CHAPTER VIII.
SHOWING HOW IT HAPPENED.
Lucy had insisted that she did not care to go to Saratoga. She preferred remaining in Hanover, where it was cool and quiet, and where she would not have to dress three times a day and dance every night until twelve. She was beginning to find that there was something to live for besides consulting one’s own pleasure, and she meant to do good the rest of her life, she said, assuming such a sober, nun-like air, that no one who saw her could fail to laugh, it was so at variance with her entire nature. But Lucy was in earnest. Hanover had a greater attraction for her than all the watering-places in the world, and she was very grateful when Fanny threw her influence on her side and so turned the scale in her favor.
Fanny was glad to leave her dangerous cousin at home, especially after Mr. Bellamy decided to join their party at Saratoga; and as she carried great weight with both her parents it was finally decided to let Lucy remain at Prospect Hill in peace, and one morning in July she saw the family depart without a single feeling of regret that she was not of their number. She had far too much on her hands to spend her time in regretting anything: there was the parish school to visit, and a class of children to hear, children who were no longer ragged, for Lucy’s money had been expended till even Arthur had remonstrated with her, and read her a long lecture on the subject of misapplied charity. Then there was Widow Hobbs waiting for the jelly which Lucy had promised, and for the chapter which Lucy now read to her, sitting where she could watch the road and see just who turned the corner, her voice always sounding a little more serious and good when the footsteps belonged to Arthur Leighton, and her eyes always glancing at the bit of a cracked mirror on the wall, to see that her dress and hair and ribbons were right before Arthur came in. It was a very pretty sight to see her thus and hear her as she read to the poor, whose surroundings she had so greatly improved; and Arthur always smiled gratefully upon her, and then walked back with her to Prospect Hill, where he lingered while she played or talked to him, or brought the luscious fruits with which the garden abounded.
This was Lucy’s life, which she preferred to Saratoga, and they left her to enjoy it, somewhat to Arthur’s discomfiture, for, much as he valued her society, he would rather she had gone where the Hethertons did, for he could not be insensible to the remarks which were being made by the curious villagers, who watched this new flirtation, as they called it, and wondered if their minister had forgotten Anna Ruthven. He had not forgotten her, and many a time was her loved name upon his lips and a thought of her in his heart, while he never returned from an interview with Lucy that he did not contrast the two, and sigh for the olden time when Anna was his coworker instead of pretty Lucy Harcourt. And yet there was about the latter a powerful fascination which he found it hard to resist. It rested him just to look at her, she was so fresh, so bright, and so beautiful; and then she flattered his self-love by the unbounded deference she paid to his opinions, studying all his tastes and bringing her will into perfect subjection to his, until she could scarcely be said to have a thought or feeling which was not a reflection of his own. And so the flirtation, which at first had been a one-sided affair, began to assume a more serious form, and the rector went oftener to Prospect Hill, while the Hetherton carriage stood daily at the gate of the parsonage, and people talked and gossiped, until Captain Humphreys, Anna’s grandfather, concluded it was his duty as senior warden of St. Mark’s, to talk with the young rector and know “what his intentions were.”
“You have none?” he said, fixing his mild eyes reproachfully upon his clergyman, who recoiled a little beneath the gaze. “Then, if you have no intentions, my advice to you is that you quit it and let the gal alone, or you’ll ruin her, if she ain’t spoilt already, as some of the women folks say she is. It don’t do no gal any good to have a chap, and ’specially a minister, gallivantin’ after her, as I must say you’ve been after this one for the last few weeks. She’s a pretty little creeter, and I don’t blame you for liking her. It makes my old blood stir faster when she comes purring around me, with her soft ways and winsome face, and so I don’t wonder at you, but when you say you’ve no intentions, I blame you greatly. You or’to have. Excuse my plainness; I’m an old man, and I like my minister, and don’t want him to go wrong; and then I feel for her, left all alone by all her folks; more’s the shame to them, and more’s the harm to you, to tangle up her affections as you are doing if you are not in earnest; and so I speak for her just as I should want some one to speak for Anna!”
The old man’s voice trembled a little here, for it had been a wish of his that Anna should occupy the parsonage, and he had at first felt a little resentment against the gay young creature who seemed to have supplanted her, but he was over that now, and in all honesty of heart he spoke both for Lucy’s interest and that of his clergyman. And Arthur listened to him respectfully, feeling when he was gone that he merited the rebuke,—that he had not been guiltless in the matter,—that if he did not mean to marry Lucy Harcourt he should let her alone. And he would, he said,—he would not go to Prospect Hill again for two whole weeks, nor visit at the cottages where he was sure to find her; he would keep himself at home; and he did, and shut himself up among his books, not even going to make a pastoral call on Lucy when he heard that she was sick. And so Lucy came to him, looking dangerously charming in her blue riding-habit with the white feather streaming from her hat. Very prettily she pouted, too, as she chided him for his neglect, and asked why he had not been to see her nor anybody;—there was the Widow Hobbs, and Mrs. Briggs, and those miserable Donelsons, whom he had not been near for a fortnight.
“What is the reason?” she asked, beating her foot upon the carpet and tapping the end of her riding-whip upon the sermon he was writing. “Are you displeased with me, Arthur,” she continued, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the expression of his face. “Have I done anything wrong; I am so sorry if I have.”
Her voice had in it the grieved tones of a little child, and her eyes were very bright with the tears quivering on her long eyelashes. Leaning back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, a position he usually assumed when puzzled and perplexed, the rector looked at her a moment before he spoke. He could not define to himself the nature of the interest he took in Lucy Harcourt. He admired her greatly, and the self-denials and generous exertions she had made to be of use to him since Anna went away, had touched a tender chord and made her seem very near to him. Habit with him was everything, and the past two weeks’ isolation had shown him how necessary she had become to him. She did not satisfy his higher wants as Anna Ruthven had done. No one could ever do that, but she amused and soothed and rested him, and made his duties lighter by taking half of them upon herself. That she was more attached to him than he could wish he greatly feared, for since Captain Humphreys’ visit he had seen matters differently from what he saw them before, and had unsparingly questioned himself as to how far he would be answerable for her future weal or woe.
“Guilty, verily I am guilty in leading her on if I meant nothing by it,” he had written against himself, pausing in his sermon to write it just as Lucy came in, appealing to him to know why he had neglected her so long.