strong, blowing the black branches wildly about the leaden sky. The
Dean’s garden was bounded by the Slopes, only a low and massive grey
wall, as old as the buttresses amid which the lawn was set, separating
it from the larger grounds, which were open to the community--and Rollo
leaning on that wall could almost see the spot where he had sat with
Lottie, when she had clasped her hands on his arm, leaning upon him with
delicious trust, and giving up all her future into his hands. Even then
what a difference there had been between them!--she throwing herself
upon him in utter faith and confidence, feeling herself delivered
completely and at once from all the troubles that overwhelmed her; while
he, even in the thrill of pleasure which that soft weight and pressure
gave him, felt his heart jump with such sudden alarm as words could not
describe. Now, when he thought it over, the alarm was more than the
pleasure. Lottie, retired into her little chamber, was at that hour
going over the whole scene with the tenderest happiness and
reliance--feeling safe with him, feeling free of all responsibility, not
even forecasting the future, safe and relieved from all the anxieties of
the past, caring for nothing but this moment, this exquisite climax of
life, this perfect union that had begun and was never to end. Very, very
different were Rollo’s thoughts. How was he to do it? Marry! the very
idea seemed impossible. It involved disclosure, and disclosure would be
madness. What would his relations say to him?--what would his friends
say to him? His tradesmen would send in their bills, his associates
would contemplate him with the very horror of astonishment. Ridsdale
married! as well cut his throat at once. Had he ever thought of the
little _ménage_ on which Lottie’s thoughts (had they been free to plan
anything) would have dwelt with simple pride and happiness, he would
have been disposed really to cut his throat. In such a case Lottie would
have been sure of her own powers--sure that if they were poor she could
make their money go twice as far as Rollo by himself could make it
go--and could much more than balance her share of the expenses by the
housewifely powers which it would have been her delight and her ambition
to exercise. But to Rollo love in a cottage was a simple folly, meaning
nothing. The very idea was so foreign to him that it never entered into
his mind at all. What did enter into his mind, as the only hope in the
blank of the future, was of a very different description. It was the
original idea which had first of all moved him towards this girl, who
gradually had awakened within him so many other sentiments: her voice.
Should he be able to produce this as he hoped, then there would be a way
of escape from the difficulty. The Manager had behaved like a fool, but
Rollo had not changed his opinion. Though he had fallen in love with the
singer, and his sentiments in regard to her had thus been modified, he
had never changed his opinion. She possessed a magnificent organ; and
though (which seemed to him very strange) Handel at present was her only
inspiration, yet he felt that with proper care that voice could do
anything, and that in it might yet lie all the elements of fortune.
Casting about around all his horizon for something like salvation, this
was the only light that Rollo perceived. It, perhaps, was not the most
desirable of lights. To marry a singer in full heyday of her powers,
admired by all the world, and making a great deal of money, was not a
thing that any younger son would hesitate to do; but an unknown singer,
with all her way to make, and her very education still so imperfect,
that was a very different matter; but still it was the only chance. In
former times, perhaps, a man would have thought it necessary to pretend
at least a desire to snatch his bride from the exposure of publicity,
from the stage, or even from the concert-room--a determination to work
for her rather than to let her work for him; but along with
circumstances sentiments change, and the desire of women for work is apt
to be supported from an undesirable side by those who once would have
thought their honour concerned in making women’s work unnecessary. In
civilisation there can be no advance without its attendant drawback. Mr.
Ridsdale had fallen in love, a thing no young man can entirely guard
against, and he had engaged to marry Lottie Despard, partly because he
was in love with her, partly because she was in want of protection and
succour. But he did not know in what way he could keep a wife; and short
of breaking his word and abandoning her altogether (things which at this
moment it seemed utterly impossible to do), what other way was open to
him than to consider how his wife could keep him? This was a great deal
more easy. He had nothing--no money, no profession--but she had a
profession, a something which was worth a great deal of money, which
only required cultivation to be as good as a fortune. Rollo’s heart
perceptibly lightened as he thought of this. It did not make the social
difficulties much easier, or soften the troubles which he must
inevitably have with his family; but still, whereas the other matter had
been impossible, this brought it within the range of things that could
be contemplated. He could not refrain from one sigh (in the undercurrent
of his mind--not dwelt upon or even acknowledged, a thing which he would
have been ashamed of had he admitted it to himself)--one sigh that the
idea of marriage had come in at all. She might have found in him all the
succour, all the companionship, all the support she wanted without
_that_; and it would have done her no harm in her after career. But that
was a secret thought--an inadvertence, a thing which he dared not permit
himself to think, as it were, in the daylight, in his own full
knowledge. He knew very well what a fool he would appear to
everybody--how the idea that he, Rollo, with all his experience, should
be thus taken in at last, would cause infinite surprise and laughter
among his friends--but still there came a gleam of possibility into the
matter when he thought of Lottie’s gift. By that means they might do it.
It was not quite out of the question, quite impossible. Rollo had been
so lost in thought that he had not seen Mr. Jeremie looking out from the
window through which he had gone into the garden; but as he arrived at
this, which was a kind of conclusion, if not a very satisfactory one, he
became at last aware of the respectable butler’s anxiety.
“Her ladyship, sir, don’t hold with leaving the windows open,” said Mr.
Jeremie, who did not hold with staying out of bed to attend upon a young
man’s vagaries. There had been nothing of this kind in Miss Augusta’s
time--not even when Mr. Daventry came courting. Rollo tossed the end of
his cigar over the wall and came in, somewhat relieved in his mind,
though the relief was not very great. It left all the immediate question
unsolved--what his family would say, and what was to be done in the
meantime--but it gave a feeble light of possibility in the future. He
had calculated on Lottie’s voice to make his fortune when he thought of
it only as a speculator. He had much more right to look upon her as
likely to make his fortune now.
In the morning the same thought was the first in Rollo’s mind; but the
faint light of hope it gave was surrounded by clouds that were full of
trouble. Supposing that in the course of time, when she was thoroughly
established in her profession, trained and started, she could manage to
attain that most necessary thing called an income, with which to meet
the world--this was a contingency which still lay in the future; whereas
it might be necessary to act at once. The very urgency and anxiety of
Rollo’s thoughts will show that he neither wanted to abandon Lottie nor
to allow her to guess that he was alarmed by his engagement to her. The
whole scope and object of his deliberations was to make the thing
possible. But for this why should he have troubled himself about it at
all? He might have “let things take their course”--he might have gone on
enjoying the delights of love-making, and all a lover’s privileges,
without going any further. Lottie was not the kind of girl who ever
would have hurried matters, or insisted upon the engagement being kept.
He knew well enough that she would never “pull him up.” But he was in
love with Lottie--he wanted to deliver her from her troubles--he wanted
to have her for his own--if he could only see how it was to be done.
Evidently there were various conditions which must be insisted on--which
Lottie must yield to. Public notice must not be called to the tie
between them more than was absolutely necessary. Everything must be
conducted carefully and privately--not to make any scandal--and not to
compel the attention of his noble family. Rollo did not want to be sent
for by his father, to be remonstrated with by his elder brother, to have
all his relatives preaching sermons to him. Even his aunt Caroline,
passive, easy-going soul--even she would be roused, he felt, to
violence, could she divine what was in the air. Marry Miss Despard! the
idea would drive her out of all the senses she possessed. Kind as she
was, and calm as she was, Rollo felt that in such circumstances she
would no longer be either kind or calm; and if even Lady Caroline were
driven to bay, what would be the effect of such a step on Lord
Courtland, who had no calm of nature with which to meet the revelation?
Therefore his heart was heavy as he went out, as soon as the bells had
ceased ringing for matins, to meet his love on the Slopes. His heart was
heavy, yet he was not a cool or indifferent lover. The thought of seeing
her again was sweet to him; but the cares were many, and he did not know
how to put into language which would not vex or hurt her the things that
must be said. He tried to wrap them up in honeyed words, but he was not
very successful; and at last he decided to leave it all to
Providence--to take no thought for what he was to say. “The words will
be put into my mouth at the right time,” he said to himself piously. He
could not exactly forecast what shape the conversation might take, or
how this special subject should be introduced. He would not settle what
he had to say, but would leave it to fate.
The morning sunshine lay as usual unbroken upon the Dean’s Walk. It had
been feeble and fitful in the morning, as sunshine has often begun to be
in October, but now had warmed into riper glory. The paths on the Slopes
were strewed with fallen leaves, which the winds of last night had blown
about in clouds. Rollo was first at the trysting-place; and when he saw
Lottie appear suddenly round the bole of the big elm-tree, she seemed to
be walking to him, her foot all light and noiseless, upon a path of
gold. Her steps seemed to have a fairy tinkle upon that yellow pavement.
The movement of her figure was like music, with a flowing liquid measure
in it. The little veil that dropped over her hat, the ribbons at her
neck, the soft sweep of her dark merino gown, commonest yet prettiest of
fabrics, all united in one soft line. There was nobody by, and it was
the first heavenly morning upon which they had belonged to each other.
She came to him as if out of paradise, out of heaven, all radiant with
happiness and celestial trust and love. A glow of tenderness and
gladness came over the young man. He forgot all about the difficulties,
about money, about his family, about how they were to live and what was
to be done. He went to meet her, ardent and eager, forgetting everything
but herself. It was the _vita nuova_ all over again--a new earth and new
skies. It seemed to both of them that they had never lived before, that
this was the birthday of a glorified existence. Even last night, in the
agitation of their happiness, had not been like this first new day. When
they stepped into each other’s sight, realising the mutual property, the
mutual right, the incomprehensible sweetness of belonging to each other,
everything else seemed to be swept out of the world. There was nothing
visible but themselves, the sweet sky, and genial air: the leaves
dropping softly, all crimson and golden, the sun shining on them with a
sympathetic surprise of pleasure. For the moment, even to the young man
of the world, everything was simple, primitive, and true, all
complication and conventionalities swept away; and if so to Rollo, how
much more to Lottie, thus advancing sweetly, with a soft measure in her
step, not hurried or eager, but in modest faith and innocence, into her
lover’s arms!
And, lo! in a moment all his calculations proved needless. Instead of
talking seriously to each other, making their mutual arrangements,
deciding what was to be done, as would have been far the wisest way of
employing the solitude of this sweet morning, which seemed to brighten
expressly for them--what did the two do but fall into an aimless
delicious whispering about their two happy selves, and nothing more!
They had things to say to each other which came by stress of nature, and
had to be said, yet were nothing--while the things of real importance
were thrust aside. They fell a-gossiping about themselves, about each
other, going over all the old ground, repeating the last evening’s
tender follies, about--when you first began to think--and when I first
knew--and what had been in the one heart and in the other, when both had
to talk of other things, and make no sign. What need to follow all the
course of that foolishness? There was nothing in earth or heaven so
deeply interesting to Lottie as to hear how Rollo was thinking of her
while he stood and talked to somebody else, watching her from far; and
how his heart would beat when he saw her coming, and how he blasphemed
old Captain Temple, yet blessed him next moment for bringing her here;
and what he had really meant when he said this and that, which had
perplexed her at the time; nor to Rollo than to know how she had watched
for him, and looked for his sympathy, and felt herself backed up and
supported the moment he appeared. There was not a day of the past month
but had its secret history, which each longed to disclose to the
other--and scarcely an hour, scarcely a scrap of conversation which did
not contain a world of unrevealed meaning to be unfolded and
interpreted. Talk of an hour! they had ample enough material for a
century without being exhausted; and as for arrangements, as for the (so
to speak) business of the matter, who thought of it? For Lottie was not
an intelligent young woman, intending to be married, but a happy girl in
love; and Rollo, though he knew better, was in love too, and wished for
nothing better than these delightful confidences. The hours went by like
a moment. They had already been aroused two or three times by the roll
of baby carriages propelled by nursemaids before the greater volume of
music from the Abbey proclaimed that service was over. “Already!” they
both cried, with wonder and dismay; and then, for the first time, there
was a pause.
“I had so much to talk to you about,” he said, “and we have not had time
to say a word, have we? Ah! when can we have a good long time to
ourselves? Can you escape your Captain to-night, my darling? I should
like to shake him by the hand, to thank him for taking care of you; but
couldn’t you escape from him, my Lottie, to-night?”
Lottie grew a little pale; her heart sank, not with distrust, but with
perhaps a little, a very little disappointment. Was this still how it
was to be? Just the same anxious diplomacies to secure a meeting, the
same risks and chances? This gave her a momentary chill. “It is very
difficult,” she said. “He is the only one I have to take care of me. He
would think it unkind.”
“You must not say now the only one, my Lottie--not the only one--my
substitute for a little while, who will soon have to give me up his
place.”
“But he will not like to give it up now; not till he knows; perhaps not
even then--for his daughter, you know----”
“Ah! it was she who married Dropmore. Lottie, my love, my darling, I
cannot live through the evening without you. Could you not come again,
at the same time as last night? It is early dark, heaven be praised.
