“I’ll tell you what we can do. We can go to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy——”
“Who on earth is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy?” said the Manager.
“But very likely there is no piano there! You see, this is a difficulty I did not think of. I have heard this lady only in the house of—one of my relations, a very rigid old person, who hates theatres, and thinks opera an invention of the devil.” How Rollo dared slander poor Lady Caroline so, who liked an opera-box as well as any one else, it is impossible to say.
“Well—it doesn’t seem to matter much what are the qualities of the voice if we can’t hear it,” the Manager said carelessly; and he told his fashionable partner of the singer he had heard of in Milan, who was to distance all the singers then on the operatic stage. “They are all like that,” he said—“like this private nightingale of yours, Ridsdale—till you hear them; and then they turn out to be very much like the rest. To tell the truth, I am not so very sorry this particularprotégéeof yours has broken down; for Idon’t believe the time has come for an English prima donna, if it ever comes. We’ve got no confidence in ourselves, so far as art goes—especially musical art. English opera, sir; there’s many fine pieces, but you’ll never keep it up in England. It might make a hit, perhaps, in Germany, or even France, but not here. Your English prima donna would be considered fit for the music halls. We’d have to dress her up in vowels, and turn her into an Italian. Contemptible? Oh, yes, it’s contemptible; but, if we’re to make our own money out of it, we mustn’t trouble ourselves about what’s contemptible. What we’ve got to do is to please the public. I’m just as glad that this idea of yours has broken down.”
“Broken down! I will never allow it has broken down. It is much easier and pleasanter, of course, to go to Milan than to go to St. Michael’s,” said Rollo disdainfully. “But never mind; if you don’t start till Monday, trust me to arrange it somehow. Your new Milanese, of course, will be like all the rest. She will have been brought up to it. She will know how to do one thing, and no more; but this is genius—owing nothing to education and everything to nature. Capable of—I could not say what such a voice and such a woman is not capable of——”
“Bravo, Ridsdale!” said his partner. “She is capable of stirring you up thoroughly, that is clear—and I hopeshe will be kind to you,” he said, with a big laugh, full of insinuations. The man was vulgar and fat, but a mountain of energy, and Rollo though disgusted, could not afford to quarrel with him.
“You are entirely out in your notion,” he said, with that air of dignity which is apt to look fictitious in such circumstances. He was not himself easily shocked, nor would this interpretation of his motives have appeared to him at all unlikely in the case of another man; therefore, as was natural, his gravity and look of disgust only confirmed the suspicions of the other, and amused him the more.
“Bravo, my boy; go in and win!” he said, chuckling; “promise whatever you like, if you find it necessary, and trust to me to back you up.”
To say “I am unable to understand what you mean,” as Rollo did, with cold displeasure, yet consciousness, did but increase the ecstasy of the fat Manager over the evident fact that his fastidious friend was “caught at last.”
Rollo went away with a great deal of offended dignity, holding himself stiffly erect, body and soul. He had never been so entirely disgusted, revolted, by the coarse character of the ideas and insinuations, which in themselves were not particularly novel, he was aware. It was because everything grew coarse under the touch of such a fellow as this, he said to himself; and itmust be allowed that vice, stripped of all sentiment and adornment, was a disgusting spectacle. Rollo had never been a vicious man. He had taken it calmly in others, acknowledging that, if they liked it, he had no right to interfere; but he had not cared for it much himself—he was not a man of passions. A dilettante generally does avoid these coarser snares of humanity; and there had always been a sense of nausea in his mind when he was brought in contact with the vicious. But this nausea had been more physical than spiritual. It was not virtue but temperament which produced it; his own temptations were not in this kind. Nevertheless, he knew that to show any exaggerated feeling on the subject would only expose him to laughter, and he was not courageous enough either to blame warmly in others, or to decry strenuously in himself, the existence of unlawful bonds. What did it matter to anybody if he were virtuous? his neighbours were not on that account to be baulked of their cakes and ale; his disinclination towards sins of the grosser kind was not a thing he was proud of—it was a constitutional peculiarity, like inability to ascend heights or to go to sea without suffering. He was not at all sure that it was not a sign of weakness—a thing to be kept out of sight. Accordingly he took his part in the social gossip, which has no warmer interest than this, like everybody else, never pretended to any superiority, and took it for granted that now and then everybody“went wrong.” He would have been a monster if he had done anything else. Why, even his good aunt Caroline—the best and stupidest of women, to whom, if she had desired it, no opportunity of going wrong had ever presented itself—liked to hear these stories and believed them implicitly, and was convinced that not to go wrong was quite exceptional. Rollo was not the man to emancipate himself from such a complete and universal understanding. He allowed it calmly, and did not pretend either to disapprove or to doubt. Probably he had himself coldly, and as a matter of course, “gone wrong” too in his day, and certainly he had never given himself out as at all better than his neighbours. Was it only the coarseness of his vulgar associate which made the suggestion so deeply disgusting to him now?
