“I know,” said Mrs. Ford, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. “I’ve seen it from the very first in your face, Lucy. I’m not a fine lady, like your Lady Randolph; I can’t put a smooth face on everything and let you go sailing over a precipice as if it were nothing to me. I am only one that speaks out plain what is in my mind, and one that has known you from your cradle, and have no ends of my own, but your interest at heart. But to be plain and true’s not enough for you any longer. I’ve known it all this time, I’ve seen it in your face; but I didn’t think you would put it into words, and before strangers, and me Lucilla Rainy’s cousin, and one that has known you from your cradle, and nursed your father on his death-bed; oh, I never thought you could have the heart to put it into words!”
“Have I said anything wrong?” said Lucy, in great distress. She was bewildered by the sudden attack, and horrified by the scene, “before strangers;” for Lucy had all the instincts of respectability, and to see Mrs. Ford’s tears filled her with pain and involuntary compunction; but she was not so emotional as to lose her sense of justice. “I did not mean to say anything wrong,” she repeated, anxiously. Mrs. Ford’s tears were a little slow in coming; she sniffed, and she held her handkerchief to her face, which was red with anger and excitement, but she did not possess, at any time, a great command over tears.
Then Philip took up the part of peace-maker.
“You said yourself, two minutes ago, that Lucy was not changed,” he said. “Because you think she should be on her guard, you don’t want her to be unhappy; and if she does not like her friends, how can she be happy, Mrs. Ford? So good a friend as you are must know that. To be sure,” said Philip, “we of the Rainy family can’t help being a little anxious and fussy about our heiress, can we? We think more of her than other people can, and care more for her.”
“That is the truth, that is the very truth,” cried Mrs. Ford. And thus the incident blew over in professions that Lucy’s interest and happiness were all she thought of, on one side, and, on the other, that she meant to say nothing which could hurt Mrs. Ford’s feelings.
Philip went upstairs with the girls after this, into the pink drawing-room, where he sat all the evening, forgetting his dinner. He had come to see Lucy, but it was Katie Russell who took the conversation in hand; and as he was a very staid young man, not used to the lighter graces of conversation, Katie’s chatter and the perpetual variations of her pretty face were a sort of revelation to Philip. He was entirely carried beyond himself and all his purposes by this new being. Lucy sat tranquilly in her corner and assisted, but did little more. She was amused to see her grave cousin laughed at and subdued, and the evening flew over them, as evenings rarely fly in more edifying intercourse. The talk and laughter were at their height, when Katie, going to the piano to sing “just one more song,” suddenly discovered that it was too dark to see her music, and stopped short with a cry of dismay. “Why, it is dark! and I never noticed— What will Mrs. Stone think? I came over only for half an hour, and I am staying all the night. Lucy, good-bye, I must go now.”
“But you have promised me this song,” Philip said; “there are candles to be had.”
“And you are not going to run away like that. Jock and I will go home with you,” said Lucy, “and, perhaps, Philip will come, too.”
Philip thanked his cousin with his eyes, and the song was sung; and then the little party got under way. It was a warm still night, with a little autumnal mist softening all the edges of the horizon, and mild stars shining through with a kind yet pensive softness. Philip Rainy had been admirable in all the relations of life. He had done his duty by his parents, by his scholars, and by himself; he had combined a prudent sense of his own interests with justice to everybody, and kindness to those who had a claim upon him; and the life which lay behind him was one which any well-regulated young man might have looked back upon with pleasure. But all at once it seemed to the young school-master that it was the dreariest of desert tracks, and that up to this moment he had never lived at all. He had never understood before what the balmy atmosphere of a summer night meant, or how it was that the stars got soft, and came to bear a personal relation to the eyes that looked at them. What did it mean? He had come to see Lucy, but he barely perceived Lucy. All the world and all his interests seemed suddenly concentrated into the little circle in which that one little figure was standing. He stood beside her, drawn to her by a soft inexplainable influence. He walked beside her as in a dream, everything was sweet—the night air that lifted her bright hair and tossed it about her forehead; the gorse-bush that clung to her dress and had to be disengaged, every prickle giving him another delicious prick as he pulled them away. Whether he was dreaming, or whether he had gone clean out of his senses, or whether this was a new life of which he had never been conscious before, Philip did not know. When they arrived at the White House, which they did not do by honest, straightforward means, along the plain road that led to it, but by a quite unnecessary roundabout—an excursion led by Jock through all the narrowest byways—a sudden stop seemed to be put to this chapter of existence. He had a hand put into his for one second, a succession of merry nods, and farewells waved by the same hand, and then he stood with Lucy, come to himself, outside a blank door, a dropped curtain, a sudden conclusion. Philip stood gazing; he did not seem to have any energy even to turn round. Had it been suggested to him to lie down there and spend the night he would have thought the suggestion most reasonable. Had he been alone he would, no doubt, have lingered, for some time at least. Even as it was, he never knew how long a time—a minute, or an hour, or perhaps only an infinitesimal moment, too small to be reckoned on any watch—elapsed before, slowly coming to himself with the giddiness of a fall, he saw that he was with Lucy, and that she was turning to go home. Jock was roaming on in advance, a little moving solid speck in the vague dark, and Lucy moved on, softly and lightly, indeed, but with no enchantment about her steps. And then what she said was all of the old world, the antiquated dried-up Sahara of existence from which Philip had escaped for the first time in his life.
“It looks a little like rain,” Lucy said; “it is a good thing we are not far from home.”