Take your walk with him, and then give him the slip, and come here,
sweet, here to me. I shall be watching, counting the moments. It is bad
enough to be obliged to get through the day without you. Ah! it is the
Signor’s day. The Signor is all rapt up in his music. He will never
suspect anything. I shall be able to see you at least, to hear you, to
look at you, my lovely darling----”
After a moment said Lottie, “That was one thing I wanted to ask you
about. You know why the Signor gives me lessons. Will it be right _now_
to go on with him? _now_ that everything is changed? Should not I give
them up?”
“Give them up!” cried Rollo, with a look of dismay. “My darling, what
are you thinking of? They are more necessary, more important than ever.
Of course, we will pay for them after. Oh! no fear but he will be
repaid; but no, no, my love, my sweet, you must not give them up!”
She looked at him with something like anxiety in her eyes, not knowing
what he could mean. What was it? Lottie could not but feel a little
disappointed. It seemed that everything was to go on just the same as
before.
“I shall see you there,” he said. “So long as we are in the same place
everything is sweet; and I have always taken so much interest in your
dear voice that no one can suspect. And to-night you will come--promise
me, my darling--just after the service, when it is getting dark?”
“Yes,” she whispered, with a sigh--then started from his side. “I saw
some one among the trees. The old Chevaliers are coming up for their
morning walk. Let me go now--you must let me go--Mr. Ridsdale----”
“‘Mr. Ridsdale!’ How can I let my Lottie go before she has called me by
my right name?”
“Oh, I must not stay. I see people coming,” said Lottie, disappointed,
troubled, afraid of being seen, yet angry with herself for being afraid.
“Mr. Ridsdale--Rollo, dear Rollo--let me go now----”
“Till it is time for the Signor----” And he did let her go, with a hasty
withdrawal on his own part, for unmistakably there were people to be
seen moving about among the trees; not, indeed, coming near their
corner, yet within sight of them. Lottie left him hurriedly, not looking
back. She was ashamed, though she had no cause for shame. She ran down
the bank to the little path which led to the foot of the hill and to the
town. She could not go up and run the risk of being seen going home by
the Dean’s Walk. She drew her veil over her face, and her cheeks burned
with blushes; she was ashamed, though she had done no wrong. And Rollo
stood looking down after her, watching her with a still more acute pang.
There were things which were very painful to him which did not affect
her. That a girl like Lottie should go away alone, unattended, and walk
through the street, with no one with her, a long round, annoyed him
beyond measure. He ought to have gone with her, or some one ought to be
with her. But then, what could he do? He might as well give up the whole
matter at once as betray all he was meditating to his people in this
way. But he watched her, leaning over the low parapet, with trouble and
shame. The girl whom he loved ought not to go about unattended, and this
relic of chivalry, fallen into conventionality, moved him more than
greater things. He did not object, like Ferdinand, to let his Miranda
carry his load for him; but it did trouble him that she should walk
through St. Michael’s by herself, though in the sweet security of the
honest morning. Thus minds differ all over the world.
END OF VOL. II.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1825
WITHIN THE PRECINCTS BY MRS. OLIPHANT.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
WITHIN
THE PRECINCTS
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT,
AUTHOR OF “THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION._
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1879.
_The Right of Translation is reserved._
CONTENTS
OF VOLUME III.
Page
CHAPTER XXXIII. Lottie’s Side of the Question 7
---- XXXIV. A Crisis 31
---- XXXV. Family Duty: according to Mrs. Despard 50
---- XXXVI. Family Duty: by a Finer Artist 73
---- XXXVII. Another Chance 91
---- XXXVIII. Lottie Resentful 111
---- XXXIX. Lottie Subdued 131
---- XL. The Effect of Good Fortune: Law 153
---- XLI. The Effect of Good Fortune: Rollo 167
---- XLII. “----till Friday” 190
---- XLIII. The End of the Dream 212
---- XLIV. Après? 235
---- XLV. Conclusion 252
WITHIN THE PRECINCTS.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
LOTTIE’S SIDE OF THE QUESTION.
Lottie made her way down the Slopes alone, with feelings which had
greatly changed from those of a few minutes ago. How happy she had been!
The hour that had passed under the falling leaves had been like
paradise; but the portals of exit from paradise are perhaps never so
sweet as those of entrance. Her coming away was with a sense of
humiliation and shame. As she wound her way down her favourite by-road
winding among the shrubs and trees, she could not help feeling that she
was making her escape, as if from some guilty meeting, some clandestine
rendezvous. In all her life Lottie had never known this sensation
before. She had been shy, and had shrunk from the gaze of people who had
stared at her, in admiration of her beauty or of her singing, but in her
shyness there had always been the pride of innocence; and never before
had she been afraid to meet any eye, or felt it necessary to steal
away, to keep out of sight as if she were guilty. She had not done
anything wrong, but yet she had all the feeling of having done something
wrong--the desire to escape, the horror of detection. To some the secret
meeting, the romance and mystery, would have been only an additional
happiness, but Lottie, proud and frank and open-hearted, could not bear
the very thought of doing anything of which she was ashamed. The
sensation hurt and humiliated her. All had been very different _before_:
to meet her lover unawares, yet not without intention, with a delightful
element of chance in each encounter--to look out secretly for him, yet
wonder innocently to find him--to let her steps be drawn here or there
by a sense of his presence, with a fond pretence of avoiding him, a
sweet certainty of meeting him--all these risks and hazards of emotion
had been natural. But Lottie felt with a sudden jar of her nerves and
mind that this ought not to continue so. She had felt a little wondering
disappointment on the previous night when he had asked her to meet him
again, without any suggestion that he should go to her, or make the new
bond between them known. Even then there had been a faint jar, a sigh of
unfulfilled expectation. But now their hurried parting, her own flight,
the little panic lest they should be seen, and discovery follow, made
Lottie’s heart sick. How well she could imagine how this ought to have
been! They ought not to have fled from each other, or been afraid of any
man’s eye. It ought not to have mattered whether the Signor or anyone
suspected. Blushing and shy, yet with full faith in the sympathy of all
who saw her, Lottie should have walked down the Dean’s Walk with her
betrothed: she should have avoided no one. She should have been
shamefaced but not ashamed. What a difference between the two! all the
difference that there is between the soft blush of happiness and the
miserable burning of guilt. And this was what ought to have been. Half
the misery of Lottie--as half the misery of all imaginative
inexperienced women--arose from the pain and disappointment of feeling
that those she loved did not come up to the ideal standard she had set
up in her soul. She was disappointed, not so much because of the false
position in which she herself was placed (for this, except
instinctively, she had but little realised), but because Rollo was not
doing, not yet, all that it seemed right for him to do. She would have
forced and beaten (had she been able) Law into the fulfilment of his
duty, she would even have made him generous to herself, not for the sake
of herself, but that he should be a model of brotherhood, an example of
all a true man ought to be; and if this was so in the case of her
brother, how much more with her lover? If to be harsh as a tyrant or
indifferent as a sultan, was the highest ideal of a man’s conduct, how
much happier many a poor creature would be! It seems a paradox to say
so, but it is true enough; for the worst of all, in a woman’s mind, is
to feel that the wrong done to _her_ is worse wrong to _him_, an
infringement of the glory of the being whom she would fain see perfect.
This, however, is a mystery beyond the comprehension of the crowd.
Lottie was used to being disappointed with Law--was she fated to another
disappointment more cruel and bitter? She did not ask herself the
question, she would not have thought it even, much less said it for all
the world; but secretly there was a wonder, a pang, a faintness of
failure in her heart.
It is not without an effort, however, that the heart will permanently
admit any such disappointment. As Lottie went her ways thus drooping,
ashamed and discouraged, thinking of everything that had been done and
that ought to have been done, there drifted vaguely across her mind a
kind of picture of Rollo’s meeting with her father, and what it would
be. She had no sooner thought of this than a glow of alarm came over her
face, bringing insensibly consolation to her mind. Rollo and her father!
What would the Captain say to him? He would put on his grand air, in
which even Lottie had no faith; he would exhibit himself in all his vain
greatness, in all his self-importance, jaunty and fine, to his future
son-in-law. He would give Lottie herself a word of commendation in
passing, and he would spread himself forth before the stranger as if it
was he whom Rollo wanted and cared for. Lottie’s steps quickened out of
the languid pace into which they had fallen, and her very forehead grew
crimson as she realised that meeting. Thank heaven, it had not taken
place yet! Rollo had been too wise, too kind, too delicate to humble his
love by hurrying into the presence of the Captain, into the house where
the Captain’s new wife now reigned supreme. The new wife--she too would
have a share in it, she would be called into counsel, she would give her
advice in everything, and claim a right to interfere. Oh, Lottie
thought, how foolish she had been! how much wiser was Rollo, no doubt
casting about in his mind how it was best to be done, and pondering over
it carefully to spare her pain. She felt herself enveloped in one blush
from the crown of her head to the sole of her feet; but how sweet was
that shame! It was she who was foolish, not he who had failed. Her
cheeks burned with a penitential flush, but he was faultless. There was
nothing in him to disappoint, but only the most delicate kindness, the
tenderest care of her. How could she have thought otherwise? It was not
possible that Rollo should like secret meetings, should fear discovery.
In the first days of their acquaintance he had shown no reluctance to
come to the humble little lodge. But now--his finer feeling shrank from
it now--he wanted to take his love away from that desecrated place, not
to shame her by prying into its ignoble mysteries. He was wiser, better,
kinder than anyone. And she was ashamed of _herself_, not any longer of
anything else, ashamed of her poor, mean, unworthy interpretation of
him; and as happy in her new, changed consciousness of guilt, and
penitence and self-disgust--as happy as if, after her downfall into
earth, she had now safely got back into heaven.
By this time she had got out of the wooded Slopes, and over the stile,
and into the steep thoroughfare at the foot of the Abbey walls, the
pavement of St. Michael’s Hill. Lottie did not feel that there was any
harm in walking through the street alone, as Rollo thought there was.
She wanted no attendant. A little bodyguard, invisible, but with a
radiance going out from them which shone about her, attended upon her
way--love and innocence and happiness, no longer with drooping heads but
brave and sweet, a band invisible, guaranteeing their charge against all
ills. As she went along the street with this shining retinue, there was
nothing in all the world that could have harmed her; and nobody wanted
to harm the girl--of whom, but that she was proud, no soul in St.
Michael’s had an unkind word to say. Everybody knew the domestic
trouble that had come upon her, and all the town was sorry for
Lottie--all the more that there was perhaps a human satisfaction in
being sorry for one whose fault was that she was proud. She met Captain
Temple as she entered the Abbey Gate. Many thoughts about her had been
in the kind old man’s heart all the morning, and it was partly to look
for her, after vain walks about the Abbey Precincts, that he was turning
his steps towards the town. He came up to her eagerly, taking her hand
between his. He thought she must have been wandering out disconsolate,
no matter where, to get away from the house which was no longer a fit
home for one like her. He was so disturbed and anxious about her, that
the shadow which was in his mind seemed to darken over Lottie, and cast
a reflection of gloom upon her face. “You have been out early, my dear?
Why did you not send for me to go with you? After matins I am always at
your service,” he said.
But there was none of the gloom which Captain Temple imagined in
Lottie’s face. She looked up at him out of the soft mist of her own
musings with a smile. “I went out before matins,” she said; “I have been
out a long time. I had--something to do.”
“My poor child! I fear you have been wandering, keeping out of the way,”
said the old Captain. Then another thought seized him. Had she begun
already to serve the new wife and do her errands? “My dear,” he said,
“what have you been doing? you must not be too good--you must not forget
yourself too much. Your duty to your father is one thing, but you must
not let yourself be made use of now--you must recollect your own
position, my dear.”
“My position?” she looked up at him bewildered; for she was thinking
only of Rollo, while he thought only of her father’s wife.
“Yes, Lottie, my dear child, you have thought only of your duty
hitherto, but you must not yield to every encroachment. You must not
allow it to be supposed that you give up everything.”
“Ah,” said Lottie, lifting to him eyes which seemed to swim in a haze of
light; “to give up everything would be so---- I don’t know what you
mean,” she added hastily, in a half-terrified tone. As for Captain
Temple, he was quite bewildered, and did not know what to think.
“Need I explain, my dear, what I mean? There can be but one thing that
all your friends are thinking of. This new relation, this new
connection. I could not sleep all night for thinking of you, in the
house with that woman. My poor child! and my wife too. You were the last
thing we talked of at night, the first thing in the morning----”
“Ah,” said Lottie again, coming back to reality with a long-drawn
breath. “I was not thinking of her; but I understand you now.”
Lottie had, however, some difficulty in thinking of _her_, even now; for
one moment, being thus recalled to the idea, her countenance changed;
but soon came back to its original expression. Her eyes were dewy and
sweet--a suspicion of tears in them like the morning dew on flowers with
the sunshine reflected in it, the long eyelashes moist, but the blue
beneath as clear as a summer sky; and the corners of her mouth would run
into curves of smiling unawares; her face was not the face of one upon
whom the cares of the world were lying heavy, but of one to whom some
new happiness had come. She was not thinking of what he was saying, but
of something in her own mind. The kind old Captain could not tell what
to think; he was alarmed, though he did not know why.