He asked himself this question as, disappointed and annoyed, he left the Manager’s ostentatious rooms; and a new sense of unkindness, ungenerosity, unmanliness in having exposed a harmless person, a woman whose reputation should be sacred, to such animadversions, suddenly came into his mind, he could not tell how. This view of the matter had never occurred to Rollo before. The women he had heard discussed—and he had heard almost everybody discussed, from the highest to the lowest—had nothing sacred about them to the laughing gossips who discussed all they had done, or might have done, or might be going todo. This, too, was a new idea to him. Who was there whom he had not heard spoken of? ladies a thousand times more important than Miss Despard, the poor Chevalier’s daughter at St. Michael’s—and nobody had seemed to think there was any harm in it. A man’s duty not to let a woman be lightly spoken of? Pooh! What an exaggerated sentimental piece of nonsense! Why should not women take their chance, like any one else? Rollo was like most other persons when in a mental difficulty of this kind. He was not so much discussing with himself as he was the arena of a discussion which unseen arguers were holding within him. While one of these uttered this Pooh! another replied, with a heat and fervour altogether unknown to the clubs, What had Lottie Despard done to subject herself to these suggestions? she who knew nothing about society and its evil thoughts—she who had it in her to be uplifted and transported by the music at which these other people, at the best, would clap their hands and applaud. The argument in Rollo’s mind went all against himself and his class. He hated not only his manager-partner, whom it was perfectly right and natural to hate, but himself and all the rest of his kind. He was so much disgusted, that he almost made up his mind to let fortune and the English prima donna go together, and to take no further step to make the girl known to those who were so incapable of appreciating her. But when he came that length,Rollo had reached the end of his tether, struck against the uttermost limits of his horizon—and thus was brought back suddenly to the question how he was best to make his prize known?
Itturned out, however, that Rollo could not accomplish the object, which he had aimed at with so much eagerness and hope, in the only legitimate way. He could not get his Manager invited to the Deanery. “I don’t think your aunt would like it; I don’t think I could sanction it,” the Dean said, whom he met at his club. Unfortunately the Dean had somewhere encountered the partner by whose aid Rollo expected to make his fortune, and he made it the subject of a little discourse, which Rollo received with impatience. “I would have nothing to do with him if I were you,” his Reverence said; “he is not a kind of man to be any credit to his associates. You can’t touch pitch without being defiled. I would not have anything to say to him if I were you.”
“Nor should I, uncle, if I were you,” said Rollo, with a rueful smile. He was not aware that this was not original; he was not thinking, indeed, of originality, but of the emergency, which he felt was very difficult to deal with.
“Nonsense!” said the Dean; “don’t tell me there are not a great many better occupations going than that of managing a theatre——”
“Opera—opera. Give us our due at least——”
“What difference is there?” said the Dean sternly. “The opera has ruined just as many men as the theatre. Talk of making your fortune? Did you ever hear of the lessee of a theatre making a fortune? Plenty have been ruined by it, and never one made rich that I ever heard of. Why can’t you go into diplomacy or to a public office, or get your Uncle Urban to give you something? You ought not to have anything to do with such a venture as this.”
“My dear uncle,” said Rollo, “you know well enough how many things I have tried. Uncles are very kind (as in your case), but they can’t take all their relations upon their shoulders; and you knew this was what I was doing, and Aunt Caroline knew——”
“Ah! yes; I recollect that was what all the singing was about; but she could not stand that Manager fellow. I could not stand him myself; as for your aunt, you could not expect it. She is very good-natured, but you could not ask her to go so far as that.”
“He is a man who goes everywhere,” said Rollo; “he is a man who can behave himself perfectly well wherever he is.”
