AN INNOCENT CONSPIRACY.
"It was only something that Jock was saying," said Lucy, "but, Tom, I
will tell you another time. I wish you had come in before Lady Randolph
went upstairs. I think she was a little disappointed to have only me."
"Did she share Jock's secret?" Sir Tom said with a keen look of inquiry.
It is perhaps one advantage in the dim light which fashion delights in,
that it is less easy to scrutinise the secrets of a face.
"We are all a little put wrong when you do not come in," said Lucy. The
cunning which weakness finds refuge in when it has to defend itself came
to her aid. "Jock is shy when you are not here. He thinks he bores Lady
Randolph; and so we ladies are left to our own devices."
"Jock must not be so sensitive," Sir Tom said; but he was not satisfied.
It occurred to him suddenly (for schoolboys are terrible gossips) that
the boy might have heard something which he had been repeating to Lucy.
Nothing could have been more unlikely, had he thought of it, than that
Jock should carry tales on such a subject. But we do not stop to argue
out matters when our own self-regard is in question. He looked at the
two with a doubtful and suspicious eye.
"He will get over it as he grows older," said Lucy; but she gave her
brother a look which to Sir Tom seemed one of warning, and he was
irritated by it; he looked from one to another and he laughed; but not
with the genial laugh which was his best known utterance.
"You are prodigiously on your guard," he said. "I suppose you have your
reasons for it. Have you been confiding the Masons' secret or something
of that awful character to her, Jock?"
"Why shouldn't I tell him?" cried Jock with great impatience. "What is
the use of making all those signs? It's nothing of the sort. It's only
I've heard of somebody that is poor--somebody she ought to know of--the
sort of thing that is meant in father's will."
"Oh!" said Sir Tom. It was the simplest of exclamations, but it meant
much. He was partially relieved that it was not gossip, but yet more
gravely annoyed than if it had been.
Lucy made haste to interpose.
"I will tell you afterwards," she said. "If I made signs, as Jock said,
it was only that I might tell it you, Tom, myself, when there was more
time."
"I am at no loss for time," said Sir Tom, placing himself in the vacant
chair. The others were both standing, as became this accidental moment
before bed-time. And Lucy had been on thorns to get away, even before
her husband appeared. She had wanted to escape from the discussion even
with Jock. She had wanted to steal into the nursery, and see that her
boy was asleep, to feel his little forehead with her soft hand, and make
sure there was no fever. To be betrayed into a prolonged and agitating
discussion now was very provoking, very undesirable; and Lucy had grown
rather cowardly and anxious to push away from her, as far as she could,
everything that did not belong to the moment.
"Tom," she said, a little tremulously, "I wish you would put it off till
to-morrow. I am--rather sleepy; it is nearly eleven o'clock, and I
always run in to see how little Tom is going on. Besides," she added,
with a little anxiety which was quite fictitious, "it is keeping
Fletcher up----"
"I am not afraid of Fletcher, Lucy."
"Oh! but I am," she said. "I will tell you about it to-morrow. There is
nothing in the least settled, only Jock thought----"
"Settled!" Sir Tom said, with a curious look. "No, I hope not."
"Oh! nothing at all settled," said Lucy. She stood restlessly, now on
one foot now on the other, eager for flight. She did not even observe
the implied authority in this remark, at which Jock pricked up his ears
with incipient offence. "And Jock ought to be in bed--oh, yes, Jock, you
ought. I am sure you are not allowed to sit up so late at school. Come
now, there's a good boy--and I will just run and see how baby is."
She put her hand on her brother's arm to take him away with her, but
Jock hung back, and Sir Tom interposed, "Now that I have just settled
myself for a chat, you had better leave Jock with me at least, Lucy. Run
away to your baby, that is all right. Jock and I will entertain each
other. I respect his youth, you see, and don't try to seduce him into a
cigar--you should be thankful to me for that."
"If I was not in sixth form," said Jock sharply, nettled by this
indignity, "I should smoke; but it is bad form when you are high up in
school. In the holidays I don't mind," he added, with careless
grandeur, upon which Sir Tom, mollified, laughed as Lucy felt like
himself.
"Off duty, eh?" he said, "that's a very fine sentiment, Jock. You may be
sure it's bad form to do anything you have promised not to do. You will
say that sounds like a copy-book. Come now, Lucy, are not you going,
little woman? Do you want to have your share in the moralities?"
