in town, but there were many other things to be settled, in order to
make a considerably long absence practicable, and these he arranged in
his own mind as he approached his journey’s end. For one thing, he had
the funds to provide; and that, as will be readily perceived, was no
small matter. He walked out of the railway station, pondering this in
his mind. It was a grave question, not one to be lightly solved. He did
not want to return to town till the season should have begun. No doubt
five months’ honeymooning would bore any man, but he felt it to be too
important to think of mere personal amusement; and he could always make
expeditions himself to more lively places, and get a share of any
amusement that might be going, when he had settled down Lottie to her
studies, under the best masters that were to be had. All this was quite
easily settled; but for an absence of five months, if you have not any
income to speak of, it is necessary to have an understanding with your
bankers, or somebody else. He meant to try his bankers, for his
confidence in Lottie’s future success was extreme, and he felt justified
in speaking of it as money which his future wife would be entitled to.
All these plans he was laying very deliberately in his head, calculating
how much he would need, and various other particulars, when the face of
a man approaching in a hansom suddenly struck him. It was Rixon, his
father’s confidential servant, a man who had been in Lord Courtland’s
service as long as anybody could recollect. What was he doing there? The
hansom was directing its course towards the railway from which Rollo
had just come, and Rixon’s countenance was of an extreme gravity. What
could it mean? Could anything have happened? Rollo saw the hansom pass,
but its occupant did not see him. He could not banish from his thoughts
the idea that something must have happened--that it was to tell him
something, some news more or less terrible that Rixon was on his way to
the railway which went to St. Michael’s. After a moment’s hesitation he
turned and went back to the station, not being able to divest himself of
this idea. To be sure Rixon might be going somewhere on business of his
own; he might be looking grave about his own affairs. Still Rollo turned
and went back; in any case it was best to know. The man was standing
among several others, waiting to take his ticket for the train, when
Rollo re-entered the station; he was getting his money out of his pocket
to pay his fare; but looking up as he did this, Rixon started, put his
money back, and immediately disengaged himself from the _queue_. It was
then a message from home of sufficient importance to be sent by special
envoy. Rollo had time to examine this bearer of ill-news as he
approached. What but ill-news was ever so urgent? special messengers do
not travel about to stray sons of a family with news of birth or bridal.
There is but one thing which calls for such state, and that is death.
Rollo ran over all the chances in a moment, in his mind. His father--if
it were his father there would be a little delay, a little ready money,
more need than ever, and a very good excuse, for keeping everything
quiet. It was not absolute want of feeling that suggested this thought.
If it was his father there would be many reasons for being sorry. Home,
with your brother at the head of affairs, is not home like your father’s
house. And Lord Courtland, though his second son had worn out his
kindness, was still kind more or less. Rollo was not insensible; he felt
the dull consciousness of a blow before he received it, as he fixed his
eyes upon Rixon’s mournful countenance, and the band on his hat.
“What is the matter?” he said, as the man approached. “What has
happened? You were going to me? Tell me at once what it is.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir,” said Rixon, with the perpetual apology of a
well-bred servant. “Yes, Sir, I was going to St. Michael’s. My lord sent
me to tell you----”
“Thank heaven, that it is not my father! You mean that my father sent
you? That is a relief,” said Rollo, drawing a long breath.
“Yes, my--Sir!” said Rixon, with confusion, “My lord is in the enjoyment
of perfect health--at least as good as is compatible with the great
misfortune, the catastrophe that has--snatched----”
“What do you mean?” said Rollo. Rixon was fond of long words. He
laughed, “You are always mysterious. But if my father is all right----”
“Oh, don’t! my--don’t, Sir!” said the man, “laughing is not what ought
to be on your lips at such a moment. Your brother has had an
accident----”
“My brother--Ridsdale? Good heavens! Can’t you speak out? What has
happened?” said Rollo, with blanched cheeks. Horror, fear, hope, all
sprung up within him, indistinguishable the one from the other. The
moment seemed a year during which he stood waiting for Rixon’s next
words.
“It is too true, my lord,” said the man, and the address threw around
Rollo a sudden gleam of growing light. “Your brother had a terrible
accident on the hunting-field. His horse stumbled on King’s Mead, at
that bad fence by Willowbrook. He was taken up insensible, and died
before he could be got home. Things are in a terrible state at
Courtlands. I was sent to let your lordship know. My lord would be glad
if you would come home at once.”
Rollo staggered back, and put himself against the wall. A cold moisture
burst out over him. He grew so pale that Rixon thought he was going to
faint. The man said afterwards that he could not have believed that Mr.
Ridsdale had so much feeling. And partly it was feeling as Rixon
thought. For the first moment the thought that his brother, upon whom
fate had always smiled--Ridsdale! _Ridsdale!_--the very impersonation of
prosperity and good fortune, should be lying dead, actually dead, at his
age, with all his prospects, appalled him. It seemed too much,
unnatural, beyond all possibility of belief. Then the blood rushed back
through all his veins with a flush and suffusion of sudden heat. The
change alarmed the messenger of so much evil and so much good. He put
out his hand to support his young master. “My lord, my lord!” he said
(they were words which Rixon loved to repeat, and which added to his own
dignity as a gentleman’s gentleman), “remember your father; now that
your lamented brother is gone, all his lordship’s trust is in you.”
Rollo waved his hand, not caring for the moment to speak. “Let me
alone!” he said. “Let me alone! leave me to myself.” And it did not take
him long to recover and shake off the horrible impression, and realise
the astounding change that had occurred. Perhaps it is not possible that
the death of a brother, which produces so extraordinary and beneficial a
change in the situation and prospects of the next in succession, can be
regarded with the natural feeling which such an event uncomplicated by
loss or gain of a pecuniary kind calls forth. There was a sudden shock,
then a consciousness that something was expected from him, some show of
grief and profound distress; and then a bewildering, overwhelming,
stupefying, yet exciting realisation of the change thus suddenly
accomplished in himself. He was no longer merely Rollo, a fashionable
adventurer, dealing in every kind of doubtful speculation, and
legitimatised gambling, a man of no importance to anyone, and free to
carry out whatever schemes might come into his head; but now--an
altogether different person--Lord Ridsdale, his father’s heir; the
future head of a great family; a future peer; and already endowed with
all the importance of an heir-apparent. The world seemed to go round and
round with Rollo, and when it settled again out of the whirling and pale
confusion as of an earthquake, it was not any longer the same world. The
proportion of things had changed in the twinkling of an eye. The distant
and the near had changed places. What was close to him before receded;
what was far away became near. In the hurry of his thoughts he could not
even think. Pain mingled with everything, with the giddiness of a
strange elation, with the bewilderment of a surprise more startling than
any that had ever come to him before in all his life. Ridsdale!--he who
had always been so smiling and prosperous; he to whom everything was
forgiven; whose sins were only peccadilloes; whose lightest schoolboy
successes were trumpeted abroad, whose movements were recorded
where-ever he went; it was inconceivable that he should be lying--dead;
inconceivable that Rollo, the detrimental, the one in the family whom
all disapproved of, should be put in his place, and succeed to all his
privileges and exemptions. It did not seem possible. It needed Rixon
saying my lord to him at every moment, to make the curious fiction seem
true. Rixon got a cab to drive his young master to the other station, by
which he must go to Courtlands; and Rollo--leaving all his former life
behind him, leaving his license, his marriage, his bride, in the
opposite direction, fading into misty spectres--turned his back upon all
that had been most important to him half an hour ago, and drove away.
He went through that day like a dream--the whole course of his existence
turned into another channel. He got home, rolling up to the familiar
door with sensations so different from any that had ever moved him when
entering that door before. He looked at it this time with a feeling of
proprietorship. It had been his home for all his early life; but now it
was going to be _his own_, which is very different. He looked at the
very trees with a different feeling, wondering why so many should be
marked for cutting down. What had they been doing to want to get rid of
so many trees? When he went into the room where his brother lay dead, it
was to him as if a waxen image lay there, as if it were all a skilful
scene, arranged to make believe that such a change, one man substituted
for another, could be _real_. To Rollo it did not seem to be real. It
was the younger son who had died, with all his busy schemes--his plans
for the future, his contrivances to get money, and the strange
connections which he had formed. Rollo, who was the founder of the new
opera, the partner of the bustling manager; it was he who was lying on
that bed. All his plans would be buried with him--his Bohemianism, his
enterprises, his----. What was it that the poor fool had gone in for,
the last of all his undertakings, the thing in which he had been happily
arrested ere he could harm himself or embarrass the family?--his
love----. It was when standing by the bed on which his brother lay dead
that this thought suddenly darted into the new Lord Ridsdale’s mind. He
turned away with a half groan. Providence had interposed to prevent that
foolish fellow from consummating his fate. He had not yet reached the
highest pitch of folly when the blow fell. Something there was which the
family had escaped. When the key was turned again in the door, and he
went back to another darkened room and heard all about the accident, it
was almost on his lips to contradict the speakers, and tell them it was
not Ridsdale that was dead. But he did not do so. He preserved his
decorum and seriousness. He was “very feeling.” Lord Courtland, who had
been afraid of his son’s levity, and had trembled lest Rollo, who had
never been on very intimate terms with his brother, should show less
sorrow than was becoming, was deeply satisfied. “How little we know what
is in a man till he’s tried,” he said to his sister, Lady Beatrice. Lady
Courtland, the mother of the young man, was happily long ago dead.
Thus, after setting out in the morning--full of tender ardour,
notwithstanding his many doubts--to make the arrangements for his
marriage, Rollo found himself at night one of the chief mourners in a
house full of weeping. It was late at night when he got to his own room,
and was able really to set himself to consider his own affairs. Which
were his own affairs? The cares of the head of the family, the earl’s
heir and right hand--or those strangely different anxieties which had
been in the mind of the second son? When he sat down to think it over,
once more there came a giddiness and bewilderment over Rollo’s being. He
seemed scarcely able to force back upon himself the events which had
happened at St. Michael’s only this morning. The figure of Lottie
appeared to him through the mist, far, far away, dimly apparent at the
end of a long vista. Lottie. What had he intended to do? He had meant to
get a license for his marriage to her, to arrange how he could get
money--if money was to be had by hook or by crook--to see about the
tickets for their journey, to decide where to go to--even to provide
travelling-wraps for his bride. All this he had come to London to do
only this morning, and now it almost cost him an effort to recollect
what it was. He would have been glad to evade the subject, to feel that
he had a right to rest after such a fatiguing day; but the revolution in
and about him was such that he could not rest. St. Michael’s and all its
scenes passed before him like dissolving views, fading off into the
mist, then rising again in spectral indistinctness. He could not think
they belonged to him, or that the central figure in all these pictures
was his own. Was it not rather his brother--he who had died? It seemed
to Lord Ridsdale that he was settling Rollo’s affairs for him, thinking
what was best to be done. He had been horribly imprudent, and had
planned a still greater imprudence to come, when death arrested him in
mid-career; but, Heaven be praised, the heedless fellow had been stopped
before he committed himself! Rollo shuddered to think what would have
happened had the family been hampered by a wife. A wife! What a fool he
had been; what a dream he had been absorbed in; folly, unmitigated,
inexcusable; but, thank Heaven, he had been stopped in time.
Lottie--that was her name, and she had been very fond of him; poor girl,
it would be a great disappointment for her. Thus Rollo thought, not
feeling that he had anything to do with it. It was all over, so
completely over, that there was scarcely a struggle in his mind,
scarcely any controversy with himself, on the subject. No advocate,
heavenly or diabolical, spoke on Lottie’s behalf. The whole affair was
done with--it was impossible--there was no room even for consideration.
For Lord Ridsdale to marry a nameless girl, the highest possibility in
whose lot was to become a singer, and who had to be educated before even
that was practicable, was not to be thought of. It was a bad thing for
the poor girl; poor thing! no doubt it was hard upon her.
Thus--was it any doing of Rollo’s? Providence itself opened a door of
escape for him from his unwary folly. Law did not act in the same way;
when good fortune came to him, by a mere savage and uncultivated
sentiment of honour, he had gone to the girl who had been his sweetheart
to propose that she should share it. Lord Ridsdale, however, was not of
this vulgar strain. The savage virtues were not in his way--they were
not possible in his circumstances. _Noblesse oblige_; he could not raise
Lottie to the sublime elevation of the rank he had so unexpectedly
fallen into. That was not possible. The matter was so clear that it
barred all question. There was not a word to be said on her side.
Nevertheless, had it not been for all the trouble about poor Ridsdale’s
funeral, and the attentions required by the father, whose manner had so
entirely changed to his surviving son, and who was now altogether
dependent upon him--the new heir to the honours of the Courtland family
might have broken off with his old love in a more considerate way. But
he had no time to think. The very day had come before he could
communicate with her; and then it had to be done abruptly. And, after
all, a little more or less, what did it matter? The important point, for
her sake especially, was that the change should be perfectly definite
and clear. Poor Lottie! he was so sorry for her. It would be better,
much better for her to hate him now, if she could; and, above all, it
was the kindest thing to her to make the disruption distinct, beyond all
possibility either of doubt or of hope.
