THE troubles of this interesting picnic were not yet over; there was tea to be made over an impromptu fire from a gypsy kettle, which the young people generally thought one of the most amusing performances of all. And indeed they were all glad of the warmth of the tea, and anxious to get as near as they could to the comforting blaze of the fire, notwithstanding the smoke which made their eyes smart. Mrs. Rushton was busily engaged over this, when Lucy and Ray, one following the other, made their appearance in the center of the proceedings; the others were dropping in from different sides, and in the important operation of making the tea Mrs. Rushton did not perceive the very evident symptoms of what had happened. It was only when a gleam of firelight lighted up the group and showed her son, standing listless and cast-down, full in the way of the smoke, and receiving it as he might have received the fire of an enemy, that the catastrophe became evident to her. She gave him a hasty glance, half furious, half pitiful. Was it all over? Poor Mrs. Rushton! She was obliged to stand there over the fire boiling her kettle, now and then getting a gust of smoke in her face, and obliged to laugh at it, appealed to on all sides, and obliged to smile and reply, obliged to make believe that her whole soul was absorbed in her tea-making, and in the monotonous question, who took sugar, and who did not? while all the while her mind was distracted with anxiety and full of a hundred questions. Talk of pyschometric facts! If Mr. Galton would measure the thoughts of a poor lady, who, while she puts the tea in her teapot, and inquires audibly with a sweet smile whether Mrs. Price takes sugar, has all at once six ideas presented to her consciousness: 1st. The discomfiture of Ray; 2d. The alienation of Lucy; 3d. Her husband’s fury at all those unnecessary expenses, which he had never countenanced; 4th. The horse which would have to be sold again, probably at a loss, having failed like Ray; 5th. How to get all her party home, it being evident that Ray and Lucy would not ride together as they came; and 6th, with a poignant sting that embittered all the rest, of the exultation of her friends and rivals in witnessing her failure—if Mr. Galton could do that, weighing the weight of each, and explaining how they could come together, yet every one keep distinct, it would indeed be worth a scientific philosopher’s while. But Mrs. Rushton, it is to be feared, would have scoffed at Mr. Galton. She stood at the stake, with the smoke in her face, and smiled like a martyr. “Sugar? I thought so, but so many people don’t take it. I lose my head altogether,” cried the poor lady. “Ray, come here, make haste and hand Mrs. Price her tea.” Even when Ray did come close to her, however, she could not, encircled as she was, ask him any questions. She looked at him, that was enough; and he in reply slightly, imperceptibly, shook his head. Good heavens! and there was the girl standing quite unmoved, talking to somebody, after she had driven a whole family to despair! What could girls be made of? Mrs. Rushton thought.
And just at the moment when this fire of suspense, yet certainty, was burning in her heart, lo, the heavens were opened, and a shower of rain came pouring down, dispersing the company, pattering among the trees. Mrs. Rushton was like the captain of a shipwrecked ship, she was the last to leave the post of danger. Though the hissing of the shower forced up a black and heavy cloud of smoke which nearly choked her, she kept her place and shrieked out directions to the others. “The Abbey ruins, the west wing,” she cried; there was shelter to be found there. And now it was that Raymond showed how much filial affection was left in him. He snatched a water-proof cloak from the heap and put it round his mother. “You want shelter as much as any one,” he cried. “Oh, Ray!” exclaimed the poor lady as they hurried along together, the last of all the scudding figures under umbrellas and every kind of improvised shelter. She held his arm tight, and he clung closely to her side. There was no more said between them, as they struggled along under the blinding rain. They had both been extinguished, their fires put out, their hopes brought to an end.
As for Lucy, she shrunk away among the crowd, and tried to hide herself from Mrs. Rushton’s eyes. She was not unconcerned, poor girl. Even the little glimmer of indignation which had woke in her was quenched in her sorrow for the trouble and disappointment which she seemed to bring to everybody. Only this morning she had trembled before Mrs. Stone, and now it was these other people who had been so kind to her, who had taken so much pains to please her, whom she had made unhappy. What could Lucy do? She did not want any of these men to come into her life. She liked them well enough in their own place; but why should she marry them? This she murmured feebly in self-justification; but her heart was very heavy, and she could not offer any compensation to Ray. He was not poor, he did not come into the range of the will. She gathered her riding-skirt up about her and ran to the shelter of the Abbey walls when the shower came on, little Jock running by her side. They had nearly reached that refuge when Jock stumbled over a stone and fell, crying out to her for help. Almost before Lucy could stop, however, help came from another quarter. It was Bertie Russell who picked the little fellow up, and carried him safely into the west wing of the Abbey, where the walls were still covered by a roof. “He is not hurt,” Bertie said, “and here is a dry corner. Why did you run away, Miss Trevor? I followed you everywhere, for I saw that there was annoyance in store for you.”
“Oh, no,” said Lucy, faintly; but it was consolatory to find a companion who would not blame her. He lifted Jock up into a window-seat, and he found her something to sit down upon and take breath, and then he arranged a place for himself between them, leaning against the wall.
“Did you get wet?” Bertie said; “after this you will not think of riding home. I have got a coat which will cover Jock and you; what made them think of a picnic to-day? Picnics are always dangerous in this climate, but in October! Jock, little fellow, take off your jacket, it is wet, and put on this coat of mine.”