For this sudden change had somehow quenched Lucy's desire both to
inspect the baby and get to bed. But what could she do? She looked very
earnestly at Jock as she bade him good-night, but neither could she
shake his respect for her husband by giving him any warning, nor offend
her husband by any appearance of secret intelligence with Jock. Poor
little Lucy went away after this through the stately rooms and up the
grand staircase with a great tremor in her heart. There could not be a
life more guarded and happy than hers had been--full of wealth, full of
love, not a crumpled rose-leaf to disturb her comfort. But as she stole
along the dim corridor to the nursery her heart was beating full of all
the terrors that make other hearts to ache. She was afraid for the
child's life, which was the worst of all, and looked with a suppressed
yet terrible panic into the dark future which contained she knew not
what for him. And she was afraid of her husband, the kindest man in the
world, not knowing how he might take the discovery he had just made,
fearing to disclose her mind to him, finding herself guilty in the mere
idea of hiding anything from him. And she was afraid of Jock, that he
would irritate Sir Tom, or be irritated by him, or that some wretched
breach or quarrel might arise between these two. Jock was not an
ordinary boy; there was no telling how he might take any reproof that
might be addressed to him--perhaps with the utmost reasonableness,
perhaps with a rapid defiance. Lady Randolph thus, though no harm had
befallen her, had come into the usual heritage of humanity, and was as
anxious and troubled as most of us are; though she was so happy and well
off. She was on thorns to know what was passing in the room she had just
left.
This was all that passed. Jock, standing up against the mantelpiece,
looked down somewhat lowering upon Sir Tom in the easy chair. He
expected to be questioned, and had made up his mind, though with great
indignation at the idea that any one should find fault with Lucy, to
take the whole blame upon himself. That Lucy should not be free to carry
out her duty as seemed to her best was to Jock intolerable. He had put
his boyish faith in her all his life. Even since the time, a very early
one, when Jock had felt himself much cleverer than Lucy; even when he
had been obliged to make up his mind that Lucy was not clever at all--he
had still believed in her. She had a mission in the world which
separated her from other women. Nobody else had ever had the same thing
to do. Many people had dispensed charities and founded hospitals, but
Lucy's office in the world was of a different description--and Jock had
faith in her power to do it. To see her wavering was trouble to him, and
the discovery he had just made of something beneath the surface, a
latent opposition in her husband which she plainly shrank from
encountering, gave the boy a shock from which it was not easy to
recover. He had always liked Sir Tom; but if---- One thing, however, was
apparent, if there was any blame, anything to find fault with, it was
he, Jock, and not Lucy, that must bear that blame.
"So, Jock, Lucy thinks you should be in bed. When do they put out your
lights at school? In my time we were up to all manner of tricks. I
remember a certain dark lantern that was my joy; but that was in old
Keate's time, you know, who never trusted the fellows. You are under a
better rule now."
This took away Jock's breath, who had been prepared for a sterner
interrogation. He answered with a sudden blush, but with the rallying of
all his forces: "I light them again sometimes. It's hard on a fellow,
don't you think, sir, when he's not sleepy and has a lot to do?"
"I never had much experience of that," said Sir Tom. "We were always
sleepy, and never did anything in my time. It was for larking, I'm
afraid, that we wanted light. And so it is seen on me, Jock. You will be
a fellow of your college, whereas I----"
"I don't think so," said Jock generously. "That construe you gave me,
don't you remember, last half? MTutor says it is capital. He says he
couldn't have done it so well. Of course, that is his modest way," the
boy added, "for everybody knows there isn't such another scholar! but
that's what he says."
Sir Tom laughed, and a slight suffusion of colour appeared on his face.
He was pleased with this unexpected applause. At five-and-forty, after
knocking about the world for years, and "never opening a book," as
people say, to have given a good "construe" is a feather in one's cap.
"To be second to your tutor is all a man has to hope for," he said, with
that mellow laugh which it was so pleasant to hear. "I hope I know my
place, Jock. We had no such godlike beings in my time. Old Puck, as we
used to call him, was my tutor. He had a red nose, which was the chief
feature in his character. He looked upon us all as his natural enemies,
and we paid him back with interest. Did I ever tell of that time when we
were going to Ascot in a cab, four of us, and he caught sight of the
turn-out?"
"I don't think so," said Jock, with a little hesitation. He remembered
every detail of this story, which indeed Sir Tom had told him perhaps
more than once; for in respect to such legends the best of us repeat
ourselves. Many were the thoughts in the boy's mind as he stood against
the mantelpiece and looked down upon the man before him, going over with
much relish the tale of boyish mischief, the delight of the urchins and
the pedagogue's discomfiture. Sir Tom threw himself back in his chair
with a peal of joyous laughter.
