Sir Tom

"You see," he said condescendingly, "Money is the easiest explanation. If you were to ask me why Sir Tom should be Sir Tom, and that man sweep a crossing, I could not tell you."

"Oh," cried Lucy, "I don't see any difficulty about that at all, for Tom was born to it. You might as well say why should baby be born to be the heir."

Jock did not know whether to be indignant or to laugh at this feminine begging of the question. He stared at her for a moment uncertain, and then went on as if she had not spoken. "But money is always intelligible. That's political economy. If you have money, as a matter of course you have everything that money can buy; and I suppose it can buy almost everything?" Jock said, reflectively.

"It cannot buy a moment's happiness," cried Lucy, "nor one of those things one wishes most for. Oh Jock, at your age don't be deceived like that. For my part," she cried, "I think it is just the trouble of life. If it was not for this horrible money – "

She stopped short, the tears were in her eyes, but she would not betray to Jock how great was the difficulty in which she found herself. She turned her head away and was glad to wave her hand to a well known face that was passing, an acquaintance of old times, who was greatly elated to find that Lady Randolph in her grandeur still remembered her. Jock looked on upon all this with a partial comprehension, mingled with disapproval. He did not quite understand what she meant, but he disapproved of her for meaning it all the same.

"Money can't be horrible," he said, "unless it's badly spent: and to say you can't buy happiness with it is nonsense. If it don't make you happy to save people from poverty it will make them happy, so somebody will always get the advantage. What are you so silly about, Lucy? I don't say money is so very fine a thing. I only say it's intelligible. If you ask me why a man should be a great deal better than you or me, only because he took the trouble to be born – "

"I am not so silly, though you think me so silly, as to ask that," said Lucy; "that is so easy to understand. Of course you can only be who you are. You can't make yourself into another person; I hope I understand that."

She looked him so sweetly and seriously in the face as she spoke, and was so completely unaware of any flaw in her reply, that Jock, argumentative as he was, only gasped and said nothing more. And it was in this pause of their conversation that they swept up to Mr. Rushton's door. Mr. Rushton was the town-clerk of Farafield, the most important representative of legal knowledge in the place. He had been the late Mr. Trevor's man of business, and had still the greater part of Lucy's affairs in his hands. He had known her from her childhood, and in the disturbed chapter of her life before her marriage, his wife had taken a great deal of notice, as she expressed it, of Lucy: and young Raymond, who had now settled down in the office as his father's partner (but never half such a man as his father, in the opinion of the community), had done her the honour of paying her his addresses. But all that had passed from everybody's mind. Mrs. Rushton, never very resentful, was delighted now to receive Lady Randolph's invitation, and proud of the character of an old friend. And if Raymond occasionally showed a little embarrassment in Lucy's presence, that was only because he was by nature awkward in the society of ladies, and according to his own description never knew what to say.

"And what can I do for your ladyship this morning?" Mr. Rushton said, rising from his chair. His private room was very warm and comfortable, too warm, the visitors thought, as an office always is to people going in from the fresh air. The fire burned with concentrated heat, and Lucy, in her furs and suppressed agitation, felt her very brain confused. As for Jock, he lounged in the background with his hands in his pockets, reading the names upon the boxes that lined the walls, and now that it had come to the crisis, feeling truly helpless to aid his sister, and considerably in the way.

"It is a very serious business," said Lucy, drawing her breath hard. "It is a thing you have never liked or approved of, Mr. Rushton, nor any one," she added, in a faint voice.

"Dear me, that is very unfortunate," said the lawyer, cheerfully; "but I don't think you have ever been much disapproved of, Lady Randolph. Come, there is nothing you can't talk to me about – an old friend. I was in all your good father's secrets, and I never saw a better head for business. Why, this is Jock, I believe, grown into a man almost! I wonder if he has any of his father's talent? Is it about him you want to consult me? Why, that's perfectly natural, now he's coming to an age to look to the future," Mr. Rushton said.

