A CHRISTMAS VISIT.
Little Tom did not die, but he became "delicate,"--and fathers and
mothers know what that means. The entire household was possessed by one
pervading terror lest he should catch cold, and Lucy's life became
absorbed in this constant watchfulness. Naturally the Christmas guests
were put off, and it was understood in respect to the Contessa di
Forno-Populo, that she was to come at Easter. Sir Tom himself thought
this a better arrangement. The Parliamentary recess was not a long one,
and the Contessa would naturally prefer, after a short visit to her old
friend, to go to town, where she would find so many people she knew.
"And even in the country the weather is more tolerable in April," said
Sir Tom.
"Oh, yes, yes. The doctor says if we keep clear of the east winds that
he may begin to go out again and get up his strength," said Lucy.
"My love, I am thinking of your visitors, and you are thinking of your
baby," Sir Tom said.
"Oh, Tom, what do you suppose I could be thinking of?" his wife cried.
Sir Tom himself was very solicitous about the baby, but to hear of
nothing else worried him. He was glad when old Lady Randolph, who was an
invariable visitor, arrived.
"How is the baby?" was her first question when he met her at the train.
"The baby would be a great deal better if there was less fuss made about
him," he said. "You must give Lucy a hint on that subject, aunt."
Lady Randolph was a good woman, and it was her conviction that she had
made this match. But it is so pleasant to feel that you have been right,
that she was half pleased, though very sorry, to think that Sir Tom (as
she had always known) was getting a little tired of sweet simplicity.
She met Lucy with an affectionate determination to be very plain with
her, and warn her of the dangers in her path. Jock had arrived the day
before. He rose up in all the lanky length of sixteen from the side of
the fire in the little drawing-room when the Dowager came in. It was
just the room into which one likes to come after a cold journey at
Christmas; the fire shining brightly in the midst of the reflectors of
burnished steel and brass, shining like gold and silver, of the most
luxurious fireplace that skill could contrive (the day of tiled stoves
was not as yet), and sending a delicious glow on the soft mossy carpets
into which the foot sank; a table with tea, reflecting the firelight in
all the polished surfaces of the china and silver, stood near; and
chairs invitingly drawn towards the fire. The only drawback was that
there was no one to welcome the visitor. On ordinary occasions Lucy was
at the door, if not at the station, to receive the kind lady whom she
loved. Lady Randolph was somewhat surprised at the difference, and when
she saw the lengthy boy raising himself up from the fireside, turned
round to her nephew and asked, "Do I know this young gentleman? There is
not light enough to see him," with a voice in which Jock, shy and
awkward, felt all the old objection to his presence as a burden upon
Lucy, which in his precocious toleration he had accepted as reasonable,
but did not like much the better for that. And then she sat down
somewhat sullenly at the fire. The next minute Lucy came hastily in with
many apologies: "I did not hear the carriage, aunt. I was in the
nursery----"
"And how is the child?" Lady Randolph said.
"Oh, he is a great deal better--don't you think he is much better, Tom?
Only a little delicate, and that, we hope, will pass away."
"Then, Lucy, my dear, though I don't want to blame you, I think you
should have heard the carriage," said Aunt Randolph. "The tea-table does
not look cheerful when the mistress of the house is away."
"Oh, but little Tom----" Lucy said, and then stopped herself, with a
vague sense that there was not so much sympathy around her as usual. Her
husband had gone out again, and Jock stood dumb, an awkward shadow
against the mantelpiece.
"My dear, I only speak for your good," the elder lady said. "Big Tom
wants a little attention too. I thought you were going to have quite a
merry Christmas and a great many people here."
"But, Aunt Randolph, baby----"
"Oh, my dear, you must think of something else besides baby. Take my
word for it, baby would be a great deal stronger if you left him a
little to himself. You have your husband, you know, to think of, and
what harm would it have done baby if there had been a little cheerful
company for his father? But you will think I have come to scold, and I
don't in the least mean that. Give me a cup of tea, Lucy. Tom tells me
that this tall person is Jock."
"You would not have known him?" said Lucy, much subdued in tone.
She occupied herself with the tea, arranging the cups and saucers with
hands that trembled a little at the unexpected and unaccustomed
sensation of a repulse.
