CHAPTER XLIV.
WHEN THE NIGHT’S DARKEST IT’S NEAREST THE DAWNING.
NOT a word could Lucy say all the way home. She was flushed and agitated, her hand burning, which grasped Jock’s, her eyes dim with moisture. When she got home she made no reply to Mrs. Ford, who came out to meet her; but, dropping Jock’s hand, ran upstairs to the quiet of that still, pink sitting-room, where the “Heroes” still lay open on the rug, and her chair stood as she had thrust it back. The afternoon was fading into twilight, the lamps were lighted outside, throwing a strange one-sided sort of chilly illumination into the room, though mingled with the daylight. Lucy shut the door behind her, as if it had been the door of a hermitage. No one would come to disturb her there, unless it might be Mrs. Ford, to persuade her to go down to tea. How could Lucy go and sit at the homely table, and listen to all the potterings of the pair, over their bread and butter? She could not do it. Agitation had driven away all trace of appetite; she wanted nothing, she thought, but to be let alone. She sat down upon the sofa, and gazed out wistfully at the bit of blue sky that appeared between the white curtains. There was not so much as that bit of blue sky in all Lucy’s world. Not one true to her, not one who did not see something in her quite different from herself. Her other suitors had startled Lucy; but this last application for her love had driven her to bay. She did injustice to poor Bertie in the vehemence of her feelings. Though he had spoken in high-flown language, he was not in reality worse than the others, nor had he a worse meaning. They all of them had known that Lucy was the most desirable thing within their reach. They had recognized with the truest sincerity that she could make them happy, that no one could make them so happy; they had aspired to her with all the fervor of heartfelt sentiment; and Bertie had not been behind the others in this very earnest and unquestionable feeling. Why then should he have made her so angry—he, and not the others? She could not tell; but she came in, feeling a universal sickening of distrust, which took all the heart out of her. She sat down dismally upon her pink sofa. Nobody to trust to. What fate in the world could be so terrible? The cold gleaming of the lamps outside were a kind of symbol of all her life had to sustain it; faint reflections of the outside light of the world but no warmth of a household lamp or hearth within. She sat down forlorn, and began to cry. “Nobody, nobody!” said poor Lucy. She did her best to survey the situation calmly, dismal as it was. What was she to do? All her friends had forsaken her; but she had Jock left, and those duties which her father had trusted to her hands. She must go on with her trust whatever happened. She kept hold of a kind of reality in her life, by grasping at this resolution. Yes, she would do her duty; whoever failed she would hold on, she would do what her father had said. It was still something that was left in life.
It seemed to Lucy, all at once, as if a new light had come upon this duty. It was in love to her as well as in justice to others that her father had charged her to give it back. Oh, if it could all be given back—got rid of, her life delivered from it, and she herself left free like other girls! Lucy’s sky seemed to her all gloomy and charged with clouds of wealth, which had risen out of the earth, and only by dispersion to earth again would leave her free. She understood what her father meant—rain to relieve the clouds, tears to relieve the heat in her forehead, the gasp in her throat. But at present the clouds were hanging suspended over her, hiding all the blueness of the heavens, and her tears were few and hot, not enough to relieve either head or heart. Nobody faithful—not one! the women conspiring, even Katie, the men paying false court, making false professions, and every one maligning the other, accusing the others of that falsehood which they knew to be in themselves. “Not one,” she repeated to herself, “not one;” and then a cry was forced out of Lucy’s poor little wrung heart. “Not even Sir Tom!” she said aloud, with a sudden torrent of tears. Was this, though she did not know it, the worst of all? Certainly the name opened those flood-gates against which her passion of wounded feeling had been straining; her tears came in a violent thunder-shower. “Not even Sir Tom!” It was the hardest of all.
