Chapter VIII: Showing How It Happened

Lucy had insisted that she did not care to go to Saratoga. She preferred remaining in Hanover, where it was cool and quiet, and where she would not have to dress three times a day and dance every night until twelve. She was beginning to find that there was something to live for besides consulting one’s own pleasure, and she meant to do good the rest of her life, she said, assuming such a sober, nun-like air, that no one who saw her could fail to laugh, it was so at variance with her entire nature. But Lucy was in earnest. Hanover had a greater attraction for her than all the watering-places in the world, and she was very grateful when Fanny threw her influence on her side and so turned the scale in her favor.

Fanny was glad to leave her dangerous cousin at home, especially after Mr. Bellamy decided to join their party at Saratoga; and as she carried great weight with both her parents it was finally decided to let Lucy remain at Prospect Hill in peace, and one morning in July she saw the family depart without a single feeling of regret that she was not of their number. She had far too much on her hands to spend her time in regretting anything: there was the parish school to visit, and a class of children to hear, children who were no longer ragged, for Lucy’s money had been expended till even Arthur had remonstrated with her, and read her a long lecture on the subject of misapplied charity. Then there was Widow Hobbs waiting for the jelly which Lucy had promised, and for the chapter which Lucy now read to her, sitting where she could watch the road and see just who turned the corner, her voice always sounding a little more serious and good when the footsteps belonged to Arthur Leighton, and her eyes always glancing at the bit of a cracked mirror on the wall, to see that her dress and hair and ribbons were right before Arthur came in. It was a very pretty sight to see her thus and hear her as she read to the poor, whose surroundings she had so greatly improved; and Arthur always smiled gratefully upon her, and then walked back with her to Prospect Hill, where he lingered while she played or talked to him, or brought the luscious fruits with which the garden abounded.

This was Lucy’s life, which she preferred to Saratoga, and they left her to enjoy it, somewhat to Arthur’s discomfiture, for, much as he valued her society, he would rather she had gone where the Hethertons did, for he could not be insensible to the remarks which were being made by the curious villagers, who watched this new flirtation, as they called it, and wondered if their minister had forgotten Anna Ruthven. He had not forgotten her, and many a time was her loved name upon his lips and a thought of her in his heart, while he never returned from an interview with Lucy that he did not contrast the two, and sigh for the olden time when Anna was his coworker instead of pretty Lucy Harcourt. And yet there was about the latter a powerful fascination which he found it hard to resist. It rested him just to look at her, she was so fresh, so bright, and so beautiful; and then she flattered his self-love by the unbounded deference she paid to his opinions, studying all his tastes and bringing her will into perfect subjection to his, until she could scarcely be said to have a thought or feeling which was not a reflection of his own. And so the flirtation, which at first had been a one-sided affair, began to assume a more serious form, and the rector went oftener to Prospect Hill, while the Hetherton carriage stood daily at the gate of the parsonage, and people talked and gossiped, until Captain Humphreys, Anna’s grandfather, concluded it was his duty as senior warden of St. Mark’s, to talk with the young rector and know “what his intentions were.”

“You have none?” he said, fixing his mild eyes reproachfully upon his clergyman, who recoiled a little beneath the gaze. “Then, if you have no intentions, my advice to you is that you quit it and let the gal alone, or you’ll ruin her, if she ain’t spoilt already, as some of the women folks say she is. It don’t do no gal any good to have a chap, and ’specially a minister, gallivantin’ after her, as I must say you’ve been after this one for the last few weeks. She’s a pretty little creeter, and I don’t blame you for liking her. It makes my old blood stir faster when she comes purring around me, with her soft ways and winsome face, and so I don’t wonder at you, but when you say you’ve no intentions, I blame you greatly. You or’to have. Excuse my plainness; I’m an old man, and I like my minister, and don’t want him to go wrong; and then I feel for her, left all alone by all her folks; more’s the shame to them, and more’s the harm to you, to tangle up her affections as you are doing if you are not in earnest; and so I speak for her just as I should want some one to speak for Anna!”

