Lady Lucy's secret E-Book

Lucy Ellen Guernsey

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 128

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

I WONDER whether, if you had seen Lady Lucy sitting at her work that warm August morning, you would have thought her a person to be envied. She certainly looked very pretty, and not at all unhappy, as she sat in her straight-backed chair, carrying her long-waisted, snugly-laced little figure very upright, her shoulders down, and her chin drawn in,—bridled, as the phrase went. In those days—for this was at the beginning of the eighteenth century—great attention was paid to the carriage of young ladies,—more than appears to be thought necessary at the present time, to judge by the attitudes into which I often see little girls throw themselves, even in company. They were taught to sit and stand very upright, to carry their arms carefully, to turn out their toes and hold up their heads. No stooping was permitted over books or work; and while Lady Lucy was living with her aunt Bernard, she used to have a bunch of knitting-needles stuck into her bodice, to keep her from "poking" over her work.

Leseprobe

LADY LUCY'S SECRET;

OR,

THE GOLD THIMBLE.

Lucy Ellen Guernsey

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

LADY LUCY'S SECRET

OR,

The Gold Thimble. ———————

CHAPTER I.

I WONDER whether, if you had seen Lady Lucy sitting at her work that warm August morning, you would have thought her a person to be envied. She certainly looked very pretty, and not at all unhappy, as she sat in her straight-backed chair, carrying her long-waisted, snugly-laced little figure very upright, her shoulders down, and her chin drawn in,—bridled, as the phrase went. In those days—for this was at the beginning of the eighteenth century—great attention was paid to the carriage of young ladies,—more than appears to be thought necessary at the present time, to judge by the attitudes into which I often see little girls throw themselves, even in company. They were taught to sit and stand very upright, to carry their arms carefully, to turn out their toes and hold up their heads. No stooping was permitted over books or work; and while Lady Lucy was living with her aunt Bernard, she used to have a bunch of knitting-needles stuck into her bodice, to keep her from "poking" over her work.

Lady Lucy was young,—only a little past eleven years old,—and small for her age: nevertheless, she was the rightful heir of the splendid room in which she now sat, with its heavy carved furniture, its worked tapestry hangings, and inlaid cabinets,—of the fine old house, Stanton Court,—of the lovely gardens and shrubbery which lay stretched before the windows, and the beautiful park, and many a farm and moorland besides. She could only just remember her mother as a delicate lady, with beautiful long black hair and dark eyes, who was very kind to her and used to talk to her in a musical, soft-sounding language, which was not English, nor at all like any tongue she ever heard nowadays. When Lady Lucy learned to be confidential with Cousin Debby, she told her of this strange language in which her mother used to talk; and Cousin Debby informed her that the language was Italian, and that some day she should learn it herself.

When Lucy thought of her mother, it was always as sitting down on the floor to play with her, or hearing her say her prayers, or else as she lay in her coffin all dressed in white, when Aunt Bernard would make the child kiss the cold face, and called her an unfeeling, heartless girl, because she had cried and screamed to get away and had declared that that was not her mother. Lucy almost thought that she began to hate Aunt Bernard from that moment. Certainly there was always war between them from that day; and, though Aunt Bernard was the stronger and compelled the child to obey, she never won her love.

It was not so very pleasant, after all, this being an heiress, with no father or mother to love and pet one, no little sisters for playmates to help dress the doll or nurse the kitten, or to make foxglove dolls and cowslip-balls, or tell tales in the seat under the tall old elm. Aunt Bernard said that, for her part, she meant to do her duty by the child: there would be people enough to spoil and flatter her by-and-by. I really think, too, that when she began she meant what she said,—though she was perhaps mistaken as to what constituted her duty but, as the time wore on, and she could not but see that Lucy disliked her, she began in her turn to dislike Lucy and the poor child led a hard life of it.

Aunt Bernard lived in a beautiful place. It was an old timbered house, of which the beams were black with age and the plastered spaces between marked off into patterns. There was a beautiful though not very large garden, with green alleys and grass-plots, where Lucy would have liked to play if she had been allowed, and where grew abundance of flowers. At the bottom of the garden was a tall hedge, clipped close and smooth like a wall, with arched openings leading through to another green, beyond which, again, was a pretty stream where ducks and geese, and one old swan, sailed up and down all day long.