Something stirred in the dimness behind her. She had taken no notice of anything in the room when she came in, blind with those tears which she was not able to shed until she found that talisman. Some one seemed to make a step forward. Was she then not alone? or was it her imagination only which made her heart jump? No, for Lucy’s imagination never went so far as this. It could not have created the voice which said, with that familiar tone, “What has Sir Tom done?” with a touch of emotion and a little touch of laughter in it, just over her head as she sat and sobbed. The sudden cry with which Lucy replied told all her little secret, even to herself. She got up and turned round, transformed, her innocent lips apart, her eyes all wet and blinded, yet seeing— But what she saw was not very clear, a big shadow, a something that was very real, not false at all, a figure that somehow—why? Lucy could not tell—put the world right again, and stopped the giddiness, and made the ground solid under her feet. She put out her hands, yet more in meaning than in action, half groping, half appealing.
“Who is it? is it you?” she said.
“Lucy, what has Sir Tom done to make you cry?” he asked, taking her hands into his. Was it possible that she did not feel any longer this most poignant stab of all? She could not in the least recollect what it was. She thought of it no more. It sailed away from her firmament as a cloud sails on a steady breeze.
“Oh, I am so glad you have come home,” she cried.
Sir Tom was touched almost to tears. No one could see it, but he felt the moisture steal into the corners of his eyes. This was not a congenial place for him, this bourgeois room, nor had this little girl, in her simplicity, any right to greet him so. And Sir Thomas had by no means made up his mind, when he came to see his aunt’s protégée, notwithstanding her heiress-ship, that he was going to give up his freedom and independence, and subject himself to all manner of vulgar comments for her sake. But these words sealed his fate. He could no more have resisted their modest, simple appeal, so unconscious as it was, than he could have denied his own nature. He did what he had done when he left her, but with a very different meaning; he stooped over her and kissed her seriously on the forehead; he had done it half paternally, half in jest, when he went away.
“Yes, my dear, I have come home,” with a little quiver in his voice, Sir Thomas said; and after an interval, “I think my little Lucy must have missed me. What is the matter? who has been vexing you? and even Sir Tom; did I do something amiss too?”
“We will speak of that after,” Lucy said, with a relief which was beyond all comprehension. She could talk again, her tongue was loosened and her heart opened. She had not been able to confide in any one for so long, and now all at once some door seemed opened, some lock undone. “It does not seem anything now you are here. I am sure it was right, quite right,” she cried, with a sob and a laugh together. “I knew underneath that it must be right all the time.”
Sir Tom did not insist upon knowing what it was; he made her sit down, and placed himself by her, still holding her hands.
“But something has been wrong,” he said. “My little girl is not in such trouble without some cause. Mrs. Ford tells me there was a disturbance this morning, and that Jock was naughty, and you went out without any dinner. Come, tell me—you can trust in me.”
Had she not heard over and over again that he was not to be trusted? Had she not believed, with the deepest sting of all, that Sir Tom had failed her? Lucy did not remember. “Oh, yes,” she said, from the bottom of her heart. It seemed so easy to tell everything now. And then the whole pent-up stream poured forth. The trouble of the morning could not be disclosed without leading to all the rest. Sometimes she cried as she spoke, sometimes almost laughed, the fact that he was there taking all the sting out of her troubles. And as for Sir Tom, though there was sometimes a gleam of indignation in him, he felt more disposed to laughter than to tears. Lucy’s troubles were very simple and transparent to him; she might have known that her fortune would tempt everybody—though the fact that she had not known, and that even proofs had not convinced her, was the thing which most profoundly touched Sir Tom’s experienced heart.
“You have had a pretty set of guardians,” he said; “these are all people that have had the charge of you, Lucy?” He did not at the moment recollect that Lady Randolph had the charge of her also, and had instantly, from the ends of the world, summoned himself. Then he said, “Lucy, listen to me; this is the sort of thing you will be subject to, I fear, wherever you go; and I don’t know what you will think of me when you hear what I am going to say. I know you have a grievance against me which you are to tell me by and by—”
“No, oh, no,” cried Lucy fervently; “I know now it must have been a mistake.”