“Then it is not so bad,” he said, “as you feared?”
“What is not so bad? Things at home? Oh, Captain Temple! But I try not
to think about it,” Lottie said hastily, with a quiver in her lip. She
looked at him wistfully, with a sudden longing. “I wish--I wish--but it
is better not to say anything.”
“You may trust to me, my dear; whatever is in your heart I will never
betray you; you may trust to me.”
Lottie’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at him, but she shook her
head. They were not bitter tears, only a little bitter-sweet of
happiness that wanted expression, but which she dared not reveal. If she
could but have told him! If Rollo, failing her father, would but come
and speak to this kind and true friend! But she shook her head. She was
no longer free to say and do whatever pleased her out of her own heart.
She must think of _him_; and while he did not speak, what could she say?
She put out her hand to her old friend again with a little sudden
artifice unlike Lottie. “I have been out all the morning,” she said; “I
must make haste and get back now.”
“I am very glad you are not unhappy,” said the old Captain, looking at
her regretfully. He was not quite sincere. To tell the truth it gave him
a shock to find that Lottie was not unhappy; how could she put up with
such a companion, with such a fate? He went in to his wife, who had been
watching furtively at the window while this conversation was going on,
to talk it all over. Mrs. Temple was almost glad to find something below
perfection in the girl about whom secretly she thought as much as her
husband talked. “We have been thinking too much about it,” she said; “if
she can find the stepmother congenial, it will be better for her.”
“Congenial! you are talking folly. How could she be congenial?” cried
Captain Temple, with great heat, but he did not know what to make of
it. He was disappointed in Lottie. When he had met her the day before
she had been quivering with pain and shame, revolted and outraged, as it
was right and natural she should be: but now it seemed to have passed
altogether from her mind. He could not make it out. He was disappointed;
he went on talking of this wonder all day long and shaking his white
head.
As for Lottie, when she went home, she passed through the house, light
and silent as a ghost, to her own little room, where, abstracted from
everything else, she could live in the new little world of her own which
had come out of the mists into such sudden and beautiful life. It was
very unlike Lottie, but what more does the young soul want when the
_vita nuova_ has just begun, but such a possibility of self-abstraction
and freedom to pursue its dreams? Rapt in these, she gave up her
occupation, her charge, without a sigh. When she was called to table she
came quite gently, and took no notice of anything that passed there,
having enough in her own mind to keep her busy. Law was as much
astonished as Captain Temple. He had thought that Lottie would not
endure it for a day; but, thanks to that happy preoccupation, Lottie
sailed serenely through these troubled waters for more than a week,
during which she spent a considerable portion of her time on the Slopes,
though the weather grew colder and colder every day, and the rest in
her own room, in which she sat fireless, doing her accustomed
needlework, her darnings and mendings, mechanically, while Polly
remodelled the drawing-room, covering it up with crocheted
antimacassars, and all the cheap and coarse devices of vulgar
upholstery. While this was going on, she too was content to have Lottie
out of the way. Polly pervaded the house with high-pitched voice and
noisy step; and she filled it with savoury odours, giving the two men
hot suppers, instead of poor Lottie’s cold beef, which they had often
found monotonous. The Captain now came in for this meal, which in former
times he had rarely favoured; he spent the evenings chiefly at home,
having not yet dropped out of the fervour of the honeymoon; and on the
whole even Law was not sure that there was not something to be said for
the new administration of the house. There was no cold beef--that was an
improvement patent to the meanest capacity. As for Polly, nothing had
yet occurred to mar her glory and happiness. She wore her blue silk
every day, she walked gloriously about the streets in her
orange-blossoms, pointed out by everybody as one of the ladies of the
Abbey. She went to the afternoon service and sat in her privileged seat,
and looked down with dignified sweetness upon “the girls” who were as
she once was. She felt herself as a goddess, sitting there in the
elevated place to which she had a right, and it seemed to her that to be
a Chevalier’s wife was as grand as to be a princess. But Polly did not
soil her lips with so vulgar a word as wife. She called herself a
Chevalier’s lady, and her opinion of her class was great. “Chevalier
means the same thing as knight, and, instead of being simple missis, I
am sure we should all be My lady,” Polly said, “if we had our rights.”
Even her husband laughed, but this did not change her opinion. It was
ungrateful of the other Chevaliers’ ladies that they took no notice of
this new champion of their order. But for the moment Polly, in the
elation of her success, did not mind this, and was content to wait for
the recognition which sooner or later she felt would be sure to come.
This elation kept her from interfering with Lottie, whose self-absorbed
life in her own room, and her exits and entrances, Mrs. Despard
tolerated and seemed to accept as natural; she had so many things to
occupy and to please her, that she could afford to let her step-daughter
alone. And thus Lottie pursued for a little time that life out of nature
to which she had been driven. She lived in those moments on the Slopes,
and in the hours she spent at the Signor’s piano, singing; and then
brooded over these intervals of life in the silence. Her lessons had
increased to three in the week, and these hours of so-called study were
each like a drama of intense and curious interest. Rollo was always
there--a fact which he explained to the Signor by his professional
interest in the new singer, and which to Lottie required no explanation;
and there too was her humble lover, young Purcell, who as she grew
familiar with the sight of him, and showed no displeasure at his
appearance, grew daily a little more courageous, sometimes daring to
turn the leaves of the music, and even to speak to her. Mrs.
O’Shaughnessy, who sat by, watching them all with lively but not
extravagant interest, was the only one in the little party who was not
more or less excited. As for Lottie, this lesson was the centre of all
her life. If music be the food of love, love was the very inspiration of
music to her; the two re-acted upon each other, raising her to such a
height of primitive heroic passion as nobody near her divined--as
nobody, indeed, except perhaps the Signor, with his Italian
susceptibility, was capable of divining. He saw indeed with
dissatisfaction, with an interest which was almost angry, that it was
not art that moved her, and that the secret of the astonishing progress
she made, was not in his instructions. What was it? The Signor was
angry, for he felt no certainty that this wonderful progress was real.
Something made her sing like an angel. What was it? not art. The natural
qualities of her voice were not to be gainsayed; but the musician felt
that the training under which she seemed to be advancing visibly, was
all fictitious, and that it was something else that inspired her. But
Rollo had no such enlightenment. He remarked with all the technicality
of an amateur how her high notes gained in clearness, and her low notes
in melody, at every new effort. It was wonderful; but then the Signor
was a wonderful teacher, a wonderful accompanyist, and what so natural
as that a creature of genius like this, should grow under his teaching
like a flower? Though it was to him she sang, and though her love for
him was her inspiration, Rollo was as unaware of this as old Pickering
in the hall, who listened and shook his head, and decided in his heart
that a woman with a voice like that was a deal too grand for Mr. John.
“She’s more like Jenny Lind than anything,” old Pick said; and in this
Mr. Ridsdale agreed, as he sat and listened, and thought over the means
which should be employed to secure her success. As for young Purcell, he
stood entranced and turned over the leaves of the music. Should he ever
dare to speak to her again, to offer her his love, as he had once
ventured to do,--she who seemed born to enthral the whole world? But
then, the young fellow thought, who was there but he who had an ’ome to
offer Lottie? He was the nobler of the two between whom she stood, the
two men who loved her: all his thought was, that she being unhappy,
poor, her father’s house made wretched to her, he had an ’ome to offer
her; whereas Rollo thought of nothing but of the success she must
achieve in which he would have his share. In order to achieve that
success Rollo had no mind to lend her even his name; but the idea that
it was a thing certain, comforted him much in the consciousness of his
own imprudent engagement, and gave a kind of sanction to his love. To
marry a woman with such a faculty for earning money could not be called
entirely imprudent. These were the calculations, generous and the
reverse, which were made about her. Only Lottie herself made no
calculations, but sang out of the fulness of her heart, and the delicate
passion that possessed her; and the Signor stood and watched,
dissatisfied, sympathetic, the only one that understood at all, though
he but poorly, the high emotion and spring-tide of life which produced
that flood of song.
In this highly-strained unnatural way, life went on amid this little
group of people, few of whom were conscious of any volcano under their
feet. It went on day by day, and they neither perceived the gathering
rapidity of movement in the events, nor any other sign that to-day
should not be as yesterday. Shortly after the explanation had taken
place between Rollo and Lottie, Augusta Huntington, now Mrs. Daventry,
arrived upon her first visit home. She was the Dean’s only child, and
naturally every honour was done to her. All the country round, everyone
that was of sufficient importance to meet the Dean’s daughter, was
invited to hail her return. The Dean himself took the matter in hand to
see that no one was overlooked. They would all like, he thought, to see
Augusta, the princess royal of the reigning house; and Augusta was
graciously pleased to like it too. One of these entertainments ended in
a great musical party, to which all who had known Miss Huntington, all
the singers in the madrigals and choruses of which she had been so fond,
were asked. When Lottie’s invitation came, there was a great thrill and
commotion in Captain Despard’s house. Lottie did not even suspect the
feeling which had been roused on the subject when she took out her white
muslin dress, now, alas, no longer so fresh as at first, and inspected
it anxiously. It would do still with judicious ironing, but what must
she do for ornaments, now that roses were no longer to be had? This
troubled Lottie’s mind greatly, though it may be thought a frivolous
question, until a few hours before the time, when two different presents
came for her, of flowers: one being a large and elaborate bouquet, the
other a bunch of late roses, delicate, lovely, half-opened buds, which
could only have come out of some conservatory. One of these was from
Rollo, and who could doubt which it was? Who but he would have
remembered her sole decoration, and found for her in winter those
ornaments of June? What did she care who sent the other? She decked
herself with her roses, in a glow of grateful tenderness, as proud as
she was happy, to find herself thus provided by his delicate care and
forethought. It did not even occur to Lottie to notice the dark looks
that were thrown at her as she came downstairs all white and shining,
and was wrapped by Law (always ostentatiously attentive to his sister in
Polly’s presence) in the borrowed glory of Mrs. O’Shaughnessy’s great
Indian shawl.
The party was large and crowded, and Lottie, all alone in it, was
frightened and confused at first; but they were all very kind to her,
she thought. Lady Caroline said, “How do you do, Miss Despard?” with
something like a smile, and looked as if she might have given Lottie her
hand, had not the girl been afraid; and Augusta, when she found her out,
came forward with a welcome which was almost effusive. “I hear you have
improved so much,” she said, taking in at one glance all the particulars
of Lottie’s appearance, with a wondering question within herself where
the roses came from, though she perceived at once that it was the same
white muslin frock. And when Lottie sang, which the Signor managed she
should do with great effect towards the close of the evening, Augusta
rushed to her with great eyes of astonishment. “Where did you get all
that voice?” she cried; “you did not have that voice when I went away.”
“I flatter myself it was I that found Miss Despard out,” said Rollo,
suffering himself to look at her, which hitherto he had only done when
there was a shield of crowding groups between him and his cousin. Before
this he had managed to make the evening sweet to Lottie by many a
whispered word: but when he looked at her now, unawares, under Augusta’s
very eyes, with that fond look of proprietorship which is so
unmistakable by the experienced, and to which Lottie responded shyly by
a smile and blush, and conscious tremor of happiness, neither of them
knew what a fatal moment it was. Augusta, looking on, suddenly woke up
to the meaning of it, the meaning of Rollo’s long stay at the Deanery,
and various other wonders. She gave the pair but one look, and then she
turned away. But Lottie did not see that anything strange had happened.
She was so happy that even when Rollo too left her, her heart was
touched and consoled by the kindly looks of the people whom she knew in
the crowd, the ladies who had heard her sing before at the Deanery, and
who were gracious to her, and Mr. Ashford who kept by her side and
watched over her--“like a father,” Lottie said to herself, with
affectionate gratitude, such as might have become that impossible
relationship. The Minor Canon did not leave her for the rest of the
evening, and he it was who saw her home, waiting till the door was
opened, and pressing kindly her trembling cold hand: for, she could not
tell how, the end of the evening was depressing and discouraging, and
the pleasure went all out of it when Rollo whispered to her in passing,
“Take care, for heaven’s sake, or Augusta will find us out!” Why should
it matter so much to him that Augusta should find it out? Was not she
more to him than Augusta? Lottie shrank within herself and trembled with
a nervous chill. She was half grateful to, half angry with even Mr.
Ashford. Why should he be so much more kind to her, so much more careful
of her than the man who had promised her his love and perpetual care?
But even now when she stole in, shivering with the cold of
disappointment and discouragement, through the dark house to her room
Lottie did not know all that this evening had wrought. And she scarcely
noticed the gloom on Polly’s face, nor the strain of angry monologue
which her father’s wife gave vent to, next morning. Polly wondered what
was the good of being a married lady, when a young unmarried girl that
was nobody, was took such notice of, and her betters left at ’ome? Did
people know no manners? gentlefolks! they called themselves
gentlefolks, and behaved like that? If that was politeness, Polly
thanked heaven it was not the kind as she had been taught. But the
outburst came when Lottie, taking no notice, scarcely even hearing what
was said, showed herself with her music in her hands going out to her
lesson. Polly came out of her husband’s room and planted herself
defiantly in Lottie’s way. “Where are you going again,” she said, “Miss?
where are you going again? is this to be always the way of it? Do you
mean never to stay at home nor do anything to help nor make yourself
agreeable? I declare it is enough to put a saint in a passion. But I
won’t put up with it, I can tell you. I did not come here to be treated
like this, like the dirt under your feet.”
