CHAPTER XXXIV.
A CROQUET PARTY.
THE Rushtons lived in a big old red brick house close to the town hall in what was still called the market-place of Farafield, though all the meaner hubbub of the market had long ago been banished to the square behind, with its appropriate buildings. It was a house of the time of Queen Anne, with rows of glittering windows surmounted by a pediment, and though it was in the center of the town a fine old walled garden behind. To Lucy this garden seemed the brightest place imaginable when she was led into it through the shady passages of the old house, the thick walls and rambling arrangement of which defended it from the blazing of the August skies, which penetrated with pitiless heat and glare the naked walls of the Terrace, built without any consideration of atmospheric changes. Mrs. Rushton’s drawing-room was green and cool—all the venetian blinds carefully closed on one side, and on the other looking out upon the trees and shady lawn where two or three young people, girls in light dresses and young men scarcely less summer-like in costume, were playing croquet. These were the days when croquet still reigned on all lawns and country places, and nobody had as yet discovered that it was “slow.” The party was of the usual orthodox kind. There was a young, a very young curate in a long black coat and a wide-awake, and a second young man in light clothes with his hands in his pockets, whom Lucy’s inexperienced eyes with difficulty distinguished from Raymond Rushton; and two or three girls, one of them the daughter of the house, Emma, a shy hoyden of sixteen. All these young people looked with great curiosity at Lucy as she followed Mrs. Rushton out of the house in her black frock, Jock clinging closely to her. Jock, though he had a great deal of self-possession on ordinary occasions, was shy in such an unusual emergency as this. He had never been at a garden party, he was not used to society, and he did not know how to play croquet, in all which points Lucy was almost as uninstructed as he. There was a tea-table set out under an old mulberry-tree, with garden-chairs and rugs spread out upon the grass. Nothing could be more pleasant, cool, leisurely, and comfortable. It was indeed a scene such as might be seen on a summer afternoon in almost every garden with a good-sized house attached to it, with a lawn and a mulberry-tree, throughout England. But then Lucy was not much acquainted with such places, and to her everything was new. They all stood and looked at her as she followed Mrs. Rushton across the grass—looked at her with inward sighs and wonderings. To think she should be so rich, while none of the others had anything to speak of. It did not perhaps go so far as actual envy; but it was certainly surprise, and a bewildered question why such good fortune should have fallen to an inconsiderable girl, and not at all to the others who might have been supposed able to make so much more use of it. The young men could not help feeling that the enjoyment which they could have extracted out of so much money would have been far more than anything a girl could derive from it. Not one of the three perhaps went any further, or at least went so far as to ask whether there were any means by which he could appropriate such a fortune, except indeed Raymond, who was in a most uncomfortable state, knowing that his mother intended him to begin at once to “pay attention” to Lucy, and not knowing in the least how to begin. Lucy was put into the most comfortable chair, as if she had been a dowager, and even Jock was wooed as he had never been wooed before.
“Oh, you will soon learn how to play,” all the young people said in a chorus; “it is very easy.”
Lucy thought they were all very kind, and she thought the lawn a kind of little paradise, with all the sights and sounds of the ruder world shut out.
“Emmie and I almost live here,” Mrs. Rushton said. “We bring out our work in the morning; you can’t think how pleasant it is. I wish, my dear Lucy, that it could have been arranged that you should live with your guardian instead of those good relations of yours. They are very nice, but it is always more cheerful where there are young people. I wish it could be managed. The Fords are excellent people; but they are in a different rank of society. I was speaking to Mr. Rushton about it, but he does not seem to think anything can be done; men are so entirely without resources. You may depend upon it I should find some way in which it could be done, if it depended on me.”
“I don’t think it could be done, Mrs. Rushton; it is all very exact in the will.”
“Then I suppose you stand up very firmly by the will—in every particular, my dear?” Mrs. Rushton said, with a significant look.
“How could I help it?” said Lucy. She preferred looking at the croquet to discussing the will, and she wished Raymond would go and play, and not stand by her chair, looming over her. His mother looked at him from time to time, and when these appeals were made he took his hands out of his pockets and grew red and cleared this throat. But nothing ever came of it. Lucy did not know what to say to this embarrassed young man; he seemed so much further off from her by being so much nearer than Sir Tom. At length, she asked with some diffidence, “Are you not going to play?”
“Oh, my mother thought you would like—to walk round the garden.”
“You goose!” cried his mother. “The fact is, Lucy, Ray thought you would like to see all the old-fashioned corners. They are not like the gardens at the Hall. Oh, we don’t pretend to anything so fine; but we have heaps of flowers, and I think that is the chief thing. Ray is devoted to the garden—he wants so much to show you round.”
And a few minutes after Lucy found herself walking by Ray, who was very shy, and had not a notion what to say to her, nor had she what to say to him. He took her along a commonplace path, and showed her the flower-beds—that is to say, he intimated, with a wave of his hand and a blush, that here were the roses, and there—“I’m sure I don’t know what you call these things,” Ray said.
“Are you not very fond of flowers, then? I thought Mrs. Rushton—”
“Oh, yes, I’m very fond of them—some, you know; but I never can remember the names; it is like songs— I’m very fond of music, but I never can remember the words.”
