CHAPTER XLII.
WHAT THE LADIES SAID.
WHEN Lucy awoke next morning a world of cares and troubles seemed to surround her bed. The previous day seemed nothing but a long imbroglio of discomforts, one after the other. First her interview with Mrs. Stone, then Raymond’s efforts to secure her attention, which she had not understood at the time, but which, as she looked back upon them, formed into a consistent pursuit of her which Lucy could not now believe herself to have been quite unconscious of. It seemed to her now that she had been hunted, and had managed to get away again and again, only to fall at last into the snare from which she finally escaped only with another hurt and wound. Poor Ray’s version of this would have been a very different one. He would have said that it was he who had been wounded and beaten, and that Lucy had remained mistress of the field. But that was not her own sensation. She had been hunted, and she had escaped, but with the loss of another friend, with the sense of having brought pain and disturbance to another set of people, who had been kind to her, and narrowed the world round about her. It seemed to Lucy, when she opened her eyes that morning, as if the skies were getting narrower and narrower, the circle of the universe closing in. It was becoming like the terrible prison in the story, which got less and less every day, till it crushed the unhappy inhabitant within. The White House first and now the Rushtons. Where was she to turn for safety?
When she went down-stairs she found Mrs. Ford much disposed to improve the occasion, and preach a sermon upon the discomforts of pleasure-seeking.
“I hope it will teach her a lesson,” said Mrs. Ford; “a woman at that age with pleasure never out of her head. Oh, I could forgive a child like you! You have not learned yet what vanity and vexation of spirit it all is, but a woman with children grown up, I wonder she is not ashamed of herself! and a fine company of draggle-tails you must have been when you came home. If I were Mr. Rushton I should give my wife a piece of my mind. I would not allow nor countenance for a moment such silly goings-on.”
“Mrs. Rushton did not do it for herself, Aunt Ford.”
“Oh, don’t tell me! Do you suppose she’d do it if she didn’t like it? Do you ever catch me at that sort of folly? I almost wished you to get something that would disgust you with such nonsense; but nothing will convince you, Lucy, nothing will make you see that it is your money, and only your money—”
How glad Lucy was when the meal was over, and she could escape upstairs! how thankful to have that pink drawing-room to take refuge in, though it was not a lovely place! Jock came with her, clinging to her hand. Jock’s eyes were bigger than ever as he raised them to his sister’s face, and she on her part clung to him, too, little though he was. She held Jock close to her, and gave him a tremendous kiss when they entered that lonely little domain in which they spent so much of their lives. When the door was closed and everything shut out, even the voices of the household which lived for them, yet had nothing to do with them, this room represented the world to Lucy and Jock. Even with the household they had no special tie—not even a servant attached to them, as they might have had if they had been brought up like the children of the rich. But they had been just so brought up that even the consolation of a kind nurse, an attendant of years, was denied to them, in the dismal isolation of that class which is too little raised above its servants to venture to trust them—which dares not to love its inferiors, because they are so very little inferior, yet will not bow to anything as above itself. They had nobody accordingly. Lucy’s maid even had been sent away. Jock had no old nurse to take refuge with; they clung together, the most forlorn young pair. “Is it your money, and only your money,” said the little boy, “as Aunt Ford says?”
“Oh, Jock, how can I tell? I wish you and I had a little cottage somewhere in a wood, or on an island, and could go far away, and never see any one any more!”
And Lucy cried; her spirit was broken, her loneliness seemed to seize upon her all at once, and the sense that she had no one to fall back upon, nobody to whom her money was not the inducement. This was an idea which in her simplicity she had never conceived before. She had thought a great deal of her money, and perhaps she had scarcely formed any new acquaintances without asking herself whether they wanted her help, whether it would be possible to place them upon the privileged list. It had been her favorite notion, the thing that occupied her mind most; but yet Lucy, thinking so much of her money, never thought that it was because of her money that people were kind to her. It had seemed so natural, she was so grateful, and her heart was so open to all that made a claim upon it. And she and Jock were so lonely, so entirely thrown upon the charity of those around them. Therefore she had never thought of her wealth as affecting any one’s opinion of herself. Had any of her friends asked for a share of it, represented themselves or others as in need of it, Lucy would have listened to them with delight, would have given with both hands and a joyful heart, at once gratifying herself and doing her duty according to her father’s instructions. But that her friends should seek her because she was rich, and that one man after another should startle her youth with proposals of marriage because she was rich—this was an idea that had never entered into Lucy’s mind before. “Your money and only your money;” the words seemed to ring in her ears, and when Jock asked, wondering if this were true, she could not make him any reply; oh, how could she tell? oh, that she had wings like a dove, that she might fly away, and hide herself and be at rest! and then she cried. What more could a girl so young and innocent do?
