THE CHEVALIERS’ LODGES.
The name of a Chevalier of St. Michael sounds very splendid to innocent
and uninstructed ears. It is a title which stands alone in England at
least. Poor Knights have been heard of both in flesh and blood and in
confectionery, in other places; but the title Chevalier is preserved in
St. Michael’s, and there alone. Lottie thought it very imposing, and her
heart leaped, partly with a sense of her own injustice all her life to
her father, of whose merits, in youthful irreverence, she had hitherto
thought but little. He must be, she thought involuntarily, a great deal
braver, better, and altogether of more importance than she had supposed,
when his qualities could win him such a distinction from his country;
for that it was a distinction accorded by the country Lottie had no
manner of doubt in those days. She was overawed and overjoyed: first of
all on account of the people in Fairford, where they had hitherto lived,
and who had shown but little respect for the family: but much more on
her own account. She felt reconciled to herself, to her kind, to all her
circumstances, when she reflected that she was the daughter of a
Chevalier of St. Michael, and that Betty would never leave Fairford, and
that Captain Despard had expressed himself in favour of respectability
as a thing to be cultivated. Life suddenly took a new aspect to her. She
thought they would be able to shake off every incumbrance when they went
away. Her father would henceforward live a stately and dignified life as
became his position. He would not haunt the place where billiards were
played, and wear a number of shabby coats, each worse than the other,
but every one with a flower in it. The flower, which most people would
have thought a softening clause, was intolerable to Lottie; it looked
like a piece of braggadocio, a wilful defiance of public opinion or
declaration of independence. But henceforward if he must wear a flower
it must be at least in a tolerable coat; henceforward he would be trim
and smooth, and come in at a respectable hour; henceforward there should
be no bills except weekly ones, and Law should go to school--nay, Law
was too old for school now--but at least he would read with a tutor, and
grow into a creature of whom his sister might be proud. Perhaps this was
but another way of expressing the domestic tyranny of which Lottie’s
will was full. She was so anxious to be able to be proud of her father
and brother; was not that another way of saying that she wanted to get
them up, or down, to her feminine standard, and control and bind and
keep them at her apron-string? So, perhaps, a cynic might have said.
But Lottie was unconscious of any such intention. She was eager to have
something which she had not, the opposite of what she had--and thus,
too, it may be said, she fell into a commonplace.
But when the family got to St. Michael’s, Lottie’s hopes came to a
melancholy conclusion. Not only did Captain Despard remain very much the
same, which was a thing that most people anticipated--and Law decline
the tutor, upon whom Lottie had set her heart, but St. Michael’s itself
and the Chevaliership turned out something very different from the
girl’s exalted expectations. She found that this office was not looked
upon on the spot as a reward of distinguished merit bestowed by the
country, but only as a sort of retiring pension for a number of old
soldiers whose friends had interest enough to have them thus provided
for. She found a hierarchy of a totally different kind constituted and
reigning, in which the Chevaliers had no place. And she found
herself--she whose chief inspiration was this proud and eager desire to
be somebody--in a place where she could never be other than nobody, and
where no nobler self-denial on the part of her father, no virtue in Law,
could call forth the acclamation of the world. In Fairford there were
people as poor as themselves whom all the world thought well of, and of
whom Lottie was envious; but here she was one of a class who were poor
among the rich, and did not get the social honours which many of them
deserved; while at the same time, close before her eyes, daily visible,
appeared another class which seemed to fulfil all Lottie’s requirements:
refined people with beautiful houses, living serene in an atmosphere of
universal respect. But alas, these were ecclesiastical people, not the
Chevaliers: and showed little disposition to notice Lottie. Lottie did
not like this. She had expected something so different. Society, she
thought, and a brighter world were going to open upon her; and lo!
nothing at all opened upon her that was new. It is very hard, especially
when you feel yourself to be, as the proverb says, as good a gentleman
as the king, to find yourself in contact with a higher class which
ignores you. Most of us have to bear something of the kind, and learn to
take it with philosophy. But Lottie was very young and sadly
disappointed. Nobody took any notice of her save the other Chevaliers,
their wives and daughters, and these were not very much more splendid
people than the society she had been used to. Lottie was sore, and
disappointed, and humbled in her own conceit.
