MORE SHUFFLING.
Tom went home the next night with a racking headache. Gladly would he
have gone to Lucy to comfort him, but he was too much ashamed of his
behavior to her the night before, and too uneasy in his conscience. He
was, indeed, in an abject condition of body, intellect, and morals.
He went at once to his own room and to bed; fell asleep; woke in the
middle of the night miserably gnawed by "Don Worm, the conscience;"
tried to pray, and found it did him no good; turned his thoughts to
Lucy, and burst into tears at the recollection of how he had treated
her, imagining over and over twenty scenes in which he begged her
forgiveness, till he fell asleep at last, dreamed that she turned her
back upon him, and refused to hear him, and woke in the morning with
the resolution of going to see her that night and confessing everything.
His father had come home after he went to bed, and it was with great
trepidation that he went down to breakfast, almost expecting to find
that he knew already of his relation to Lucy. But Richard Boxall was
above that kind of thing, and Mr. Worboise was evidently free from any
suspicion of the case.
He greeted his son kindly, or rather frankly, and seemed to be in good
spirits.
"Our friends are well down the Channel by this time, with such a fair
wind," he said. "Boxall's a lucky man to be able to get away from
business like that. I wish you had taken a fancy to Mary, Tom. She's
sure to get engaged before she comes back. Shipboard's a great place
for getting engaged. Some hungry fellow, with a red coat and an empty
breeches-pocket, is sure to pick her up. You might have had her if you
had liked. However, you may do as well yet; and you needn't be in a
hurry now. It's not enough that there's as good fish in the sea: they
must come to your net, you know."
Tom laughed it off, went to his office, worked the weary day through,
and ran round to Guild Court the moment he left business.
Lucy had waked in the night as well as Tom; but she had waked to the
hope that there was a power somewhere--a power working good, and
upholding them that love it; to the hope that a thought lived all
through the dark, and would one day make the darkness light about
her; to the hope that a heart of love and help was at the heart of
things, and would show itself for her need. When, therefore, Tom
knocked--timidly almost--at the door, and opened it inquiringly, she
met him with a strange light in her pale face, and a smile flickering
about a lip that trembled in sympathy with her rain-clouded eyes.
She held out her hand to him cordially, but neither offered to
embrace--Thomas from shame, and Lucy from a feeling of something
between that had to be removed before things could be as they were-or
rather before their outward behavior to each other could be the same,
for things could not to all eternity be the same again: they must be
infinitely better and more beautiful, or cease altogether.
Thomas gave a look for one moment full in Lucy's eyes, and then dropped
his own, holding her still by the consenting hand.
"Will you forgive me, Lucy?" he said, in a voice partly choked by
feeling, and partly by the presence of Mrs. Boxall, who, however, could
not hear what passed between them, for she sat knitting at the other
end of the large room.
"Oh, Tom!" answered Lucy, with a gentle pressure of his hand.
Now, as all that Tom wanted was to be reinstated in her favor, he
took the words as the seal of the desired reconciliation, and went no
further with any confession. The words, however, meaning simply that
she loved him and wanted to love him, ought to have made Tom the more
anxious to confess all--not merely the rudeness of which he had been
guilty and which had driven her from the room, but the wrong he had
done her in spending the evening in such company; for surely it was
a grievous wrong to a pure girl like Lucy to spend the space between
the last and the next pressure of her hand in an atmosphere of vice.
But the cloud cleared from his brow, and, with a sudden reaction of
spirits, he began to be merry. To this change, however, Lucy did
not respond. The cloud seemed rather to fall more heavily over her
countenance. She turned from him, and went to a chair opposite her
grandmother. Tom followed, and sat down beside her. He was sympathetic
enough to see that things were not right between them after all. But
he referred it entirely to her uneasiness at his parents' ignorance of
their engagement.
Some of my readers may think that Lucy, too, was to blame for want of
decision; that she ought to have refused to see Thomas even once again,
till he had made his parents aware of their relation to each other.
But knowing how little sympathy and help he had from those parents,
she felt that to be severe upon him thus would be like turning him
out into a snow-storm to find his way home across a desolate moor;
and her success by persuasion would be a better thing for Thomas than
her success by compulsion. No doubt, if her rights alone had to be
considered, and not the necessities of Thomas's moral nature, the
plan she did not adopt would have been the best. But no one liveth to
himself--not even a woman whose dignity is in danger--and Lucy did
not think of herself alone. Yet, for the sake of both, she remained
perfectly firm in her purpose that Thomas should do something.
