Sir Tom
by Mrs. Oliphant · English · Gutenberg #30692 · 953,692 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sir Tom
Author: Mrs. Oliphant
Release date: December 17, 2009 [eBook #30692]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR TOM ***
Produced by Brenda Lewis, woodie4 and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net (This
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SIR TOM
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF "THE WIZARD'S SON," "HESTER," ETC.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1893
_All rights reserved_
_First Edition (3 Vols. Crown 8vo) Sept. 1884_
_Second Edition (1 Vol. Crown 8vo) 1884_
_Reprinted (Globe 8vo) 1888, (Crown 8vo) 1893_
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
HOW SIR TOM BECAME A GREAT PERSONAGE 1
CHAPTER II.
HIS WIFE 9
CHAPTER III.
OLD MR. TREVOR'S WILL 20
CHAPTER IV.
YOUNG MR. TREVOR 29
CHAPTER V.
CONSULTATIONS 39
CHAPTER VI.
A SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS 48
CHAPTER VII.
A WARNING 58
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH 67
CHAPTER IX.
A CHRISTMAS VISIT 77
CHAPTER X.
LUCY'S ADVISERS 86
CHAPTER XI.
AN INNOCENT CONSPIRACY 96
CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRST STRUGGLE 105
CHAPTER XIII.
AN IDLE MORNING 115
CHAPTER XIV.
AN UNWILLING MARTYR 126
CHAPTER XV.
ON BUSINESS 135
CHAPTER XVI.
AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL 146
CHAPTER XVII.
FOREWARNED 157
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE VISITORS 167
CHAPTER XIX.
THE OPENING OF THE DRAMA 179
CHAPTER XX.
AN ANXIOUS CRITIC 189
CHAPTER XXI.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER 200
CHAPTER XXII.
A PAIR OF FRIENDS 211
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE BREAKFAST TABLE 221
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ORACLE SPEAKS 230
CHAPTER XXV.
THE CONTESSA'S BOUDOIR 242
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE TWO STRANGERS 259
CHAPTER XXVII.
AN ADVENTURESS 269
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SERPENT AND THE DOVE 280
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE CONTESSA'S TRIUMPH 291
CHAPTER XXX.
DIFFERENT VIEWS 301
CHAPTER XXXI.
TWO FRIENDS 311
CHAPTER XXXII.
YOUTHFUL UNREST 321
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE CONTESSA PREPARES THE WAY 332
CHAPTER XXXIV.
IN SUSPENSE 342
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DÉBUT 354
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE EVENING AFTER 366
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE CONTESSA'S TACTICS 377
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DISCOVERIES 388
CHAPTER XXXIX.
LUCY'S DISCOVERY 397
CHAPTER XL.
THE DOWAGER'S EXPLANATION 409
CHAPTER XLI.
SEVERED 417
CHAPTER XLII.
LADY RANDOLPH WINDS UP HER AFFAIRS 427
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE LITTLE HOUSE IN MAYFAIR 437
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE SIEGE OF LONDON 448
CHAPTER XLV.
THE BALL 458
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE BALL CONTINUED 469
CHAPTER XLVII.
NEXT MORNING 480
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE LAST BLOW 491
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE EXPERIENCES OF BICE 502
CHAPTER L.
THE EVE OF SORROW 514
CHAPTER LI.
THE LAST CRISIS 522
CHAPTER LII.
THE END 538
CHAPTER I.
HOW SIR TOM BECAME A GREAT PERSONAGE.
Sir Thomas Randolph had lived a somewhat stormy life during the earliest
half of his career. He had gone through what the French called a
_jeunesse orageuse_; nothing very bad had ever been laid to his charge;
but he had been adventurous, unsettled, a roamer about the world even
after the period at which youthful extravagances cease. Nobody ever knew
when or where he might appear. He set off to the farthest parts of the
earth at a day's notice, sometimes on pretext of sport, sometimes on no
pretext at all, and re-appeared again as unexpectedly as he had gone
away. He had run out his fortune by these and other extravagances, and
was at forty in one of the most uncomfortable positions in which a man
can find himself, with the external appearance of large estates and an
established and important position, but in reality with scarcely any
income at all, just enough to satisfy the mortgagees, and leave himself
a pittance not much more than the wages of a gamekeeper. If his aunt,
Lady Randolph, had not been so good to him it was uncertain whether he
could have existed at all, and when the heiress, whom an eccentric will
had consigned to her charge, fell in his way, all her friends concluded
as a matter of certainty that Sir Tom would jump at this extraordinary
windfall, this gift of a too kind Providence, which sometimes will care
for a prodigal in a way which he is quite unworthy of, while leaving the
righteous man to struggle on unaided. But for some time it appeared as
if society for once was out in its reckoning. Sir Tom did not pounce
upon the heiress. He was a person of very independent mind, and there
were some who thought he was happier in his untrammelled poverty, doing
what he pleased, than he ever had been as a great proprietor. Even when
it became apparent to the wise and far-seeing that little Miss Trevor
was only waiting till his handkerchief was thrown at her to become the
happiest of women, still he did nothing. He exasperated his kind aunt,
he made all his friends indignant, and what was more, he exposed the
young heiress hourly to many attempts on the part of the inferior class,
from which as a matter of fact she herself sprang; and it was not until
she was driven nearly desperate by those attempts that Sir Tom suddenly
appeared upon the scene, and moved, it was thought, more by a
half-fatherly kindness and sympathy for her, than either by love or
desire of wealth, took her to himself, and made her his wife, to the
great and grateful satisfaction of the girl herself, whose strange
upbringing and brief introduction into a higher sphere had spoiled her
for that homely country-town existence in which every woman flattered
and every man made love to her.
Whether Lucy Trevor was in love with him was as uncertain as whether he
was in love with her. So far as any one knew neither one nor the other
had asked themselves this question. She had, as it were, thrown herself
into his arms in sudden delight and relief of mind when he appeared and
saved her from her suitors; while he had received her tenderly when she
did this, out of kindness and pleasure in her genuine, half-childish
appreciation of him. There were, of course, people who said that Lucy
had been violently in love with Sir Tom, and that he had made up his
mind to marry her money from the first moment he saw her; but neither of
these things was true. They married with a great deal more pleasure and
ease of mind than many people do who are very much in love, for they had
mutual faith in each other, and felt a mutual repose and satisfaction in
their union. Each supplied something the other wanted. Lucy obtained a
secure and settled home, a protector and ever kind and genial guardian,
while Sir Tom got not only a good and dutiful and pleasant companion,
with a great deal of sense, and good-nature and good looks,--all of
which gifts he prized highly,--but at the same time the control of a
great fortune, and money enough at once to clear his estates and restore
him to his position as a great landowner.
There were very peculiar conditions attached to the great fortune, but
to these for the moment he paid very little heed, considering them as
fantastic follies not worth thinking about, which were never likely to
become difficulties in his way. The advantage he derived from the
marriage was enormous. All at once, at a bound, it restored him to what
he had lost, to the possession of his own property, which had been not
more than nominally his for so many years, and to the position of a man
of weight and importance, whose opinion told with all his neighbours and
the county generally, as did those of few others in the district.
Sir Tom, the wanderer, had not been thought very highly of in his
younger days. He had been called wild. He had been thought
untrustworthy, a fellow here to-day and gone to-morrow, who had no
solidity in him. But when the mortgages were all paid off, and the old
hall restored, and Sir Thomas Randolph came to settle down at home, with
his pretty little wife, and an establishment quite worthy of his name,
the county discovered in a day, almost in a moment, that he was very
much improved. He had always been clever enough, they said, for
anything, and now that he had sown his wild oats and learned how to
conduct himself, and attained an age when follies are naturally over,
there was no reason why he should not be received with open arms. Such a
man had a great many more experiences, the county thought with a certain
pride, than other men who had sown no wild oats, and had never gone
farther afield than the recognised round of European cities. Sir Tom had
been in all the four quarters of the globe; he had travelled in America
long before it became fashionable to do so, and even had been in Africa
while it was as yet untrod by any white foot but that of a missionary.
And it was whispered that in the days when he was "wild" he had
penetrated into regions nearer at hand, but more obscure and mysterious
even than Africa. All this made the county think more of him now when he
appeared staid yet genial, in the fulness of manhood, with a crisp brown
beard and a few gray hairs about his temples mingled with his abundant
locks, and that capability of paying his way which is dear to every
well-regulated community. But for this last particular the county would
not have been so tolerant, nay almost pleased, with the fact that he had
been "wild." They saw all his qualities in the halo that surrounded the
newly-decorated hall, the liberated farms, the lands upon which no
creditor had now any claim. He was the most popular man in the district
when Parliament was dissolved, and he was elected for the county almost
without opposition, he, at whom all the sober people had shaken their
heads only a few years before. The very name of "Sir Tom," which had
been given rather contemptuously to denote a somewhat careless fellow,
who minded nothing, became all at once the sign of popular amity and
kindness. And if it had been necessary to gain votes for him by any
canvassing tricks, this name of his would have carried away all
objections. "Sir Tom!" it established a sort of affectionate
relationship at once between him and his constituency. The people felt
that they had known him all his life, and had always called him by his
Christian name.
Lady Randolph was much excited and delighted with her husband's success.
She canvassed for him in a modest way, making herself pleasant to the
wives of his supporters in a unique manner of her own which was not
perhaps quite dignified considering her position, but yet was found very
captivating by those good women. She did not condescend to them as other
titled ladies do, but she took their advice about her baby, and how he
was to be managed, with a pretty humility which made her irresistible.
They all felt an individual interest thenceforward in the heir of the
Randolphs, as if they had some personal concern in him; and Lady
Randolph's gentle accost, and the pretty blush upon her cheeks, and her
way of speaking to them all, "as if they were just as good as she was,"
had a wonderful effect. When she received him in the hotel which was the
headquarters of his party, as soon as the result of the election was
known, Sir Tom, coming in flushed with applauses and victory, took his
wife into his arms and kissed her. "I owe this to you, as well as so
much else, Lucy," he said.
"Oh, don't say that! when you know I don't understand much, and never
can do anything; but I am so glad, nobody could be more glad," said
Lucy. Little Tom had been brought in, too, in his nurse's arms, and
crowed and clapped his fat little baby hands for his father; and when
his mother took him and stepped out upon the balcony, from which her
husband was speaking an impromptu address to his new constituents, with
the child in her arms, not suspecting that she would be seen, the cheers
and outcries ran into an uproar of applause. "Three cheers for my lady
and the baby," the crowd shouted at the top of its many voices; and
Lucy, blushing and smiling and crying with pleasure, instead of
shrinking away as everybody feared she would do, stood up in her modest,
pretty youthfulness, shy, but full of sense and courage, and held up the
child, who stared at them all solemnly with big blue eyes, and, after a
moment's consideration, again patted his fat little hands together, an
action which put the multitude beside itself with delight. Sir Tom's
speech did not make nearly so much impression as the baby's
"patti-cake." Every man in the crowd, not to say every woman, and with
still more reason every child, clapped his or her hands too, and shouted
and laughed and hurrahed.
The incident of the baby's appearance before the public, and the early
success he had gained--the earliest on record, the newspapers said--made
quite a sensation throughout the county, and made Farafield famous for
a week. It was mentioned in a leading article in the first newspaper in
the world. It appeared in large headlines in the placards under such
titles as "Baby in Politics," "The Nursery and the Hustings," and such
like. As for the little hero of the moment, he was handed down to his
anxious nurse just as symptoms of a whimper of fear at the alarming
tumult outside began to appear about the corners of his mouth. "For
heaven's sake take him away; he mustn't cry, or he will spoil all," said
the chairman of Sir Tom's committee. And the young mother, disappearing
too into the room behind, sat down in a great chair behind their backs,
and cried to relieve her feelings. Never had there been such a day. If
Sir Tom had not been the thoroughly good-humoured man he was, it is
possible that he might have objected to the interruption thus made in
his speech, which was altogether lost in the tumult of delight which
followed his son's appearance. But as a matter of fact he was as much
delighted as any one, and proud as man could be of his pretty little
wife and his splendid boy. He took "the little beggar," as he called
him, in his arms, and kissed the mother again, soothing and laughing at
her in the tender, kindly, fatherly way which had won Lucy.
"It is you who have got the seat," he said; "I vote that you go and sit
in it, Lady Randolph. You are a born legislator, and your son is a
favourite of the public, whereas I am only an old fogey."
"Oh, Tom!" Lucy said, lifting her simple eyes to his with a mist of
happiness in them. She was accustomed to his nonsense. She never said
anything more than "Oh, Tom!" and indeed it was not very long since she
had given up the title and ceased to say "Oh, Sir Tom!" which seemed
somehow to come more natural. It was what she had said when he came
suddenly to see her in the midst of her early embarrassments and
troubles; when the cry of relief and delight with which she turned to
him, uttering in her surprise that title of familiarity, "Oh, Sir Tom!"
had signified first to her middle-aged hero, with the most flattering
simplicity and completeness, that he had won the girl's pure and
inexperienced heart.
There was no happier evening in their lives than this, when, after all
the commotion, threatenings of the ecstatic crowd to take the horses
from their carriage, and other follies, they got off at last together
and drove home through roads that wound among the autumn fields, on some
of which the golden sheaves were still standing in the sunshine. Sir Tom
held Lucy's hand in his own. He had told her a dozen times over that he
owed it all to her.
"You have made me rich, and you have made me happy," he said, "though I
am old enough to be your father, and you are only a little girl. If
there is any good to come out of me, it will all be to your credit,
Lucy. They say in story books that a man should be ashamed to own so
much to his wife, but I am not the least ashamed."
"Oh, Tom!" she said, "how can you talk so much nonsense," with a laugh,
and the tears in her eyes.
"I always did talk nonsense," he said; "that was why you got to like me.
But this is excellent sense and quite true. And that little beggar; I am
owing you for him, too. There is no end to my indebtedness. When they
put the return in the papers it should be Sir Thomas Randolph, etc.,
returned as representative of his wife, Lucy, a little woman worth as
much as any county in England."
"O, Sir Tom," Lucy cried.
"Well, so you are, my dear," he said, composedly. "That is a mere matter
of fact, you know, and there can be no question about it at all."
For the truth was that she was so rich as to have been called the
greatest heiress in England in her day.
CHAPTER II.
HIS WIFE.
Young Lady Randolph had herself been much changed by the progress of
these years. Marriage is always the great touchstone of character at
least with women; but in her case the change from a troubled and
premature independence, full of responsibilities and an extremely
difficult and arduous duty, to the protection and calm of early married
life, in which everything was done for her, and all her burdens taken
from her shoulders, rather arrested than aided in the development of her
character. She had lived six months with the Dowager Lady Randolph after
her father's death; but those six months had been all she knew of the
larger existence of the wealthy and great. All she knew--and even in
that short period she had learned less than she might have been expected
to learn; for Lucy had not been introduced into society, partly on
account of her very youthful age, and partly because she was still in
mourning, so that her acquaintance with life on the higher line
consisted merely in a knowledge of certain simple luxuries, of larger
rooms and prettier furniture, and more careful service than in her
natural condition. And by birth she belonged to the class of small
townsfolk who are nobody, and whose gentility is more appalling than
their homeliness. So that when she came to be Sir Thomas Randolph's wife
and a great lady, not merely the ward of an important personage, but
herself occupying that position, the change was so wonderful that it
required all Lucy's mental resources to encounter and accustom herself
to it.
Sir Tom was the kindest of middle-aged husbands. If he did not adore his
young wife with the fervour of passion, he had a sincere affection for
her, and the warmest desire to make her happy. She had done a great deal
for him, she had changed his position unspeakably, and he was fully
determined that no lady in England should have more observance, more
honour and luxury, and what was better, more happiness, than the little
girl who had made a man of him. There had always been a sweet and
serious simplicity about her, an air of good sense and reasonableness,
which had attracted everybody whose opinion was worth having to Lucy;
but she was neither beautiful nor clever. She had been so brought up
that, though she was not badly educated, she had no accomplishments, and
not more knowledge than falls to the lot of an ordinary schoolgirl. The
farthest extent of her mild experiences was Sloane Street and Cadogan
Place: and there were people who thought it impossible that Sir Tom, who
had been everywhere, and run through the entire gamut of pleasures and
adventures, should find anything interesting in this bread-and-butter
girl, whom, of course, it was his duty to marry, and having married to
be kind to. But when he found himself set down in an English country
house with this little piece of simplicity opposite to him, what would
he do, the sympathising spectators said? Even his kind aunt, who felt
that she had brought about the marriage, and who, as a matter of fact,
had fully intended it from the first, though she herself liked Lucy, had
a little terror in her soul as she asked herself the same question. He
would fill the house with company and get over it in that way, was what
the most kind and moderate people thought. But Sir Tom laughed at all
their prognostications. He said afterwards that he had never known
before how pretty it was to know nothing, and to have seen nothing, when
these defects were conjoined with intelligence and delightful curiosity
and never-failing interest. He declared that he had never truly enjoyed
his own adventures and experiences as he did when he told them over to
his young wife. You may be sure there were some of them which were not
adapted for Lucy's ears: but these Sir Tom left religiously away in the
background. He had been a careless liver no doubt, like so many men, but
he would rather have cut off his right hand, as the Scripture bids, than
have soiled Lucy's white soul with an idea, or an image, that was
unworthy of her. She knew him under all sorts of aspects, but not one
that was evil. Their solitary evenings together were to her more
delightful than any play, and to him nearly as delightful. When the
dinner was over and the cold shut out, she would wait his appearance in
the inner drawing-room, which she had chosen for her special abode, with
some of the homely cares that had been natural to her former condition,
drawing his chair to the fire, taking pride in making his coffee for
him, and a hundred little attentions. "Now begin," she would say,
recalling with a child's eager interest and earnest recollection the
point at which he had left off. This was the greater part of Lucy's
education. She travelled with him through very distant regions, and went
through all kinds of adventure.
And in the season they went to London, where she made her appearance in
society, not perhaps with _éclat_, but with a modest composure which
delighted him. She understood then, for the first time, what it was to
be rich, and was amused and pleased--amused above all by the position
which she occupied with the utmost simplicity. People said it would turn
the little creature's head, but it never even disturbed her imagination.
She took it with a calm that was extraordinary. Thus her education
progressed, and Lucy was so fully occupied with it, with learning her
husband and her life and the world, that she had no time to think of the
responsibilities which once had weighed so heavily upon her. When now
and then they occurred to her and she made some passing reference to
them, there were so many other things to do that she forgot
again--forgot everything except to be happy and learn and see, as she
had now so many ways of doing. She forgot herself altogether, and
everything that had been hers, not in excitement, but in the soft
absorbing influence of her new life, which drew her away into endless
novelties and occupations, such as were, indeed, duties and necessities
of her altered sphere.
If this was the case in the first three or four years of her marriage,
when she had only Sir Tom to think of, you may suppose what it was when
the baby came, to add a hundredfold to the interests of her existence.
Everything else in life, it may be believed, dwindled into nothing in
comparison with this boy of boys--this wonderful infant. There had
never been one in the world like him it is unnecessary to say: and
everything was so novel to her, and she felt the importance of being
little Tom's mother so deeply, that her mind was quite carried away from
all other thoughts. She grew almost beautiful in the light of this new
addition to her happiness. And how happy she was! The child grew and
throve. He was a splendid boy. His mother did not sing litanies in his
praise in public, for her good sense never forsook her: but his little
being seemed to fill up her life like a new stream flowing into it, and
she expanded in life, in thought, and in understanding. She began to see
a reason for her own position, and to believe in it, and take it
seriously. She was a great lady, the first in the neighbourhood, and she
felt that, as little Tom's mother, it was natural and befitting that she
should be so. She began to be sensible of ambition within herself, as
well as something that felt like pride. It was so little like ordinary
pride, however, that Lucy was sorry for everybody who had not all the
noble surroundings which she began to enjoy. She would have liked that
every child should have a nursery like little Tom's, and every mother
the same prospects for her infant, and was charitable and tender beyond
measure to all the mothers and children within reach on little Tom's
account, which was an extravagance which her husband did not grudge, but
liked and encouraged, knowing the sentiment from which it sprang. It was
with no view to popularity that the pair thus endeavoured to diffuse
happiness about them, being so happy themselves; but it answered the
same purpose, and their popularity was great.
