THE FIRST PROPOSAL.
“Lucy, I never thought you were a flirt before,” said Mrs. Rushton, half
severe, half jocular. They did not walk home with her now, as they had
done in the warm August evenings. It was now dark, and almost all the
company had dispersed, and the brougham had been ordered to take Miss
Trevor home.
“A flirt!” Lucy looked up with great surprise at the word.
“Oh, yes, you may look astonished; perhaps you don’t call that flirting;
but I am old-fashioned. No one has been able to get a word with you all
the evening. Now recollect,” said Mrs. Rushton, shaking a forefinger at
the culprit. “I am very prim and proper, and I have Emmie to think of.
You must not set her a bad example; and there’s poor Ray. You have not a
bit of feeling for poor Ray.”
Lucy looked at her with very serious inquiring eyes, and went home with
a consciousness that there was a rivalry between Mr. St. Clair and
Raymond, in which she was more or less involved. Lucy was not very quick
of understanding, and neither of them had said anything to her which was
quite unmistakable. Had they mentioned the words love or marriage, she
would have known what she had to encounter at once; but she was not on
the outlook for implied admiration, and their assiduities scarcely
affected her. St. Clair was Jock’s tutor, and in constant communication
with her, and, no doubt, she thought, it was Mrs. Rushton who made
Raymond take so much care of her. This was a shrewd guess, as the reader
knows, and, therefore she did not trouble herself about Ray’s
attentions, or wonder at the devotion of St. Clair. But she had a faint
uneasy feeling in her mind. The rose which she had fastened in her dress
was very sweet, and kept reminding her of that scene in the garden. This
pricked Lucy’s conscience a little as she drove home in the dark alone
with it. It ought to have been given to Mrs. Rushton, not to her; the
last Devoniensis, sweet like an echo of summer, the only one that was
left. St. Clair had no right to gather it, nor she to wear it. It was a
robbery in its way, and this made her uncomfortable, more uncomfortable
than the accusation of flirting, of which Lucy felt innocent. The night
was dark, but very soft and warm for the season, not even a star
visible, everything wrapped in clouds and dimness. When the brougham
stopped at the door in the Terrace, some one appeared at once to open it
for her, to help her out. “Mr. St. Clair!” she cried, almost with alarm.
“Yes,” he said; he was not much more than a voice and a big shadow, but
still she could not have any doubt about him. “I hurried on to do my
duty as Miss Trevor’s servant; they would not have let me walk home with
you, but I was determined to pay my duty here.”
Lucy was embarrassed by this new attention, “I am so sorry you have
taken so much trouble,” she said. “I always wait till they have opened
the door. Ah! here they are coming; there was no need, indeed, of any
one. I am sorry you took the trouble.”
“Trouble!” he said, “that is not the word. Ah, Miss Trevor, thanks! you
are wearing my rose.”
“Indeed!” said Lucy. “I am afraid it is not right to cut it. Mr. Raymond
looked--it was the last one; and it was theirs--not ours.”
“The churl!” said St. Clair; “he ought to have been too proud if you had
put your foot upon it, instead of wearing it. How sweet it is! it is
where it ought to be.” Then he paused, detaining her for a moment. “Yes,
the door is open,” he said, with a sigh. “I can not deny it. Good-night
then--till to-morrow.”
“Good-night!” said Lucy, calmly. She wondered what was the matter? What
did he mean by it? He held her hand closely, but did not shake it as
people in their ordinary senses do when they bid you good-night, and he
kept Mrs. Ford standing at the door with her candle in her hand, blown
about by the draught. Mrs. Ford was sleepy, she did not pay much
attention to Lucy’s companion. It was past ten o’clock, an hour at which
all the Ford household went to bed; and Mrs. Ford knew herself to be
very virtuous and self-denying in sitting up for Lucy, and was a little
cross in consequence. She said only, “You are late, Lucy. I wonder what
pleasure it can be to anybody to be out of bed at this hour,” and shut
the door impatiently. The lights were all out except Mrs. Ford’s candle,
and the darkness in-doors was very different from that soft darkness out
of doors, it was only half past ten, yet Lucy felt herself dissipated.
She was glad to hurry upstairs. Jock opened his big eyes as she went
through the room in which he slept. He put up a sleepy hand, and softly
stroked her rose as she bent down to kiss him. The rose seemed the chief
point altogether in the evening. She put it into water on her table, and
went to bed with a little tremulous sense of excitement. But she could
not tell why she was excited.
It was something in the air, something independent of her, a breath as
from some other atmosphere straying into her own.
