THE RUSSELLS.
“That is just what I was thinking,” Lady Randolph said, “we can do two
things, Lucy, two benefits at once. I know just the place for little
Jock! since he wants to go to school--with a poor lady whom you will
like to help--and,” she added, with a little softening of compassion,
“where you could go to see him often; and he could come--” this addition
was less cordial. Lady Randolph was a woman too easily led away by her
feelings. She thought of her committee, and restrained herself. “Katie
Russell must have told you about her mother. She has taken a house at
Hampstead, or one of those places, and is trying to set up a little
school. We are all on the outlook for Indian children, or, indeed,
pupils of any kind. Jock will be quite happy there. She will take an
interest in him as your brother, I have got her address somewhere. Shall
we go and look her up to-day?”
Lucy’s eyes, before she replied, traveled anxiously to Jock’s face to
read that little chart of varying sentiment, and take her guidance from
it. But Jock’s face said nothing. He could not any longer lie on the
hearth-rug, but he was doubled up in a corner by the fire, reading, as
usual, one of the books with which Lady Randolph had thought it proper
to supply him--a proper little story about little boys, supposed to be
adapted to the caliber of eight years old. Perhaps it was more fit for
him than the “History of the Plague,” but he did not like it so well.
“I think that would be very nice, Lady Randolph,” said Lucy, doubtfully.
“Well, my dear, we can but go and see. Jock is too young to judge for
himself; but he can come, too, and tell you how he likes it. Mrs.
Russell is very kind, I believe. She is, also, rather feeble, and does
not know quite so well what she would be at as one could wish. She is
always changing her plans. It may help to fix her if we take her a
pupil. It is a great blessing,” Lady Randolph said, with a sigh, “when
people know their own mind--especially poor people who have to be helped
by their friends.”
“I wonder,” said Lucy, “if it is more difficult to be poor than to be
rich.”
“Oh, there can be little doubt about that--for women, at least. I am not
in the least sorry for the butchers and bakers--they have their
trade--or for our house-maids, which is the same thing; but you and I,
Lucy. If anything were to happen, if we were to lose all our money, what
should we do?”
“I should not be afraid,” said Lucy, quietly, “for you know I was born
poor, but to have a great deal of money, and not know how to employ
it--that was always what papa said. He gave me a great many directions;
but I don’t know if I understood them, and sometimes I do not feel sure
whether he understood. Life is different here and at the Terrace, Lady
Randolph.”
“Very different, my dear; but you need not bewilder your poor little
head just yet. You will be older, you will have more experience before
you have any occasion to trouble yourself about the employment of your
money. I have no doubt all the investments are excellent--your father
had a good business head.”
“It was not about investments I was thinking,” Lucy said. “I have no
power over them.”
“Nor over anything else, fortunately, at your present age,” Lady
Randolph said, with a smile. “We may all be very thankful for that; for
I fear, unless you are very unlike other girls, that you would throw a
good deal of it away.” Lucy did not smile, or take any notice of this
pleasantry. Her next remark was very serious. “Don’t you think,” she
said, “that it is very wrong for me to be so rich, when others are so
poor?”
“A little Radical,” cried Lady Randolph, with a laugh. “Why, Lucy, I
never thought a proper little woman like you would entertain such
revolutionary sentiments.”
“You see,” said Lucy, very gravely, “it is upon me the burden falls;
every one feels most what is most hard upon themselves.”
Lady Randolph laughed again, but this time with a puzzled air.
“Hard upon you!” she said. “My dear, half the girls in England--and the
men, too--would give their heads to have half so much reason to
complain.”
“Men, perhaps, might understand better, Lady Randolph; but it is
altogether very strange. Papa must have known a great deal better; but
he did nothing himself. All that he wanted, so far as I can make out,
was to make more and more money; and then left the use of it--the
spending of it--to a girl that knows nothing. I never took much thought
of this while he was living, but I feel very bewildered now.”
