At this Lucy began to feel an impulse if not of self-defense, yet of resistance on her friend’s behalf. “Please do not speak so of Lady Randolph,” she said, with mild firmness; “if you are angry with me— I do not know why it is, but if you are angry I am very sorry, and you must say what you please of me—but Lady Randolph! I think,” said Lucy, tears coming to her eyes, “if I am not to trust Lady Randolph, I may as well give up altogether, for there seems no one who will stand by me, of all the people I know.”
“Oh, Lady Randolph will stand by you, never fear; so long as you keep your fortune, you are sure of Lady Randolph,” cried Mrs. Rushton, with vehemence. “But as for other friends, Miss Trevor, your behavior must be their guide.”
“Why do you call me Miss Trevor?” cried Lucy, her courage giving way; “what have I done? If it is Raymond that has set you against me, it is cruel. I have done nothing to make my friends give me up,” the poor girl cried, with mingled shame and indignation; for the suggestion of unfit behavior abashed Lucy, and yet, being driven to bay, she could not but make a little stand in her own defense.
“Raymond again!” cried Mrs. Rushton, with an angry laugh; “why should you wish to mix up my son in it? It is not Raymond as I have said before, that would lead any girl to make an exhibition of herself—but the moment you get with one of your own set! I call you Miss Trevor, because I am disappointed, bitterly disappointed in you. I thought you were a different girl altogether—nice and modest and gentle, and—but I have my innocent Emmie to think of, and I will not have her grow up with such an example before her eyes. Therefore, if you see a difference in me, you will know the cause of it. I have treated you like a child of my own. I have made parties for you, introduced you everywhere, and this is my reward. But it is always so; I ought to console myself with that; those we are kind to are exactly those that turn upon us and rend us. Oh, what is that? are you setting a dog upon me? You ungrateful, ill-mannered—”
There was no dog; but Jock, unobserved by the visitor, had been there all the time, and as Mrs. Rushton grew vehement, his attention had been roused. He had raised himself on his elbows, listening with ears and eyes alike, and by this time his patience was exhausted; the child was speechless with childish fury. He took the easiest way that occurred to him of freeing Lucy. He seized the long folds of Mrs. Rushton’s train which lay near him in not ungraceful undulations, and winding his hands into it, made an effort to drag her to the door. The alarm with which she felt this mysterious tug, which very nearly overset her balance, got vent in a shriek which rang through the whole house. “It is a mad dog!” she cried, with a rush for the door, carrying Jock along with her. But no mortal thread could stand such an appendage. Mrs. Rushton’s dress was slight in fabric, and gave way with a shrieking of stuff rent asunder, and stitches torn loose. Lucy flew to the rescue, catching her little champion in her arms with outcries of horror and apology, yet secret kisses of gratitude and consolation to the flushed and excited child. It was at this moment that Mrs. Ford, having put on her purple silk, sailed into the room, her pace scarcely accelerated by the cries she heard, for she owed it to herself to be dignified in the presence of strangers whatever happened. She paused a moment at the door, throwing up her hands. Then, “For shame, Jock! for shame!” she cried, loudly, stamping her foot, while Lucy, kneeling down, kissing, and scolding, and crying in a breath, endeavored to unloose the little passionate hot hands. “She should let Lucy alone!” cried Jock, with spasmodic fury. He would have held on like a dog for which his enemy took him, through any amount of beating. “I do not wonder after the way in which he has been brought up,” cried Mrs. Rushton, panting and furious as she got free.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE CUP FULL.
Jock was not allowed to come down to dinner that day, and Lucy, refusing to leave him, sat with the culprit on her knee, their arms clasped about each other, their hot cheeks touching. “Oh, if we could go away! if we only had a little hut anywhere, you and me, in the loneliest place, where we should never see any of these people more,” Lucy cried; and Jock, though he was still in a state of wild excitement, calmed down a little, and began to think of a desolate island, that favorite fancy of childhood. “I should not be so clever as Hazel was—for he was a fellow that knew everything; but couldn’t I build you a house, Lucy?” the little fellow said, his wet eyes lighting up at the thought. He had read “Foul Play” not long before. Jock was not fond of the modern novel; but he made an exception in favor of Mr. Reade, as what boy of sense would not do? With this forlorn fancy they consoled themselves as they sat dinnerless, clinging to each other—a lonely pair. Mrs. Ford, half alarmed at the success of her punishment, which was so much greater than she expected, for, to do her justice, she wanted only a lawful submission, and not to deprive a little delicate boy of a meal, came upstairs several times to the door to ask if Jock would submit; but he would not say he was sorry, which was what she required. “Why couldn’t she let my Lucy alone? I would do it again,” he said, turning a deaf ear to all Mrs. Ford’s moral addresses. All this time Lucy held him close, kissing his little tear-wet cheeks, and crying over him, so that, perhaps, his firmness was not wonderful. “You should not encourage him, Lucy,” said Mrs. Ford. “Come down to your dinner. It is a shame to encourage a little naughty boy; and you can’t go without your dinner.” “If you had but one in all the world to stand up for you, only one, would you go and forsake him?” cried Lucy, with floods of hot tears. And then Mrs. Ford went down-stairs very uncomfortable, as are all enforcers of domestic discipline, when the culprits will not give way. Against this kind of resistance the very sternest of household despots fight in vain, and Mrs. Ford was not a household despot, but only an ignorant, well-meaning woman, driven to her wits’ end. If she were unkind now and then, it was not that she ever meant to be unkind. She grew more and more uncomfortable as time after time she returned beaten to the dinner-table down-stairs, which she, herself, could not take any pleasure in, because these two troublesome young persons were fasting above.
This was a mournful meal in the house. Ford himself, satisfying his usual good appetite in the natural way, was fallen upon by his wife, and, so to speak, slaughtered at his own table. The dainty dishes she had prepared specially for Lucy were sent away untouched, and the good woman herself eat nothing. She did nothing but talk all through that meal of Jock’s misdemeanor. “And Lucy spoils him so. She will not listen to me. It is bad for the child—dreadfully bad for the child. He ought to be at school, knocking about among other boys. And instead of that she sits and cries and kisses him, and goes without her dinner. It’s enough to kill the child,” cried Mrs. Ford, “at his age, and a delicate boy, to eat nothing all day.”
“Then why don’t you let him come down and have his dinner?” said Ford, his mouth full of a fugitive morsel.
“Oh, you never—you never understand anything! Am I the one to ruin that child’s morals, and make him think he can do what he likes, for the sake of a dinner? Not till he gives in and says he is sorry,” said Mrs. Ford, pushing her plate away with angry emphasis; “but it is Lucy that makes me unhappy,” she said; “anybody—anything else for the sake of that boy.”