This was a long speech, and he felt better after it. However little inclined you may feel to do your duty, there is a sense of satisfaction in having done it. “Do you sing?” he added, emboldened by his own success.
“No,” Lucy said; and then the poor young fellow was balked, and the path which seemed to be opening before him was cut suddenly short. He gave a sigh of disappointment, and plunged his hands deeper than ever into his pockets to seek inspiration there.
“Mamma thinks we should go out to-morrow,” he said.
“Yes?” This monosyllable was interrogative, and gave him encouragement. He cleared his throat again.
“I could show you some very nice rides—the way to the picnic on Thursday is very pretty. Were you ever at the old abbey at Burnside? Quantities of people go—”
“I have passed it,” said Lucy, “when we rode at school.”
“Oh, did you ride at school? I don’t think that could be much fun—all girls. Picnics are not very much fun either.”
“I never saw one. I should think it would be nice,” said Lucy, with some doubt.
“Oh, well, perhaps if you were never at one before— I dare say it will be nice when—when you are there, Miss Trevor,” said Ray, growing very red; “but then you see I never went with you before.”
Lucy looked at him with some surprise, totally unable to divine why he should flourish so wildly the croquet-mallet he was carrying, and blush and stammer so much. She was entirely unaware that she had assisted at the production of Raymond’s first compliment. She took it very quietly, not knowing its importance.
“My mother thinks Emmie can ride,” he went on, after a confused pause; “but she can’t a bit. Some girls are famous—take fences, and everything you can put before them. There are the Morton girls— I suppose you know the Mortons?”
“I don’t know any one—except the girls who were at school.”
“Oh, there were some great swells, were there not,” said Raymond, “at that school?”
Perhaps for the first time Lucy felt a little pleasure in repeating the names of her school-fellows, information which Raymond received with awe.
“That’s a cut above us,” he said; “they were all awfully angry at home because the old ladies wouldn’t have Emmie. I suppose you were different.”
“It was because of my having so much money,” said Lucy, calmly. “Oh, but you need not laugh. Mrs. Stone said a girl with a great deal of money wanted more training.”
“I can’t see that,” cried Raymond; “not a bit. It doesn’t take much education to spend a great fortune, when a fellow has to make his own way like me; I should think there was nothing so jolly as to have a lot of money, so much that you never could get through it; by Jove! I wonder how it feels,” he said, with a laugh. To this question, if it was a question, Lucy made no reply. It was the subject upon which she could talk best; but she was not a great talker, and Raymond was a kind of being very far off from her, whom she did not understand.
“I don’t think there is much more to see,” he said; “there is not much. I can’t think what my mother meant to show you in the garden. Would you like to go back and try a game? I’ll teach you, if you like. I suppose I may say you will ride to the picnic? Emmie will go (as well as she knows how), and I—”
“If Jock may come, too.”
“Oh,” cried Raymond, “there will be no want of chaperons, you know. My mother is coming, and no doubt some more old ladies. It will be all right, you know,” said the youth with a laugh. This speech made Lucy ponder, but confused her mind rather than enlightened it. She went back to the lawn with him into the midst of the croquet-players, with very little more conversation, and Mrs. Rushton, looking on anxiously, gnashed her teeth behind the tea-urn. “He did not seem to me to find a word to say to her,” she lamented afterward; “what’s the good of spending all that money on a boy’s education, if at the end of it he can’t say a word for himself.” And her husband answered with those comforting words which husbands have the secret of. “You had much better let scheming alone,” he said. “You will put me in a false position if you don’t mind, and you’ll never do any good to yourself.” We are ashamed to say the monosyllable was “Stuff!” which Mrs. Rushton replied.
But the afternoon was very pleasant to Lucy; and Jock enjoyed it too, after awhile, learning the game much more quickly than his sister, and getting into an excitement about it which she did not share. The little fellow remained in the foreground brandishing a mallet long after the party had melted away, and took possession of the lawn altogether, tyrannizing over the little Rushtons, when Lucy was taken in to dinner with the grown-up members of the family. “Mrs. Rushton says you may come with me, Jock,” Lucy said; but Jock resisted strenuously. “It is only when you go we can have a real game; you are all duffers,” said the little boy, with a contempt which he was much in the habit of showing to his sister. Thus they were launched upon life and society in Farafield. Mrs. Rushton proposed the brougham to Lucy when the time came to go home, but, on hearing that she would prefer to walk, declared that she too was dying for a little fresh air, and that the cool of the evening was delightful. Then they sallied forth in a body, Raymond by Lucy’s side. It was all very pleasant. He was not a brilliant talker, indeed, but Lucy did not want anything very brilliant, and what with the little pricks and stimulants provided by his mother, who walked behind, Raymond excelled himself. It was cheerful even to see the little party making its way along the cool twilight ways, with soft interchange of voices and laughter, little Jock again holding his sister’s hand, while Raymond was skillfully poked and bantered into talk. If it was a scheme it was not very deeply laid, and meant nothing cruel. Would not Raymond Rushton be a perfectly good match for her, should it come to pass? and why should not Raymond have the great fortune as well as another? His mother felt all the glow of virtuous consciousness in her breast. He was a good son, and would make a good husband. In every way, even in respect to family and position, old Trevor’s daughter in marrying Raymond would do very well for herself.