“Oh, bless you, she would see through him at a glance!” cried the Dean. “I don’t mean to say youraunt is clever, Rollo, but instinct goes a long way. She would see through him. Miss Despard was quite different; she was perfectlycomme il faut. Girls are wonderful sometimes in that way. Though they may have no advantages, they seem to pick up and look just as good as any one: whereas a man like that—— By the way, I am very sorry for the poor thing. They say her father, a disreputable sort of gay man who never should have got the appointment, is going to marry some low woman. It will be hard upon the girl.”
What an opportunity was this of seizing hold upon her—of overcoming any objection that might arise! Rollo felt himself Lottie’s best friend as he heard of this complication. While she might help to make his fortune he could make her independent, above the power of any disreputable father or undesirable home. He could not bear to think that such a girl should be lost in conditions so wretched, and, though the Dean was obdurate, he did not lose hope. But between Thursday and Monday is not a very long time for such negotiations, and the Manager was entirely preoccupied by his Milanese, whom another impresario was said to be on the track of, and in whom various connoisseurs were interested. It is impossible to describe the scorn and incredulity with which Rollo himself heard his partner’s account of this new singer. He put not the slightest faith in her.
“I know how she will turn out,” he said. “She will shriek like a peacock; she will have to be taught her own language; she will be coached up for onerôleand good for nothing else; and she will smell of garlic enough to kill you.”
“Oh, garlic will never kill me!” said the vulgar partner who gave Rollo so much trouble.
In the meantime he wrote to the Signor to see what could be done, and begged with the utmost urgency that he would arrange something. “Perhaps the old Irishwoman next door would receive us,” Rollo said, “even if she has got no piano. Try, my dear Rossinetti, I implore you; try your best.” The Signor was very willing to serve the Dean’s nephew; but he was at the moment very much put out by Lottie’s reception of young Purcell, as much as if it had been himself that had been refused.
“Who is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and how am I to communicate with her?” he cried; and he did not throw himself into the work with any zeal. All that he would do at last, moved by Rollo’s repeated letters, was to bid him bring his friend down to the service on Sunday afternoon, when he would see Lottie at least, and hear something of her voice. The Manager grinned at this invitation. He was not an enthusiast for Handel, and shrugged his shoulders at sacred music generally as much out of his line; but he ended, having no better engagement on hand, by consenting togo. It was the end of the season; the opera was over, and all its fashionable patrons dispersed; and St. Michael’s was something to talk of at least. So the two connoisseurs arrived on a warm afternoon of early August, when the grey pinnacles of the Abbey blazed white in excessive sunshine, and the river showed like glowing metal here and there through the broad valley, too brilliant to give much refreshment to the eyes.
As it happened, it was a chance whether Lottie would attend the service that afternoon at all. She was sorry for poor Purcell, and embarrassed to face the congregation in the Abbey, some of whom at least must know the story. She was certain the Signor knew it, from the glance he had thrown at her; and Mrs. Purcell, she felt sure, would gloom at her from the free seats, and the hero himself look wistful and reproachful from the organ-loft. She had very nearly made up her mind not to go. Would it not be better to go out on the slopes, and sit down under a tree, and hear the music softly pealing at a distance, and get a little rest out of her many troubles? Lottie had almost decided upon this, when suddenly, by a caprice, she changed her mind and went. Everything came true as she had divined. Mrs. Purcell fixed her eyes upon her from the moment she sat down in her place, with a gloomy interest which sadly disconcerted Lottie; and so did old Pick, who sat by his fellow servant and chuckled over the conclusion of Mr. John’s romance;while once at least Lottie caught the pale dulness of the Signor’s face looking disapproval, and at every spare moment the silent appeal of Purcell’s eyes looking down from over the railing of the organ-loft. Lottie’s heart revolted a little in resistance to all these pitiful and disapproving looks. Why should they insist upon it? If she could not accept young Purcell, what was it to the Signor and old Pick?