“I THINK I have got it now, Ford, I think I have got it now,” the old man said, rubbing his hands. “But it has given me a great deal of trouble. Get yourself a chair, and sit down. I want you to hear how I’ve put it. I think, though I don’t want to be conceited, that this time I have hit upon the very thing. Sit down, Ford, and give me your advice.”
Ford found himself a chair, and put it in front of the fire. His feet were close to little Jock on the hearth-rug, but neither did he pay the least attention to little Jock, any more than if he had been a little dog half buried in the fur. The child moved now and then, as his position became fatiguing. He changed now an elbow, now the hand with which he held his book, and sometimes fluttered the pages as he turned them; but these little movements were like the falling of the ashes from the grate, or the little flickers of the flames, and no one took any notice. Jock kept on reading his Shakespeare, wholly absorbed in it; yet as in a dream heard them talking, and remembered afterward, as children do, what they had said.
“Listen!” said Mr. Trevor. He was so eager to read that he had taken his MS. into his hands before his confidant was ready to hear, and waited, clearing his throat while Ford took his seat. Then without a pause, raising his hand to command attention, he began:
“In respect to the future residence of my daughter Lucy, up to the moment of her coming of age, I desire that her time should be divided between two homes which I have selected for her. It is my wish that she should pass the first six months of every year in the house and under the care of Lady Randolph, Park Street, London—”
Here Ford interrupted with an exclamation of astonishment. “Lady Randolph!” he said.
Trevor paused, and uttered his usual chuckle, but with a still livelier note of pleasure in it. “Ah!” he said. “Lady Randolph—that surprises you, Ford. We haven’t many titles among us, have we? But she’s a relation of poor Lucilla’s all the same; or at least she says so,” he added, with another chuckle. “There is nothing like money for opening people’s eyes.”
“A relation of Lucilla’s!” Ford’s amazement was not more genuine than the impression of awe made upon him by the name. “I never knew the Rainys had any rich relations. I suppose you mean Sir Thomas Randolph at the Hall, the lord of the manor, he that was member for the county when I first came here—the present Sir Thomas’s uncle—the—”
“That will do,” said the old man. “It’s not Sir Thomas, but it’s his wife, or his widow, to be exact. She says she is a relation—no, a connection of Lucilla’s—and she ought to know best. She has made me an offer to take charge of Lucy, and introduce her, as she calls it. I’ve been of use to my Lady Randolph in the way of business, and she wants to be of use to me. I don’t ask, for my part, if it’s altogether disinterested. It appears there was a Randolph that married beneath him; I can’t tell you how long ago. My lady,” said old Trevor dryly, “would not break her heart, perhaps, if another Randolph married beneath him, and into the same family too.”
“But,” said Ford, “that would be no reason for putting Lucy in her hands—a poor lamb in the way of the wolf.”
“One wolf is not a bad thing to keep off others; besides, my good fellow, I’ve taken every precaution. Wait till you see,” and he resumed his manuscript, with again a little preparatory clearing of his throat:
“The latter part of the year it is my wish that Lucy should spend in the house which has already been her home for some years, under the charge of her other relations, Richard Ford and Susan, his wife, who have been her fast friends since ever she can recollect, and to whom for this purpose I hereby give and bequeath the said house, No. 6 in the Terrace, in the parish of Farafield, in the hundred of—”
“Stop a bit!” said Ford feebly; he was overcome by his feelings. “‘Her fast friends,’” he repeated, “that’s just what we are. We’ve loved her like our own, that’s what we’ve always done, Susan and me. And as for Susan, many’s the time she has said, ‘Supposing anything was to happen, or any change to occur, what should we do without Lucy? It would be like losing a child of our own.’”
“Then you approve?” Trevor said. He liked to receive the full expression of the gratitude which was his due.
