“It is not a charitable fund—it is not charity at all. It was to be given in sums which would make the people independent. Why should you think worse of me than I deserve?” cried Lucy; “it is not my fault. I did not want him to say—that— I wanted to help him—to offer him—what papa left.”
Here Mrs. Stone burst out furious. “To offer him—my nephew—a man; and you a little chit of a girl, a nobody—help as you call it—alms! charity!”
“Maria— Maria!” said Miss Southwood. “Stop, I tell you. It is all nonsense about alms and charity. Good honest money is not a thing to be turned away from any one’s door. Lucy, my dear, speak to me. Enough to make people independent! Old Mr. Trevor was a wonderfully sensible old man. How much might that be? You have no right to spoil the boy’s chance. Oh, hold your tongue, Maria! Lucy, Lucy, my dear, do tell me.”
“I never knew that was what he meant, Miss Southwood,” said Lucy, eagerly. “How could I think that he—a Gentleman—” She used such a big capital for the word that it overbalanced Lucy’s eloquence. “And I only a little chit of a girl,” she added, with a tremulous laugh, “it is quite true. But there is this money, and I have to give it away. I have no choice. Papa said— And since he is not strong, and wants rest. Gentlemen want a great deal more money than women; but if it was only for a short time, till he got strong—perhaps,” said Lucy, faltering and hesitating, “a few thousand pounds—might do?”
The two ladies stood and stared at her confounded—they were struck dumb, both of them. Mrs. Stone’s commanding intellect stood her in as little stead as the good Southwood’s common sense, upon which she so prided herself. A few thousand pounds?
“And it would make me—so much more happy!” Lucy said. She put her hands together in the fervor of the moment entreating them; but they were both too entirely taken by surprise, too much overwhelmed by wonder and confusion to speak. Only when Mrs. Stone moved, as if in act to speak, Miss Southwood burst forth in alarm.
“Hold your tongue—hold your tongue,” she said, “Maria!” Never in all her life had she so ventured to speak to her dominant sister before.
But when Lucy finally withdrew from this interview it was with a heart calmed and comforted. Mrs. Stone was still stupefied; but her sister had recovered her wits. “You see, Maria, this money is not hers. It is trust money; it is quite a different thing; and she is not such a great heiress after all. Dear Frank, after all, might have been throwing himself away,” was what Miss Southwood said. Lucy heard this, as it were, with a corner of her ear, for, at the same time, the bell began to ring at the White House; and it was echoed faintly by another at a distance which she alone understood. This was the bell for Mrs. Ford’s early dinner, and Lucy knew that the door had been opened at No. 6 in the Terrace, in order that she, if within hearing, might be summoned home. And that was not an appeal which she ventured to disobey.
This morning’s adventure made Lucy’s heart much more light for her pleasure in the afternoon. When Raymond and Emmie rode up at two o’clock, he on the new horse which his father had permitted to be bought for this very cause, she sitting very clumsily on a clumsy pony, Lucy and Jock met them with nothing but smiles and brightness. It was not so bright as the day on which the expedition had been planned. The autumn afternoon had more mist than mellow fruitfulness in it, and there was a cold wind about which shook the leaves in clouds from the trees. And Raymond, for his part, was nervous and uncomfortable. He had a deep and growing sense of what was before him. At a distance, such a piece of work is not so terrible as when seen close at hand. But when time has gone on with inexorable stride to the very verge of a moment which nothing can delay, when the period has come beyond all possibility of escape, then it is not wonderful if the stoutest heart sinks. Raymond had got some advantages already by the mere prospect of this act to come. He had got a great many pleasant hours of leisure, escaping from the office, which he was not fond of; and he had got his horse, which was a very tangible benefit. And in the future what might he not hope for? Emancipation from the office altogether; a life of wealth and luxury; horses, as many as he could think of; hunting, shooting, everything that heart could desire; a “place” in the country; a box somewhere in Scotland; a fine house in town (which moved him less), and the delightful certainty of being his own master. All these hung upon his power of pleasing Lucy—nothing more than pleasing a girl. Raymond could not but think with a little scorn of the strange incongruity of mortal affairs which made all these happinesses hang upon the nod of a bit of a girl; but granting this, which he could not help granting, it was, he had frankly acknowledged, a much easier way of getting all the good things of life than that of laboriously striving for them all his life long—to succeed, perhaps, only at the end, when he was no longer able to enjoy them. “And you are fond of Lucy,” his mother said. Yes—this too the young man did not deny. He liked Lucy, he “did not mind” the idea of spending his life with her. She was very good-natured, and not bad-looking. He had seen girls he thought prettier; but she was not bad-looking, and always jolly, and not at all “stuck up” about her money; there was not a word to be said against her. And Raymond did not doubt that he would like it well enough were it done. But the doing of it! this was what alarmed him; for, after all, it must be allowed that, more or less, he was doing it in cold blood. And many things were against him on this special day. The wind was cold, and it was charged with dust, which blew into his eyes, making them red, and into his mouth, making him inarticulate. And Emmie clung to his side on one hand, and Jock on the other. He could not shake himself free of these two; when Lucy and he cantered forward, instead of jogging on discreetly, these two pests would push on after, Jock catching them up in no time, but Emmie, after lumbering along with tolerable rapidity for thirty yards or so, taking fright and shrieking “Ray! Ray!” Raymond concluded, at last, with a sense of relief, that to say anything on the way there would be impossible. It was a short reprieve for him, and for the moment his spirits rose. He shook his head slightly when they met the party who had gone in the break, and when his mother’s anxious eye questioned him, “No opportunity,” he whispered as he passed her. The party in the break were covered with dust, and they had laid hold upon all the wraps possible to protect them from the cold. There was shelter in the wood, but still it was cold, and the party was much less gay than the previous one had been, though Mrs. Rushton herself did all that was possible to “keep it up.” Perhaps the party itself was not so well selected as on that previous occasion. It was larger, which, of itself, was a mistake, and Bertie, who did not know the people, yet was too great a personage to be neglected, proved rather in Mrs. Rushton’s way. He would stray after Lucy, interfering with Ray’s “opportunity,” and then would apologize meekly for his “indiscretion,” with a keen eye for all that was going on.
“Oh, there is no indiscretion,” Mrs. Rushton said; “but young people, you know, young people seeing a great deal of each other, they like to get together.”