As for St. Clair, he stumbled home across the common, almost losing his
way, as the night was so dark, with a little excitement in his mind too.
When he got into Mrs. Stone’s parlor, where she sat at the little meal
which was her special and modest indulgence, he was greeted by both
ladies with much interest and many questions. “Did it go off well?” Miss
Southwood said, who liked to hear what there had been to eat at the
“heavy tea” which followed the croquet party, and whether there had been
wine on the table in addition to the tea. But Mrs. Stone looked still
more anxiously in Frank’s face. “Are you getting on? Are you making
progress?” was what she said. To which he answered, with a great deal of
earnestness, in the words of the poet:
“‘He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.’”
“Has it come so far as that?” said Mrs. Stone.
“I think so; but do not ask me any more questions,” he said, and he was
treated with the utmost delicacy and consideration. Without another
word, a plate with some of Mrs. Stone’s delicately cooked dish was set
before him, and a large glass of East India sherry poured out, far
better fare than the cold viands and tea prepared for Mrs. Rushton’s
many guests, while the conversation was gently led into another channel.
His feelings could not have been more judiciously studied, for he had
been too much intent upon Lucy to eat much at the previous meal, and
agitation is exhausting. The only further allusion that was made to the
crisis was when Mrs. Stone bade him good-night. She kissed him on the
cheek, and said softly, “I quite approve your action if you think the
occasion is ripe for it, but do not be premature, my dear boy.”
“No, I will not be premature,” he said, smiling upon her. His heart
expanded with a delightful self-confidence. It did not seem to him that
there was any cause to fear.
And as he sat in the little room at the end of the long passage, where
he was permitted to smoke, and watched the floating clouds that rose
from his cigar, the imaginations which rose along with these circling
wreaths were beautiful. He saw within his grasp a something sweeter than
love, more delicious than any kind of dalliance. Wealth! the power of
doing whatever he pleased, stepping at once into a position, he, the
unsuccessful, which would leave all the successful men behind, and
dazzle those who had once passed him by in the race. He was not
disinclined toward Lucy. He felt it was in him indeed to be fond of her,
who could do so much for him. She could open to him the gates of
paradise, she could make him the happiest man in the world. These
hyperboles would be strictly true, far more true than they were in the
majority of the cases in which they were uttered with fullest sincerity.
But nobody could be more sincere than Frank St. Clair in his use of the
well-worn formulas. It was nothing less than blessedness, salvation, an
exemption from ills of life which Lucy had it in her power to confer.
Next morning he went as usual to the Terrace and gave Jock his lesson
with a mind somewhat disturbed. The little fellow with his grammar, the
tranquil figure of the girl over her books, the ordinary aspect of the
room with which he was growing so familiar, had the strangest effect
upon him in the state of excitement in which he found himself. The
monotony of the lesson which had to be made out all the same, word by
word, and the strange suspense and expectation in which he sat amid all
the calmness of the domestic scene, made St. Clair’s head go round. He
did not know how to support it, and it was before his hour was out that
he suddenly interrupted Jock’s repetition with a sudden harsh whisper.
“Run and play,” he said; “that is enough for to-day.”
He had not even heard what Jock had been saying for the last ten
minutes. The child looked up in the utmost surprise. He was stopped in
the middle of a sentence, the words taken out of his mouth. He looked
with his eyes opening wide.
“Run and play,” St. Clair repeated, his lips were quite dry with
excitement; “I want to speak to Lucy.”
He had never spoken of her as Lucy before, he had never thought of
suggesting that Jock should run and play. The child, though startled and
indignant, yielded to the emergency which was unmistakable in his
instructor’s face. He looked at St. Clair for a moment, angry, then
yielding to the necessity. And Lucy, whose interest in her history-book
was never of an absorbing description, hearing the pause, the whisper,
the little rustle of movement, looked up too. She saw with some
astonishment that Jock was leaving the room.
“Have you got through your lessons already?” she cried.
St. Clair made the child an imperative sign, and got up and approached
Lucy.
“I have sent him away,” he said, and then stood for a moment looking
down upon her. She, on her side, looked up with a surprised countenance.
There could not have been a greater contrast than that which was
apparent between them; he full of excitement, she perfectly calm, though
surprised, wondering what it was he was about to say to her, and what
his restrained agitation could mean. “I sent him away,” said St. Clair,
“because I wanted to say something to you, Miss Trevor; I could not
delay it any longer. It has been almost more than I could do to keep
silence so long.”