And there was another way in which the word of promise was kept to her
ear, with far other meaning than she had hoped. Captain Despard had a
very serious interview with his daughter when they arrived in their
little house. He called her out of the little box which was her
drawing-room to the other little box where he had established himself,
and deigned to enter upon the question of income.
“Now, Lottie,” he said, “you have chosen to bother me lately about
money, and expressed views which I could not sanction about weekly
bills.”
“Only to save you trouble, papa,” said Lottie; “if we do it every week,
we may hope to keep within our income; but how can you ever do that when
you leave butchers and bakers for a year?”
“My child,” said Captain Despard, with his grand air, “circumstances
have enabled me to yield to your wishes. I don’t say if it’s a system I
approve or don’t approve. I say to myself, Lottie is my only girl, and
she is like her dear mother; she shall have her way. From this day, my
dear, the new income which I receive from my country will go straight
into your hands. It is but a pittance. A poor soldier stands a poor
chance in these times, but such as it is, my love, it shows your
father’s trust in you. Take it, Lottie, and pay your bills according to
your pleasure. I will ask no questions; weekly, monthly, or once a
quarter, as long as I have a bit of dinner and a cup of coffee when I
want it. Your father’s confidence in you is perfect, Lottie, and I leave
it all to you.”
“Papa!” said the girl, trembling, half delighted, half frightened, half
taken in by that grand air. But he would hear no more. He kissed her
forehead with the favourite action of the _père noble_, and hurried
away. “No thanks, my child; no thanks,” he said.
It _was_ a pittance. Lottie stood where he left her gazing after him,
her veins tingling with mingled disappointment and pleasure. To the
inexperienced it seems always possible to do a great deal with a little,
and the power of paying bills at all seemed a heavenly power. But
Captain Despard chuckled to himself as he went away. He had purchased by
that fine address the right to be disagreeable ever after, to wave his
hand loftily, and to decline all knowledge of details. “Keep to your
bargain, my dear, and I’ll keep to mine,” he had the right to say; and
whereas some of his former income always had to be wasted upon the
household, let him make what resistance he would, at least that would be
the case no longer. Thus Lottie had her way, but in such a changed form
that it no longer seemed her way. With the addition of the St. Michael’s
allowance she had hoped that there would be plenty for all needs; but
what was she to do with the St. Michael’s allowance and no more?
Nevertheless, Lottie plucked up a heart. To feel that she had something
was always exhilarating, and inexperience has wild hopes which knowledge
does not venture to share. Her little room was full for a week after of
little bits of paper scribbled over with calculations. She was
determined to do it. If the dinner was not good enough for papa, he must
just go and dine elsewhere. And there was no Betty to make herself
disagreeable, but only a young girl, whom Lottie, heaven save her! meant
to train. Once a week or so Law and she could very well do without a
dinner. They were both still great on bread and butter, and capable, not
knowing anything about digestion, of swallowing innumerable cups of tea.
Her fond hopes of furniture and “picking up things” to make the little
old house pretty, must be relinquished, it was true; but, still, at
nineteen one can put up with a great deal in the present. There is
always the future, so much of the future, like the sky and the plain
from St. Michael’s Hill, spreading above, below, everywhere, without
limit or bound, save in the eyes which can only reach a certain
distance. So Lottie comforted herself for “just now,” and marched on
into her life, colours flying and drums beating, taking as little heed
as she could of those stragglers who would always fall out of the
ranks--her father always shuffling off to some new haunt or other, the
places which such men find out by instinct in the least-known locality,
and large loose-limbed Law, whose vague career was always dubious, and
who could not keep step. Never mind! Lottie herself set out, brave, head
erect, eyes straight, all her faculties in fullest attention to the roll
of her own cheerful drum.