CHAPTER XLII.
--“TILL FRIDAY.”
Captain Despard put on his best coat after his return from the Abbey on
the morning of Rollo’s departure. He brushed his hat with more than his
usual care; he found, after much investigation, among what he called his
papers, an ancient and shabby card-case: and thus equipped set forth on
his solemn mission. He had a bit of red geranium in his button-hole
which looked cheerful against the damp and gloom of the morning. Polly,
looking out after him, thought her Captain a finished gentleman, and
felt a swell of pride expand her bosom--of pride and of anxiety as
well--for if, by good fortune, the Captain should succeed in his
mission, then Polly felt that there would be a reasonable chance of
getting “her house to herself.” Lottie’s proud withdrawal from all the
concerns of the house had indeed given her step-mother a great deal less
trouble than she had expected; but she could not escape from the idea of
Lottie’s criticism; and the sight of the girl, sitting there, looking as
if she knew better, though she never said anything, was to Polly as
gall and wormwood. If she would have spoken, there would have been less
harm. Mrs. Despard was always ready for a conflict of tongues, and knew
that she was not likely to come off second best; but Lottie’s silence
exasperated her; and it was the highest object of her desires to get her
house to herself. Lottie was coming down the Dean’s Walk, calm, and
relieved, and happy, after seeing her lover make his way down the
Slopes, when the Captain turned towards the cloisters. Her heart gave a
jump of irritation and excitement, followed by a gleam of angry
pleasure. This mission, which was an insult to her and to Rollo alike,
would be a failure, thank Heaven; but still it was a shame that it
should ever have been undertaken. Oh, how unlike, she thought, the
perfect trust and faith that was between them, to intrude this vulgar
inquiry, this coarse interference, into the perfection of their love! It
brought the tears to Lottie’s eyes to think how ready he was to throw
prudence to the winds for her sake, to accept all the risks of life
rather than leave her to suffer; the only question between them being
whether it was right for her to accept such a sacrifice. Lottie did not
think of the approval of his family as she ought to have done, and as
for the approval of her own, though the secret vexed her a little, yet
she was glad to escape from the noisy congratulations to which she would
have been subjected, and her father’s unctuous satisfaction had her
prospects been known. A few days longer, and the new wife whose presence
was an offence to Lottie would have her house to herself. The two, upon
such opposite sides, used the very same words; Lottie, too, was thankful
above measure that Mrs. Despard would have her house to herself. She
calculated the days--Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; Friday was the day on
which she was to meet him, in the afternoon, while all the world at St.
Michael’s was at the afternoon service, and when the Signor, on the
organ, which had been the accompaniment to all the story of their love,
would be filling the wintry air with majestic and tender and solemn
sound. She seemed to hear the pealing of that wonderful symphony, and
Rollo’s voice against it, like a figure standing out against a noble
background, telling her all he had done, and when and how the crowning
event of their story was to be. Her heart was beating loudly, yet
softly, in Lottie’s breast. Supreme expectation, yet satisfaction, an
agitated calm, a pathetic happiness, feelings too exquisite in their
kind to be without a touch of pain, filled all her being. The happiness
she had most prized all her life was to have her ideal fulfilled in
those she loved; and was it possible that any man could have more nobly
done what a true lover should do, than Rollo was doing it? She was
happy, in that he loved her above prudence and care and worldly
advantage; but she was almost happier in that this generosity, this
tender ardour, this quick and sudden action of the deliverer, was all
that poet could have asked or imagination thought of. These were her
fancies, poor girl; the fancies of a foolish, inexperienced creature,
knowing nothing--and far enough from the truth that the charitable may
forgive her, Heaven knows!
When she went in, Polly called her, with a certain imperiousness. She
was on her way to her room, that sole bower of safety; but this Mrs.
Despard had made up her mind not to allow. “You may show me those scales
you were speaking of,” said Polly. “I daresay I’ll remember as soon as I
see them. It will take up your attention, and it will take up my
attention till your pa comes back. I’m that full of sympathy (though it
can’t be said as you deserve it), that though I have nothing to do with
it, I am just as anxious as you are.”
“I am not anxious,” Lottie said proudly; but she would not condescend to
say more. She brought out an old music-book with easy lessons for a
beginner, at which she had herself laboured in her childhood, and placed
it before her scholar. The notes were like Hebrew and Greek to Polly,
and she could not twist her fingers into the proper places; these
fingers were not like a child’s pliable joints, and how to move each
one separately was a problem which she could not master. She sat at the
piano with the greatest seriousness, striking a note a minute, with much
strain of the unaccustomed hand--and now and then looking up jealously
to see if her instructress was laughing at her; but Lottie was too
preoccupied to smile. She heard her father coming back in what she felt
to be angry haste; and then, with her heart beating, listened to his
step upon the stairs. At this Polly too was startled, and jumping up
from her laborious exercise, snatched the old music-book from its place
and opened it at random at another page.
“Me and Miss Lottie, we’ve been practising our duet,” she said. “La,
Harry! is that you back so soon?”
“The fellow’s gone,” said Captain Despard, throwing down his hat and
cane; that hat which had been brushed for nothing, which had not even
overawed Mr. Jeremie, who gazed at him superciliously, holding the
Deanery door half open, and not impressed at all by the fine manners of
the Chevalier. “The fellow’s gone! He did not mean to go yesterday, that
odious menial as good as confessed. He has heard I was coming, and he
has fled. There could not be a worse sign. My poor child! Lottie!” said
the Captain, suddenly catching a gleam of something like enjoyment in
her eyes, “you do not mean to tell me that you were the traitor. You!
Was it you told him? You may be a fool, but so great a fool as _that_
couldn’t be!”
Lottie scorned to deny what she had done. She was too proud and too rash
to think that she was betraying herself by the acknowledgment. She met
her father’s eye with involuntary defiance. “You would not listen to
me,” she said, “and I could not bear it. It was a disgrace; it was
humbling me to the dust. I warned him you were coming----” As she spoke
she suddenly perceived all that was involved in the confession, and grew
crimson-red, and then pale.
“So, miss,” said Polly, “you’re nicely caught. Keeping company all this
time, and never to say a word to nobody; but if I were your pa, you
shouldn’t be let off like that. Was it for nothing but a bit of fun
you’ve been going on with the gentleman? That’s carrying it a deal too
far, that is. And when your pa takes it in hand to bring him to the
point, you ups and tells him, and frightens him away! I’d just like to
know--and, Harry, I’d have you to ask her--what she means by it? What do
you mean by it, miss? Do you mean to live on here for ever, and eat us
out of house and home? If you won’t work for your living, nor do
anything to get an ’usband, I’d just like to know what you mean to do?”
“Hold your tongue,” said her husband. “Let her alone. It is I that must
speak. Lottie, is it really true that you have betrayed your father?
You have separated yourself from me and put yourself on the side of a
villain!”
“Mr. Ridsdale is not a villain,” said Lottie, passionately. “What has he
done? He has done nothing that can give you any right to interfere with
him. I told him, because I would not have him interfered with. He has
done nothing wrong.”
“He has trifled with my child’s affections,” said the Captain. “He has
filled our minds with false expectations. By Jove, he had better not
come in the way of Harry Despard, if that’s how he means to behave. I’ll
horsewhip the fellow--I’ll kill him; I’ll show him up, if he were twenty
times the Dean’s nephew. And you, girl, what can anyone say to
you--never thinking of your own interest, or of what’s to become of you,
as Mrs. Despard says?”
“Her own interest!” cried Polly. “Oh, she’ll take care of herself, never
fear. She knows you won’t turn her to the door, Harry. You’re too soft,
and they knows it. They’ll hang upon you and eat up everything you have,
till you have the courage to tell them as you won’t put up with it. Oh,
you needn’t turn upon me, Miss Lottie. As long as there was a chance of
a good ’usband I never said a word; but when you goes and throws your
chance away out of wilful pride, then I’m bound to speak. Your poor pa
has not a penny, and all that he has he wants for himself; and I want
my house to myself, Harry; you always promised I was to have my house to
myself. I don’t want none of your grown-up daughters, as think
themselves a deal better than me. I think I will go out of my mind with
Miss Lottie’s lessons, and Mr. Law’s lessons, and all the rest. I never
would have married you--you know I shouldn’t--if I hadn’t thought as I
was to have my house to myself.”
“My love,” said the Captain, deprecatingly, “you know it is not my
fault. You know that if I could I would give you everything. I had very
good reason to think----”
“Papa,” said Lottie, who had been standing by trembling, but less with
fear than passionate disgust and anger, “do you agree in what she says?”
“Of course he agrees,” says Polly. “He hasn’t got any choice; he’s
obliged to say the same as me. He promised me when I married him as you
shouldn’t be long in my way. He told me as you was going to be married.
One girl don’t like another girl for everlasting in her road; and you
never took no trouble to make yourself agreeable, not even about the
music. Harry, do you hear me? Speak up, and say the truth for once. Tell
her if she goes on going against me and you, and all we do for her, like
this, that you won’t have her here.”
“My child,” said the Captain, who, to do him justice, was by no means
happy in his task, “you see me in a difficult position, a most difficult
position. What can I say? Mrs. Despard is right. When I married it was
my opinion that you, too, would soon make a happy and brilliant
marriage. How far that influenced me I need not say. I thought you would
be established yourself, and able to help your brother and--and even
myself. I’m disappointed, I cannot deny it; and if you have now, instead
of fulfilling my expectations, done your best, your very best, to
balk----”
The Captain hesitated and faltered, and tried to swagger, but in vain.
He had the traditions of a gentleman lingering about him, and Lottie was
his child, when all was said. He could not look at her, or meet her
eyes; and Lottie, for her part, who could see nothing but from her own
side of the question, who did not at all realise his, nor recognise any
extenuating circumstances in the plea that he had thought her about to
marry, so blazed upon him with lofty indignation as to have altogether
consumed her father had he been weak enough to look at her. She did not
even glance at Polly, who stood by, eager to rush into the fray.
“In that case,” she said, with a passionate solemnity, “you shall be
satisfied, papa. A few days and you shall be satisfied. I will not ask
any shelter from you after--a few days.”
Though it was happiness Lottie looked forward to, and there could no
longer in this house be anything but pain and trouble for her, these
words seemed to choke her. To leave her father’s house thus; to make the
greatest of changes in her life, thus; all Lottie’s sense of what was
fit and seemly was wounded beyond description. She turned away,
listening to none of the questions which were showered upon her. “What
did she mean? Where was she going? When did she intend to go? What was
she thinking of?” To all these Lottie made no reply; she did not even
wait to hear them, but swept away with something of the conscious
stateliness of the injured, which it is so hard for youth to deny
itself. Heaven knows her heart was full enough; yet there was in
Lottie’s deportment, as she swept out of the room, perhaps a touch of
the injured heroine, a suggestion of a tragedy queen.
She went into her own room, where she found consolation very speedily in
such preparations for her departure as she could make. She took out her
white muslin dress, the simple garment which was so associated with
thoughts of Rollo, and spent an hour of painful yet pleasant
consideration over it, wondering how it could be made to serve for
Saturday. Such a marriage made the toilette of a bride impossible; but
Lottie could not bear the thought of standing by her lover’s side, and
pledging him her faith, in her poor little brown frock which she had
worn all the winter past. She thought that, carefully pinned up under
her cloak, she might wear this, her only white gown, to be a little like
a bride. It had been washed, but it had not suffered much. The folds
might be a little stiffer and less flowing than before they had
undergone the indignity of starch; but still they were fresh and white,
and Lottie did not think it would be noticed that the dress was not new.
Perhaps it was more appropriate that in her poverty and desolation she
should go to him in the gown she had worn, not in one made new and
lovely, as if there were people who cared. “Nobody cares,” she said to
herself, but without the usual depression which these words convey. She
filled up the bodice of her little dress, which had been made open at
the throat for evening use, and made it fit close. She put her pearl
locket upon a bit of white ribbon. Doing this consoled her for the pangs
she had borne. All the money she had of her own was one sovereign, which
she had kept from the time of her mother’s death as a last supreme
resource in case of emergency; surely she might use it now. Taking this
precious coin from the little old purse in which it was put away, in the
deepest corner of an old Indian box, purse and box and coin all coming
from her mother, Lottie went out to make a few purchases. She was
forlorn, but her heart was light. She went down to the great shop not
far from the Abbey gates, of which St. Michael’s was proud, and bought
some tulle and white ribbons. Poor child! her heart yearned for a little
sprig of orange-blossom, but she did not venture to ask for anything
that would betray her. It seemed to Lottie that she met everybody in the
place as she went home with her little parcel in her hand. She met Mr.