“Wait a little,” Lady Randolph said, “you will find it very easy after
awhile; and, when you marry, your husband will give you a great deal of
assistance. In England you can never be at a loss in spending the
largest income; and the more you have, the more satisfactorily you can
spend it, the better return you have for your money. It is among us poor
people that money is most unsatisfactory. It never brings so much as it
ought,” she said, with that air of playfulness which, on such subjects,
is the usual disguise for the most serious feeling. Lucy looked up at
her with a gravity that disdained all disguise.
“But you do not mean to say, Lady Randolph, that _you_ are poor?”
This question brought the color to Lady Randolph’s face. “You are very
downright, my dear,” she said, “but I will be honest, too. Yes, Lucy, I
am poor. The allowance that is made for you is a great matter for me.
Without that I should not have dreamed-- My dear, you must not think I
mean anything unkind--”
“Oh, no; you could not have cared for me even had I been nicer than I
am,” said Lucy, “for you had never seen me. Then I am rather glad it is
so, Lady Randolph; but you should not give me so many things.”
Lady Randolph laughed, but the moisture came into her eyes. “Lucy, I
begin to think you are a darling,” she said.
“Do you?” cried Lucy, with a warm flush which gave her face a certain
beauty for a moment. “But I am afraid not,” she said, shaking her head.
“Nobody ever said that. I am glad, _very_ glad that you think you will
not mind having me; and it is very, very kind of you to do so much for
me. But I should be quite as happy if you liked me, and did not buy so
many things for me. Is it vulgar to say it? I am almost afraid it is. I
never had anything half--not a tenth part so nice at the Terrace as you
give me here.”
“You were a little school-girl then, and now you are a young lady--a
great heiress, and must begin to live as such people do.”
Lucy shook her head again. “I am only me,” she said, with a smile, “all
the same.”
“Not quite the same; but to leave these perplexing subjects, what is to
be done about your own studies, Lucy?”
“Must I have studies?” she asked, with a tone of melancholy; then added,
submissively, “Whatever you think best, Lady Randolph.”
“My dear, you are far too good. I should like you to have a little will
of your own.”
“Oh, yes, I have a will of my own. If you please, I do not wish to have
any more lessons. I will read books; but they all said I never would
play very well, and I can not draw at all. I can speak French a little,
but it is very bad, and I have done about twenty German exercises,” Lucy
said, with a shudder.
“Poor child! but I fear you must go on with these dreadful experiences.
Perhaps a good German governess for a year--”
Lucy shuddered again. She thought of the Fraulein at the White House,
with an inward prayer for deliverance. The Fraulein knew everything, all
her own business, and other people’s special branches, even better than
her own. Her very spectacles shone with knowledge.
“They can not be _all_ like each other,” Lucy said, “and I will do
whatever you like, Lady Randolph.”
There was never a girl so docile and obedient. Lady Randolph almost
regretted the absence of all struggle, till her eyes fell upon little
Jock in the corner, holding his book somewhat languidly. Jock did not
care for this correct literature; the last thing in the world that he
had any acquaintance with was the doings of children at school.
“Do you like your story-book, Jock?”
“No,” said Jock, concisely.
He let it drop from his hand; he did not even feel very deeply desirous
of knowing what was the end.
“I am sorry for that; I hunted it up for you out of my old nursery.
Nobody had touched the things for thirty years.”
“It is very pretty--outside,” Jock said, eying the gilding, “but I don’t
care much about little boys,” he added, with dignity, “I don’t know what
it means.”
“That is because you are so little, my dear.”
“Oh, no, because I--don’t understand it. I have read much nicer books;
the ‘History of the Plague,’ that was what I liked best, better than
‘Robinson Crusoe,’ as good as the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’”
“How old-fashioned the child is!” Lady Randolph said. “Will you come
with us to see the school where Lucy wishes you to go?”
“Lucy did not wish it,” said the boy, “it was me, I told her. I will go,
because I suppose it is the right thing. You can’t grow up to be a
giant, or even a common man, without going to school. I do not like it
at all, but it is the right thing to do.”
“You are a wise little man,” said Lady Randolph, “and do you think you
may perhaps grow up a giant, Jock?”
