HIS WIFE.
Young Lady Randolph had herself been much changed by the progress of
these years. Marriage is always the great touchstone of character at
least with women; but in her case the change from a troubled and
premature independence, full of responsibilities and an extremely
difficult and arduous duty, to the protection and calm of early married
life, in which everything was done for her, and all her burdens taken
from her shoulders, rather arrested than aided in the development of her
character. She had lived six months with the Dowager Lady Randolph after
her father's death; but those six months had been all she knew of the
larger existence of the wealthy and great. All she knew--and even in
that short period she had learned less than she might have been expected
to learn; for Lucy had not been introduced into society, partly on
account of her very youthful age, and partly because she was still in
mourning, so that her acquaintance with life on the higher line
consisted merely in a knowledge of certain simple luxuries, of larger
rooms and prettier furniture, and more careful service than in her
natural condition. And by birth she belonged to the class of small
townsfolk who are nobody, and whose gentility is more appalling than
their homeliness. So that when she came to be Sir Thomas Randolph's wife
and a great lady, not merely the ward of an important personage, but
herself occupying that position, the change was so wonderful that it
required all Lucy's mental resources to encounter and accustom herself
to it.
Sir Tom was the kindest of middle-aged husbands. If he did not adore his
young wife with the fervour of passion, he had a sincere affection for
her, and the warmest desire to make her happy. She had done a great deal
for him, she had changed his position unspeakably, and he was fully
determined that no lady in England should have more observance, more
honour and luxury, and what was better, more happiness, than the little
girl who had made a man of him. There had always been a sweet and
serious simplicity about her, an air of good sense and reasonableness,
which had attracted everybody whose opinion was worth having to Lucy;
but she was neither beautiful nor clever. She had been so brought up
that, though she was not badly educated, she had no accomplishments, and
not more knowledge than falls to the lot of an ordinary schoolgirl. The
farthest extent of her mild experiences was Sloane Street and Cadogan
Place: and there were people who thought it impossible that Sir Tom, who
had been everywhere, and run through the entire gamut of pleasures and
adventures, should find anything interesting in this bread-and-butter
girl, whom, of course, it was his duty to marry, and having married to
be kind to. But when he found himself set down in an English country
house with this little piece of simplicity opposite to him, what would
he do, the sympathising spectators said? Even his kind aunt, who felt
that she had brought about the marriage, and who, as a matter of fact,
had fully intended it from the first, though she herself liked Lucy, had
a little terror in her soul as she asked herself the same question. He
would fill the house with company and get over it in that way, was what
the most kind and moderate people thought. But Sir Tom laughed at all
their prognostications. He said afterwards that he had never known
before how pretty it was to know nothing, and to have seen nothing, when
these defects were conjoined with intelligence and delightful curiosity
and never-failing interest. He declared that he had never truly enjoyed
his own adventures and experiences as he did when he told them over to
his young wife. You may be sure there were some of them which were not
adapted for Lucy's ears: but these Sir Tom left religiously away in the
background. He had been a careless liver no doubt, like so many men, but
he would rather have cut off his right hand, as the Scripture bids, than
have soiled Lucy's white soul with an idea, or an image, that was
unworthy of her. She knew him under all sorts of aspects, but not one
that was evil. Their solitary evenings together were to her more
delightful than any play, and to him nearly as delightful. When the
dinner was over and the cold shut out, she would wait his appearance in
the inner drawing-room, which she had chosen for her special abode, with
some of the homely cares that had been natural to her former condition,
drawing his chair to the fire, taking pride in making his coffee for
him, and a hundred little attentions. "Now begin," she would say,
recalling with a child's eager interest and earnest recollection the
point at which he had left off. This was the greater part of Lucy's
education. She travelled with him through very distant regions, and went
through all kinds of adventure.
And in the season they went to London, where she made her appearance in
society, not perhaps with _eclat_, but with a modest composure which
delighted him. She understood then, for the first time, what it was to
be rich, and was amused and pleased--amused above all by the position
which she occupied with the utmost simplicity. People said it would turn
the little creature's head, but it never even disturbed her imagination.
She took it with a calm that was extraordinary. Thus her education
progressed, and Lucy was so fully occupied with it, with learning her
husband and her life and the world, that she had no time to think of the
responsibilities which once had weighed so heavily upon her. When now
and then they occurred to her and she made some passing reference to
them, there were so many other things to do that she forgot
again--forgot everything except to be happy and learn and see, as she
had now so many ways of doing. She forgot herself altogether, and
everything that had been hers, not in excitement, but in the soft
absorbing influence of her new life, which drew her away into endless
novelties and occupations, such as were, indeed, duties and necessities
of her altered sphere.
If this was the case in the first three or four years of her marriage,
when she had only Sir Tom to think of, you may suppose what it was when
the baby came, to add a hundredfold to the interests of her existence.
