“It is only Elizabeth,” said Lucy; “Oh, how like Sir Tom! he has put her in the carriage; Elizabeth—that is my maid. Would you rather I had not brought a maid, Aunt Ford?”
“A maid— I never see the use of them. You could have had Jane to help you when you wanted any extra dressing,” said Mrs. Ford, with gloom on her countenance. “What did I tell you, Ford? I said Lady Randolph would be sending some spy to keep a watch upon us. Do you call that a maid? sitting up as grand as possible in the carriage, as if she were the lady and you the servant. It’s like Sir Tom, is it? I don’t doubt but it’s like Sir Tom, he’s well enough known about here. He’s not one you should ever have spoken to, or sat down in the same room with him, if my consent had been asked. Many’s the story I could tell about Sir Tom, as you call him; oh, I don’t doubt it’s quite like him! and many a one he has ruined with his smiling ways.”
Jock had not been able so much as to open his book while he rattled along the Farafield streets in the fly, but he had not paid much attention to what was going on; now, however, moved by the practical necessity of getting out of the carriage, he awoke to what was going on around him. He had heard the voice of Mrs. Ford in this same key before. And he looked up suddenly with a surprised but serious countenance.
“Why is Aunty Ford scolding, and us just come? Is it you, or is it me, Lucy?” the little fellow said.
“Me scolding! God forbid!” cried the excited woman, and instead of getting out of the fly, she cried, and then, in a voice broken with sobs, entreated their pardon. “It’s all my anxiety,” she said, “I can’t abide that anything but what’s good should come to you. I’d like to keep you safe, like the apple of my eye; and that’s what Ford thinks too.”
This scene was rather an unpleasant beginning to the second chapter of life on which Lucy was now entering. She stood on the pavement before the familiar door, and tried to occupy the attention of Elizabeth, and keep her from observing Mrs. Ford’s agitation and tears. Elizabeth was too refined a person to take any notice. She was the very last improvement in the way of a maid, and could have written her mistress’s letters had that been desirable, a most useful attendant to ladies “whose education had been neglected.” Lady Randolph had not been at all sure of Lucy’s grammar or her h’s when she secured such a treasure. But fortunately Elizabeth’s superiority went so far as to have convinced her of the inexpediency of taking any notice of her employer’s private affairs. She turned her back upon the fly, where Mrs. Ford was sobbing. She had the air of seeing nothing.
“Sir Thomas made me come in the carriage, Miss Trevor. I could not help it,” she said.
“It makes me so happy to see you at home again,” Mrs. Ford said, commanding herself. “It is silly, I know, but I can’t help crying when I am happy. Come and carry in Miss Lucy’s things, Jane. Isn’t it a pleasure to see her back again? And you follow me, my darling, and I’ll let you see what we have done for you,” she said, with some triumph. Lucy went upstairs with a serious face. She thought she knew what she would find there, everything the same, no difference except in one thing—the old man sitting by the chimney-corner, with the big blue folios open on the writing-table, spreading the “Times” on his knees, rubbing his hands as she came in, looking up at her with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead. He would not be there, but the place would be full of him and of his image. She took Jock’s hand into hers, and led him upstairs. It was a pilgrimage upon which the two orphan children were going. “Come and see where papa used to sit,” she said. She had never made great demonstrations of sorrow, but her heart was full of her father and tears were in her eyes.
Mrs. Ford received them at the door with a look of triumph; but it was with consternation that Lucy saw what had happened. The whole room had been transmogrified. The Fords had given all their minds, and a great deal of money, which was of more immediate value, to the great work. Wherever it had been blue now it was pink. White curtains, very stiff with starch fluttered at the windows. There was a great deal of gilding about—gilt cornices, gilt chairs, gilt cabinets, and over the mantel-piece an enormous gilt frame inclosing a portrait of old Trevor, which the good people had caused to be painted by a local artist from an old daguerreotype, all with the kind intention of giving pleasure to Lucy. She gave a cry of dismay as she came in. Her father’s chair and his writing-table—objects which would have recalled him so much more tenderly than this portrait—had been carried away. In their place was what the upholsterer called a “lady’s chair,” covered in one of the newest and most fashionable cretonnes, stout little cupids disporting themselves on a pink ground, and a gilt and highly decorated work-table. Lucy stood at the door of the room with the checked tears feeling very hot and heavy behind her eyes.
“This is all for you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Ford, restored to good humor by the satisfaction with which she regarded her work; “everything in it has been done for you. We have been working at it these three months and more. If you had but heard us talking—’Do you think she would like this? and do you think she’d like that?’ and Ford would say, ‘I saw a little cabinet in William’s would just please Lucy,’ or ‘There’s some new curtains at Hemsdon’s are the very thing.’ We’ve done nothing else these three months. I declare I don’t think I ever slaved so much in my life—to get carpets that matched and a nice chintz, and the rugs and everything. But we kept the two old white rugs. Mr. Hemsdon said they were beauties. I was determined,” said the good woman, “that you should find something just as pretty as your fine London drawing-rooms. ‘She sha’n’t come home and find nothing but a dingy old place to sit in, and think my Lady Randolph’s is a paradise,’ is what I said to Ford, and he backed me up in everything. And now here it is, Lucy, my darling, and it’s all for you, and I hope you’ll be as happy in it as I and Ford wish you to be. I couldn’t say more if I were to talk from this to Christmas,” Mrs. Ford concluded with a tremulous warmth of enthusiasm which arose partly from the delightful consciousness of giving her charge a pleasant surprise, and partly from a quiver of uncertainty as to whether Lucy’s delight would be equal to the occasion. She added instantaneously, in a tone which was ready to be defiant, “You may have seen finer in London: I can’t say; but this I know, you’ll find nothing like it in Farafield, search where you may!”