“Not in tallness,” Jock said.
He looked at her with something like contempt, and she was cowed in
spite of herself. His very reticence impressed her, for he relapsed into
silence, and gave no further explanation, not caring even to describe in
what, if not in tallness, he expected to be a giant; and the two sat and
looked at each other for a minute in silence. They looked very unlikely
antagonists, but it was not the least important of the two who was most
nervous. Lady Randolph felt as if it was she who was the inexperienced,
the uninstructed one. She did not like to venture out of her depth
again.
“Will you go and get your hat and come with us? You must be very kind to
Lucy, and not worry her. You know she does not want you to leave her;
but also, you know, little Jock--”
Lady Randolph looked at him with a little alarm, feeling that his big
eyes saw through and through her, and not knowing what weird insight
might be in them, or what strange thing he might say.
But Jock’s answer was to get up, and put away his book.
“I am going,” he said.
It was the old lady who was afraid of him. She sat and watched him, and
was glad when he was gone. Lucy was comprehensible and manageable, but
the child dismayed and troubled her. Poor little forlorn boy! There was
no home for him anywhere, no one to care for him but Lucy, who no doubt
would form, as people say, “other ties.”
It was a bright morning in March, the skies full of the beauty of
spring, the air fresh with showers, the sun shining; the buds were
beginning to swell on the trees, and primroses coming out in the
suburban gardens. Jock looked somewhat forlorn, all by himself, in the
front seat of the carriage, buttoned closely into his great-coat, and
looking smaller than ever as his delicate little face looked out from
the thick collar; opposite to Lady Randolph’s portly person, in her
great furred mantle, he looked like a little waxen image; and he sat
very stiffly, trying to draw up his thin little legs beneath him, but
now and then receiving a warning glance from Lucy, who was extremely
nervous about his manners. They were both amused, however, by the long
drive across London, and up the hill toward the northern suburbs. Lady
Randolph did not know the way. She took almost as much interest as they
did in the animated streets.
“Jock, little Jock, there is the heath. Do you see the big furze
bushes?” she said. “How strange to see a place so wild, yet so near
town!”
“It is not so good as our common,” Jock said. Yet school took a more
smiling aspect after he had got a glimpse of the broken ground and wild
vegetation.
They drew up at last after a troublesome search (for Lady Randolph’s
coachman would not have betrayed any knowledge of that out-of-the-way
locality for worlds, it was as much as his reputation was worth) before
a little new house with a bay-window and a small square patch of green
called a garden. Through the bay-window there was a dim appearance
visible of some one seated at a table writing; but when the carriage
stopped there was evidently a great commotion in the house, and the dim
figure disappeared. Some one hastily opening an upper window, a sound of
bells rung, and of noisy footsteps running up and down the stairs, were
all audible to the little party seated in the carriage, who were amused
by all this pantomime.
“She will have a headache,” Lady Randolph said, “as soon as she sees
us.”
Lucy, for her part, felt that to sit at her ease, and witness the
flutter in the house, of excitement and expectation, was scarcely
generous. She was relieved when the door opened. It wounded her to see
the disdain of the footman, the scorn with which he contemplated the
house, and the maid who came to the door; all this penetrated her mind
with a curious sense of familiarity. Mrs. Ford, too, would have been
greatly excited had a pair of prancing horses drawn up before her door,
and a great lady in furs and velvet been seen about to enter; and Lucy
knew that she herself would have rushed out of the parlor, had she been
sitting there, and would have been apt to fly to an upstairs window and
peep out upon the unwonted visitor. She felt all this in the person of
the others, to whom she was coming in the capacity of a great lady. She
had never felt so humble or so insignificant as when she stepped out of
the carriage, following Lady Randolph. Jock grasped at her hand as he
jumped down. He clung to it with both his without saying a word. He did
not feel at all sure that he was not now, this very moment, to be
consigned to separation and banishment, and the new life of school for
which he had offered himself as a victim. He contemplated that
approaching fate with courage, with wide-open, unwinking eyes, but all
the same at the descent of Avernus, at the mouth of the pit, so to
speak, clung to his only protector, his sole comforter. She stooped down
and kissed him hurriedly as they crossed the little green.