“What is it?” she said. She was gently anxious, concerned about him,
wondering if he was going to relieve her of her difficulty by confessing
his wants, and putting it into her power to help him. It did not occur
to Lucy that a man would be very unlikely to confide troubles about
money to a girl. The distribution of her money occupied her own mind so
much that it seemed, on the contrary, a likely matter to her that others
should be so preoccupied too.
“I have something to say to you,” he repeated; but the look of her mild
blue eyes steadfastly directed toward him made what he had to say a
great deal more difficult to St. Clair. A chill doubt penetrated into
his mind; he hesitated. The least little uncertainty on her part, a
blush, a shade of trouble, would have made everything easier to him; but
Lucy was not excited. She “did seriously incline” to hear whatever he
might have to say, but her eyes did not even veil their mild light, nor
her cheek own the shadow of a flush. To discharge a declaration of love
point-blank at a young woman who is gazing at you in perfect composure
and ease, without a shade of expectation in her countenance, is no easy
matter. Besides, the fact of her composure was, of all things in the
world, the most discouraging to her suitor; and it was what he had not
anticipated. It came upon him as a revelation of the most chilling and
discouraging kind. “Now that the moment has come,” said. St. Clair, “all
the unkind judgments I may be exposing myself to seem to rise up before
me. I never thought of them till now. The sincerity of my feelings was
my defense. Now I feel overwhelmed by them. Miss Trevor-- Lucy! I feel
now that I have been a fool. What I wanted to say is what I ought not to
say.”
He covered his face with his hands, and turned away from her. Lucy was
much concerned. This little pantomime, which, however, was the sincerest
part of all St. Clair’s proceedings, took away her indifference at once.
Her composed countenance was disturbed, a little color came to her face.
“Oh, tell me what it is,” she cried.
When he looked at her, there was an air almost of entreaty on Lucy’s
face. She repeated her petition, “Tell me what it is,” looking anxiously
up to him. His heart beat very loudly. To
“ ... put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.”
is not so easily done in reality as in verse. He drew a long, almost
sobbing, breath. He dropped down suddenly on one knee, close to her.
This was not any expedient of humility or devotion, but merely to bring
himself on a level with her, and as such Lucy understood it, though she
was surprised.
“Lucy!” he said (and this startled her still more), “Lucy! don’t you
know what it is? can not you guess? haven’t you seen it already in every
look of my face, in every tone of my voice? Ah, yes, I am sure you know
it. I am not a good dissembler, and what else could have kept me here?
Lucy! I am not good enough for you, but such as I am, will you have me?”
he cried.
“_Have_ you, Mr. St. Clair!” Lucy stammered out in consternation. She
understood him vaguely, and yet she did not understand him. _Have_ him!
not give to him, but take from him. He had put it skillfully, without,
however, being aware that he was doing so, excitement taking the place
of calculation, as it often does. He held out his hands for hers, he
looked at her with eyes full of entreaty, beseeching, imploring. There
was nothing fictitious in their eloquence. He meant as sincerely as ever
lover meant, and the yes or no was to him, as in the case of the most
impassioned wooer, like life or death.
“Yes,” he said, “have me! I am not much of a man, but with you I should
be another creature. You would give me what I have always wanted, an
inspiration, a motive. Since the first time I saw you, my happiness has
been in your hands; for what else do you think I have been staying here?
I have not done all I might have done, but, Lucy, if love had not held
me, do you think I am good for nothing but to be tutor to a child? I
have served for love, like Jacob, for you.”
Lucy gave a low cry at this. She put her hands, not into his, but
together, wringing them with sudden pain.
“Oh,” she said, “why did not you tell me before? Oh, Mr. St. Clair, why
did I not know?”
“Do you think I grudge it?” he said, “not if it had been as long as
Jacob’s. Do you think I regret having done this for you? not if it had
been a life-time; but Lucy, you are too good to keep me in suspense, you
will give me my reward at the end?”
And this time he took her clasped hands into his, drawing her to him.
Lucy’s courage had failed for a moment. Confusion and trouble and
distress had taken away all the strength from her. There was a mist over
her eyes, and her voice seemed to die away in her throat; but at his
touch her girlish shyness came to her aid. A flush of shrinking and
shame came over her. She drew away from him with an instinctive recoil.
“Mr. St. Clair, I don’t know what you want from me. I am very grateful
to you about Jock. I thought it was a great favor; but I did not
know--oh, I am very sorry, very sorry that you should have done anything
that was not good enough for me.”