Ashford, for one, who was greatly surprised that she did not stop to
speak to him about Law, and who was, indeed, to tell the truth, somewhat
disappointed and chagrined that his liberality to his pupil had as yet
met with no response except from that pupil himself. The Minor Canon
looked at her wistfully; but Lottie, being full of her own thoughts, did
nothing but smile in reply to his bow. Then she met Captain Temple, who,
less shy, came to her side eagerly, complaining and upbraiding her that
she had deserted him.
“I never see you,” said the old man, “and my wife says the same, who
takes so much interest in you. We hope, my dear,” he said, kind yet half
vexed with her, “that all is going better--going well now?”
“Indeed it is not, Captain Temple,” Lottie said, tears coming suddenly
to her eyes. She could not but wonder what he would think of her if he
knew--if he would disapprove of her; and this sudden thought brought a
look of anxiety and sudden emotion into her face.
“My poor child!” cried the old Chevalier. The ready moisture sprang to
his eyes also. “Lottie,” he said, “my wife takes a great interest in
you; she would be very fond of you if she knew you better. Come to us,
my dear, and we will take care of you.” He said it with the fervour of
uncertainty, for he was not sure, after all, how far he could calculate
on his wife, and this gave a tremulous heat to his proposition.
But Lottie shook her head and smiled, though the tears were in her eyes.
Oh, if she only dared to tell him what was the deliverance which was so
near! He went with her to her door, repeating to her this offer of
service.
“You might be like our own child,” he said. “My wife cannot talk of
it--but she would be very fond of you, my dear, when she knew you. If
things go on badly, you will come to us?--say you will come to us,
Lottie.”
And while these words were in her ears, old Mrs. Dalrymple came out to
her door, to ask if Lottie would not come in, if she would come to
tea--if she would stay with them for a day or two.
“It is only next door, to be sure; but it would be a change,” the old
lady said. The ladies in the Lodges had forgiven her for her foolish
pride, and for the notice the great people had taken of her, and for all
the signs of discontent that Lottie had shown on her first coming to the
Abbey. Now that the girl was in trouble they were all good to her,
compassionate of her forlorn condition, and making common cause with her
against the infliction of the stepmother, who was an insult to every one
of them. There was not one Chevalier’s wife who was not personally
insulted, outraged in her most tender feelings, by the intrusion of
Polly, and this quickened their sympathies to the poor girl, who was the
most cruelly injured of all.
When Mrs. O’Shaughnessy saw the little group at her neighbour’s door,
she too came out. “It’s her own fault, my dear lady, if she ever eats a
meal there,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy; “me and the Major, we are both as
fond of her as if she was our own.”
Lottie stood amongst them and cried softly, taking care that her tears
did not drop upon the little parcel with the tulle, which was connected
with still dearer hopes.
“I don’t deserve that you should all be so good to me,” she said. And
indeed it was true; for Lottie had been very haughty in her time to the
kind people who forgave her in her trouble.
Thus it was that she shared the dinner of the good O’Shaughnessys, and
only went home in the afternoon, after Polly and the Captain had been
seen to go out; when Lottie shut herself up in her room, and with much
excitement began the “confection” for which she had bought the
materials. It is needless to say that with so little money as she had
ever had, Lottie had learnt, _tant bien que mal_, to make most of her
own articles of apparel. How she had sighed to have her dresses come
home all complete from the dressmaker’s, like Augusta Huntington’s! but
as sighing did no good, Lottie had fitted herself with her gowns, and
trimmed her little straw hats, and the occasional bonnet which she
permitted herself for going to church in, since ever she was able to use
her needle and her scissors. She had never, however, made anything so
ambitious as the little tulle bonnet which she meant to be married in.
She would have preferred a veil, could anyone doubt? but with no better
tiring-room than the waiting-room at the railway, how was she to put
herself into a veil? She had to give up that idea with a sigh. But, her
pale cheeks glowing with two roses, and her blue eyes lighted up with
the fires of invention, she sat all the afternoon, with her door locked,
making that bonnet. If she but had a little sprig of orange-blossom to
mark what it meant! but here Lottie’s courage failed her. _That_ she
could not venture to buy.
In this way the days glided on till Friday came. Lottie packed up the
things she cared for--the few books, the little trifling possessions of
no value, which yet were dear to her to be removed afterwards, and put
up her little bonnet (bonnets were worn very small, the fashion books
said) in a tiny parcel which she could carry in her hand. Thus all her
preparations were made. When she was not in her room making these last
arrangements, she was out of doors--in the Abbey or on the Slopes--or
with the friends who sought her so kindly, and gave her such meals as
she would accept, and would have given her a great many more,
overwhelmed her, indeed, with eating and drinking if she would have
consented. To some of these Lottie allowed herself the privilege of
saying that it was only for a few days she should remain in her father’s
house. She would not tell where she was going; to friends--yes,
certainly to friends; but she would not say any more. This gave great
relief to the minds of the Chevaliers generally, except to Captain
Temple, who did not like it. The announcement even drew from him
something like a reproach to his wife.
“If you had come forward--if you had gone to her when she was in
trouble,” he said, “we might have had a child again to comfort us.” The
old Captain was sadly put out, and did nothing but roam about all the
day restless and lamenting. He went to the Signor’s to hear what Lottie
thought would be her last lesson, and thus bemoaned himself.
“Going away!” the Signor said in great surprise; and Lottie sang so well
that day that the musician felt the desertion doubly. She sang fitfully
but finely, saying to herself all the time, “To-morrow--to-morrow!” and
taking her leave, as she supposed, joyfully, regretfully of Art. That
day Lottie thought nothing whatever about Art. Her spirit was moved to
its very depths. To-morrow the man whom she loved was coming to take her
away from all that was petty, all that was unlovely in her life. From
the hardness of fate, from the unkindness of her family, from the house
that was desecrated, from the existence which was not made sweet by any
love--he was coming to deliver her. The air was all excitement, all
agitation, to Lottie. It was not so much that she was glad--happiness
was in it, and trouble, and regret, and agitation, made up by all these
together. It was life in its strongest strain, tingling, throbbing, at
the highest pressure. The earth was elastic under her feet, the whole
world was full of this which was about to happen; and how she sang!
Those lessons of hers were as a drama to the Signor, but he did not
understand this art. He had understood the struggle she made to get hold
of her powers on the day when Rollo was not there, and Lottie had made a
proud, forlorn attempt to devote herself to Song, as Song; he had
understood the confusion and bewildered discouragement of the day when
Mrs. Daventry assisted at the lesson; but this time the Signor was
puzzled. There was nothing to excite her, only Mrs. O’Shaughnessy and
Captain Temple, listeners who cared nothing for art, but only for
Lottie; yet how she sang! He made her a little solemn compliment, almost
for the first time.
“Miss Despard,” he said, “you change from lesson to lesson--it is always
another voice I hear; but this is the one I should like to retain; this
is the one that shows what wonderful progress we have made.”
Lottie smiled in a way which nearly won the Signor’s steady heart. A
golden dazzlement of light got into her eyes, as if the slanting
afternoon sun was in them. She did not speak, but she gave him her
hand--a thing which was very rare with Lottie. The Signor was flattered
and touched; but he would not have been so flattered had he known that
she was saying to herself, “It is the last time--it is the last!”
Mr. Ashford met the party coming out, and walked with them along the
north side of the Abbey and through the cloisters. He could not make out
why Lottie said nothing to him about her brother. To tell the truth, he
wanted to have something for his money, and it did not seem that he was
likely to get anything. He said to her at last, abruptly, “I hope you
think Law is likely to do well, Miss Despard?”
“Law?” she said, looking up with wondering eyes.
He was so confounded by her look of bewilderment that he did not say
anything more.
Next day dawned bright and fair, as it ought. A fair, clear, sunny
winter’s day--not a leaf, even of those few that hung upon the ends of
the boughs, stirring--not a cloud. Earth in such a day seems hanging
suspended in the bright sphere, not certain yet whether she will turn
back again to the careless summer, or go through her winter spell of
storm duty. Lottie had all her preparations made; her dress ready to put
on in the morning; her little bonnet done up in a parcel incredibly
small, a veil looped about it; and the great cloak, a homely waterproof,
which was to cover her from head to foot, and conceal her finery, hung
out all ready. Everything ready--nothing now to be done but to meet him
on the Slopes, and to hear how all had been settled, and arrange for the
final meeting on the wedding morning. Even her railway fare, so many
shillings, was put ready. She would not let him pay even that for her
until she belonged to him. She went out with the dreamy sweetness of the
approaching climax in her eyes when the last rays of the sunset were
catching all the Abbey pinnacles. She scarcely saw the path over which
her light feet skimmed. The people who passed her glided like the
people in a dream; the absorbing sweet agitation of happiness and fear,
and hope and content, was in all her veins; her eyes were suffused with
light as eyes get suffused with tears--an indescribable elation and
alarm, sweet panic, yet calm, was in her breast. Mr. Ashford met her
going along, swift and light, and with that air of abstraction from
everything around her. She did not see him, nor anyone; but she
remembered after, that she _had_ seen him, and the very turn of the road
where he made a half pause to speak to her, which she had not taken any
notice of. In this soft rapture Lottie went to the corner of the bench
under the elm-tree. It was too early, but she placed herself there to
wait till he should come to her. This was the place where he was certain
to come. By-and-by she would hear his step, skimming too, almost as
light and quick as her own--or hear him vaulting over the low wall from
the Deanery--or perhaps, to attract less notice, coming up the winding
way from the Slopes. Where she sat was within reach of all the three. It
was a little chilly now that the sun had gone down, but Lottie did not
feel it. She sat down with a smile of happy anticipation on her face,
hearing the Abbey bells in the clear frosty air, and then the bursting
forth of the organ and all the strains of the music. These filled up her
thoughts for the time, and it was not till the larger volume of sound
of the voluntary put Lottie in mind of the length of time she had
waited, that she woke up to think of the possibility that something
might have detained her lover. It was strange that he should be so late.
The light was waning, and the sounds about were eerie; the wind that had
lain so still all day woke up, and wandered chilly among the bare
shrubberies, tossing off the late leaves. She shivered a little with the
cold and the waiting. Why did not he come? the hour of stillness was
passing fast, the organ pealing, the light fading moment by moment. Why
was not Rollo here?
At last there was a step. It was not light and quick like his step; but
something might have happened to make it sound differently--something in
the air, or something in him, some gravity of movement befitting the
importance of the occasion. So anxiety beguiles itself, trying to
believe what it wishes. The step came nearer, and Lottie roused herself,
a little alarmed, wondering if anything (she could not tell what) could
have happened to him--and looked round. A figure--a man coming her
way--her heart jumped into her throat, then sank down, down, with a
flutter of fright and pain. It was not Rollo--but what then? it might be
only some chance passer-by, not having anything to do with her and him.
Another moment, and she waited with an agonised hope that he was
passing along without taking any notice, and that he had indeed nothing
at all to do with her. But the steady step came on--nearer, nearer. She
raised her head, she opened her eyes that had been veiled in such sweet
dreams, with a wideness of fear and horror. What could he have to do
with her? What had he come to tell her? The man came up to her straight,
without any hesitation. He said, “Are you Miss Despard, ma’am? I was
sent to give you this from my lord.”
My lord--who was my lord? She took it with a gasp of terror. It was not
Rollo that was my lord. The man, a middle-aged, respectable servant,
gave her a look of grave pity and went away. Lottie sat still for a
moment with the letter in her hand, thinking with wild impatience that
the sound of those heavy departing steps would prevent her from hearing
Rollo’s light ones when he came. My lord--who was my lord? Suddenly an
idea seized upon her. The light was almost gone. She tore the letter
open, and read it by the faint chill shining of the skies, though it was
almost too dark to see.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE END OF THE DREAM.
Captain Temple was an old soldier, whose habit it was to get up very
early in the morning. He said afterwards that he had never got up so
early as on that morning, feeling a certain pride in it, as showing the
magical power of sympathy and tenderness. He woke before it was light.
It had been raining in the night, and the morning was veiled with
showers; when the light came at last, it was white and misty. He was
ready to go out before anyone was stirring. Not a soul, not even the
milkman, was astir in the Dean’s Walk. The blinds were still down over
his neighbours’ windows. The only one drawn up, he noticed in passing,
was Lottie’s. Was she too early, like himself? the question went through
his mind as he passed. Poor child! her life was not a happy one. How
different, he could not help feeling, how different his own girl would
have been had she but been spared to them! He shook his white head,
though he was all alone, wailing, almost remonstrating, with Providence.
How strange that the blessing should be with those who did not know how
to prize it, while those who did were left desolate! The Captain’s step
rang through the silent place. There was no one about; the Abbey stood
up grey and still with the morning mists softly breaking from about it,
and here and there, behind and around, smoke rose from some homely roof,
betraying the first signs of waking life, Captain Temple walked briskly
to the Slopes; it was his favourite walk. He made one or two turns up
and down all the length of the level promenade, thinking about her--how
often she had come with him here: but lately she had avoided him. He
paused when he had made two or three turns, and leaned over the low
parapet wall, looking down upon the misty landscape. The river ran
swiftly at the foot of the hill, shewing in a pale gleam here and there.