Jock stood by her side, by her knee, and watched her with large serious eyes, which seemed to widen and widen with the strain and dilation of tears; but he would not cry with Lucy. He said slowly in a voice which it took him a great deal of trouble to keep steady, “I do not think that Sir Tom—”
“Oh,” cried Lucy, putting him away from her with a burst of still warmer tears. “Sir Tom! You don’t know, Jock. Sir Tom is unkind, too.”
Jock looked at her, swallowing all his unshed tears with an effort; he looked at her with that scorn which so often fills the mind of a child, to see the want of perception which distinguishes its elders. “Is it you that don’t know,” said Jock. He would not argue the question. He left her, shaking as it might be the dust off his feet, and took the “Heroes” from the table, and threw himself down on his favorite rug. He would not condescend to argue. But after he had read a dozen pages he paused and raised himself upon his elbows, and looked at her with fine contempt. “You!” he said, “you wouldn’t have known the gods if you had seen them. You would have thought Heré was only a big woman. What is the good of talking to you?”
Lucy dried her eyes in great surprise; she was quite startled and shaken by the reproof. She looked at the little oracle with a respect which was mingled at once with awe and with gratitude. If he would but say something more! But, instead of uttering any further deliverance, he dropped his elbows again, and let himself down into the rug, and became altogether unconscious at once of her presence and her difficulties, indifferent as the gods themselves to the sorrows of mortal men.
It is not to be supposed, however, that, after all this, Lucy could settle with much tranquillity to her book, which was the history which she had been reading so conscientiously. When St. Clair had withdrawn he had taken with him the history-book (it was Mr. Froude’s version of that oft-told tale), which was as easy to read as any novel, and Lucy was left with her old text-book, which was as dry as facts could make it. She could not read, the book dropped upon her knee half a dozen times in half an hour, and the time of study was nearly over when some one came with a soft knock to the door. It was Miss Southwood, who came in with a shawl round her, and her close, old-fashioned bonnet tied over her ears. She came in somewhat breathless, and plunged into a few set phrases about the weather without a moment’s pause.
“What a dreadful day for your picnic! I could not help thinking of you through all that rain. Did you get very wet, Lucy? and you were riding, too. You must have got everything spoiled that you had on.”
“Oh, no, for we drove home; but it was not very pleasant.”
“Pleasant! I should think not. It was very foolish—what could you expect in October? Mrs. Rushton must have had some object. What did she mean by it? Ah, my dear, you were a great deal safer in Maria’s hands; that is a scheming woman,” cried Miss Southwood. Then she touched Lucy on the arm, and made signs at Jock on the rug; “wouldn’t you—” she said, making a gesture with her hand toward the door, “for I want to speak to you—by yourself.”
“You need not mind Jock,” said Lucy; “he is always there. When he has a book to read he never cares for anything else.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t trust to his not caring—little pitchers—and then you never know when they may open their mouths and blurt everything out. Come this way a little,” Miss Southwood said, leading Lucy to the window, and sinking her voice to a whisper. “I have a note to you from Maria; but, my dear, I wouldn’t give it you without saying, you must not take it by the letter, Lucy. For my part, I don’t agree with it at all. It ought to have been sent to you last night; but I am Frank’s aunt as well as Maria. I have a right to my say, too; and I don’t agree with it, I don’t at all agree with it,” Miss Southwood said, anxiously. She watched Lucy’s face with great concern while she opened the note, standing against the misty-white curtains at the window. The countenance of little Miss Southwood was shaded by the projecting eaves of her bonnet, but it was very full of anxiety, and the interval seemed long to her though the note was short. This is what Mrs. Stone said:
“DEAR LUCY,— On thinking over the extraordinary proposal you made yesterday I think it right to recommend you to dismiss all idea of my nephew, Frank St. Clair, out of your mind. Your offer is very well meant, but it is impossible, and I trust he will never be so deeply wounded as he would be by hearing of the compensation which you have thought proper to suggest. I don’t wish to be unkind, but it is only your ignorance that makes the idea pardonable; I forgive, and will try to forget it; but I trust you will take precautions to prevent it from ever reaching the ears of Mr. St. Clair.