Everything else in life, it may be believed, dwindled into nothing in
comparison with this boy of boys--this wonderful infant. There had
never been one in the world like him it is unnecessary to say: and
everything was so novel to her, and she felt the importance of being
little Tom's mother so deeply, that her mind was quite carried away from
all other thoughts. She grew almost beautiful in the light of this new
addition to her happiness. And how happy she was! The child grew and
throve. He was a splendid boy. His mother did not sing litanies in his
praise in public, for her good sense never forsook her: but his little
being seemed to fill up her life like a new stream flowing into it, and
she expanded in life, in thought, and in understanding. She began to see
a reason for her own position, and to believe in it, and take it
seriously. She was a great lady, the first in the neighbourhood, and she
felt that, as little Tom's mother, it was natural and befitting that she
should be so. She began to be sensible of ambition within herself, as
well as something that felt like pride. It was so little like ordinary
pride, however, that Lucy was sorry for everybody who had not all the
noble surroundings which she began to enjoy. She would have liked that
every child should have a nursery like little Tom's, and every mother
the same prospects for her infant, and was charitable and tender beyond
measure to all the mothers and children within reach on little Tom's
account, which was an extravagance which her husband did not grudge, but
liked and encouraged, knowing the sentiment from which it sprang. It was
with no view to popularity that the pair thus endeavoured to diffuse
happiness about them, being so happy themselves; but it answered the
same purpose, and their popularity was great.
When the county conferred the highest honour in its power upon Sir Tom,
his immediate neighbours in the villages about took the honour as their
own, and rejoiced as, even at a majority or a marriage, they had never
rejoiced before, for so kind a landlord, so universal a friend, had
never been.
The villages were model villages on the Randolph lands. Sir Tom and his
young wife had gone into every detail about the labourers' cottages with
as much interest as if they had themselves meant to live in one of them.
There were no such trim gardens or bright flower-beds to be seen
anywhere, and it was well for the people that the Rector of the parish
was judicious, and kept Lady Randolph's charities within bounds. There
had been no small amount of poverty and distress among these rustics
when the Squire was poor and absent, when they lived in tumbledown old
houses, which nobody took any interest in, and where neither decency nor
comfort was considered; but now little industries sprang up and
prospered, and the whole landscape smiled. A wise landlord with
unlimited sway over his neighbourhood and no rivals in the field can do
so much to increase the comfort of everybody about him; and such a small
matter can make a poor household comfortable. Political economists, no
doubt, say it is demoralising: but when it made Lucy happy and the poor
women happy, how could Sir Tom step in and arrest the genial bounty? He
gave the Rector a hint to see that she did not go too far, and walked
about with his hands in his pockets and looked on. All this amused him
greatly; even the little ingratitudes she met with, which went to Lucy's
heart, made her husband laugh. It pleased his satirical vein to see how
human nature displayed itself, and the black sheep appeared among the
white even in a model village. But as for Lucy, though she would
sometimes cry over these spots upon the general goodness, it satisfied
every wish of her heart to be able to do so much for the cottagers. They
did not, perhaps, stand so much in awe of her as they ought to have
done, but they brought all their troubles to her with the most perfect
and undoubting confidence.
All this time, however, Lucy, following the dictates of her own heart,
and using what after all was only a little running over of her great
wealth to secure the comfort of the people round, was neglecting what
she had once thought the great duty of her life as entirely as if she
had been the most selfish of worldly women. Her life had been so
entirely changed--swung, as one might say, out of one orbit into
another--that the burdens of the former existence seemed to have been
taken from her shoulders along with its habits and external
circumstances. Her husband thought of these as little as herself; yet
even he was somewhat surprised to find that he had no trouble in weaning
Lucy from the extravagances of her earlier independence. He had not
expected much trouble, but still it had seemed likely enough that she
would at least propose things that his stronger sense condemned, and
would have to be convinced and persuaded that they were impracticable;
but nothing of the kind occurred, and when he thought of it Sir Tom
himself was surprised, as also were various other people who knew what
Lucy's obstinacy on the subject before her marriage had been, and
especially the Dowager Lady Randolph, who paid her nephew a yearly
visit, and never failed to question him on the subject.
"And Lucy?" she would say. "Lucy never makes any allusion? She has
dismissed everything from her mind? I really think you must be a
magician, Tom. I could not have believed it, after all the trouble she
gave us, and all the money she threw away. Those Russells, you know,
that she was so ridiculously liberal to, they are as bad as ever. That
sort of extravagant giving of money is never successful. But I never
thought you would have got it out of her mind."
"Don't flatter me," he said; "it is not I that have got it out of her
mind. It is life and all the novelties in it--and small Tom, who is more
of a magician than I am----"
"Oh, the baby!" said the dowager, with the indifference of a woman who
has never had a child, and cannot conceive why a little sprawling
tadpole in long clothes should make such a difference. "Yes, I suppose
that's a novelty," she said, "to be mother of a bit of a thing like that
naturally turns a girl's head. It is inconceivable the airs they give
themselves, as if there was nothing so wonderful in creation. And so far
as I can see you are just as bad, though you ought to know better, Tom."
