But Lucy sat very disconsolate in front of the shining steel fire-place filled up with shavings, amid that blaze of gas, without even the little stir of a fire which might have given companionship at another season. She felt like a stranded sailor, like some one shipwrecked on a very clean, bright, polished desert island, where, however, there was not even the consolation of struggling for your living to keep you alive. She pondered all things that had happened, and that were going to happen. It had given her a painful sensation to hear Mrs. Stone speak of the Russells, and of the money which had come to them, which was just enough to enable them to live in comfort, as Lucy had intended. Had that been a failure, that first effort? And then she thought of the new claimant, the poor gentleman whom Mrs. Stone had hoped might be lord chancellor one day, and who was only able to be tutor to Jock. Surely it would be a right thing to give him enough to remove anxiety, as Mrs. Stone had said. And this time Lucy thought she would take care that there was enough, that no one should say it was a pittance. This idea made her face glow with as much shame as if she had cheated these poor people, to whom she had meant to be kind. How was she to know what was enough? especially for a gentleman. Oh, Lucy thought, if I could but ask some one! If some one would but tell me! But who was there whom she could consult on such a subject? Her guardians, instead of helping her, would certainly do all they could to hinder. They would put every kind of obstacle in her way. Instead of aiding her to make her calculations and ascertain how much was wanted, they would beat her down to the last penny, and try to persuade her that half of what she wanted to give would do. How difficult was this commission she held, this office of dispenser, almoner of posthumous bounty! Oh, if her father had but done it himself! he was old, he had experience, he must have known much better than she could know. But here Lucy stopped short and bethought herself of the conclusion that had been forced upon her, that poor papa did not understand. The world in which her timid footsteps were finding out painfully unaccustomed tracks was one of which even his keen eyes had not found out the conditions. In her stumblings and gropings she had already discovered more than his threescore and ten years of keen, imperfect theory had taught him. And now it was her part to suffer all the inconveniences and vexations which in his ignorance he had fixed upon her life. It never occurred to Lucy to make any effort to escape from them, or even to remain quiescent and refrain from doing the difficult things he had left her to do. She was determined to execute his will in every detail. Should she die even of this ennui and loneliness, she would yet bear it until the appointed moment; and, though she might have no more success than with the Russells, still she must flounder on. If she could only find somebody to help her, to give her a little guidance, to tell her how much, not how little, she ought to give? There was one indeed who might be a help to her, who would understand. But was it possible that even Sir Tom had deserted her? Three days, and he had not come to see her? At this thought there came into Lucy’s eyes something that felt very like a tear.
This, however, was the last of these silent days. In the morning Katie Russell burst upon her, all radiant with pleasure. “Oh, what a lucky girl you are!” Katie cried; “you have got all we used to talk of, Lucy, I never thought it would come true; but here you are, just looking the same as ever, though you have been living among swells; and come down to dazzle us all at Farafield, with beautiful horses, and heaps of money, and everybody after you. To think that all this should have happened to you, and nothing at all to me!”
Lucy did not like her friend’s tone. What had come over her that everything seemed to hurt her? “I don’t think very much has happened to me,” she said. “What has happened was all before I left here.”
Katie shook her head and her curly locks till she had almost shaken them off. “I know a great deal more than you think. I know what you were doing in London, and how you went riding about, and turning people’s heads. What a lucky girl you are, with everything that heart can desire! I don’t envy you, not wicked envy, because you are always as good as gold, and never give yourself airs; but you are a lucky girl. You don’t even know how different we poor ones are. I have never turned any one’s head,” said Katie, with a sigh.
“Do not talk of anything so silly,” said Lucy, blushing, she did not quite know why. “I think you are laughing at me; and to laugh at me is not kind, for I am not clever as you are, and can not make fun of you. Katie, tell me all about yourself, what you are doing; and tell me how they all are at Hampstead, and if they have got into the new house.”
“I am doing— I don’t know what I am doing,” said Katie, “dancing attendance on Mrs. Stone and old Southernwood. They are going to get me a situation in some nice family. I wish the nice family would turn up, for I am very tired waiting and wasting my holidays in this old place. It is nice being here? Oh, I know what you will say it is very nice, and I am very ungrateful; but though it is nice it is a school, Lucy and mamma does not want me at home, and I have got no other place to go. Lady Langton has been very kind; she asked me to go there for three days. But it’s dreary always coming back to school, for the White House is only school when all is said. They are all right at Hampstead, so far as I know. Did you hear what happened? Mamma has come into some money. It is not a very great sum, but it is a great help. It was some old relations, that no one had ever thought of, and mamma says it might just as well have been the double, for they were dreadfully rich. But anyhow it has been a great help. With what she had before, I believe they have quite enough to live on now, without doing anything,” Katie said with a little pride.
To all this Lucy listened with a countenance void of all expression. She had been half afraid of her friend’s gratitude: but there was something in this complete ignorance which was very bewildering. And when she looked at her own generosity through Katie’s eyes, so to speak, and saw it on the other side, she felt, too, that “it might as well have been the double,” and contemplated her own action with a mixture of shame and regret, instead of the satisfaction which she had vainly felt at first. And this little discovery made her first wound smart all the more. A certain fear crept over her. She would have liked to stop her ears from further revelations had she been able. But as that was impossible, Lucy listened patiently, with a blank countenance, trying hard to dismiss all appearance of feeling from her face.
“Mamma would like me to stay at home too,” Katie continued “She can not bear me to be a governess. But I could not do it; stay at home and sink down into Hampstead tea-parties—oh, I could not do it! If I get into a good family, Maud and the others will stand by me, and I shall have some fun at least and see life. To have only enough to live on, and to live at Hampstead, is more than I could put up with. Bertie, he has gone into chambers; he doesn’t live with mamma now. I don’t blame him, do you, Lucy? It must have been so slow for him, a young man. And now he has some money of his own, of course he has himself to think of. He is always”— Katie said slowly, watching her friend’s face—“always talking of you.”
Lucy did not make any response; but she was surprised by this unexpected change in the strain, and looked up involuntarily, with a half inquiry in her eyes.
“Oh, constantly!” said Katie, with a mixture of natural mischief and more serious purpose, not quite able to give up the pleasure of laughing at her companion, yet very seriously determined to help her brother. “He says you are cross about that dedication. How could you be cross about it? such a lovely dedication, making you into a famous person all at once! It is just the same as Dante did, and Petrarch, and all the poets, Bertie says. And it has brought him luck. Lucy, do you mind? He wants so much to come down here.”