“Approve!” said Ford. When a man without any natural dignity to speak of is moved tearfully, the effect is sometimes less pathetic than ludicrous; the good man did all but cry. “It isn’t the property, Mr. Trevor, it’s the trust,” he said, with a restrained sob. “But one thing I’ll promise, it sha’n’t be a trust betrayed. We’ll watch over her night and day. There shall be no wolf come near her while she’s with Susan and me.”
“In moderation! in moderation!” said the old man, waving his hand. “I don’t want her to be watched night and day; something must be left to Lucy herself.”
“Ah!” said Ford, drawing a long breath. He had the air of a man who was ready to patrol under his ward’s window with a pair of pistols. “Lucy has a great deal of sense, but to expose a girl to the wiles of a set of fortune-hunters is what I would never do—and with that worldly-minded old woman. Ah! Mr. Trevor, you’re too kind, you’re too kind. Lady Randolph is not one that would step out of her own sphere for nothing. It isn’t any desire she has to be kind to you.”
“Her own sphere,” said Mr. Trevor. “Money levels all spheres. And Lucy is an heiress, which makes her equal to a prince of the blood. But,” he added, with a chuckle, snapping his fingers, “that for the fortune-hunters! I’ve put bolt and bar between them and their prey. It’s all done in black and white, and I don’t know who can go against it. Listen, Ford.
“It is further my wish, and I hereby stipulate that my said daughter, Lucy, shall contract no marriage up to the age hereinafter mentioned without the consent of the following parties, who will consider themselves as a sort of committee for the disposal of her hand, and whom I hereby appoint and constitute her guardians, so far as this subject is concerned; it being fully understood that this appointment does not confer any power or authority over her pecuniary concerns. The committee which I thus charge with the arrangement of her marriage is to consist of the three persons above mentioned, to wit, Dame Elena Randolph, Richard Ford, and Susan Ford, his wife, with the following assessors added: Robert Rushton, Esq., town clerk of Farafield, my old friend; the Rev. William Williamson, of the Congregational Chapel, my pastor; and Mrs. Maria Stone, school-mistress, of the same place—”
“But, Mr. Trevor!” Ford ejaculated with a gasp. The paragraph he had just listened to took away his breath.
“Well? out with your objections; let us hear them,” said old Trevor, turning upon him, brisk and lively, and ready for war.
“Objections! yes, I can not deny it, I have objections,” said Ford, hesitating. “Mr. Trevor, you know better than I do, you that have had such quantities of money passing through your hands; but—”
“Out with it,” said Trevor; he rubbed his hands. It was an amusement the more to him to have his arrangements questioned.
“You can’t have taken everything into consideration. Six people—six, all so different. If she has to get all their consents, she will never marry at all.”
“And no great harm done either,” said old Trevor briefly, “if that is all. Why should she marry? A woman who is poor, who wants somebody to work for her, that is comprehensible; but a woman with a lot of money, there is no reason why she shouldn’t stay as she is. What should she get married for?”
Ford scratched his head; he did not quite make it out. This was a challenge to all his convictions. It touched, he felt, the very first prerogative of man. Where were all true foundations of primal supremacy and authority to go to, if it were once set up as a rule that marriage was no longer necessary to womankind?
“It’s always a good thing for a woman to marry,” he said hoarsely. Many a radical opinion he had heard from his lodger, but never anything so sweeping as this.
“Ah! you think so,” said old Trevor. “There was poor Lucilla, to go no further. She might have been alive yet, and enjoying her good fortune, if she had not married me.”
This disturbed still more the man of orthodox ideas; he could do nothing but stare at the old revolutionary. What might he not say next?
“I suppose,” he said, after awhile, “poor Lucilla would never have hesitated; she was a woman who never considered her own comfort, in comparison with doing her duty.”