"Oh, no! it is not about Jock. He is only sixteen, and, besides, it is something that is much more difficult," said Lucy. And then she paused, and cleared her throat, and put down her muff among Mr. Rushton's papers, that she might have her hands free for this tremendous piece of business. Then she said, with a sort of desperation, looking him in the face: "I have come to get you to – settle some money for me in obedience to papa's will."

Mr. Rushton started as if he had been shot. "You don't mean – " he cried, "You don't mean – Come, I dare say I am making a mountain out of a mole-hill, and that what you are thinking of is quite innocent. If not about our young friend here, some of your charities or improvements? You are a most extravagant little lady in your improvements, Lady Randolph. Those last cottages you know – but I don't doubt the estate will reap the advantage, and it's an outlay that pays; oh, yes, I don't deny it's an outlay that pays."

Lucy's countenance betrayed the futility of this supposition long before he had finished speaking. He had been standing with his back to the fire, in a cheerful and easy way. Now his countenance grew grave. He drew his chair to the table and sat down facing her. "If it is not that, what is it?" he said.

"Mr. Rushton," said Lucy, and she cleared her throat. She looked back to Jock for support, but he had his back turned to her, and was still reading the names on the lawyer's boxes. She turned round again with a little sigh. "Mr. Rushton, I want to carry out papa's will. You know all about it. It is codicil F. I have heard of some one who is the right kind of person. I want you to transfer ten thousand pounds – "

The lawyer gave a sort of shriek; he bolted out of his chair, pushing it so far from him that the substantial mahogany shivered and tottered upon its four legs.

"Nonsense!" he said, "Nonsense!" increasing the firmness of his tone until the word thundered forth in capitals, "NONSENSE! – you are going out of your senses; you don't know what you are saying. I made sure we had done with all this folly – "

When it had happened to Lucy to propose such an operation as she now proposed, for the first time, to her other trustee, she had been spoken to in a way which young ladies rarely experience. That excellent man of business had tried to put this young lady – then a very young lady – down, and he had not succeeded. It may be supposed that at her present age of twenty-three, a wife, a mother, and with a modest consciousness of her own place and position, she was not a less difficult antagonist. She was still a little frightened, and grew somewhat pale, but she looked steadfastly at Mr. Rushton with a nervous smile.

"I think you must not speak to me so," she said. "I am not a child, and I know my father's will and what it meant. It is not nonsense, nor folly – it may perhaps have been," she said with a little sigh – "not wise."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Randolph," Mr. Rushton said precipitately, with a blush upon his middle-aged countenance, for to be sure, when you think of it, to tell a gracious young lady with a title, one of your chief clients, that she is talking nonsense, even if you have known her all her life, is going perhaps a little too far. "I am sure you will understand that is what I meant," he cried, "unwise – the very word I meant. In the heat of the moment other words slip out, but no offence was intended."

She made him a little bow; she was trembling, though she would not have him see it. "We are not here," she said, "to criticise my father." Lucy was scarcely half aware how much she had gained in composure and the art of self-command. "I think he would have been more wise and more kind to have done himself what he thought to be his duty; but what does that matter? You must not try to convince me, please, but take the directions, which are very simple. I have written them all down in this paper. If you think you ought to make independent inquiries, you have the right to do that; but you will spare the poor gentleman's feelings, Mr. Rushton. It is all put down here."

Mr. Rushton took the paper from her hand. He smiled inwardly to himself, subduing his fret of impatience. "You will not object to let me talk it over," he said, "first with Sir Tom?"

Lucy coloured, and then she grew pale. "You will remember," she said, "that it has nothing to do with my husband, Mr. Rushton."

"My dear lady," said the lawyer, "I never expected to hear you, who I have always known as the best of wives, say of anything that it has nothing to do with your husband. Surely that is not how ladies speak of their lords?"

Lucy heard a sound behind her which seemed to imply to her quick ear that Jock was losing patience. She had brought him with her, with the idea of deriving some support from his presence; but if Sir Tom had nothing to do with it, clearly on much stronger grounds neither had her brother. She turned round and cast a hurried warning glance at him. She had herself no words ready to reply to the lawyer's gibe. She would neither defend herself as from a grave accusation, nor reply in the same tone. "Mr. Rushton," she said faltering, "I don't think we need argue, need we? I have put down all the particulars. You know about it as well as I do. It is not for pleasure. If you think it is right, you will inquire about the gentleman – otherwise – I don't think there need be any more to say."