“Your friend,
“MARIA STONE.”
This letter brought the tears to Lucy’s eyes. “I did not mean to be unkind. Oh, Miss Southwood, you did not think I wanted to insult any one.”
“It is all nonsense; of course you never meant to insult him,” said Miss Southwood, anxiously. “It is Maria who is cracked, I think. Money is never an insult—unless there is too little of it,” she added, cautiously. “Of course if you were to offer a gentleman the same as you would give to a common man— But my opinion, Lucy, is that Frank himself should be allowed to judge. We ought not to sacrifice his interest for our pride. It is he himself who ought to decide.”
“I do not want to give too little. Oh,” said Lucy, “if you knew how glad I would be to think it was all gone! I thought at first it would be delightful to help everybody—to give them whatever they wanted.”
“But if you give all your money away you will not be a very great heiress any more.”
“That was what papa meant,” said Lucy. “He thought because my uncle made it I should have the pleasure of giving it back.”
Miss Southwood looked at her with a very grave face. “My dear,” she said, “if I were you I would not speak of it like this, I would not let it be known. As it is, you might marry anybody; you might have a duke, I verily believe, if you liked; but if it is known that the money is not yours after all, that you are not the great heiress everybody thinks, it will spoil your prospects, Lucy. Listen to me, for I am speaking as a friend; now that you are not going to marry Frank, I can’t have any motive, can I? I would not say a word about it till after I was married, Lucy, if I were in your place. It will spoil all your prospects, you will see.”
She raised her voice unconsciously as she gave this advice, till even little Jock was roused. He got upon his elbows and twisted himself round to look at her. And the stare of his great eyes had a fascinating effect upon Miss Southwood. She turned round, involuntarily drawn by them, and said with a half shriek, “Good Lord! I forgot that child.”
As for Lucy, she made no reply; she only half understood what was meant by the spoiling of her prospects, and this serious remonstrance had much less effect upon her than words a great deal less weighty.
“Will you tell me what I am to do?” she said simply; “and how much do you think it should be, Miss Southwood? Gentlemen spend a great deal more than women. I will write at once to my guardian.”
“To your guardian!” Miss Southwood cried; and this time with a real though suppressed shriek, “you will write to your guardian—about Frank?”
Here Lucy laughed softly in spite of herself. “You do not think I could keep thousands of pounds in my pockets? and besides, it has all to be done—like business.”
“Like business!” Miss Southwood was unreasonably, incomprehensibly wounded; “write to your guardian,” she said, faintly, “about Frank—manage it like business! Oh, Lucy, I fear it was I that was mistaken, and Maria that understood you, after all!”
Why did she cry? Lucy stood by wondering, yet troubled, while her visitor threw herself into a chair and wept. “Oh,” she cried, “I that thought you were a lady! But what is bred in the bone will come out. To offer a favor, and then to expose a person—who is much better born and more a gentleman than yourself!”
This new blow entirely overwhelmed Lucy. She did not know what to reply. Whatever happened she began to think, she must always be in the wrong. She was not a lady, she had no delicacy of feeling; had not Mrs. Russell said so before? Lucy felt herself sink into unimaginable depths. They all despised her, or, what was worse, thought of her money, shutting their hearts against herself, and she was so willing, so anxious that they should have her money, so little desirous to get any credit from it. After awhile she laid her hand softly upon her visitor’s shoulder. “Miss Southwood,” she said, in her soft little deprecating voice, “if you would only think for a moment I am only a girl, I do not keep it myself. They only let me have a little, just a little, when I want it. It is in the will that my guardians must know, and help me to decide. Dear Miss Southwood, don’t be angry, for I can not— I can not do anything else. It is no disgrace not to have money, and no credit or pleasure to have it,” Lucy said, with a deep sigh, “no one can know that so well as me.”