When the county conferred the highest honour in its power upon Sir Tom,
his immediate neighbours in the villages about took the honour as their
own, and rejoiced as, even at a majority or a marriage, they had never
rejoiced before, for so kind a landlord, so universal a friend, had
never been.
The villages were model villages on the Randolph lands. Sir Tom and his
young wife had gone into every detail about the labourers' cottages with
as much interest as if they had themselves meant to live in one of them.
There were no such trim gardens or bright flower-beds to be seen
anywhere, and it was well for the people that the Rector of the parish
was judicious, and kept Lady Randolph's charities within bounds. There
had been no small amount of poverty and distress among these rustics
when the Squire was poor and absent, when they lived in tumbledown old
houses, which nobody took any interest in, and where neither decency nor
comfort was considered; but now little industries sprang up and
prospered, and the whole landscape smiled. A wise landlord with
unlimited sway over his neighbourhood and no rivals in the field can do
so much to increase the comfort of everybody about him; and such a small
matter can make a poor household comfortable. Political economists, no
doubt, say it is demoralising: but when it made Lucy happy and the poor
women happy, how could Sir Tom step in and arrest the genial bounty? He
gave the Rector a hint to see that she did not go too far, and walked
about with his hands in his pockets and looked on. All this amused him
greatly; even the little ingratitudes she met with, which went to Lucy's
heart, made her husband laugh. It pleased his satirical vein to see how
human nature displayed itself, and the black sheep appeared among the
white even in a model village. But as for Lucy, though she would
sometimes cry over these spots upon the general goodness, it satisfied
every wish of her heart to be able to do so much for the cottagers. They
did not, perhaps, stand so much in awe of her as they ought to have
done, but they brought all their troubles to her with the most perfect
and undoubting confidence.
All this time, however, Lucy, following the dictates of her own heart,
and using what after all was only a little running over of her great
wealth to secure the comfort of the people round, was neglecting what
she had once thought the great duty of her life as entirely as if she
had been the most selfish of worldly women. Her life had been so
entirely changed--swung, as one might say, out of one orbit into
another--that the burdens of the former existence seemed to have been
taken from her shoulders along with its habits and external
circumstances. Her husband thought of these as little as herself; yet
even he was somewhat surprised to find that he had no trouble in weaning
Lucy from the extravagances of her earlier independence. He had not
expected much trouble, but still it had seemed likely enough that she
would at least propose things that his stronger sense condemned, and
would have to be convinced and persuaded that they were impracticable;
but nothing of the kind occurred, and when he thought of it Sir Tom
himself was surprised, as also were various other people who knew what
Lucy's obstinacy on the subject before her marriage had been, and
especially the Dowager Lady Randolph, who paid her nephew a yearly
visit, and never failed to question him on the subject.
"And Lucy?" she would say. "Lucy never makes any allusion? She has
dismissed everything from her mind? I really think you must be a
magician, Tom. I could not have believed it, after all the trouble she
gave us, and all the money she threw away. Those Russells, you know,
that she was so ridiculously liberal to, they are as bad as ever. That
sort of extravagant giving of money is never successful. But I never
thought you would have got it out of her mind."
"Don't flatter me," he said; "it is not I that have got it out of her
mind. It is life and all the novelties in it--and small Tom, who is more
of a magician than I am----"
"Oh, the baby!" said the dowager, with the indifference of a woman who
has never had a child, and cannot conceive why a little sprawling
tadpole in long clothes should make such a difference. "Yes, I suppose
that's a novelty," she said, "to be mother of a bit of a thing like that
naturally turns a girl's head. It is inconceivable the airs they give
themselves, as if there was nothing so wonderful in creation. And so far
as I can see you are just as bad, though you ought to know better, Tom."
"Oh, just as bad," he said, with his large laugh. "I never had a share
in anything so wonderful. If you only could see the superiority of this
bit of a thing to all other things about him----"
"Oh! spare me," cried Lady Randolph the elder, holding up her hands. "Of
course I don't undervalue the importance of an heir to the property,"
she said in a different tone. "I have heard enough about it to be pretty
sensible of that."
This the Dowager said with a slight tone of bitterness, which indeed was
comprehensible enough: for she had suffered much in her day from the
fact that no such production had been possible to her. Had it been so,
her nephew who stood by her would not (she could scarcely help
reflecting with some grudge against Providence) have been the great man
he now was, and no child of his would have mattered to the family. Lady
Randolph was a very sensible woman, and had long been reconciled to the
state of affairs, and liked her nephew, whom she had been the means of
providing for so nobly; and she was glad there was a baby; still, for
the sake of her own who had never existed, she resented the
self-exaltation of father and mother over this very common and in no way
extraordinary phenomenon of a child.
Sir Tom laughed again with a sense of superiority, which was in itself
somewhat ludicrous; but as nobody is clear-sighted in their own
concerns, he was quite unconscious of this. His laugh nettled Lady
Randolph still more. She said, with a certain disdain in her tone,--
"And so you think you have sailed triumphantly over all that
difficulty--thanks to your charms and the baby's, and are going to hear
nothing of it any more?"
Sir Tom felt that he was suddenly pulled up, and was a little resentful
in return.
"I hope," he said, "that is, I do more than hope, I feel convinced, that
my wife, who has great sense, has outgrown that nonsense, and that she
has sufficient confidence in me to leave her business matters in my
hands."
Lady Randolph shook her head.
"Outgrown nonsense--at three and twenty?" she said. "Don't you think
that's premature? and, my dear boy, take my word for it, a woman when
she has the power, likes to keep the control of her own business just as
well as a man does. I advise you not to holloa till you are out of the
wood."
"I don't expect to have any occasion to holloa; there is no wood for
that matter; Lucy, though perhaps you may not think it, is one of the
most reasonable of creatures."
"She is everything that is nice and good," said the Dowager, "but how
about the will? Lucy may be reasonable, but that is not. And she cannot
forget it always."
"Pshaw! The will is a piece of folly," cried Sir Tom. He grew red at the
very thought with irritation and opposition. "I believe the old man was
mad. Nothing else could excuse such imbecility. Happily there is no
question of the will."
"But there must be, some time or other."
"I see no occasion for it," said Sir Tom coldly; and as his aunt was a
reasonable woman, she did not push the matter any farther. But if the
truth must be told this sensible old lady contemplated the great
happiness of these young people with a sort of interested and alarmed
spectatorship (for she wished them nothing but good), watching and
wondering when the explosion would come which might in all probability
shatter it to ruins. For she felt thoroughly convinced in her own mind
that Lucy would not always forget the conditions by which she held her
fortune, and that all the reason and good sense in the world would not
convince her that it was right to ignore and baulk her father's
intentions, as conveyed with great solemnity in his will. And when the
question should come to be raised, Lady Randolph felt that it would be
no trifling one. Lucy was very simple and sweet, but when her conscience
spoke even the influence of Sir Tom would not suffice to silence it. She
was a girl who would stand to what she felt to be right if all the world
and even her husband were against her--and the Dowager, who wished them
no harm, felt a little alarmed as to the issue. Sir Tom was not a man
easy to manage, and the reddening of his usually smiling countenance at
the mere suggestion of the subject was very ominous. It would be better,
far better, for Lucy if she would yield at once and say nothing about
it. But that was not what it was natural for her to do. She would stand
by her duty to her father, just as, were it assailed, she would stand by
her duty to her husband; but she would never be got to understand that
the second cancelled the first. The Dowager Lady Randolph watched the
young household with something of the interest with which a playgoer
watches the stage. She felt sure that the explosion would come, and that
a breath, a touch, might bring it on at any moment; and then what was to
be the issue? Would Lucy yield? would Lucy conquer? or would the easy
temper with which everybody credited Sir Tom support this trial? The old
lady, who knew him so well, believed that there was a certain fiery
element below, and she trembled for the peace of the household which was
so happy and triumphant, and had no fear whatever for itself. She
thought of "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below," of the calm
that precedes a storm, and many other such images, and so frightened did
she become at the dangers she had conjured up that she put the will
hurriedly out of her thoughts, as Sir Tom had done, and would think no
more of it. "Sufficient," she said to herself, "is the evil to the day."
In the meantime, the married pair smiled serenely at any doubts of their
perfect union, and Lucy felt a great satisfaction in showing her
husband's aunt (who had not thought her good enough for Sir Tom,
notwithstanding that she so warmly promoted the match) how satisfied he
was with his home, and how exultant in his heir.
In the following chapters the reader will discover what was the cause
which made the Dowager shake her head when she got into the carriage to
drive to the railway at the termination of her visit. It was all very
pretty and very delightful, and thoroughly satisfactory; but still Lady
Randolph, the elder, shook her experienced head.
CHAPTER III.
OLD MR. TREVOR'S WILL.
Lucy Trevor, when she married Sir Thomas Randolph, was the heiress of so
great a fortune that no one ventured to state it in words or figures.
She was not old enough, indeed, to have the entire control of it in her
hands, but she had unlimited control over a portion of it in a certain
sense, not for her own advantage, but for the aggrandisement of others.
Her father, who was eccentric and full of notions, had so settled it
that a large portion of the money should eventually return, as he
phrased it, to the people from whom it had come, and this not in the way
of public charities and institutions, as is the common idea in such
cases, but by private and individual aid to struggling persons and
families. Lucy, who was then all conscience and devotion to the
difficult yet exciting duty which her father had left to her to do, had
made a beginning of this extraordinary work before her marriage,
resisting all the arguments that were brought to bear upon her as to
the folly of the will, and the impossibility of carrying it out. It is
likely, indeed, that the trustees and guardians would have taken steps
at once to have old Trevor's will set aside but for the fact that Lucy
had a brother, who in that case would divide the inheritance with her,
but who was specially excluded by the will, as being a son of Mr.
Trevor's second wife, and entirely unconnected with the source from
which the fortune came. It was Lucy's mother who had brought it into the
family, although she was not herself aware of its magnitude, and did not
live long enough to have any enjoyment of it. Neither did old Trevor
himself have any enjoyment of it, save in the making of the will by
which he laid down exactly his regulations for its final disposal. In
any case Lucy was to retain the half, which was of itself a great sum;
but the condition of her inheritance, and indeed the occupation of her
life, according to her father's intention, was that she should select
suitable persons to whom to distribute the other half of her fortune. It
is needless to say that this commission had seriously occupied the
thoughts of the serious girl who, without any sense of personal
importance, found herself thus placed in the position of an official
bestower of fortune, having it in her power to confer comfort,
independence, and even wealth; for she was left almost entirely
unrestricted as to her disposition of the money, and might at her
pleasure confer a very large sum upon a favourite. Everybody who had
ever heard of old Trevor's will considered it the very maddest upon
record, and there were many who congratulated themselves that Lucy's
husband, if she was so lucky as to marry a man of sense, would certainly
put a stop to it--or even that Lucy herself, when she came to years of
serious judgment, would see the folly; for there was no stipulation as
to the time at which the distributions should be made, these, as well as
the selection of the objects of her bounty, being left to herself. She
had been very full of this strange duty before her marriage, and had
selected several persons who, as it turned out, did but little credit to
her choice, almost forcing her will upon the reluctant trustees, who had
no power to hinder her from carrying it out, and whose efforts at
reasoning with her had been totally unsuccessful. In these early
proceedings Sir Tom, who was intensely amused by the oddity of the
business altogether, and who had then formed no idea of appropriating
her and her money to himself, gave her a delighted support.
He had never in his life encountered anything which amused him so much,
and his only regret was that he had not known the absurd but high-minded
old English Quixote who, wiser in his generation than that noble knight,
left it to his heir to redress the wrongs of the world, while he himself
had the pleasure of the anticipation only, not perhaps unmixed with a
malicious sense of all the confusions and exhibitions of the weakness of
humanity it would produce. Sir Tom himself had humour enough to
appreciate the philosophy of the old humorist, and the droll spectator
position which he had evidently chosen for himself, as though he could
somehow see and enjoy all the struggles of self-interest raised by his
will, with one of those curious self-delusions which so often seem to
actuate the dying. Sir Tom, however, had thought it little more than a
folly even at the moment when it had amused him the most. He had thought
that in time Lucy would come to see how ridiculous it was, and would
tacitly, without saying anything, give it up, so sensible a girl being
sure in the long run to see how entirely unsuited to modern times and
habits such a disposition was. And had she done so, there was nobody who
was likely to awaken her to a sense of her duty. Her trustees, who
considered old Trevor mad, and Lucy a fool to humour him, would
certainly make no objection; and little Jock, the little brother to whom
Lucy was everything in the world, was still less likely to interfere.
When it came about that Lucy herself, and her fortune, and all her
right, were in Sir Tom's own hands, he was naturally more and more sure
that this foolish will (after giving him a great deal of amusement, and
perhaps producing a supernatural chuckle, if such an expression of
feeling is possible in the spiritual region where old Trevor might be
supposed to be) would be henceforward like a testament in black letter,
voided by good sense and better knowledge and time, the most certain
agency of all. And his conviction had been more than carried out in the
first years of his married life. Lucy forgot what was required of her.
She thought no more of her father's will. It glided away into the unseen
along with so many other things, extravagances, or if not extravagances,
still phantasies of youth. She found enough in her new life--in her
husband, her baby, and the humble community which looked up to her and
claimed everything from her--to occupy both her mind and her hands. Life
seemed to be so full that there was no time for more.
It had been no doing of Sir Tom's that little Jock, the brother who had
been Lucy's child, her Mentor, her counsellor and guide, had been
separated from her for so long. Jock had been sent to school with his
own entire concurrence and control. He was a little philosopher with a
mind beyond his years, and he had seemed to understand fully, without
any childish objection, the reason why he should be separated from her,
and even why it was necessary to give up the hope of visiting his
sister. The first year it was because she was absent on her prolonged
wedding tour: the next because Jock was himself away on a long and
delightful expedition with a tutor, who had taken a special fancy to
him. Afterwards the baby was expected, and all exciting visits and
visitors were given up. They had met in the interval. Lucy had visited
Jock at his school, and he had been with them in London on several
occasions. But there had been little possibility of anything like their
old intercourse. Perhaps they could never again be to each other what
they had been when these two young creatures, strangely separated from
all about them, had been alone in the world, having entire and perfect
confidence in each other. They both looked back upon these bygone times
with a sort of regretful consciousness of the difference; but Lucy was
very happy in her new life, and Jock was a perfectly natural boy, given
to no sentimentalities, not jealous, and enjoying his existence too
completely to sigh for the time when he was a quaint old-fashioned
child, and knew no life apart from his sister.
Their intercourse then had been so pretty, so tender and touching; the
child being at once his sister's charge and her superior in his
old-fashioned reflectiveness, her pupil and her teacher, the little
judge of whose opinions she stood in awe, while at the same time quite
subject and submissive to her--that it was a pity it should ever come to
an end; but it is a pity, too, when children grow up, when they grow out
of all the softness and keen impressions of youth into the harder stuff
of man and woman. To their parents it is a change which has often
little to recommend it--but it is inevitable, as we all know; and so it
was a pity that Lucy and Jock were no longer all in all to each other;
but the change was in their case, too, inevitable, and accepted by both.
When, however, the time came that Jock was to arrive really on his first
long visit at the Hall, Lucy prepared for this event with a little
excitement, with a lighting up of her eyes and countenance, and a
pleasant warmth of anticipation in which even little Tom was for the
moment set aside. She asked her husband a dozen times in the previous
day if he thought the boy would be altered. "I know he must be taller
and all that," Lucy said. "I do not mean the outside of him. But do you
think he will be changed?"
"It is to be hoped so," said Sir Tom, serenely. "He is sixteen. I trust
he is not what he was at ten. That would be a sad business, indeed----"
"Oh, Tom, you know that's not what I mean!--of course he has grown
older; but he always was very old for his age. He has become a real boy
now. Perhaps in some things he will seem younger too."
"I always said you were very reasonable," said her husband, admiringly.
"That is just what I wanted you to be prepared for--not a wise little
old man as he was when he had the charge of your soul, Lucy."
She smiled at him, shaking her head. "What ridiculous things you say.
But Jock was always the wise one. He knew much better than I did. He did
take care of me whatever you may think, though he was such a child."
"Perhaps it was as well that he did not continue to take care of you. On
the whole, though I have no such lofty views, I am a better guide."
Lucy looked at him once more without replying for a moment. Was her mind
ever crossed by the idea that there were perhaps certain particulars in
which little Jock was the best guide? If so the blasphemy was
involuntary. She shook it off with a little movement of her head, and
met his glance with her usual serene confidence. "You ought to be," she
said, "Tom; but you liked him always. Didn't you like him? I always
thought so; and you will like him now?"
"I hope so," said Sir Tom.
Then a slight gleam of anxiety came into Lucy's eyes. This seemed the
only shape in which evil could come to her, and with one of those
forewarnings of Nature always prone to alarm, which come when we are
most happy, she looked wistfully at her husband, saying nothing, but
with an anxious question and prayer combined in her look. He smiled at
her, laying his hand upon her head, which was one of his caressing ways,
for Lucy, not an imposing person in any particular, was short, and Sir
Tom was tall.
"Does that frighten you, Lucy? I shall like him for your sake, if not
for his own, never fear."
"That is kind," she said, "but I want you to like him for his own sake.
Indeed, I should like you if you would, Tom," she added almost timidly,
"to like him for your own. Perhaps you think that is presuming, as if
he, a little boy, could be anything to you; but I almost think that is
the only real way--if you know what I mean."
"Now this is humbling," said Sir Tom, "that one's wife should consider
one too dull to know what she means. You are quite right, and a complete
philosopher, Lucy. I will like the boy for my own sake. I always did
like him, as you say. He was the quaintest little beggar, an old man
and a child in one. But it would have been bad for him had you kept on
cultivating him in that sort of hot-house atmosphere. It was well for
Jock, whatever it might be for you, that I arrived in time."
Lucy pondered for a little without answering; and then she said, "Why
should it be considered so necessary for a boy to be sent away from
home?"
"Why!" cried Sir Tom, in astonishment; and then he added, laughingly,
"It shows your ignorance, Lucy, to ask such a question. He must be sent
to school, and there is an end of it. There are some things that are
like axioms in Euclid, though you don't know very much about that--they
are made to be acted upon, not to be discussed. A boy must go to
school."
"But why?" said Lucy undaunted. "That is no answer." She was
untrammelled by any respect for Euclid, and would have freely questioned
the infallibility of an axiom, with a courage such as only ignorance
possesses. She was thinking not only of Jock, but had an eye to distant
contingencies, when there might be question of a still more precious
boy. "God," she said, reverentially, "must have meant surely that the
father and mother should have something to do in bringing them up."
"In the holidays, my dear," said Sir Tom; "that is what we are made for.
Have you never found that out?"
Lucy never felt perfectly sure whether he was in jest or earnest. She
looked at him again to see what he meant--which was not very easy, for
Sir Tom meant two things directly opposed to each other. He meant what
he said, and yet said what he knew was nonsense, and laughed at himself
inwardly with a keen recognition of this fact. Notwithstanding, he was
as much determined to act upon it as if it had been the most certain
truth, and in a way pinned his faith to it as such.
"I suppose you are laughing," said Lucy, "and I wish you would not,
because it is so important. I am sure we are not meant only for the
holidays, and you don't really think so, Tom; and to take a child away
from his natural teachers, and those that love him best in the world, to
throw him among strangers! Oh, I cannot think that is the best way,
whatever Euclid may make you think."
At this Sir Tom laughed, as he generally did, though never
disrespectfully, at Lucy's decisions. He said, "That is a very just
expression, my dear, though Euclid never made us think so much as he
ought to have done. You are thinking of that little beggar. Wait till he
is out of long clothes."
