The Greatest Heiress in England

by Mrs. Oliphant

While she was thinking thus her father was talking on, but she had lost a good deal of what he was saying when she suddenly came to herself again, and began to hear him as if his voice came out of a mist.

“And when that has happened once or twice,” old Trevor was saying, “you get sharp, oh, you get sharp! you are up to their devices—you can not be taken in any more.”

“You speak as if everybody tried to take you in, papa.”

“Very near everybody,” said old Trevor, grinning, with a chuckle; “not all, I don’t say all—but very near: and the hard thing is to find out the ones that don’t want to take you in. That is a thing which you have to learn by experience, Lucy. First you trust everybody—then you trust nobody; but after awhile the sight comes back to your eyes, and you know who to trust. That is about the best lesson you can have in this world. I was over fifty before I met with your mother; that is to say, I had known her when we were younger, but I had not given any attention to her, not having learned then to discriminate. We saw a deal of each other for two years before we married; so you see I was a long time before I got hold of my best, and yet I did get it at the end.”

Lucy was disturbed out of her usual composure by all this alarming and discouraging talk, and she was slightly irritated, she could scarcely have told why, by all she had heard about her mother. She could not avoid a little retaliation. “But afterward,” she said, “after—when poor mamma died—was that the best too?”

He had been discoursing as from a pulpit upon his own wisdom and success, and received this thrust full in his face with astonishment that was comic. After the first confusion of surprise old Trevor laughed and chuckled himself out of breath. “You have me there,” he said, “Lucy, you have me there. I have not got a word to say. We won’t say anything on the subject at all, my dear. I told you before that was a mistake.”

But he was half-flattered, half-amused by this return blow. During the rest of the evening he would drop into ceaseless chuckles, recalling the sudden boldness of the assault. A man of many wives is always more flattered than disconcerted by any allusion to his successes. It was a mistake, but still he was not ashamed of his achievement. When, however, he had taken his glass of port, which had more effect upon him than usual in his growing weakness, the old man grew penitential. “It was a great mistake,” he said again, “and I can’t help wondering, now and then, how Lucilla will take it. She was a very considerate person; but there are flings the best of women can’t be expected to put up with. I will confess to you, Lucy, that it makes me a little uneasy sometimes. Oh, yes, it was a mistake.”

Lucy had been quite reassured when she had joined her father in the afternoon after Ford’s warning, and had seen no difference in his looks; but before the evening was over a vague uneasiness had crept over her. He talked more than usual and sat longer than usual before he could be persuaded to go to bed. And now and then there was something disjointed in his talk. He stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and forgot to finish it. He introduced one subject into the midst of another. He gave her the same advice several times over. After awhile she ceased to notice what he was saying altogether, out of anxiety about him. He was not like himself; but he would not allow her to leave him. He was more intent on having her companionship than she had ever known him. “Don’t go away,” he said, when she did but stir in her chair. As she sat and looked at him, having no knitting (as it was Sunday), the spectacle of the feeble old figure, garrulous, holding forth from his chair, scarcely waiting for a reply, struck the girl as if she had seen it for the first time. His old cheeks were suffused with a feverish red, his eyes were gleaming, his head had a tremble in it, his lean old hand, so often used to emphasize what he said, shook when he held it up. There are moments when the aspects of a familiar figure change to us, when we see it as strangers see it, but with a still keener insight, perceiving in a moment, the wreck which we may have seen without seeing it, falling into decay for years. This was the revelation which all at once came upon Lucy. She had seen nothing unusual about him a few hours ago—now, quite suddenly, she came to see him as Mr. Rushton had seen him, as he appeared to strangers; but in a guise so much the more alarming as it concerned her much more closely. She held her breath as this revelation flashed upon her, feeling as if she must cry out and call for help, she who was so composed and unexcitable. It seemed to Lucy, in her sudden alarm and ignorance, that he might die before her eyes.

This, of course, was an entirely false alarm. Next morning he was exactly like himself again, no special feebleness in his aspect, and much energy in his mind. As soon as he got settled in his chair Mr. Trevor got his big manuscript out, took a fresh pen which Ford had mended for him, and began to work with great energy and pleasure. Never had he more enjoyed his work; he was putting on the corner-stone—finishing the fabric. It took him all the morning to put everything down as he had planned it. And it pleased him so much that he smiled and chuckled to himself as he wrote, and said special phrases over and over under his breath. All the morning through he sat at his table working at it, while little Jock occupied his habitual position stretched out upon the white rug before the fire, his shoulders raised a little, his head bent over his book. Jock was too much absorbed to be aware of anything that was going on. The book he had lighted upon that day was Defoe’s “History of the Plague,” and the little fellow was altogether given over to its weird fascinations. It was more entrancing even than “Robinson Crusoe.” Thus the child and the old man kept each other company for hours together; the one betraying his presence occasionally by a little flicker of two small blue legs from the white rug, and of the pages of his book, itself half buried in the silky whiteness; while the other chuckled and muttered as he wrote, delighted with himself and his latest conception. They were both living by the imagination, though in phases so different; the boy carried out of himself, lost in the wonderful dream-history which was so much, more real than anything else round him; the old man throwing himself forward into a future he should never see, enacting a dream-life, which was to be when his should be ended and over, but which in its visionary distance was also a thousand times more real than the dull day to which it gave a fictitious charm.

When the clause was finished Mr. Trevor once more called up Ford, and made him acquainted with his new conception. Ford studied him attentively while he read it, but he also listened with benevolent attention; and he gave his approval to the new plan. Seven years! Ford was just about so much the junior of his friend and patron. He said to himself, as he listened, that by that time he would no longer care to have the responsibility of superintending Lucy’s actions; and he graciously concurred in the expediency of her liberation. “If she can not manage her own affairs at thirty or so she never will,” he said, “and I think, Mr. Trevor, that you’re in the right.