—though his mother might be forgiven if she felt the disappointment of her boy. The girl shrank a little from all those glances, and gave herself up altogether to her devotions. Was it to her devotions? There was the Captain chanting all the responses within hearing, cheerful and self-confident, as if the Abbey belonged to him; and there, too, was Law, exchanging glances of a totally different description with the people in the free seats. It was to two fair-haired girls whom Lottie had seen before—who were, indeed, constant in their attendance on the Sunday afternoon—that Law was signalling; and they, on their part, tittered and whispered, and looked at the Captain in his stall, and at another woman in a veil whom Lottie did not make out. This was enough to distract her from the prayers, to which, however, if only to escape from the confusion of her own thoughts, she did her very best to give full attention. But—— She put up her prayer-book in front of her face, and hid herself at least from all the crowd, so full each of his and her own concerns. She wassilent during the responses, hearing nothing but her father’s voice with its tone of proprietorship, and only allowed herself to sing when the Captain’s baritone was necessarily silent. Lottie’s voice had become known to the people who sat near her. They looked for her as much as they looked for little Rowley himself, who was the first soprano; but to-day they did not get much from Lottie. Now and then she forgot herself, as in the “Magnificat,” when she burst forth suddenly unawares, almost taking it out of the hands of the boys; but while she was singing Lottie came to herself almost as suddenly, and stopped short, with a quaver and shake in her voice as if the thread of sound had been suddenly broken. Raising her eyes in the midst of the canticle, she had seen Rollo Ridsdale within a few places of her, holding his book before him very decorously, yet looking from her to a large man by his side with unmistakable meaning. The surprise of seeing him whom she believed to be far away, the agitation it gave her to perceive that she herself was still the chief point of interest to him, and the sudden recalling thus of her consciousness, gave her a shock which extinguished her voice altogether. There was a thrill in the music as if a string had broken; and then the hymn went on more feebly, diminished in sweetness and volume, while she stood trembling, holding herself up with an effort. He had come back again, and again his thoughts were full ofher, his whole attention turned to her. An instantaneous change took place in Lottie’s mind. Instead of the jumble of annoyances and vexations that had been around her—the reproachful looks on one side, the family discordance on the other—her father and Law both jarring with all that Lottie wished and thought right—a flood of celestial calm poured into her soul. She was no longer angry with the two fair-haired girls who tittered and whispered through the service, looking up to Law with a hundred telegraphic communications. She was scarcely annoyed when her father’s voice pealed forth again in pretentious incorrectness. She did not mind what was happening around her. The sunshine that came in among the pinnacles and fretwork above in a golden mist, lighting up every detail, yet confusing them in a dazzle and glory which common eyes could not bear, made just such an effect on the canopies of the stalls as Rollo’s appearance made on Lottie’s mind. She was all in a dazzle and mist of sudden calm and happiness which seemed to make everything bright, yet blurred everything in its soft, delicious glow.
“Don’t think much of her,” said the Manager, as they came out. The two were going back again at once to town, but Rollo’s partner had supposed that at least they would first pay a visit to the Deanery. He was a man who counted duchesses on his roll of acquaintances, but he liked to add a Lady Carolinewhenever the opportunity occurred, and deans, too, had their charm. He was offended when he saw that Rollo had no such intention, and at once divined that he was not considered a proper person to be introduced to the heads of such a community. This increased his determination not to yield to his partner in this fancy of his, which, indeed, he had always considered presumptuous, finding voices being his own share of the work—a thing much too important to be trusted to an amateur. “The boy has a sweet little pipe of his own; but as for yourprima donna, Ridsdale, if you think that sort of thing would pay with us—— No, no! my good fellow; she’s a deuced handsome girl, and I wish you joy; I don’t wonder that she should have turned your head; but for our new house, not if I know it, my boy. A very nice voice for an amateur, but that sort of thing does not do with the public.”
“You scarcely heard her at all; and the few notes she did sing were so mixed up with those scrubby little boys——”
“Oh! I heard her, and I don’t care to hear her again—unless it were in a drawing-room. Why, there’s Rossinetti,” said theimpresario; “he’ll tell you just the same as I do. Do you know what we’re down here for, Rossinetti, eh? Deluded by Ridsdale to come and hear some miraculous voice; and it turns out to be only a charming young lady who has bewitchedhim, as happens to the best of us. Pretty voice for a drawing-room, nice amateur quality; but for the profession—— I tell him you must know that as well as I.”
“Come into my place and rest a little; there is no train just yet,” said the Signor. He had left Purcell to play the voluntary, and led the strangers through the nave, which was still crowded with people listening to the great strains of the organ. “Come out this way” he said; “I don’t want to be seen. Purcell plays quite as well as I do; but if they see me they will stream off, and hurt his feelings. Poor boy! he has had enough to vex him already.”