"Which shows all you know about it. He was shortcoated at the proper
time, I hope," said Lucy, with some indignation, "do you call these long
clothes?"
_These_ were garments which showed when he sprawled, as he always did, a
great deal of little Tom's person, and as his mother was at that time
holding him by them, while he "felt his feet," upon the carpet, the
spectacle of two little dimpled knees without any covering at all
triumphantly proved her right. Sir Tom threw himself upon the carpet to
kiss those sturdy, yet wavering little limbs, which were not quite under
the guidance of Tommy's will as yet, and taking the child from his
mother, propped it up against his own person. "For the present, I allow
that fathers and mothers are the best," he said.
Lucy stood and gazed at them in that ecstasy of love and pleasure with
which a young mother beholds her husband's adoration for their child.
Though she feels it to be the highest pride and crown of their joint
existence, yet there is always in her mind a sense of admiration and
gratitude for his devotion. She looked down upon them at her feet, with
eyes running over with happiness. It is to be feared that at such a
moment Lucy forgot even Jock, the little brother who had been as a child
to her in her earlier days; and yet there was no want of love for Jock
in her warm and constant heart.
CHAPTER IV.
YOUNG MR. TREVOR.
John Trevor, otherwise Jock, arrived at the Hall in a state of
considerable though suppressed excitement. It was not in his nature to
show the feelings which were most profound and strongest in his nature,
even if the religion of an English public school boy had not forbidden
demonstration. But he had very strong feelings underneath his calm
exterior, and the approach to Lucy's home gave him many thoughts. The
sense of separation which had once affected him with a deep though
unspoken sentiment had passed away long ago into a faint grudge, a
feeling of something lost--but between ten and sixteen one does not
brood upon a grievance, especially when one is surrounded by everything
that can make one happy; and there was a certain innate philosophy in
the mind of Jock which enabled him to see the justice and necessity of
the separation. He it was who in very early day, had ordained his own
going to school with a realisation of the need of it which is not
usually given to his age--and he had understood without any explanation
and without any complaint that Lucy must live her own life, and that
their constant brother and sister fellowship became impossible when she
married. The curious little solemn boy, who had made so many shrewd
guesses at the ways of life while he was still only a child, accepted
this without a word, working it out in his own silent soul; but
nevertheless it had affected him deeply. And when the time came at last
for a real meeting, not a week's visit in town where she was fully
occupied, and he did not well know what to do with himself--or a hurried
rapid meeting at school, where Jock's pride in introducing his tutor to
his sister was a somewhat imperfect set-off to the loss of personal
advantage to himself in thus seeing Lucy always in the company of other
people--his being was greatly moved with diverse thoughts. Lucy was all
he had in the world to represent the homes, the fathers and mothers and
sisters and brothers of his companions. The old time when they had been
all in all to each other had a more delicate beauty than the ordinary
glow of childhood. He thought there was nobody like her, with that
mingled adoration and affectionate contempt which make up a boy's love
for the women belonging to him. She was not clever: but he regarded the
simplicity of her mind with pride. This seemed to give her her crowning
charm. "Any fellow can be clever," Jock said to himself. It was part of
Lucy's superiority that she was not so. He arrived at the railway
station at Farafield with much excitement in his mind, though his looks
were quiet enough. The place, though it was the first he had ever known,
did not attract a thought from the other and more important meeting. It
was a wet day in August, and the coachman who had been sent for him gave
him a note to say that Lucy would have come to meet him but for the
rain. He was rather glad of the rain, this being the case. He did not
want to meet her on a railway platform--he even regretted the long
stretches of the stubble fields as he whirled past, and wished that the
way had been longer, though he was so anxious to see her. And when he
jumped down at the great door of the hall and found himself in the
embrace of his sister, the youth was thrilling with excitement, hope,
and pleasure. Lucy had changed much less than he had. Jock, who had been
the smallest of pale-faced boys, was now long and weedy, with limbs and
fingers of portentous length. His hair was light and limp; his large
eyes, well set in his head, had a vague and often dreamy look. It was
impossible to call him a handsome boy. There was an entire want of
colour about him, as there had been about Lucy in her first youth, and
his gray morning clothes, like the little gray dress she had worn as a
young girl were not very becoming to him. They had been so long apart
that he met her very shyly, with an awkwardness that almost looked like
reluctance, and for the first hour scarcely knew what to say to her, so
full was he of the wonder and pleasure of being by her, and the
impossibility of expressing this. She asked him about his journey, and
he made the usual replies, scarcely knowing what he said, but looking at
her with a suppressed beatitude which made Jock dull in the very
intensity of his feeling. The rain came steadily down outside, shutting
them in as with veils of falling water. Sir Tom, in order to leave them
entirely free to have their first meeting over, had taken himself off
for the day. Lucy took her young brother into the inner drawing-room,
the centre of her own life. She made him sit down in a luxurious chair,
and stood over him gazing at the boy, who was abashed and did not know
what to say. "You are different, Jock. It is not that you are taller and
bigger altogether, but you are different. I suppose so am I."
"Not much," he said, looking shyly at her. "You couldn't change."
"How so?" she asked with a laugh. "I am such a great deal older I ought
to look wiser. Let me see what it is. Your eyes have grown darker, I
think, and your face is longer, Jock; and what is that? a little down,
actually, upon your upper lip. Jock, not a moustache!"
Jock blushed with pleasure and embarrassment, and put up his hand fondly
to feel those few soft hairs. "There isn't very much of it," he said.
"Oh, there is enough to swear by; and you like school as well as ever?
and MTutor, how is he? Are you as fond of him as you used to be, Jock?"
"You don't say you're fond of him," said Jock, "but he's just as jolly
as ever, if that is what you mean."
"That is what I mean, I suppose. You must tell me when I say anything
wrong," said Lucy. She took his head between her hands and gave him a
kiss upon his forehead. "I am so glad to see you here at last," she
said.
And then there was a pause. Her first little overflow of questions had
come to an end, and she did not exactly know what to say, while Jock sat
silent, staring at her with an earnest gaze. It was all so strange, the
scene and surroundings, and Lucy in the midst, who was a great lady,
instead of being merely his sister--all these confused the boy's
faculties. He wanted time to realise it all. But Lucy, for her part,
felt the faintest little touch of disappointment. It seemed to her as if
they ought to have had so much to say to each other, such a rush of
questions and answers, and full-hearted confidence. Jock's heart would
be at his lips, she thought, ready to rush forth--and her own also, with
all the many things of which she had said to herself: "I must tell that
to Jock." But as a matter of fact, many of these things had been told by
letter, and the rest would have been quite out of place in the moment of
reunion, in which indeed it seemed inappropriate to introduce any
subject other than their pleasure in seeing each other again, and those
personal inquiries which we all so long to make face to face when we are
separated from those near to us, yet which are so little capable of
filling all the needs of the situation when that moment comes. Jock was
indeed showing his happiness much more by his expressive silence and shy
eager gaze at her than if he had plunged into immediate talk; but Lucy
felt a little disappointed, and as if the meeting had not come up to her
hopes. She said, after a pause which was almost awkward, "You would like
to see baby, Jock? How strange that you should not know baby! I wonder
what you will think of him." She rose and rang the bell while she was
speaking in a pleasant stir of fresh expectation. No doubt it would stir
Jock to the depths of his heart, and bring out all his latent feeling,
when he saw Lucy's boy. Little Tom was brought in state to see "his
uncle," a title of dignity which the nurse felt indignantly disappointed
to have bestowed upon the lanky, colourless boy who got up with great
embarrassment and came forward reluctantly to see the creature quite
unknown and unrealised, of whom Lucy spoke with so much exultation. Jock
was not jealous, but he thought it rather odd that "a little thing like
that" should excite so much attention. It seemed to him that it was a
thing all legs and arms, sprawling in every direction, and when it
seized Lucy by the hair, pulling it about her face with the most riotous
freedom, Jock felt deeply disposed to box its ears. But Lucy was
delighted. "Oh, naughty baby!" she said, with a voice of such admiration
and ecstasy as the finest poetry, Jock reflected, would never have awoke
in her; and when the thing "loved" her, at its nurse's bidding, clasping
its fat arms round her neck, and applying a wide-open wet mouth to her
cheek, the tears were in her eyes for very pleasure. "Baby, darling,
that is your uncle; won't you go to your uncle? Take him, Jock. If he is
a little shy at first he will soon get used to you," Lucy cried. To see
Jock holding back on one side, and the baby on the other, which
strenuously refused to go to its uncle, was as good as a play.
"I'm afraid I should let it fall," said Jock, "I don't know anything
about babies."
"Then sit down, dear, and I will put him upon your lap," said the young
mother. There never was a more complete picture of wretchedness than
poor Jock, as he placed himself unwillingly on the sofa with his knees
put firmly together and his feet slanting outwards to support them. "I
sha'n't know what to do with it," he said. It is to be feared that he
resented its existence altogether. It was to him a quite unnecessary
addition. Was he never to see Lucy any more without that thing clinging
to her? Little Tom, for his part, was equally decided in his
sentiments. He put his little fists, which were by no means without
force, against his uncle's face, and pushed him away, with squalls that
would have exasperated Job; and then, instead of consoling Jock, Lucy
took the little demon to her arms and soothed him. "Did they want it to
make friends against its will," Lucy was so ridiculous as to say, like
one of the women in _Punch_, petting and smoothing down that odious
little creature. Both she and the nurse seemed to think that it was the
baby who wanted consoling for the appearance of Jock, and not Jock who
had been insulted; for one does not like even a baby to consider one as
repulsive and disagreeable. The incident was scarcely at an end when Sir
Tom came in, fresh, smiling, and damp from the farm, where he had been
inspecting the cattle and enjoying himself. Mature age and settled life
and a sense of property had converted Sir Tom to the pleasure of
farming. He shook Jock heartily by the hand, and clapped him on the
back, and bade him welcome with great kindness. Then he took "the little
beggar" on his shoulder and carried him, shrieking with delight, about
the room. It seemed a very strange thing to Jock to see how entirely
these two full-grown people gave themselves up to the deification of
this child. It was not bringing themselves to his level, it was looking
up to him as their superior. If he had been a king his careless favours
could not have been more keenly contended for. Jock, who was fond of
poetry and philosophy and many other fine things, looked on at this new
mystery with wondering and indignant contempt. After dinner there was
the baby again. It was allowed to stay out of bed longer than usual in
honour of its uncle, and dinner was hurried over, Jock thought, in
order that it might be produced, decked out in a sash almost as broad as
its person. When it appeared rational conversation was at an end, Sir
Tom, whom Jock had always respected highly, stopped the inquiries he was
making, with all the knowledge and pleasure, of an old schoolboy, into
school life, comparing his own experiences with those of the present
generation--to play bo-peep behind Lucy's shoulder with the baby.
Bo-peep! a Member of Parliament, a fellow who had been at the
University, who had travelled, who had seen America and gone through the
Desert! There was consternation in the astonishment with which Jock
looked on at this unlooked-for, almost incredible, exhibition. It was
ridiculous in Lucy, but in Sir Tom!
"I suppose we were all like that one time?" he said, trying to be
philosophical, as little Tom at last, half smothered with kisses, was
carried away.
"Like _that_--do you mean like baby? You were a little darling, dear,
and I was always very, very fond of you," said Lucy, giving him the
kindest look of her soft eyes. "But you were not a beauty, like my boy."
Sir Tom had laughed, with something of the same sentiment very evident
in his mirth, when Lucy spoke. He put out his hand and patted his young
brother-in-law on the shoulder. "It is absurd," he said, "to put that
little beggar in the foreground when we have somebody here who is in
Sixth form at sixteen, and is captain of his house, and has got a school
prize already. If Lucy does not appreciate all that, I do, Jock, and the
best I can wish for Tommy is that he should have done as much at your
age."
"Oh, I was not thinking of that," said Jock with a violent blush.
"Of course he was not," said Lucy calmly, "for he always had the kindest
heart though he was so clever. If you think I don't appreciate it as you
say, Tom, it is only because I knew it all the time. Do you think I am
surprised that Jock has beaten everybody? He was like that when he was
six, before he had any education. And he will be just as proud of baby
as we are when he knows him. He is a little strange at first," said
Lucy, beaming upon her brother; "but as soon as he is used to you, he
will go to you just as he does to me."
To this Jock could not reply by betraying the shiver that went over him
at the thought, but it gave great occupation to his mind to make out how
a little thing like that could attain, as it had done, such empire over
the minds of two sensible people. He consulted MTutor on the subject by
letter, who was his great referee on difficult subjects, and he could
not help betraying his wonder to the household as he grew more familiar
and the days went on. "He can't do anything for you," Jock said. "He
can't talk; he doesn't know anything about--well, about books: I know
that's more my line than yours, Lucy--but about anything. Oh! you
needn't flare up. When he dabs his mouth at you all wet----"
"Oh! you little wretch, you infidel, you savage," Lucy cried; "his sweet
mouth! and a dear big wet kiss that lets you know he means it."
Jock looked at her as he had done often in the old days, with mingled
admiration and contempt. It was like Lucy, and yet how odd it was. "I
suppose, then," he said, "I was rather worse than _that_ when you took
me up and were good to me. What for, I wonder? and you were fond of me,
too, although you are fonder of _it_----"
"If you talk of It again I will never speak to you more," Lucy said, "as
if my beautiful boy was a thing and not a person. He is not It: he is
Tom, he is Mr. Randolph: that is what Williams calls him." Williams was
the butler who had been all over the world with Sir Tom, and who was
respectful of the heir, but a little impatient and surprised, as Jock
was, of the fuss that was made about Tommy for his own small sake.
By this time, however, Jock had recovered from his shyness--his
difficulty in talking, all the little mist that absence had made--and
roamed about after Lucy, hanging upon her, putting his arm through hers,
though he was much the taller, wherever she went. He held her back a
little now as they walked through the park in a sort of procession, Mrs.
Richens, the nurse, going first with the boy. "When I was a little
slobbering beast, like----" he stopped himself in time, "like the
t'other kind of baby, and nobody wanted me, you were the only one that
took any trouble."
"How do you know?" said Lucy; "you don't remember and I don't remember."
"Ah! but I remember the time in the Terrace, when I lay on the rug, and
heard papa making his will over my head. I was listening for you all the
time. I was thinking of nothing but your step coming to take me out."
"Nonsense!" said Lucy, "you were deep in your books, and thinking of
them only; of that--gentleman with the windmills--or Shakspeare, or some
other nonsense. Oh, I don't mean Shakspeare is nonsense. I mean you were
thinking of nothing but your books, and nobody would believe you
understood all that at your age."
"I did not understand," said Jock with a blush. "I was a little prig.
Lucy, how strange it all is, like a picture one has seen somewhere, or a
scene in a play or a dream! Sometimes I can remember little bits of it,
just as he used to read it out to old Ford. Bits of it are all in and
out of _As You Like It_, as if Touchstone had said them, or Jaques. Poor
old papa! how particular he was about it all. Are you doing everything
he told you, Lucy, in the will?"
He did not in the least mean it as an alarming question, as he stooped
over, in his awkward way holding her arm, and looked into her face.
CHAPTER V.
CONSULTATIONS.
Lucy was much startled by her brother's demand. It struck, however, not
her conscience so much as her recollection, bringing back that past
which was still so near, yet which seemed a world away, in which she had
made so many anxious efforts to carry out her father's will and
considered it the main object of her life. A young wife who is happy,
and upon whom life smiles, can scarcely help looking back upon the time
when she was a girl with a sense of superiority, an amused and
affectionate contempt for herself. "How could I be so silly?" she will
say, and laugh, not without a passing blush. This was not exactly Lucy's
feeling; but in three years she had, even in her sheltered and happy
position, attained a certain acquaintance with life, and she saw
difficulties which in those former days had not been apparent to her.
When Jock began to recall these reminiscences it seemed to her as if she
saw once more the white commonplace walls of her father's sitting-room
rising about her, and heard him laying down the law which she had
accepted with such calm. She had seen no difficulty then. She had not
even been surprised by the burden laid upon her. It had appeared as
natural to obey him in matters which concerned large external interests,
and the well-being of strangers, as it was to fill him out a cup of tea.
But the interval of time, and the change of position, had made a great
difference; and when Jock asked, "Are you doing all he told you?" the
question brought a sudden surging of the blood to her head, which made a
singing in her ears and a giddiness in her brain. It seemed to place her
in front of something which must interrupt all her life and put a stop
to the even flow of her existence. She caught her breath. "Doing all he
told me!"
Jock, though he did not mean it, though he was no longer her
self-appointed guardian and guide, became to Lucy a monitor, recalling
her as to another world.
But the effect though startling was not permanent. They began to talk it
all over, and by dint of familiarity the impression wore away. The
impression, but not the talk. It gave the brother and sister just what
they wanted to bring back all the habits of their old affectionate
confidential intercourse, a subject upon which they could carry on
endless discussions and consultations, which was all their own, like one
of those innocent secrets which children delight in, and which, with
arms entwined and heads close together, they can carry on endlessly for
days together. They ceased the discussion when Sir Tom appeared, not
with any fear of him as a disturbing influence, but with a tacit
understanding that this subject was for themselves alone. It involved
everything; the past with all those scenes of their strange childhood,
the homely living, the fantastic possibilities always in the air, the
old dear tender relationship between the two young creatures who alone
belonged to each other. Lucy almost forgot her present self as she
talked, and they moved about together, the tall boy clinging to her arm
as the little urchin had done, altogether dependent, yet always with a
curious leadership, suggesting a thousand things that would not have
occurred to her.
Lucy had no occasion now for the advice which Jock at eight years old
had so freely given her. She had her husband to lead and advise her. But
in this one matter Sir Tom was put tacitly out of court, and Jock had
his old place. "It does not matter at all that you have not done
anything lately," Jock said; "there is plenty of time--and now that I am
to spend all my holidays here, it will be far easier. It was better not
to do things so hastily as you began."
"But, Jock," said Lucy, "We must not deceive ourselves; it will be very
hard. People who are very nice do not like to take the money; and those
who are willing to take it----"
"Does the will say the people are to be nice?" asked Jock. "Then what
does that matter? The will is all against reason, Lucy. It is wrong, you
know. Fellows who know political economy would think we are all mad; for
it just goes against it, straight."
"That is strange, Jock; for papa was very economical. He never could
bear waste: he used to say----"
"Yes, yes; but political economy means something different. It is a
science. It means that you should sell everything as dear as you can,
and buy it as cheap as you can--and never give anything away----"
"That is dreadful, Jock," said Lucy. "It is all very well to be a
science, but nobody like ourselves could be expected to act upon
it--private people, you know."
"There is something in that," Jock allowed; "there are always
exceptions. I only want to show you that the will being all against
rule, it _must_ be hard to carry it out. Don't you do anything by
yourself, Lucy. When you come across any case that is promising, just
you wait till I come, and we'll talk it all over. I don't quite
understand about nice people not taking it. Fellows I know are always
pleased with presents--or a tip, nobody refuses a tip. And that is just
the same sort of thing, you know."
"Not just the same," said Lucy, "for a tip--that means a sovereign,
doesn't it?"
"It sometimes means--paper," said Jock, with some solemnity. "Last time
you came to see me at school Sir Tom gave me a fiver----"
"A what?"
"Oh, a five-pound note," said Jock, with momentary impatience; "the
other's shorter to say and less fuss. MTutor thought he had better not;
but I didn't mind. I don't see why anybody should mind. There's a fellow
I know--his father is a curate, and there are no end of them, and
they've no money. Fellow himself is on the foundation, so he doesn't
cost much. Why they shouldn't take a big tip from you, who have too
much, I'm sure I can't tell; and I don't believe they would mind," Jock
added, after a pause.
This, which would have inspired Lucy in the days of her dauntless
maidenhood to calculate at once how much it would take to make this
family happy, gave her a little shudder now.