“Her duty, poor soul! how was it her duty to marry me? Poor thing, I’ve always been very sorry for her,” said Trevor. “Women have hard times in this world. But a girl with a great fortune, she may be kept out of it.” Here he paused, while his companion sat opposite to him, his very mouth open with amazement. It was indeed more than amazement, it was consternation which filled the honest mind of Richard Ford. He did not know what to think of this; was it a new phase of Radicalism worse than any that had gone before? He would have said it was Popery if he had not known how far from any ideas of that description his old friend was. While he sat thus half stupefied with astonishment, old Trevor took up his pen again hastily. “Now I think of it,” he said, “Lucy belongs to the country, I don’t hold much with the Church, but the Church should have a hand in it. I’ll add the rector to the committee. That will be only a proper respect.”
“The rector!” said Ford, pale with wonder, “and Mr. Williamson at the chapel, and Mr. Rushton, and Mrs. Stone, and me—”
“You forget Lady Randolph,” said old Trevor, with a chuckle; “that’s exactly as it ought to be, all classes represented, the right thing for a girl in Lucy’s position. To tell the truth,” he added, laying down his pen, “I don’t know that there ever was a girl in Lucy’s position before. It’s a very fine position, and I hope she’s been brought up to feel all the responsibilities. I don’t want to brag of myself; but given an unusual situation like hers, and I think I’ve hit the right thing for it. When you are born a great lady that’s different; but a girl with the greatest fortune in England, proceeding out of the lower classes—”
“I don’t see,” said Ford, aggrieved, “that we need call ourselves the lower classes; the middle—that is about what it is—the middle class—the strength of the country.”
“Bosh!” said Trevor, “she will go to Lady Randolph’s, and there she will see fine people, and no doubt she’ll be courted. There is nobody like them for knowing the value of money; and then she will come to you, Dick Ford, where she will see nobody, or else a few young clerks and that sort.”
“I assure you,” said Ford solemnly, “I will take care that she shall see no one here; not a man shall enter the house, not a creature come near her, while she is under my care.”
“That will be lively for Lucy,” said the old man, “you numskull! If she never sees any one, how is she to make a choice?”
“Mr. Trevor,” said Ford, with a voice so solemn and serious that it trembled, “you would not wish your heiress to make a choice among the young clerks? Whom you say,” he added after a moment, in a tone of offense, “she will meet here.”
“She is not my heiress, you stupid fellow. She is Lucilla’s heiress, poor Rainy’s heiress; what was he but a young clerk? Why shouldn’t she, if she likes, marry into her own class? That’s your snobbishness, Ford. You will find nothing of that in me. If she likes a man who is in the same rank of life as Rainy was when he began to make his fortune, or as I was (when I was that age), why let her marry him in Heaven’s name and be happy—that is,” said old Trevor, chuckling, “if she can get her guardians to consent.”
“Mr. Trevor,” said Ford hurriedly, with the tremulousness of real feeling, “I must protest, I must really protest. I am very conscious of the great kindness you are showing to us; but I can not sit quiet and see poor Lucy doomed to such a fate. She will never get all her guardians to consent. Put it into one person’s hands, whom you please, but for goodness’ sake don’t leave the poor thing to fight with half a dozen; the end will be that she will never be married at all.”
“And that won’t kill her,” said Trevor. “Do you think I want her to marry? Not a bit, not a bit. ‘She is better if she so abide.’ Don’t you know who said that? And I agree with St. Paul, whatever you may do.”
Now the idea of not agreeing with St. Paul was terrible to Ford; it scandalized him utterly; for he was a Low Churchman, and much devoted to the writer of the Epistles.
“There never could be any question on that point,” he said, “if you ask me whether I believe in my Bible, Mr. Trevor; but I can not pretend that I understand that passage. There is more in it, I make bold to say, than meets the eye. There’s a type in it, or a similitude. I am not a learned man, I can’t tell you what it is in the original, but there’s more in it than we think.”
Old Trevor laughed—he was quite as stanch a believer as his friend; but being a Congregationalist, he was naturally a little more at his ease on such subjects than even the lowest of Churchmen. He was not shocked by the idea that it might be possible not to agree with St. Paul, and he was not so sure of the hidden meaning.