The earliest part of her career here, however, was brightened yet
disturbed by a discovery which considerably confused her mind in her
outset, and seemed to open better prospects before her. Lottie found out
that she had a voice. She had known that she could sing long before, and
had performed many a time in the little parlour at Fairford to the
admiration of all hearers, singing every new comic song that burst upon
the little provincial world from the music-halls in London, and knowing
no better, so long as she was a child. There was no harm in the songs
she sang, nothing but absolute silliness and flippancy, such as are
natural to that kind of production; but as Lottie grew into womanhood,
and began by instinct to know better, she gave them up, and knowing no
others except some ancient sentimental ditties of her mother’s, gave up
singing so far as a musical creature can give up what is another kind of
breathing to her. But when she heard the choir in the Abbey church,
Lottie woke up, with such a delightful discovery of what music was, and
such an ecstatic finding out of her own powers, as words cannot express.
She had an old jingling worn-out piano, and had “learned to play” from
her mother, who knew nothing about it, except as much as could be taught
to a school-girl twenty years before; but this meagre instruction, and
the bad instrument, and the half-dozen “pieces” which were all Mrs.
Despard’s musical library, had not attracted the pupil, and it was not
till she heard the organ pealing through St. Michael’s, and the
choristers singing like angels--though they were not like angels out of
doors--that Lottie awoke to a real consciousness of her own gift. She
had never had any education herself. Though she was so anxious for
school for Law, it had not occurred to her that she wanted any
schooling. Lottie was narrow-minded and practical. She did not
understand self-culture. She wanted Law to learn, because without
education he could not do anything worth speaking of, could not earn any
money, could not get on in the world. Perhaps it is true that women have
a natural inclination to calculate in this poor way. She did not care a
straw for the cultivation of Law as Law--but that he should be made good
for something, get a good situation, have some hopes of comfort and
prosperity. For herself, what did it matter? She never could know enough
to teach, and Captain Despard would not let his daughter teach; besides,
she had plenty to do at home, and could not be spared. She could read
and write, and do her accounts, the latter very well indeed; and she had
learned to “play” from her mother, and she could sew, rather badly at
first, rather well now by dint of practice. What did a girl want more?
But Lottie discovered now that a girl might want more.
“Is there any place where they will teach you to sing without money?”
she said one day to old Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, her next-door neighbour, the
old lady of all her neighbours whom Lottie liked best.
“Me jewel!” cried the old lady; “is it without paying youre meaning?
They send an account if you do but look at them here, me dear.”
“All of them?” said Lottie; “for I can sing, and I should like to learn
to sing; but, you know, I can’t pay--much----”
“I know; nothing at all, if you’re like us, me honey. But maybe you’re
better off. O’Shaughnessy, we don’t make a secret of it, rose from the
ranks, and we’ve never had a penny--I don’t care who knows it--barring
our pay.”
“We are not like that,” said Lottie, drawing herself up. “Papa was
always a gentleman” (“Then I don’t give much for such gentlemen,”
murmured the other Chevalier’s lady, under her breath), “and we have a
little. That is--I mean, that he has a little--papa has a little”--the
girl said on the edge of a confidence; and then stopped suddenly short.
“It don’t do much for the children, I’ll go bail,” said the old lady.
“That’s the worst of fine gentlemen, me dear. O’Shaughnessy he asks me
for a shillin’ when he wants it, bless him--and that’s the only way when
there’s small pay. Singing, is it? If you’re always to make such a stand
on being a lady, me friend Lottie, I don’t see how I can help you; but
if you will come in free and comfortable, and take a dish of tay when
Rowley’s there--oh, to be sure, puff! my lady’s off--but there’s no harm
in him; and he’ll make you die with laughin’ at him, him and his
airs--but they tell me he has the best voice and the best method of any
of the lay clerks.”
“A singing man!”