“But you will want it yourself,” said Lucy, very grateful. Bertie bore the aspect of an old friend, and the people at Farafield, though she had lived in Farafield all her life, were comparative strangers to her. She was moved to laugh when Jock appeared in the coat, which was so much too large for him, a funny little figure, his big eyes looking out from the collar that came over his ears, but comfortable, easy, and dry. “He has been wrapped in my coat before now,” Bertie said. “Don’t you remember, Jock, on the heath when I had to carry you home? Mary expects to have him back, Miss Trevor, when you return to town. I have not told you,” continued Bertie, raising his voice, “how Mrs. Berry-Montagu has taken me up, she who nearly made an end of me by that review; and even old Lady Betsinda has smiled upon me; oh, I must tell you about your old friends.”
Their dry corner was by this time shared by a number of the other guests, who were watching the sky through the great hole of a ruined window, and had nothing to talk about except the chances of the weather, whether “it would leave off,” whether there was any chance of getting home without a wetting, and sundry doubts and questions of the same kind. In the midst of these depressed and shivering people who had nothing to amuse them, it was fine to talk of Lady Betsinda and other names known in the higher society of Mayfair; and Bertie was not indifferent to this, whatever Lucy’s sentiments might be.
“I ran over to Homburg for a few weeks,” Bertie said. “Everybody was there. I saw Lady Randolph, who was very kind to me of course. She is always kind. We talked of you constantly, I need not tell you. But you should have seen Lady Betsinda in the morning taking the waters, without her lace, without her satin, a wonderful little old mummy swathed in folds of flannel. Can you imagine Lady Betsinda without her lace?” said Bertie, delighted with the effect he was producing. Mrs. Price and the rest had been caught in the full vacancy of their discussion about the rain. To hear of a Lady Betsinda was always interesting. They edged half consciously a little nearer, and stopped their conjectures in respect to the storm.
“I hear it is worth more than all the rest of her ladyship’s little property,” Bertie said. “I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur, but I am told she has some very fine point d’Alençon which has never been equaled. Poor old Lady Betsinda! her lace is what she stands upon. The duchess, they say, declares everywhere that the point d’Alençon is an heirloom, and that Lady Betsinda has no right to it; but if she were separated from her lace I think she would die.”
“It is very dirty,” said Lucy, with simplicity. She was not sure that she liked him to call the attention of the others by this talk which everybody could hear, but she was glad to escape from the troublesome circumstances of the moment.
“Dirty!” he said, repeating her word in his higher tones. “What is lace if it is not dirty? you might say the same of the poor old woman herself, perhaps; but a duke’s daughter is always a duke’s daughter, Miss Trevor, and point is always point. And the more blood you have, and the more lace you have, the more candid you feel yourself entitled to be about your flannel. A fine lady can always make a fright of herself with composure. She used to hold out a grimy finger to me, and ask after you.”
“After me?” said Lucy, shrinking. If he would but speak lower, or if she could but steal away! Everybody was listening now, even Mrs. Rushton, who had just come in, shaking the rain off her bonnet. She had found Lucy out the moment she entered with that keen gaze of displeasure which is keener than anything but love.
“Yes,” said Bertie, still raising his voice. Then he bent toward her, and continued the conversation in a not inaudible whisper. “This is not for everybody’s ears,” he said. “She asked me always, ‘How is little Miss Angel—the Angel of Hope’?”
A vivid color covered Lucy’s face. She was looking toward Mrs. Rushton, and who could doubt that Raymond’s mother saw the flush and put her own interpretation upon it? Of this Lucy did not think, but she was annoyed and disconcerted beyond measure. She drew away as far as possible among the little group around them. Had she not forgotten all this, put it out of her mind? Was there nobody whom she could trust? She shrunk from the old friend with whom she had been so glad to take refuge; after all he was not an old friend; and was there not, far or near, any one person whom she could trust?
When, however, the carriages came, and the big break, into which Lucy and Emmie and little Jock had to be crowded, since the weather was too broken to make it possible that they could ride home, Bertie managed to get the place next her there, and engrossed her the whole way. He held an umbrella over her head when the rain came down again, he busied himself officiously in putting her cloak round her, he addressed all his conversation to her, talking of Lady Randolph, and of the people whom they two alone knew. Sometimes she was interested, sometimes amused by his talk, but always disturbed and troubled by its exclusiveness and absorbing character; and she did not know how to free herself from it. The rest of the party grew tired, and cross, and silent, but Bertie never failed. It was he who jumped down at the gate of the Terrace, and handed her down from amid all the limp and draggled figures of the disappointed merry-makers. They were all too wet to make anything possible but the speediest return to their homes, notwithstanding the pretty supper-table all shining with flowers and lights which awaited them in the big house in the market-place, and at which the Rushtons, tired and disappointed, and drenched, had to sit down alone. Bertie’s was the only cheerful voice which said good-night. He attended her to her door with unwearying devotion. Raymond, who had insisted upon riding after the carriages, passed by all wet and dismal, as the door opened. He put his hand to his hat with a morose and stiff salutation. With the water streaming from the brim of that soaked hat he passed by stiffly like a figure of despair. And Bertie laughed. “It has been a dismal expedition, but a most delightful day. There is nothing I love like the rain,” he said.