Lottie was almost too much taken by surprise to speak. It was the first
absolute shock of collision. “I am going for my lesson,” she said.
“Your lesson!” cried Polly. “Oh my patience, oh my poor ’usband! that is
the way his money goes--lessons for you and lessons for Law, and I don’t
know what! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you two. You ought to
be making your living both of you, if you were honest, instead of living
on your father as wants all he’s got for himself. But you shan’t go to
any lesson if I can help it,” she cried. “You’ll stay at home and try
and be of a little use, or you’ll march off this very day, and find some
one else to put up with you and your lessons. It shan’t be me. I won’t
stand by and see my ’usband wronged. You’ll ruin him between you, that’s
what you’ll do; go back, Miss, and put down them books this moment. I
won’t have it, I tell you. I’ll not see my ’usband eaten up by the likes
of you.”
Polly’s diction suffered from her passion, and so did her appearance.
Her face grew scarlet, her eyes flashed with fury. She put out her hand
to push Lottie back, who shrank from her with a cry of dismay--
“Let me pass, please,” said Lottie piteously. She could not quarrel with
this woman, she could not even enter so much into conflict with her as
to brush past her, and thus escape. She shrank with pain and horror from
the excited creature in her way.
“It’s you that will have to go back,” said Polly, “not me. I’m the
mistress of this house, you’ll please to recollect, Miss Lottie. Your
father’s been a deal too good, he’s let you do just what you pleased,
but that’s not my style. I begins as I mean to end. You shan’t stay
here, I tell you, whatever you may think, if you want to trample upon
me, and eat up every penny he has. Go and take off your things this
moment, and see if you can’t be a little use in the house.”
Lottie was struck dumb and could not tell what to say. She had not been
cared for much in her life, but she had never been restrained, and the
sensation was new to her. She did not know how to reply. “I do not wish
to be in your way,” she cried. “I shall not stay long nor trouble you
long, but please do not interfere with me while I am here. I must go.”
“And I say you shan’t go!” said Polly, raising her voice after the
manner of her kind, and stamping her foot upon the floor. “If you
disobey me, I won’t have you here not another day. I’ll turn you out if
it was twelve o’clock at night. I’ll show you that I am mistress in my
own house. Do you think I’m going to be outfaced by you, and treated
like the dirt below your feet? Go and take off your things this moment,
and try if you can’t settle to a bit of work. Out of this house you
shan’t go, not a single step.”
“I say, stand out of the way,” said Law; he had come out of the
dining-room with his hands in his pockets, having just finished his
dinner. Law was not easily moved, but he had now made up his mind that
he was on Lottie’s side. “Don’t give yourself airs to her. She is not of
your sort,” he said. “The governor may let you do many things, but not
bully her. Look here, Polly, you’d better stand out of her way.”
“And who are you, you lazy, useless lout, that dares to call me Polly?”
she cried. “Polly, indeed! your father’s wife, and far better than you.
I’ll make him put you to the door, too, you idle low fellow, spending
your time with a pack of silly, dressing, useless girls----”
“I say, stop that,” cried Law, growing red and seizing her suddenly by
the arm; he stood upon no ceremony with Polly, though she was his
father’s wife; but he gave an uneasy alarmed glance at Lottie. “There’s
some one waiting for you outside,” he cried. “Lottie, go.”
She did not wait for any more. Trembling and horrified, she ran past and
got out breathless, hastily closing the door behind her. The door had
been open, and Mrs. O’Shaughnessy outside--drawing her skirts round her,
physically and metaphorically, so as to avoid all pollution, yet
listening to everything she could hear, was walking up and down the
pavement. “Me poor child!” the good Irishwoman said, half sorry, half
delighted to hear the first of the scandal. “Already! has it come to
this? Me heart is sore for ye, Lottie me dear!”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A CRISIS.
Lottie scarcely knew how she got through that afternoon. Rollo presented
himself for but a moment at the Signor’s, in great concern that he could
not stay, and begging a hundred pardons with his eyes, which he could
not put into words. Lady Caroline and Augusta had made an engagement for
him from which he could not get free. “At the elm-tree!” he whispered in
the only moment when he could approach Lottie. Her heart, which was
beating still with the mingled anger, and wonder, and fright of her late
encounter, sank within her. She could only look at him with a glance
which was half appeal and half despair. And when he went away the day
seemed to close in, the clouds to gather over the very window by which
she was standing, and heaven and earth to fail her. Rollo’s place was
taken by a spectator whose sympathy was more disinterested than that of
Rollo, and his pity more tender; but what was that to Lottie, who wanted
only the one man whom she loved, not any other? What a saving of
trouble and pain there would be in this world if the sympathy of one did
as well as that of another! There was poor Purcell turning over the
music, gazing at her with timid eyes full of devotion, and longing to
have the courage and the opportunity to offer her again that ’ome which
poor Lottie so much wanted, which seemed opened to her nowhere else in
the whole world. And on the other side stood Mr. Ashford without any
such definite intention as Purcell, without any perception as yet of
anything in himself but extreme “interest in,” and compassion for, this
solitary creature, but roused to the depths of his heart by the sight of
her, anxious to do anything that could give her consolation, and ready
to stand by her against all the world. The Minor Canon had been passing
when that scene took place in the hall of Captain Despard’s house with
its open door. He had heard Polly’s loud voice, and he had seen Law rush
out, putting on his hat, and flushed with unusual feeling. “I don’t mind
what she says to me as long as she keeps off Lottie!” the young man had
said; and careless as Law was, the tears had come to his eyes, and he
had burst forth, “My poor Lottie! what is she to do?” Mr. Ashford’s
heart had been wrung by this outcry. What could he do?--he was
helpless--an unmarried man; of what use could he ever be to a beautiful,
friendless girl? He felt how impotent he was with an impatience and
distress which did not lessen that certainty. He could do nothing for
her, and yet he could not be content to do nothing. This was why he came
to the Signor’s, sitting down behind backs beside Mrs. O’Shaughnessy,
who distracted him by much pantomimic distress, shaking her head and
lifting up her hands and eyes, and would fain have whispered to him all
the time of Lottie’s singing had not the Signor sternly interfered.
(“Sure these musical folks they’re as big tyrants as the Rooshians
themselves,” Mrs. O’Shaughnessy said indignantly.) This was all the
Minor Canon could do--to come and stand by the lonely girl, though no
one but himself knew what his meaning was. It could not be any help to
Lottie, who was not even conscious of it. Perhaps, after all, the sole
good in it was to himself.
Lottie had never sung so little well. She did not sing badly. She took
trouble; the Signor felt she tried to do her best, to work at it, to
occupy herself with the music by way of getting rid of things more
urgent which would press themselves upon her. In short, for the time
Lottie applied herself to it with some faint conception of the purposes
of art. To have recourse to art as an opiate against the pangs of the
inner being, as an escape from the harms of life, is perhaps not the
best way of coming at it, but the Signor knew that this was one of the
most beaten ways towards that temple which to him enshrined everything
that was best in the world. It was, perhaps, the only way in which
Lottie was likely to get at it, and he saw and understood the effort.
But it could not be said that the effort was very successful. The
others, who were thinking only of her, felt that Lottie did not do so
well as usual. She was not in voice, Purcell said to himself; and to the
Minor Canon it seemed very natural that after the scene which she had
just gone through poor Lottie should have but little heart for her work.
It was easily explained. The Signor, however, who knew nothing of the
circumstances, came to the most true conclusion. The agitation of that
episode with Polly would not have harmed her singing, however it might
have troubled herself, had Lottie’s citadel of personal happiness been
untouched. But the flag was lowered from that donjon, the sovereign was
absent. There was no inspiration left in the dull and narrowed world
where Lottie found herself left. Her first opening of vigorous
independent life had been taken from her, and for the first time the
life of visionary passion and enthusiasm was laid low. She did not give
in. She made a brave effort, stilling her excited nerves, commanding her
depressed heart. The Signor himself was more excited than he had been by
all the previous easy triumphs of her inspiration. Now was the test of
what she had in her. Happiness dies, love fails, but art is for ever.
Could she rise to the height of this principle, or would she drop upon
the threshold of the sacred place incapable of answering to the guidance
of art alone? Never before had he felt the same anxious interest in
Lottie. He thought she was groping for that guidance, though without
knowing it, in mere instinct of pain to find something that would not
fail her. She did not rise so high as she had done under the other
leading; but to the Signor this seemed to be in reality Lottie’s first
step, though she did not know it, on the rugged ascent which is the
artist’s way of life. Strait is the path and narrow is the way in that,
as in all excellence. The Signor praised her more than he had ever
praised her before, to the surprise of the lookers-on; the generous
enthusiasm of the artist glowed in him. If he could, he would have
helped her over the roughness of the way, just as the Minor Canon,
longing and pitiful, would have helped her if he could, over the
roughness of life. But the one man was still more powerless than the
other to smooth her path. Here it was not sex, nor circumstances, which
were in fault, but the rigid principles of art, which are less yielding
than rocks; every step, however painful, in that thorny way the neophyte
must tread for herself. The Signor knew it; but the more his beginner
stumbled, the more eager was he to cheer her on.
“I am afraid I sang very badly,” Lottie said, coming out with Mrs.
O’Shaughnessy and the Minor Canon, who went along with them he scarcely
knew why. He could do nothing for the girl, but he did not like to leave
her--to seem (to himself) to desert her. Only himself was in the least
degree aware that he was standing by Lottie in her trouble.
“Me child, you all think a deal too much about it. It was neither better
nor worse; that’s what I don’t like in all your singing. It may be fine
music, but it’s always the same thing over and over. If it was a tune
that a body could catch--but it’s little good the best tune would have
been to me this day. I didn’t hear you, Lottie, for thinking what was to
become of you. What will ye do? Will you never mind, but go back? Sure
you’ve a right to your father’s house whatever happens, and I wouldn’t
be driven away at the first word. There is nothing would please her so
well. I’d go back!”
“Oh, don’t say any more!” cried Lottie with a movement of sudden pride.
But when she caught the pitying look of the Minor Canon her heart
melted. “Mr. Ashford will not be angry because I don’t like to speak of
it,” she said, raising her eyes to him. “He knows that things are
not--not very happy--at home.”
Then Mr. Ashford awoke to the thought that he might be intruding upon
her. He took leave of the ladies hurriedly. But when she had given him
her hand, he stood holding it for a minute. “I begin to like Law very
much,” he said. To feel that this was the way in which he could give her
most pleasure was a delicate instinct, but it was not such a pleasure as
it would have been a month ago. Lottie did not speak, but a gleam of
satisfaction rose in her eyes. “If there is anything I can do,” he said
faltering, “to be of use----”
What could he do? Nothing? He knew that, and so did she. It was only to
himself that this was a consolation, he said to himself when they were
gone. He went away to his comfortable house; and she, slim and light,
turned to the other side of the Abbey, with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, with
nowhere in the world to go to. Was that so? was it really so? But still
he, with that house of his, a better home than the one which young
Purcell was so eager to offer her, what could he do? Nothing; unless it
were one thing which had not before entered his thoughts, and now, when
it had got in, startled him so, that, middle-aged as he was, he felt his
countenance turn fiery red, and went off at a tremendous pace, as if he
had miles to go. He had only a very little way to go before he reached
his own door, and yet he had travelled more than miles between that and
the dwelling of the Signor.
As for Lottie, she went home with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, not knowing what
she was to do after. The elm-tree--that was the only place in the world
that seemed quite clear to her. For a moment, in the sickness of her
disappointment to see Rollo abandon her, she had said to herself that
she would not go; but soon a longing to tell him her trouble came upon
her. After the Abbey bells had roused all the echoes, and the usual
congregation had come from all quarters for the evening service, she
left Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and went slowly towards the Slopes. It was
still early, and the wintry afternoon was cold. There was an east wind
blowing, parching the landscape, and turning all its living tints into
lines of grey. Lottie was not very warmly clothed. She had her merino
gown and little cloth jacket, very plain garments, not like the furs in
which Augusta had come home; but, then, Lottie was not used to living
like Augusta, and perhaps her thinner wrap kept her as warm. She went up
the Dean’s Walk languidly, knowing that it was too early, but unable to
rest. She would have to go home after all, to steal in and hide herself
in her room, for this night at least; but, after that, what was she to
do? The O’Shaughnessys had not a room to give her. She had no relations
whom she might go to; what was to become of her? When she got to the
elm-tree there was nobody there. She had known it was too early. She sat
down and thought, but what could thinking do? What could she make of it?
