University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
A NEW FRIEND.

Lucy ran her eye over all the Hydes in the directory,
and selecting fortunately the right one, she
went to Hudson Square, and was admitted to one
of the fine houses that overlook St. John's Park.
She asked to speak with Mrs. Hyde, and was
shown into a large room on the second floor.
Mrs. Hyde looked up as she entered, and Lucy at
once recognised the intelligent and benevolent
countenance impressed on her memory. The
recognition was not mutual, for the lady, merely
saying, “Sit down, my child, I am busy just now,”
proceeded to look over an account-book, while a
girl of fourteen stood by anxiously awaiting the
result. Three of Mrs. Hyde's daughters sat by
the window, one reading aloud a book of travels,
one drawing, and another painting, and near them
a seamstress plying her needle, and listening and
enjoying with the rest. Two little girls of four
and six were sitting beside their mother, hemming
ruffles. “We must do them very neatly, Grace,”
said the youngest, “for mamma says Mrs. Lux
will look at them with her spectacles; and besides,
mamma says it is a shame to do work badly for a
poor woman.” Two boys were at a table with
maps and slates, and there seemed to be in this
hive but one unproductive labourer, a busy little
urchin, who, among other miscellaneous mischief,

let fall a glass, which luckily not breaking, the little
Pharisee exclaimed, “Was not that careful?”
This excited a general laugh, and even our poor
stranger's face relaxed into a smile, which the
little girls, glancing their eyes towards her, caught,
and one said in a low voice, but loud enough for
Lucy to hear, “Don't she look sweet when she
smiles?” and the other replied, “Yes; but I
wonder what she has been crying so for?” and
Lucy was relieved when Mrs. Hyde said, returning
the account-book to the girl in waiting, “All is
right, Harriet—girls, give Harriet joy!”

“No, give Mrs. Hyde thanks,” said Harriet;
“I never could have got on if you had not kept
my courage up, Mrs. Hyde.”

“Ah, we can only help those who help themselves,
Harriet. What do you wish, my child?”
to Lucy.

“To speak alone with you, ma'am,” replied
Lucy, in a tremulous voice, for the dread of asking
trust and employment from a stranger to whom she
must confess she was in disgrace, turned off as a
liar and thief, took possession of her. Mrs. Hyde
led the way to another apartment; when there,
Lucy's brow contracted and her lips quivered.
There is something irresistibly touching in the
distress of the young. We expect storms in winter,
but we shrink from the cloud that lowers over
the promise of early summer. “What is the
matter, my child?” asked Mrs. Hyde, so kindly
that tears came to Lucy's relief, and she was imboldened
to say, “You do not remember me,
ma'am?”

“No, I do not.”

“I never saw you but once, Mrs. Hyde, and that
was a great while ago, when I lived at Mrs.
Ardley's.” Lucy paused, but Mrs. Hyde shook
her head, and Lucy proceeded to refer to the conversation
that she had then heard, to the circumstances
Mrs. Hyde had recounted, and occasionally
to the very words she had uttered, and finally
reminding her of her own exclamation, “how
much like mother she does talk!” she succeeded
in recalling the image of the little girl, whose identity,
though grown a head taller, she perceived.
The most accomplished flatterer could not have
devised a more ingenious mode of approach than
Lucy, in her simplicity, had adopted. “I thought
then, ma'am,” she resumed, “that if ever I should
have to apply to a stranger for advice and help, I
should wish it were you.”

“But why is it necessary for you to come to a
stranger? You should have made friends before
this time of life.”

“I have friends, ma'am—real friends, that I
could go to in any trouble,” replied Lucy, her face
brightening with a just pride, “but they are all a
great way off—all, but one.”

“Why not go to that one?”

“I did not feel as if that would be best, ma'am,”
she replied, casting down her eyes, and blushing
so deeply that Mrs. Hyde, pitying her embarassment,
told her to proceed with her story. Lucy
briefly sketched what the reader already knows:
her mother's troubles, her different service-places,
and finished by relating, fairly, every particular of
the unfortunate affair at Mrs. Hartell's. Mrs.
Hyde listened as a good judge listens to the testimony

in the case of a prisoner arraigned before
him, anxious to get the truth, and leaning to a
merciful interpretation where it could not be fully
developed. “But why, my child,” she asked, “if
you were conscious of innocence, did you object to
having your trunk opened?”

After a little faltering, Lucy replied that “there
was a picture on the top of her trunk she did not
wish seen.”

“A picture!—of what? or whom?”