The bare branches of the trees were all jewelled coldly with drops of
rain. It began to drizzle again as he stood gazing over the misty wet
champaign in the stillness of the early morning. He was the only
conscious tenant of this wide world of earth and sky. Smoke rising from
the houses in the town, and a faint stir was beginning; but here on the
hill there was no stir or waking movement, save only his own.
What was that? a sound--he turned round quickly--he could not tell what
it was; was there someone about after all, someone else as early as
himself? But he could see nobody. There was not a step nor a visible
movement, but there was a sense of a human presence, a feeling of
somebody near him. He turned round with an anxiety which he could not
explain to himself. Why should he be anxious? but it pleased him
afterwards to remember that all his sensations this morning were
strange, uncalled for, beyond his own control. He peered anxiously about
among the bushes and bare stems of the trees. At last it seemed to him
that he saw something in the corner of the bench under the elm-tree. He
turned that way, now with his old heart beating, but altogether
unprepared for the piteous sight that met his eyes. She was so slim, so
slight, her dress so heavy and clinging with the rain, that a careless
passer-by might never have seen her. He hurried to the place with a
little cry. Her head drooped upon the rough wooden back of the seat, her
hands were wrapped in her cloak, nothing visible of her but a face as
white as death, and wet--was it with rain or with tears? Her eyes were
closed, her long dark eyelashes drooping over her cheek. But for her
frightful paleness she would have looked like a child who had lost its
way, and cried itself to sleep. “Lottie!” cried the old man; “Lottie!”
But she made no response. She did not even open her eyes. Was she
sleeping, or, good God----! He put his hand on her shoulder. “Lottie,
Lottie, my dear child!” he cried into her ear. When after a while a deep
sigh came from her breast, the old man could have wept for joy. She was
living then. He thought for a moment what was to be done; some help
seemed indispensable to him; then rushed away down through the cloisters
to the house of Mr. Ashford, which was one of the nearest. The Minor
Canon was coming downstairs; he had something to do which called him out
early. He paused in some surprise at the sight of his visitor, but
Captain Temple stopped the question on his lips. “Will you come with
me?” he cried; “come with me--I want you,” and caught him by the sleeve
in his eagerness. Mr. Ashford felt that there was that in the old man’s
haggard face which would not bear questioning. He followed him, scarcely
able in the fulness of his strength to keep up with the nervous steps of
his guide. “God knows if she has been there all night,” the Captain
said. “I cannot get her to move. And now the whole place will be astir.
If I could get her home before anybody knows! They have driven her out
of her sweet senses,” he said, gasping for breath as he hurried along.
“I came for you because you are her friend, and I could trust you. Oh,
why is a jewel like that given to those who do not prize it, Mr.
Ashford, and taken from those that do? Why is it? why is it? they have
broken her heart.” The Minor Canon asked no questions; he felt that he
too knew by instinct what it was. The rain had come on more heavily,
small and soft, without any appearance of storm, but penetrating and
continuous. The Captain hurried on to the corner where he had left her.
Lottie had moved her head; she had been roused by his first appeal from
the stupor into which she had fallen; her eyes were open, her mind
slowly coming, if not to itself, at least to some consciousness of the
external world and her place in it. The instinct that so seldom abandons
a woman, that of concealing her misery, had begun to dawn in her--the
first sign of returning life.
“Lottie, Lottie, my dear child, you must not sit here in the rain. Come,
my pet, come. We have come to fetch you. Come to your mother, or at
least to one who will be like a mother. Come, my poor dear, come home
with me.” The old man was almost sobbing as he took into his her cold
hands.
Lottie did her best to respond. She attempted to smile, she attempted to
speak mechanically. “Yes,” she said, under her breath; “I will
come--directly. It is--raining.” Her voice was almost gone; it was all
they could do to make out what she said.
“And here is a kind friend who will give you his arm, who will help you
along,” said Captain Temple. He stopped short--frightened by the change
that came over her face; an awful look of hope, of wonder, woke in her
eyes, which looked preternaturally large, luminous, and drowsy. She
stirred in her seat, moving with a little moan of pain, and attempted to
turn round to look behind her.
“Who is it?” she whispered. “Who is it? is it--you?”
Who did she expect it to be? Mr. Ashford, greatly moved, stepped forward
quickly and raised her from her seat. It was no time for politeness. He
drew her arm within his, not looking at her. “Support her,” he said
quickly to Captain Temple, “on the other side.” The Minor Canon never
looked at Lottie as he half carried her along that familiar way. He did
not dare to spy into her secret, but he guessed at it. The hand which he
drew through his arm held a letter. He knew none of the steps which had
led to this, but he thought he knew what had happened. As for Captain
Temple, he did not do much of his share of the work; he held her elbow
with his trembling hand, and looked pitifully into her face, knowing
nothing at all. “My poor dear,” he said, “you shall not go back--you
shall not be made miserable; you are mine now. I have found you, and I
shall keep you, Lottie. It is not like a stepmother that my Mary will
be. My love, we will say nothing about it, we will not blame anyone; but
now you belong to me.” What he said was as the babbling of a child to
Lottie, and to the other who divined her; but they let him talk, and the
old man seemed to himself to understand the position entirely. “They
have driven her out of her senses,” he said to his wife; “so far as I
can see she has been out on the Slopes all night, sitting on that bench.
She will be ill, she is sure to be ill--she is drenched to the skin.
Think if it had been our own girl! But I will never let her go into the
hands of those wretches again.”
No one of the principal actors in this strange incident ever told the
story, yet it was known all through the Abbey precincts in a few
hours--with additions--that Captain Despard’s new wife had driven her
step-daughter out of the house by her ill-usage; turned her to the door,
some said; and that the poor girl, distracted and solitary, had spent
the night on the Slopes, in the cold, in the rain, and had been found
there by Captain Temple. “When we were all in our comfortable beds,” the
good people cried with angry tears, and an indignation beyond words.
Captain Despard came in from matins in a state of alarm indescribable,
and besought his wife to keep indoors, not to allow herself to be seen.
No one in the house had known of Lottie’s absence during the night. She
was supposed to be “sulky,” as Polly called it, and shut up in her own
room. When she did not appear at breakfast, indeed, there had been some
surprise, and a slight consternation, but even then no very lively
alarm. “She’s gone off, as she said she would,” Polly said, tossing her
head; and the Captain had, though with some remorse and compunction,
satisfied himself that it was only an escapade on Lottie’s part, which
would be explained by the post, or which Law would know about, or Mrs.
O’Shaughnessy. Law had gone out early, before breakfast. It was natural
to suppose he would know--or still more likely that his sister had gone
with him, on some foolish walk, or other expedition. “I don’t mean to
hurt your feelings,” Polly cried, “but I shouldn’t break my heart,
Harry, if they’d gone for good, and left us the house to ourselves.”
When Captain Despard came in from matins, however, the case was very
different; he came in pale with shame and consternation, and ready to
blame his wife for everything. “This is what has come of your nagging
and your impudence,” he said; and Polly flew to arms, as was natural,
and there was a hot and dangerous encounter. The Captain went out,
swearing and fuming, recommending her if she prized her own safety not
to show herself out of doors. “You will be mobbed,” he said; “and you
will well deserve it.”
“I’m going to put my hat on,” said Polly, “and let them all see what a
coward you are, as won’t stand up for your wife.” But when he had
slammed the door emphatically after him, Polly sat down and had a good
cry, and did not put on her hat. Oh, what a foolish thing it is, she
repeated, to marry a man with grown-up children! It was nature, and not
anything she had done, that was in fault.
Lottie made no resistance when she found herself in Mrs. Temple’s care.
To have her wet things taken off, to have a hundred cares lavished upon
her, as she lay aching and miserable in the bed that had been prepared
for her, soothed her at least, if they did nothing more. Chilled in
every bit of her body, chilled to her heart, the sensation of warmth,
when at last it stole over her, broke a little the stony front of her
wretchedness. She never knew how she had passed that miserable night.
The fabric of her happiness had fallen down on every side, and crushed
her. Her heart had been so confident, her hopes so certain. She had not
doubted, as women so often do, or even thought it within the compass of
possibility that Rollo could fail her. How could she suppose it? and,
when it came, she was crushed to the ground. The earth seemed to have
opened under her feet; everything failed her when that one thing in
which all her faith was placed failed. She had sat through the darkness,
not able to think, conscious of nothing but misery, not aware how the
time was passing, taking no note of the coming of the night, or of the
bewildering chimes from the Abbey of hour after hour and quarter after
quarter. Quarter or hour, what did it matter to her? what did she know
of the hurrying, flying time, or its stupefying measures? It began to
rain, and she did not care. She cared for nothing--not the cold, nor the
dark, nor the whispering of the night wind among the bare branches, the
mysterious noises of the night. The pillars of the earth, the arch of
the sweet sky, had fallen. There was nothing in all the world but dismal
failure and heart-break to Lottie. In the long vigil, even the cause of
this horrible downfall seemed to fade out of her mind. The pain in her
heart, the oppression of her brain, the failing of all things--hope,
courage, faith--was all she was conscious of. Rollo--her thoughts
avoided his name, as a man who is wounded shrinks from any touch; and at
last everything had fallen into one stupor of misery. That it was the
night which she was spending there, under the dark sky, just light
enough to show the darker branches waving over it, the rain falling from
it, Lottie was unconscious. She had nowhere to go, she had no wish to go
anywhere; shelter was indifferent to her, and one place no more
miserable than another. When Captain Temple roused her, there came
vaguely to her mind a sense that her feelings must be hid, that she must
try to be as other people, not betraying her own desolation; and this
was the feeling that again woke feebly in her when Mrs. Temple took her
place by the bedside where Lottie was lying. She tried to make some
feeble excuse, an excuse which in the desperation of her mind did not
sound so artificial as it was. “I give you a great deal of trouble,” she
faltered.
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Temple, with tears, “do not say so; let me do
what I can for you--only trust in me, trust in me.”
Lottie could not trust in anyone. She tried to smile. She was past all
confidences, past all revelation of herself or her trouble. And thus
she lay for days, every limb aching with the exposure, her breathing
difficult, her breast throbbing, her heart beating, her voice gone.
Downstairs there was many an anxious talk over her between the three
most intimately concerned. The old Captain held by his simple idea that
she had been driven from home by her stepmother, that idea which all the
Abbey had adopted. The Minor Canon was not of that opinion. He came
every day to ask for the patient, and would sit and listen to all they
could tell him, and to the Captain’s tirades against Polly. “I think
there was something more than that,” he would say. And Mrs. Temple
looked at him with a look of understanding. “I think so too,” she said.
Mrs. Temple had disengaged out of Lottie’s cold hand the letter which
she had been grasping unawares. She had not been able to resist looking
at it, telling herself that she ought to know what was the cause. These
two alone had any idea of it, and no one spoke to Lottie, nor did she
speak to anyone of the cause of her vigil. She lay in a silent paradise
of warmth and rest, cared for and watched at every turn she made, as she
had never been in her life before. And by degrees the pain stole out of
her limbs, her cough was got under, and the fever in her veins subdued.
Of two things only Lottie did not mend. Her heart seemed dead in her
bosom, and her voice was gone. She could neither sing any more, nor be
happy any more; these are things which neither doctor nor nurse can
touch, but for all the rest her natural health and strength soon
triumphed. Her brain, which had tottered for a moment, righted itself
and regained its force. She had no fever, though everybody expected it.
She did not fall into “a decline,” as was universally thought. She got
better, but she did not get happy, nor did she recover her voice. When
she was able to be brought downstairs, the good people who had taken her
up made a little _fête_ of her recovery. Mr. Ashford was asked to
dinner, and the room was filled with flowers, rare hothouse flowers, on
which the old Captain spent a great deal more than he could afford to
spend. “To please the poor child, my dear,” he said, apologetically; and
Mrs. Temple had not a word to say. She winced still when in his simple
way he would speak of “our own girl,” but in her heart she made a kind
of religion of Lottie, feeling sometimes, poor soul, as if she were thus
heaping coals of fire, whatever they may be, upon the head--though it
might be blasphemy to put it into words--of Him who had bereaved her. He
had taken her child from her, and she had been angry, and perhaps had
sinned in the bitterness of her grief; but now here was a child who was
His--for are not all the helpless His?--whom she would not cast from
her, whom she would take to her bosom and cherish, to show Him (was
it?) that she was more tender than even the Father of all. “Thou hast
taken mine from me, but I have not closed my heart to thine,” was what,
all unawares, the woman’s heart said; for she was angry still, being a
mother, and unable to see why she should have been bereaved.