“I am not sorry,” he said; his heart began to sink, but he looked more
lover-like, more eager than ever. “You do not know how sweet it is to
serve those one loves. Do you remember what Browning says about Dante’s
angel and Raphael’s sonnet?” He was a man of culture himself, and he did
not reflect that Dante, and Raphael, and Browning were all alike out of
Lucy’s way, who stared at him with growing horror, as he pleaded,
feeling that he must be citing spectators of his sacrifices for her, who
would blame her, and say she used him badly. “This is my sonnet and my
picture,” he added; “‘Once, and only once, and for one only.’ Lucy!
believe me, I should never have said anything about it, save to prove my
dear love.”
Blanched with pain and terror, her mild eyes opened widely, her breath
coming quick, Lucy looked at him kneeling by her side, and held herself
away, leaning to the other hand to avoid the almost unavoidable contact.
She kept her eyes fixed upon him to keep watch more than anything else,
upon what he would do next.
He saw that his cause was lost. There was neither love nor gratitude for
love in the stare of her troubled eyes; but he would not give in without
another effort. He said, softly sinking his voice, “You ask what I want
from you, Lucy? Alas! I thought you would have divined without asking.
Your love, dear, in return for mine, which I have given you. What I want
is nothing less than your love--and yourself.”
Again he put out his hands to take hers. To think that this should be
all the mere fancy of a little girl, all that stood between him and
bliss, not perhaps the usual kind of lover’s bliss, yet happiness,
rapture. Impatience seized him, which he could scarcely restrain. Such a
trifling obstacle as this, no obstacle at all, for it was clear she
could not know what was for her own advantage, what would make her
happy. Then came an impatient inclination upon him to capture her by his
bow and spear, to seize upon her simply and carry her off, and compel
her to see what was for her own advantage. But alas! the rules of
conventional life were too many for St. Clair. Though this he felt would
have been the natural and the sensible way of proceeding, he could not
adopt it. He had still to kneel by her side and do his best to persuade
her. He could not force her to do even what was so evidently for her
good.
The extremity of her need brought back Lucy’s courage. She felt herself
driven to bay, and it was evident that he must have no doubt as to the
answer she gave. She looked at him as steadily as her trembling would
permit, a deep flush came over her face, her lips quivered.
“Do you mean that you want to--marry me, Mr. St. Clair?” she said.
St. Clair felt that the moment was supreme. He threw all the passionate
entreaty which was possible (and his passion was real enough) into his
look, and gathering her hands into both his, kissed them again and
again.
“What else?” he said, in a whisper, which must have thrilled through and
through a heart in which there was any response. But in Lucy’s there was
no response. She stumbled to her feet with an effort, getting her hands
free, and leaving her discomfited suitor kneeling by the side of her
empty chair in ludicrous confusion. He had, indeed, to grasp hold of the
chair, or the sudden energy of her movement would have disturbed his
balance too.
“That is impossible, impossible!” Lucy cried, her cheeks burning, her
mild eyes glowing; “you must never speak of it again, you must never
mention it to me more. I could not,” she added, feeling in his look that
all was not settled, even by this vehement negative, “I could not, I
could never marry _you_; and I do not want to be married at all.”
“Not now, perhaps, but some time you will,” he said. He had risen from
his knee, and stood opposite to her, banishing as best he could his
confusion from his face. “Not now; I have been rash, I have frightened
you with an avowal which I ought not to have made so soon; but Lucy,
dearest, the time will come.”
“Not now, or ever!” she cried; “oh, Mr. St. Clair, believe me! don’t let
it be all to go over another time; neither now nor ever. I may be
frightened, I never thought of anything like this before; but now you
have made me think of it, I know--_that_ is impossible, it could never,
never be!”
“You are very sure of yourself,” he said, with a little involuntary
bitterness; for it is not pleasant to be rejected, even when you think
it is the dictate of fright, and St. Clair did not think so, but only
pretended so to think.
“Yes, I am very, very sure. Oh, indeed, I am sure. Anything, anything
else! If I could help you to get on, if I could be of any use. Anything
else; but that can never be!” said Lucy, with tremendous firmness. He
looked at her with cynical scorn in his eyes.
“I will never thrust anything upon a lady against her will,” he said,
“even to save her from the blood-hounds; one can not do that, but the
time will come-- I know very well the time will come.” He was as much
agitated as if indeed he had loved Lucy to desperation. He went to the
table and collected his books with a tremendous vehemence. “I must now
wish you good-morning, Miss Trevor,” he said.
And it was with a troubled heart that Lucy saw him go. What could she
have done otherwise? She could not bear that any one should leave her
thus. She longed to be able to offer him--anything that would salve his
wound. If he would only take some of the money! if he would only accept
her help, since she could not give him herself. She looked after him
with her heart wrung, and tears in her piteous eyes.