"Oh, just as bad," he said, with his large laugh. "I never had a share
in anything so wonderful. If you only could see the superiority of this
bit of a thing to all other things about him----"
"Oh! spare me," cried Lady Randolph the elder, holding up her hands. "Of
course I don't undervalue the importance of an heir to the property,"
she said in a different tone. "I have heard enough about it to be pretty
sensible of that."
This the Dowager said with a slight tone of bitterness, which indeed was
comprehensible enough: for she had suffered much in her day from the
fact that no such production had been possible to her. Had it been so,
her nephew who stood by her would not (she could scarcely help
reflecting with some grudge against Providence) have been the great man
he now was, and no child of his would have mattered to the family. Lady
Randolph was a very sensible woman, and had long been reconciled to the
state of affairs, and liked her nephew, whom she had been the means of
providing for so nobly; and she was glad there was a baby; still, for
the sake of her own who had never existed, she resented the
self-exaltation of father and mother over this very common and in no way
extraordinary phenomenon of a child.
Sir Tom laughed again with a sense of superiority, which was in itself
somewhat ludicrous; but as nobody is clear-sighted in their own
concerns, he was quite unconscious of this. His laugh nettled Lady
Randolph still more. She said, with a certain disdain in her tone,--
"And so you think you have sailed triumphantly over all that
difficulty--thanks to your charms and the baby's, and are going to hear
nothing of it any more?"
Sir Tom felt that he was suddenly pulled up, and was a little resentful
in return.
"I hope," he said, "that is, I do more than hope, I feel convinced, that
my wife, who has great sense, has outgrown that nonsense, and that she
has sufficient confidence in me to leave her business matters in my
hands."
Lady Randolph shook her head.
"Outgrown nonsense--at three and twenty?" she said. "Don't you think
that's premature? and, my dear boy, take my word for it, a woman when
she has the power, likes to keep the control of her own business just as
well as a man does. I advise you not to holloa till you are out of the
wood."
"I don't expect to have any occasion to holloa; there is no wood for
that matter; Lucy, though perhaps you may not think it, is one of the
most reasonable of creatures."
"She is everything that is nice and good," said the Dowager, "but how
about the will? Lucy may be reasonable, but that is not. And she cannot
forget it always."
"Pshaw! The will is a piece of folly," cried Sir Tom. He grew red at the
very thought with irritation and opposition. "I believe the old man was
mad. Nothing else could excuse such imbecility. Happily there is no
question of the will."
"But there must be, some time or other."
"I see no occasion for it," said Sir Tom coldly; and as his aunt was a
reasonable woman, she did not push the matter any farther. But if the
truth must be told this sensible old lady contemplated the great
happiness of these young people with a sort of interested and alarmed
spectatorship (for she wished them nothing but good), watching and
wondering when the explosion would come which might in all probability
shatter it to ruins. For she felt thoroughly convinced in her own mind
that Lucy would not always forget the conditions by which she held her
fortune, and that all the reason and good sense in the world would not
convince her that it was right to ignore and baulk her father's
intentions, as conveyed with great solemnity in his will. And when the
question should come to be raised, Lady Randolph felt that it would be
no trifling one. Lucy was very simple and sweet, but when her conscience
spoke even the influence of Sir Tom would not suffice to silence it. She
was a girl who would stand to what she felt to be right if all the world
and even her husband were against her--and the Dowager, who wished them
no harm, felt a little alarmed as to the issue. Sir Tom was not a man
easy to manage, and the reddening of his usually smiling countenance at
the mere suggestion of the subject was very ominous. It would be better,
far better, for Lucy if she would yield at once and say nothing about
it. But that was not what it was natural for her to do. She would stand
by her duty to her father, just as, were it assailed, she would stand by
her duty to her husband; but she would never be got to understand that
the second cancelled the first. The Dowager Lady Randolph watched the
young household with something of the interest with which a playgoer
watches the stage. She felt sure that the explosion would come, and that
a breath, a touch, might bring it on at any moment; and then what was to
be the issue? Would Lucy yield? would Lucy conquer? or would the easy
temper with which everybody credited Sir Tom support this trial? The old
lady, who knew him so well, believed that there was a certain fiery
element below, and she trembled for the peace of the household which was
so happy and triumphant, and had no fear whatever for itself. She
thought of "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below," of the calm
that precedes a storm, and many other such images, and so frightened did
she become at the dangers she had conjured up that she put the will
hurriedly out of her thoughts, as Sir Tom had done, and would think no
more of it. "Sufficient," she said to herself, "is the evil to the day."
In the meantime, the married pair smiled serenely at any doubts of their
perfect union, and Lucy felt a great satisfaction in showing her
husband's aunt (who had not thought her good enough for Sir Tom,
notwithstanding that she so warmly promoted the match) how satisfied he
was with his home, and how exultant in his heir.
In the following chapters the reader will discover what was the cause
which made the Dowager shake her head when she got into the carriage to
drive to the railway at the termination of her visit. It was all very
pretty and very delightful, and thoroughly satisfactory; but still Lady
Randolph, the elder, shook her experienced head.