“It is quite enough for me as it stands,” he said; “and as for Lucy’s marriage—”
Here there was an interruption that startled these old conspirators. Little Jocky, who had been lying as still as a mouse at their feet, with no movement except that of turning a leaf of his book, now began to stir. They had forgotten his very existence, as they often did. He had not been paying much attention to them, but probably he had heard other sounds more interesting to him, which they, on the other hand, had taken no notice of. At this stage he suddenly jumped up on his feet like a little acrobat, startling them greatly. He was not at all unlike an acrobat, with his long, slim, pliable limbs, and his faded suit of blue velveteen, a little short in the arms, and white in the seams. He got up with a bound, like a thing on springs, immediately under Mr. Ford’s nose, who was much discomfited by the sudden movement. It was a thing that had happened before, but Mr. Ford had confessed that it was not a thing to which he could accustom himself. He was not used to children, and he was nervous; little Jock’s jump made him jump too.
“What is it? What is the matter?” he cried.
But just then the door softly opened behind the screen, and a soft voice said, “I have come home, papa, I have come to take Jock for his walk. Do you want anything?”
“Not that I know of, my dear, not that I know of; except yourself, and I shall have you by and by,” said the old man, his countenance expanding. She was not visible behind the high screen, but her voice seemed to throw a new element, something of softness and comfort into the air.
“At tea, papa. Come, Jock,” said the voice; and the little fellow was gone almost before the words were said. The two old men sat quite silent, and listened to the steps going down the stairs. It was not an unusual incident, but it is scarcely possible not to feel an uneasy sensation when you have been discussing, much more deciding, the fate of another, and suddenly that other looks in and interrupts your secret combinations by the sound of an innocent and affectionate voice. Such unconsciousness is more trying to a conspirator than any suspicion of his motives. Even when it is a private consultation between a father and mother on the expediency of sending a child to school, with what compunctions the sudden appearance of the unconscious victim overwhelms them! Old Trevor himself was moved by it, though he was not a likely subject for penitence.
“She hasn’t much notion what we’re settling,” he said. “Poor little Lucy! I wonder if it’s a good thing for a bit of a girl to have such a fate before her. But it is a fine position—a fine position; not many have such a chance, and I hope I’ve bred her up to understand what it is.”
“Poor child!” Ford breathed, in a sigh which was not unmingled with personal feeling; for notwithstanding the substantial advantages promised to him, and the gratifying character of the trust conferred, there already began to appear before the good man, not too confident in his own firmness or force of character, a crowd of difficulties to come. How would he be able to resist if a fine lady like Lady Randolph took him in hand? And how would Susan stand out against cajoling? He sighed, beginning to foresee that it would not be unmixed happiness to be Lucy’s guardian even for six months in the year. But Lucy’s appearance, or rather Lucy’s voice had disturbed the sitting effectually. Mr. Trevor folded up his blue manuscript, and put it back into the blotting-book, and he lifted the “Times” from the little table on which it had been spread out, and once more arranged it on his knees.
“We’ll go into further detail,” he said, “another time, I’ll give you the help of all my lights, Dick Ford. You’ll want them to steer your way clear, and you can tell Susan there sha’n’t be any want of money. That is what she’ll think of first.”
“I hope, Mr. Trevor, that you don’t think money is the only thing we think of, either Susan or me.”
“It is a very important thing,” said the old man. “I have been poor, and now I am rich, and it isn’t a matter that will let itself be kept in the background. But you shall have plenty of money, tell Susan so, and for other things you must do your best.”
“I hope we’ll do that in any case,” Ford said devoutly, and he went down-stairs with nervous solemnity, holding his head very high. He was very conscientious even in the smallest matters, and it may be supposed that this tremendous call upon him, as soon as he began to realize it, went to the very depths of that conscience which was alert and anxious in the minutest affairs. Old Trevor watched him disappear behind the screen, waited till the door had audibly closed behind him, then with a chuckling laugh resumed his newspaper.
“I’ve given him something to think about,” he said, with a grin of mischievous satisfaction to himself.