These words were on his lips when, coming out by a private door, the three connoisseurs suddenly came upon Lottie, who was walking home with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. The Signor, who was noted for a womanish heat of partisanship and had not forgiven her for the disappointment of his pupil, darted a violent glance at her as he took off his hat. It might have been himself that she had rejected, so full of offence was his look; and this fixed the attention of the big Manager, who took off his hat too, with a smile of secret amusement, and watched the scene, making a private memorandum to the effect that Rossinetti evidently had been hit also; and no wonder! a handsome girl as you could see in a summer day, with avoice that was a very nice voice, a really superior voice for an amateur.
As for Rollo, he hastened up to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy with fervour, and held out his hand; and how happy and how proud was that kind woman! She curtseyed as she took his hand as if he had been the Prince of Wales, nearly pulling him down, too, ere she recovered herself; and her countenance shone, partly with the heat, partly with the delight.
“And I hope I seeyouwell, sir,” she said; “and glad to see you back in St. Michael’s. There’s nothing like young people for keeping a place cheerful. Though we don’t go into society, me and me Major, yet it’s a pleasure to see the likes of you about.”
Rollo had time to turn to Lottie with very eloquent looks while this speech was being addressed to him. “I am only here for half an hour,” he said; “I could not resist the temptation of coming for the service.”
“Oh! me dear sir, you wouldn’t care so much for the sarvice if ye had as much of it as we have,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, going on well pleased. She liked to hear herself talking, and she had likewise a quick perception of the fact that, while she talked, communications of a different kind might go on between “the young folks.” “Between ourselves, it’s not me that they’ll get to stop for their playing,” she said, all the more distinctly that the Signor was within hearing. “I’d go five miles to hear a good band. The musicwas beautiful in the regiment when O’Shaughnessy was adjutant. And for me own part, Mr. Ridsdale, I’d not give the drums and the fifes for the most elegant music you could play. I don’t say that I’m a judge, but I know what I like.”
“Why did you stop so soon?” Rollo said, aside. “Ah! Miss Despard, was it not cruel?—A good band is an excellent thing, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. I shall try to get my uncle to have the band from the depôt to play once a week, next time I come here.—Thanks all the same for those few notes; I shall live upon them,” he added fervently, “till I have the chance of hearing you again.”
Lottie made no reply. It was unnecessary with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy there, and talking all the time. And, indeed, what had she to say? The words spread themselves like a balm into every corner of her heart. He would not have gone so far, nor spoken so warmly, if it had not been for the brutal indifference of the big Manager, who stood looking on at a distance, with an air of understanding a great deal more than there was to understand. The malicious knowingness in this man’s eyes made Rollo doubly anxious in his civilities; and then he felt it necessary to make up to Lottie for the other’s blasphemy in respect to her voice, though of this Lottie knew nothing at all.
“I shall not even have time to see my aunt,” he said; “how fortunate that I have had this opportunityof a word with you! I did not know whether I might take the liberty to call.”
“And welcome, Mr. Ridsdale,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. “Lottie’s but a child, so to speak; but I and the Major would be proud to see you. And of an afternoon we’re always at home, and, though I say it as shouldn’t, as good a cup of tea to offer ye as ye’d get from me Lady Caroline herself. It’s ready now, if you’ll accept the refreshment, you and—your friend.”
“A thousand thanks, but we must not stay. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, if you see my aunt will you explain how it was I could not come to see her? And be sure you tell her you met me at the Abbey door, or she will not like it. Miss Despard, Augusta is coming home, and I hope to be at the Deanery next month.ThenI trust you will be more generous, and not stop singing as soon as you see me. What had I done?” he cried in his appealing voice. “Yes, Rossinetti, I’m coming.—Not Good-bye, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy; only, as the French say, Till we meet again.”
