WHEN THE NIGHT’S DARKEST IT’S NEAREST THE DAWNING.
Not a word could Lucy say all the way home. She was flushed and
agitated, her hand burning, which grasped Jock’s, her eyes dim with
moisture. When she got home she made no reply to Mrs. Ford, who came out
to meet her; but, dropping Jock’s hand, ran upstairs to the quiet of
that still, pink sitting-room, where the “Heroes” still lay open on the
rug, and her chair stood as she had thrust it back. The afternoon was
fading into twilight, the lamps were lighted outside, throwing a strange
one-sided sort of chilly illumination into the room, though mingled with
the daylight. Lucy shut the door behind her, as if it had been the door
of a hermitage. No one would come to disturb her there, unless it might
be Mrs. Ford, to persuade her to go down to tea. How could Lucy go and
sit at the homely table, and listen to all the potterings of the pair,
over their bread and butter? She could not do it. Agitation had driven
away all trace of appetite; she wanted nothing, she thought, but to be
let alone. She sat down upon the sofa, and gazed out wistfully at the
bit of blue sky that appeared between the white curtains. There was not
so much as that bit of blue sky in all Lucy’s world. Not one true to
her, not one who did not see something in her quite different from
herself. Her other suitors had startled Lucy; but this last application
for her love had driven her to bay. She did injustice to poor Bertie in
the vehemence of her feelings. Though he had spoken in high-flown
language, he was not in reality worse than the others, nor had he a
worse meaning. They all of them had known that Lucy was the most
desirable thing within their reach. They had recognized with the truest
sincerity that she could make them happy, that no one could make them so
happy; they had aspired to her with all the fervor of heartfelt
sentiment; and Bertie had not been behind the others in this very
earnest and unquestionable feeling. Why then should he have made her so
angry--he, and not the others? She could not tell; but she came in,
feeling a universal sickening of distrust, which took all the heart out
of her. She sat down dismally upon her pink sofa. Nobody to trust to.
What fate in the world could be so terrible? The cold gleaming of the
lamps outside were a kind of symbol of all her life had to sustain it;
faint reflections of the outside light of the world but no warmth of a
household lamp or hearth within. She sat down forlorn, and began to cry.
“Nobody, nobody!” said poor Lucy. She did her best to survey the
situation calmly, dismal as it was. What was she to do? All her friends
had forsaken her; but she had Jock left, and those duties which her
father had trusted to her hands. She must go on with her trust whatever
happened. She kept hold of a kind of reality in her life, by grasping at
this resolution. Yes, she would do her duty; whoever failed she would
hold on, she would do what her father had said. It was still something
that was left in life.
It seemed to Lucy, all at once, as if a new light had come upon this
duty. It was in love to her as well as in justice to others that her
father had charged her to give it back. Oh, if it could all be given
back--got rid of, her life delivered from it, and she herself left free
like other girls! Lucy’s sky seemed to her all gloomy and charged with
clouds of wealth, which had risen out of the earth, and only by
dispersion to earth again would leave her free. She understood what her
father meant--rain to relieve the clouds, tears to relieve the heat in
her forehead, the gasp in her throat. But at present the clouds were
hanging suspended over her, hiding all the blueness of the heavens, and
her tears were few and hot, not enough to relieve either head or heart.
Nobody faithful--not one! the women conspiring, even Katie, the men
paying false court, making false professions, and every one maligning
the other, accusing the others of that falsehood which they knew to be
in themselves. “Not one,” she repeated to herself, “not one;” and then a
cry was forced out of Lucy’s poor little wrung heart. “Not even Sir
Tom!” she said aloud, with a sudden torrent of tears. Was this, though
she did not know it, the worst of all? Certainly the name opened those
flood-gates against which her passion of wounded feeling had been
straining; her tears came in a violent thunder-shower. “Not even Sir
Tom!” It was the hardest of all.