The old man’s voice trembled a little here, for it had been a wish of his that Anna should occupy the parsonage, and he had at first felt a little resentment against the gay young creature who seemed to have supplanted her, but he was over that now, and in all honesty of heart he spoke both for Lucy’s interest and that of his clergyman. And Arthur listened to him respectfully, feeling when he was gone that he merited the rebuke,—that he had not been guiltless in the matter,—that if he did not mean to marry Lucy Harcourt he should let her alone. And he would, he said,—he would not go to Prospect Hill again for two whole weeks, nor visit at the cottages where he was sure to find her; he would keep himself at home; and he did, and shut himself up among his books, not even going to make a pastoral call on Lucy when he heard that she was sick. And so Lucy came to him, looking dangerously charming in her blue riding-habit with the white feather streaming from her hat. Very prettily she pouted, too, as she chided him for his neglect, and asked why he had not been to see her nor anybody;—there was the Widow Hobbs, and Mrs. Briggs, and those miserable Donelsons, whom he had not been near for a fortnight.

“What is the reason?” she asked, beating her foot upon the carpet and tapping the end of her riding-whip upon the sermon he was writing. “Are you displeased with me, Arthur,” she continued, her eyes filling with tears as she saw the expression of his face. “Have I done anything wrong; I am so sorry if I have.”

Her voice had in it the grieved tones of a little child, and her eyes were very bright with the tears quivering on her long eyelashes. Leaning back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, a position he usually assumed when puzzled and perplexed, the rector looked at her a moment before he spoke. He could not define to himself the nature of the interest he took in Lucy Harcourt. He admired her greatly, and the self-denials and generous exertions she had made to be of use to him since Anna went away, had touched a tender chord and made her seem very near to him. Habit with him was everything, and the past two weeks’ isolation had shown him how necessary she had become to him. She did not satisfy his higher wants as Anna Ruthven had done. No one could ever do that, but she amused and soothed and rested him, and made his duties lighter by taking half of them upon herself. That she was more attached to him than he could wish he greatly feared, for since Captain Humphreys’ visit he had seen matters differently from what he saw them before, and had unsparingly questioned himself as to how far he would be answerable for her future weal or woe.

“Guilty, verily I am guilty in leading her on if I meant nothing by it,” he had written against himself, pausing in his sermon to write it just as Lucy came in, appealing to him to know why he had neglected her so long.

She was very beautiful this morning, and Arthur felt his heart beat rapidly as he looked at her, and thought any man who had not known Anna Ruthven would be glad to gather that bright creature in his arms and know she was his own. One long, long sigh to the memory of all he had hoped for once,—one bitter pang as he remembered Anna and that twilight hour in the church, and then he made a mad plunge in the dark and said:

“Lucy, do you know people are beginning to talk about my seeing you so much?”

“Well, let them talk; who cares?” Lucy replied, with a good deal of asperity of manner for her, for that very morning the housekeeper at Prospect Hill had ventured to remonstrate with her for “running after the parson.” “Pray where is the wrong? What harm can come of it?”

“None, perhaps,” Arthur replied, “if one could keep their affections under control. But if either of us should learn to love the other very much and the love was not reciprocated, harm would surely come of that. At least that was the view Captain Humphreys took of the matter when he was speaking to me about it.”

There were red spots on Lucy’s face, but her lips were very white and the buttons on her riding-dress rose and fell rapidly with the beating of her heart as she looked steadily at Arthur. Was he going to send her from him,—back to the insipid life she had lived before she knew him? It was too terrible to believe, and the great tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. Then as a flash of pride came to her aid, she dashed them away and said to him haughtily:

“And so for fear I shall fall in love with you, you are sacrificing both comfort and freedom, and shutting yourself up with your books and studies to the neglect of other duties. But it need be so no longer. The necessity for it, if it existed once, certainly does not now. I will not be in your way; forgive me that I ever have been.”

