Lady Lucy's secret

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

The Gold Thimble.
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[CHAPTER I.]

I WONDER whether, if you had seen Lady Lucy sitting at her work that warm August morning, you would have thought her a person to be envied. She certainly looked very pretty, and not at all unhappy, as she sat in her straight-backed chair, carrying her long-waisted, snugly-laced little figure very upright, her shoulders down, and her chin drawn in,—bridled, as the phrase went. In those days—for this was at the beginning of the eighteenth century—great attention was paid to the carriage of young ladies,—more than appears to be thought necessary at the present time, to judge by the attitudes into which I often see little girls throw themselves, even in company. They were taught to sit and stand very upright, to carry their arms carefully, to turn out their toes and hold up their heads. No stooping was permitted over books or work; and while Lady Lucy was living with her aunt Bernard, she used to have a bunch of knitting-needles stuck into her bodice, to keep her from "poking" over her work.

Lady Lucy was young,—only a little past eleven years old,—and small for her age: nevertheless, she was the rightful heir of the splendid room in which she now sat, with its heavy carved furniture, its worked tapestry hangings, and inlaid cabinets,—of the fine old house, Stanton Court,—of the lovely gardens and shrubbery which lay stretched before the windows, and the beautiful park, and many a farm and moorland besides. She could only just remember her mother as a delicate lady, with beautiful long black hair and dark eyes, who was very kind to her and used to talk to her in a musical, soft-sounding language, which was not English, nor at all like any tongue she ever heard nowadays. When Lady Lucy learned to be confidential with Cousin Debby, she told her of this strange language in which her mother used to talk; and Cousin Debby informed her that the language was Italian, and that some day she should learn it herself.

When Lucy thought of her mother, it was always as sitting down on the floor to play with her, or hearing her say her prayers, or else as she lay in her coffin all dressed in white, when Aunt Bernard would make the child kiss the cold face, and called her an unfeeling, heartless girl, because she had cried and screamed to get away and had declared that that was not her mother. Lucy almost thought that she began to hate Aunt Bernard from that moment. Certainly there was always war between them from that day; and, though Aunt Bernard was the stronger and compelled the child to obey, she never won her love.

It was not so very pleasant, after all, this being an heiress, with no father or mother to love and pet one, no little sisters for playmates to help dress the doll or nurse the kitten, or to make foxglove dolls and cowslip-balls, or tell tales in the seat under the tall old elm. Aunt Bernard said that, for her part, she meant to do her duty by the child: there would be people enough to spoil and flatter her by-and-by. I really think, too, that when she began she meant what she said,—though she was perhaps mistaken as to what constituted her duty but, as the time wore on, and she could not but see that Lucy disliked her, she began in her turn to dislike Lucy and the poor child led a hard life of it.

Aunt Bernard lived in a beautiful place. It was an old timbered house, of which the beams were black with age and the plastered spaces between marked off into patterns. There was a beautiful though not very large garden, with green alleys and grass-plots, where Lucy would have liked to play if she had been allowed, and where grew abundance of flowers. At the bottom of the garden was a tall hedge, clipped close and smooth like a wall, with arched openings leading through to another green, beyond which, again, was a pretty stream where ducks and geese, and one old swan, sailed up and down all day long.

Lucy would have enjoyed playing on the green, and sailing little boats upon the stream, and throwing bits of bread to the waterfowls but she was never allowed to do any of these things. If she ever ventured to run or romp, she was reminded that she was a lady,—a countess in her own right,—and that she must not demean herself like the parson's little girls, who worked in the hay-field, or gathered cowslips for wine in the meadows, or herbs and roots for their mother to distil into medicines and cordials. Lucy used many times to wish that she had been the daughter of that stout, good-natured gentleman and his plump, rosy little wife, who walked to church every Sunday morning followed by their ten children, two by two, and looking so happy and pleasant. True, the little Burgess girls hardly ever seemed to have new gowns or hoods, even for Sundays, and their weekday frocks were coarse and mended but she was sure that Polly and Dulcie Burgess were much happier than she was. But when she ventured to express this thought to Hannah, her aunt's waiting-woman, Hannah reproved her sharply, and added that it served Mrs. Kitty Lindsay right for marrying a poor parson, that she should have such a host of children and nothing to keep them decent.

Poor Lucy could not make hay, or gather primroses in the lanes, or carry jugs of skim-milk to the poor old people, as Polly Burgess did. She must practise on her lute so many hours a day, instead of singing sweet old country songs and ballads like Polly and her sister. She must work at her sampler and her satin stitches so many hours more, and read and write so much longer. She must read so many chapters in the Bible aloud to Aunt Bernard, taking them as they came, whether it were a long chapter of hard names and nothing else, or a beautiful story in the New Testament. She must learn her lesson standing in the stocks to make her turn her toes out, and carrying a heavy bag of beans upon her head that she might attain a good carriage, or strapped up to a back-board or lying flat upon the floor, to straighten her back.

If there was daylight enough after all this was done, she might walk up and down the green path in the garden and around the shrubbery for a certain length of time. There was one place in her walk where Lucy was out of sight of the garden-windows for some little distance and here she used to peep among the branches for the birds' nests, and strew for the robin-redbreasts the few crumbs she could contrive to save from her breakfast. There was a garden-seat, too, old and broken, where she could venture to rest a few minutes and look at the sky or the water, while she thought about her mother and wondered if she remembered her poor little girl who was so very, very unhappy and lonely without her.