Lucy would have enjoyed playing on the green, and sailing little boats upon the stream, and throwing bits of bread to the waterfowls but she was never allowed to do any of these things. If she ever ventured to run or romp, she was reminded that she was a lady,—a countess in her own right,—and that she must not demean herself like the parson's little girls, who worked in the hay-field, or gathered cowslips for wine in the meadows, or herbs and roots for their mother to distil into medicines and cordials. Lucy used many times to wish that she had been the daughter of that stout, good-natured gentleman and his plump, rosy little wife, who walked to church every Sunday morning followed by their ten children, two by two, and looking so happy and pleasant. True, the little Burgess girls hardly ever seemed to have new gowns or hoods, even for Sundays, and their weekday frocks were coarse and mended but she was sure that Polly and Dulcie Burgess were much happier than she was. But when she ventured to express this thought to Hannah, her aunt's waiting-woman, Hannah reproved her sharply, and added that it served Mrs. Kitty Lindsay right for marrying a poor parson, that she should have such a host of children and nothing to keep them decent.

Poor Lucy could not make hay, or gather primroses in the lanes, or carry jugs of skim-milk to the poor old people, as Polly Burgess did. She must practise on her lute so many hours a day, instead of singing sweet old country songs and ballads like Polly and her sister. She must work at her sampler and her satin stitches so many hours more, and read and write so much longer. She must read so many chapters in the Bible aloud to Aunt Bernard, taking them as they came, whether it were a long chapter of hard names and nothing else, or a beautiful story in the New Testament. She must learn her lesson standing in the stocks to make her turn her toes out, and carrying a heavy bag of beans upon her head that she might attain a good carriage, or strapped up to a back-board or lying flat upon the floor, to straighten her back.

If there was daylight enough after all this was done, she might walk up and down the green path in the garden and around the shrubbery for a certain length of time. There was one place in her walk where Lucy was out of sight of the garden-windows for some little distance and here she used to peep among the branches for the birds' nests, and strew for the robin-redbreasts the few crumbs she could contrive to save from her breakfast. There was a garden-seat, too, old and broken, where she could venture to rest a few minutes and look at the sky or the water, while she thought about her mother and wondered if she remembered her poor little girl who was so very, very unhappy and lonely without her.

Lucy did not think so much about her father. She had only seen him twice since she could remember, when he had come from the wars. She thought he must have been a good man, because her mother had been so happy when he came home; and she was sure he was kind to her and used to give her rides upon his shoulder or his foot. She remembered, too, the day when the news came of his death, and she had been dressed in black and told it was for her dear papa who had been killed in the wars abroad. But it was of her mother that she loved to think at such times, even though the remembrance made her feel more unhappy than ever.

Poor little Lucy! It was a sad, irksome life. It would have been dull enough if Aunt Bernard had been kind to her but she was not. She did not love the little girl. She envied her because Lucy was rich, and she herself poor, or, at least, not wealthy. She had hated her mother before her, and she visited it on her little daughter. Lucy could never do any thing right. Whether she sat or stood, ate or drank, worked, read, or played, Aunt Bernard always saw something to find fault with. Nor was fault-finding the worst. Aunt Bernard carried a fan with a long whalebone handle, and there were few days in which the impression of that whalebone was not printed upon Lucy's shoulders or arms, nor many weeks during which she was not sent supperless to bed in the dark.

She would have fared worse than she did, if Margery, the cook, had not pitied the child. Sometimes Margery would contrive to bring her a cake or a biscuit; and when Mrs. Bernard went away on a visit with her waiting-woman Hannah, Margery would make feasts for Lady Lucy in the kitchen, and sometimes allow her to bake little cakes for herself. These were Lucy's happy days, when she could sit in a corner of the great chimney and watch the cook bustling about her work, or the milkmaid bringing in her pails of fresh milk and carrying out buckets of whey to the pigs. It made no difference to Lucy that her aunt always forbade her going into the kitchen,—unless, indeed, it rather added to her pleasure to think that she was disobeying Aunt Bernard and for once having her own way. It was perhaps the worst result of that lady's system of management that Lucy learned to take pleasure in deceiving and outwitting her.