"I will talk it over with Sir Tom," said Mr. Rushton, feeling that he had found the only argument by which to manage this young woman. He even chuckled a little to himself at the thought. "Evidently," he said to himself, "she is afraid of Sir Tom, and he knows nothing about this. He will soon put a stop to it." He added aloud, "My dear Lady Randolph, this is far too serious a matter to be dismissed so summarily. You are young and very inexperienced. Of course I know all about it, and so does Sir Thomas. We will talk it over between us, and no doubt we will manage to decide upon some course that will harmonise everything."

Lucy looked at him with grave suspicion. "I don't know," she said, "what there is to be harmonised, Mr. Rushton. There is a thing which I have to do, and I have shrunk from it for a long time; but I cannot do so any longer."

"Look here," said Jock, "it's Lucy's affair, it's nobody else's. Just you look at her paper and do what she says."

"My young friend," said the lawyer blandly, "that is capital advice for yourself: I hope you always do what your sister says."

"Most times I do," said Jock; "not that it's your business to tell me. But you know very well you'll have to do it. No one has got any right to interfere with her. She has more sense than a dozen. She has got the right on her side. You may do what you please, but you know very well you can't stop her – neither you, nor Sir Tom, nor the old lady, nor one single living creature; and you know it," said Jock. He confronted Mr. Rushton with lowering brows, and with an angry sparkle in his deep-set eyes. Lucy was half proud of and half alarmed by her champion.

"Oh hush, Jock!" she cried. "You must not speak; you are only a boy. You must beg Mr. Rushton's pardon for speaking to him so. But, indeed, what he says is quite true; it is no one's duty but mine. My husband will not interfere with what he knows I must do," she said, with a little chill of apprehension. Would he indeed be so considerate for her? It made her heart sick to think that she was not on this point quite certain about Sir Tom.

"In that case there will be no harm in talking it over with him," said the lawyer briefly. "I thought you were far too sensible not to see that was the right way. Oh, never mind about his asking my pardon. I forgive him without that. He has a high idea of his sister's authority, which is quite right; and so have I – and so have all of us. Certainly, certainly, Master Jock, she has the right; and she will arrange it judiciously, of that there is no fear. But first, as a couple of business men, more experienced in the world than you young philanthropists, I will just, the first time I see him, talk it over with Sir Tom. My dear Lady Randolph, no trouble at all. Is that all I can do for you? Then I will not detain you any longer this fine morning," the lawyer said.

CHAPTER XVI.

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

They drove away again with scarcely a word to each other. It was a bright, breezy, wintry day. The roads about Farafield were wet with recent rains, and gleamed in the sunshine. The river was as blue as steel, and gave forth a dazzling reflection; the bare trees stood up against the sky without a pretence of affording any shadow. The cold to these two young people, warmly dressed and prosperous, was nothing to object to – indeed, it was not very cold. But they both had a slight sense of discomfiture – a feeling of having suffered in their own opinion. Jock, who was much regarded at school as a fellow high up, and a great friend of his tutor, was not used to such unceremonious treatment, and he was wroth to see that even Lucy was supposed to require the sanction of Sir Tom for what it was clearly her own business to do. He said nothing, however, until they had quite cleared the town, and were skimming along the more open country roads; then he said suddenly —

"That old Rushton has a great deal of cheek. I should have another fellow to manage my affairs, Lucy, if I were you."

"Don't you know, Jock, that I can't? Papa appointed him. He is my trustee; he has always to be consulted. Papa did not mind," said Lucy with a little sigh. "He said it would be good for me to be contradicted, and not to have my own way."

"Don't you have your own way?" said Jock, opening his eyes. "Lucy, who contradicts you? I should like to know who it was, and tell him my mind a bit. I thought you did whatever you pleased. Do you mean to say there is any truth in all that about Sir Tom?"