"I don't feel as if I could do it," she said. "I wish papa had found an
easier way. People don't like you afterwards when you do _that_ for
them. They are angry--they think, why should I have all that to give
away, a little thing like me?"
"The easiest way would be an exam.," said Jock. "Everybody now goes in
for exams.; and if they passed, they would think they had won the money
all right."
"Perhaps there is something in that, Jock; but then it is not for young
men. It is for ladies, perhaps, or old people, or----"
"You might let them choose their own subjects," said the boy. "A lady
might do a good paper about--servants, or sewing, or that sort of thing;
or housekeeping--that would be all right. MTutor might look over the
papers----"
"Does he know about housekeeping?"
"He knows about most things," cried Jock, "I should like to see the
thing he didn't know. He is the best scholar we have got; and he's what
you call an all-round man besides," the boy said with pride.
"What is an all-round man?" Lucy asked, diffidently. "He is tall and
slight, so it cannot mean his appearance."
"Oh, what a muff you are, Lucy; you're awfully nice, but you are a muff.
It means a man who knows a little of everything. MTutor is more than
that, he knows a great deal of everything; indeed, as I was saying,"
Jock added defiantly, "I should just like to see the thing he didn't
know."
"And yet he is so nice," said Lucy, with a gentle air of astonishment.
MTutor was a subject which was endless with Jock, so that the original
topic here glided out of sight as the exalted gifts of that model of all
the virtues became the theme. This conversation, however, was but one of
many. It was their meeting ground, the matter upon which they found each
other as of old, two beings separated from the world, which wondered at
and did not understand them. What a curious office it was for them, two
favourites of fortune as they seemed, to disperse and give away the
foundation of their own importance! for Jock owed everything to Lucy,
and Lucy, when she had accomplished this object of her existence, and
carried out her father's will, would no doubt still be a wealthy woman,
but not in any respect the great personage she was now. This was a view
of the matter which never crossed the minds of these two. Their strange
training had made Lucy less conscious of the immense personal advantage
which her money was to her than any other could have done. She knew,
indeed, that there was a great difference between her early home in
Farafield and the house in London where she had lived with Lady
Randolph, and still more, the Hall which was her home--but she had been
not less but more courted and worshipped in her lowly estate than in her
high one, and her father's curious philosophy had affected her mind and
coloured her perceptions. She had learned, indeed, to know that there
are difficulties in attempting to enact the part of Providence, and
taking upon herself the task of providing for her fellow-creatures; but
these difficulties had nothing to do with the fact that she would
herself suffer by such a dispersion. Perhaps her imagination was not
lively enough to realise this part of the situation. Jock and she
ignored it altogether. As for Jock, the delight of giving away was
strong in him, and the position was so strange that it fascinated his
boyish imagination. To act such a part as that of Haroun-al-Raschid in
real life, and change the whole life of whatsoever poor cobbler or
fruit-seller attracted him, was a vision of fairyland such as Jock had
not yet outgrown. But the chief thing that he impressed on his sister
was the necessity of doing nothing by herself. "Just wait till we can
talk it over," he said, "two are always better than one: and a fellow
learns a lot at school. You wouldn't think it, perhaps, but there's all
sorts there, and you learn a lot when you have your eyes well open. We
can talk it all over and settle if it's good enough; but don't go and be
rash, Lucy, and do anything by yourself."
"I sha'n't, dear; I should be too frightened," Lucy said.
This was on one of his last days, when they were walking together
through the shrubbery. It was September by this time, and he might have
been shooting partridges with Sir Tom, but Jock was not so much an
out-door boy as he ought to have been, and he preferred walking with his
sister, his arm thrust through hers, his head stooping over her. It was
perhaps the last opportunity they would have of discussing their family
secrets, a matter (they thought) which really concerned nobody else,
which no one else would care to be troubled with. Perhaps in Lucy's mind
there was a sense of unreality in the whole matter; but Jock was
entirely in earnest, and quite convinced that in such an important
business he was his sister's natural adviser, and might be of a great
deal of use. It was towards evening when they went out, and a red
autumnal sunset was accomplishing itself in the west, throwing a gleam
as of the brilliant tints which were yet to come, on the still green and
luxuriant foliage. The light was low, and came into Lucy's eyes, who
shaded them with her hand. And the paths had a touch of autumnal damp,
and a certain mistiness, mellow and golden by reason of the sunshine,
was rising among the trees.
"We will not be hasty," said Jock; "we will take everything into
consideration: and I don't think you will find so much difficulty, Lucy,
when you have me."
"I hope not, dear," Lucy said; and she began to talk to him about his
flannels and other precautions he was to take; for Jock was supposed not
to be very strong. He had grown fast, and he was rather weedy and long,
without strength to support it. "We have been so happy together," she
said. "We always were happy together, Jock. Remember, dear, no wet feet,
and as little football as you can help, for my sake."
"Oh, yes," he said, with a wave of his hand; "all right, Lucy. There is
no fear about that. The first thing to think of is poor old father's
will, and what you are going to do about it. I mean to think out all
that about the examinations, and I suppose I may speak to MTutor----"
"It is too private, don't you think, Jock? Nobody knows about it. It is
better to keep it between you and me."
"I can put it as a supposed case," said Jock, "and ask what he would
advise; for you see, Lucy, you and even I are not very experienced, and
MTutor, he knows such a lot. It would always be a good thing to have his
advice, you know; he----"
There was no telling how long Jock might have gone on on this subject.
But just at this moment a quick step came round the corner of a clump of
wood, and a hand was laid on the shoulder of each. "What are you
plotting about?" asked the voice of Sir Tom in their ears. It was a
curious sign of her mental condition which Lucy remembered with shame
afterwards, without being very well able to account for it, that she
suddenly dropped Jock's arm and turned round upon her husband with a
quick blush and access of breathing, as if somehow--she could not tell
how--she had been found out. It had never occurred to her before,
through all those long drawn out consultations, that she was concealing
anything from Sir Tom. She dropped Jock's arm as if it hurt her, and
turned to her husband in the twinkling of an eye.
"Jock," she said quickly, "and I--were talking about MTutor, Tom."
"Ah! once landed on that subject, and there is no telling when we may
come to an end," Sir Tom said, with a laugh, "but never mind, I like you
all the better for it, my boy."
Jock gave an astonished look at Lucy, a half-defiant one at her husband.
"That was only by the way," he said, lifting up his shoulders with a
little air of offence. He did not condescend to any further explanation,
but walked along by their side with a lofty abstraction, looking at them
now and then from the corner of his eye. Lucy had taken Sir Tom's arm,
and was hanging upon her tall husband, looking up in his face. The
little blush of surprise--or was it of guilt?--with which she had
received him was still upon her cheek. She was far more animated than
usual, almost a little agitated. She asked about the shooting, about the
bag, and how many brace was to Sir Tom's own gun, with that conciliating
interest which is one of the signs of a conscious fault; while Sir Tom,
on his side bending down to his little wife, received all her flatteries
with so complacent a smile, and such a beatific belief in her perfect
sincerity and devotion, that Jock, looking on from his superiority of
passionless youth, regarded them both with a wondering disdain. Why did
she "make up" in that way to her husband, dropping her brother as if she
had been plotting harm? Jock was amazed, he could not understand it.
Perhaps it was only because he thus fell in a moment from being the
chief object of interest to the position of nobody at all.
CHAPTER VI.
A SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS.
Lucy's mind had sustained a certain shock when her husband appeared.
During her short married life there had not been a cloud, or a shadow of
a cloud, between them. But then there had been no question between them,
nothing to cause any question, no difference of opinion. Sir Tom had
taken all her business naturally into his hands. Whatever she wished she
had got--nay, before she expressed a wish it had been satisfied. He had
talked to her about everything, and she had listened with docile
attention, but without concealing the fact that she neither understood
nor wished to understand; and he had not only never chided her, but had
accepted her indifference with a smile of pleasure as the most natural
thing in the world. He had encouraged her in all her liberal charities,
shaking his head and declaring with a radiant face that she would ruin
herself, and that not even her fortune would stand it. But the one
matter which had given Lucy so much trouble before her marriage, and
which Jock had now brought back to her mind, was one that had never been
mentioned between them. He had known all about it, and her eccentric
proceedings and conflict with her guardians, backing her up, indeed,
with much laughter, and showing every symptom of amiable amusement; but
he had never given any opinion on the subject, nor made the slightest
allusion since to this grand condition of her father's will. In the
sunny years that were past Lucy had taken no notice of this omission.
She had not thought much on the subject herself. She had withdrawn from
it tacitly, as one is apt to do from a matter which has been productive
of pain and disappointment, and had been content to ignore that portion
of her responsibilities. Even when Jock forcibly revived the subject it
continued without any practical importance, and its existence was a
question between themselves to afford material for endless conversation
which had been pleasant and harmless. But when Sir Tom's hand was laid
on her shoulder, and his cheerful voice sounded in her ear, a sudden
shock was given to Lucy's being. It flashed upon her in a moment that
this question which she had been discussing with Jock had never been
mentioned between her and her husband, and with a sudden instinctive
perception she became aware that Sir Tom would look upon it with very
different eyes from theirs. She felt that she had been disloyal to him
in having a secret subject of consultation even with her brother. If he
heard he would be displeased, he would be taken by surprise, perhaps
wounded, perhaps made angry. In any wise it would introduce a new
element into their life. Lucy saw, with a sudden sensation of fright and
pain, an unknown crowd of possibilities which might pour down upon her,
were it to be communicated to Sir Tom that his wife and her brother were
debating as to a course of action on her part, unknown to him. All this
occurred in a moment, and it was not any lucid and real perception of
difficulties, but only a sudden alarmed compunctious consciousness that
filled her mind. She fled, as it were, from the circumstances which made
these horrors possible, hurrying back into her former attitude with a
penitential urgency. Jock, indeed, was very dear to her, but he was no
more than second, nay he was but third, in Lady Randolph's heart. Her
husband's supremacy he could not touch, and though he had been almost
her child in the old days, yet he was not, nor ever would be, her child
in the same ineffable sense as little Tom was, who was her very own, the
centre of her life. So she ran away (so to speak) from Jock with a real
panic, and clung to her husband, conciliating, nay almost wheedling him,
if we may use the word, with a curious feminine instinct, to make up to
him for the momentary wrong she had done, and which he was not aware of.
Sir Tom himself was a little surprised by the warmth of the reception
she gave him. Her interest in his shooting was usually very mild, for
she had never been able to get over a little horror she had, due,
perhaps, to her bourgeois training, of the slaughter of the birds. He
glanced at the pair with an unusual perception that there was something
here more than met the eye. "You have been egging her up to some
rebellion," he said; "Jock, you villain; you have been hatching treason
behind my back!" He said this with one of those cordial laughs which
nobody could refrain from joining--full of good humour and fun, and a
pleased consciousness that to teach Lucy to rebel would be beyond any
one's power. At any other moment she would have taken the accusation
with the tranquil smile which was Lucy's usual reply to her husband's
pleasantries; but this time her laugh was a little strained, and the
warmth of her denial, "No, no! there has been no treason," gave the
slightest jar of surprise to Sir Tom. It sounded like a false note in
the air; he did not understand what it could mean.
Jock went away the next day. He went with a basket of game for MTutor
and many nice things for himself, and all the attention and care which
might have been his had he been the heir instead of only the young
brother and dependent. Lucy herself drove in with him to Farafield to
see him off, and Sir Tom, who had business in the little town and meant
to drive back with his wife, appeared on the railway platform just in
time to say good-bye. "Now, Lucy, you will not forget," were Jock's last
words as he looked out of the window when the train was already in
motion. Lucy nodded and smiled, and waved her hand, but she did not make
any other reply. Sir Tom said nothing until they were driving along the
stubble fields in the afternoon sunshine. Lucy lay back in her corner
with that mingled sense of regret and relief with which, when we are
very happy at home, we see a guest go away--a gentle sorrow to part, a
soft pleasure in being once more restored to the more intimate circle.
She had not shaken off that impression of guiltiness, but now it was
over, and nothing further could be said on the subject for a long time
to come.
"What is it, Lucy, that you are not to forget?"
She roused herself up, and a warm flush of colour came to her face. "Oh,
nothing, Tom, a little thing we were consulting about. It was Jock that
brought it to my mind."
"I think it must be more than just a little thing. Mayn't I hear what
this secret is?"
"Oh, it is nothing, Tom," Lady Randolph repeated; and then she sat up
erect and said, "I must not deceive you. It is not merely a small
matter. Still it is just between Jock and me. It was about--papa's will,
Tom."
"Ah! that is a large matter. I don't quite see how that can be between
you and Jock, Lucy. Jock has very little to do with it. I don't want to
find fault, my dear, but I think as an adviser you will find me better
than Jock."
"I know you are far better, Tom. You know more than both of us put
together."
"That would not be very difficult," he said, with a smile.
Perhaps this calm acceptance of the fact nettled Lucy. At least she
said, with a little touch of spirit, "And yet I know something about our
kind of people better than you will ever do, Tom."
"Lucy, this is a wonderful new tone. Perhaps you may know better, but I
am doubtful if you understand the relation of things as well. What is
it, my dear?--that is to say, if you like to tell me, for I am not going
to force your confidence."
"Tom--oh dear Tom! It is not that. It is rather that it was something to
talk to Jock about. He remembers everything. When papa was making that
will----" here Lucy stopped and sighed. It had not been doing her a good
service to make her recollect that will, which had enough in it to make
her life wretched, though that as yet nobody knew. "He recollects it
all," she said. "He used to hear it read out. He remembers everything."
"I suppose, then," said Sir Tom, with a peculiar smile, "there is
something in particular which he thought you were likely to forget?"
Here Lucy sighed again. "I am afraid I had forgotten it. No, not
forgotten, but--I never knew very well what to do. Perhaps you don't
remember either. It is about giving the money away."
Sir Tom was a far more considerable person in every way than the little
girl who was his wife, and who was not clever nor of any great account
apart from her wealth; and she was devoted to him, so that he could have
very little fear how any conflict should end when he was on one side, if
all the world were on the other. But perhaps he had been spoiled by
Lucy's entire agreement and consent to whatever he pleased to wish, so
that his tone was a little sharp, not so good-humoured as usual, but
with almost a sneer in it when he replied quickly, not leaving her a
moment to get her breath, "I see; Jock having inspiration from the
fountain head, was to be your guide in that."
She looked at him alarmed and penitent, but reproachful. "I would have
done nothing, I could have done nothing, oh Tom! without you."
"It is very obliging of you Lucy to say so; nevertheless, Jock thought
himself entitled to remind you of what you had forgotten, and to offer
himself as your adviser. Perhaps MTutor was to come in, too," he said,
with a laugh.
Sir Tom was not immaculate in point of temper any more than other men,
but Lucy had never suffered from it before. She was frightened, but she
did not give way. The colour went out of her cheeks, but there was more
in her than mere insipid submission. She looked at her husband with a
certain courage, though she was so pale, and felt so profoundly the
displeasure which she had never encountered before.
"I don't think you should speak like that, Tom. I have done nothing
wrong. I have only been talking to my brother of--of--a thing that
nobody cares about but him and me in all the world."
"And that is----"
"Doing what papa wished," Lucy said in a low voice. A little moisture
stole into her eyes. Whether it came because of her father, or because
her husband spoke sharply to her, it perhaps would have been difficult
to say.
This made Sir Tom ashamed of his ill-humour. It was cruel to be unkind
to a creature so gentle, who was not used to be found fault with; and
yet he felt that for Lucy to set up an independence of any kind was a
thing to be crushed in the bud. A man may have the most liberal
principles about women, and yet feel a natural indignation when his own
wife shows signs of desiring to act for herself; and besides, it was not
to be endured that a boy and girl conspiracy should be hatched under his
very nose to take the disposal of an important sum of money out of his
hands. Such an idea was not only ridiculous in itself, but apt to make
him ridiculous, a man who ought to be strong enough to keep the young
ones in order. "My dear," he said, "I have no wish to speak in any way
that vexes you; but I see no reason you can have--at least I hope there
has been nothing in my conduct to give you any reason--to withdraw your
confidence from me and give it to Jock."
Lucy did not make him any reply. She looked at him pathetically through
the water in her eyes. If she had spoken she would have cried, and this
in an open carriage, with a village close at hand, and people coming and
going upon the road, was not to be thought of. By the time she had
mastered herself Sir Tom had cooled down, and he was ashamed of having
made Lucy's lips to quiver and taken away her voice.
"That was a very nasty thing to say," he said, "wasn't it, Lucy? I ought
to be ashamed of myself. Still, my little woman must remember that I am
too fond of her to let her have secrets with anybody but me."
And with this he took the hand that was nearest to him into both of his
and held it close, and throwing a temptation in her way which she could
not resist, led her to talk of the baby and forget everything else
except that precious little morsel of humanity. He was far cleverer than
Lucy; he could make her do whatever he pleased. No fear of any
opposition, any setting up of her own will against his. When they got
home he gave her a kiss, and then the momentary trouble was all over. So
he thought at least. Lucy was so little and gentle and fair, that she
appeared to her husband even younger than she was; and she was a great
deal younger than himself. He thought her a sort of child-wife, whom a
little scolding or a kiss would altogether sway. The kiss had been
quite enough hitherto. Perhaps, since Jock had come upon the scene, a
few words of admonition might prove now and then necessary, but it would
be cruel to be hard upon her, or do more than let her see what his
pleasure was.
But Lucy was not what Sir Tom thought. She could not endure that there
should be any shadow between her husband and herself, but her mind was
not satisfied with this way of settling an important question. She took
his kiss and his apology gratefully, but if anything had been wanted to
impress more deeply upon her mind the sense of a duty before her, of
which her husband did not approve, and in doing which she could not have
his help, it would have been this little episode altogether. Even little
Tom did not efface the impression from her mind. At dinner she met her
husband with her usual smile, and even assented when he remarked upon
the pleasantness of finding themselves again alone together. There had
been other guests besides Jock, so that the remark did not offend her;
but yet Lucy was not quite like herself. She felt it vaguely, and he
felt it vaguely, and neither was entirely aware what it was.
In the morning, at breakfast, Sir Tom received a foreign letter, which
made him start a little. He started and cried, "Hollo!" then, opening
it, and finding two or three closely-scribbled sheets, gave way to a
laugh. "Here's literature!" he said. Lucy, who had no jealousy of his
correspondents, read her own calm little letters, and poured out the
tea, with no particular notice of her husband's interjections. It did
not even move her curiosity that the letter was in a feminine hand, and
gave forth a faint perfume. She reminded him that his tea was getting
cold, but otherwise took no notice. One of her own letters was from the
Dowager Lady Randolph, full of advice about the baby. "Mrs. Russell
tells me that Katie's children are the most lovely babies that ever were
seen; but she is very fantastic about them; will not let them wear shoes
to spoil their feet, and other vagaries of that kind. I hope, my dear
Lucy, that you are not fanciful about little Tom," Lady Randolph wrote.
Lucy read this very composedly, and smiled at the suggestion. Fanciful!
Oh, no, she was not fanciful about him--she was not even silly, Lucy
thought. She was capable of allowing that other babies might be lovely,
though why the feet of Katie's children should be of so much importance
she allowed to herself she could not see. She was roused from these
tranquil thoughts by a little commotion on the other side of the table,
where Sir Tom had just thrown down his letter. He was laughing and
talking to himself. "Why shouldn't she come if she likes it?" he was
saying. "Lucy, look here, since you have set up a confidant, I shall
have one too," and with that Sir Tom went off into an immoderate fit of
laughing. The letter scattered upon the table all opened out, two large
foreign sheets, looked endless. Nobody had ever written so much to Lucy
in all her life. She could see it was largely underlined and full of
notes of admiration and interrogation, altogether an out-of-the-way
epistle. Was it possible that Sir Tom was a little excited as well as
amused? He put his roll upon a hot plate, and began to cut it with his
knife and fork in an absence of mind, which was not usual with him, and
at intervals of a minute or two would burst out with his long "Ha, ha,"
again. "That will serve you out, Lucy," he said, with a shout, "if I set
up a confidant too."