"Jove! I think I can see him now with the corners of his mouth all
dropped, and his nose like a beacon," he cried. Jock meanwhile looked
down upon him very gravely, though he smiled in courtesy. He was a
different manner of boy from anything Sir Tom could ever have been, and
he wondered, as young creatures will, over the little world of mystery
and knowledge which was shut up within the elder man. What things he had
done in his life--what places he had seen! He had lived among savages,
and fought his way, and seen death and life. Jock, only on the
threshold, gazed at him with a curious mixture of awe and wonder and
kind contempt. He would himself rather look down upon a fellow (he
thought) who did that sort of practical joke now. MTutor would regard
such an individual as a natural curiosity. And yet here was this man who
had seen so much, and done so much, who ought to have profited by the
long results of time, and grown to such superiority and mental
elevation--here was he, turning back with delight to the schoolboy's
trick. It filled Jock with a great and compassionate wonder. But he was
a very civil boy. He was one who could not bear to hurt a
fellow-creature's feelings, even those of an old duffer whose
recollections were all of the bygone ages. So he did his best to laugh.
And Sir Tom enjoyed his own joke so much that he did not know that it
was from the lips only that his young companion's laugh came. He got up
and patted Jock on the shoulders with the utmost benevolence when this
pastime was done.
"They don't indulge in that sort of fooling nowadays," he said. "So much
the better--though I don't know that it did us much harm. Now come
along, let us go to bed, according to my lady's orders. We must all, you
know, do what Lucy tells us in this house."
Jock obeyed, feeling somewhat "shut up," as he called it, in a sort of
blank of confused discomfiture. Sir Tom had the best of it, by whatever
means he attained that end. The boy had intended to offer himself a
sacrifice, to brave anything that an angry man could say to him for
Lucy's sake, and at the same time to die if necessary for Lucy's right
to carry out her father's will, and accomplish her mission uninterrupted
and untrammelled. When lo, Sir Tom had taken to telling him schoolboy
stories, and sent him to bed with good-humoured kindness, without
leaving him the slightest opening either to defend Lucy or take blame
upon himself. He was half angry, and humbled in his own esteem, but
there was nothing for it but to submit. Sir Tom for his part, did not go
to bed. He went and smoked a lonely cigar, and his face lost its genial
smile. The light of it, indeed, disappeared altogether under a cloud, as
he sat gravely over his fire and puffed the smoke away. He had the air
of a man who had a task to do which was not congenial to him. "Poor
little soul," he said to himself. He could not bear to vex her. There
was nothing in the world that he would have grudged to his wife. Any
luxury, any adornment that he could have procured for her he would have
jumped at. But it was his fate to be compelled to oppose and subdue her
instead. The only thing was to do it quickly and decisively, since done
it must be. If she had been a warrior worthy of his steel, a woman who
would have defended herself and held her own, it would have been so much
more easy; but it was not without a compunction that Sir Tom thought of
the disproportion of their forces, of the soft and compliant creature
who had never raised her will against his or done other than accept his
suggestions and respond to his guidance. He remembered how Lucy had
stuck to her colours before her marriage, and how she had vanquished the
unwilling guardians who regarded what they thought the squandering of
her money with a consternation and fury that were beyond bounds. He had
thought it highly comic at the time, and even now there passed a gleam
of humour over his face at the recollection. He could not deny himself a
smile when he thought it all over. She had worsted her guardians, and
thrown away her money triumphantly, and Sir Tom had regarded the whole
as an excellent joke. But the recollection of this did not discourage
him now. He had no thought that Lucy would stand out against him. It
might vex her, however, dear little woman. No doubt she and Jock had
been making up some fine Quixotic plans between them, and probably it
would be a shock to her when her husband interfered. He had got to be so
fond of his little wife, and his heart was so kind, that he could not
bear the idea of vexing Lucy. But still it would have to be done. He
rose up at last, and threw away the end of his cigar with a look of
vexation and trouble. It was necessary, but it was a nuisance, however.
"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly,"
he said to himself; then laughed again, as he took his way upstairs, at
the over-significance of the words. He was not going to murder anybody;
only when the moment proved favourable, for once and only once, seeing
it was inevitable, he had to bring under lawful authority--an easy
task--the gentle little feminine creature who was his wife.