She looked over the wide landscape which had so often stilled and
consoled her, but it was all dead and unresponsive, dried up by that
east wind; the earth and the sky, and even the horizon on which they
met, all drawn in pale outlines of grey. Her face was blank and pale,
like the landscape, when the lover for whom she was waiting appeared.
The wind, which was so cold, had driven everybody else away. They had it
all to themselves, this chilly wintry landscape, the shadowy trees, with
a few ragged garments of yellow or faded brown still clinging to them.
Rollo came up breathless, his feet ringing upon the winding path. He
came and placed himself beside her, with a thousand apologies that she
should have had to wait. “It was a trick of Augusta’s,” he said; “I am
sure she suspects something.” Lottie felt that this repeated suggestion
that someone suspected ought not to be made to her. But her paleness and
sadness roused Rollo to the most hearty concern. “Something has
happened,” he said; “I can see it, darling, in your eyes. Tell me what
it is. Have not I a right to know everything?” Indeed he was so anxious
and so tender that Lottie forgot all about offence and her
disappointment, and everything that was painful. Who had she beside to
relieve her burdened heart to, to lean upon in her trouble? She told him
what had happened, feeling that with every word she uttered her load was
being lightened. Oh! how good it is to be able to say forth everything,
to tell someone to whom all that happens to you is interesting! As she
told Polly’s insults, even Polly herself seemed to grow more
supportable. Rollo listened to every word with anxious interest, with
excitement, and indignation and grief. He held her closer to him,
saying, “My poor darling, my poor Lottie!” with outbursts of rage and
tender pity. Lottie’s heart grew lighter and lighter as she went on. He
seemed to her to be taking it all on his shoulders, the whole of the
burden. His eyes shone with love and indignation. It was not a thing
which could be borne; she must not bear it, he would not allow her to
bear it, he cried. Finally, a great excitement seemed to get possession
of him all at once. A sudden impulse seized upon him. He held her closer
than ever, with a sudden tightening of his clasp, and hasty resolution.
“Lottie!” he cried; and she could feel his heart suddenly leap into wild
beating, and looked up trembling and expectant, sure that he had found
some way of deliverance. “Lottie, my love! you must not put up with this
another day. You must come away at once. Why not this very night? I
could not rest and think you were bearing such indignity. You must be
brave, and trust yourself to me. You will not be afraid, my darling, to
trust yourself to me?”
“To-night!” she said, with a cry of answering excitement, alarm, and
wonder.
“Why not to-night?” he cried, with more and more energy. “I know a place
where I could take you. A quiet, safe place, with people to take care of
you, who would not suffer you to be annoyed even when I was not there
myself to watch over you. Lottie, dearest, you would not be afraid to
trust yourself to me?”
“No, Rollo, why should I be afraid?--but----” The suddenness of this
prospect of deliverance, which she did not understand, took away
Lottie’s breath.
“But--there are no buts. You would be taken care of as if you were in a
palace. You would have everything to make your life pleasant. You could
work at your music----”
“Ah!” she said, interrupting him; his excitement roused no alarm in her
mind. She was incapable of understanding any meaning in him that was
inconsistent with honour. “Would it be so necessary to think of the
music?” she said. It seemed to her that for Rollo Ridsdale’s wife it
need not be any longer a point essential. A host of other duties, more
sweet, more homely, came before her dazzled eyes.
“Above all things!” he said, with a sudden panic, “without that what
would you--how could I?----“--the suggestion was insupportable--“but we
can discuss this after,” he said. “Lottie, my Lottie, listen! Trust
yourself to me--let me take you away out of all this misery into
happiness. Such happiness! I scarcely can put it into words. Why should
you have another day of persecution, when you can be free, if you will,
this very night?”
His countenance seemed aflame as he bent towards her in the wintry
twilight; she could feel the tumultuous beating of his heart. It was no
premeditated villany, but a real impulse, acted upon, without any pause
for thought, with that sudden and impassioned energy which is often more
subtle than the craftiest calculation. Even while his heart beat thus
wildly with awakened passion, Rollo answered the feeble resistance of
his conscience by asking himself what harm could it do her? it would not
interfere with her career. As for Lottie, she raised herself up within
his arm and threw back her head and looked at him, not shrinking from
him nor showing any horror of the suggestion. There was a pause--only
for a moment, but it felt like half-an-hour, while wild excitement,
love, and terror coursed through his veins. Surely she understood him,
and was not alarmed? If she had understood him and flung away from him
in outraged virtue, Rollo would have been abject in guilt and
penitence. For the moment, however, though his heart beat with alarm,
there was a sense of coming triumph in all his being.
Lottie raised her drooping shoulders, she threw back her head and looked
at him, into the glowing face that was so close to her. Her heart had
given one answering leap of excitement, but was not beating like his. At
that moment, so tremendous to him, it was not passion, but reflection,
that was in her eyes.
“Let me think--let us think,” she said. “Oh, Rollo! it is a great
temptation. To go away, to be safe with you----”
“My darling, my own darling! you shall never have cause to fear, never
to doubt me; my love will be as steady, as true----” So high had the
excitement of suspense grown, that he had scarcely breath to get out the
words.
“Do you think I doubt that?” she said, her voice sounding so calm, so
soft to his excited ear. “That is not the question; there are so many
other things to think of. If you will not think for yourself, I must
think for you. Oh, Rollo, no! I don’t see how it could be. Listen to me;
you are too eager, oh! thank you, dear Rollo, too fond of me, to take
everything into consideration--but _I_ must. Rollo! no, no; it would
never do; how could it ever do, if you will only think? Supposing even
that it did not matter for me, how could you marry your wife from any
place but her home? It would not be creditable,” said Lottie, shaking
her head with all the gentle superiority of reason, “it would not be
right or becoming for you.”
His arm relaxed round her; he tried to say something, but it died away
in his throat. For the moment the man was conscious of nothing but a
positive pang of gratitude for a danger escaped; he was safe, but he
scarcely dared breathe. Had she understood him as he meant her to
understand him, what vengeance would have flashed upon him, what
thunderbolt scathed him! But for very terror he would have shrunk and
hid his face now in the trembling of the catastrophe escaped.
“More than that, even,” said Lottie, going on all unaware; “I have
nothing, you know; and how could I take money--_money to live
upon_--from _you_!--till I was married to you? No! it is impossible,
impossible, Rollo. Oh! thank you, thank you a thousand times for having
thought more of me than of anything else; but you see, don’t you see,
how impossible it is? I will never forget,” said the girl softly,
drawing a little closer to him who had fallen away from her in the
strange tumult of failure--yet deliverance--which took all strength
from him, “I will never forget that you were ready to forget everything
that was reasonable, everything that was sensible, and even your own
credit, for me!”
Another pause, but this time indescribable. In her bosom gratitude,
tender love, and that sweet sense of calmer judgment, of reason less
influenced by passion than it would be fitting or right for his to be,
which a woman loves to feel within herself--her modest prerogative in
the supreme moment; in his a tumult of love, disappointment, relief,
horror of himself, anger and shame, and the thrill of a hairbreadth
escape. He could not say a word; what he had done seemed incredible to
him. The most tremendous denunciation would not have humbled him as did
her unconsciousness. He had made her the most villainous proposal, and
she had not even known what it meant; to her it had seemed all
generosity, love, and honour. His arm dropped from around her, he had no
force to hold her, and some inarticulate exclamation--he could not tell
what--sounded hoarsely in utter confusion and shame in his throat.
“You are not angry?” she said, almost wooing him in her turn. “Rollo, it
is not that I do not trust you, you know; who should I trust but you? If
that were all, I would put my hand in yours; you should take me
wherever you pleased. But then there are the other things to be
considered. And, Rollo, don’t be angry,” she said, drawing his arm
within hers, “I can bear anything now. After talking to you, after
feeling your sympathy, I can bear anything. What do I care for a woman
like that? Of course I knew,” said Lottie, with tears in her eyes, “that
you did feel for me, that you thought of me, that you were always on my
side. But one wants to have it said over again to make assurance sure.
Now I can bear anything, now I can go home--though it is not much
home--and wait, till you come and fetch me, Rollo, openly, in the light,
in the day.”
Here, because she was so happy, Lottie put her hands up to her face and
laid those hands upon his shoulder and cried there in such a heavenly
folly of pain and blessedness as words could not describe. That he
should not claim her at once, that was a pain to her; and to think of
that strange, horrible house to which she must creep back, that was pain
which no happiness could altogether drive out of her thoughts. But yet,
how happy she was! What did it matter if for the moment her heart was
often sore? A little while and all would be well; a little while and she
would be delivered out of all these troubles. It was only a question of
courage, of endurance, of fortitude, and patience; and Lottie had got
back her inspiration, and felt herself capable of bearing anything,
everything, with a stout heart. But Rollo had neither recovered his
speech nor his self-possession; shame and anger were in his heart. He
had not been found out, but the very awe of escape was mingled with
intolerable anger; anger no doubt chiefly against himself, but also a
little against her, though why he could not have said. The
unconsciousness of her innocence, which had impressed him so deeply at
first and confounded all his calculations, began to irritate him. How
was it possible she did not understand? was there stupidity as well as
innocence in it? Most people would have had no difficulty in
understanding, it would have been as clear as noonday--or, rather, as
clear as gaslight; as evident as any “intention” could be. He could not
bear this superiority, this obtuseness of believing; it offended him,
notwithstanding that he had made by it what he felt to be the greatest
escape of his life.
They parted after this not with the same enthusiasm on Rollo’s part as
that which existed on Lottie’s. She was chilled, too, thinking he was
angry with her for not yielding to his desire; and this overcast her
happiness, but not seriously. They stole down by the side of the Abbey,
in the shadow--Lottie talking, Rollo silent. When they came within sight
of the cloister gate and the line of the lodges opposite, Lottie
withdrew her hand from his arm. The road looked empty and dark; but who
could tell what spectator might suddenly appear? She took his _rôle_ in
the eagerness of her heart to make up to him for any vexation her
refusal might have given. “Don’t come any further,” she whispered; “let
us part here; someone might see us.” In her eagerness to make up to him
for her own unkindness, she allowed the necessity for keeping that
secret--though to think of it as a secret had wounded her before.
Nevertheless, when he took her at her word and left her, Lottie, like
the fanciful girl she was, felt a pang of disappointment and painfully
realised her own desolateness, the dismal return all alone to the house
out of which every quality of kindness had gone. Her heart sank, and
with reluctant, lingering steps she came out of the Abbey shadow and
began to cross the Dean’s Walk, her forlorn figure moving slowly against
the white line of the road and the grey of the wintry sky.
Someone was standing at the door as she came in sight of her father’s
house. It was Captain Despard himself, looking out. “Is that you,
Lottie?” he called out, peering into the gloom. “Come in, come in; where
have you been? You must not stay out again, making everybody anxious.”
Then he came out a step or two from his door and spoke in a whisper:
“You know what a woman’s tongue is,” he said; “they have a great deal
to answer for; but when they get excited, what can stop them? You must
try not to pay any attention; be sensible, and don’t mind--no more than
I do,” Captain Despard said.
CHAPTER XXXV.
FAMILY DUTY: ACCORDING TO MRS. DESPARD.
There are some victories which feel very much like defeats. When Polly
had scattered her adversaries on every side, driven forth Lottie and got
rid of Law, and silenced Captain Despard--who sat in his room and heard
everything but thought it wisest not to interfere--she retired upstairs
to her drawing-room and celebrated her triumph by shedding torrents of
tears. She had intended to make everybody very wretched, and she had
done so; supposing, perhaps (though she did not really know what her
motive was), that some pleasure would come to herself out of the
discomfiture of the others. But pleasure rarely comes by that means, and
when she had thus chased everybody out of her way, Polly threw herself
down and burst forth into angry sobs and tears. It is not to be supposed
that Captain Despard entertained any romantic illusions about his bride;
he knew very well what Polly was. He had, as facts proved, been
sufficiently fond of her to marry her, but he did not expect of her more
than Polly could give, nor was he shocked to find that she had a temper
and could give violent utterance to its vagaries; all this he had known
very well before. Knowing it, however, he thought it wise to keep out of
the way and not mix himself up in a fray with which evidently he had
nothing to do. Had she gone a step further with Lottie it is possible
that he might have interfered, for, after all, Lottie was his child; and
though he might himself be hard upon her at times, there is generally a
mingled sentiment of family pride and feeling which makes us unwilling
to allow one who belongs to us to be roughly treated by a stranger. But
when Law put himself in the breach, his father sat close and took no
notice; he did not feel impelled to turn his wife’s batteries upon
himself out of consideration for Law. Nor did it make any impression
upon the Captain when he heard her angry sobs overhead. “She will come
to if she is left to herself,” he said, and he did not allow himself to
be disturbed. Polly, in her passion, threw herself on the carpet,
leaning her head upon a chair. She had changed the room after her own
fashion. She had lined the curtains with pink muslin, and fastened her
crochet-work upon the chairs with bows of pink ribbon; she had covered
the old piano with a painted cover, and adorned it with vases and paper
flowers. She had made the faded little room which had seemed a fit home
enough, in its grey and worn humility, for Lottie’s young beauty, into
something that looked very much like a dressmaker’s ante-room, or that
terrible chamber, “handsomely fitted up with toilet requisites,” where
the victims of the photographic camera prepare for the ordeal. But the
loveliness of her handiwork did not console Polly; she got no comfort
out of the pink bows, nor even from the antimacassars--a point in which
Lottie’s room was painfully deficient. She flung herself upon the carpet
and sobbed. What was the use of being a lady, a Chevalier’s wife, and
living here in the heart of the Abbey, if no one called upon her or took
any notice of her? Polly was not of a patient nature; it did not occur
to her even that there was still time for the courtesies she had set her
heart upon gaining. She had looked every day for some one to come, and
no one had ever come; no one had made any advances to her at the Abbey,
which was the only place in which she could assert her position as a
lady and a Chevalier’s wife. Even Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, who had risen from
the ranks, who lived next door, who was not a bit better, nay, who was
much less good than Polly to begin with (for what is a trooper’s wife?
and she had been nothing but a trooper’s wife)--even Mrs. O’Shaughnessy
had passed the door as if she did not see it, and had waited outside
till Miss Lottie came to her. Polly’s dreams had been very different.