CHAPTER VII.
A WARNING.
"I wonder if I shall like her," Lucy said to herself.
She had been hearing from her husband about the Contessa di
Forno-Populo, who had promised to pay them a visit at Christmas. He had
laughed a great deal while he described this lady. "What she will do
here in a country-house in the depth of winter, I cannot tell," he said,
"but if she wants to come why shouldn't she? She and I are old friends.
One time and another we have seen a great deal of each other. She will
not understand me in the character of a Benedick, but that will be all
the greater fun," he said with a laugh. Lucy looked at him with a little
surprise. She could not quite make him out.
"If she is a friend she will not mind the country and the winter," said
Lucy; "it will be you she will want to see----"
"That is all very well, my dear," said Sir Tom, "but she wants something
more than me. She wants a little amusement. We must have a party to meet
her, Lucy. We have never yet had the house full for Christmas. Don't you
think it will be better to furnish the Contessa with other objects
instead of letting her loose upon your husband. You don't know what it
is you are treating so lightly."
"I--treat any one lightly that you care for, Tom! Oh, no; I was only
thinking. I thought she would come to see you, not a number of strange
people----"
"And you would not mind, Lucy?"
"Mind?" Lucy lifted her innocent eyes upon him with the greatest
surprise. "To be sure it is most nice of all when there is nobody with
us," she said--as if that had been what he meant. Enlightenment on this
subject had not entered her mind. She did not understand him; nor did he
understand her. He gave her a sort of friendly hug as he passed, still
with that laugh in which there was no doubt a great perception of
something comic, yet--an enlightened observer might have thought--a
little uneasiness, a tremor which was almost agitation too. Lucy too had
a perception of something a little out of the way which she did not
understand, but she offered to herself no explanation of it. She said to
herself, when he was gone, "I wonder if I shall like her?" and she did
not make herself any reply. She had been in society, and held her little
place with a simple composure which was natural to her, whoever might
come in her way. If she was indeed a little frightened of the great
ladies, that was only at the first moment before she became used to
them; and afterwards all had gone well--but there was something in the
suggestion of a foreign great lady, who perhaps might not speak English,
and who would be used to very different "ways," which alarmed her a
little; and then it occurred to her with some disappointment that this
would be the time of Jock's holidays, and that it would disappoint him
sadly to find her in the midst of a crowd of visitors. She said to
herself, however, quickly, that it was not to be expected that
everything should always go exactly as one wished it, and that no doubt
the Countess of ---- what was it she was the Countess of?--would be very
nice, and everything go well; and so Lady Randolph went away to her
baby and her household business, and put it aside for the moment. She
found other things far more important to occupy her, however, before
Christmas came.
For that winter was very severe and cold, and there was a great deal of
sickness in the neighbourhood. Measles and colds and feverish attacks
were prevalent in the village, and there were heartrending "cases," in
which young Lady Randolph at the Hall took so close an interest that her
whole life was disturbed by them. One of the babies, who was little
Tom's age, died. When it became evident that there was danger in this
case it is impossible to describe the sensations with which Lucy's brain
was filled. She could not keep away from the house in which the child
was. She sent to Farafield for the best doctor there, and everything
that money could procure was got for the suffering infant, whose
belongings looked on with wonder and even dismay, with a secret question
like that of him who was a thief and kept the bag--to what purpose was
this waste? for they were all persuaded that the baby was going to die.
"And the best thing for him, my lady," the grandmother said. "He'll be
better done by where he's agoing than he ever could have been here."
"Oh, don't say so," said Lucy. The young mother, who was as young as
herself, cried; yet if Lucy had been absent would have been consoled by
that terrible philosophy of poverty that it was "for the best." But Lady
Randolph, in such a tumult of all her being as she had never known
before, with unspeakable yearning over the dying baby, and a panic
beyond all reckoning for her own, would not listen to any such easy
consolation. She shut her ears to it with a gleam of anger such as had
never been seen in her gentle face before, and would have sat up all
night with the poor little thing in her lap if death had not ended its
little plaints and suffering. Sir Tom, in this moment of trial, came out
in all his true goodness and kindness. He went with her himself to the
cottage, and when the vigil was over appeared again to take her home. It
was a wintry night, frosty and clear, the stars all twinkling with that
mysterious life and motion which makes them appear to so many wistful
eyes like persons rather than worlds, and as if there was knowledge and
sympathy in those far-shining lights of heaven. Sir Thomas was alarmed
by Lucy's colourless face, and the dumb passion of misery and awe that
was about her. He was very tender-hearted himself at sight of the dead
baby which was the same age as his lovely boy. He clasped the trembling
hand with which his wife held his arm, and tried to comfort her. "Look
at the stars, my darling," he said, "the angels must have carried the
poor little soul that way." He was not ashamed to let fall a tear for
the little dead child. But Lucy could neither weep nor think of the
angels. She hurried him on through the long avenue, clinging to his arm
but not leaning upon it, hastening home. Now and then a sob escaped her,
but no tears. She flew upstairs to her own boy's nursery, and fell down
on her knees by the side of his little crib. He was lying in rosy sleep,
his little dimpled arms thrown up over his head, a model of baby beauty.
But even that sight did not restore her. She buried her wan face in her
hands and so gasped for breath that Sir Tom, who had followed her, took
her in his arms and carrying her to her own room laid her down on the
sofa by the fire and did all that man could to soothe her.
"Lucy, Lucy! we must thank God that all is well with our own," he said,
half terrified by the gasping and the paleness; and then she burst
forth:
"Oh, why should it be well with him, and little Willie gone? Why should
we be happy and the others miserable? My baby safe and warm in my arms,
and poor Ellen's--poor Ellen's----"
This name, and the recollection of the poor young mother, whom she had
left in her desolation, made Lucy's tears pour forth like a summer
storm. She flung her arms round her husband's neck, and called out to
him in an agony of anxiety and excitement:
"Oh, what shall we do to save him? Oh, Tom, pray, pray! Little Willie
was well on Saturday--and now--How can we tell what a day may bring
forth?" Lucy cried, wildly pushing him away from her, and rising from
the sofa.
Then she began to pace about the room as we all do in trouble, clasping
her hands in a wild and inarticulate appeal to heaven. Death had never
come across her path before save in the case of her father, an old man
whose course was run, and his end a thing necessary and to be looked
for. She could not get out of her eyes the vision of that little solemn
figure, so motionless, so marble white. The thought would not leave her.
To see the calm Lucy pacing up and down in this passion of terror and
agony made Sir Tom almost as miserable as herself. He tried to take her
into his arms, to draw her back to the sofa.
"My darling, you are over-excited. It has been too much for you," he
said.
"Oh, what does it matter about me?" cried Lucy; "think--oh, God! oh, God
I--if we should have _that_ to bear."
"My dear love--my Lucy, you that have always been so reasonable--the
child is quite well; come and see him again and satisfy yourself."
"Little Willie was quite well on Saturday," she cried again. "Oh, I
cannot bear it, I cannot bear it! and why should it be poor Ellen and
not me?"
When a person of composed mind and quiet disposition is thus carried
beyond all the bounds of reason and self-restraint, it is natural that
everybody round her should be doubly alarmed. Lucy's maid hung about the
door, and the nurse, wrapped in a shawl, stole out of little Tom's room.
They thought their mistress had the hysterics, and almost forced their
way into the room to help her. It did Sir Tom good to send these
busybodies away. But he was more anxious himself than words could say.
He drew her arms within his, and walked up and down with her. "You know,
my darling, what the Bible says, 'that one shall be taken and another
left; and that the wind bloweth where it listeth,'" he said, with a
pardonable mingling of texts. "We must just take care of him, dear, and
hope the best."
Here Lucy stopped, and looked him in the face with an air of solemnity
that startled him.
"I have been thinking," she said; "God has tried us with happiness
first. That is how He always does--and if we abuse _that_ then there
comes--the other. We have been so happy. Oh, so happy!" Her face, which
had been stilled by this profounder wave of feeling, began to quiver
again. "I did not think any one could be so happy," she said.
"Well, my darling! and you have been very thankful and good----"
"Oh, no, no, no," she cried. "I have forgotten my trust. I have let the
poor suffer, and put aside what was laid upon me--and now, now----" Lucy
caught her husband's arm with both her hands, and drew him close to her.
"Tom, God has sent his angel to warn us," she said, in a broken voice.
"Lucy, Lucy, this is not like you. Do you think that poor little woman
has lost her baby for our sake? Are we of so much more importance than
she is, in the sight of God, do you think? Come, come, that is not like
you."
Lucy gazed at him for a moment with a sudden opening of her eyes, which
were contracted with misery. She was subdued by the words, though she
only partially comprehended them.
"Don't you think," he said, "that to deprive another woman of her child
in order to warn you, would be unjust, Lucy? Come and sit down and warm
your poor little hands, and take back your reason, and do not accuse God
of wrong, for that is not possible. Poor Ellen I don't doubt is composed
and submissive, while you, who have so little cause----"
She gave him a wild look. "With her it is over, it is over!" she cried,
"but with us----"
Lucy had never been fanciful, but love quickens the imagination and
gives it tenfold power; and no poet could have felt with such a
breathless and agonised realisation the difference between the
accomplished and the possible, the past which nothing can alter, and the
pain and sickening terror with which we anticipate what may come. Ellen
had entered into the calm of the one. She herself stood facing wildly
the unspeakable terror of the other. "Oh, Tom, I could not bear it, I
could not bear it!" she cried.
It was almost morning before he had succeeded in soothing her, in
making her lie down and compose herself. But by that time nature had
begun to take the task in hand, wrapping her in the calm of exhaustion.
Sir Tom had the kindest heart, though he had not been without reproach
in his life. He sat by her till she had fallen into a deep and quiet
sleep, and then he stole into the nursery and cast a glance at little
Tom by the dim light of the night lamp. His heart leaped to see the
child with its fair locks all tumbled upon the pillow, a dimpled hand
laid under a dimpled cheek, ease and comfort and well-being in every
lovely curve; and then there came a momentary spasm across his face, and
he murmured "Poor little beggar!" under his breath. He was not
panic-stricken like Lucy. He was a man made robust by much experience of
the world, and a child more or less was not a thing to affect him as it
would a young mother; but the pathos of the contrast touched him with a
keen momentary pang. He stole away again quite subdued, and went to bed
thankfully, saying an uncustomary prayer in the emotion that possessed
him: Good God, to think of it; if that poor little beggar had been
little Tom!
Lucy woke to the sound of her boy's little babbling of happiness in the
morning, and found him blooming on her bed, brought there by his father,
that she might see him and how well he was, even before she was awake.
It was thus not till the first minute of delight was over that her
recollections came back to her and she remembered the anguish of the
previous night; and then with a softened pang, as was natural, and warm
flood of thankfulness, which carried away harsher thoughts. But her mind
was in a highly susceptible and tender state, open to every impression.
And when she knelt down to make her morning supplications, Lucy made a
dedication of herself and solemn vow. She said, like the little princess
when she first knew that she was to be made queen, "I will be good." She
put forth this promise trembling, not with any sense that she was making
a bargain with God, as more rigid minds might suppose, but with all the
remorseful loving consciousness of a child which feels that it has not
made the return it ought for the good things showered upon it, and
confronts for the first time the awful possibility that these tender
privileges might be taken away. There was a trembling all over her, body
and soul. She was shaken by the ordeal through which she had come--the
ordeal which was not hers but another's: and with the artlessness of the
child was mingled that supreme human instinct which struggles to disarm
Fate by immediate prostration and submission. She laid herself down at
the feet of the Sovereign greatness which could mar all her happiness in
a moment, with a feeling that was not much more than half Christian.
Lucy tried to remind herself that He to whom she knelt was love as well
as power. But nature, which still "trembles like a guilty thing
surprised" in that great Presence, made her heart beat once more with
passion and sickening terror. God knew, if no one else did, that she had
abandoned her father's trust and neglected her duty. "Sell all thou hast
and give to the poor." Lucy rose from her knees with anxious haste,
feeling as if she must do this, come what might and whoever should
oppose; or at least since it was not needful for her to sell all she
had, that she must hurry forth, and forestall any further discipline by
beginning at once to fulfil the duty she had neglected. She could not
yet divest herself of the thought that the baby who was dead was a
little warning messenger to recall her to a sense of the punishments
that might be hanging over her. A messenger to her of mercy, for what,
oh! what would she have done if the blow had fallen upon little Tom?
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
After this it may perhaps be surprising to hear that Lucy did nothing to
carry out that great trust with which she had been charged. She had
felt, and did feel at intervals, for a long time afterwards, as if God
Himself had warned her what might come upon her if she neglected her
duty. But if you will reflect how very difficult that duty was, and how
far she was from any opportunity of being able to discharge it! In early
days, when she was fresh from her father's teaching, and deeply
impressed with the instant necessity of carrying it out, Providence
itself had sent the Russell family, poor and helpless people, who had
not the faculty of getting on by themselves, into her way, and Lucy had
promptly, or at least as promptly as indignant guardians would permit,
provided for them in the modest way which was all her ideas reached to
at the time. But around the Hall there was nobody to whom the same
summary process could be applied. The people about were either working
people, whom it is always easy to help, or well-off people, who had no
wants which Lucy could supply. And this continued to be so even after
her fright and determination to return to the work that had been
allotted to her. No doubt, could she have come down to the hearts and
lives of the neighbours who visited Lady Randolph on the externally
equal footing which society pretends to allot to all gentlefolks, she
would have found several of them who would have been glad to free her
from her money; but then she could not see into their hearts. She did
not know what a difficult thing it was for Mr. Routledge of Newby to pay
the debts of his son when he had left college, or how hardly hit was
young Archer of Fordham in the matter of the last joint-stock bank that
stopped payment. If they had not all been so determined to hold up their
heads with the best, and keep up appearances, Lucy might have managed
somehow to transfer to them a little of the money which she wanted to
get rid of, and of which they stood so much in need. But this was not to
be thought of; and when she cast her eyes around her it was with a
certain despair that Lucy saw no outlet whatever for those bounties
which it had seemed to her heaven itself was concerned about, and had
warned her not to neglect. Many an anxious thought occupied her mind on
this subject. She thought of calling her cousin Philip Rainy, who was
established and thriving at Farafield, and whose fortune had been
founded upon her liberality, to her counsels. But if Sir Tom had
disliked the confidences between her and her brother, what would he
think of Philip Rainy as her adviser? Then Lucy in her perplexity turned
again to the thought of Jock. Jock had a great deal more sense in him
than anybody knew. He had been the wisest child, respected by everybody;
and now he was almost a man, and had learned, as he said, a great deal
at school. She thought wistfully of the poor curate of whom Jock had
told her. Very likely that poor clergyman would do very well for what
Lucy wanted. Surely there could be no better use for money than to endow
such a man, with a whole family growing up, all the better for it, and a
son on the foundation! And then she remembered that Jock had entreated
her to do nothing till he came. Thus the time went on, and her
passionate resolution, her sense that heaven itself was calling upon
her, menacing her with judgment even, seemed to come to nothing--not out
of forgetfulness or sloth, or want of will--but because she saw no way
open before her, and could not tell what to do. And after that miserable
night when Ellen Bailey's baby died, and death seemed to enter in, as
novel and terrible as if he had never been known before, for the first
time into Lucy's Paradise, she had never said anything to Sir Tom. Day
after day she had meant to do it, to throw herself upon his guidance, to
appeal to him to help her; but day after day she had put it off,
shrinking from the possible contest of which some instinct warned her.
She knew, without knowing how, that in this he would not stand by her.
Impossible to have been kinder in that crisis, more tender, more
indulgent, even more understanding than her husband was; but she felt
instinctively the limits of his sympathy. He would not go that length.
When she got to that point he would change. But she could not have him
change; she could not anticipate the idea of a cloud upon his face, or
any shadow between them. And then Lucy made up her mind that she would
wait for Jock, and that he and she together, when there were two to talk
it over, would make out a way.
All was going on well again, the grass above little Willie's grave was
green, his mother consoled and smiling as before, and at the Hall the
idea of the Christmas party had been resumed, and the invitations,
indeed, were sent off, when one morning the visitor whom Lucy had
anticipated with such dread came out of the village, where infantile
diseases always lingered, and entered the carefully-kept nursery. Little
Tom awoke crying and fretful, hot with fever, his poor little eyes heavy
with acrid tears. His mother had not been among the huts where poor men
lie for nought, and she saw at a glance what it was. Well! not anything
so very dreadful--measles, which almost all children have. There was no
reason in the world why she should be alarmed. She acknowledged as much,
with a tremor that went to her heart. There were no bad symptoms. The
baby was no more ill than it was necessary he should be. "He was having
them beautiful," the nurse said, and Lucy scarcely allowed even her
husband to see the deep, harrowing dread that was in her. By and by,
however, this dread was justified; she had been very anxious about all
the little patients in the village that they should not catch cold,
which in the careless ignorance of their attendants, and in the limited
accommodation of the cottages, was so usual, so likely, almost
inevitable. A door would be left open, a sudden blast of cold would come
upon the little sufferer; how could any one help it? Lucy had given the
poor women no peace on this subject. She had "worrited them out o' their
lives." And now, wonder above all finding out, it was in little Tom's
luxurious nursery, where everything was arranged for his safety, where
one careful nurse succeeded another by night and by day, and Lady
Randolph herself was never absent for an hour, where the ventilation was
anxiously watched and regulated, and no incautious intruder ever
entered--it was there that the evil came. When the child had shaken off
his little complaint and all was going well, he took cold, and in a few
hours more his little lungs were labouring heavily, and the fever of
inflammation consuming his strength. Little Tom, the heir, the only
child! A cloud fell over the house; from Sir Tom himself to the lowest
servant, all became partakers, unawares, of Lucy's dumb terror. It was
because the little life was so important, because so much hung upon it,
that everybody jumped to the conclusion that the worst issue might be
looked for. Humanity has an instinctive, heathenish feeling that God
will take advantage of all the special circumstances that aggravate a
blow.
Lucy, for her part, received the stroke into her very soul. She was
outwardly more calm than when her heart had first been roused to terror
by the death of the little child in the village. That which she had
dreaded was come, and all her powers were collected to support her. The
moment had arrived--the time of trial--and she would not fail. Her hand
was steady and her head clear, as is the case with finer natures when
confronted with deadly danger. This simple girl suddenly became like one
of the women of tragedy, fighting, still and strong, with a desperation
beyond all symbols--the fight with death. But Sir Tom took it
differently. A woman can nurse her child, can do something for him; but
a man is helpless. At first he got rid of his anxieties by putting a
cheerful face upon the matter, and denying the possibility of danger.
"The measles! every child had the measles. If no fuss was made the
little chap," he declared, "would soon be all right. It was always a
mistake to exaggerate." But when there could no longer be any doubt on
the subject, a curious struggle took place in Sir Tom's mind. That
baby--die? That crowing, babbling creature pass away into the solemnity
of death! It had not seemed possible, and when he tried to get it into
his mind his brain whirled. Wonder for the moment seemed to silence even
the possibility of grief. He had himself gone through labours and
adventures that would have killed a dozen men, and had never been
conscious even of alarm about himself; and the idea of a life quenched
in its beginning by so accidental a matter as a draught in a nursery
seemed to him something incomprehensible. When he had heard of a child's
death he had been used to say that the mother would feel it, no doubt,
poor thing; but it was a small event, that scarcely counted in human
history to Sir Tom. When, however, his own boy was threatened, after the
first incredulity, Sir Tom felt a pang of anger and wretchedness which
he could not understand. It was not that the family misfortune of the
loss of the heir overwhelmed him, for it was very improbable that poor
little Tom would be his only child; it was a more intimate and personal
sensation. A sort of terrified rage came over him which he dared not
express; for if indeed his child was to be taken from him, who was it
but God that would do this? and he did not venture to turn his rage to
that quarter. And then a confusion of miserable feelings rose within
him. One night he did not go to bed. It was impossible in the midst of
the anxiety that filled the house, he said to himself. He spent the
weary hours in going softly up and down stairs, now listening at the
door of the nursery and waiting for his wife, who came out now and then
to bring him a bulletin, now dozing drearily in his library downstairs.
