place was what the upholsterer called a “lady’s chair,” covered in one of the newest and most fashionable cretonnes, stout little cupids disporting themselves on a pink ground, and a gilt and highly decorated work-table. Lucy stood at the door of the room with the checked tears feeling very hot and heavy behind her eyes.
“This is all for you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Ford, restored to good humor by the satisfaction with which she regarded her work; “everything in it has been done for you. We have been working at it these three months and more. If you had but heard us talking—’Do you think she would like this? and do you think she’d like that?’ and Ford would say, ‘I saw a little cabinet in William’s would just please Lucy,’ or ‘There’s some new curtains at Hemsdon’s are the very thing.’ We’ve done nothing else these three months. I declare I don’t think I ever slaved so much in my life—to get carpets that matched and a nice chintz, and the rugs and everything. But we kept the two old white rugs. Mr. Hemsdon said they were beauties. I was determined,” said the good woman, “that you should find something just as pretty as your fine London drawing-rooms. ‘She sha’n’t come home and find nothing but a dingy old place to sit in, and think my Lady Randolph’s is a paradise,’ is what I said to Ford, and he backed me up in everything. And now here it is, Lucy, my darling, and it’s all for you, and I hope you’ll be as happy in it as I and Ford wish you to be. I couldn’t say more if I were to talk from this to Christmas,” Mrs. Ford concluded with a tremulous warmth of enthusiasm which arose partly from the delightful consciousness of giving her charge a pleasant surprise, and partly from a quiver of uncertainty as to whether Lucy’s delight would be equal to the occasion. She added instantaneously, in a tone which was ready to be defiant, “You may have seen finer in London: I can’t say; but this I know, you’ll find nothing like it in Farafield, search where you may!”
“Thank you, Aunt Ford,” said Lucy faintly. “It is very pretty—but— I was thinking of papa.”
These words checked the rising disappointment and displeasure in the mind of Mrs. Ford, who, if not very refined in her perceptions, was kind, and had a sincere if jealous affection for the girl committed to her care. She took Lucy into her arms and consoled her with much petting and caressing. “Yes, my pet, I knew you would feel it. Yes, my petty! Of course it brings it all back. But after the first you’ll find the change of the furniture very comforting,” Mrs. Ford said.
Lucy did not know what to say when the first pangs of recollection were over. She went round the room and looked at everything, and did her best to praise. Six months ago she would have thought it all beautiful. Even now she had no opinion on the matter, or taste that she was aware of; but she had been six months away in a different atmosphere, and nothing could undo or change that fact. She said everything she could to show her gratitude. Whatever might be said about the curtains or the carpets, the kindness was indisputable; and it was all very pretty, probably quite as nice as the other way; but it was different. That was all that was to be said—everything was different. She placed herself in the lady’s chair which stood in the place of her father’s old seat, and found it very comfortable. It was not comfort that was wanting; it was— Lucy did not know what—it was different. Where she sat she could see, through the windows and lines of the curtains, the White House shining in the afternoon sunshine, and the road across the common, still green with all the freshness of summer. It was very different from the burned-up parks and the rows of London houses, but not in the same way.
“It is all for you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Ford, not quite satisfied with the commendation she had received. “For my part, there is nothing I like so well as my own parlor. It may be vulgar, but that’s my taste. I don’t want to be moving about all day long from the drawing-room to the dining-room. I like to feel myself at home. But you are young, and that’s a different thing. You have to do as other people do. There’s one thing—just one thing I can’t give in to: I can’t begin at my time of life to be eating my dinner when I should be having my tea; tea’s far more to me than any dinner, I never was a great eater, and as for wine, I can’t abide it. A cup of tea and a bit of toast—that’s what I like. I’ll see to your dinner if you wish, like in your poor papa’s time, but I can’t change, that’s just the one thing I can’t do.”
“I do not care for dinner,” said Lucy; “I will do whatever you do, it does not matter to me.”
“If that’s so,” said Mrs. Ford brightening, and she came up to her charge and kissed her affectionately, “whatever we can get, or whatever we can do to make you happy, Lucy, you have only to say it: never mind the expense. If there is one thing you have a fancy for more than another, if it should be game, or whatever it is, you shall have it. And this room is yours, my pet. You’ll excuse me sitting here; I think there’s nothing like my parlor; but when you want me you can always send for me. And here you shall always find everything kept nice; and as for a cup of tea, whenever you want it— I shouldn’t wonder if you were kept very short up there.”
Mrs. Ford jerked her thumb over her shoulder by way of indicating Lucy’s former abode. “I know what fine ladies are,” she said: “a fine outside and not much within. Horses and carriages and all that show, and footmen waiting, and silver dishes on the table, but not much inside.”
“Lady Randolph was not like that,” Lucy said faintly. She did not know whether to laugh or to cry; but her companion took her hesitation as a proof of the correctness of her own judgment, and was triumphant.