A few days after Lottie had begun to be brought downstairs (for this was
done without any will of hers), a visit was paid to her which had no
small effect upon her life. She was seated in the invalid’s place near
the fire, a little table by her side with flowers on it, and a new book,
and _Punch_, and the illustrated papers, all the little innocent
_gâteries_ of which the old Captain could think, the trifles which make
the days of a happy convalescent sweet, and which Lottie tried hard to
look as if she cared for; and with Mrs. Temple near her, watching her to
see lest she should be too warm or too cold, lest she should want
anything, with the anxious care of a mother. There was a prancing of
horses outside the door, a tremendous knock, a rustle of silk, and
wafting of perfume, and the door was opened and Mrs. Daventry announced.
Augusta came in with a sweep which filled Mrs. Temple’s little
drawing-room. There did not seem room for its legitimate inmates in that
redundant presence. Mrs. Temple ran to her patient, thinking Lottie was
about to faint, but she recovered herself enough to smile faintly at
Augusta when she spoke, which was as much as she did to anyone. Augusta
seated herself opposite the convalescent, her train falling round her in
heavy masses--the one all wealth and commotion and importance, the other
so pale, so slight in her weakness, her brown merino dress hanging
loosely upon her. Mrs. Temple was not made much account of by the fine
lady, who made her a slight salutation, half bow, half curtsey, and took
no further notice of “the people of the house.”
“Well,” she said, “how are you, and what has been the matter? There are
the most extraordinary stories told about you. I have come to find out
what is really the matter, Lottie. Mamma wishes to know too. You know
you were always a kind of favourite with mamma.”
“I will tell you about her illness,” said Mrs. Temple. “She is scarcely
well enough yet to enter into details.”
“Oh,” said Augusta, gazing blankly upon the “person of the house,”--then
she returned to Lottie again. “I don’t want you to enter into details;
but they say the most extraordinary things; they say you were turned out
of doors, and stayed all night on the Slopes--that, of course, can’t be
true--but I wish you would tell me what is true, that I may give the
right version of the story. Mamma is quite anxious to know.”
“Lottie, my dear, I will tell Mrs. Daventry,” said Mrs. Temple, “it is
too much for you;” and she held her point and recounted her little story
with a primness which suited her voice and manner. Many were the
demonstrations of impatience which the fine lady made, but it was not in
her power to struggle against Mrs. Temple’s determination. She turned to
Lottie again as soon as the tale was told.
“Is that true? Only a very bad cold, and influenza from getting wet? Oh,
we heard a great deal more than that; and your voice--we heard you had
quite lost your voice. I promised the Signor to inquire. He is quite
anxious, he always thought so much of your voice. He is an odd man,”
said Augusta, giving a blow in passing, “he thinks so differently from
other people about many things. I promised to find out for him all about
it. Have you really, really lost your voice, as everybody says?”
It was curious that Lottie, who had never been concerned about her
voice, who had never cared anything about it, who had not wanted to be a
singer at all, should feel, even in the midst of the greater and deeper
unhappiness that possessed her, a distinct sting of pain as she heard
this question. Her paleness was flushed with a sudden painful colour.
She looked at Mrs. Temple wistfully again.
“You can hear that she is hoarse,” said Mrs. Temple; “a very common
consequence of a cold. She has lost her voice for the moment, but we
hope to find it again.”
“I think she must be dumb altogether, as she never answers me,” said
Augusta, fretfully. Then she tried another subject, with a triumphant
certainty of success. “I don’t know if you have heard of our trouble,”
she said, looking at her black dress. “You remember, Lottie, my cousin,
Mr. Ridsdale? Oh, yes; you knew him a little, I think.”
Once more Lottie’s pale face flushed with painful overwhelming colour.
She looked up with alarmed and troubled eyes.
“Oh, I see you remember him; he was such a flirt, he was always making
himself agreeable to women. It did not matter who they were,” said
Augusta, fixing her eyes on her victim’s face, “or what class of people,
so long as they were at all nice-looking, or could sing, or draw, or
anything. I remember I sent him out to try whether he could not hear you
sing the very day I was married. He was another of the people who
believed in you, Lottie. He did not hear you then, so he made mamma ask
you, you remember. He had something to do with a new opera company, and
he was always on the look-out for a new voice.”
Once more Lottie turned her eyes upon Mrs. Temple, eyes full of anguish
and wonder. Who else could she turn to?--not to the cruel executioner
who sat opposite to her, with a lurking smile about her heartless
mouth. How cruel a woman can be with a fair face, and no signs of the
savage in her! Augusta saw that her arrow had struck home, and was
encouraged to do more.
“Oh, yes; he was in a great state about your voice. He said it would
make his fortune and yours too. He was always ridiculously sanguine. You
know how he used to flatter you, Lottie, and go to all your lessons. Oh,
you must not tell me that you don’t remember, for I could see you liked
it. Well,” said Augusta, who did not lose a single change of colour, no
quiver of her victim’s lips, or flutter of her bosom, “that sort of
thing is all over now. Oh, I daresay he will continue to take a great
interest as an amateur; but his position is now entirely changed. My
poor cousin Ridsdale, Rollo’s eldest brother, was killed in the
hunting-field about a fortnight ago. Such a shock for us all! but it has
made a great change for Rollo. He is Lord Ridsdale now, and my uncle
Courtland’s heir. His servant came last Friday week to fetch some things
he had left at the Deanery--for he had gone away for the day only, not
knowing what had happened. Poor fellow; and yet, of course, though he
was truly grieved and all that, it is great good fortune for him. We are
not likely _now_” Augusta added, with a faint smile, “to see much of him
here.”
Lottie did not say a word. She sat, no longer changing colour, perfectly
pale, with the great blue eyes that had so expanded and dilated during
her illness, fixed upon the vacant air. To hear him named was still
something, and filled her with a sick excitement, an anguish of interest
and agitation. After the long silence, after the cutting of all ties,
after his cruel desertion of her, after the blow which had all but
killed her, to hear of him had been something. Pain--yet a pain she was
more eager to undergo than to meet any pleasure. But Lottie had not
calculated upon the cruel, treacherous, yet careless, blow which fell
upon her now, upon her quivering wounds. To hear her voice, was that
what it was? not to see her because he loved her, but to hear her
singing. Till now she had at least had her past. He was false, and had
forsaken her, she knew, but once he had loved her; the Rollo who gazed
up in the moonlight at her window had still been hers, though another
Rollo had betrayed her trust and broken her heart. But now! the blood
ebbed away from her face, and seemed to fail from her heart; the beating
of it grew confused and muffled in her ears. She gazed with her great
eyes, all strained and pained with gazing, at nothing. To hear her sing,
not seeking her, but only running after a new voice! She sat with her
hands clasped upon her lap in a kind of piteous appeal, and sometimes
would look at the one and then the other, asking them--was it true,
could it be true?
“I must go,” said Augusta, having fired her shot, “and I am glad to
have such a good account of you. Only a bad cold and a hoarseness, such
as are quite common. Mamma will be pleased to hear, and so will the
Signor. I can’t tell him anything about your voice, because you have not
let me hear it, Lottie. Oh, quite prudent--much the best thing not to
use it at all; though with an old friend, to be sure--you look rather
ill, I am bound to say.”
Lottie sat still in the same attitude after this cruel visitor was gone,
all her thoughts going back upon that time, which after all was only a
few months, yet which seemed her life. She had given him up, or rather
she had accepted his abandonment of her, without a struggle, without a
hope; it had been to her as a doom out of Heaven. She had not even
blamed him. It had killed her, she thought. She had not resisted, but it
had killed her. Now, however, she could not submit. In her heart she
fought wildly against this last, most cruel blow. He was not hers, he
was cut off from her, by his own murderous hand; but to give up the
lover who had loved her before he knew her, who had watched under her
window and wiled her heart away, that she could not do. She fought
against it passionately in her soul. The afternoon went on without a
sound, nothing but the ashes softly falling from the fire, the soft
movement of Mrs. Temple’s arm as she worked; but the silence tingled all
the time with the echo of Augusta’s words, and with the hot conflict of
recollections in her own heart, opposing and denying them. Mrs. Temple
worked quietly by and watched, divining something of the struggle,
though she did not know what it was. At last, all at once in the
stillness, the girl broke forth passionately: “Oh, no, no,” she cried,
“not that! I will not believe it. Not that; it is not true.”
“What is not true, dear? tell me,” her companion said, laying down her
work, and coming forward with tender hands outstretched, and pity in her
eyes.
“You heard her,” Lottie said, “you heard her. That it was to hear me
singing--that it was all for my voice. No, no, not that! It could not
be--_that_ was not true. You could not believe _that_ was true.”
And Lottie looked at her piteously, clasping her hands, entreating her
with those pathetic eyes for a little comfort. “Not that, not that,” she
said. “My singing, was it likely? Oh you cannot think _that_!” she
cried.
Mrs. Temple did all she could to soothe her. “My poor child, it is all
over--over and ended--what does it matter now?”
“It matters all the world to me,” Lottie cried. Kind as her new guardian
was, she could not understand that even when her happiness and her hopes
were all crushed, it was a bitterness more exquisite, a sting the girl
could not bear to believe that her foundations had been sand, that she
had been deluded from the beginning, that the love she trusted in had
never been. This sting was so keen and sharp that it woke her from the
apathy of despair that was creeping over her. She was roused to
struggle, to a passion of resistance and denial. “How can anyone but I
know how it was? It all came from that; without that I should never have
thought--we should never have met. It was the beginning. How can anyone
know but me?” she cried, contending as against some adversary. When the
first strain of this conflict was over, she turned, faltering, to her
kind guardian. “I had a letter,” she said; “it was _the_ letter. I
cannot find it.” She gave her a look of entreaty which went to Mrs.
Temple’s heart.
“I have got your letter, Lottie. I have it in my desk, put away. No one
has seen it. Let me put it into the fire.”
“Ah, no! perhaps there may be something in it different from what I
thought.”
She held out her hands supplicating, and Mrs. Temple went to her desk
and took out an envelope. Within was something all stained and blurred.
The rain had half washed the cruel words away. Once for all, as Rollo’s
last act and deed, and suicidal exit from this history, the letter shall
be copied here. Imagine how Lottie had been sitting, all happiness and
soft agitation and excitement, waiting for him when this curt epistle
came:--
“DEAR LOTTIE,--
“An extraordinary change has happened in my life--not my doing, but
that of Providence. It gives me new duties, and a new existence
altogether. What we have been thinking of cannot be. It is
impossible in every way. For me to do what I promised to you was,
when we parted, a sacrifice which I was willing to make, but now is
an impossibility. I am afraid you will feel this very much--and
don’t think I don’t feel it; but it is an impossibility. I have
things to do and a life to lead that makes it impossible. I hope
soon someone will be raised up for you when you want it most, to
give you the help and assistance I would so gladly have given.
Could I but know that you assented to this, that you saw the reason
for my conduct, I should be as happy as I now can ever be; and I
hope that you will do so when you can look at it calmly. Farewell,
dear Lottie, think of me with as little anger as you can, for it is
not I, but Providence. Your voice will soon make you independent;
it is only a momentary disappointment, I know, and I cannot help
it. To do what we settled to do is now an impossibility--an
impossibility. Dear Lottie, farewell!
“R. R.”
Underneath, _Forgive me_ was scrawled hastily, as if by an afterthought.
In the calm warm room, in the dull afternoon, under the eyes of her
tender nurse, Lottie read over again this letter, which she had read
with incredulous wonder, with stupefying misery, by the dim light of the
evening under the black waving branches of the leafless trees. She gave
a cry of anguish, of horror, of indignation and shame, and with
trembling hands folded it up, and put it within its cover, and thrust it
back into Mrs. Temple’s keeping. “Oh, take it, take it,” she cried
wildly; “keep it, it has killed me. Perhaps--perhaps! the other is true
too.”
CHAPTER XLIV.
APRÈS?
Law had been living a busy life at the time of this crisis and climax of
his sister’s existence. He had spent day after day in London, lost in
that dangerous and unaccustomed delight of spending money, which is only
tasted in its full flavour by those who are little accustomed to have
any money to spend. Law was tempted by a hundred things which would have
been no temptation at all to more experienced travellers--miracles of
convenience and cheapness, calculated to smooth the path of the
emigrant, but which were apt, on being bought, to turn out both
worthless and expensive--and many a day the young fellow came home
penitent and troubled, though he started every morning with an
ever-renewed confidence in his own wisdom. Lottie’s sudden illness had
checked these preparations in mid-career. He had lost the ship in which
he meant to have made his voyage, and though he bore the delay with
Christian resignation, it was hard to keep from thinking sometimes that
Lottie could not have chosen a worse moment for being ill--a little
later, or a little earlier, neither would have mattered half so
much--but at the very moment when he was about to sail! However, he
allowed impartially that it was not his sister’s fault, and did not deny
her his sympathy. Law, however, had never been satisfied about the cause
of her illness. He did not know why she should have sat out on the
Slopes all night. Polly--he refused the idea that it was Polly. Mrs.
Despard was bad enough, but not so bad as that; nor did Lottie care
enough for the intruder to allow herself to be driven out in this way.