“You little goose,” said Miss Southwood, “why, it is everything to you! who do you think would have taken any notice of you, who would have made a pet of you, but for your money? I mean, of course,” she said, with a compunction, seeing the effect her words produced, “except steady old friends like Maria and me.”
Poor little Lucy had grown very pale; her limbs trembled under her, her blue eyes got a wistful look which went to the heart of the woman who had not, so opaque are some intelligences, intended to be unkind. Miss Southwood, even now, did not quite see how she had been unkind. It was as plain as daylight to her that old John Trevor’s daughter had no claim whatever upon the consideration of ladies and gentlemen, except on account of her money; which was not to say that she might not, however, have friends in a humbler class, who might care for her, for herself alone. As for Lucy, she dropped down upon a chair, and said no more, her heart was as heavy as lead. Wherever she turned was not this dismal burden taken up and repeated, “Your money, and your money alone”?
“Oh, no, it does not matter. Must I write to Mr. Chervil, or must it all be given up?” said Lucy, faintly, “and Mr. St. Clair—”
“If you think so much of him, why—why can’t you make up your mind and have him?” cried his aunt. “It is not anything so much out of the way, when one knows all the circumstances; for you will not really have such a great fortune after all. Lucy, would it not be much better—”
Lucy shook her head; she did not feel herself capable of words, and Miss Southwood was about to begin another and an eloquent appeal, when there was once more a summons at the door, and some one was heard audibly coming upstairs. A minute after Mrs. Rushton appeared at the drawing-room door. She was flushed and preoccupied, and came in quickly, not waiting for the maid; but when she saw Miss Southwood she made a marked and sudden pause.
“I beg your pardon. I thought I should find you alone, Miss Trevor, at this early hour.”
“I am just going,” Miss Southwood said; and she kissed Lucy affectionately, partly by way of blowing trumpets of defiance to the rival power. “Don’t conclude about what we were speaking of till I see you again; be sure you wait till I see you again,” she said as she went away. Mrs. Rushton had not sat down, she was evidently full of some subject of importance. She scarcely waited till her predecessor had shut the door.
“I have come to say a few words to you which I fear will scarcely be pleasant, Miss Trevor,” she said.
Lucy tried to smile; she brought forward her softest easy-chair with obsequious attention. She had something to make up to Raymond’s mother. “I hope nothing has happened,” she said.
“I will not sit down, I am much obliged to you. No, nothing has happened, so far as I know. It is about yourself I wanted to speak. Miss Trevor, you afforded a spectacle to my party yesterday which I hope never to see repeated again. I warned you the other night that you were flirting—”
Lucy’s countenance, which had been full of alarm, cleared a little, she even permitted herself to smile. “Flirting?” she said.
“I don’t think it a smiling matter. You have no mother,” said Mrs. Rushton, “and we are all sorry for you—in a measure, we are all very sorry for you. We know what the manner of fashionable circles are, at least of some fashionable circles. I have always said that to put you, with your antecedents, into the hands of a woman like Lady Randolph! But I have nothing to do with that, I wash my hands of that. The thing is that it will not do here.”
Lucy said nothing. She looked at her new tormentor wistfully, begging for mercy. What had she done?
“Yesterday opened my eyes,” said Mrs. Rushton, with a heat and energy which flushed her cheeks. “I have been trying to think you were all a nice girl should be. I have been thinking of you,” said the angry woman, with some sudden natural tears, “as one of my own. Heaven knows that is what has been in my mind. A poor orphan, though she is so rich, that is what I have always said to myself—poor thing! I will try to be a mother to her.”
“Oh, Mrs. Rushton, you have been very kind. I know it seems ungrateful,” cried Lucy, with answering tears of penitence, “but if you will only think—what was I to do?— I don’t want to marry any one. And Mr. Raymond is— I had never thought—”
There was a momentary pause. Mrs. Rushton had a struggle with herself. Nature had sent her here in Raymond’s quarrel, eager to avenge him somehow, and her mind was torn with the desire to take his part openly, to declare herself on her boy’s side, to overthrow and punish the girl who had slighted him. But pride and prudence came, though tardily, to her assistance here. She stared at Lucy for a moment with the blank look which so often veils a supreme conflict. Then she said, with an air of surprise, “Raymond? Do you mean my son? I can not see what he has to do with the question.”
