“And that is just my case, too,” Lucy said.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A CROQUET PARTY.
The Rushtons lived in a big old red brick house close to the town hall in what was still called the market-place of Farafield, though all the meaner hubbub of the market had long ago been banished to the square behind, with its appropriate buildings. It was a house of the time of Queen Anne, with rows of glittering windows surmounted by a pediment, and though it was in the center of the town a fine old walled garden behind. To Lucy this garden seemed the brightest place imaginable when she was led into it through the shady passages of the old house, the thick walls and rambling arrangement of which defended it from the blazing of the August skies, which penetrated with pitiless heat and glare the naked walls of the Terrace, built without any consideration of atmospheric changes. Mrs. Rushton’s drawing-room was green and cool—all the venetian blinds carefully closed on one side, and on the other looking out upon the trees and shady lawn where two or three young people, girls in light dresses and young men scarcely less summer-like in costume, were playing croquet. These were the days when croquet still reigned on all lawns and country places, and nobody had as yet discovered that it was “slow.” The party was of the usual orthodox kind. There was a young, a very young curate in a long black coat and a wide-awake, and a second young man in light clothes with his hands in his pockets, whom Lucy’s inexperienced eyes with difficulty distinguished from Raymond Rushton; and two or three girls, one of them the daughter of the house, Emma, a shy hoyden of sixteen. All these young people looked with great curiosity at Lucy as she followed Mrs. Rushton out of the house in her black frock, Jock clinging closely to her. Jock, though he had a great deal of self-possession on ordinary occasions, was shy in such an unusual emergency as this. He had never been at a garden party, he was not used to society, and he did not know how to play croquet, in all which points Lucy was almost as uninstructed as he. There was a tea-table set out under an old mulberry-tree, with garden-chairs and rugs spread out upon the grass. Nothing could be more pleasant, cool, leisurely, and comfortable. It was indeed a scene such as might be seen on a summer afternoon in almost every garden with a good-sized house attached to it, with a lawn and a mulberry-tree, throughout England. But then Lucy was not much acquainted with such places, and to her everything was new. They all stood and looked at her as she followed Mrs. Rushton across the grass—looked at her with inward sighs and wonderings. To think she should be so rich, while none of the others had anything to speak of. It did not perhaps go so far as actual envy; but it was certainly surprise, and a bewildered question why such good fortune should have fallen to an inconsiderable girl, and not at all to the others who might have been supposed able to make so much more use of it. The young men could not help feeling that the enjoyment which they could have extracted out of so much money would have been far more than anything a girl could derive from it. Not one of the three perhaps went any further, or at least went so far as to ask whether there were any means by which he could appropriate such a fortune, except indeed Raymond, who was in a most uncomfortable state, knowing that his mother intended him to begin at once to “pay attention” to Lucy, and not knowing in the least how to begin. Lucy was put into the most comfortable chair, as if she had been a dowager, and even Jock was wooed as he had never been wooed before.
“Oh, you will soon learn how to play,” all the young people said in a chorus; “it is very easy.”
Lucy thought they were all very kind, and she thought the lawn a kind of little paradise, with all the sights and sounds of the ruder world shut out.
“Emmie and I almost live here,” Mrs. Rushton said. “We bring out our work in the morning; you can’t think how pleasant it is. I wish, my dear Lucy, that it could have been arranged that you should live with your guardian instead of those good relations of yours. They are very nice, but it is always more cheerful where there are young people. I wish it could be managed. The Fords are excellent people; but they are in a different rank of society. I was speaking to Mr. Rushton about it, but he does not seem to think anything can be done; men are so entirely without resources. You may depend upon it I should find some way in which it could be done, if it depended on me.”
“I don’t think it could be done, Mrs. Rushton; it is all very exact in the will.”
“Then I suppose you stand up very firmly by the will—in every particular, my dear?” Mrs. Rushton said, with a significant look.
“How could I help it?” said Lucy. She preferred looking at the croquet to discussing the will, and she wished Raymond would go and play, and not stand by her chair, looming over her. His mother looked at him from time to time, and when these appeals were made he took his hands out of his pockets and grew red and cleared this throat. But nothing ever came of it. Lucy did not know what to say to this embarrassed young man; he seemed so much further off from her by being so much nearer than Sir Tom. At length, she asked with some diffidence, “Are you not going to play?”
“Oh, my mother thought you would like—to walk round the garden.”