But Law kept this conviction to himself, and outwardly accepted the
story, not even asking any explanation from his sister. Whatever was the
real reason, it was no doubt the same cause which kept her from
listening to him when he had tried to tell her of the new step in his
own career, and the unexpected liberality of the Minor Canon. “If it had
but been he!” Law said to himself--for indeed he, who knew the value of
money, never entertained any doubt as to Mr. Ashford’s meaning in
befriending him; he was a great deal more clear about this than Mr.
Ashford himself.
He lost his passage by the ship with which he had originally intended to
go. It was a great disappointment, but what could he do? He could not
start off for the Antipodes when his sister might be dying. And as for
his own affairs, they had not come to any satisfactory settlement.
Instead of saying yes or no to his question to her, Emma, when he had
seen her, had done everything a girl could do to make him change his
intention. To make _him_ change his intention!--the very idea of this
filled him with fierce scorn. It was quite simple that she should make
up her mind to leave everything she cared for, for love of him; but that
he should change his purpose for love of her, was an idea so absurd that
Law laughed at the simplicity of it. As well expect the Abbey tower to
turn round with the wind as the weathercock did; but yet Law did not
object to stroll down to the River Lane in the evenings, when he had
nothing else to do, sometimes finding admission to the workroom when the
mother was out of the way, demanding to know what was Emma’s decision,
and smiling at her entreaties. She cried, clasping her hands with much
natural eloquence, while she tried to persuade him; but Law laughed.
“Are you coming with me?” he said--he gave no answer to the other
suggestion--and by this time he had fully made up his mind that she did
not mean to come, and was not very sorry. He had done his duty by
her--he had not been false, nor separated himself from old friends when
prosperity came; no one could say that of him. But still he was not
sorry to make his start alone--to go out to the new world unencumbered.
Nevertheless, though they both knew this was how it would end, it still
amused Law in his unoccupied evenings to do his little love-making at
the corner of the River Lane, by the light of the dull lamp, and it
pleased Emma to be made love to. They availed themselves of this
diversion of the moment, though it often led to trouble, and sometimes
to tears; and Emma for her part suffered many scoldings in consequence.
The game, it is to be supposed, was worth the candle, though it was
nothing but a game after all.
On the day after Mrs. Daventry’s visit, Lottie sent for her brother. He
found her no longer a languid invalid, but with a fire of fervid energy
in her eyes.
“Law,” she said, “I want you to tell me what you are going to do. You
told me once, and I did not pay any attention--I had other--other things
in my mind. Tell me now, Law.”
Then he told her all that had happened, and all he had been doing. “It
was your sense, Lottie, after all,” he said. “You were always the one
that had the sense. Who would have thought when I went to old Ashford to
be coached, that he would come forward like this, and set me up for
life? Nor he wouldn’t have done that much either,” Law added, with a
laugh, “but for you!”
“Law,” cried Lottie, with that fire in her eyes, “this was what we
wanted all the time, though we did not know it. It was always an office
I was thinking of--and that I would be your housekeeper--your servant if
we were too poor to keep a servant; but this is far better. Now we are
free--we have only each other in the world. When must we go?”
“We!” cried Law, completely taken aback. He looked at her with dismay.
“You don’t mean you are coming? You don’t suppose I--can take you.”
“Yes,” she cried, “yes,” with strange vehemence. “Were we not always to
be together? I never thought otherwise--that was always what I
meant--until----”
“Ah,” said Law, “that is just it--until! When you’re very young,” he
continued, with great seriousness, “you think like that--yes, you think
like that. A sister comes natural--you’ve always been used to her; but
then, Lottie, you know as well as I do that don’t last.”
“Oh, yes--it lasts,” cried Lottie: “other things come and go. You
suppose you want something more--and then trouble comes, and you
remember that there is nobody so near. Who could be so near? I know all
you like and what is best for you, and we have always been together.
Law, I have had things to make me unhappy--and I have no home, no place
to live in.”
“I thought,” said Law, severely, “that they were very kind to you here.”
“Kind! it is more than that,” cried Lottie, her hot eyes moistening.
“They are like--I do not know what they are like--like nothing but
themselves; but I do not belong to them. What right have I to be here?
and oh, Law, you don’t know----. To walk about here again--to live,
where one has almost died--to see the same things--the place--where it
all happened----”
Lottie was stopped by the gasp of weeping that came into her throat. She
ended with a low cry of passionate pain. “I must go somewhere. I cannot
stay here. We will go together, and work together; and some time,
perhaps--some time--we shall not be unhappy, Law.”
“I am not unhappy now,” said the young man. “I don’t know why you should
be so dismal. Many a fellow would give his ears to be in my place. But
you--that’s quite a different thing. A man can go to many a place where
he can’t drag his sister after him. Besides, you’ve got no outfit,”
cried Law, delighted to find so simple a reason, “and no money to get
one. Old Ashford has been awfully kind; but I don’t think it would be
nice to draw him for an outfit for you. It wouldn’t be kind,” said Law,
with a grin, “it would be like the engineer fellow in Shakespeare--burst
with his own boiler. You know that would never do.”
“A woman does not need an outfit, as a man does,” said Lottie; “a woman
can put up with anything. If you go away, what is to become of me? When
you are young, whatever you may have had to make you unhappy, you cannot
die when you please. That would be the easiest way of all--but it is
not possible; you cannot die when you please.”
“Die--who wants to die?” said Law. “Don’t you know it’s wicked to talk
so. Why, there’s your singing. You’ll be able to make a great deal more
money than I ever shall; and of course you may come over starring to
Australia when you’re a great singer; but it would be ruin to you now to
go there. Don’t be carried away by it because I’m lucky just now,
because it’s my turn,” he said; “everybody wants to hold on by a fellow
when he’s in luck--but it is really you who are the lucky one of the
family.”
“My voice is gone,” said Lottie, “my home is gone. I have nothing in the
world but you. All I used to have a little hope in is over. There are
only two of us in the world, brother and sister. What can I do but go
with you? I have nobody but you.”
“Oh, that’s bosh,” said Law, getting up from his seat in impatience. “I
don’t believe a word they say about your voice. You’ll see it’ll soon
come back if you give it a chance; and as for having nobody but me, I
never knew a girl that had so many friends--there’s these old Temples,
and heaps of people; and it seems to me you may marry whoever you like
all round. A girl has no right to turn up her nose at that. Besides,
what made old Ashford so kind to me? You don’t find men doing that sort
of thing for nothing in this world. I always think it’s kindest to
speak out plain,” said Law, reddening, however, with a sense of cruelty,
“not to take you in with pretending. Look here, Lottie. I can’t take you
with me. I have got no more than I shall want for myself, and I may have
to knock about a great deal there before I get anything. And to tell the
truth,” said Law, reddening still more, “if I was to take a woman with
me, it would be more natural to take--someone else. A fellow expects to
marry, to make himself comfortable when he gets out there. Now you can’t
do that if you have a sister always dragging after you. I’ve told you
this before, Lottie--you know I have. I don’t want to hurt your feelings
when you’ve been ill--but what can a fellow do? To say what you mean
once for all, that is the best for both you and me.”
Law made his exit abruptly when he had given forth this confession. He
could say what was necessary boldly enough, but he did not like to face
his sister’s disappointment. It was a comfort to him to meet Mr. Ashford
at the door.
“Lottie is upstairs,” he said. “She wants me to take her with me, but I
have told her I can’t take her with me. I wish you would say a word to
her.”
Law rushed away with a secret chuckle when he had sent to his sister a
new suitor to console her. If one lover proves unsatisfactory, what can
be better than to replace him by another? Law felt himself bound in
gratitude and honour to do all that he could for Mr. Ashford, who had
been so kind to him; and was it not evidently the best thing--far the
best thing for Lottie too?
The Minor Canon went upstairs with a little quickening of his pulse. He
had been a great deal about Captain Temple’s little house since the
morning when he had brought Lottie there, and her name and the thought
of her had been in his mind constantly. He had not defended himself
against this preoccupation, for would it not have been churlish to put
the poor girl out of his mind when she was so desolate, and had no other
place belonging to her? Rather he had thrown open all his doors and
taken in her poor pale image, and made a throne for her, deserted,
helpless, abandoned as she was. A generous soul cannot take care of
itself when a friend is in trouble. Mr. Ashford, who had been on the
edge of the precipice, half consciously, for some time, holding himself
back as he could, thinking as little about her as he could, now let
himself go. He felt as the Quixotes of humanity are apt to feel, that
nothing he could give her should be withheld now. If it did not do her
any good, still it would be something--it was all he could do. He let
himself go. He thought of her morning and night, cherishing her name in
his heart. Poor Lottie--life and love had alike been traitors to her.
“Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I,” he said, as once was said
rashly to a greater than man. What could he ever be to her, wrung as
her heart was by another? but that did not matter. If it was any
compensation to her, she should have his heart to do what she liked
with. This was the sentiment in the mind of the Minor Canon, who ought,
you will say, to have known better, but who never had been practical, as
the reader knows. He went upstairs with his heart beating. How gladly he
would have said a hundred words to her, and offered her all he had, to
make up for the loss of that which she could not have. But what his
generosity would have thrown at her feet, his delicacy forbade him to
offer. Lottie, in her disappointment and desertion (which he only
divined, yet was certain of) was sacred to him. Mrs. Temple was absent
about her household concerns, and there was nobody in the drawing-room
upstairs except Lottie, who in her excitement and despair did not hear
his step, nor think that anyone might be coming. She was walking about
the room, with her hands clasped and strained against her breast, her
weak steps full of feverish energy, her eyes glowing with a fire of
despair. “What shall I do? what shall I do?” she was moaning in the
anguish of her heart.
When Ernest Ashford opened the door, her back was turned to him, so that
he heard this moan, and saw the passionate misery of her struggle,
before she knew that he was there. When she saw him a momentary gleam of
anger came over her face; then she put force upon herself, and dropped
her hands by her side like a culprit, and tried to receive him as she
ought. As she ought--for was not he her brother’s benefactor, whom all
this time she had been neglecting, not thanking him as he had a right to
be thanked? The change from that anguish and despair which she had been
indulging when alone, to the sudden softening of courtesy and
compunction and gratitude which, after a pathetic momentary interval of
struggling with herself, came over her face, was one of those sudden
variations which had transported Rollo in the beginning of their
acquaintance by its power of expression. But this change, which would
have pleased the other, went to the heart of the Minor Canon, to whom
Lottie had never appeared in the light of an actress or singer, but only
as herself.
“Mr. Ashford,” she said faintly. “I wanted to see you--to thank you----”
She was trembling, and he came up to her tenderly--but with a tenderness
that never betrayed its own character--grave and calm, for all that his
heart was beating--and took her hand and arm into his, and led her to
her chair. “You must not thank me for anything,” he said.
“For Law----”
“No; not for Law. If it would give you any ease or any comfort, you
should have everything I have. That is not saying much. You should have
all I can do or think,” he said, with a thrill in his voice, which was
all that betrayed his emotion. “The misery of human things is that all I
can do is not what you want, Lottie--and that what you want is out of my
power.”
He asked no permission to call her by her name; he was not aware he did
it--nor was she.
“I want nothing,” she said, with a passionate cry. “Oh, do not think I
am so miserable and weak. I want nothing. Only, if Law could take me
with him--take me away--to a new place--to a new life.”
He sat down beside her, and softly pressed the hand which he held in his
own. Yes, this was the misery of human things, as he said--he did not
repeat the words, but they were in his face. That which she wanted was
not for her, nor was his desire for him; other gifts might be thrown at
their feet, and lie there unheeded, but not that for which they pined
and were ready to die.
“Do you think it must not be?” she said. Lottie was willing to make him
the judge of her fate--to allow him to decide for her how it was to be.
Yes, but only in that way in which he was powerless. He smiled, with a
sense of this irony, which is more tragic than any solemn verdict of
fate.
“I do not think it could be,” he said, “except with perfect consent and
harmony; and Law--does not wish it. He is like the rest of us. He does
not care for what he can have, though another man might give his life
for it. It is the way of the world.”
“I am used to it,” said Lottie, bowing her head; “you need not say it is
the way of the world to break it to me, Mr. Ashford. Oh, how well I
ought to know! I am used to being rejected. Papa, and Law, and----”
She put her hand over her hot eyes, but she did not mean to drop into
self-pity. “Nobody cares to have me,” she said after a moment, with the
quiver of a smile on her lips. “I must make up my mind to it--and when
you are young you cannot die whenever you please. I must do something
for myself.”
“That is it,” said the Minor Canon, bitterly--“always the same; between
those you love and those that love you there is a great gulf; therefore
you must do something for yourself.”