Something stirred in the dimness behind her. She had taken no notice of
anything in the room when she came in, blind with those tears which she
was not able to shed until she found that talisman. Some one seemed to
make a step forward. Was she then not alone? or was it her imagination
only which made her heart jump? No, for Lucy’s imagination never went so
far as this. It could not have created the voice which said, with that
familiar tone, “What has Sir Tom done?” with a touch of emotion and a
little touch of laughter in it, just over her head as she sat and
sobbed. The sudden cry with which Lucy replied told all her little
secret, even to herself. She got up and turned round, transformed, her
innocent lips apart, her eyes all wet and blinded, yet seeing-- But what
she saw was not very clear, a big shadow, a something that was very
real, not false at all, a figure that somehow--why? Lucy could not
tell--put the world right again, and stopped the giddiness, and made the
ground solid under her feet. She put out her hands, yet more in meaning
than in action, half groping, half appealing.
“Who is it? is it _you_?” she said.
“Lucy, what has Sir Tom done to make you cry?” he asked, taking her
hands into his. Was it possible that she did not feel any longer this
most poignant stab of all? She could not in the least recollect what it
was. She thought of it no more. It sailed away from her firmament as a
cloud sails on a steady breeze.
“Oh, I am so glad you have come home,” she cried.
Sir Tom was touched almost to tears. No one could see it, but he felt
the moisture steal into the corners of his eyes. This was not a
congenial place for him, this _bourgeois_ room, nor had this little
girl, in her simplicity, any right to greet him so. And Sir Thomas had
by no means made up his mind, when he came to see his aunt’s _protégée_,
notwithstanding her heiress-ship, that he was going to give up his
freedom and independence, and subject himself to all manner of vulgar
comments for her sake. But these words sealed his fate. He could no more
have resisted their modest, simple appeal, so unconscious as it was,
than he could have denied his own nature. He did what he had done when
he left her, but with a very different meaning; he stooped over her and
kissed her seriously on the forehead; he had done it half paternally,
half in jest, when he went away.
“Yes, my dear, I have come home,” with a little quiver in his voice, Sir
Thomas said; and after an interval, “I think my little Lucy must have
missed me. What is the matter? who has been vexing you? and even Sir
Tom; did I do something amiss too?”
“We will speak of that after,” Lucy said, with a relief which was beyond
all comprehension. She could talk again, her tongue was loosened and her
heart opened. She had not been able to confide in any one for so long,
and now all at once some door seemed opened, some lock undone. “It does
not seem anything now you are here. I am sure it was right, quite
right,” she cried, with a sob and a laugh together. “I knew _underneath_
that it must be right all the time.”
Sir Tom did not insist upon knowing what it was; he made her sit down,
and placed himself by her, still holding her hands.
“But something has been wrong,” he said. “My little girl is not in such
trouble without some cause. Mrs. Ford tells me there was a disturbance
this morning, and that Jock was naughty, and you went out without any
dinner. Come, tell me--you can trust in me.”
Had she not heard over and over again that he was not to be trusted? Had
she not believed, with the deepest sting of all, that Sir Tom had failed
her? Lucy did not remember. “Oh, yes,” she said, from the bottom of her
heart. It seemed so easy to tell everything now. And then the whole
pent-up stream poured forth. The trouble of the morning could not be
disclosed without leading to all the rest. Sometimes she cried as she
spoke, sometimes almost laughed, the fact that he was there taking all
the sting out of her troubles. And as for Sir Tom, though there was
sometimes a gleam of indignation in him, he felt more disposed to
laughter than to tears. Lucy’s troubles were very simple and transparent
to him; she might have known that her fortune would tempt
everybody--though the fact that she had not known, and that even proofs
had not convinced her, was the thing which most profoundly touched Sir
Tom’s experienced heart.
“You have had a pretty set of guardians,” he said; “these are all people
that have had the charge of you, Lucy?” He did not at the moment
recollect that Lady Randolph had the charge of her also, and had
instantly, from the ends of the world, summoned himself. Then he said,
“Lucy, listen to me; this is the sort of thing you will be subject to, I
fear, wherever you go; and I don’t know what you will think of me when
you hear what I am going to say. I know you have a grievance against me
which you are to tell me by and by--”
“No, oh, no,” cried Lucy fervently; “I know now it must have been a
mistake.”