She had seen herself in imagination the admired of all admirers; she was
by far the youngest of all the Chevaliers’ wives, and the gentlemen, at
least, she was sure would rally round her. Women might be spiteful, but
men always did justice to a woman when she was handsome and young. Was
not that written in all the records? She expected that the ladies would
be spiteful--_that_ would be indeed a part of her triumph. They would be
jealous of her superior attractions, of her youth, of her husband’s
adoration of her; the old things would be in a flutter of alarm lest
their old men should come within her influence. But Polly had felt
pretty sure that the old gentlemen would admire her and rally round her.
To make the women envious and the men enthusiastic, was not that always
the way? certainly such was the course of events in the _Family Herald_.
The heroine might have one friend devoted to her fortunes, a confidant
more admiring, more faithful even than her lover; but all the rest of
womankind was leagued against her. And so it had been in most of the
novels Polly had read. But that neither men nor women should take any
notice, that was a thing for which she was not prepared, and which she
declared to herself she would not bear.
She had seen enough already from her windows to make her furious. She
had seen Mrs. O’Shaughnessy ostentatiously waiting for Lottie, walking
up and down outside, making signs to the girl upstairs. She had seen
Captain Temple pass and repass, looking up at the same window. She had
seen the greetings that met Lottie wherever she appeared. The Chevaliers
and their wives had not always looked upon Miss Despard with such
favourable eyes. They had thought her proud, and they had resented her
pride; but now that Lottie was in trouble it was round her they had all
rallied. It was the party at the Deanery, however, which had been the
last drop in Polly’s cup. How was she to know that on the highest
elevation she could reach as the lady of a Chevalier, she was still
beneath the notice of Lady Caroline, and as far as ever from the heaven
of the highest society? Polly did not know. The elevation to which she
herself had risen was so immense in her own consciousness that there
seemed no distinction of ranks above her. She thought, as Lottie had
once thought, though from a different point of view, that gentlefolks
were all one; that a gentleman’s wife, if not so rich or so grand, was
still on a level with Lady Caroline herself, and within the circle which
encompassed the Queen. “You can’t be no better than a gentleman,” Polly
said to herself. You might, it was true, be a lord, which some people
thought better, but even a lord was scarcely above an officer. All this
glorious ambition, however, what was it going to end in? She watched the
carriages going to the Deanery, and with still more furious feelings
she watched Lottie in her white dress crossing the Dean’s Walk. And she
left at home, at the window, neglected, left out, though she was Mrs.
Despard, and the other nobody! Was it possible that it might be better
even to be a dressmaker, forewoman in the workroom, acknowledged to have
the best eye for cutting out, and to be the quickest worker of the lot,
superior so far among her equals--than to be ignored and neglected and
treated as the dust under their feet by a set of poor gentlefolks? Polly
felt that she must wreak her vengeance on somebody.
When she had got her fit of crying over accordingly, she jumped up to
her feet and hurried to her room to put on her “things.” It was her
“best things” that she put on. Indeed, Polly had been wearing her best
things every day with an extravagance which rather touched her
conscience, though it delighted her fancy. She made herself very fine
indeed that wintry afternoon, and pattered downstairs upon a pair of
high heels which were more splendid than comfortable, and burst into the
little room where Captain Despard sat attentive to all these sounds, and
wondering what was coming next. Few people realise the advantage of a
silly wife to a man who is not over wise. The Captain, though he had a
high opinion of himself, was aware at the bottom of his heart that other
people scarcely shared that sentiment. And to have a wife whom he was
fond of, and whose acquisition flattered his vanity, and who was
unmistakably, though clever enough, less clever, less instructed, than
he was, gave him a sense of superiority which was very pleasant to him.
He looked upon her follies with much more indulgence than he had ever
felt for Lottie, who did not give him the same consolation.
“Well, what is it now?” he said, with a smile.
“I want you to come out with me,” Polly said. “I want to buy some
things. My old muff is shabby, I couldn’t wear it in the Abbey. Though
they’re a set of old frights and frumps, I don’t wish your wife to be
looked down upon by them, Harry. I can see them looking at all my
things, counting up what everything costs, and whispering behind my
back. That old Mrs. Jones has trimmed her bonnet exactly like mine,
though she looks as if she was too grand to see me. They ain’t above
copying me, that’s one thing.”
“No wonder,” said the admiring husband; “for it is long since anything
so young and so handsome has been among them before. Don’t they wish
they could copy your face as well as your bonnet! that’s all.”
“Oh, get along!” said Polly, well pleased; “you’re always flattering.
Come and buy me a muff. I don’t know what kind to get. Grebe is sweetly
pretty and ermine is delicious, but sealskin, perhaps, is the most
genteel; that always looks lady-like. Did you see Mrs. Daventry go by in
her carriage? Ah!” Polly sighed; how could she help it? She was very
fine in her blue silk, but Augusta was finer. “She has just come from
France, you know, and then, of course, they are rich. She had on a
velvet with sable _that_ deep----! Ah! it’s hard to see folks that are
no better than you with things that are so much better,” cried Polly;
“but, after all, though velvet and sable are very nice, give me
sealskin--that’s always lady-like. A sealskin jacket!--if I had that, I
don’t think there is anything more I should wish for in the world.”
“Are they very dear?” said the Captain, with a sudden fit of liberality.
He had a native love of buying, which is very general with impecunious
persons, and at present was in a prodigal mood.
“Dear! Oh, not for the good they are,” said Polly. “You never want
another winter mantle all your life. You’re set up. That makes them
cheap in the end; but they cost a deal of money. I haven’t seen nobody
with one in all the Abbey, except the Canon’s ladies.”
“Then you shall have one!” said Captain Despard. He looked like a
prince, Polly thought, as he stood there glowing with generous purpose.
The sound of the “O--Oh!” with which she received the offer rang
through the Lodges. Such a shriek of pleasure had not been heard there
since there had been Chevaliers in St. Michael’s. They went out
together, all beaming, arm in arm, the bride clinging fondly to her
husband, the Captain looking down with delighted protection upon his
bride. This sight, which is so pretty in some cases, and calls forth, if
much amusement, often a great deal of sympathy, roused anything but
friendly feelings in the Lodges, where the good people were getting
ready for the afternoon service. Old fool was the best name they had for
the bridegroom, though he was not very old; and Polly was a grievance
which the ladies could not tolerate. They looked after her from their
windows with feelings which were far from Christian. It was a thing they
ought not to have been exposed to. There should have been an appeal to
the Queen, if the gentlemen had the least energy. “But even the Queen,
bless her! could not keep a man from marrying,” the Warden said,
deprecatingly. He did not like it any more than they did; but it is only
when you are yourself of the executive that you know the difficulties of
action; that is why the ladies are such critics--they have not got it to
do.
Captain and Mrs. Captain Despard (Polly had got beautiful glazed cards
printed stiff and strong with this title upon them) walked down to the
best shop in St. Michael’s, which is a very good shop indeed; and there
they bought a _beautiful sealskin_. Impossible to tell the pride, the
happiness, the glory with which Polly acquired this new possession. She
had not expected it. These were the days when sealskins were still a
hope, a desire, an aspiration to the female mind, a property which
elevated its possessor, and identified her among her peers. “That lady
with the sealskin,” who would think of pointing out anybody by so
general a description now? are they not even going out of fashion? But
Polly, for one, could not realise the possibility that such a thing
could ever happen. And she had not anticipated such a bliss; the
happiness was doubled by being unforeseen. This, indeed, was a proof of
the blessedness of being a married lady, of having bettered herself, of
having married a gentleman. Her mind was in a confusion of delight.
Nevertheless she did not forget that she had come out with another and
quite distinct purpose. The fact that she had herself been so fortunate
did not turn her from her mission. Was it not more her duty than ever to
do everything that could be done for her husband’s family? When she had
decided upon her sealskin, Polly began to shiver. She said, “It is a
very cold day. I don’t know why it should be so cold so early in the
year. Don’t you think it is very cold, Harry? I have come out without
any wrap. Do you know I think I will put the sealskin _on_.” Why should
not she? The proprietor of the shop accomplished the sale with a pang.
He knew Captain Despard well enough and he knew Polly, and he trembled
when he thought of his bill. But what could he be but civil? He put it
on for her--though how any ordinary sealskin could have covered a bosom
so swelling with pride and bliss it is hard to say. And the pair went
out together as they came in, except that one was almost speechless with
the proud consciousness of drawing all eyes. “It is not the appearance,”
said Polly, “but it _is_ so deliciously warm; there never was anything
like it. And now I am set up. I shall not cost you any more for a winter
cloak, not for years and years.” “I thought you said it was to last for
ever,” said the Captain, equally delighted. They promenaded all the way
down St. Michael’s Hill, the admired of all beholders. If the remarks
that were made were not precisely such as Polly hoped, still there was
no doubt that remarks were made by everybody, and that the sealskin had
all the honour it deserved. Sometimes, indeed, there would be a bitter
in the sweet, as when the Captain took off his hat with jaunty grace to
some lady whom he knew. “Who is that?” Polly would ask sharply; but the
ladies all hurried by, and never stopped to be introduced; and no man
took off his hat to Polly. Even against this, however, the happiness
that wrapped her round defended Mrs. Despard. And how the people
stared!--people who had seen her going up and down with a little bundle
of patterns on her way to her work, on her way to try on a dress--people
in the shops, who had been her equals if not her superiors--to see them
gazing out at her with big eyes, at her fine sealskin and her fine
husband, that comforted her soul. She walked slowly, getting the full
good of her triumph. But when she had got to the foot of the hill she
dismissed her escort. “Now you may go,” she said; “you always had plenty
to do in the old days. I don’t want you to say _I_ tie you to my
apron-string. You may go now.”
“This is a pretty way to dismiss your husband,” said Captain Despard;
“and where are you going, may I ask, that you send me away?”
“Oh, I will tell you fast enough. I am not going anywhere you can
disapprove of. I am going to see the girls,” said Polly, “that is all.”
“The girls! My love, you must recollect,” said Captain Despard with
dignity, “that the girls, as you call them, are not fit companions for
you.”
“You may trust me to know my place,” said Polly, “and to keep them in
theirs. I should think you may trust _me_.”
Fortified by this assurance, the Captain left his lovely bride. He
turned back to kiss his hand to her when he was half way up the hill,
prolonging the sweet sorrow of the parting, and Polly blew him a kiss
with infantine grace. It was “as good as a play.” “Lord, what fools
they are!” said the fishmonger on the hill, who was a cynic! and the
young ladies in the draper’s shop shook their heads at each other and
said, “Poor gentleman!” with the profoundest commiseration.
When he had left her, Polly threw out her skirts and smoothed the fur of
her lovely new coat with a caressing hand. She felt that she loved it.
It was more entirely delightful than even her husband--a happiness
without alloy. She walked very slowly, enjoying every step of the way.
She gave a penny to the beggar at the corner in the fulness of her
satisfaction. So far her happiness had evidently a fine moral influence
on Polly; and she was going to pay a visit, which was also very kind, to
“the girls” in the River Lane. She was not one to forget old friends.
She sailed along in her pride and glory through the quarter where she
was so well known, and curved her nostrils at the smells, and allowed
disgust to steal over her face when her path was crossed by an unlovely
figure. Polly flattered herself that she was a fine lady complete; and
there was no doubt that the imitation was very good in the general, so
long as you did not enter into details.