When the first gleams of the dawn stole in at the window he went out
upon the terrace in the misty chill morning, all damp and miserable,
with the trees standing about like ghosts. There was a dripping thaw
after a frost, and the air was raw and the prospect dismal; but even
that was less wretched than the glimmer of the shaded lights, the
muffled whispering and stealthy footsteps indoors. He took a few turns
up and down the terrace, trying to reason himself out of this misery.
How was it, after all, that the little figure of this infant should
overshadow earth and heaven to a man, a reasonable being, whose mind and
life were full of interests far more important? Love, yes! but love must
have some foundation. The feeling which clung so strongly to a child
with no power of returning it, and no personal qualities to excite it,
must be mere instinct not much above that of the animals. He would not
say this before Lucy, but there could be no doubt it was the truth. He
shook himself up mentally, and recalled himself to what he attempted to
represent as the true aspect of affairs. He was a man who had obtained
most things that this world can give. He had sounded life to its depths
(as he thought), and tasted both the bitter and the sweet; and after
having indulged in all these varied experiences it had been given to
him, as it is not given to many men, to come back from all wanderings
and secure the satisfactions of mature life, wealth, and social
importance, and the power of acting in the largest imperial concerns.
Round about him everything was his; the noble woods that swept away into
the mist on every side; the fields and farms which began to appear in
the misty paleness of the morning through the openings in the trees. And
if he had not by his side such a companion as he had once dreamed of,
the beautiful, high-minded ideal woman of romance, yet he had got one
of the best of gentle souls to tread the path of life along with him,
and sympathise even when she did not understand. For a man who had not
perhaps deserved very much, how unusual was this happiness. And was it
possible that all these things should be obscured, cast into the shade,
by so small a matter as the sickness of a child? What had the baby ever
done to make itself of so much importance? Nothing. It did not even
understand the love it excited, and was incapable of making any
response. Its very life was little more than a mechanical life. The
woman who fed it was far more to it than its father, and there was
nothing excellent or noble in the world to which it would not prefer a
glittering tinsel or a hideous doll. If the little thing had grown up,
indeed, if it had developed human tastes and sympathies, and become a
companion, an intelligence, a creature with affections and
thoughts,--but that the whole house should thus be overwhelmed with
miserable anxiety and pain because of a being in the embryo state of
existence, who could neither respond nor understand, what a strange
thing it was! No doubt this instinct had been implanted in order to
preserve the germ and keep the race going; but that it should thus
develop into an absorbing passion and overshadow everything else in life
was a proof how the natural gets exaggerated, and, if we do not take
care, changes its character altogether, mastering us instead of being
kept in its fit place, and in check, as it ought to be by sense and
reason. From time to time, as Sir Tom made these reflections, there
would flit across his mind, as across a mirror, something which was not
thought, which was like a picture momentarily presented before him. One
of the most persistent of these, which flashed out and in upon his
senses like a view in a magic lantern, was of that moment in the midst
of the flurry of the election when little Tom, held up in his mother's
arms, had clapped his baby hands for his father. This for a second would
confound all his thoughts, and give his heart a pang as if some one had
seized and pressed it with an iron grasp; but the next moment he would
pick up the thread of his reflections again, and go on with them. That,
too, was merely mechanical, like all the little chap's existence up to
this point. Poor little chap! here Sir Tom stopped in his course of
thought, impeded by a weight at his heart which he could not shake off;
nor could he see the blurred and vague landscape round him--something
more blinding even than the fog had got into his eyes.
Then Sir Tom started and his heart sprang up to his throat beating
loudly. It was not anything of much importance, it was only the opening
of the window by which he himself had come out upon the terrace. He
turned round quickly, too anxious even to ask a question. If it had been
a king's messenger bringing him news that affected the whole kingdom, he
would have turned away with an impatient "Pshaw!" or struck the intruder
out of his way. But it was his wife, wrapped in a dressing-gown, pale
with watching, her hair pushed back upon her forehead, her eyes
unnaturally bright. "How is he?" cried Sir Tom, as if the question was
one of life or death.
Lucy told him, catching at his arm to support herself, that she thought
there was a little improvement. "I have been thinking so for the last
hour, not daring to think it, and yet I felt sure; and now nurse says so
too. His breathing is easier. I have been on thorns to come and tell
you, but I would not till I was quite sure."
"Thank God! God be praised!" said Sir Tom. He did not pretend to be a
religious man on ordinary occasions, but at the present moment he had no
time to think, and spoke from the bottom of his heart. He supported his
little wife tenderly on one arm, and put back the disordered hair on her
forehead. "Now you will go and take a little rest, my darling," he said.
"Not yet, not till the doctor comes. But you want it as much as I."
"No; I had a long sleep on the sofa. We are all making fools of
ourselves, Lucy. The poor little chap will be all right. We are queer
creatures. To think that you and I should make ourselves so miserable
over a little thing like that, that knows nothing about it, that has no
feelings, that does not care a button for you and me."
"Tom, what are you talking of? Not of my boy, surely--not my boy!"
"Hush, my sweet. Well," said Sir Tom, with a tremulous laugh, "what is
it but a little polypus after all? that can do nothing but eat and
sleep, and crow perhaps--and clap its little fat hands," he said, with
the tears somehow getting into his voice, and mingling with the
laughter. "I allow that I am confusing my metaphors."
At this moment the window opening upon the terrace jarred again, and
another figure in a dressing-gown, dark and ghost-like, appeared
beckoning to Lucy, "My lady! my lady!"
Lucy let go her husband's arm, thrust him away from her with passion,
gave him one wild look of reproach, and flew noiselessly like a spirit
after the nurse to her child. Sir Tom, with his laugh still wavering
about his mouth, half hysterically, though he was no weakling, tottered
along the terrace to the open window, and stood there leaning against
it, scarcely breathing, the light gone out of his eyes, his whole soul
suspended, and every part of his strong body, waiting for what another
moment might bring to pass.
CHAPTER IX.
A CHRISTMAS VISIT.
Little Tom did not die, but he became "delicate,"--and fathers and
mothers know what that means. The entire household was possessed by one
pervading terror lest he should catch cold, and Lucy's life became
absorbed in this constant watchfulness. Naturally the Christmas guests
were put off, and it was understood in respect to the Contessa di
Forno-Populo, that she was to come at Easter. Sir Tom himself thought
this a better arrangement. The Parliamentary recess was not a long one,
and the Contessa would naturally prefer, after a short visit to her old
friend, to go to town, where she would find so many people she knew.
"And even in the country the weather is more tolerable in April," said
Sir Tom.
"Oh, yes, yes. The doctor says if we keep clear of the east winds that
he may begin to go out again and get up his strength," said Lucy.
"My love, I am thinking of your visitors, and you are thinking of your
baby," Sir Tom said.
"Oh, Tom, what do you suppose I could be thinking of?" his wife cried.
Sir Tom himself was very solicitous about the baby, but to hear of
nothing else worried him. He was glad when old Lady Randolph, who was an
invariable visitor, arrived.
"How is the baby?" was her first question when he met her at the train.
"The baby would be a great deal better if there was less fuss made about
him," he said. "You must give Lucy a hint on that subject, aunt."
Lady Randolph was a good woman, and it was her conviction that she had
made this match. But it is so pleasant to feel that you have been right,
that she was half pleased, though very sorry, to think that Sir Tom (as
she had always known) was getting a little tired of sweet simplicity.
She met Lucy with an affectionate determination to be very plain with
her, and warn her of the dangers in her path. Jock had arrived the day
before. He rose up in all the lanky length of sixteen from the side of
the fire in the little drawing-room when the Dowager came in. It was
just the room into which one likes to come after a cold journey at
Christmas; the fire shining brightly in the midst of the reflectors of
burnished steel and brass, shining like gold and silver, of the most
luxurious fireplace that skill could contrive (the day of tiled stoves
was not as yet), and sending a delicious glow on the soft mossy carpets
into which the foot sank; a table with tea, reflecting the firelight in
all the polished surfaces of the china and silver, stood near; and
chairs invitingly drawn towards the fire. The only drawback was that
there was no one to welcome the visitor. On ordinary occasions Lucy was
at the door, if not at the station, to receive the kind lady whom she
loved. Lady Randolph was somewhat surprised at the difference, and when
she saw the lengthy boy raising himself up from the fireside, turned
round to her nephew and asked, "Do I know this young gentleman? There is
not light enough to see him," with a voice in which Jock, shy and
awkward, felt all the old objection to his presence as a burden upon
Lucy, which in his precocious toleration he had accepted as reasonable,
but did not like much the better for that. And then she sat down
somewhat sullenly at the fire. The next minute Lucy came hastily in with
many apologies: "I did not hear the carriage, aunt. I was in the
nursery----"
"And how is the child?" Lady Randolph said.
"Oh, he is a great deal better--don't you think he is much better, Tom?
Only a little delicate, and that, we hope, will pass away."
"Then, Lucy, my dear, though I don't want to blame you, I think you
should have heard the carriage," said Aunt Randolph. "The tea-table does
not look cheerful when the mistress of the house is away."
"Oh, but little Tom----" Lucy said, and then stopped herself, with a
vague sense that there was not so much sympathy around her as usual. Her
husband had gone out again, and Jock stood dumb, an awkward shadow
against the mantelpiece.
"My dear, I only speak for your good," the elder lady said. "Big Tom
wants a little attention too. I thought you were going to have quite a
merry Christmas and a great many people here."
"But, Aunt Randolph, baby----"
"Oh, my dear, you must think of something else besides baby. Take my
word for it, baby would be a great deal stronger if you left him a
little to himself. You have your husband, you know, to think of, and
what harm would it have done baby if there had been a little cheerful
company for his father? But you will think I have come to scold, and I
don't in the least mean that. Give me a cup of tea, Lucy. Tom tells me
that this tall person is Jock."
"You would not have known him?" said Lucy, much subdued in tone.
She occupied herself with the tea, arranging the cups and saucers with
hands that trembled a little at the unexpected and unaccustomed
sensation of a repulse.
"Well, I cannot even see him. But he has certainly grown out of
knowledge--I never thought he would have been so tall; he was quite a
little pinched creature as a child. I daresay you took too much care of
him, my dear. I remember I used to think so; and then when he was tossed
into the world or sent to school--it comes to much the same thing, I
suppose--he flourished and grew."
"I wonder," said Lucy, somewhat wistfully, "if that is really so?
Certainly it is since he has been at school that he has grown so much."
Jock all this time fidgeted about from one leg to another with
unutterable darkness upon his brow, could any one have seen it. There
are few things so irritating, especially at his age, as to be thus
discussed over one's own head.
"My dear Lucy," said Lady Randolph, "don't you remember some one
says--who was it, I wonder? it sounds like one of those dreadfully
clever French sayings that are always so much to the point--about the
advantages of a little wholesome neglect?"
"Can neglect ever be wholesome? Oh, I don't think so--I can't think
so--at least with children."
"It is precisely children that are meant," said the elder Lady
Randolph. But as she talked, sitting in the warm light of the fire, with
her cup in her hand, feeling extremely comfortable, discoursing at her
ease, and putting sharp arrows as if they had been pins into the heart
of Lucy, Sir Tom's large footsteps became audible coming through the
great drawing-room, which was dark. The very sound of him was cheerful
as he came in, and he brought the scent of fresh night air, cold but
delightful, with him. He passed by Lucy's chair and said, "How is the
little 'un?" laying a kind hand upon her head.
"Oh, better. I am sure he is better. Aunt Randolph thinks----"
"I am giving Lucy a lecture," said Lady Randolph, "and telling her she
must not shut herself up with that child. He'll get on all the better if
he is not coddled too much."
Sir Tom made no reply, but came to the fire, and drew a chair into the
cheerful glow. "You are all in the dark," he said, "but the fire is
pleasant this cold night. Well, now that you are thawed, what news have
you brought us out of the world? We are two hermits, Lucy and I. We
forget what kind of language you speak. We have a little sort of talk of
our own which answers common needs about babies and so forth, but we
should like to hear what you are discoursing about, just for a change."
"There is no such thing as a world just now," said Lady Randolph, "there
are nothing but country-houses. Society is all broken up into little
bits, as you know as well as I do. One gleans a little here and a little
there, and one carries it about like a basket of eggs."
"Jock has a world, and it is quite entire," said Sir Tom, with his
cordial laugh. "No breaking up into little bits there. If you want a
society that knows its own opinions, and will stick to them through
thick and thin, I can tell you where to find it; and to see how it holds
together and sits square whatever happens----"
Here there came a sort of falsetto growl from Jock's corner, where he
was blushing in the firelight. "It's because you were once a fellow
yourself, and know all about it."
"So it is, Jock; you are right, as usual," said Sir Tom; "I was once a
fellow myself, and now I'm an old fellow, and growing duller. Turn out
your basket of eggs, Aunt Randolph, and let us know what is going on.
Where did you come from last--the Mulberrys? Come; there must have been
some pretty pickings of gossip there."
"You shall have it all in good time. I am not going to run myself dry
the first hour. I want to know about yourselves, and when you are going
to give up this honeymooning. I expected to have met all sorts of people
here."
"Yes," said Sir Tom, and then he burst forth in a laugh, "La
Forno-Populo and a few others; but as little Tom is not quite up to
visitors, we have put them off till Easter."
"La Forno-Populo!" said Lady Randolph, in a voice of dismay.
"Why not?" said Sir Tom. "She wrote and offered herself. I thought she
might find it a doubtful pleasure, but if she likes it---- However, you
may make yourself easy, nobody is coming," he added, with a certain jar
of impatience in his tone.
"Well, Tom, I must say I am very glad of that," Lady Randolph said
gravely--and then there was a pause. "I doubt whether Lucy would have
liked her," she added, after a moment. Then with another interval, "I
think, Lucy, my love, after that nice cup of tea, and my first sight of
you, that I will go to my own room. I like a little rest before
dinner--you know my lazy way."
"And it's getting ridiculously dark in this room," Sir Tom said, kicking
a footstool out of the way. This little impatient movement was like one
of those expletives that seem to relieve a man's mind, and both the
ladies understood it as such, and knew that he was angry. Lucy, as she
rose from her tea-table to attend upon her visitor, herself in a
confused and painful mood, and vexed with what had been said to her,
thought her husband was irritated by his aunt, and felt much sympathy
with him, and anxiety to conduct Lady Randolph to her room before it
should go any farther. But the elder lady understood it very
differently. She went away, followed by Lucy through the great
drawing-room, where a solitary lamp had been placed on a table to show
the way. It had been the Dowager's own house in her day, and she did not
require any guidance to her room. Nor did she detain Lucy after the
conventional visit to see that all was comfortable.
"That I haven't the least doubt of," Lady Randolph said, "and I am at
home, you know, and will ask for anything I want; but I must have my nap
before dinner; and do you go and talk to your husband."
Lucy could not resist one glance into the nursery, where little Tom, a
little languid but so much better, was sitting on his nurse's knee
before the fire, amused by those little fables about his fingers and
toes which are the earliest of all dramatic performances. The sight of
him thus content, and the sound of his laugh, was sweet to her in her
anxiety. She ran downstairs again without disturbing him, closing so
carefully the double doors that shut him out from all draughts, not
without a wondering doubt as she did so, whether it was true, perhaps,
that she was "coddling" him, and if there was such a thing as wholesome
neglect. She went quickly through the dim drawing-room to the warm ruddy
flush of firelight that shone between the curtains from the smaller
room, thinking nothing less than to find her husband, who was fond of an
hour's repose in that kindly light before dinner. She had got to her old
place in front of the fire before she perceived that Sir Tom's tall
shadow was no longer there. Lucy uttered a little exclamation of
disappointment, and then she perceived remorsefully another shadow, not
like Sir Tom's, the long weedy boyish figure of her brother against the
warm light.
"But you are here, Jock," she said, advancing to him. Jock took hold of
her arm, as he was so fond of doing.
"I shall never have you, now _she_ has come," Jock said.
"Why not, dear? You were never fond of Lady Randolph--you don't know how
good and kind she is. It is only when you like people that you know how
nice they are," Lucy said, all unconscious that a deeper voice than hers
had announced that truth.
"Then I shall never know, for I don't like her," said Jock
uncompromising. "You'll have to sit and gossip with her when you're not
in the nursery, and I shall have no time to tell you, for the holidays
last only a month."
"But you can tell me everything in a month, you silly boy; and if we
can't have our walks, Jock (for it's cold), there is one place where
she will never come," said Lucy, upon which Jock turned away with an
exclamation of impatience.
His sister put her hand on his shoulder and looked reproachfully in his
face.
"You too! You used to like it. You used to come and toss him up and make
him laugh----"
"Oh, don't, Lucy! can't you see? So I would again, if he were like that.
How you can bear it!" said the boy, bursting away from her. And then
Jock returned very much ashamed and horror-stricken, and took the hand
that dropped by her side, and clumsily patted and kissed it, and held it
between his own, looking penitently, wistfully, in her face all the
while: but not knowing what to say.
Lucy stood looking down into the glowing fire, with her head drooping
and an air of utter dejection in her little gentle figure. "Do you think
he looks so bad as that?" she said, in a broken voice.
"Oh, no, no; that is not what I mean," the boy cried. "It's--the little
chap is not so jolly; he's--a little cross; or else he's forgotten me. I
suppose it's that. He wouldn't look at me when I ran up. He's so little
one oughtn't to mind, but it made me----your baby, Lucy! and the little
beggar cried and wouldn't look at me."
"Is that all?" said Lucy. She only half believed him, but she pretended
to be deceived. She gave a little trembling laugh, and laid her head for
a moment upon Jock's boyish breast, where his heart was beating high
with a passion of sorrow and tender love. "Sometimes," she said, leaning
against him, "sometimes I think I shall die. I can't live to see
anything happen to him: and sometimes---- But he is ever so much better;
don't you think he looks almost himself?" she said, raising her head
hurriedly, and interrogating the scarcely visible face with her eyes.
"Looks! I don't see much difference in his looks, if he wouldn't be so
cross," said Jock, lying boldly, but with a tremor, for he was not used
to it. And then he said hurriedly, "But there's that clergyman, the
father of the fellow on the foundation. I've found out all about him. I
must tell you, Lucy. He is the very man. There is no call to think about
it or put off any longer. What a thing it would be if he could have it
by Christmas! I have got all the particulars--they look as if they were
just made for us," Jock cried.
CHAPTER X.
LUCY'S ADVISERS.
Lady Randolph found her visit dull. It is true that there had been no
guests to speak of on previous Christmases since Sir Tom's marriage; but
the house had been more cheerful, and Lucy had been ready to drive, or
walk, or call, or go out to the festivities around. But now she was
absorbed by the nursing, and never liked to be an hour out of call. The
Dowager put up with it as long as she was able. She did not say anything
more on the subject for some days. It was not, indeed, until she had
been a week at the Hall that, being disturbed by the appeals of Lucy as
to whether she did not think baby was looking better than when she came,
she burst forth at last. They were sitting by themselves in the hour
after dinner when ladies have the drawing-room all to themselves. It is
supposed by young persons in novels to be a very dreary interval, but to
the great majority of women it is a pleasant moment. The two ladies sat
before the pleasant fire; Lucy with some fleecy white wool in her lap
with which she was knitting something for her child, Lady Randolph with
a screen interposed between her and the fire, doing nothing, an
operation which she always performed gracefully and comfortably. It
could not be said that the gentlemen were lingering over their wine.
Jock had retired to the library, where he was working through all the
long-collected literary stores of the Randolph family, with an
instinctive sense that his presence in the drawing-room was not desired.
Sir Tom had business to do, or else he was tired of the domestic calm.