He smiled, but the smile was not that of mere triumph. He was old enough to be touched by his own unexpected success, to be grateful to the young creature who had resisted all other claims upon her regard, to give her heart so unreservedly to him; and there was even more than this, a something which, at the moment, was very like love, which probably was the most passionate sentiment he was likely to entertain now, after all his experiences, for any one. He was “very fond of” Lucy. He understood her simple goodness, and regarded it with that soft, fraternal enthusiasm which a beloved child excites in us; and he was grateful to her, and deeply touched by her choice of himself, a choice of which he could have very little doubt. “And you have heard a great deal of harm of me—all these good people have said something. They have said Tom Randolph was not a man to be your friend.”
“I have not believed them,” said Lucy. “I know you better. I have not believed a word.”
“But you might have believed, Lucy. You must listen to me now, my dear. I have not been a good man, as you give me credit for being. I can not say of myself that I am fit to be the companion of a young, pure, good girl.”
“Oh, Sir Tom!” Lucy cried in indignant protestation. Words would not serve her to say more.
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head regretfully. “It is quite true. I who know myself best confess it to you, but still there is a little truth left in me. I am going to enter the lists with all these others, Lucy. I am going to ask you to set yourself free from all of them by marrying me.”
“Marrying—you, Sir Tom!”
“Yes, me. People will say I am a fortune-hunter like the rest.”
Lucy could not bear even this censure suggested by himself. She had been looking at him seriously all the time, showing her emotion only by the changing color of her face, which, indeed, it was not very easy to see. Now she made a hasty movement of impatience, stamping her foot upon the ground. “No!” she said. “No! they would not dare to say that. It would not be true.”
“It would be true so far that, if you were a little girl without any fortune, I should not dare to ask you to marry me, for I am a poor man; but not any worse than that. Will you marry me, Lucy?” Sir Thomas said. He let her hands go free, and held out his own. He was not afraid like the others. It can not even be said that he had much doubt what the answer would be.
Lucy had not shrunk from him, nor shown any appearance of timidity. She sat quite quietly looking at him, her eyes showing through the gathering twilight, but not much else. There was a little quiver about her mouth, but that did not show.
“Must I be married at all?” she said, in a very low voice.
This chilled Sir Thomas a little, for he had expected a much warmer reply. He had thought it possible that she would fling herself upon his breast, and receive his proposal with the same soft enthusiasm with which she had welcomed his coming. He forgot how young she was, how child-like, and how serious and dutiful in every new step she had to take.
“Yes,” he said, with a little jar in his voice, “unless you are always to be running the gantlet through a string of suitors. You like me, Lucy?”
“Oh, Sir Tom, yes!”
“And I—” he stopped the other words on his own lips; he would be honest and no more; he would not say love, which indeed was a word he knew he had soiled by ignoble use, and employed ere now in a very different sense. “And I,” he said, “am very fond of you.”
There was a pause. He never could have thought he would have felt so anxious, or that his heart would have beaten as it was beating. Through the twilight he could see Lucy’s serious eyes—not stars, or anything superfluous—honest, tranquil, with a little curve of thought over each brow, looking at him. She was anxious too. At last she said, with a soft sigh, “I wish, I wish I knew—”
“What Lucy?”
“What is right,” she said, with a little hurrying and faltering of the words, “what papa would have liked. It is so hard to tell. He left me a great many instructions for different things, but not a word, not a word about this.”
“In this, you may be sure, he wished your heart to be your guide,” said Sir Thomas, “and so, even if you decide against me, do I—”
“How could I decide against you, Sir Tom?” she said, with a soft reproach. “I am thinking, only thinking, what is right.”
What was Sir Thomas to do? he began to feel that his position was almost ludicrous, sitting here, suspended upon Lucy’s breath, waiting for her answer. This was not the triumphant position which he had occupied ten minutes ago, when he felt himself to be the deliverer, coming with acclamations to set everything right. Whether to be very angry and annoyed, or to laugh at this curious turning of the tables—to be patient and wait her pleasure, or to betray the half-provoked, half-amused impatience he began to feel—he did not know.