“And I hope that will not be long,” said the good woman, delighted. She swept along the Dean’s Walk, letting her dress trail after her and holding her head high; she was too much excited to think of holding up her skirts. “Did ye hear him, Lottie, me honey? ‘If you see my aunt,’ says he. Lord bless the man! as if me Lady Caroline was in the way of looking in and taking a cup of tea! Sure, I’d make her welcome, andmore sense than shutting herself up in that old house, and never stirring, no, not to save her life. ‘If ye see my aunt,’ says he. Oh, yes! me darlint, I’ll see her, shut up in her state, and looking as if—— He’ll find the difference when he comes to the Deanery, as he says. Not for you, Lottie, me dear; you’re one of themselves, so to speak. But it’s not much thanks me Lady Caroline will give him for sending her a message by Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. I thought I’d burst out in his face, ‘Tell her ye met me by the Abbey door.’ That’s to save me lady’s feelings, Lottie. But I’ll do his bidding next time I see her; I’ll make no bones of it, I’ll up and give her my message. Lord! just to see how me lady would take it. See if I don’t now. For him, he’s a jewel, take me word for it, Lottie; and ye’ll be a silly girl, me honey, if you let a gentleman like Mr. Ridsdale slip through your fingers. A real gentleman—ye can see as much by his manners. If I’d been a duchess, Lottie, me dear, what more could he say?”
Lottie made no reply to this speech, any more than to the words Rollo himself had addressed to her. Her mind was all in a confused maze of happy thoughts and anticipations. His looks, his words, were all turned to the same delicious meaning; and he was coming back to the Deanery, when she was to be “more generous” to him. No compliment could have been so penetrating as that soft reproach. Lottie had nowords to spend upon her old friend, who, for her part, was sufficiently exhilarated to require no answer. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy rang the changes upon this subject all the way to the Lodges. “‘When you see my aunt,’ says he.” The idea that she was in the habit of visiting Lady Caroline familiarly not only amused but flattered her, though it was difficult enough to understand how this latter effect could come about.
Rollo was himself moved more than he could have imagined possible by this encounter. He said nothing as he followed his companions to the Signor’s house, and did not even remark what they were saying, so occupied was he in going over again the trivial events of the last few minutes. As he did so, it occurred to him for the first time that Lottie had not so much as spoken to him all the time; not a word had she said, though he had found no deficiency in her. It was evident, then, that there might be a meeting which should fill a man’s mind with much pleasant excitement and commotion, and leave on his thoughts a very delightful impression, without one word said by the lady. This idea amused him in the pleasant agitation of his being to which the encounter at the church door had given rise. He forgot what he had come for, and the rudeness of his partner, and the refusal of that personage to think at all of Lottie. He did not want any further discussion of this question; he had forgotten, even, that it could require to be discussed.Somehow all at once, yet completely, Lottie had changed character to him; he did not want to talk her over with anyone, and he forgot altogether the subject upon which the conversation must necessarily turn when he followed the Signor and his big companion through the groups of people who began to emerge from the Abbey. There were a great many who stared at Rollo, knowing who he was, but none who roused him from his preoccupation. Fortunately the Dean had a cold and was not visible, and Lady Caroline did not profess to go to church in the afternoon—“It was too soon after lunch, and there were so many people, and one never felt that one had the Abbey to one’s self,” her ladyship said.
The Manager went off to Italy the next day, after his Milanese, without being at all restrained by Rollo, who was glad to get rid of him, and to have no more said about the Englishprima donna. He did not quite like it even, so perverse was he, when the Signor, sitting out upon his terrace, defended her against theimpresario’shasty verdict: “She has a beautiful voice, so far as that goes,” the Signor said, with the gravity of a judge; “you are mistaken if you do not admire her voice; we have had occasion to hear it, and we know what it is, so far as that goes.”
“You dog!” said the jovial Manager, with a large fat laugh. “I see something else if I don’t see that. Ah, Rossinetti! hit too?”
“Do you happen to know what he means?” said the Signor with profound gravity, turning his fine eyes upon Ridsdale. “Ah! it is a pleasantry, I suppose. I have not the same appreciation of humour that I might have had, had I been born an Englishman,” he said, with a seriousness that was portentous, without relaxing a muscle.
Rollo, who was not aware of the vehement interest with which the Signor espoused Purcell’s cause, felt the Manager’s suspicions echo through his own mind. He knew how entirely disinclined he felt to enter upon this question. Was his companion right, and had the Signor been hit too? It seemed to Rollo that the wonder was how anyone could avoid that catastrophe. The Manager made very merry, as they went back to town, upon Lottie’s voice and the character of the admiration which it had excited; but all this Rollo received with as much solemnity of aspect as characterised the Signor.