She looked at him wondering, with sad eyes. He was angry, but not with
her--with life and fate; and Lottie did not blush as she divined his
secret. It was too serious for that. It was not her fault or his fault;
neither of them had done it or could mend it. Had she but known! had he
but known! Now there was nothing to be done but to unite what little
wisdom they had over the emergency, and decide what she was to do--for
herself. Her father had no place for her in his house. Law would not
have her with him; her lover had forsaken her; and to those who would
have had her, who would have cherished her, there was no response in
Lottie’s heart. Yet here she stood with her problem of existence in her
hands, to be solved somehow. She looked piteously at the man who loved
her, but was her friend above all, silently asking that counsel of which
she stood so much in need. What was she to do?
Just then the door opened, and Mrs. Temple came in with Dr. Enderby, who
had been kind to Lottie, as they all were, and who regulated everybody’s
health within the Precincts, from Lady Caroline downward. The good
doctor, who had daughters of his own, looked with kind eyes upon the
girl, who was so much less happy than they. He took her slender wrist
into his hand, and looked into her luminous, over-clear eyes, wet with
involuntary tears.
“She is looking a great deal better. She will soon be quite herself,” he
said cheerfully; but winked his own eyelids to throw off something,
which was involuntary too.
“Yes, yes,” said Captain Temple, who had come in after him. “She will
soon be quite herself; but you must give her her orders to stay with us,
doctor. We want to be paid for nursing her--and now she will be able to
run about on all our errands, and save us a great deal of trouble, and
keep us happy with her pretty voice and her singing. Did you ever hear
her sing, doctor? The Signor is very anxious about her. We must begin
our lessons again, my pretty Lottie, as soon as ever the doctor gives
leave.”
Dr. Enderby looked very grave. “There is no hurry about that,” he said,
“let her have a little more time. The Signor must be content to wait.”
Now Lottie had said, and they all had said, that her voice was gone; but
when the doctor’s face grew so grave, a cold chill struck to their
hearts. She gave him a startled look of alarmed inquiry, she who had
suddenly realised, now that all dreams were over, that question of
existence which is the primitive question in this world. Before
happiness, before love, before everything that makes life lovely, this
mere ignoble foundation of a living, must come. When one is young, as
Lottie said, one cannot die at one’s own pleasure--and suddenly, just as
she had got to realise that necessity, was it possible that this other
loss was really coming too? She looked at him with anxious eyes, but he
would not look at her, to give her any satisfaction; then she laid her
hand softly on his arm.
“Doctor,” she said, “tell me true--tell me the worst there is to tell.
Shall I never have my voice again? is it gone, gone?”
“We must not ask such searching questions,” said the doctor, with a
smile. “We don’t know anything about _never_ in our profession. We know
to-day, and perhaps to-morrow--something about them--but no more.”
He tried to smile, feeling her gaze upon him, and made light of her
question. But Lottie was not to be evaded. All the little colour there
was ebbed out of her face.
“Shall I never sing again?” she said. “No--that is not what I mean;
shall I never be able to sing as I did once? Is it over? Oh, Doctor,
tell me the truth, is that over too?”
They were all surrounding him with anxious faces. The doctor got up
hurriedly and told them he had an appointment. “Do not try to sing,” he
said, “my dear,” patting her on the shoulder. “It will be better for
you, for a long time, if you do not even try;” and before anyone could
speak again he had escaped, and was hurrying away.
When he was gone, Lottie sat still, half stupefied, yet quivering with
pain and the horror of a new discovery. She could not speak at first.
She looked round upon them with trembling lips, and great tears in her
eyes. Then all at once she slid down upon her knees at Mrs. Temple’s
feet.
“Now all is gone,” she said, “all is gone--not even _that_ is left. Take
me for your servant instead of the one that is going away. I can work--I
am not afraid to work. I know all the work of a house. Let me be your
servant instead of the one who is going away.”
“Oh, Lottie, hush, hush! are you not my child?” said Mrs. Temple, with a
great outcry of weeping, clasping her shoulders and drawing the
upturned face to her breast. But Lottie insisted gently and kept her
position. In this thing at least she was not to be balked.
“Your servant,” she said, “instead of the one that is going away. I am
an honest girl, though they all cast me off. I cannot sing but I can
work--your servant, or else I cannot be your child.”
CHAPTER XLV.
CONCLUSION.
If this history had proposed to settle and bring to a dramatic
conclusion even one single human life, the writer would falter here,
feeling her task all unfulfilled; for what have we been able to do more
than to bring our poor Lottie at the end of all things to a kind of
dead-lock of all the possibilities of life? Such stoppages in the course
of human affairs are, however, at least as common as a distinct climax
or catastrophe. For one girl or boy whose life lies all fair before them
after the first effort, how many are there who have to leave the chapter
incomplete, and, turning their backs upon it, to try a second beginning,
perhaps with less satisfaction, and certainly with a somewhat disturbed
and broken hope! Lottie Despard had arrived at this point. Her love had
not ended as happy loves end. It had been cut short by a cruel hand; her
fabric of happiness had fallen to the ground; her visionary shelter, the
house of her dreams, had crumbled about her, leaving nothing but bare
walls and broken rafters. Her misery and dismay, the consternation of
her young soul when, instead of that fair and pleasant future which was
to be her resting-place, she found around her a miserable ruin, we have
scarcely attempted to say. What words can tell such a convulsion and
rending of earth and sky? She had believed in her lover, and in her love
as something above the weakness of ordinary humanity. She had believed
herself at last to have found in him the ideal after which she had
sighed all her life. His generous ardour to help her whenever he found
her in want of help, the enthusiasm of a love which she believed had
been given at first sight, like the love the poets tell of, had filled
Lottie’s heart with all the sweetness of a perfect faith. Impossible to
say how she had trusted in him, with what pure and perfect delight and
approbation her soul had given itself up to him, glad beyond all
expression not only to find him hers, but to have found him at all, the
one man known to her for whom no excuse had to be made. The discovery
that he was a traitor killed her morally--at least it seemed so to the
poor girl when, all crushed and bleeding from a hundred wounds, she was
taken to the house of her friends. But even that was scarcely a more
horrible blow than the stroke administered delicately by Augusta while
still the injured soul had not staunched its own bleeding or recovered
from the first mortal overthrow. The earth that had been so solid opened
round her in yawning mouths of hell, leaving no ground to stand upon.
There was nothing that was not changed. She had not only lost her
future, which was all happiness, and in which she had believed like a
child; but she had lost her past. She had been deceived; or, worse
still, she had deceived herself, seeking her own overthrow. The
knowledge that it had not been love that brought Rollo under her window
first, that it was altogether another sentiment, _business_, regard for
his own interests--seemed to throw upon herself the blame of all that
came after. Soul and heart, the girl writhed under the consciousness of
having thus anticipated and brought on her fate. So vain, so foolish, so
easily deceived, who was in fault but herself? Those thoughts gave her a
false strength, or feverish impassioned power for a time. It was her own
doing. She had been the deceiver of herself.
But who could deliver her from the dying pangs of love in her heart,
those longings which are unquenchable, those protestations of nature
against loss, those visions of excuses that might still be made, and
suggestions of impossible explanation which in her mind she knew to be
impossible even while her fancy framed them? Sometimes Lottie would find
herself dreaming unawares that someone else, not Rollo, had written that
cruel letter; that it was not by his will he had left her to bear the
brunt of her disappointment under the elm-tree; that _it_ was a forgery,
and he detained by some act of cruel treachery and deceit. Sometimes a
flood of passionate longing and yearning would sweep over her--a
longing only to see him, to hear his voice, to ask why, why he could
have been so cruel. Love does not die in a moment, nor does it come to a
violent end when the object is proved unworthy, as some people think.
With Lottie it was a lingering and painful conclusion, full of memories,
full of relentings; the ground that had been gained by days of painful
self-suppression being lost by one sudden burst of remembrance, the
sight of something that brought up before her one of the scenes that
were past.
While this process was going on wistful looks were directed to Lottie’s
lonely path by more than one spectator. The household of the Signor was
deeply moved by the hapless fate of the young lady for whom young
Purcell sighed with unavailing faithfulness. He could not be made to see
that it was unavailing, and the Signor, blinded by his partiality for
his pupil, did not or would not see it; and, as was natural, Mrs.
Purcell could not understand the possibility of any girl being
indifferent to John’s devotion. She thought Lottie’s troubles would
indeed be at an end, and her future happiness secured, if her eyes were
but opened to his excellence. So strong was this feeling in the mind of
the family that the Signor himself took the matter in hand, and sallied
forth with the anxious sympathy of all the household to put the case
before Captain Temple, who was now recognised as Lottie’s guardian. “In
every country but England,” the Signor said, “the friends arrange such
matters. Surely it is much more judicious than the other way. There is
some guarantee at least that it is not mere youthful folly. Now here is
a young lady who is in very unfortunate circumstances, who has been
obliged to leave her father’s house----”
“I beg your pardon, Signor,” said the Captain, trying hard to keep his
temper, “but I do not think my house is a very bad exchange for Captain
Despard’s.”
“Nobody who knows Captain Temple can have any doubt of that,” the Signor
said with a wave of his hand, “but what can her situation be in your
house? You are not her relation. She has no claim, she has no right,
nothing to depend upon; and if anything were to happen to you----”
“To be sure,” said Captain Temple, with profound gravity, not
untinctured with offence, “there is much to be said on that point. We
are mortal like everybody else.”
Explanations were not the Signor’s strong point; he was wanting in tact
everybody knew. “I am making a mess of it,” he said, “as I always do.
Captain Temple, you are a man of sense, you know that marriage is
something more than a matter of sentiment. John Purcell is a very rising
musician, there is nothing in our profession he may not hope for; he
loves Miss Despard, and he could give her a home. Will you not
recommend her to consider his suit, and be favourable to him? His origin
perhaps is an objection--but he is a very good fellow, and he could
provide for her.”
Captain Temple kept his temper; he was always very proud of this
afterwards. He bowed the Signor out, then came fuming upstairs to his
wife. “Young Purcell!” he cried, “the housekeeper’s son! as if all that
was wanted was somebody to provide for her; but when a man has that
taint of foreign notions,” said the old Captain gravely, “nothing will
wear it out.”
Mrs. Temple did not respond as her husband would have wished. Indeed
this was very often the case; she had not his quick impulses nor his
ready speech. She said with a sigh, “I almost think the Signor is right.
I wish we could do what he says. I know a man who is very fond of her,
who would be very suitable, who would be sure to make her happy. I think
if I could marry her to him I would take the responsibility; but she
will not see it in the same light.”
“Who is it? who is it?” Captain Temple said with lively curiosity. And
when Mr. Ashford’s name was mentioned to him, after some protestations
of incredulity, he could find nothing to say but a fretful “Do you want
to be rid of Lottie?” He for his part did not want to be rid of her. She
was delightful to the old man. She walked with him and sat with him,
and though she had not sufficiently recovered to talk much to him, yet
she listened to him while he talked, which did almost as well. The old
Chevalier was more happy than he had been since his own child married
and went away from him. Why should Lottie be married and carried away
from him too, for no better reason than that a man could provide for
her? This indeed was the weak point in Captain Temples armour. He could
not provide for his adopted daughter; but he was angry when this was
suggested to him. He had got a new interest, a new pleasure in life, and
he did not like the idea of dying and losing it. Why should not he live
for years and keep the shelter of a father’s roof over this girl, who
was like his own?
As for the Minor Canon, it had only been when he took the girl home from
her vigil on the Slopes that he allowed himself fully to confess the
state of his feelings towards her. When he had drawn her hand within his
arm and felt her light weight upon him, holding up by close clasping of
his own, the soft arm which he held, the floodgates had opened. He knew
very well by instinct and by observation that Lottie loved, not him, but
another man. He felt very sure that what had happened had little to do
with her stepmother but a great deal to do with her lover; and yet at
that very moment, the most discouraging and hopeless, those gates opened
and the stream flowed forth, and he no longer attempted any disguise
either with himself or with Mrs. Temple, who saw through and through
him. Law, whom nobody supposed to have any discrimination, had seen
through and through him long ago. Law felt that it was not at all likely
that any man would sacrifice so much money and trouble on _his_ account;
and indeed from the beginning of their acquaintance he had read in “old
Ashford’s” eye an expression of weakness of which the astute youth was
very willing to take advantage. When, however, Mr. Ashford himself
gained this point of making no further resistance, and attempting no
further concealment, the acknowledgment to himself of the new sentiment,
little hopeful as it was, had brought him a sense of happiness and
freedom. Love in his heart was sweet, even though it had no return. It
made life other than it had ever been. It opened possibilities which to
the middle-aged Minor Canon had all been closed before. Handel may be a
consolation or even a delight; and pupils, though neither consolatory
nor delightful, at least keep a man from the sense that his life is
useless; but neither of these things make up the sum of human
requirements, nor do they help to reveal the _fin mot_ of that mortal
enigma which is more hard to solve than all the knots of philosophy. It
seemed to Mr. Ashford when he gave up all resistance, and let this flood
of tenderness for one creature take possession of his heart, that a
sudden illumination had been given to him, a light that cleared up many
difficult matters, and made the whole world more clear. With this
lantern in his hand he thought he might even go back to tread the darker
ways of the world with more fortitude and calm. The miseries of the poor
seemed to him more bearable, the burdens of humanity less overwhelming.