“You shan’t go if you do not like it, Jock.”
“But I am going,” said the child, with courage that was heroic; though
he clung to her hand as if he never would let it go, all the same.
Mrs. Russell was a pretty, faded woman, with hair like Katie’s, and the
same blue eyes; but the mirth was out of them, and puckers of anxiety
had come instead. She had put up her handkerchief to her forehead when
Lucy entered the room. She had a headache, as Lady Randolph divined.
There was a little flush of excitement upon her cheeks. When Lucy was
introduced to her she gave the girl a wistful look first, then made an
anxious inspection of her, returning again and again, Lucy felt, to her
face. Was not there in that look the inevitable contrast which it was so
impossible to help making?
“Is this,” she said, “the young lady Katie has written to me about?” She
added, faltering, after a moment, “the dear young friend who has been so
kind to her?” and again she turned a questioning, wistful look upon
Lucy, whose fate was so different.
“Indeed,” said Lucy, “I could not be kind, I wish I could; but I like
Katie very dearly, Mrs. Russell.”
“Ah, my dear, if I may call you so,” cried the poor woman with the
headache, “that is the very sweetest thing you could say,” but all the
same her eyes kept questioning. What had the heiress come for? What had
Lady Randolph come for? When visitors like these enter a very poor
house, should not some pearls and diamonds fall from their lips, some
little wells of comforting wealth spring up beneath their feet?
“How does the school go on?” said Lady Randolph; “that is the cause of
our visit, really. I heard of a little boy--but how does it go on? Did
you settle about those Indian children?”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Russell, “there is nothing so hard to get as Indian
children; they are the prizes; if one can but get a good connection in
that way, one’s fortune is made; but there are so many that want them.
It seems to me that there is nothing in all the world but a crowd of
poor ladies fighting for pupils. It will be strange to you, Miss Trevor,
to hear any one talk like that,” she added.
She could not help, it would seem, this reference to Lucy; a girl who
was made of money, who could support dozens of families and never feel
it. It was not that the poor lady wanted her money, but she could not
help feeling a wistful wonder about her, a young creature whose fate was
so different! When one is very poor it is so natural to admire wealth,
and so curious to see it, and watch its happy owners, if only to note in
what way they differ. Lucy did not differ in any way, at which poor Mrs.
Russell admired and wondered all the more.
“But you have some pupils?” Lady Randolph said.
“Yes, three in the house, and six who are day-scholars. Bertie tells me
it is not such a bad beginning. I tried for little boys, because there
are so few, in comparison, that take little boys; and Bertie teaches
them Latin.”
“I thought your son was to get a situation.”
“Yes, indeed, but some one else got it instead; one can hardly grudge
it, when one knows how many poor young fellows there are with nothing.
He is writing,” Mrs. Russell said, with some pride.
“Writing!” Lady Randolph echoed with dismay, mingled with contempt.
Their points of view were very different. To the mother, fortune seemed
to be hovering, doubtful, yet very possible, over the feather of her
boy’s pen; to the woman of the world, a little clerkship in an office
would have been much more satisfactory. “You should not encourage him
in that; I fear it is not much better than idleness,” Lady Randolph
said, shaking her head.
“Idleness! look at Mr. Trollope, and all those gentlemen; it is a fine
profession! a noble profession!” said the poor lady fervently; but she
added, with a sigh, “if he could only get an opening, that is the hard
thing. If he only knew somebody! Bertie takes the Latin, and Mary the
English, and I superintend, and give the music lessons.”
“And you are getting on?”
The poor woman looked the rich woman (as she thought) in the face, with
eyes that filled with tears. She could not answer in words before the
strangers. She mutely and faintly shook her head, with a pathetic
attempt at a smile.