He smiled, but the smile was not that of mere triumph. He was old enough
to be touched by his own unexpected success, to be grateful to the young
creature who had resisted all other claims upon her regard, to give her
heart so unreservedly to him; and there was even more than this, a
something which, at the moment, was very like love, which probably was
the most passionate sentiment he was likely to entertain now, after all
his experiences, for any one. He was “very fond of” Lucy. He understood
her simple goodness, and regarded it with that soft, fraternal
enthusiasm which a beloved child excites in us; and he was grateful to
her, and deeply touched by her choice of himself, a choice of which he
could have very little doubt. “And you have heard a great deal of harm
of me--all these good people have said something. They have said Tom
Randolph was not a man to be your friend.”
“I have not believed them,” said Lucy. “I know you better. I have not
believed a word.”
“But you might have believed, Lucy. You must listen to me now, my dear.
I have not been a good man, as you give me credit for being. I can not
say of myself that I am fit to be the companion of a young, pure, good
girl.”
“Oh, Sir Tom!” Lucy cried in indignant protestation. Words would not
serve her to say more.
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head regretfully. “It is quite true. I who
know myself best confess it to you, but still there is a little truth
left in me. I am going to enter the lists with all these others, Lucy. I
am going to ask you to set yourself free from all of them by marrying
me.”
“_Marrying--you_, Sir Tom!”
“Yes, me. People will say I am a fortune-hunter like the rest.”
Lucy could not bear even this censure suggested by himself. She had been
looking at him seriously all the time, showing her emotion only by the
changing color of her face, which, indeed, it was not very easy to see.
Now she made a hasty movement of impatience, stamping her foot upon the
ground. “No!” she said. “No! they would not dare to say that. It would
not be true.”
“It would be true so far that, if you were a little girl without any
fortune, I should not dare to ask you to marry me, for I am a poor man;
but not any worse than that. Will you marry me, Lucy?” Sir Thomas said.
He let her hands go free, and held out his own. He was not afraid like
the others. It can not even be said that he had much doubt what the
answer would be.
Lucy had not shrunk from him, nor shown any appearance of timidity. She
sat quite quietly looking at him, her eyes showing through the gathering
twilight, but not much else. There was a little quiver about her mouth,
but that did not show.
“Must I be married at all?” she said, in a very low voice.
This chilled Sir Thomas a little, for he had expected a much warmer
reply. He had thought it possible that she would fling herself upon his
breast, and receive his proposal with the same soft enthusiasm with
which she had welcomed his coming. He forgot how young she was, how
child-like, and how serious and dutiful in every new step she had to
take.
“Yes,” he said, with a little jar in his voice, “unless you are always
to be running the gantlet through a string of suitors. You like me,
Lucy?”
“Oh, Sir Tom, yes!”
“And I--” he stopped the other words on his own lips; he would be honest
and no more; he would not say love, which indeed was a word he knew he
had soiled by ignoble use, and employed ere now in a very different
sense. “And I,” he said, “am very fond of you.”
There was a pause. He never could have thought he would have felt so
anxious, or that his heart would have beaten as it was beating. Through
the twilight he could see Lucy’s serious eyes--not stars, or anything
superfluous--honest, tranquil, with a little curve of thought over each
brow, looking at him. She was anxious too. At last she said, with a soft
sigh, “I wish, I wish I knew--”
“What Lucy?”
“What is right,” she said, with a little hurrying and faltering of the
words, “what papa would have liked. It is so hard to tell. He left me a
great many instructions for different things, but not a word, not a word
about this.”
“In this, you may be sure, he wished your heart to be your guide,” said
Sir Thomas, “and so, even if you decide against me, do I--”
“How could I decide against you, Sir Tom?” she said, with a soft
reproach. “I am thinking, only thinking, what is right.”
What was Sir Thomas to do? he began to feel that his position was almost
ludicrous, sitting here, suspended upon Lucy’s breath, waiting for her
answer. This was not the triumphant position which he had occupied ten
minutes ago, when he felt himself to be the deliverer, coming with
acclamations to set everything right. Whether to be very angry and
annoyed, or to laugh at this curious turning of the tables--to be
patient and wait her pleasure, or to betray the half-provoked,
half-amused impatience he began to feel--he did not know.