"In what about Sir Tom?" cried Lucy, instantly on her defence; and then she changed her tone with a little laugh. "Of course I do whatever I please. It is not good for anybody, Jock. Don't you know we must be crossed sometimes, or we should never do any good at all?"

"Now I wonder which she means?" said Jock. "If she does have her own way or if she don't? I begin to think you speak something else than English, Lucy. I know it is the thing to say that women must do what their husbands tell them; but do you mean that it's true like that? and that a fellow may order you to do this or not to do that, with what is your own and not his at all?"

"I don't think I understand you, dear," said Lucy sweetly.

"Oh! you can't be such a stupid as that," said the boy; "you understand right enough. What did he mean by talking it over with Sir Tom? He thought Sir Tom would put a stop to it, Lucy."

"If Mr. Rushton forms such false ideas, dear, what does it matter? That is not of any consequence either to you or me."

"I wish you would give me a plain answer," said Jock, impatiently. "I ask you one thing, and you say another; you never give me any satisfaction."

She smiled upon him with a look which, clever as Jock was, he did not understand. "Isn't that conversation?" she said.

"Conversation!" The boy repeated the word almost with a shriek of disdain: "You don't know very much about that, down here in the country, Lucy. You should hear MTutor; when he's got two or three fellows from Cambridge with him, and they go at it! That's something like talk."

"It is very nice for you, Jock, that you get on so well with Mr. Derwentwater," said Lucy, catching with some eagerness at this way of escape from embarrassing questions. "I hope he will come and see us at Easter, as he promised."

"He may," said Jock, with great gravity, "but the thing is, everybody wants to have him; and then, you see, whenever he has an opportunity he likes to go abroad. He says it freshens one up more than anything. After working his brain all the half, as he does, and taking the interest he does in everything, he has got to pay attention, you know, and not to overdo it; he must have change, and he must have rest."

Lucy was much impressed by this, as she was by all she heard of MTutor. She was quite satisfied that such immense intellectual exertions as his did indeed merit compensation. She said, "I am sure he would get rest with us, Jock. There would be nothing to tire him, and whatever I could do for him, dear, or Sir Tom either, we should be glad, as he is so good to you."

"I don't know that he's what you call fond of the country – I mean the English country. Of course it is different abroad," said Jock doubtfully. Then he came back to the original subject with a bound, scattering all Lucy's hopes. "But we didn't begin about MTutor. It was the other business we were talking of. Is it true that Sir Tom – "

"Jock," said Lucy seriously. Her mild eyes got a look he had never seen in them before. It was a sort of dilation of unshed tears, and yet they were not wet. "If you know any time when Sir Tom was ever unkind or untrue, I don't know it. He has always, always been good. I don't think he will change now. I have always done what he told me, and I always will. But he never told me anything. He knows a great deal better than all of us put together. Of course, to obey him, that is my first duty. And I always shall. But he never asks it – he is too good. What is his will, is my will," she said. She fixed her eyes very seriously on Jock, all the time she spoke, and he followed every movement of her lips with a sort of astonished confusion, which it is difficult to describe. When she had ceased Jock drew a long breath, and seemed to come to the surface again, after much tossing in darker waters.

"I think that it must be true," he said slowly, after a pause, "as people say – that women are very queer, Lucy. I didn't understand one word you said."

"Didn't you, then?" she said, with a smile of gentle benignity; "but what does it matter, when it will all come right in the end? Is that our omnibus, Jock, that is going along with all that luggage? How curious that is, for nobody was coming to-day that I know of. Don't you see it just turning in to the avenue? Now that is very strange indeed," said Lucy, raising herself very erect upon her cushions with a little quickened and eager look. An arrival is always exciting in the country, and an arrival which was quite unexpected, and of which she could form no surmise as to who it could be, stirred up all her faculties. "I wonder if Mrs. Freshwater will know what rooms are best?" she said, "and if Sir Tom will be at home to receive them; or perhaps it may be some friends of Aunt Randolph's, or perhaps – I wonder very much who it can be."

Jock's countenance covered itself quickly with a tinge of gloom.