"Your uncle has said nothing about that unfortunate rencontre, Lucy,"
said Tom, hoping that what had relieved him would relieve her. "My
father came home last night, and the paternal brow is all serene."
"Then I suppose you said something about it, Tom?" said Lucy, with a
faint hope dawning in her heart.
"Oh! there's time enough for that. I've been thinking about it, you
see, and I'll soon convince you," he added, hurriedly, seeing the cloud
grow deeper on Lucy's face. "I must tell you something which I would
rather not have mentioned."
"Don't tell me, if you ought not to tell me, Tom," said Lucy, whose
conscience had grown more delicate than ever, both from the turning of
her own face toward the light, and from the growing feeling that Tom
was not to be trusted as a guide.
"There's no reason why I shouldn't," returned Tom. "It's only
this--that my father is vexed with me because I wouldn't make love
to your cousin Mary, and that I have let her slip out of my reach
now; for, as he says, somebody will be sure to snap her up before she
comes back. So it's just the worst time possible to tell him anything
unpleasant, you know. I really had far better wait till the poor girl
is well out to sea, and off my father's mind; for I assure you, Lucy,
it will be no joke when he does know. He's not in any mood for the news
just now, I can tell you. And then my mother's away, too, and there's
nobody to stand between me and him."
Lucy made no reply to his speech, uttered in the eagerness with which
a man, seeking to defend a bad position, sends one weak word after
another, as if the accumulation of poor arguments would make up for
the lack of a good one. She sat for a long minute looking down on a
spot in the carpet--the sight of which ever after was the signal for a
pain-throb; then, in a hopeless tone, said, with a great sigh:
"I've done all I can."
The indefiniteness of the words frightened Thomas, and he began again
to make his position good.
"I tell you what, Lucy," he said; "I give you my promise that before
another month is over--that is to give my father time to get over his
vexation--I will tell him all about it, and take the consequences."
Lucy sighed once more, and looked dissatisfied. But again it passed
through her mind that if she were to insist further, and refuse to
see Thomas until he had complied with her just desire, she would most
likely so far weaken, if not break, the bond between them, as to take
from him the only influence that might yet work on him for good, and
expose him entirely to such influences as she most feared. Therefore
she said no more. But she could not throw the weight off her, or
behave to Thomas as she had behaved hitherto. They sat silent for some
time--Thomas troubled before Lucy, Lucy troubled about Thomas. Then,
with another sigh, Lucy rose and went to the piano. She had never done
so before when Thomas was with her, for he did not care much about her
music. Now she thought of it as the only way of breaking the silence.
But what should she play?
Then came into her memory a stately, sweet song her father used to
sing. She did not know where he got either the words or the music of
it. I know that the words are from Petrarch. Probably her father had
translated them, for he had been much in Italy, and was a delicately
gifted man. But whose was the music, except it was his own, I do not
know. And as she sang the words, Lucy perceived for the first time how
much they meant, and how they belonged to her; for in singing them she
prayed both for herself and for Thomas.
I am so weary with the burden old
Of foregone faults, and power of custom base,
That much I fear to perish from the ways,
And fall into my enemy's grim hold.
A mighty friend, to free me, though self-sold
Came, of his own ineffable high grace,
Then went, and from my vision took his face.
Him now in vain I weary to behold.
But still his voice comes echoing below:
O ye that labor! see, here is the gate!
Come unto me--the way all open lies!
What heavenly grace will--what love--or what fate--
The glad wings of a dove on me bestow,
That I may rest, and from the earth arise?[1]
[Footnote 1: Petrarch's sixtieth Sonnet.]
Her sweet tones, the earnest music, and the few phrases he could catch
here and there, all had their influence upon Tom. They made him feel.
And with that, as usual, he was content. Lucy herself had felt as she
had never felt before, and, therefore, sung as she had never sung
before. And Tom was astonished to find that her voice had such power
over him, and began to wonder how it was that he had not found it out
before. He went home more solemn and thoughtful than he had ever been.
Still he did nothing.