Lucy’s voice began to tremble as she gathered up her riding-habit and turned to find her gauntlets. One of them had dropped upon the floor between the table and the rector, and as she stooped to reach it her curls almost swept the young man’s lap.

“Let me get it for you,” he said, hastily pushing back his chair and awkwardly entangling his foot in her long sweeping dress, so that when she arose she stumbled backward and would have fallen, but for the arm he quickly passed around her.

Something in the touch of that quivering form completed the work of temptation, and he held it for an instant, when she said to him pettishly:

“Please let me go, sir.”

“No, Lucy, I can’t let you go. I want you to stay with me.”

Instantly the drooping head was uplifted, and Lucy’s eyes looked into his with such a wistful, pleading, wondering look that Arthur saw or thought he saw his duty plain, and gently touching his lips to the brow glistening so white within their reach, he continued:

“There is a way to stop the gossip and make it right for me to see you. Promise to be my wife, and not even Captain Humphreys can say aught against it.”

Arthur’s voice trembled now, for the mention of Captain Humphreys had brought a thought of Anna, whose eyes seemed for an instant to look reproachfully upon that wooing. But he had gone too far to retract; he had only to wait for Lucy’s answer. There was no deception about her; hers was a nature as clear as crystal, and with a gush of glad tears she promised to be the rector’s wife; and hiding her face on his bosom, told him, brokenly, how unworthy she was of him; how foolish, and how unsuited to the place, but promising to do the best she could not to bring him into disgrace on account of her shortcomings.

“With the knowledge that you love me I can do anything,” she said, and her white hand crept slowly into the cold, clammy one which lay so listlessly on Arthur’s lap.

He was already repenting, for he felt that it was sin to take that warm, trusting, loving heart in exchange for the cold, half lifeless one he should render in return, and in which scarcely a pulse of joy was beating, even though he held his promised wife; and she was fair and beautiful as ever promised wife could be.

“But I can make her happy, and I will,” he thought, pressing the warm fingers which quivered to his touch.

But he did not kiss her again; he could not for the eyes, which still seemed looking at him and asking what he did. There was a strange spell about those phantom eyes, and they made him say to Lucy, who was now sitting demurely at his side:

“I could not clear my conscience if I did not confess that you are not the first woman whom I have asked to be my wife.”

There was a start, and Lucy’s face was pale as ashes, while her hand went quickly to her side, where the heartbeats were visible, warning Arthur to be careful how he startled one whose life hung on so slender a thread as Lucy’s; so, when she asked, “Who was it, and why did you not marry her? Did you love her very much?” he answered indifferently, “I would rather not tell you who it was, as that might be a breach of confidence. She did not care to be my wife, and so that dream was over and I was left for you.”

He did not say how much he loved her who had discarded him, but Lucy forgot the omission, and asked, “Was she very young and pretty?”

“Young and pretty both, but not as beautiful as you,” Arthur replied, his fingers softly putting back the golden curls from the face looking so trustingly into his.

And in that he answered truly. He had seen no face as beautiful of its kind as Lucy’s was, and he was glad that he could tell her so. He knew how that would please her and partly make amends for the tender words which he could not speak,—for the phantom eyes still haunting him so strangely.

And Lucy, who took all things for granted, was more than content, although she wondered that he did not kiss her again, and wished she knew the girl who had come so near being in her place. But she respected his wishes too much to ask after what he had said, and she tried to make herself glad that he had been so frank with her and not left his other love-affair to the chance of her discovering it afterwards, at a time when it might be painful to her.

“I wish I had something to confess,” she thought; but from the score of her flirtations, and even offers, for she had not lacked for them, she could not find one where her own feelings had been enlisted in ever so slight a degree until she remembered Thornton Hastings, who for one whole week had paid her such attentions as had made her dream of him, and even drive round once on purpose to look at the house on Madison Square where the future Mrs. Hastings was to live.