Why? but he could not have told why. Perhaps because life itself was
more worth having, more beautiful, more divine with love in it; a poor
man, though he was starving, could not be so poor with that to keep him
alive. He remembered in his early experiences, when he had fled from the
horrible mystery of want and pain, to have seen that other presence
which then he took no note of, in the poorest places--gleaming in the
eyes of a woman, in a man’s rough face, which knew no other
enlightenment. This, then, was what it was. In the sweetness of the
heavenly discovery perhaps he went too far, and felt in it the
interpretation and compensation of all. Naturally, a man who has found a
new happiness does exalt it above the dimensions of any human
possession. It made the Minor Canon feel his own life too sheltered and
peaceful, it made of him a man among other men. It seemed to him now
that he wanted to go and help his brothers who were suffering, whose
suffering had appalled him, from whom he had fled in excess of pity.
But he did not say one word of his love to Lottie, except those vague
words which have been recorded. What was the use? She knew it as he knew
it; and what could it matter? After the first impulse of speech, which
was for her sake rather than his--to comfort her wounded pride, her
sense of humiliation, if nothing else, by the knowledge that she was
priceless to another if rejected by one--no desire to speak was in his
mind. He surrounded her with every care he was permitted to give, with a
thousand unexpressed tendernesses, with a kind of ideal worship, such as
was most likely to soothe her wounds and to please her, at least, with a
sense that she was beloved. In this way the winter went slowly on. Law
did not sail till the early spring, being detained by the Minor Canon as
he would, if he could, have detained a ray of sunshine that warmed her.
And thus Lottie was surrounded by all the fairest semblances of life.
The fairest semblances! How often they collect about those who can
derive no advantage from them! A good man loved her, but Lottie could
not accept his love; the kindest domestic shelter was given to her, but
she had no right to it--she was not the daughter of these kind people,
and they would not make her their servant as she had asked them to do.
Musing in her own mind over all that lay about her, this seemed the only
true standing ground that she could hope for. Now that she wanted a way
of living, a real occupation, her voice had failed her and she could not
sing; now that she had the doors of marriage opened before her, her
heart was too sick even to contemplate that possibility; now that she
had a home where she was beloved, it was not her home but the house of a
stranger. To all this she had no right. If they would let her be their
servant, that would be true; if Mr. Ashford would see that she was not
worth loving, that would be true; if she could take up the trade she had
despised, in that there would be an honest refuge. All these things were
out of her reach. She said nothing about the thoughts in her heart, but
they burned within her; and nobody understood them, except perhaps Mr.
Ashford, to whom she never confided them. Law thought her very well off
indeed, and declared frankly that he would leave England with an easy
mind: “You are one that will always fall on your feet,” he said, with
perfect satisfaction. Captain Despard even, who had at first resented
the new arrangement of affairs, came at last in his finest manner and
made very pretty speeches to Captain Temple and his wife. “If, as I
understand, my daughter’s society is a real pleasure to you,” he said,
“I am always glad when I or mine can be of use to my neighbours, and
certainly, my dear Madam, she shall stay. Indeed, in the present state
of my domestic circumstances,” he added, with a wave of his hand, not
perceiving Captain Temple’s angry eagerness to speak, which his wife
subdued with a supplicating gesture, “I will not conceal from you that
it is an ease to my mind to know that Lottie is among the friends of her
own choice. My wife and she,” Captain Despard said, with a little shrug
of his shoulders--“we all know what ladies are, and that occasionally
unpleasantnesses will occur--my wife and she have not got on together.”
Thus Lottie was left by those who belonged to her. And when she retired
to the room that was her own in the new home--which was so like the
little room in the old, but so much more dainty, with everything in it
that the old people could think of to make her comfortable, and all the
little decorations which a mother invents for her child, Lottie would
stand in the midst of these evidences of love and kindness, and ask
herself what she could do--she had never been so well off in her life,
what could she do? She had “no claim” upon the Temples, as the Signor
said, “no right” to their kindness. The Captain’s niece, who lived in
St. Michael’s, looked at the interloper, as the nearest relative of a
foolish old couple who were wasting their means upon a stranger might be
excused for looking. What was she doing but living on their charity?
What could she do? Oh, that she had now the voice which she had cared so
little for when she had it! How strange, how strange it all seemed to
her now! She had, she said to herself, a trade, an honest trade in her
hands, and she had not cared for it, had struggled against its exercise,
had not wished to qualify herself for its use; and now it was lost to
her. This was the only thing that was Lottie’s fault; the other strange
paradoxes about her had come without any doing of hers. But the result
of all was that, with love and kindness on every side, she had no place
that belonged to her, no right to anything. After the kind people who
were so good to her had gone to their rest, the girl would sit and think
over this problem. What was she to do? To be obliged to think of this
did her good; it took her mind away from the wounds of her heart, it
brought in new objects--new thoughts. She could not dwell for ever, as a
disengaged mind might have done, amid the ruined temples and palaces of
her love; she could not sink to the ground, and conclude, as in happier
circumstances a broken-hearted girl might have been tempted to do, that
all was over. On the contrary, life not being over, nor any end
procurable by means of hers, an entire world of new difficulties and
troubles was brought in which Lottie had to meet, and, as she might,
find a solution for.
On the day before Law’s departure, which had been so often delayed, she
went back to her father’s house, under her brother’s guardianship, to
take away the few little possessions which remained there. Law had been
a very faithful guardian of Lottie’s little belongings. There was
nothing that Polly would have liked better than to enter and rummage
through her step-daughter’s things, searching for secrets through all
the little drawers and boxes which Lottie had taken a girlish pleasure
in keeping in good order. But Law had stood up like a dragon for his
sister’s property; and Captain Despard, who sometimes put himself on
Lottie’s side, by a certain _esprit de famille_ against the wife, who,
after all, was an alien and not one of them, supported Law. Thus the men
of her family, though they had not hesitated to treat her carelessly and
even harshly themselves, yet made a certain stand against the
interference of any other. It was a day in early April when Lottie
reluctantly went into her father’s house on this errand. Polly was out;
the house was vacant and quiet as when it had been her own, and it is
not to be described with what a yearning the girl looked at the shabby
furniture, the old piano, the faded rooms in which she had spent many a
troubled and many a dull day, and beat her wings against the bars of her
cage, and wished for a hundred things which were never to be hers. The
reader knows how far Lottie had been from being happy: but yet she
thought she had been happy, and that nothing better could have been
desired than to be the household Providence, and “take care,” as she
called it, of her father and brother. All that was over. She could not
bear to go into the little drawing-room, where he had visited her, where
she had lived in such a world of dreams. Her heart beat as she went up
the old stairs. She was far better off with the Temples, who could not
pet or serve her enough; yet with what a yearning she came into the
house which had once been hers, but in which now there was no place for
her! In her own room, thanks to Law’s care, she found everything as she
had left it; and it is not to be told what anguish filled Lottie’s
breast as she looked at her little white dress, all carefully prepared
for the event which was never to happen, and the little box with the
bonnet which she had made in such sweet agitation and tumult of heart.
And there was the pearl locket upon its white ribbon, her sole ornament.
She gathered these things together and carried them, not letting even
Law touch them, to her new home. She could not speak as she went up and
shut herself in her room. A little fire was burning there, a luxury
unknown to Lottie in the days when she was her own mistress, and no one
cared how chilly she might be. Then with old Lear’s “climbing sorrow” in
her throat, she undid the little bit of maidenly finery for which she
had so much wanted a sprig of orange blossom. It was a nothing, a little
knot of tulle and ribbon--a piece of vanity not worthy a thought; so any
moralist would have said who had seen Lottie stand speechless, tearless,
a great sob in her throat, with the poor little bonnet in her hand. A
bonnet, there is nothing tragic in that. She put it upon her fire and
watched the light stuff flame and fall into sudden ashes. It was the
affair of a moment; but those hopes, those prospects of which it had
been the token, her life itself, with all that was beautiful in it,
seemed ended too.
Then she sat down for the hundredth time and confronted the waste of
darkness that was her life. What was she to do? Perhaps it was the final
ending of her dream, symbolised by the destruction of that bit of tulle
and ribbon, which moved her. For the first time her dreamy
self-questions took a different tone. She asked herself, not what am I
to do? but something more definite. Law was going away the next day, the
only being except her father to whom she had any right, on whom she had
any claim--going away in comfort, in high hope, as much as she could
have desired for him. By whose doing? She had given up the care of Law,
selfishly absorbed in her own hopes; and who was it who had taken her
place and done the thing which Lottie had only wished and longed to do?
She seemed to see him standing before her, with tenderness beyond words
in his eyes. Always her good angel: how often he had interposed to help
her!--from that early time at the Deanery when she had sung false in her
agitation, and he had covered the error and beguiled her into the divine
song which at that very moment she could hear thrilling all the air,
pealing from the Abbey. Was it because this happened to be the afternoon
anthem that she thought of that simple beginning of the Minor Canon’s
benefits? Never since had he failed her; though of all the people upon
whom Lottie had no claim, he it was on whom she had the least claim. He
had saved Law from his aimless idleness, and it was he who had awakened
herself out of the miserable dream that had almost cost her her life.
How could she repay him for all he had done for her? In one way, one
only way. She shuddered, then stilled herself, and faced the thought
with all the courage she had left. Marry him! If he would have her, if
he wanted her, why should not she marry him? She trembled as the words
came into her mind. It was not she that said them; something seemed to
say them in her mind, without any will of hers. So good a man, so kind.
Did it matter so much whether she liked it, whether she did not like it,
so long as it pleased him? Perhaps this was not the right way in which
such a calculation ought to be made, but Lottie did not think of that.
At all times it had been easier for her to think of others than of
herself. Only once had she pleased herself, and no good had come of it.
Her heart began to beat with a heroic impulse. She was not worth his
having, she whom everyone had cast off; but if he thought so? She
shuddered, yet her heart rose high in her bosom. She would do her best,
she would be a good wife, that would be within her power. She would
serve him humbly, that he might forgive her for not loving him. She rose
up to her feet unconsciously as this great resolution came upon her
mind.
“Lottie,” said Law at her door, “the service is over, and the Signor is
practising. Come over to the Abbey with me. I’d like to wander about the
old place a little the last night I am here. Come, it’ll be something to
think of,” said Law, more moved than he liked to show, “when we’re
thousands of miles separate over the sea.”
Lottie did not wait to be asked again. She hurried to him, glad to be
thus delivered from the thoughts that were getting too much for her.
Long, long months had passed since the brother and sister had gone to
church together, their close vicinity to the Abbey and its frequent
services had broken up the old childish Sunday habits. And it was not
going to church in the ordinary way, but only roaming through to the
silent beautiful place all deserted, with the organ pealing through its
silence. Law’s heart was touched, though he was too successful and
prosperous now to be easily moved. He strayed about the majestic
stillness of the nave with tears in his eyes, thinking--this time
to-morrow! This time to-morrow he would probably be prosaically ill or
prosaically comfortable, and thinking little of what he left. But for
the moment it seemed to Law that when he once was gone, his heart would
turn like that of any poet, to the sweet friends to whom that day he had
said farewell.
The Abbey was altogether still except for the music. No one was about;
the last ray of the westerly sun had got in among the canopy work over
the stalls, and tangled itself there. Underneath the shadows of the
evening were creeping dimly, and through the great vault the organ
pealed. What bursts of wonderful sound, what glories in the highest,
what quiverings of praise unspeakable! Lottie raised her face unawares
to the gallery from which that music came. How her life had gone along
with it, shaping itself to that high accompaniment! It had run through
everything, delight and misery alike, good and evil. Her heart was moved
already, and trembling under the touch of new impulses, resolutions,
emotions. She stood still unawares, with her face turned that way, a new
light coming upon it; once more the music got into her soul. With her
head raised, her arms falling by her side, her heart going upwards in an
ecstasy of sudden feeling, she stood spell-bound. She did not hear--how
should she?--a whisper in the organ-loft, a noiseless change of music,
nor see the anxious faces looking out upon her from among the fretwork
of the carved screen. The torrent of sound changed; it breathed into a
celestial softness of sorrow and hope; tears dropped liquid like a
falling of rain; a counter stream of melody burst forth. Lottie did not
know what she was doing, the spell upon her was broken. “I know that my
Redeemer liveth:” she lifted up her voice and sang.
In the organ loft there was a group which clustered together, scarcely
venturing to breathe. The Signor was the one who had most command of
himself. “I always knew it would come back,” he said in sharp staccato
syllables, as he played on. Young Purcell, who loved her, sat down in
the shadow and laughed and cried, blubbering not with dignity. The Minor
Canon, who did not once take his eyes from her, waiting the moment that
she might falter or want succour, watched, looking over the carved rail
with face lighted up like her own.
Thus was Lottie restored to Art; was it to Love too?
THE END.
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