At the entrance of the River Lane, however, she ceased to stand upon
ceremony with herself. She picked up her skirts and went on at a more
business-like rate of speed. Some one was coming up against the light,
which by this time of the afternoon came chiefly from the west, someone
with his shoulders up to his ears, who took off his hat to Polly, and
pleased her until she perceived that it was only Law. “You here!” she
said: and as she looked at him the moral influence of the sealskin
almost vanished. Thus she went in state to visit the scenes in which so
much of her previous life had passed. But a new sentiment was in Polly’s
eyes. She felt that she had a duty to do--a duty which was superior to
benevolence. She pushed open the green swing door with a delicious sense
of the difference. The girls were talking fast and loud when she opened
the door, discussing some subject or other with all the natural chatter
of the workroom. There was a pause when the sound of her heels and the
rustle of her silk was heard--a hush ran round the table. How well Polly
knew what it meant! “They will think it is a customer,” she said to
herself; and never customer swept in more majestically. They were all at
work when she entered, as if they did not know what it was to chatter,
and Ellen rose respectfully at the first appearance of the lady.
“Mother is upstairs, ma’am, but I can take any orders,” she said; and
then with a shriek cried out “Polly!”
“Polly!” echoed all the girls.
Here was a visitor indeed. They got up and made a circle round her,
examining her and all she “had on.” “In a sealskin!” ’Liza and Kate
cried in a breath, with an admiration which amounted to awe. One of them
even put forth her hand to stroke it in her enthusiasm. For an instant
Polly allowed this fervour of admiration to have its way. Then she said,
languidly--
“Give me a chair, please, and send Mrs. Welting to me. I wish to speak
to Mrs. Welting. I am sorry to interrupt your work, young ladies--it is
Mrs. Welting I want to see.”
“But, Polly!” the girls cried all together. They were too much startled
to know what to say. They stood gaping in a circle round her.
“I thought you had come to see us like a friend--like what you used to
be.”
“And weren’t we all just glad to see you again, Polly--and quite the
lady!” cried another. They would not take their dismissal at the first
word.
“Young ladies,” said Polly, “I’ve not come in any bad spirit. I don’t
deny as I’ve passed many a day here. My family (though always far above
the dressmaking) was not well off, and I shall always be thankful to
think as I did my best for them. But now that I’m married, in a
different position,” said Polly, “though always ready to stand your
friend, when you want a friend, or to recommend you among the Abbey
ladies, you can’t think as I can go on with you like you were in my own
sphere. Where there’s no equality there can’t be no friendship. Perhaps
you wouldn’t mind opening a window? It’s rather early to put on my
sealskin, but one never knows at this time of the year--and I’m ’eated
with my walk. Send Mrs. Welting to me, please.”
There was a great commotion among the girls. The two passive ones stood
with open mouth, struck dumb by this magnificence.
“Lor!” cried Kate, finding no other word that could express her emotion.
Emma, though she was the youngest, was the most vehement of all. “I know
what she’s come for. She’s come to make mischief,” cried Emma. “I
wouldn’t fetch mother. I wouldn’t go a step. Let her speak straight out
what she’s got to say.”
“There’s reason in everything,” said Ellen. “You mayn’t mean to keep us
up like friends. Just as you like, I’m sure; none of us is wanting to
keep it up; but mother takes no hand in the business, and that you know
as well as me.”
“Send Mrs. Welting to me,” cried Polly, waving her hand majestically.
She did not condescend to any further reply. She leant back on her chair
and unfastened her beloved mantle at the throat. Then she 5 got out a
laced handkerchief and fanned herself. “Me that thought it was so cold,”
Polly remarked to herself, “and it’s like summer!” She did not pay any
further attention to the young women, who consulted together with great
indignation and excitement at a little distance.
“What can she have to say to mother? I wouldn’t call mother, not if she
was to sit there for a week,” said Emma, who had a presentiment as to
the subject of the visit.
“Lord! just look at her in her sealskin,” interrupted Kate, who could
think of nothing else.
But Ellen, who was the serious one, paused and hesitated. “We can’t tell
what it may be--and if it turned out to be a job, or something she had
got us from some of the Abbey ladies! She’s not bad natured,” said
Ellen, full of doubts.
All this time Polly waved her handkerchief about, with its edge of lace,
fanning herself. She looked at no one--she was too much elevated above
all the associations of the place to deign to take any notice. Had not
she always been above it? With her disengaged hand she smoothed the fur
of her sealskin, rubbing it knowingly upward. She was altogether
unconscious of their talk and discussion. What could _they_ have in
common with Mrs. Despard? To see her, if any of her former associates
had been cool enough to notice it, was still “as good as a play.”
The upshot was, that while the others, with much ostentation of dragging
their seats to the other end of the table, sat down and resumed their
work with as much appearance of calm as possible, Ellen ran upstairs in
obedience to her own more prudent suggestions, and reappeared shortly
with her mother, a large, comely woman, who, not knowing who the visitor
was, was a little expectant, hoping for a very good order--a trousseau,
or perhaps mourning. “Or it might be the apartments,” Mrs. Welting said.
And when she entered the workroom she made the lady a curtsey, then
cried out, as her daughters had done, “Why, bless my heart, Polly! The
idea of taking me in like this, you saucy things,” she cried, turning,
laughing, upon the girls. But she did not get any response from these
indignant young women, nor from Polly, who made no reply to her
salutation, but sat still, delicately fanning herself.
Mrs. Welting stood between the two opposed parties, wondering what was
the matter. Since Polly was here, she could have come only in
friendship. “I’m sure I’m very glad to see you,” she said, “and looking
so well and so ’andsome. And what a lovely sealskin you’ve got on!”
“Mrs. Welting,” said Polly, with great dignity, taking no notice of
these friendly remarks, “I asked for you because I’ve something to say
that is very particular. You don’t take much charge of the business, but
it is you as one must turn to about the girls. Mrs. Welting, you mayn’t
know, but there’s goings on here as always gave me a deal of annoyance.
And now I’ve come to tell you they must be put a stop to. I never could
endure such goings on, and I mean to put a stop to them now.”
“Lord bless us!” said Mrs. Welting. She was really alarmed. She gave a
glance round upon her girls, all bursting with self-defence, and made
them a sign to be silent. Then she turned to her visitor with a mixture
of anxiety and defiance. “Speak up, Polly,” she said; “nobody shall say
as I won’t listen, if there’s anything against my girls; but speak up,
for you’ve gone too far to stop now.”
“How hot it is, to be sure!” said Mrs. Despard, “in this close bit of a
place. I wish someone would open a window. I can’t think how I could
have put up with it so long. And I wonder what my ’usband would say if
he heard me spoke to like that? I thought you would have the sense to
understand that I’ve come here for your good. It wasn’t to put myself on
an equality with folks like you, working for your living. I don’t want
to be stuck up, but a lady must draw the line somewhere. Mrs. Welting, I
don’t suppose you know it--you ain’t often in the workroom--it would be
a deal better if you was. There’s gentlemen comes here, till the place
is known all over the town; and there is one young gentleman as I take a
deal of interest in as makes me and his papa very uneasy all along of
coming here----”
“Gentlemen! coming here!” cried Mrs. Welting, looking round upon her
daughters with mingled anger and dismay.
“I know what I’m talking about,” said Polly; “let them contradict me if
they dare. He comes here mostly every day. One of the girls is that
silly as to think he’s after her. After her! I hope as he has more
sense; he knows what’s what a deal too well for that. He takes his fun
out of them--that is what he does. But you may think yourself what kind
of feelings his family has--the Captain and me. That’s the one that
encourages him most,” Mrs. Despard added, pointing out Emma with her
finger. “She is always enticing the poor boy to come here.”
“Oh, you dreadful, false, wicked story!” cried Emma, flushed and crying.
“Oh, mother, it ain’t nothing of the kind! It was she as brought him
first. She didn’t mind who came when she was here. She said it was no
harm, it was only a bit of fun. We was always against it--at least Ellen
was,” added the culprit, bursting forth into sobs and tears.
“Yes, I always was,” said Ellen, demurely--it was not in human nature
not to claim the palm of superior virtue--“but it was not Emma, it was
Polly that began. I’ve heard her argue as it was no harm. She was the
first with the Captain, and then when young Mr. Despard----”
“I am not going to sit here, and listen to abuse of my family,” said
Polly, rising. “I wouldn’t have mentioned no names, for I can’t abide to
have one as belongs to me made a talk about in a place like this. I came
to give you a warning, ma’am, not these hardened things. It isn’t for
nothing a lady in my position comes down to the River Lane. I’ve got my
beautiful silk all in a muddle, and blacks upon a white bonnet is
ruination. I did it for your sake, Mrs. Welting, for I’ve always had a
respect for you. And now I’ve done my Christian duty,” said Polly, with
vehemence, shaking the dust from her blue silk. “There’s them that talk
about it, like that little Methody Ellen, but there ain’t many that do
it. But don’t let anybody suppose,” she cried, growing hotter and
hotter, “that I mean to do it any more! If you let him come here after
this, I won’t show you any mercy--we’ll have the law of you, my ’usband
and I. There’s laws against artful girls as entice poor innocent young
men. Don’t you go for to think,” cried Mrs. Despard, sweeping out while
they all gazed after her, speechless, “because I’ve once done my
Christian duty that I’m going to do it any more!”
We will not attempt to describe the commotion that followed--the
reproaches, the tears, the fury of the girls betrayed, of which none was
more hot than that of Ellen, who had to stand and hear herself called a
Methody--she who was conscious of being an Anglican and a Catholic
without blemish, and capable of anything in the world before Dissent.
Polly sailed up the hill, triumphant in that consciousness of having
done her duty as a Christian, but equally determined not to do it any
more; and what with the consciousness of this noble performance, and
what with the sealskin, found it in her power to be almost agreeable to
her step-daughter, when the Captain, who, after all, was Lottie’s
father, and did not like the idea that his girl should be banished from
his house, had met her and brought her in.
“She has not had the careful bringing-up that you have had, my child,”
the Captain said. “She hasn’t had your advantages. You must have a
little patience with her, for my sake.” Captain Despard had always been
irresistible when he asked tenderly, with his head on one side, and an
insinuating roll in his voice, that anything should be done for his
sake.
Lottie, who was happy in the sense of her lover’s readiness to sacrifice
everything for her sake (as she thought), and to whom the whole world
seemed fairer in consequence, yielded without any struggle; while Polly,
on her part, put on her most gracious looks.
“If you take every word I say for serious,” said Polly, “I don’t know
whatever I shall do. I never was used to have my words took up hasty
like that. I say a deal of naughtiness that I don’t mean--don’t I,
Harry? You and me would never have come together, should we, if you’d
always gone and taken me at my word?” And so the reconciliation was
effected, and things went on as before. There was no similar occurrence
in respect to Law, whose looks at Polly were murderous; but, then, Law
had no delicacy of sentiment, and, whatever had happened, would have
come into his meals all the same.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FAMILY DUTY: BY A FINER ARTIST.
Rollo did not come away from the strange excitement of that interview on
the Slopes with the same feelings which filled the mind of Lottie. The
first intense sensation of shame with which he had realised the villany
of the proposal which Lottie did not understand soon changed into a
different sentiment. He had felt its guilt, its treacherous cruelty,
under the guise of devotion, far more bitterly and intensely than as if
she had understood and denounced him; and the relief of his escape from
an indignation and horror which must have been as overwhelming as the
confidence, had made him feel how great a danger he had run, and how
terrible to him, as well as to her, would have been the discovery of his
base intention. How could he ever think that Lottie, proud, and pure,
and fearless of evil as she was, could have fallen into such a snare! He
felt himself a fool as well as a villain; perceiving, too, by the light
of fact, what he would not have understood in theory, that the very
uncomprehension of innocence makes guilt contemptible as well as
terrible. If she could have understood him, he would scarcely have felt
so mean, so miserable, so poor a creature as he did now; not even a gay
and fine betrayer, but a pitiful cheat and would-be criminal, false to
everything that nature trusts in. Rollo had not been irreproachable
hitherto; but such sins as he had indulged in had been done among those
who were sinners like himself, among people who had a cynical
comprehension of the worth of promises and the value of vows. He had
never tried that _rôle_ of the seducer before; and the fact that his own
shame and horror were real made them all the more hard to bear. Shame,
however, of this bitter kind is not an improving influence. Soon it
began to turn to anger equally bitter. He tried to think that Lottie was
partly to blame, that she had “led him on,” that he never would have
gone so far but for “encouragement” from her. Even it flashed across his
mind that she was not so unconscious as she appeared, but had pretended
ignorance in order to rivet her chains upon him, and force him to the
more honourable way which was so much more for her interest. He tried to
force this idea into his own mind, which was not sufficiently depraved
to receive it; but yet it was not long before he was angry, irritated
against the girl who would not understand him, and sore with the
humiliation she had inflicted unawares.
Other influences, too, came in to break the purer spell of honourable
love under which Rollo, to his own surprise, had so entirely fallen.