“Well, and that was what ye wanted!” said the old woman. “You know as
well as me, Miss Lottie, there’s no singin’ woman here.”
Lottie protested that she could not consent to appear in such
company--that papa would not allow it--that it was impossible. But she
ended by promising to “run in” before old Major O’Shaughnessy began his
rubber, and see this singing man. And the result was that, half out of
friendship for his Irish hosts who did not pretend to be above him, and
half out of pride to be interrogated so graciously about his invalid
daughter by a young lady who gave herself such airs, Rowley, the first
tenor, agreed for so low a rate as had never been heard of before to
train Miss Despard’s beautiful voice. “If the young lady had been a
little boy, and if the Signor could but ha’ gotten hold on it!” Rowley
said, in enthusiasm. It was the voice, which is impersonal, of which he
spoke, and the Signor was the organist. But good fortune had not as yet
thrown him in Lottie’s way. Soon, however, Rowley began to whisper it
about that he had got a pupil who was quite good enough for Exeter Hall,
if not for the Italian Opera, and the whole community was interested.
Lottie herself, and her pretty looks, had not attracted any notice--but
a voice was a very different matter. And then it was that steps were
taken to make, for Lottie’s behalf, a practicable gap in the hedge of
prickles which surrounded the Cloisters and kept intruders out. Miss
Despard was invited to join the St. Michael’s Choral Society, in which
the Divinities on the hill did not disdain to mingle their voices even
with the lower-born outside the Abbey walls. And when it became known
what a voice Lottie’s was, a remarkable thing happened. The Dean
_called!_ It was not Lady Caroline, but the Dean; and a gentleman’s
visit, as is well known, is not the same thing as a lady’s. But Lottie,
who knew nothing of the laws of society, was flattered and happy, and
saw a hundred lovely visions unfolding before her when the Dean invited
her to go to a private practice, which was then going on in the Deanery
drawing-room. “My daughter bade me fetch you, Miss Despard, if you would
be good enough to come,” he said, gravely; but waited very impatiently
till she was ready, in great terror lest “the father” should make his
appearance, and his visit be construed into a call upon Captain Despard.
Lottie put on her hat with her heart leaping and bounding. At last she
had done it! At last Paradise was opening before the Peri! At last the
wrongs of fate were to be set right, and herself conveyed back into her
natural sphere. She went by the Dean’s side demurely, with downcast
eyes, across the slope to the Deanery garden. The very stones felt
elastic under her feet, there was a ringing of excitement and delight in
the air and in her ears. She arrived breathless at the door, though they
had not walked fast. So absorbed was she by all that was about to happen
that Lottie never thought of the sensation that ran through the Abbey
when the Dean was seen walking to his own dignified door in company with
Captain Despard’s daughter. Miss Despard? Lottie? The Chevaliers, and
their wives and daughters, could not believe their eyes.
Lottie held her head as high as usual when she came back. It no longer
drooped with diffidence and delight. Once more she had come down with a
jar into the realms of reality from those of hope. She was not received
with open arms in that higher celestial world. Miss Augusta Huntington
said, “How do you do, Miss Despard?” very sweetly, but Lady Caroline
only bowed with her eyelids--a new mode of salutation which Lottie did
not understand--and kept aloof; and no one else said anything to Lottie,
except about the music. They gave her a cup of tea when all was over,
but Lottie had to drink it in silence, while the others laughed and
chatted. She was not of them, though they had brought her among them for
the sake of her voice. “Are you going, Miss Despard?” said the Dean’s
daughter, putting on the same sweet smile. “We are so much obliged to
you for coming. The next practice is next Tuesday. Will you come as
early as possible, please?” It was on Lottie’s lips to say “No”--to tell
them that she was a lady too, a better gentlewoman than they were, since
she would not have treated any stranger so. But she was fortunately too
shy to say anything, and made her exit hastily, and not so gracefully as
the others, who were at home. But she would not allow, even to herself,
that she had come down again in that painful tussle with reality, which
is so much different from dreams. She kept very quiet and said nothing,
which seemed the wisest way. And as she walked home with a much more
stately gravity than was her wont--a state put on to console herself for
humiliation and disappointment, and to vindicate, so to speak, her own
dignity to herself, but which the lookers-on gave a very different
interpretation of--Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, nodding and smiling, and in a
state of great excitement, threw up the window and called to her, as she
was going past. “Come up, come up, and tell me all about it,” the old
lady said, so audibly that some of the ladies and gentlemen who had been
in the Deanery turned round to look, and smiled at each other, making
Lottie furious. As she could not stand there and explain before all the
world, Lottie obeyed the call, and rushing upstairs to the kind old
Irishwoman’s little bit of a drawing-room, appeared, crimson with shame
and wrath at the door.