But his coolness afterwards, and his comments on her frivolity had terribly angered her, making her think that she hated him, as she had said to Anna. Now, however, as she remembered the drive and the house, she nestled closer to Arthur and told him all about it, fingering the buttons on his dressing-gown as she told him it, and never dreaming of the pang she was inflicting as Arthur thought how mysterious were God’s ways, and wondered that He had not reversed the matter and given Lucy to Thornton Hastings, rather than to him, who did not half deserve her.

“I know now I never cared a bit for Thornton Hastings, though I might if he had not been so mean as to call me frivolous,” Lucy said, as she arose to go; then suddenly turning to the rector, she added: “I shall never ask who your first love was, but would like to know if you have quite forgotten her?”

“Have you forgotten Thornton Hastings?” Arthur asked, laughingly; and Lucy replied, “Of course not; one never forgets, but I don’t care a pin about him now, and did I tell you, Fanny writes that rumor says he will marry Anna Ruthven?”

“Yes,—no,—I did not know; I am not surprised;” and Arthur stooped to pick up a book lying on the floor, thus hiding his face from Lucy, who, woman-like, was glad to report a piece of gossip, and continued:

“She is a great belle, Fanny says; dresses beautifully and in perfect taste, besides talking as if she knew something, and this pleases Mr. Hastings, who takes her out to ride and drive, and all this after I warned her against him and told her just what he said of me. I am surprised at her!”

Lucy was drawing on her gauntlets, and Arthur was waiting to see her out, but she still lingered on the threshold, and at last said to him:

“I wonder you never fell in love with Anna yourself. I am sure, if I were you I should prefer her to me. She knows something and I do not, but I am going to study; there are piles of books in the library at Prospect Hill, and you shall see what a famous student I will become. If I get puzzled will you help me?”

“Yes, willingly,” Arthur replied, wishing that she would go, before she indulged in any more speculation as to why he did not love Anna Ruthven.

But Lucy was not done yet; the keenest pang was yet to come, and Arthur felt as if the earth was giving way beneath his feet, when, as he lifted her into the saddle and took her hand at parting, she said:

“You remember I am not going to be jealous of that other girl. There is only one person who could make me so, and that is Anna Ruthven; but I know it was not she, for that night we all came from Mrs. Hobbs’s and she went with me upstairs, I asked her honestly if you had ever offered yourself to her, and she told me you had not. I think you showed a lack of taste; but I am glad it was not Anna.”

Lucy was far down the road ere Arthur recovered from the shock her last words had given him. What did it mean, and why had Anna said he never proposed? Was there some mistake, and he the victim of it? There was a blinding mist before the young man’s eyes, and a gnawing pain at his heart as he returned to his study and went over again with all the incidents of Anna’s refusal, even to the reading of the letter which, he already knew by heart. Then, as the thought came over him that possibly Mrs. Meredith played him false in some way, he groaned aloud, and the great sweat-drops fell upon the table where he leaned his head. But this could not be, he reasoned. Lucy was mistaken. She had not heard aright. Somebody surely was mistaken, or he had committed a fatal error.

“But I must abide by it,” he said, lifting up his pallid face. “God forgive the wrong I have done in asking Lucy to be my wife when my heart belonged to another. God help me to forget the one and love the other as I ought. She is a lovely little girl, trusting me so wholly that I can make her happy,—and I will!—but Anna,—O Anna!”

It was a despairing cry, such as a newly-engaged man should never have sent after another than his affianced bride; and Arthur thought so too, fighting back his first love with an iron will, and after that hour of anguish burying it so far from sight that he went that night to Captain Humphreys and told of his engagement; then called upon his bride-elect, and tried so hard to be satisfied, that, when at a late hour he returned to the parsonage, he was more than content; and by way of fortifying himself still more, wrote the letter which Thornton Hastings read at Newport.

And that was how it happened.