“Of that one friend, ma'am, I said I had in the
city.”

“And who is he?—and how long have you
known him?”

“Ever since mother was in the deepest of her
troubles; he was the first person that was kind to
us, and he has been kind ever since.”

“But you do not tell me who this friend is.”

“Oh, Charles Lovett, ma'am.”

“Ah, I understand now; the son of those friends
you are so fond of?” After a little more questioning,
cross-examination, and deliberation, Mrs. Hyde
asked Lucy if she had any letters from her mother
or from Mrs. Lovett; and finding she had, she said,
if Lucy would let her see them, and if they corroborated
her statements, she would take her, for
the present, into her family. “I will not,” she
said, “send to inquire your character at the places
where you lived so long ago. Suspicion might be
excited by your not having referred me to the last
place you was at.”

“That was just what I thought, ma'am; but I
did not suppose that anybody but mother and Mrs.
Lovett would have thought so for me.” Lucy was

yet to know in Mrs. Hyde a Christian woman, one
to whom the wants of her fellow-creatures were
claims, and who judged and felt in their affairs as
if they were her own. To her might justly be
applied Wordsworth's beautiful description of the
man of Christian sympathy.

Mrs. Hyde saw in Lucy a young creature who,
if her story were true, and truth was stamped on
her countenance, was in most forlorn circumstances.
The simplicity of her manner and the
directness and consistency of her statements were
in her favour, and it seemed scarcely possible she
could be guilty of the complicated iniquity in which
a supposition of the falsehood of her story involved
her. At any rate, it was in conformity with Mrs.
Hyde's principles and experience to “hope all
things of the young;” and, true to her theory, she
sent to Mrs. Hartell's for Lucy's trunk. When
that came she examined Mrs. Lovett's and Mrs.
Lee's letters sufficiently to corroborate Lucy's
statement, and then she permitted her to enter upon
the duties of her new situation. A previous duty,
however, she performed. “I cannot,” she said to
Mrs. Hyde, “rest easy a minute without writing
to Mr. Hartell about the danger poor little Eugene
is in. If you only knew what a sweet little fellow
he is, Mrs. Hyde!”

“No child, Lucy, should be left in the hands of
such a person as you describe that nurse. Write

yourself to Mr. Hartell at Richmond. Tell your
own story. I will add a postscript. Perhaps he
may yet ferret out the truth for you.”

“Perhaps so, Mrs. Hyde; but it's little Eugene
that I am anxious about. My conscience is clear,
and that is comfort enough for me.”

“The girl has the true secret of comfort,”
thought Mrs. Hyde. “As this is a broken day,
Lucy,” she said, “and I want you to get all
troubles off your mind, let us send for that `one
friend' of yours, and acquaint him with your change
of place.” Lucy, at first, feared he would be instigated
by the injustice she had suffered to some
rash act; but the desire to communicate her good
and evil fortune controlled her; and, with many
thanks, she assented to Mrs. Hyde's proposal.
Charles instantly answered to the summons, and in
an hour's time had heard the whole story from
Lucy's lips; and, with the impetuous resentment
natural to his age, had vowed that “he would go
instantly to Mrs. Hartell's—that he would shoot
Adéle if she did not tell the whole truth—yes, he
would blow her up sky-high.” Lucy, after a while,
convinced him that though this mode of proceeding
might punish Adéle, it would not establish her innocence,
nor extricate her from the labyrinth in
which Adéle's arts had involved her. He still insisted
that he could not go quietly back to his work
while she was lying under such an imputation.
“Why, Lucy,” he said, “I positively had rather
walk the fiery furnace with Shadrac, Meshac, and
Abednego.”

“Oh, don't talk so—please, Charles.”

“It is foolish and wrong, I know, when you are

really the one in the furnace; but then it does not
even scorch you, for your conscience is like the
angel that walked with those men, while mine,
Lucy, will torment me if I go quietly about my
business just as if nothing had happened. Am I
not, Lucy, the only protector you have in the city,
besides being your—your—your—only friend,
Lucy?”

“No, Charles, not my only one. It would be
wrong to say so, when I have found such a friend
as Mrs. Hyde. Leave all to her—please, Charles.”

Charles at first flatly refused, urging that Mrs.
Hyde did not know Lucy enough to judge in the
matter; but at last, subdued by Lucy's gentle entreaties,
he yielded, though declaring “it was
deused hard;” and, in compliance with Mrs. Hyde's
advice, he promised to remain passive till Mr. Hartell's
return.