"Whoever it is, I know it will be disgusting," cried the boy. "Just when we have got so much to talk about! and now I shall never see you any more. Lady Randolph was bad enough, and now here's more of them! I should just as soon go back to school at once," he said, with premature indignation. The servants on the box perceived the other carriage in advance with equal curiosity and excitement. They were still more startled, perhaps, for a profound wonder as to what horses had been sent out, and who was driving them, agitated their minds. The horses, solicited by a private token between them and their driver which both understood, quickened their pace with a slight dash, and the carriage swept along as if in pursuit of the larger and heavier vehicle, which, however, had so much the advance of them, that it had deposited its passengers, and turned round to the servants' entrance with the luggage, before Lady Randolph could reach the door. Williams the butler wore a startled look upon his dignified countenance, as he came out on the steps to receive his mistress.

"Some one has arrived," said Lucy with a little eagerness. "We saw the omnibus."

"Yes, my lady. A telegram came for Sir Thomas soon after your ladyship left; there was just time to put in the horses – "

"But who is it, Williams?"

Williams had a curious apologetic air. "I heard say, my lady, that it was some of the party that were invited before Mr. Randolph fell ill. There had been a mistake about the letters, and the lady has come all the same – a lady with a foreign title, my lady – "

"Oh!" said Lucy, with English brevity. She stood startled, in the hall, lingering a little, changing colour, not with any of the deep emotions which Williams from his own superior knowledge suspected, but with shyness and excitement. "It will be the lady from Italy, the Contessa – Oh, I hope they have attended to her properly! Was Sir Thomas at home when she came?"

"Sir Thomas, my lady, went to meet them at the station," Williams said.

"Oh, that is all right," cried Lucy, relieved. "I am so glad she did not arrive and find nobody. And I hope Mrs. Freshwater – "

"Mrs. Freshwater put the party into the east wing, my lady. There are two ladies besides the man and the maid. We thought it would be the warmest for them, as they came from the South."

"It may be the warmest, but it is not the prettiest," said Lucy. "The lady is a great friend of Sir Thomas', Williams."

The man gave her a curious look.

"Yes, my lady, I was aware of that," he said.

This surprised Lucy a little, but for the moment she took no notice of it. "And therefore," she went on, "the best rooms should have been got ready. Mrs. Freshwater ought to have known that. However, perhaps she will change afterwards. Jock, I will just run upstairs and see that everything is right."

As she turned towards the great staircase, so saying, she ran almost into her husband's arms. Sir Tom had appeared from a side door, where he had been on the watch, and it was certain that his face bore some traces of the new event that had happened. He was not at his ease as usual. He laughed a little uncomfortable laugh, and put his hand on Lucy's shoulder as she brushed against him. "There," he said, "that will do; don't be in such a hurry," arresting her in full career.

"Oh, Tom!" Lucy for her part looked at her husband with the greatest relief and happiness. There had been a cloud between them which had been more grievous to her than anything else in the world. She had felt hourly compelled to stand up before him and tell him that she must do what he desired her not to do. The consternation and pain and wrath that had risen over his face after that painful interview had not passed away through all the intervening time. There had been a sort of desperation in her mind when she went to Mr. Rushton, a feeling that she so hated the duty which had risen like a ghost between her husband and herself, that she must do it at all hazards and without delay. But this cloud had now departed from Sir Tom's countenance. There was a little suffusion of colour upon it which was unusual to him. Had it been anybody but Sir Tom, it would have looked like embarrassment, shyness mingled with a certain self-ridicule and sense of the ludicrous in the position altogether. He caught his wife in his arms and met her eyes with a certain laughing shamefacedness, "Don't," he said, "be in such a hurry, Lucy. Ces dames have gone to their rooms; they have been travelling all night, and they are not fit to be seen. It is only silly little English girls like you that can bear to be looked at at all times and seasons." And with this he stooped over her and gave her a kiss on her forehead, to Lucy's delight, yet horror – before Williams, who looked on approving, and the footman with the traps, and Jock and all! But what a load it took off her breast! He was not any longer vexed or disturbed or angry. He was indeed conciliatory and apologetic, but Lucy only saw that he was kind.