"Well, I cannot even see him. But he has certainly grown out of
knowledge--I never thought he would have been so tall; he was quite a
little pinched creature as a child. I daresay you took too much care of
him, my dear. I remember I used to think so; and then when he was tossed
into the world or sent to school--it comes to much the same thing, I
suppose--he flourished and grew."
"I wonder," said Lucy, somewhat wistfully, "if that is really so?
Certainly it is since he has been at school that he has grown so much."
Jock all this time fidgeted about from one leg to another with
unutterable darkness upon his brow, could any one have seen it. There
are few things so irritating, especially at his age, as to be thus
discussed over one's own head.
"My dear Lucy," said Lady Randolph, "don't you remember some one
says--who was it, I wonder? it sounds like one of those dreadfully
clever French sayings that are always so much to the point--about the
advantages of a little wholesome neglect?"
"Can neglect ever be wholesome? Oh, I don't think so--I can't think
so--at least with children."
"It is precisely children that are meant," said the elder Lady
Randolph. But as she talked, sitting in the warm light of the fire, with
her cup in her hand, feeling extremely comfortable, discoursing at her
ease, and putting sharp arrows as if they had been pins into the heart
of Lucy, Sir Tom's large footsteps became audible coming through the
great drawing-room, which was dark. The very sound of him was cheerful
as he came in, and he brought the scent of fresh night air, cold but
delightful, with him. He passed by Lucy's chair and said, "How is the
little 'un?" laying a kind hand upon her head.
"Oh, better. I am sure he is better. Aunt Randolph thinks----"
"I am giving Lucy a lecture," said Lady Randolph, "and telling her she
must not shut herself up with that child. He'll get on all the better if
he is not coddled too much."
Sir Tom made no reply, but came to the fire, and drew a chair into the
cheerful glow. "You are all in the dark," he said, "but the fire is
pleasant this cold night. Well, now that you are thawed, what news have
you brought us out of the world? We are two hermits, Lucy and I. We
forget what kind of language you speak. We have a little sort of talk of
our own which answers common needs about babies and so forth, but we
should like to hear what you are discoursing about, just for a change."
"There is no such thing as a world just now," said Lady Randolph, "there
are nothing but country-houses. Society is all broken up into little
bits, as you know as well as I do. One gleans a little here and a little
there, and one carries it about like a basket of eggs."
"Jock has a world, and it is quite entire," said Sir Tom, with his
cordial laugh. "No breaking up into little bits there. If you want a
society that knows its own opinions, and will stick to them through
thick and thin, I can tell you where to find it; and to see how it holds
together and sits square whatever happens----"
Here there came a sort of falsetto growl from Jock's corner, where he
was blushing in the firelight. "It's because you were once a fellow
yourself, and know all about it."
"So it is, Jock; you are right, as usual," said Sir Tom; "I was once a
fellow myself, and now I'm an old fellow, and growing duller. Turn out
your basket of eggs, Aunt Randolph, and let us know what is going on.
Where did you come from last--the Mulberrys? Come; there must have been
some pretty pickings of gossip there."
"You shall have it all in good time. I am not going to run myself dry
the first hour. I want to know about yourselves, and when you are going
to give up this honeymooning. I expected to have met all sorts of people
here."
"Yes," said Sir Tom, and then he burst forth in a laugh, "La
Forno-Populo and a few others; but as little Tom is not quite up to
visitors, we have put them off till Easter."
"La Forno-Populo!" said Lady Randolph, in a voice of dismay.
"Why not?" said Sir Tom. "She wrote and offered herself. I thought she
might find it a doubtful pleasure, but if she likes it---- However, you
may make yourself easy, nobody is coming," he added, with a certain jar
of impatience in his tone.
"Well, Tom, I must say I am very glad of that," Lady Randolph said
gravely--and then there was a pause. "I doubt whether Lucy would have
liked her," she added, after a moment. Then with another interval, "I
think, Lucy, my love, after that nice cup of tea, and my first sight of
you, that I will go to my own room. I like a little rest before
dinner--you know my lazy way."