“I know ’em,” she said. “I don’t give myself any airs Lucy, but I know you’ll find nothing like that here. No show, but everything good, and plenty of it, and not so much fuss made about you—for we’ve got no ends to serve, Ford and me—but if there’s a thing you want you shall have it; that is our way, and I don’t see but what you may be very happy here. Keep all these folks that will be gathering round you, and making believe to adore you, at a distance, and keep yourself to yourself, and don’t put your faith in the Rushtons, nor the Stones, nor any of the Farafield folks; and I don’t see, Lucy my pet, but what you may be very happy here. And now, my darling, I’ll go down-stairs and see after the tea.”
Lucy was left alone accordingly, seated in the familiar room, so changed and transformed, and looking out somewhat drearily upon the common, which had not changed, which she had crossed so often in those old days that were never to come back, that could not come back, neither the simple habits of them, nor the gentle ease of mind and happy ignorance of everything beyond their quiet round. It was not a cheerful programme which her present guardian had traced for her, and Lucy, sitting very still, not caring to move, in the most strangely complete and depressing solitude which she had ever been conscious of, went further in her thoughts than Mrs. Ford. Had it all been a mistake? Her father’s favorite theory, his pet whim about her, his determination to divide her life between the different worlds of society, one part of it on the higher level, one on the lower, was that to prove itself at once a hopeless blunder? Lucy felt too much dulled and stupefied by the sudden change to be able to think about it; a sensation as of a sudden fall, a precipitate descent down, down, into a world she no longer understood, pervaded her being. Lady Randolph’s world had not been a very lofty one; was it possible that it was the mere external change from one kind of house to another, from a companion who dressed with exquisite taste to one who huddled on her common clothes anyhow, and wore crape flowers in her bonnet; from old, soft, mossy Turkey carpets to brilliant modern Brussels, that gave her this sensation of downfall? Lucy did not ask herself the question, nor did it even suggest itself in any formal way to her mind, only a vague sense of the impossibility of the return, the radical change in all things, the space she had traversed which could not be gone back, overwhelmed her vaguely. If it had been a poor country cottage, a rustic farm-house, real poverty to contrast with the soft surroundings of wealth, the contrast might have been salutary, and it might have been natural. But the Terrace was nothing but a vulgar, unintelligent copy of the house she had come from, the life set before her now was but a poor imitation of that she had left, but narrowed and limited and shut in, cut off by jealous precautions from all the human fellowship that made the other attractive. Ford and his wife, in their little stuffy parlor, at their teatable, eating their toast and their shrimps, were as respectable in themselves as Lady Randolph at the head of the pretty table covered with flowers, softly lighted, and noiselessly served. Probably they were more honest, more strictly sincere, than she, and their love for Lucy was a very genuine love, more profound than her easy affections. But how was it? Lucy could not tell—to step down all in a moment from Lady Randolph to the Fords was something incomprehensible and impossible. She could not go back these six months, the new life had claimed her; she was not capable of resuming the old where she had left it off. This feeling humiliated and depressed her, she could not tell how or why. Had they been living in a little cottage in the country, had they been quite poor, so that she should have had homely services to do for them, help to give, that would have been practicable; but to come back to the Terrace with her maid, and her horse, and her groom, and her new habits, to have all the indulgences without any of the graces of existence! Lucy sat sadly in the pink room, all newly bedizened and fine, dressed out by ignorance and kindness for her pleasure, but not pleasing her at all, and pondered, dreary and down-hearted. Was it possible that papa himself had not understood? that he did not know what the real differences were, but had made to himself some picture of extravagant splendor on the one side, to be tempered by the Fords and their respectable parlor on the other? Alas! Lucy felt more and more, as she reflected, that poor papa did not understand. It made her heart sore to sit in the place where he had sat, and to contemplate this, and to feel that perhaps, as Sir Thomas had said, to follow out all those regulations of his, which she had thought a happiness and consolation, might turn out nothing less than a bondage. Everything seemed somewhat blank before her, as she sat thus solitary. She knew the routine so well, there was no margin of the unexpected, no novelty to carry her on. She had been so deep in thought that she had not felt a pull at her dress several times repeated. At last Jock could have patience no longer.
“I say,” he cried, looking up from his old position upon the great white rug, “Lucy, it is not any good to think.”
Lucy was not greatly given to that exercise of thinking, and, to tell the truth, she had not found it to be of very much use.
“What makes you say so, Jock?”
“Oh, because I have tried—often,” said the little fellow; “before we went away from here, and after, when I went to school. It’s no good, you never find out anything; you wonder and wonder, but you never know any better. Do you think now,” said Jock, with a gleam of moisture in his eyes, “that he ever sees us now, or hears what we are talking about? I wonder—often—”
“I—hope so, Jock,” said Lucy; but as she remembered what she had just been thinking she faltered a little, and was not so sure that this was desirable, as in the abstract it seemed to be.
“I wonder,” said the little boy—thoughts such as had filled her mind had perhaps been vaguely floating across his firmament also. “I wonder—if he would miss his funny old table and his big blue paper if he were to come back now.”
“He has now something better; we will not think of that any longer,” said Lucy, drying her wet eyes.
“But we have got to think of it,” said Jock, reflectively contradicting himself; “that is funny, everything is funny. There is Aunty Ford at the foot of the stairs calling us to go down to tea.”