With the return of Augusta and her husband, the world seemed to have
come back and seized him. Even the society of Augusta, of itself, had an
immediate influence, breaking up the magic of the seclusion in which he
had been content to live. Lady Caroline was not a woman who could be
called unworldly, but she was passive, and did not take any initiative
even in the way of gossip. She liked to hear it; there came a little
gleam of interest to her eyes when the stories of the great world were
brought to her, when she was told who was going to marry who, and by
what schemes and artifices the marriage had been brought about; and who
had most frequently and boldly broken the marriage vow, and by whom it
had been most politely eluded; and how everybody lived and cheated, and
nothing was as it seemed; and all that is done for money, and that is
done for pleasure, in that busy, small, narrow-minded village
society--which is the world. But though she loved to hear, she could not
begin; for, unless people told her what was going on, how, she sometimes
asked piteously, was she to know? As for the Dean, he was not in the
habit of it any more than his wife, though when he went to town he would
bring down invariably a piece of news from his club--of somebody’s
appointment, or somebody’s good luck, or somebody’s wedding. “Now, why
can’t you go and do likewise?” he would say to Rollo. But all this was
mild and secondary in comparison with Augusta, who brought the very air
of what Mr. Jenkins calls the Upper Ten into the Deanery, perfuming all
the rooms and all the meals with stories of fortunes won and lost, of
squabbles, ministerial and domestic, of marriages and dinners alike
“arranged,” and all the wonderful _dessous des cartes_ and _behind the
scenes_ with which so many people are acquainted in fashionable life.
Who so well as Augusta knew that when the Duke of Mannering gave up his
governorship, it was not from any political reason, but because the life
he led was such that the place was far too hot to hold him, and
Government was only too glad to send out Algy Fairfax, though he was
only a younger son, and had no particular interest, simply to smooth
things down? And what a lucky thing it was for Algy to be there just at
the right moment, when there was nobody else handy, and just when Lord
Arthur was there, who had got him to explain matters to his elder
brother, and knew what he could do! It was what old Lady Fairfax had
been scheming for all her life, just as she had been scheming to catch
young Snellgrove for Mina. Of course she had succeeded. Mina was almost
distracted, everybody knew. It was she who had that affair with Lord
Colbrookdale, and now everybody said she was wildly in love with
Reginald Fane, her cousin; but she might just as well be in love with
St. Paul’s, for he had not a penny, and she was to be married directly.
Did you hear about her settlements? They were simply ridiculous. But
that old woman was wonderful. There was nothing she did not think of,
and everything she wanted she got. And then there was that story about
poor young Jonquil, of the War Department, who married somebody quite
out of the question, a poor clergyman’s daughter, or something of that
sort, without a penny (though he might have had the rich Miss Windsor
Brown for the asking, people said), and of the dreadful end he had come
to, living down in some horrid weedy little cottage about Kew, and
wheeling out two babies in a perambulator. All these tales, and a
thousand more, Augusta told, filling the Deanery with a shameful train
of people, all doing something they did not want to do, or forcing
others to do it, or following their pleasure through every law, human
and divine. Lady Caroline sat in her easy-chair (she was not allowed to
put up her feet except in the evening, after dinner, when Augusta was at
home), and listened with half-closed eyes, but unfailing attention. “I
knew his father very well,” she would say now and then, or “his mother
was a great friend of mine.” As for Rollo, he knew all the people of
whom these stories were told. He had seen the things beginning of which
his cousin knew all the conclusions, and what went on behind the scenes,
and thus he was carried back after the idyll of the last six weeks to
his own proper world. He began to feel that there was no world but that,
that nothing else could make up for the want of it; and a shudder ran
over him when he thought of Jonquil’s fate. Augusta, for her part, did
not conceal her surprise to find him at the Deanery. “What is Rollo
doing here?” she said to her mother.
“I am sure, my dear, I do not know. He seems to like it, and we are very
glad to have him,” Lady Caroline replied. But that did not satisfy Mrs.
Daventry’s curiosity. What could a young man of fashion, a man of the
world, do here?
“I wonder what he is after,” she said; “I wonder what his object can be.
It can’t be only your society and papa’s. I should just like to know
what he is up to. He is not a fool, to have gone and got entangled
somehow. I wonder what he can mean by it!” Augusta cried; but her mother
could give her no idea. Lady Caroline thought it was natural enough.
“I don’t see that it is so strange,” she said. “Autumn is a terrible
time. To sleep in a strange bed night after night, and never settle down
anywhere! Rollo likes to be comfortable; and then there is this Miss
Despard. You have heard about Miss Despard?”
“What about Miss Despard?” Augusta said, pricking up her ears.
“She is to be the prima donna,” said Lady Caroline. “He thinks she will
make his fortune. He has always got some wild scheme in his head. He
used to annoy me very much to have her here----”
“And did you have her here?” cried Augusta, roused into sudden
excitement. “Oh, why didn’t I know of it! I thought there must be some
reason! Lottie Despard! And were you obliged to have her here, mamma?
What a bore it must have been for you!”
“I did not like it, my dear,” her ladyship said. But after a while she
added, conscience compelling her, “She sang very nicely, Augusta; she
has a pretty voice.”
“She has plenty of voice, but she cannot sing a note,” said Augusta,
with vehemence, who was herself, without any voice to speak of, a very
well-trained musician. She would not say any more to frighten Lady
Caroline, but she took her measures without delay. And the result of
Augusta’s enquires was that Rollo found his feet entangled in a web of
engagements which separated him from Lottie. But though he was sore and
angry, he had not given up Lottie, nor had he any intention so to do.
When, however, the day came for Lottie’s next lesson, Mrs. Daventry
herself did the Signor the honour of calling upon him just before his
pupil appeared. “You know the interest I always took in Lottie. Please
let me stay. We have so many musical friends in town that I am sure I
can be of use to her,” Mrs. Daventry said; and the consequence was that
when Lottie and her companion entered the Signor’s sitting-room, the
great chair between the fire and the window in which Mrs. O’Shaughnessy
usually placed herself was found to be already occupied by the much
greater lady, whose sudden appearance in this cordial little company put
everybody out. Augusta sat leaning back in the big chair, holding a
screen between her cheek and the fire, her fine Paris bonnet, her furs,
and her velvet making a great appearance against the dark wall, and her
smiles and courtesy confounding every individual of the familiar party.
She was more refined, far less objectionable than Polly, and did her
spiriting in a very different way; but there could be little doubt that
the fine artist was also the most effectual. She put the entire party
out, from the least to the greatest, though the sweetest of smiles was
on her face. Even the Signor was not himself with this gracious
personage superintending his exertions. He was a good English Tory, of
the most orthodox sentiments; but he was at the same time an impatient
Italian, of despotic tastes, and did not easily tolerate the position of
second in his own house. Rollo, who had determined to be present,
whatever happened, but who, by a refinement of cruelty, did not know his
cousin was coming, came in with all the ease of habit, and had already
betrayed the fact of his constant attendance at these strange lessons,
when Augusta called to him, covering him with confusion. “We shall be
quite a family party,” she said. “I’m so glad you take an interest in
poor Lottie _too_.” Rollo could not but ask himself what was the meaning
of this sudden friendliness and interest; but he was obliged to place
himself by her side when she called him. And when Lottie came in, at
whom he did not dare to look, his position became very uncomfortable.
Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, finding her seat occupied, and herself compelled to
take a lower place, sat down on a chair near the door, with wrath which
made her countenance flame. She had stood up in the room a minute before
she seated herself, looking round for a more comfortable place, and had
greeted Mr. Ridsdale joyously as an old friend. But even Rollo, usually
so polite, who never saw her without doing his very best to make himself
agreeable, even he never attempted to introduce her to his cousin, and
the good woman sat down accordingly, against the wall, silent and
fuming, while Augusta took the chief place. The stranger in the midst
of them turned the whole party upside down. Even Purcell was so occupied
by the conversation that was kept up in whispers by Augusta, in her
corner, even during the singing, that he missed to turn the leaves at
the proper moment. Augusta knew very well what she was doing. She had a
respect for the Signor, but she had higher purposes in hand. She kept
Rollo by her side, and kept up a conversation with him through all,
which was, like her usual conversation, deeply pervaded by the essence
of society and “the Upper Ten.” She kept it up in a whisper when Lottie
began to sing. “Don’t you think she is handsome? She is a little like
Lady Augustus Donjon about the eyes--don’t you think so? Oh, I never
told you that good story about the Augustus Donjons,” said Mrs.
Daventry; and she told her story, all through the song, half audible.
“Wasn’t it good?” Augusta said; and then, “That is such a pretty song;
and, Lottie, you are so improved, I should never have known it to be the
same voice. Yes, wasn’t it good, Rollo? Augustus Donjon is always the
first to laugh himself, and even the children have got it in the
nursery. She is such a jolly woman, she never minds. What are we going
to have next? Oh, that will be very nice!” said Augusta.
Was it wonderful that Purcell should lose the place? The young fellow
did all he could to stop the fine lady with furious glances; and the
Signor, though his back was turned to her, felt the whisper and the
indignity run through every nerve of him. Even in his back you could
see, Purcell thought, how horribly annoyed he was. His sensitive
shoulders winced and shuddered, his elbows jerked. He could not attend
to his accompaniment, he could not attend to his pupil. In the very
midst of a song he said aloud, distracted by the s’s of a whisper which
was louder than usual, “This must never happen again.” As for Lottie,
she did not know what she was doing. She sang--because it was the hour
for her lesson, because she found herself standing there by the side of
the Signor’s piano--but not for any other reason. She had neither
inspiration, nor had she that nascent sense that Art might perhaps
console for other losses which she had once felt when Rollo was away.
She was distracted by the whispering behind her, from which she could
not withdraw her attention. Why did he listen? Why did he allow Augusta
to draw him into unfaithfulness to her? And yet, how could he help it?
Was it not all Augusta’s fault? But with whomsoever the fault lay,
Lottie was the victim. Her voice could not be got out. And the reader
knows that Augusta was right--that this poor girl, though she had the
voice of an angel, did not as yet know how to sing, and had no science
to neutralise the impressions made upon her which took away all her
heart and her voice. She went on making a brave fight; but when once the
Signor faltered in his accompaniment, and said loud out, “This must
never happen again,” and when Purcell forgot to turn the page, what is
it to be supposed Lottie could do, who was not the tenth part of a
musician such as they were? She faltered, she went wrong. Tune she could
not help keeping, it was in her nature: even her wrong notes were never
out of harmony; but in time she went wildly floundering, not even kept
right by the Signor. Even that did not matter very much, seeing that
none of these people, who generally were so critical, so censorious, so
ready to be hard upon her out of pure anxiety for her, were in a state
of mind to perceive the mistakes she was making. And it was only vaguely
that Lottie herself was aware of them. Her whole attention was attracted
in spite of herself by the whispering in the corner.
“Oh, thank you so much!” Augusta broke forth, when she came to the end.
“What a charming bit that is! It is Schubert, of course, but I don’t
know it. The time was a little odd, but the melody was beautiful.”
“You know my weakness,” said the Signor stiffly, turning round. “I
cannot answer for myself when people are talking. I am capable of doing
anything that is wrong.”
“Oh! I remember,” cried Mrs. Daventry; “you used to be very stern with
all our little societies. Not a word were we allowed to say. We all
thought it hard, but of course it was better for us in the long run. And
are you as tyrannical as ever, Signor?”
“Not so tyrannical since ladies come here, and carry on their charming
conversation all the same. I only wish I could have profited by it. It
seemed amusing and instructive. If I were not unhappily one of those
poor creatures who can only do one thing at a time----”
“Oh, Signor, how very severe you are!” said Augusta. “I was only telling
my cousin some old stories which I am sure you must have heard weeks
ago. You know the Donjons? No! Oh, I thought everybody knew the Augustus
Donjons! They go everywhere; they have friends in music and friends in
art, and you meet all sorts of people at their house. Lottie, when you
are a great singer, I hope you will remember me, and send me cards now
and then for one of your concerts. There are so many things going on
now, and all so expensive, that people in our circumstances really can’t
do everything. Spencer has stalls where we go when there is anything
particular; but I assure you, now-a-days, one can no more afford a box
at the opera----! You know, Signor; but I daresay your friends always
find you places somewhere.”
“That is true. If everything else fails, a friend of mine who plays
second violin will lend me his instrument,” said the Signor, “or a
box-keeper now and then will be glad of an evening’s holiday. They are
_blasés_, these people. They do not care if Patti sings. They will
rather have a holiday and go to a music-hall.”
Augusta looked at her cousin, puzzled. She did not see the irony. After
all, she thought, there was not, perhaps, so very much difference
between a musician and those perfectly gentlemanlike people who showed
you to your box or your stall. She had often thought how nice they
looked. The Signor saw her bewilderment, and added, with a smile--“You
have never recognised me in my borrowed part?”
“Oh, Signor!--certainly not. I never meant to say anything that would
suggest--to imply anything that might----indeed, I hope you will not
think I have been indiscreet,” cried Augusta. “But, Rollo, we must go,
we must certainly go. I told mamma you would come with me to see the old
Skeffingtons. Spencer is away, and I must return their call. Signor, I
do hope you will forgive me. I meant nothing that was disagreeable. I am
sure we are all put to worse straits than that, in order to get a little
amusement without ruining ourselves. Oh, Rollo, _please_ come away!”
Rollo had snatched an instant as Lottie gathered her music together.
“It is not my fault,” he said. “She never lets me alone. I did not know
she was coming here to-day. Do not put on that strange look.”