Both Lucy and little Jock saw the silent communication, and divined it,
perhaps, better than the elder lady. As for Lucy, her heart ached with
sympathy, and a flood of sudden resolutions, intentions, took possession
of her; but what could she do? She had to keep silent, holding Jock’s
little hand fast, who stood by her knee.
“I thought you might perhaps have an opening for the little boy I heard
of. He is a delicate child, and peculiar; he would require a great deal
of special care. If you think you have time--”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Russell, the pink flush deepening on her cheeks, “plenty
of time! And I think I may say for myself that I am very good with
delicate children. I take an interest in them. I--you would like to see
Bertie, perhaps, about the Latin?” Mrs. Russell rang her bell hastily.
She was feverishly anxious to conclude the bargain without loss of time.
“Will you tell Mr. Bertie I want him?” she said, going to the door, to
anticipate the maid, who was not too anxious to reply. “I am here,
mother,” they heard in a youthful bass--at no great distance--evidently
the house was all in a stir of expectation. Mrs. Russell came back with
a little nervous laugh. “Bertie will be here directly,” she said. “I
would ask you to step into the school-room, and see them; but the truth
is they are all out for a walk. Mary has taken them to the heath. It is
so good for them--and it was such a beautiful day--and my headache was
particularly bad. When my headache is very bad, the voices of the
children drive me wild.” Poor soul! as soon as she had said this, she
perceived that it was a thing inexpedient to say. But by this time the
door had opened again, and introduced a new figure. He came in with his
hands in his pockets, after the manner of young men. He, too, was like
Katie; but his face was cloudy, not so open as hers, and his features
handsomer. He stood hesitating, his eyes going from one to another; to
Lucy first--was not that natural? Then he straightened himself out, and
took a hand from one of his pockets, and presented it to Lady Randolph.
He was eager too, but with a suppressed bravado, as if anxious to show
that he did not mean it, and was himself personally much at his ease.
“So this is Bertie!” said Lady Randolph. “What a long time it must be
since I have seen him! Why, you are a man now; and what a comfort it
must be to your mother to have you with her!”
Mrs. Russell clasped her thin hands. “Yes, it _is_ a comfort!” she said.
“What should I do if Bertie were away?”
Lucy was in the position of a spectator while all this was going on, and
though she was not a great observer, something jarred in this little
scene, she could not tell what. She surprised a glance from the mother
to the son, which did not chime in with her words, and Bertie himself
did not respond with enthusiasm. “I don’t know if I am a comfort,” he
said; “but here I am anyhow, and very glad to see an old friend.”
“I hear you are coming out as a literary character, Bertie?”
“I am trying to write a little; it seems the best trade nowadays. I
believe there are heaps of money to be made by it,” he said, with that
air of careless grandeur which is so delightful to the unsophisticated
imagination, “and not much trouble. The only thing is to get one’s hand
in.”
“That is what I was telling Lady Randolph,” said his mother, her thin
hands clasping and unclasping; “to get an opening--that is all you
want.”
“But you require to be very clever, Bertie,” said Lady Randolph, gravely
disapproving, “to make anything by writing. I have heard people say in
society--”
“No,” said the young man, “not at all, it is only a knack; there is
nothing that costs so little trouble. You want training for every other
profession, but anybody can write. I think I know what I am about.”
Then there was a momentary silence, Mrs. Russell looked at her son with
wistful admiration, not unmingled with a furtive and painful doubt,
while Lady Randolph contemplated him with a severity which was
resentful, as if poor Bertie’s pretensions did her, or any one else, any
harm. This pause, which was somewhat embarrassing, was broken by Jock,
whose small voice, suddenly uplifted, startled them all.
“Is it stories he writes, Lucy? I would like to learn to write stories.
I think I will stay here,” he said. But Jock was confused by the
attention attracted by his utterance, and the faces of all those
grown-up people turned toward him. “I can’t write at all yet,” he said,
growing very red, planting himself firmly against Lucy, and facing the
company, half apologetic, half defiant. Between pot-hooks and novels
there is a difference; but why should not the one branch of skill be
learned as well as the other? Jock knew no reason why.