“How could you call out so loud and make them laugh?” she said, with a
strong inclination to burst into hot tears.
“Laugh, was it? and sure I’m ready to laugh too. To see you and his
Reverence the Dean, Miss Lottie--no less would serve you!--arm in arm
like a pair of young----”
“We were not arm in arm,” said Lottie, stamping her foot. Then she had
the sense to perceive that the wicked old Irishwoman would but laugh the
more at her petulance. She put her music on the table with a recovery of
her dignified manners, and sat down.
“What did he say to ye? and what did me Lady Caroline say to ye? and
were they all wild over yer beautiful voice, me honey?” said the old
lady. “Come, take off your hat, me pet, and ye shall have the best cup
o’ tea in the Abbey. And tell me all about it,” she said.
“I have had a cup of tea, thank you,” said Lottie. “Oh, yes, they are
all nice enough. Nobody talked to me--but then, I didn’t expect them to
talk to me. They wanted me to sing--and I sang; and that was all.”
“And what more would you have, me jewel?” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. “Now,
you take my advice, Lottie. I’m old, and I know the world. Take what you
can get, me dear, and wait till your time comes. Don’t go and take
offence and throw up the cards, and lose all you’ve got for a tantrum.
Tantrums pass off, but life goes on. If they don’t speak to you, it’s
their loss, for you have a clever little tongue o’ your own. And you’ll
not be long there till they find out that. Don’t say a word, me honey.
I’ll not bother you; but never take offence with the gentry----”
“The gentry!” cried the girl furious, starting to her feet. “I am as
much a lady as any of them--and more, for I would not be such---- I
would not be unkind----”
“Well--well--well! There, I have put my foot in it!” said the old lady.
“I was thinking of meself, me dear, as if ye were a girl of my own. But
you _are_ a lady, honey; one has but to look at you,” said the astute
old woman; “and just you wait a bit, and all will come as it
ought--sure, I know it will.”
Lottie did not much trust the assurance, but she took the advice,
feeling a quick admonition within herself as to the absurdity of her
complaint, and the horrible possibility of anybody supposing that she
felt herself not to be of the gentry, as good as any Dean’s daughter. So
she went to the next practice, taking no notice of any want of courtesy:
and the result was that there arose a kind of intimacy, as has been
indicated, between Miss Huntington at the Deanery and the daughter of
the Chevalier--an intimacy, indeed, of a peculiar kind, in which all
that was given came from the side of the poorer and more insignificant,
and the great young lady was content with taking all that poor Lottie
was so willing to give. She sang the solos in their private little
concerts, and though her science was less perfect than her voice, her
ear was so good that Lottie was able to be of a great deal of use. They
sent for her when they had parties, when there was anyone who wanted
entertaining, and put Lottie to the only unnecessary personal expense
she had ever gone into--a white muslin frock to make her presentable
among that fine company. And thus she had gone and come, and had been
called upon on all occasions, but without making any nearer advance than
at first. Lady Caroline still made her a little inclination of her
eyelids, though now and then she went so far as to say, “How do you do,
Miss Despard?” All of this, however, Lottie would have pardoned, if the
bride, when she went away, had but at least remembered her, and made her
some little sign of farewell.