The matter was decided in a way as unlooked for as was the crisis itself. Suddenly, without any warning, the door bounced open, and Mrs. Ford stood in the door-way, in a dark vacancy, which showed her darker substance like a drawing in sepia. “Lucy,” she said solemnly, “do you mean to starve yourself to death, all to spite me? I have not had a moment’s peace all day since you went out without your dinner. Sir Thomas Randolph, if you have got any influence with her, make her come down to her tea.”
“I will, Mrs. Ford,” he said.
“There’s a roast partridge,” said Mrs. Ford, with real emotion. “Jock, bless him, has eat up the other. Oh, Lucy, if you do not want to make me wretched, come down to your tea!”
“I am coming,” said Lucy. She rose up, and so did her companion— Mrs. Ford in the door-way looking on, not seeing anything but the two shadows, yet wondering and troubled in her mind to think of the neglect which had left them there without any lights. “I will give it to that Lizzie,” said Mrs. Ford internally; but there was something in the air which she did not understand, which kept her silent in spite of herself.
Then Lucy put her hand into Sir Thomas’s hand, which was no longer held out for it. “If you think it is the best,” she said, very low, in her serious voice, “you have more sense than I have. Tell me what to do. Do you think it is the best?”
Sir Thomas had been confused by the strange and unexpected position; he had been prepared for an easy triumph, and at the moment of coming it had eluded him; and when he had almost made up his mind to the reverse, here was another surprise and change. But Lucy’s voice again touched a deeper chord than he was conscious of. He was affected beyond description by the trust she placed in him. He took the hand she gave him within his own. “Lucy!” he cried, with a thrill of passionate feeling in his voice, “as God shall judge between us, I believe it is the best; but not, my dear, unless you feel that it will be happy for you.”
“Oh!” cried Lucy, with a soft breath of ease and content which scarcely seemed to form words, yet shaped into them, “happy! but it was not that I was thinking of,” she said.
He drew her hand within his arm. It was triumph after all, but of a kind original, surprising, with a novelty in it that went to his heart, touching all that was tender in him. He led her down-stairs into Mrs. Ford’s parlor, with his mind in a confusion of sympathy and respect and pleasure, and carved her partridge for her, and eat half of it with a sacramental solemnity, and a laugh in his eyes, which were glistening and dewy. “You see,” he said, addressing the mistress of the house, who looked on somewhat grimly, “it is not because I am greedy, but because she will not eat without company. She wants company. She does not care for the good things you get for her, unless you will share them too.”
“I declare!” cried Mrs. Ford, “I never thought of that before. Lucy, is it true?”
“It is quite true,” said Sir Thomas gravely, with always the laugh in his eyes. “She cares for nothing unless she can share it. Has she eaten up her half honestly? You see I know how to manage her. Will you let me marry her, Mrs. Ford?”
“Sir Thomas!” cried the pair in consternation, in one voice. He had come so opportunely to their assistance that they had quite forgotten he was a wolf in the fold. Ford thrust up his spectacles off his forehead, and let the evening paper (which had come in Sir Thomas’s pocket) drop from his hands, and as for Mrs. Ford she gasped for breath.
But the two at the table took it very quietly. Lucy looked up with eyes more bright than her eyes had ever been before, and a color which was very becoming, which made her almost beautiful; and Sir Thomas (who certainly was a real gentleman, with no pride about him) comforted them with friendly looks, without the slightest appearance of being ashamed of himself. “Yes,” he said. “We both think it will answer so far as we are concerned. You are her oldest friends. Will you let me marry her, Mrs. Ford?”
The question was answered in a way nobody expected. There raised itself suddenly up to the table a small head supported upon two elbows, rising from no one knew where. “Sir Tom was the one I always wanted,” said little Jock.