"And it's getting ridiculously dark in this room," Sir Tom said, kicking
a footstool out of the way. This little impatient movement was like one
of those expletives that seem to relieve a man's mind, and both the
ladies understood it as such, and knew that he was angry. Lucy, as she
rose from her tea-table to attend upon her visitor, herself in a
confused and painful mood, and vexed with what had been said to her,
thought her husband was irritated by his aunt, and felt much sympathy
with him, and anxiety to conduct Lady Randolph to her room before it
should go any farther. But the elder lady understood it very
differently. She went away, followed by Lucy through the great
drawing-room, where a solitary lamp had been placed on a table to show
the way. It had been the Dowager's own house in her day, and she did not
require any guidance to her room. Nor did she detain Lucy after the
conventional visit to see that all was comfortable.
"That I haven't the least doubt of," Lady Randolph said, "and I am at
home, you know, and will ask for anything I want; but I must have my nap
before dinner; and do you go and talk to your husband."
Lucy could not resist one glance into the nursery, where little Tom, a
little languid but so much better, was sitting on his nurse's knee
before the fire, amused by those little fables about his fingers and
toes which are the earliest of all dramatic performances. The sight of
him thus content, and the sound of his laugh, was sweet to her in her
anxiety. She ran downstairs again without disturbing him, closing so
carefully the double doors that shut him out from all draughts, not
without a wondering doubt as she did so, whether it was true, perhaps,
that she was "coddling" him, and if there was such a thing as wholesome
neglect. She went quickly through the dim drawing-room to the warm ruddy
flush of firelight that shone between the curtains from the smaller
room, thinking nothing less than to find her husband, who was fond of an
hour's repose in that kindly light before dinner. She had got to her old
place in front of the fire before she perceived that Sir Tom's tall
shadow was no longer there. Lucy uttered a little exclamation of
disappointment, and then she perceived remorsefully another shadow, not
like Sir Tom's, the long weedy boyish figure of her brother against the
warm light.
"But you are here, Jock," she said, advancing to him. Jock took hold of
her arm, as he was so fond of doing.
"I shall never have you, now _she_ has come," Jock said.
"Why not, dear? You were never fond of Lady Randolph--you don't know how
good and kind she is. It is only when you like people that you know how
nice they are," Lucy said, all unconscious that a deeper voice than hers
had announced that truth.
"Then I shall never know, for I don't like her," said Jock
uncompromising. "You'll have to sit and gossip with her when you're not
in the nursery, and I shall have no time to tell you, for the holidays
last only a month."
"But you can tell me everything in a month, you silly boy; and if we
can't have our walks, Jock (for it's cold), there is one place where
she will never come," said Lucy, upon which Jock turned away with an
exclamation of impatience.
His sister put her hand on his shoulder and looked reproachfully in his
face.
"You too! You used to like it. You used to come and toss him up and make
him laugh----"
"Oh, don't, Lucy! can't you see? So I would again, if he were like that.
How you can bear it!" said the boy, bursting away from her. And then
Jock returned very much ashamed and horror-stricken, and took the hand
that dropped by her side, and clumsily patted and kissed it, and held it
between his own, looking penitently, wistfully, in her face all the
while: but not knowing what to say.
Lucy stood looking down into the glowing fire, with her head drooping
and an air of utter dejection in her little gentle figure. "Do you think
he looks so bad as that?" she said, in a broken voice.
"Oh, no, no; that is not what I mean," the boy cried. "It's--the little
chap is not so jolly; he's--a little cross; or else he's forgotten me. I
suppose it's that. He wouldn't look at me when I ran up. He's so little
one oughtn't to mind, but it made me----your baby, Lucy! and the little
beggar cried and wouldn't look at me."
"Is that all?" said Lucy. She only half believed him, but she pretended
to be deceived. She gave a little trembling laugh, and laid her head for
a moment upon Jock's boyish breast, where his heart was beating high
with a passion of sorrow and tender love. "Sometimes," she said, leaning
against him, "sometimes I think I shall die. I can't live to see
anything happen to him: and sometimes---- But he is ever so much better;
don't you think he looks almost himself?" she said, raising her head
hurriedly, and interrogating the scarcely visible face with her eyes.
"Looks! I don't see much difference in his looks, if he wouldn't be so
cross," said Jock, lying boldly, but with a tremor, for he was not used
to it. And then he said hurriedly, "But there's that clergyman, the
father of the fellow on the foundation. I've found out all about him. I
must tell you, Lucy. He is the very man. There is no call to think about
it or put off any longer. What a thing it would be if he could have it
by Christmas! I have got all the particulars--they look as if they were
just made for us," Jock cried.