Itwas not to be supposed that the visit of Rollo and his companion should pass unnoticed in so small a community as that of St. Michael’s, where everybody knew him, and in which he had all the importance naturally belonging to a member, so to speak, of the reigning family. Everybody noticed his appearance in the Abbey, and it soon became a matter of general talk that he was not at the Deanery, but had come down from town expressly for the service, returning by as early a train afterwards as the Sunday regulations of the railway allowed. What did he come for? Not to see his relations, which would have been a comprehensible reason for so brief a visit. He had been seen talking to somebody at the north door, and he had been seen following the Signor, in company with a large and brilliant person who wore more rings and studs andbreloquesthan had ever been seen at St. Michael’s. Finally, this remarkable stranger, who was evidently a friend of the Signor as well as of Rollo, had been visible on the little green terrace outside Rossinetti’s sitting-room, smoking cigarettes anddrinking claret-cup, and tilting up his chair upon two legs in a manner which suggested a tea-garden, critics said, more than a studious nook sheltered among the buttresses of the Abbey. Public opinion was instinctively unfavourable to Rollo’s companion; but what was the young prince, Lady Caroline’s nephew, doing there? Then the question arose, who was it to whom Rollo had been talking at the north door? All the Canons and their wives, and the ladies in the Lodges, and even the townspeople, when the story reached them, cried out “Impossible!” when they were told that it was Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. But that lady had no intention of concealing the honour done her. She published it, so to speak, on the housetops. She neglected no occasion of making her friends acquainted with all the particulars of the interview. “And who should it have been but me?” she said. “Is there e’er another one at St. Michael’s that knows as much of his family? Who was it but an uncle of his, or maybe it might be a cousin, that was in the regiment with us and O’Shaughnessy’s greatest friend? Many’s the good turn the Major’s done him; and, say the worst you can o’ the Ridsdales, it’s not ungrateful they are. It’s women that are little in their ways. What does a real gentleman care for our little quarrels and the visiting list at the Deanery? ‘When ye see me aunt,’ says he, ‘Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, ye’ll tell her——’ Sure he took it for certain that me Lady Caroline was a good neighbour,and would step in of an afternoon for her bit of talk and her cup o’ tea. ‘You’ll tell her,’ says he, ‘that I hadn’t time to go and see her.’ And, please God, I will do it when I’ve got the chance. If her ladyship forgets her manners, it shall ne’er be said that O’Shaughnessy’s wife was wanting in good breeding to a family the Major had such close connections with.”
“But do you really know—Mr. Ridsdale’s family?” said Lottie, after one of these brilliant addresses, somewhat bewildered by her recollection of what had passed. “And, sure, didn’t you hear me say so? Is it doubting me word you are?” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, with a twinkle in her eye. Lottie was bewildered—but it did not matter much. At this moment nothing seemed to matter very much. She had been dull, and she had been troubled by many things before the wonderful moment in which she had discovered Rollo close to her in the Abbey—much troubled, foreseeing with dismay the closing in around her of a network of new associations in which there could be nothing but pain and shame, and dull with a heavy depression of dulness which no ray of light in the present, no expectation in the future, seemed to brighten. Purcell’s hand held out to her, tenderly, yet half in pity, had been the only personal encouragement she had; and that had humbled her to the dust, even though she struggled with herself to do him justice. Her heart had been as heavy as lead. There had seemed to her nothingthat was hopeful, nothing that was happy before her. Now all the heaviness had flown away. Why? Why, for no reason at all, because this young man, whom she supposed (without any warrant for the foolish idea) to love her, had come back for an hour or two; because he was coming back on a visit. The visit was not to her, nor had she probable share in the enjoyments to be provided for Lady Caroline’s nephew; and Lottie did not love him to make his very presence a delight to her. She did not love him—yet. This was the unexpressed feeling in her mind; but when a girl has got so far as this it may be supposed that the visit of the lover whom she does not love—yet, must fill her with a thousand delightful tremors. How could she doubt his sentiments? What was it that brought him back and back again to St. Michael’s? And to be led along that flowery way to the bower of bliss at the end of it, to be persuaded into love by all the flatteries and worship of a lover so delicately impassioned—could a girl’s imagination conceive anything more exquisite?—No, she was not in love—yet—— But there was no reason why she should not be, except the soft maidenly reluctance, the shy retreat before one who kept advancing, the instinct of coy resistance to an inevitable delight.