The ladies had been sitting for some time in silence when Lady Randolph
suddenly broke forth--
"You know what I said to you the first evening, Lucy? I have not said a
word on the subject since--of course I didn't come down here to enjoy
your hospitality and then to find fault."
"Oh, Aunt Randolph! don't speak of hospitality; it is your own house."
"My dear, it is very pretty of you to say so. I hope I am not the sort
of person to take advantage of it. But I feel a sort of responsibility,
seeing it was I that brought you together first. Lucy, I must tell you.
You are not doing what you ought by Tom. Here he is, a middle-aged man,
you know, and one of the first in the county. People look to him for a
great many things: he is the member: he is a great landowner: he is
(thanks to you) very well off. And here is Christmas, and not a visitor
in the house but myself. Oh, there's Jock! a schoolboy home for his
holidays--that does not count; not a single dinner that I can hear
of----"
"Yes, aunt, on the 6th," said Lucy, with humility.
"On the 6th, and it is now the 27th! and no fuss at all made about
Christmas. My dear, you needn't tell me it's a bore. I know it is a
bore--everywhere wherever one goes; still, everybody does it. It is just
a part of one's responsibilities. You don't go to balls in Lent, and you
stand on your heads, so to speak, at Christmas. The country expects it
of you; and it is always a mistake to take one's own way in such
matters. You should have had, in the first place," said Lady Randolph,
counting on her fingers, "your house full; in the second, a ball, to
which everybody should have been asked. On these occasions no one that
could possibly be imagined to be gentlefolk should be left out. I would
even stretch a point--doctors and lawyers, and so forth, go without
saying, and those big brewers, you know, I always took in; and some
people go as far as the 'vet.,' as they call him. He was a very
objectionable person in my day, and that was where I drew the line; then
three or four dinners at the least."
"But, Aunt Randolph, how could we when baby is so poorly----"
"What has baby to do with it, Lucy? You don't have the child down to
receive your guests. With the door of his nursery shut to keep out the
noise (if you think it necessary: I shouldn't think it would matter)
what harm would it do him? He would never be a bit the wiser, poor
little dear. Yes, I dare say your heart would be with him many a time
when you were elsewhere; but you must not think of yourself."
"I did not mean to do so, aunt. I thought little Tom was my first duty."
"Now, I should have thought, my dear," said the Dowager, smiling
blandly, "that it would have been big Tom who answered to that
description."
"But, Tom----" Lucy paused, not knowing in what shape to put so obvious
a truth, "he is like me," she said. "He is far, far more anxious than he
lets you see. It is his--duty too."
"A great many other things are his duty as well; besides, there is so
much, especially in a social point of view, which the man never sees
till his wife points it out. That's one of the uses of a woman. She must
keep up her husband's popularity, don't you see? You must never let it
be said: 'Oh, Sir Tom! he is all very well in Parliament, but he does
nothing for the county.'"
"I never thought of that," said Lucy, with dismay.
"But you must learn to think of it, my love. Never mind, this is the
first Christmas since the election. But one dinner, and nothing else
done, not so much as a magic lantern in the village! I do assure you, my
dearest girl, you are very much to blame."
"I am very sorry," said Lucy, with a startled look, "but, dear aunt,
little Tom----"
"My dear Lucy! I am sure you don't wish everybody to get sick of that
poor child's very name."
Lucy sprang up from her chair at this outrage; she could not bear any
more. A flush of almost fury came upon her face. She went up to the
mantelpiece, which was a very fine one of carved wood, and leant her
head upon it. She did not trust herself to reply.
"Now, I know what you are thinking," said Lady Randolph blandly. "You
are saying to yourself, that horrid old woman, who never had a child,
how can she know?--and I don't suppose I do," said the clever Dowager
pathetically. "All that sweetness has been denied to me. I have never
had a little creature that was all mine. But when I was your age, Lucy,
and far older than you, I would have given anything--almost my life--to
have had a child."
Lucy melted in a moment, threw herself down upon the hearth-rug upon her
knees, and took Lady Randolph's hands in her own and kissed them.
"Oh, dear aunt, dear aunt!" she cried, "to think I should have gone on
so about little Tom and never remembered that you---- But we are all your
children," she said, in the innocence and fervour of her heart.
"Yes, my love." Lady Randolph freed one of her hands and put it up with
her handkerchief to her cheek. As a matter of fact she did not regret it
now, but felt that a woman when she is growing old is really much more
able to look after her own comforts when she has no children; and yet,
when she remembered how she had been bullied on the subject, and all the
reproaches that had been addressed to her as if it were her fault,
perhaps there was something like a tear. "That is why I venture to say
many things to you that I would not otherwise. Tom, indeed, is too old
to have been my son; but I have felt, Lucy, as if I had a daughter in
you." Then shaking off this little bit of sentiment with a laugh, the
Dowager raised Lucy and kissed her and put her into a chair by her own
side.
"Since we are about it," she said, "there is one other thing I should
like to talk to you about. Of course your husband knows a great deal
more of the world than you do, Lucy; but it is perhaps better that he
should not decide altogether who is to be asked. Men have such strange
notions. If people are amusing it is all they think of. Well, now, there
is that Contessa di Forno-Populo. I would not have her, Lucy, if I were
you."
"But it was she who was the special person," said Lucy, in amaze. "The
others were to come to meet her. She is an old friend."
"Oh, I know all about the old friendship," said Lady Randolph. "I think
Tom should be ashamed of himself. He knows that in other houses where
the mistress knows more about the world. Yes, yes, she is an old friend.
All the more reason, my dear, why you should have as little to say to
her as possible; they are never to be reckoned upon. Didn't you hear
what he called her. _La_ Forno-Populo? Englishmen never talk of a lady
like that if they have any great respect for her; but it can't be denied
that this lady has a great deal of charm. And I would just keep her at
arm's length, Lucy, if I were you."
"Dear Aunt Randolph, why should I do that?" said Lucy, gravely. "If she
is Tom's friend, she must always be welcome here. I do not know her,
therefore I can only welcome her for my husband's sake; but that is
reason enough. You must not ask me to do anything that is against Tom."
"Against Tom! I think you are a little goose, Lucy, though you are so
sensible. Is it not all for his sake that I am talking? I want you to
see more of the world, not to shut yourself up here in the nursery
entirely on his account. If you don't understand that, then words have
no meaning."
"I do understand it, aunt," said Lucy meekly. "Don't be angry; but why
should I be disagreeable to Tom's friend? The only thing I am afraid of
is, should she not speak English. My French is so bad----"
"Oh, your French will do very well; and you will take your own way, my
dear," said the elder lady, getting up. "You all do, you young people.
The opinion of others never does any good; and as Tom does not seem to
be coming, I think I shall take my way to bed. Good-night, Lucy.
Remember what I said, at all events, about the magic lantern. And if you
are wise you will have as little to do as possible with La Forno-Populo
as you can--and there you have my two pieces of advice."
Lucy was disturbed a little by her elder's counsel, both in respect to
the foreign lady, whom, however, she simply supposed Lady Randolph did
not like--and in regard to her own nursery tastes and avoidance of
society;--could that be why Tom sat so much longer in the dining-room
and did not come in to talk to his aunt? She began to think with a
little ache in her heart, and to remember that in her great
preoccupation with the child he had been left to spend many evenings
alone, and that he no longer complained of this. She stood up in front
of the fire and pressed her hot forehead to the mantel-shelf. How was a
woman to know what to do? Was not he that was most helpless and had most
need of her the one to devote her time to? There was not a thought in
her that was disloyal to Sir Tom. But what if he were to form the habit
of doing without her society? This was an idea that filled her with a
vague dread. Some one came in through the great drawing-room as she
stood thinking, and she turned round eagerly, supposing that it was her
husband; but it was only Jock, who had been on the watch to hear Lady
Randolph go upstairs.
"I never see you at all now, Lucy," cried Jock. "I never have a chance
but in the holidays, and now they're half over, and we have not had one
good talk. And what about poor Mr. Churchill, Lucy? I thought he was the
very man for you. He has got about a dozen children and no money.
Somebody else pays for Churchill, that's the fellow I told you of that's
on the foundation. I shouldn't have found out all that, and gone and
asked questions and got myself thought an inquisitive beggar, if it
hadn't been for your sake."
"Oh, Jock, I'm sure I am much obliged to you," said Lucy, dolefully;
"and I am so sorry for the poor gentleman. It must be dreadful to have
so many children and not to be able to give them everything they
require."
At this speech, which was uttered with something between impatience and
despair, and which made no promise of any help or succour, her brother
regarded her with a mixture of anger and disappointment.
"Is that all about it, Lucy?" he said.
"Oh, no, Jock! I am sure you are right, dear. I know I ought to bestir
myself and do something, but only---- How much do you think it would take
to make them comfortable? Oh, Jock, I wish that papa had put it all into
somebody's hands, to be done like business--somebody that had nothing
else to think of!"
"What have you to think of, Lucy?" said the boy, seriously, in the
superiority of his youth. "I suppose, you know, you are just too well
off. You can't understand what it is to be like that. You get angry at
people for not being happy, you don't want to be disturbed." He paused
remorsefully, and cast a glance at her, melting in spite of himself, for
Lucy did not look too well off. Her soft brow was contracted a little;
there was a faint quiver upon her lip. "If you really want to know,"
Jock said, "people can live and get along when they have about five
hundred a year. That is, as far as I can make out. If you gave them
that, they would think it awful luck."
"I wish I could give them all of it, and be done with it!"
"I don't see much good that would do. It would be two rich people in
place of one, and the two would not be so grand as you. That would not
have done for father at all. He liked you to be a great heiress, and
everybody to wonder at you, and then to give your money away like a
queen. I like it too," said Jock, throwing up his head; "it satisfies
the imagination: it is a kind of a fairy tale."
Lucy shook her head.
"He never thought how hard it would be upon me. A woman is never so well
off as a man. Oh, if it had been you, Jock, and I only just your
sister."
"Talking does not bring us any nearer a settlement," said Jock, with
some impatience. "When will you do it, Lucy? Have you got to speak to
old Rushton, or write to old Chervil, or what? or can't you just draw
them a cheque? I suppose about ten thousand or so would be enough. And
it is as easy to do it at one time as another. Why not to-morrow, Lucy?
and then you would have it off your mind."
This proposal took away Lucy's breath. She thought with a gasp of Sir
Tom and the look with which he would regard her--the laugh, the amused
incredulity. He would not be unkind, and her right to do it was quite
well established and certain. But she shrank within herself when she
thought how he would look at her, and her heart jumped into her throat
as she realised that perhaps he might not laugh only. How could she
stand before him and carry her own war in opposition to his? Her whole
being trembled even with the idea of conflict. "Oh, Jock, it is not just
so easily managed as that," she said faltering; "there are several
things to think of. I will have to let the trustees know, and it must
all be calculated."
"There is not much need for calculation," said Jock, "that is just about
it. Five per cent is what you get for money. You had better send the
cheque for it, Lucy, and then let the old duffers know of it afterwards.
One would think you were afraid!"
"Oh, no," said Lucy, with a slight shiver, "I am not afraid." And then
she added, with growing hesitation, "I must--speak to---- Oh! Is it you,
Tom?" She made a sudden start from Jock's side, who was standing close
by her, argumentative and eager, and whose bewildered spectatorship of
her guilty surprise and embarrassment she was conscious of through all.
"Yes, it is I," said Sir Tom, putting his hand upon her shoulders; "you
must have been up to some mischief, Jock and you, or you would not look
so frightened. What is the secret?" he said, with his genial laugh. But
when he looked from Jock, astonished but resentful and lowering, to
Lucy, all trembling and pale with guilt, even Sir Tom, who was not
suspicious, was startled. His little Lucy! What had she been plotting
that made her look so scared at his appearance? Or was it something that
had been told to her, some secret accusation against himself? This
startled Sir Tom also a little, and it was with a sudden gravity, not
unmingled with resentment, that he added, "Come! I mean to know what it
is."
CHAPTER XI.
AN INNOCENT CONSPIRACY.
"It was only something that Jock was saying," said Lucy, "but, Tom, I
will tell you another time. I wish you had come in before Lady Randolph
went upstairs. I think she was a little disappointed to have only me."
"Did she share Jock's secret?" Sir Tom said with a keen look of inquiry.
It is perhaps one advantage in the dim light which fashion delights in,
that it is less easy to scrutinise the secrets of a face.
"We are all a little put wrong when you do not come in," said Lucy. The
cunning which weakness finds refuge in when it has to defend itself came
to her aid. "Jock is shy when you are not here. He thinks he bores Lady
Randolph; and so we ladies are left to our own devices."
"Jock must not be so sensitive," Sir Tom said; but he was not satisfied.
It occurred to him suddenly (for schoolboys are terrible gossips) that
the boy might have heard something which he had been repeating to Lucy.
Nothing could have been more unlikely, had he thought of it, than that
Jock should carry tales on such a subject. But we do not stop to argue
out matters when our own self-regard is in question. He looked at the
two with a doubtful and suspicious eye.
"He will get over it as he grows older," said Lucy; but she gave her
brother a look which to Sir Tom seemed one of warning, and he was
irritated by it; he looked from one to another and he laughed; but not
with the genial laugh which was his best known utterance.
"You are prodigiously on your guard," he said. "I suppose you have your
reasons for it. Have you been confiding the Masons' secret or something
of that awful character to her, Jock?"
"Why shouldn't I tell him?" cried Jock with great impatience. "What is
the use of making all those signs? It's nothing of the sort. It's only
I've heard of somebody that is poor--somebody she ought to know of--the
sort of thing that is meant in father's will."
"Oh!" said Sir Tom. It was the simplest of exclamations, but it meant
much. He was partially relieved that it was not gossip, but yet more
gravely annoyed than if it had been.
Lucy made haste to interpose.
"I will tell you afterwards," she said. "If I made signs, as Jock said,
it was only that I might tell it you, Tom, myself, when there was more
time."
"I am at no loss for time," said Sir Tom, placing himself in the vacant
chair. The others were both standing, as became this accidental moment
before bed-time. And Lucy had been on thorns to get away, even before
her husband appeared. She had wanted to escape from the discussion even
with Jock. She had wanted to steal into the nursery, and see that her
boy was asleep, to feel his little forehead with her soft hand, and make
sure there was no fever. To be betrayed into a prolonged and agitating
discussion now was very provoking, very undesirable; and Lucy had grown
rather cowardly and anxious to push away from her, as far as she could,
everything that did not belong to the moment.
"Tom," she said, a little tremulously, "I wish you would put it off till
to-morrow. I am--rather sleepy; it is nearly eleven o'clock, and I
always run in to see how little Tom is going on. Besides," she added,
with a little anxiety which was quite fictitious, "it is keeping
Fletcher up----"
"I am not afraid of Fletcher, Lucy."
"Oh! but I am," she said. "I will tell you about it to-morrow. There is
nothing in the least settled, only Jock thought----"
"Settled!" Sir Tom said, with a curious look. "No, I hope not."
"Oh! nothing at all settled," said Lucy. She stood restlessly, now on
one foot now on the other, eager for flight. She did not even observe
the implied authority in this remark, at which Jock pricked up his ears
with incipient offence. "And Jock ought to be in bed--oh, yes, Jock, you
ought. I am sure you are not allowed to sit up so late at school. Come
now, there's a good boy--and I will just run and see how baby is."
She put her hand on her brother's arm to take him away with her, but
Jock hung back, and Sir Tom interposed, "Now that I have just settled
myself for a chat, you had better leave Jock with me at least, Lucy. Run
away to your baby, that is all right. Jock and I will entertain each
other. I respect his youth, you see, and don't try to seduce him into a
cigar--you should be thankful to me for that."
"If I was not in sixth form," said Jock sharply, nettled by this
indignity, "I should smoke; but it is bad form when you are high up in
school. In the holidays I don't mind," he added, with careless
grandeur, upon which Sir Tom, mollified, laughed as Lucy felt like
himself.
"Off duty, eh?" he said, "that's a very fine sentiment, Jock. You may be
sure it's bad form to do anything you have promised not to do. You will
say that sounds like a copy-book. Come now, Lucy, are not you going,
little woman? Do you want to have your share in the moralities?"
For this sudden change had somehow quenched Lucy's desire both to
inspect the baby and get to bed. But what could she do? She looked very
earnestly at Jock as she bade him good-night, but neither could she
shake his respect for her husband by giving him any warning, nor offend
her husband by any appearance of secret intelligence with Jock. Poor
little Lucy went away after this through the stately rooms and up the
grand staircase with a great tremor in her heart. There could not be a
life more guarded and happy than hers had been--full of wealth, full of
love, not a crumpled rose-leaf to disturb her comfort. But as she stole
along the dim corridor to the nursery her heart was beating full of all
the terrors that make other hearts to ache. She was afraid for the
child's life, which was the worst of all, and looked with a suppressed
yet terrible panic into the dark future which contained she knew not
what for him. And she was afraid of her husband, the kindest man in the
world, not knowing how he might take the discovery he had just made,
fearing to disclose her mind to him, finding herself guilty in the mere
idea of hiding anything from him. And she was afraid of Jock, that he
would irritate Sir Tom, or be irritated by him, or that some wretched
breach or quarrel might arise between these two. Jock was not an
ordinary boy; there was no telling how he might take any reproof that
might be addressed to him--perhaps with the utmost reasonableness,
perhaps with a rapid defiance. Lady Randolph thus, though no harm had
befallen her, had come into the usual heritage of humanity, and was as
anxious and troubled as most of us are; though she was so happy and well
off. She was on thorns to know what was passing in the room she had just
left.
This was all that passed. Jock, standing up against the mantelpiece,
looked down somewhat lowering upon Sir Tom in the easy chair. He
expected to be questioned, and had made up his mind, though with great
indignation at the idea that any one should find fault with Lucy, to
take the whole blame upon himself. That Lucy should not be free to carry
out her duty as seemed to her best was to Jock intolerable. He had put
his boyish faith in her all his life. Even since the time, a very early
one, when Jock had felt himself much cleverer than Lucy; even when he
had been obliged to make up his mind that Lucy was not clever at all--he
had still believed in her. She had a mission in the world which
separated her from other women. Nobody else had ever had the same thing
to do. Many people had dispensed charities and founded hospitals, but
Lucy's office in the world was of a different description--and Jock had
faith in her power to do it. To see her wavering was trouble to him, and
the discovery he had just made of something beneath the surface, a
latent opposition in her husband which she plainly shrank from
encountering, gave the boy a shock from which it was not easy to
recover. He had always liked Sir Tom; but if---- One thing, however, was
apparent, if there was any blame, anything to find fault with, it was
he, Jock, and not Lucy, that must bear that blame.
"So, Jock, Lucy thinks you should be in bed. When do they put out your
lights at school? In my time we were up to all manner of tricks. I
remember a certain dark lantern that was my joy; but that was in old
Keate's time, you know, who never trusted the fellows. You are under a
better rule now."
This took away Jock's breath, who had been prepared for a sterner
interrogation. He answered with a sudden blush, but with the rallying of
all his forces: "I light them again sometimes. It's hard on a fellow,
don't you think, sir, when he's not sleepy and has a lot to do?"
"I never had much experience of that," said Sir Tom. "We were always
sleepy, and never did anything in my time. It was for larking, I'm
afraid, that we wanted light. And so it is seen on me, Jock. You will be
a fellow of your college, whereas I----"
"I don't think so," said Jock generously. "That construe you gave me,
don't you remember, last half? MTutor says it is capital. He says he
couldn't have done it so well. Of course, that is his modest way," the
boy added, "for everybody knows there isn't such another scholar! but
that's what he says."
Sir Tom laughed, and a slight suffusion of colour appeared on his face.
He was pleased with this unexpected applause. At five-and-forty, after
knocking about the world for years, and "never opening a book," as
people say, to have given a good "construe" is a feather in one's cap.
"To be second to your tutor is all a man has to hope for," he said, with
that mellow laugh which it was so pleasant to hear. "I hope I know my
place, Jock. We had no such godlike beings in my time. Old Puck, as we
used to call him, was my tutor. He had a red nose, which was the chief
feature in his character. He looked upon us all as his natural enemies,
and we paid him back with interest. Did I ever tell of that time when we
were going to Ascot in a cab, four of us, and he caught sight of the
turn-out?"