The matter was decided in a way as unlooked for as was the crisis
itself. Suddenly, without any warning, the door bounced open, and Mrs.
Ford stood in the door-way, in a dark vacancy, which showed her darker
substance like a drawing in sepia. “Lucy,” she said solemnly, “do you
mean to starve yourself to death, all to spite me? I have not had a
moment’s peace all day since you went out without your dinner. Sir
Thomas Randolph, if you have got any influence with her, _make_ her come
down to her tea.”
“I will, Mrs. Ford,” he said.
“There’s a roast partridge,” said Mrs. Ford, with real emotion. “Jock,
bless him, has eat up the other. Oh, Lucy, if you do not want to make me
wretched, come down to your tea!”
“I am coming,” said Lucy. She rose up, and so did her companion-- Mrs.
Ford in the door-way looking on, not seeing anything but the two
shadows, yet wondering and troubled in her mind to think of the neglect
which had left them there without any lights. “I will give it to that
Lizzie,” said Mrs. Ford internally; but there was something in the air
which she did not understand, which kept her silent in spite of herself.
Then Lucy put her hand into Sir Thomas’s hand, which was no longer held
out for it. “If you think it is the best,” she said, very low, in her
serious voice, “you have more sense than I have. Tell me what to do. Do
you think it is the best?”
Sir Thomas had been confused by the strange and unexpected position; he
had been prepared for an easy triumph, and at the moment of coming it
had eluded him; and when he had almost made up his mind to the reverse,
here was another surprise and change. But Lucy’s voice again touched a
deeper chord than he was conscious of. He was affected beyond
description by the trust she placed in him. He took the hand she gave
him within his own. “Lucy!” he cried, with a thrill of passionate
feeling in his voice, “as God shall judge between us, I believe it is
the best; but not, my dear, unless you feel that it will be happy for
you.”
“Oh!” cried Lucy, with a soft breath of ease and content which scarcely
seemed to form words, yet shaped into them, “happy! but it was not
_that_ I was thinking of,” she said.
He drew her hand within his arm. It was triumph after all, but of a kind
original, surprising, with a novelty in it that went to his heart,
touching all that was tender in him. He led her down-stairs into Mrs.
Ford’s parlor, with his mind in a confusion of sympathy and respect and
pleasure, and carved her partridge for her, and eat half of it with a
sacramental solemnity, and a laugh in his eyes, which were glistening
and dewy. “You see,” he said, addressing the mistress of the house, who
looked on somewhat grimly, “it is not because I am greedy, but because
she will not eat without company. She wants company. She does not care
for the good things you get for her, unless you will share them too.”
“I declare!” cried Mrs. Ford, “I never thought of that before. Lucy, is
it true?”
“It is quite true,” said Sir Thomas gravely, with always the laugh in
his eyes. “She cares for nothing unless she can share it. Has she eaten
up her half honestly? You see I know how to manage her. Will you let me
marry her, Mrs. Ford?”
“Sir Thomas!” cried the pair in consternation, in one voice. He had come
so opportunely to their assistance that they had quite forgotten he was
a wolf in the fold. Ford thrust up his spectacles off his forehead, and
let the evening paper (which had come in Sir Thomas’s pocket) drop from
his hands, and as for Mrs. Ford she gasped for breath.
But the two at the table took it very quietly. Lucy looked up with eyes
more bright than her eyes had ever been before, and a color which was
very becoming, which made her almost beautiful; and Sir Thomas (who
certainly was a real gentleman, with no pride about him) comforted them
with friendly looks, without the slightest appearance of being ashamed
of himself. “Yes,” he said. “We both think it will answer so far as we
are concerned. You are her oldest friends. Will you let me marry her,
Mrs. Ford?”
The question was answered in a way nobody expected. There raised itself
suddenly up to the table a small head supported upon two elbows, rising
from no one knew where. “Sir Tom was the one I always wanted,” said
little Jock.