Chapter VI.
No hag is a houri to herfille de chambre.
Mrs. Brothertoft, handsome hag, was thoroughly comprehended by the Voltaire family. That was no doubt part of their compensation for being black, and below stairs.
Sweet Lucy was also well understood in the kitchen.
Many a pitiful colloquy went on about her between those three faithful souls.
Sappho’s conundrum, “What is de most importantest ’gredient in soup?” was often propounded. Voltaire always protested against such vulgar remarks. Plato always guessed “Faith!” and pretended he’d never heard the riddle before.
“Faith is all very well,” Voltaire would say, in studied phrase, as a model to his son. “But where is the Works? Where is the Works to help Miss Lucy?”
“Jess you keep yer grip onto de Faith,” his wife would respond, “an’ de Works will jussumfy, when de day of jussumfication comes.”
So Lucy grew up a grave, sad, lonely young girl. Her heart was undeveloped, for she had no one but her mother to love. She loved there, with little response. Her mother received, and did not repel, her love. That was enough for this affectionate nature. As to sympathy, they were strangers.
“She seems to me bitterly cold, when I love her so dearly,” Lucy would say to herself; “but how can I wonder? My father’s wrong-doing has broken her heart. Her life must be mere endurance. Mine would be, if I were so disappointed in one I loved. It is now.”
And the poor child’s heart would sink, and her eyes fill, and thick darkness come over her future.
She lived a sadly lonely life. She could never be merry as other girls. There was a miserable sense of guilt oppressing her soul. The supposed crimes of her father — those unknown enormities — weighed upon her. These, she thought, were what made many good people a little shy of the Brothertoft household. She could not fail to perceive a vague something in which her mother’s house was different from other houses she was permitted slightly to know. Why were so many odious men familiar there? When the family were in town, she could avoid them, day and evening, and spend long hours unnoticed and forgotten in her own chamber. She could escape to books or needlework. But why did her mother tolerate these coarse men from the barracks, with their Tom, Dick, and Harry talk? To be sure these were days of war, and Mrs. Brothertoft was loyal in her sympathies, though non-committal, and “She may think it right,” thought Lucy, “to show her loyalty in the only way a woman can, by hospitality. But I am glad she does not expect me to help her entertain her guests. I am glad I am a child still. I hope I shall never be a woman.”
Her life took a sombre cast. She sank into a groove, and moved through the hours of her days a forlorn and neglected creature.
“Queer!” Julia Peartree Smith would say of her. “A little weak here,” and Julia touched her forehead, just below her chestnut front. “She is a Brothertoft, and they were always feeble-minded folk, you know. But perhaps it’s just as well,” — and Julia sank her voice to a mean whisper, — “just as well she shouldn’t be too sharp-sighted in that house. I really believe the silly chit loves her mother, and thinks her as good as anybody. I tried to give her a half-hint once, but the little fool fired up red-hot and said, I was a shameful old gossip, — ‘old,’ indeed!”
So Lucy lived, utterly innocent of any dream of the evil she was escaping. There is something sadly beautiful and touching in this spectacle. A moonlit cloud flitting over the streets of a great wicked city, pausing above foul courts where vice slinks and crime cowers, reflected in the eddies of the tainted river, — the same eddy that was cleft at solemn moonrise by a suicide, — this weft of gentle cloud is not more unconscious of all the sin and shame beneath it, than Lucy of any wrong. The cloud beholds the pure moon, and drifts along unsullied; Lucy saw only her own white and virginal faith. It was not a warming, cheering luminary; but it shed over her world the gray, resigned light of patience.
A touching sight! the more so, because we know that the character will develop, and, when it is ripe enough to bear maturer sorrows and to perceive a darker shame, that the eyes will open and the sorrow and shame will be revealed, standing where they have so long stood unseen.
After this little glimpse of Lucy’s life, monotonously patient for the want of love, Voltaire takes up his narration again.