“And I hope you won’t let him persuade you to think,” said Philip, lingering with her hand in his to say good-night, “that I am neglecting my work, or giving myself airs, or—”
“Oh, that is only his fun,” said Lucy, nodding her head to him with a pleasant smile as he went out into the night.
She was not pretty, he thought, as he walked away, but her face was very soft and round and pleasant; her blue eyes very steady and peaceful, with a calmness in them, which, in its way, represented power. Philip, who was, though so steady, somewhat excitable, and apt to be fretted and worried, felt that the repose in her was consolatory and soothing. She would be good to come home to after a man had been baited and bullied in the world. He had thought her an insignificant little girl, but to-night he was not so sure that she was insignificant, and Philip did not know anything, at all about the will and its iron rod.
CHAPTER VII.
THE WHITE HOUSE.
The life of Lucy Trevor, at this period, was divided between two worlds, very dissimilar in constitution. The odd household over which her father’s will and pleasure was paramount, though exercised through the medium of Mrs. Ford, and in which so many out-of-the-way subjects were continually being discussed, all with some personal reference to the old man and his experiences and crotchety principles of action, occupied one part of her time and thoughts: but the rest of her belonged to another sphere—to the orderly circle of studies and amusements of which the central figure was Mrs. Stone, and the scene the White House, a large irregular low building on the edge of the common, which was within sight of Mr. Trevor’s windows in the Terrace, and had appeared, through all the mist and fog of those wintery days, with a kind of halo round its whiteness like that of a rainy and melancholy old moon, tumbled from its high place to the low levels of a damp and flat country. Mrs. Stone’s was known far and wide as the best school for a hundred miles round, the best as far as education was concerned, and also the most exclusive and aristocratic. Lucy Trevor was the only girl in Farafield who was received as a day-pupil. Efforts had been made by people of the highest local standing to procure the admission of other girls of well-known families in the town, but in vain. And why Mrs. Stone had taken Lucy, who was nobody, who was only old John Trevor’s daughter, was a mystery to her best friends. She had offended a great many of the townspeople, but she had flattered the local aristocracy, the county people, by her exclusiveness; and she offended both by the sudden relaxation of her rule on behalf of Lucy. The rector’s daughter would have been a thousand times more eligible, or even Emmy Rushton, whose mother had knocked at those jealous doors in vain for years together; and why should she have taken Lucy Trevor, old John’s daughter, who was nobody, who had not the faintest pretension to gentility? Lady Langton drove in, as a kind of lofty deputation and representative of the other parents who had daughters at Mrs. Stone’s school, to remonstrate with her, and procure the expulsion of the intruder; but Mrs. Stone was equal to the occasion. She did not hesitate to say to the countess, “Your ladyship is at liberty to remove Lady Maud whenever you please. I dispense with the three months’ notice.”
It was this speech which established Mrs. Stone’s position far more than her excellence in professional ways. A woman who dared to look a countess in the face, and make such a suggestion, was too wonderful a person to be contemplated save with respect and awe. Lady Langton herself withdrew, abashed and confounded, protesting that to take Maud a way was the last idea in her mind. And Mrs. Stone’s empire was thus established. The incident made a great impression on the county generally; and it nearly threw into a nervous fever the other mistress, conjointly with Mrs. Stone, of the White House, her sister Miss Southwood, called, as a matter of course, Southernwood by the girls, who stood by aghast, and heard her say, “I dispense with the three months’ notice:” and expected nothing less than that the sky should fall, and the walls crumble in round them. Miss Southwood liked to think afterward that it was her own deprecating glances, her look of horror and dismay, and, above all, the cup of exquisite tea which she offered Lady Langton as she waited for her carriage, which put everything straight; but all her civilities would never have established that moral ascendency which her sister’s uncompromising defiance secured.
Miss Southwood was the elder of the two. She was forty-five or thereabouts, and she was old-fashioned. Whether it was by calculation, to make a claim of originality for herself, such as it was, or simply because she thought that style becoming to her, nobody knew; but she dressed in the fashions which had been current in her youth, and never changed. She wore her hair in a knot fastened by a high comb behind, and with little ringlets drooping on either cheek; and amid the long and sweeping garments of the present era, wore a full plain skirt which did not touch the ground, and gigot sleeves. In this dress she went about the house softly and briskly, without the whistling and rustling of people in long trains. She was a very mild person in comparison with her high-spirited and despotic sister; but yet was gifted with a gentle obstinacy, and seldom permitted any argument to beguile her from her own way. She had, nominally, the same power in the house as Mrs. Stone, and it was partly her money which was put in peril by her sister’s audacity; but the elder had always been faithful to the younger, and though she might grumble, never failed to make common cause with her, even in her most heroic measures. As for Lucy Trevor, though she shook her head, she submitted, feeling that to suffer on behalf of an heiress was a pain from which the worst sting was taken out; for it was not to be supposed that a girl so rich could allow her school-mistress to come to harm on her account. Mrs. Stone was far more imposing in appearance. She was full five years younger, and she was not old-fashioned. She was tall, with a commanding figure, and her dresses were handsome as herself, made by an artiste in town, not by the bungling hands of the trade in Farafield, of rich texture and the most fashionable cut. She was a woman of speculative and theoretical mind, believing strongly in “influence,” and very anxious to exercise it when an opportunity occurred. She had her ideas, as Mr. Trevor had, of what might be made of an heiress; and it seemed to Mrs. Stone that there was no class in the world upon which “influence” might tell more, or be more beneficially exercised. Her ideas on this subject laid her open to various injurious suppositions. Thus, when she took Lady Maud Langton into her bosom, as it were—moved by a brilliant hope of influence to be exercised on society itself by means of a very pretty and popular young woman of fashion—vulgar by-standers accused Mrs. Stone of tuft-hunting, and of paying special honor to the girl who was the daughter of an earl out of mere love of a title, an altogether unworthy representation of her real motive. And her sudden stand on behalf of Lucy took the world by surprise. They could not fathom her meaning; that she should have defied the countess, whom up to this time she had been supposed to worship with a servile adulation, on account of a little bit of a girl of no particular importance, was incomprehensible. It was known in Farafield that Lucy had a fortune, but it was not known how great that fortune was, and after much groping among the motives possible to Mrs. Stone in the circumstances, the country-town gossips had come to the conclusion that she aspired to a marriage with old John Trevor, and an appropriation to herself of all his wealth. This supplied a sufficient reason even for a breach with the countess. To be asked to Langdale, which was the finest thing that could happen to her in connection with Lady Maud, was, though gratifying, not to be compared with the possibility of marrying a rich man in her own person, and becoming one of the chief ladies of Farafield. This was how it was accounted for by that chorus of spectators who call themselves society, and Miss Southwood herself entertained, against her will, the same opinion. This suggestion seemed to make everything clear.
A few days after that on which Mr. Trevor read to Ford the last paragraph which he had added to his will, Lucy tapped at the door of Mrs. Stone’s private parlor with her father’s message. The ladies were seated together in their private sanctuary, resting from their labors. It was a seclusion never invaded by the pupils except on account of some important commission from a parent, or to ask advice, or by order of its sovereigns. Lucy came in with the little old-fashioned courtesy which Mrs. Stone insisted upon, and made her request.
“If you would come to tea to-morrow night. Papa is very sorry, but he bids me say he thinks you know that he can not come to you.”
“How is Mr. Trevor, Lucy?”