Lucy felt as a half-fainting patient feels when the traditionary glass of cold water is dashed in her face. She came to herself with a little gasp of astonishment. What was it then? except in the matter of refusing Ray, her conscience was void of all offense. She looked at Mrs. Rushton with wonder in her wide open eyes.
“I do not know,” Mrs. Rushton continued, finding her ground more secure as she went on, “what you mean to insinuate about my boy. He is not one that will ever lead a girl too far. No, Lucy, that is a thing that will never happen. It is when one of your own town set appears that you show yourself in your true colors; but perhaps it is not your fault, perhaps Lady Randolph thinks that quite the right sort of behavior. I never attempt to fathom the conduct of women of her class.”
At this Lucy began to feel an impulse if not of self-defense, yet of resistance on her friend’s behalf. “Please do not speak so of Lady Randolph,” she said, with mild firmness; “if you are angry with me— I do not know why it is, but if you are angry I am very sorry, and you must say what you please of me—but Lady Randolph! I think,” said Lucy, tears coming to her eyes, “if I am not to trust Lady Randolph, I may as well give up altogether, for there seems no one who will stand by me, of all the people I know.”
“Oh, Lady Randolph will stand by you, never fear; so long as you keep your fortune, you are sure of Lady Randolph,” cried Mrs. Rushton, with vehemence. “But as for other friends, Miss Trevor, your behavior must be their guide.”
“Why do you call me Miss Trevor?” cried Lucy, her courage giving way; “what have I done? If it is Raymond that has set you against me, it is cruel. I have done nothing to make my friends give me up,” the poor girl cried, with mingled shame and indignation; for the suggestion of unfit behavior abashed Lucy, and yet, being driven to bay, she could not but make a little stand in her own defense.
“Raymond again!” cried Mrs. Rushton, with an angry laugh; “why should you wish to mix up my son in it? It is not Raymond as I have said before, that would lead any girl to make an exhibition of herself—but the moment you get with one of your own set! I call you Miss Trevor, because I am disappointed, bitterly disappointed in you. I thought you were a different girl altogether—nice and modest and gentle, and—but I have my innocent Emmie to think of, and I will not have her grow up with such an example before her eyes. Therefore, if you see a difference in me, you will know the cause of it. I have treated you like a child of my own. I have made parties for you, introduced you everywhere, and this is my reward. But it is always so; I ought to console myself with that; those we are kind to are exactly those that turn upon us and rend us. Oh, what is that? are you setting a dog upon me? You ungrateful, ill-mannered—”
There was no dog; but Jock, unobserved by the visitor, had been there all the time, and as Mrs. Rushton grew vehement, his attention had been roused. He had raised himself on his elbows, listening with ears and eyes alike, and by this time his patience was exhausted; the child was speechless with childish fury. He took the easiest way that occurred to him of freeing Lucy. He seized the long folds of Mrs. Rushton’s train which lay near him in not ungraceful undulations, and winding his hands into it, made an effort to drag her to the door. The alarm with which she felt this mysterious tug, which very nearly overset her balance, got vent in a shriek which rang through the whole house. “It is a mad dog!” she cried, with a rush for the door, carrying Jock along with her. But no mortal thread could stand such an appendage. Mrs. Rushton’s dress was slight in fabric, and gave way with a shrieking of stuff rent asunder, and stitches torn loose. Lucy flew to the rescue, catching her little champion in her arms with outcries of horror and apology, yet secret kisses of gratitude and consolation to the flushed and excited child. It was at this moment that Mrs. Ford, having put on her purple silk, sailed into the room, her pace scarcely accelerated by the cries she heard, for she owed it to herself to be dignified in the presence of strangers whatever happened. She paused a moment at the door, throwing up her hands. Then, “For shame, Jock! for shame!” she cried, loudly, stamping her foot, while Lucy, kneeling down, kissing, and scolding, and crying in a breath, endeavored to unloose the little passionate hot hands. “She should let Lucy alone!” cried Jock, with spasmodic fury. He would have held on like a dog for which his enemy took him, through any amount of beating. “I do not wonder after the way in which he has been brought up,” cried Mrs. Rushton, panting and furious as she got free.