CHAPTER XIX.
LADY RANDOLPH’S MOTIVE.
The past seemed entirely swept away and obliterated from Lucy when she found herself in Lady Randolph’s London house, inhabiting two rooms charmingly and daintily furnished, with a deft and respectful maid belonging to herself, at her special call, and everything that it was desirable a young lady of fortune should have. The allowance made for her was very large, so her father had willed, and her new guardian employed it liberally. Needless to say that Lady Randolph was not herself rich; but she was not greedy or grasping. She liked dearly the large additional income she had to spend, but she had no wish to make economies from it at Lucy’s cost. Economies, indeed, were not in Lady Randolph’s way. She liked a large liberal house. She liked the sense of a full purse into which she could put her hand without fear of the supply failing (who does not?). She liked the power of moving about as she pleased, of filling her house with visitors, and making herself the cheerful beneficent center of a society not badly chosen. She was willing to give her charge “every advantage,” and to spend the large income she brought with her entirely upon the life which they were to lead together. Old Trevor was shrewd, he knew what he was doing, and his choice carried out his intention fully. Lady Randolph was pleased to have a great heiress to bring out, and she was anxious to bring her out in the very best way. Her object on her own side was, no doubt, selfish, in so far that to live liberally was pleasant to her, and to spend largely a kind of necessity of her nature. But all this largeness and liberality, which were so pleasant to herself, were exactly what was wanted, according to her father’s plan, for Lucy, to whom Lady Randolph communicated the advantages procured by her money with all the lavish provision for her pleasure which a doting mother might have made. In all this there was a fine high-spirited honorableness about Lucy’s new guardian. She scorned to save a penny of the allowance. And we are bound to add that this course of procedure did not approve itself (what course ever does?) to Lady Randolph’s friends. While Lucy was being established in those luxurious yet simple rooms, which were good enough for a princess, yet so little fine, that Lucy’s simplicity had not yet found out how delicate and costly they were, Lady Randolph’s small coterie of advisers were censuring her warmly down-stairs.
“You ought to lay by half of it,” old Lady Betsinda Molyneux was saying at the very moment when Lucy, with tranquil pleasure, aided by Jock, in a state of half-resentful, half-happy excitement, was putting a set of pretty books into the low book-shelves that lined her little sitting-room; “you ought to lay by one half of it. Good life! a girl like that to get the advantage of being in your house at all! Instead of petting her, and getting her everything that you can think of, she ought to be too thankful if you put her in the housemaid’s closet. If you don’t show a little wisdom now I will despair of you, my dear,” the old lady said. She was an old lady of the first fashion; but she was, all the same, a very grimy old lady with a mustache, and a complexion which suggested coal dust rather than poudre de riz. Her clothes would have been worth a great deal to an antiquary, notwithstanding that they were all shaped, more or less, in accordance with the fashion; but they gave Lady Betsinda the air of an animated rag-bag; and she wore a profusion of lace, clouds of black upon her mantle, and ruffles of white about her thin and dingy neck; but it would have been a misnomer, and also an insult, to call that lace white. It was frankly dirty, and toned to an indescribable color by years and wear. She was worth a small fortune where she stood with all her old trumpery upon her; and yet a clean old woman in a white cap and apron would have been a much fairer spectacle. Her rings flashed as she moved her quick bony wrinkled hands, which were of a color as indescribable as her lace. It would have been hard to have seen any signs of noble race in Lady Betsinda’s hands; and yet the queer old figure hung round with festoons of lace, and clothed in old black satin as thick as a modern party-wall, could not have been anything but that of a woman of rank. Her garments smelled not of myrrh and frankincense, but of camphor, in which they were always put away to preserve them; and the number of times these garments had been through the hands of Lady Betsinda’s patient maid, and the number of stitches that were required to keep them always in order, was more than anybody, except the hard-worked official who had charge of the old lady’s wardrobe, could say.
“I think so, too,” said a small and delicate person who was seated in a deep low chair upon the other side of the fire. She was not old like Lady Betsinda. She was a fragile little pale woman approaching fifty, the wife of an eminent lawyer, and a little leader of society in her way. She wrote a little, and drew a little, and sung a little, and was a great patroness of artists, to whom, it need not be said, Mrs. Berry-Montagu was very superior, gracious to them as a queen to her courtiers; while young painters, and young writers, and young actors were very obsequious to her, as to a woman who could, their elders told them, “make their fortunes.” And there was more truth than usual in this, for though Mrs. Berry-Montagu could not make anybody’s fortune she could do something to mar it, and very frequently exercised that less amiable power, writing pretty little critiques which made the young people wince, and damning their best efforts with elegant depreciation. These were two of the friends who took Lady Randolph’s moral character and social actions under their control. Most women, especially those who are widows, have a superintending tribunal of this description, before which all their actions are judged; and nowhere does the true dignity of the woman who is married come out with more imposing force than in such circumstances. Lady Betsinda was vehement; she was old and the daughter of a duke, and had a very good right to say what she pleased, and keep the rest of the world in order. But Mrs. Berry-Montagu was, so to speak, two people. Her views were enlarged, as everybody acknowledged tacitly by her possession of that larger shadow of a husband behind her, and she had a great, unexpressed contempt for all women who were without that dual dignity. A smile of the softest disdain—nay, the word is too strong, and so is derision also much too potent for the delicate subdued amusement with which she contemplated the doings of the femme sole of all classes—hovered about her lips. This did not spring from any special devotion on her part to her husband, or faith in him, but only from her consciousness of her own good fortune and dignity, and the high position she occupied in consequence of his existence. We have given too much space to the description of Lady Randolph’s privy council. Has not every solitary woman in society a governing body which is much, the same?
“I think so, too,” Mrs. Berry-Montagu said; “you ought really to think of yourself a little; self-renunciation is a beautiful virtue; but then we are not called upon to exercise it for everybody, and a girl of this description is fair game.”
“If I were a hunter,” said Lady Randolph.
“Oh my dear, don’t tell me, you are all hunters,” said the little lady in serene superiority. “What do you take her for? You are not one of the silly women that want a girl to take about with them; to be an excuse for going to parties therefore you must have an object. Now, of course, we don’t want to know, till you tell us, what the object is; but in the meantime you ought, it is your duty, to derive a little advantage on your side from what is so great an advantage on hers.”
“That’s speaking like a book,” said Lady Betsinda, “but I like to be plain for my part: you ought to lay by half, my dear. You want to go to Homburg when the season’s over, that stands to reason; and when you come back you’ve got dozens of visits to pay—the most expensive thing in the world; and, after all, this won’t last forever, there will come a time when she will marry or set up for herself that’s quite common nowadays girls do it, and nobody thinks any harm.”
“Oh, she will marry,” said Mrs Berry Montagu, with a significant smile.
“Most likely she’ll marry; but not so sure as it once was,” said Lady Betsinda, nodding her old head; “women’s ways have changed; I don’t say if it is better or worse, but they have changed; and anyhow it is your duty to look after yourself. Now, don’t you think it her duty to look after herself? Disinterestedness and so forth, are all very fine. We know you’re unselfish, my dear.”