“Thank you, Aunt Ford,” said Lucy faintly. “It is very pretty—but— I was thinking of papa.”
These words checked the rising disappointment and displeasure in the mind of Mrs. Ford, who, if not very refined in her perceptions, was kind, and had a sincere if jealous affection for the girl committed to her care. She took Lucy into her arms and consoled her with much petting and caressing. “Yes, my pet, I knew you would feel it. Yes, my petty! Of course it brings it all back. But after the first you’ll find the change of the furniture very comforting,” Mrs. Ford said.
Lucy did not know what to say when the first pangs of recollection were over. She went round the room and looked at everything, and did her best to praise. Six months ago she would have thought it all beautiful. Even now she had no opinion on the matter, or taste that she was aware of; but she had been six months away in a different atmosphere, and nothing could undo or change that fact. She said everything she could to show her gratitude. Whatever might be said about the curtains or the carpets, the kindness was indisputable; and it was all very pretty, probably quite as nice as the other way; but it was different. That was all that was to be said—everything was different. She placed herself in the lady’s chair which stood in the place of her father’s old seat, and found it very comfortable. It was not comfort that was wanting; it was— Lucy did not know what—it was different. Where she sat she could see, through the windows and lines of the curtains, the White House shining in the afternoon sunshine, and the road across the common, still green with all the freshness of summer. It was very different from the burned-up parks and the rows of London houses, but not in the same way.
“It is all for you, Lucy,” said Mrs. Ford, not quite satisfied with the commendation she had received. “For my part, there is nothing I like so well as my own parlor. It may be vulgar, but that’s my taste. I don’t want to be moving about all day long from the drawing-room to the dining-room. I like to feel myself at home. But you are young, and that’s a different thing. You have to do as other people do. There’s one thing—just one thing I can’t give in to: I can’t begin at my time of life to be eating my dinner when I should be having my tea; tea’s far more to me than any dinner, I never was a great eater, and as for wine, I can’t abide it. A cup of tea and a bit of toast—that’s what I like. I’ll see to your dinner if you wish, like in your poor papa’s time, but I can’t change, that’s just the one thing I can’t do.”
“I do not care for dinner,” said Lucy; “I will do whatever you do, it does not matter to me.”
“If that’s so,” said Mrs. Ford brightening, and she came up to her charge and kissed her affectionately, “whatever we can get, or whatever we can do to make you happy, Lucy, you have only to say it: never mind the expense. If there is one thing you have a fancy for more than another, if it should be game, or whatever it is, you shall have it. And this room is yours, my pet. You’ll excuse me sitting here; I think there’s nothing like my parlor; but when you want me you can always send for me. And here you shall always find everything kept nice; and as for a cup of tea, whenever you want it— I shouldn’t wonder if you were kept very short up there.”
Mrs. Ford jerked her thumb over her shoulder by way of indicating Lucy’s former abode. “I know what fine ladies are,” she said: “a fine outside and not much within. Horses and carriages and all that show, and footmen waiting, and silver dishes on the table, but not much inside.”
“Lady Randolph was not like that,” Lucy said faintly. She did not know whether to laugh or to cry; but her companion took her hesitation as a proof of the correctness of her own judgment, and was triumphant.
“I know ’em,” she said. “I don’t give myself any airs Lucy, but I know you’ll find nothing like that here. No show, but everything good, and plenty of it, and not so much fuss made about you—for we’ve got no ends to serve, Ford and me—but if there’s a thing you want you shall have it; that is our way, and I don’t see but what you may be very happy here. Keep all these folks that will be gathering round you, and making believe to adore you, at a distance, and keep yourself to yourself, and don’t put your faith in the Rushtons, nor the Stones, nor any of the Farafield folks; and I don’t see, Lucy my pet, but what you may be very happy here. And now, my darling, I’ll go down-stairs and see after the tea.”
Lucy was left alone accordingly, seated in the familiar room, so changed and transformed, and looking out somewhat drearily upon the common, which had not changed, which she had crossed so often in those old days that were never to come back, that could not come back, neither the simple habits of them, nor the gentle ease of mind and happy ignorance of everything beyond their quiet round. It was not a cheerful programme which her present guardian had traced for her, and Lucy, sitting very still, not caring to move, in the most strangely complete and depressing solitude which she had ever been conscious of, went further in her thoughts than Mrs. Ford. Had it all been a mistake? Her father’s favorite theory, his pet whim about her, his determination to divide her life between the different worlds of society, one part of it on the higher level, one on the lower, was that to prove itself at once a hopeless blunder? Lucy felt too much dulled and stupefied by the sudden change to be able to think about it; a sensation as of a sudden fall, a precipitate descent down, down, into a world she no longer understood, pervaded her being. Lady Randolph’s world had not been a very lofty one; was it possible that it was the mere external change from one kind of house to another, from a companion who dressed with exquisite taste to one who huddled on her common clothes anyhow, and wore crape flowers in her bonnet; from old, soft, mossy Turkey carpets to brilliant modern Brussels, that gave her this sensation of downfall? Lucy did not ask herself the question, nor did it even suggest itself in any formal way to her mind, only a vague sense of the impossibility of the return, the radical change in all things, the space she had traversed which could not be gone back, overwhelmed her vaguely. If it had been a poor country cottage, a rustic farm-house, real poverty to contrast with the soft surroundings of wealth, the contrast might have been salutary, and it might have been natural. But the Terrace was nothing but a vulgar, unintelligent copy of the house she had come from, the life set before her now was but a poor imitation of that she had left, but narrowed and limited and shut in, cut off by jealous precautions from all the human fellowship that made the other attractive. Ford and his wife, in their little stuffy parlor, at their teatable, eating their toast and their shrimps, were as respectable in themselves as Lady Randolph at the head of the pretty table covered with flowers, softly lighted, and noiselessly served. Probably they were more honest, more strictly sincere, than she, and their love for Lucy was a very genuine love, more profound than her easy affections. But how was it? Lucy could not tell—to step down all in a moment from Lady Randolph to the Fords was something incomprehensible and impossible. She could not go back these six months, the new life had claimed her; she was not capable of resuming the old where she had left it off. This feeling humiliated and depressed her, she could not tell how or why. Had they been living in a little cottage in the country, had they been quite poor, so that she should have had homely services to do for them, help to give, that would have been practicable; but to come back to the Terrace with her maid, and her horse, and her groom, and her new habits, to have all the indulgences without any of the graces of existence! Lucy sat sadly in the pink room, all newly bedizened and fine, dressed out by ignorance and kindness for her pleasure, but not pleasing her at all, and pondered, dreary and down-hearted. Was it possible that papa himself had not understood? that he did not know what the real differences were, but had made to himself some picture of extravagant splendor on the one side, to be tempered by the Fords and their respectable parlor on the other? Alas! Lucy felt more and more, as she reflected, that poor papa did not understand. It made her heart sore to sit in the place where he had sat, and to contemplate this, and to feel that perhaps, as Sir Thomas had said, to follow out all those regulations of his, which she had thought a happiness and consolation, might turn out nothing less than a bondage. Everything seemed somewhat blank before her, as she sat thus solitary. She knew the routine so well, there was no margin of the unexpected, no novelty to carry her on. She had been so deep in thought that she had not felt a pull at her dress several times repeated. At last Jock could have patience no longer.