"I don't think so," said Jock, with a little hesitation. He remembered
every detail of this story, which indeed Sir Tom had told him perhaps
more than once; for in respect to such legends the best of us repeat
ourselves. Many were the thoughts in the boy's mind as he stood against
the mantelpiece and looked down upon the man before him, going over with
much relish the tale of boyish mischief, the delight of the urchins and
the pedagogue's discomfiture. Sir Tom threw himself back in his chair
with a peal of joyous laughter.
"Jove! I think I can see him now with the corners of his mouth all
dropped, and his nose like a beacon," he cried. Jock meanwhile looked
down upon him very gravely, though he smiled in courtesy. He was a
different manner of boy from anything Sir Tom could ever have been, and
he wondered, as young creatures will, over the little world of mystery
and knowledge which was shut up within the elder man. What things he had
done in his life--what places he had seen! He had lived among savages,
and fought his way, and seen death and life. Jock, only on the
threshold, gazed at him with a curious mixture of awe and wonder and
kind contempt. He would himself rather look down upon a fellow (he
thought) who did that sort of practical joke now. MTutor would regard
such an individual as a natural curiosity. And yet here was this man who
had seen so much, and done so much, who ought to have profited by the
long results of time, and grown to such superiority and mental
elevation--here was he, turning back with delight to the schoolboy's
trick. It filled Jock with a great and compassionate wonder. But he was
a very civil boy. He was one who could not bear to hurt a
fellow-creature's feelings, even those of an old duffer whose
recollections were all of the bygone ages. So he did his best to laugh.
And Sir Tom enjoyed his own joke so much that he did not know that it
was from the lips only that his young companion's laugh came. He got up
and patted Jock on the shoulders with the utmost benevolence when this
pastime was done.
"They don't indulge in that sort of fooling nowadays," he said. "So much
the better--though I don't know that it did us much harm. Now come
along, let us go to bed, according to my lady's orders. We must all, you
know, do what Lucy tells us in this house."
Jock obeyed, feeling somewhat "shut up," as he called it, in a sort of
blank of confused discomfiture. Sir Tom had the best of it, by whatever
means he attained that end. The boy had intended to offer himself a
sacrifice, to brave anything that an angry man could say to him for
Lucy's sake, and at the same time to die if necessary for Lucy's right
to carry out her father's will, and accomplish her mission uninterrupted
and untrammelled. When lo, Sir Tom had taken to telling him schoolboy
stories, and sent him to bed with good-humoured kindness, without
leaving him the slightest opening either to defend Lucy or take blame
upon himself. He was half angry, and humbled in his own esteem, but
there was nothing for it but to submit. Sir Tom for his part, did not go
to bed. He went and smoked a lonely cigar, and his face lost its genial
smile. The light of it, indeed, disappeared altogether under a cloud, as
he sat gravely over his fire and puffed the smoke away. He had the air
of a man who had a task to do which was not congenial to him. "Poor
little soul," he said to himself. He could not bear to vex her. There
was nothing in the world that he would have grudged to his wife. Any
luxury, any adornment that he could have procured for her he would have
jumped at. But it was his fate to be compelled to oppose and subdue her
instead. The only thing was to do it quickly and decisively, since done
it must be. If she had been a warrior worthy of his steel, a woman who
would have defended herself and held her own, it would have been so much
more easy; but it was not without a compunction that Sir Tom thought of
the disproportion of their forces, of the soft and compliant creature
who had never raised her will against his or done other than accept his
suggestions and respond to his guidance. He remembered how Lucy had
stuck to her colours before her marriage, and how she had vanquished the
unwilling guardians who regarded what they thought the squandering of
her money with a consternation and fury that were beyond bounds. He had
thought it highly comic at the time, and even now there passed a gleam
of humour over his face at the recollection. He could not deny himself a
smile when he thought it all over. She had worsted her guardians, and
thrown away her money triumphantly, and Sir Tom had regarded the whole
as an excellent joke. But the recollection of this did not discourage
him now. He had no thought that Lucy would stand out against him. It
might vex her, however, dear little woman. No doubt she and Jock had
been making up some fine Quixotic plans between them, and probably it
would be a shock to her when her husband interfered. He had got to be so
fond of his little wife, and his heart was so kind, that he could not
bear the idea of vexing Lucy. But still it would have to be done. He
rose up at last, and threw away the end of his cigar with a look of
vexation and trouble. It was necessary, but it was a nuisance, however.
"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly,"
he said to himself; then laughed again, as he took his way upstairs, at
the over-significance of the words. He was not going to murder anybody;
only when the moment proved favourable, for once and only once, seeing
it was inevitable, he had to bring under lawful authority--an easy
task--the gentle little feminine creature who was his wife.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRST STRUGGLE.
Lucy knew nothing of this till the next forenoon after breakfast, and
after the many morning occupations which a lady has in her own house.
She looked wistfully at both her brother and her husband when they met
at table, and it was a great consolation to her, and lightening of her
heart, when she perceived that they were quite at ease with each other;
but still she was burning with curiosity to know what had passed. Sir
Tom had not said a word. He had been just as usual, not even looking a
consciousness of the unexplained question between them. She was glad and
yet half sorry that all was about to blow over, and to be as if it had
not been. After going so far, perhaps it would have been better that it
had gone farther and that the matter had been settled. This she said to
herself in the security of a respite, believing that it had passed away
from Sir Tom's mind. She wanted to know, and yet she was afraid to ask,
for her heart revolted against asking questions of Jock which might
betray to him the fear of a possible quarrel. After she had
superintended little Tom's toilet, and watched him go out for his walk
(for the weather was very mild for the time of the year), and seen Mrs.
Freshwater, the housekeeper, and settled about the dinner, always with a
little quiver of anxiety in her heart, she met Jock by a happy chance,
just as she was about to join Lady Randolph in the drawing-room. She
seized his arm with energy, and drew him within the door of the library;
but after she had done this with an eagerness not to be disguised, Lucy
suddenly remembered all that it was inexpedient for her to betray to
Jock. Accordingly she stopped short, as it were, on the threshold, and
instead of saying as she had intended, "What did he say to you?" dropped
down into the routine question, "Where are you going--were you going
out?"
"I shall some time, I suppose. What do you grip a fellow's arm for like
that? and then when I thought you had something important to say to me,
only asking am I going out?"
"Yes, clear," said Lucy, recovering herself with an effort. "You don't
take enough exercise. I wish you would not be always among the books."
"Stuff, Lucy!" said Jock.
"I am sure Tom thinks the same. He was telling me--now didn't he say
something to you about it last night?"
"That's all bosh," said the boy. "And if you want to know what he said
to me last night, he just said nothing at all, but told me old stories
of school that I've heard a hundred times. These old d---- fellows,"
(Jock did not swear; he was going to say duffers, that was all) "always
talk like that. One would think they had not had much fun in their life
when they are always turning back upon school," Jock added, with fine
sarcasm.
"Oh, only stories about school!" said Lucy with extreme relief. But the
next moment she was not quite so sure that she was comfortable about
this entire ignoring of a matter which Sir Tom had seemed to think so
grave. "What sort of stories?" she said dreamily, pursuing her own
thoughts without much attention to the answer.
"Oh, that old stuff about Ascot and about the old master that stopped
them. It isn't much. I know it," said Jock, disrespectfully, "as well as
I know my a, b, c."
"It is very rude of you to say so, Jock."
"Perhaps it is rude," the boy replied, with candour; but he did not
further explain himself, and Lucy, to veil her mingled relief and
disquietude, dismissed him with an exhortation to go out.
"You read and read," she cried, glad to throw off a little excitement in
this manner, though she really felt very little anxiety on the subject,
"till you will be all brains and nothing else. I wish you would use your
legs a little too." And then, with a little affectionate push away from
her, she left him in undisturbed possession of his books, and the
morning, which, fine as it was, was not bright enough to tempt him away
from them.
Then Lucy pursued her way to the drawing-room: but she had not gone many
steps before she met her husband, who stopped and asked her a question
or two. Had the boy gone out? It was so fine it would do him good, poor
little beggar; and where was her ladyship going? When he heard she was
going to join the Dowager, Sir Tom smilingly took her hand and drew it
within his own. "Then come here with me for a minute first," he said.
And strange to say, Lucy had no fear. She allowed him to have his way,
thinking it was to show her something, perhaps to ask her advice on some
small matter. He took her into a little room he had, full of trophies of
his travels, a place more distinctively his own than any other in the
house. When he had closed the door a faint little thrill of alarm came
over her. She looked up at him wondering, inquiring. Sir Tom took her by
her arms and drew her towards him in the full light of the window. "Come
and let me look at you, Lucy," he said. "I want to see in your eyes what
it is that makes you afraid of me."
She met his eyes with great bravery and self-command, but nothing could
save her from the nervous quiver which he felt as he held her, or from
the tell-tale ebb and flow of the blood from her face. "I--I am not
afraid of you, Tom."
"Then have you ceased to trust me, Lucy? How is it that you discuss the
most important matters with Jock, who is only a boy, and leave me out?
You do not think that can be agreeable to me."
"Tom," she said; then stopped short, her voice being interrupted by the
fluttering of her heart.
"I told you: you are afraid. What have I ever done to make my wife
afraid of me?" he said.
"Oh, Tom, it is not that! it is only that I felt--there has never been
anything said, and you have always done all, and more than all, that I
wished; but I have felt that you were opposed to me in one thing. I may
be wrong, perhaps," she added, looking up at him suddenly with a
catching of her breath.
Sir Tom did not say she was wrong. He was very kind, but very grave. "In
that case," he said, "Lucy, my love, don't you think it would have been
better to speak to me about it, and ascertain what were my objections,
and why I was opposed to you--rather than turn without a word to another
instead of me?"
"Oh!" cried Lucy, "I could not. I was a coward. I could not bear to make
sure. To stand against you, how could I do it? But if you will hear me
out, Tom, I never, never turned to another. Oh! what strange words to
say. It was not another. It was Jock, only Jock; but I did not turn even
to him. It was he who brought it forward, and I---- Now that we have
begun to talk about it, and it cannot be escaped," cried Lucy, with
sudden nervous boldness, freeing herself from his hold, "I will own
everything to you, Tom. Yes, I was afraid. I would not, I could not do
it, for I could feel that you were against it. You never said anything;
is it necessary that you should speak for me to understand you? but I
knew it all through. And to go against you and do something you did not
like was more than I could face. I should have gone on for years,
perhaps, and never had courage for it," she cried. She was tingling all
over with excitement and desperate daring now.
"My darling," said Sir Tom, "it makes me happier to think that it was
not me you were afraid of, but only of putting yourself in opposition to
me; but still, Lucy, even that is not right, you know. Don't you think
that it would be better that we should talk it over, and that I should
show you my objections to this strange scheme you have in your head, and
convince you----"
"Oh!" cried Lucy, stepping back a little and putting up her hands as if
in self-defence, "that was what I was most frightened for."
"What, to be convinced?" he laughed: but his laugh jarred upon her in
her excited state. "Well, that is not at all uncommon; but few people
avow it so frankly," he said.
She looked up at him with appealing eyes. "Oh, Tom," she cried, "I fear
you will not understand me now. I am not afraid to be convinced. I am
afraid of what you will think when you know that I cannot be convinced.
Now," she said, with a certain calm of despair, "I have said it all."
To her astonishment her husband replied by a sudden hug and a laugh.
"Whether you are accessible to reason or not, you are always my dear
little woman," he said. "I like best to have it out. Do you know, Lucy,
that it is supposed your sex are all of that mind? You believe what you
like, and the reason for your faith does not trouble you. You must not
suppose that you are singular in that respect."
To this she listened without any response at all either in words or
look, except, perhaps, a little lifting of her eyelids in faint
surprise; for Lucy was not concerned about what was common to her sex.
Nor did she take such questions at all into consideration. Therefore,
this speech sounded to her irrelevant; and so quick was Sir Tom's
intelligence that, though he made it as a sort of conventional
necessity, he saw that it was irrelevant too. It might have been all
very well to address a clever woman who could have given him back his
reply in such words. But to Lucy's straightforward, simple, limited
intellect such dialectics were altogether out of place. Her very want of
capacity to understand them made them a disrespect to her which she had
done nothing to deserve. He coloured in his quick sense of this, and
sudden perception that his wife in the limitation of her intellect and
fine perfection of her moral nature was such an antagonist as a man
might well be alarmed to meet, more alarmed even than she generously was
to displease him.
"I beg your pardon, Lucy," he said, "I was talking to you as if you were
one of the ordinary people. All this must be treated between you and me
on a different footing. I have a great deal more experience than you
have, and I ought to know better. You must let me show you how it
appears to me. You see I don't pretend not to know what the point was. I
have felt for a long time that it was one that must be cleared up
between you and me. I never thought of Jock coming in," he said with a
laugh. "That is quite a new and unlooked-for feature; but begging his
pardon, though he is a clever fellow, we will leave Jock out of the
question. He can't be supposed to have much knowledge of the world."
"No," said Lucy, with a little suspicion. She did not quite see what
this had to do with it, nor what course her husband was going to adopt,
nor indeed at all what was to follow.
"Your father's will was a very absurd one," he said.
At this Lucy was slightly startled, but she said after a moment, "He did
not think what hard things he was leaving me to do."
"He did not think at all, it seems to me," said Sir Tom; "so far as I
can see he merely amused himself by arranging the world after his
fashion, and trying how much confusion he could make. I don't mean to
say anything unkind of him. I should like to have known him: he must
have been a character. But he has left us a great deal of botheration.
This particular thing, you know, that you are driving yourself crazy
about is sheer absurdity, Lucy. Solomon himself could not do it,--and
who are you, a little girl without any knowledge of the world, to see
into people's hearts, and decide whom it is safe to trust?"
"You are putting more upon me than poor papa did, Tom," said Lucy, a
little more cheerfully. "He never said, as we do in charities, that it
was to go to deserving people. I was never intended to see into their
hearts. So long as they required it and got the money, that was all he
wanted."
"Well, then, my dear," said Sir Tom, "if your father in his great sense
and judgment wanted nothing but to get rid of the money, I wonder he did
not tell you to stand upon Beachy Head or Dover Cliff on a certain day
in every year and throw so much of it into the sea--to be sure," he
added with a laugh, "that would come to very much the same thing--for
you can't annihilate money, you can only make it change hands--and the
London roughs would soon have found out your days for this wise purpose
and interrupted it somehow. But it would have been just as sensible.
Poor little woman! Here I am beginning to argue, and abusing your poor
father, whom, of course, you were fond of, and never so much as offering
you a chair! There is something on every one of them, I believe. Here,
my love, here is a seat for you," he said, displacing a box of
curiosities and clearing a corner for her by the fire. But Lucy resisted
quietly.
"Wouldn't it do another time, Tom?" she said with a little anxiety, "for
Aunt Randolph is all by herself, and she will wonder what has become of
me; and baby will be coming back from his walk." Then she made a little
pause, and resumed again, folding her hands, and raising her mild eyes
to his face. "I am very sorry to go against you, Tom. I think I would
rather lose all the money altogether. But there is just one thing, and
oh, do not be angry! I must carry out papa's will if I were to die!"
Her husband, who had begun to enter smilingly upon this discussion, with
a certainty of having the best of it, and who had listened to her
smilingly in her simple pleas for deferring the conversation, pleas
which he was very willing to yield to, was so utterly taken by surprise
at this sudden and most earnest statement, that he could do nothing but
stare at her, with a loud alarmed exclamation, "Lucy!" and a look of
utter bewilderment in his face. But she stood this without flinching,
not nervous as many a woman might have been after delivering such a
blow, but quite still, clasping her hands in each other, facing him with
a desperate quietness. Lucy was not insensible to the tremendous nature
of the utterance she had just made.
"This is surprising, indeed, Lucy," cried Sir Tom. He grew quite pale in
that sensation of being disobeyed, which is one of the most disagreeable
that human nature is subject to. He scarcely knew what to reply to a
rebellion so complete and determined. To see her attitude, the look of
her soft girlish face (for she looked still younger than her actual
years), the firm pose of her little figure, was enough to show that it
was no rash utterance, such as many a combatant makes, to withdraw from
it one hour after. Sir Tom, in his amazement, felt his very words come
back to him; he did not know what to say. "Do you mean to tell me," he
said, almost stammering in his consternation, "that whatever I may think
or advise, and however mad this proceeding may be, you have made up your
mind to carry it out whether I will or not?"
"Tom! in every other thing I will do what you tell me. I have always
done what you told me. You know a great deal better than I do, and never
more will I go against you; but I knew papa before I knew you. He is
dead; I cannot go to him to ask him to let me off, to tell him you don't
like it, or to say it is more than I can do. If I could I would do that.
But he is dead: all that he can have is just that I should be faithful
to him. And it is not only that he put it in his will, but I gave him my
promise that I would do it. How could I break my promise to one that is
dead, that trusted in me? Oh, no, no! It will kill me if you are angry;
but even then, even then, I must do what I promised to papa."
The tears had risen to her eyes as she spoke: they filled her eyelids
full, till she saw her husband only through two blinding seas: then they
fell slowly one after another upon her dress: her face was raised to
him, her features all moving with the earnestness of her plea. The
anguish of the struggle against her heart, and desire to please him, was
such that Lucy felt what it was to be faithful till death. As for Sir
Tom, it was impossible for such a man to remain unmoved by emotion so
great. But it had never occurred to him as possible that Lucy could
resist his will, or, indeed, stand for a moment against his injunction;
he had believed that he had only to say to her, "You must not do it,"
and that she would have cried, but given way. He felt himself utterly
defeated, silenced, put out of consideration. He did nothing but stare
and gasp at her in his consternation; and, more still, he was betrayed.
Her gentleness had deceived him and made him a fool; his pride was
touched, he who was supposed to have no pride. He stood silent for a
time, and then he burst out with a sort of roar of astonished and angry
dismay.
"Lucy, do you mean to tell me that you will disobey me?" he cried.
CHAPTER XIII.
AN IDLE MORNING.
The Dowager Lady Randolph had never found the Hall so dull. There was
nothing going on, nothing even to look forward to: one formal
dinner-party was the only thing to represent that large and cordial
hospitality which she was glad to think had in her own time
characterised the period when the Hall was open. She had never pretended
to be fond of the county society. In the late Sir Robert's time she had
not concealed the fact that the less time she spent in it the better she
was pleased. But when she was there, all the county had known it. She
was a woman who loved to live a large and liberal life. It was not so
much that she liked gaiety, or what is called pleasure, as that she
loved to have people about her, to be the dispenser of enjoyment, to
live a life in which there was always something going on. This is a
temperament which meets much censure from the world, and is stigmatised
as a love of excitement, and by many other unlovely names; but that is
hard upon the people who are born with it, and who are in many cases
benefactors to mankind. Lady Randolph's desire was that there should
always be something doing--"a magic lantern at the least," she had said.
Indeed, there can be no doubt that in managing that magic lantern she
would have given as much satisfaction to everybody, and perhaps managed
to enjoy herself as much, as if it had been the first entertainment in
Mayfair. She could not stagnate comfortably, she said; and as so much of
an ordinary woman's life must be stagnation more or less gracefully
veiled, it may be supposed that Lady Randolph had learned the useful
lesson of putting up with what she could get when what she liked was not
procurable. And it was seldom that she had been set down to so languid a
feast as the present. On former occasions a great deal more had been
going on, except the last year, which was that of the baby's birth, on
which occasion Lucy was, of course, out of the way of entertainment
altogether. Lady Randolph had, indeed, found her visits to the Hall
amusing, which was delightful, seeing they were duty visits as well. She
had stayed only a day or two at that time--just long enough to kiss the
baby and talk for half an hour at a time, on two or three distinct
opportunities, to the young mother in v
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