One day, however,—one memorable, miserable day,—all these surreptitious feasts came to a sudden end. I will tell you about it particularly, because it was the means of bringing about a great change in Lucy's manner of life.

On this day Aunt Bernard set out in her carriage to make a visit at Langham Hall, some twenty miles away. She was to stay over-night with Lady Langham and return home the next evening. She left Lucy plenty of work to do, and many injunctions as to her conduct, and threats as to what would happen if she were disobedient.

Lucy stood demurely at the door and watched the carriage out of sight and hearing. Then she started and ran like a hare down the garden, and through the gate in the holly hedge, to the water-side, but presently came running back to beg for some bits of bread to feed the swan.

"Bless the poor child!" said kind old Margery. "'Tis like a kitten let out of a basket, to be sure. But, Lady Lucy, my dear, had you not better do your tasks before you go to play?"

"I cannot do them all before my aunt comes home again,—no, not if I were to work all night, Margery!" said Lucy, shaking her head. "And if I have the least bit undone I shall be scolded and beaten as much as if I had not touched them: so where is the use? I may just as well play while I can."

"'Tis true what the child says," remarked Anne, the housemaid, as Margery looked grave: "my mistress has left her marking and open-hem enough for a grown woman, besides all her other tasks,—more shame to her, I say, to have no feeling for her own flesh and blood! Never mind, Lady Lucy: I will take hold of it when my work is done, and you shall have one good play. But you must mind and wear your gloves and your hood, and not break your nails and scratch your hands with the brambles, or my mistress will find you out."

"I don't feel right about teaching and helping the child to deceive her aunt," said Margery, when Lucy had rather unwillingly gone to seek her hood.

"I don't care one pin," replied Anne, decidedly. "If my mistress treated any of us with any confidence, or put any trust in one, it would be different; but so long as she and Hannah are always spying and prying about, and won't believe a word one says, even though it should be gospel truth, why, they may just find out what they can, for all me. I shall just sit down and do up the child's open-hem for her, and my mistress may find out the difference if she can. It will not be the first trick I have played her in my time,—nor you either, Mistress Margery."

Margery sighed, and shook her head. She was not satisfied with Anne's reasoning, nor did her own conscience acquit her in the matter, but she was very fond of Lucy, and loved to see the child happy for once, as she said. So she set about making currant buns and a gooseberry fool—an old-fashioned country dish, than which there are few better—for Lucy's supper. But Lucy was not destined to the enjoyment of these dainties.

She played in the garden and down by the brook as long as she could see, forgetting for a while books, lute, and all the rest of her torments. She talked to Polly Burgess across the stream, and watched her as she milked her own little black Welsh cow, wishing all the time that she had a cow to milk and take care of. At last she yielded to Anne's entreaties that she would come in out of the dew and eat her supper.

She had just settled herself comfortably at the little table which Margery had set out in the corner, and was watching with quiet satisfaction the toasting of the currant buns, when the door of the kitchen was opened, and Aunt Bernard, entering quietly as usual, stood transfixed with amazement and anger at the sight which met her eyes. There was Lady Lucy, in the kitchen, actually leaning with both elbows on the table, and her chin resting on her hands, watching Margery, who was on her knees toasting the buns, and laughing and joking with old Roger, the cow-man; while Anne had actually a whole new mould candle lighted at her elbow, and was busily working at the open-hem ruffle!

Aunt Bernard had gone more than half her journey, when she was met by a messenger sent to tell her that the family at Langham Hall were in great trouble,—that the smallpox had broken out in the house, and my lady's two daughters were down with that dreadful disease, for which in those days no preventive was known. Of course all thought of the visit was now out of the question, and Aunt Bernard turned homeward in no good humour. It was destined to be a day of misfortunes; for about a mile from home the carriage broke down, and Aunt Bernard was obliged to walk home, in her best brocade and carriage-shoes, over a road far from good in the best of times, and now sloppy and dirty from two or three days' rain. It was in no placid mood, therefore, that she opened the kitchen-door, to find her family in her absence violating almost every rule she had ever laid down for them.