Into this delicate world of happiness, in which there was nothing real, but all imagination, Lottie was delivered over that bright Sunday. She had no defenceagainst it, and she did not wish to have any. She gave herself up to the dream. After that interval of heaviness, of darkness, when there was no pleasant delusion to support her, and life, with all its difficulties and dangers, became so real, confronting her at every point, what an escape it was for Lottie to find herself again under the dreamy skies of that fool’s paradise! It was the Garden of Eden to her. She thought it was the true world, and the other the false one. The vague terror and disgust with which her father’s new plans filled her mind floated away like a mist; and, as for Law, what so easy as to carry him with her into the better world where she was going? Her mind in a moment was lightened of its load. She had left home heavily; she went back scarcely able to keep from singing in the excess of her light-heartedness, more lifted above earth than if any positive good had come to her. So long as the good is coming, and exists in the imagination only, how much more entrancing is it than anything real that ever can be ours!
The same event, however, which had so much effect upon Lottie acted upon her family too in a manner for which she was far from being prepared. Captain Despard came in as much elated visibly as she was in her heart. There had been but little intercourse among them since the evening when the Captain had made those inquiries about Rollo, which Lottie resented sodeeply. The storm had blown over, and she had nominally forgiven Law for going over to the enemy’s side; but Lottie’s heart had been shut even against her brother since that night. He had forsaken her, and she had not been able to pass over his desertion of her cause. However, her heart had softened with her happiness, and she made his tea for him now more genially than she had done for weeks before. They seated themselves round the table with, perhaps, less constraint than usual—a result due to the smiling aspect of the Captain as well as to the softened sentiment in Lottie’s heart. Once upon a time a family tea was a favourite feature in English literature, from Cowper down to Dickens, not to speak of the more exclusively domestic fiction of which it is the chosen banquet. A great deal has been said of this nondescript (and indigestible) meal. But perhaps there must be a drawing of the curtains, a wheeling-in of the sofa, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in contradistinction to storms and chills outside, as in the Opium-eater’s picture of his cottage, to carry out the ideal—circumstances altogether wanting to the tea of the Despards, which waseaten(passez-moi le mot, for is it not the bread-and-butter that makes the meal?) in the warmest hour of an August afternoon. The window, indeed, was open, and the Dean’s Walk, by which the townspeople were coming and going in considerable numbers, as they always did on Sunday, was visiblewith its gay groups, and the prospect outside was more agreeable than the meal within. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, next door, had loosed her cap-strings, and fanned herself at intervals as she sipped her tea. “It’s hot, but sure it cools you after,” she was saying to her Major. The Despards, however, were not fat, and did not show the heat like their neighbours. Law sat at the table and pegged away resolutely at his bread-and-butter, having nothing to take his mind off his food, and no very exciting prospect of supper to sustain him. But the Captain took his tea daintily, as one who had heard of a roast fowl and sausages to be ready by nine o’clock, and was, therefore, more or less indifferent to the bread-and-butter. He patted Lottie on the shoulder as she gave him his tea.
“My child,” he said, “I was wrong the other day. It is not every man that would own it so frankly; but I have always been a candid man, though it has damaged me often. When I am in the wrong I am bound to confess it. Take my hand, Lottie, my love. I made a mistake.”
Lottie looked at him surprised. He had taken her hand and held it, shaking it, half-playfully, in his own.
“My love,” he said, “you are not so candid as your poor father. You will get on all the better in the world. I withdraw everything I said, Lottie. All is going well; all is for the best. I make no doubt you can manage your own affairs a great deal better than I.”
“What is it you mean, papa?”
“We will say no more, my child. I give you free command over yourself. That was a fine anthem this afternoon, and I have no doubt those were well repaid who came from a distance to hear it. Don’t you think so, Lottie? Many people come from a great distance to hear the service in the Abbey, and no doubt the Signor made it known that there was to be such a good anthem to-day.”
Lottie did not make any reply. She looked at him with mingled wonder and impatience. What did he mean? It had not occurred to her to connect Rollo with the anthem, but she perceived by the look on her father’s face that something which would be displeasing to her was in his mind.
“What’s the row?” said Law. “Who was there? I thought it was always the same old lot.”
“And so it is generally the same old lot.Wedon’t vary; but when pretty girls like Lottie say their prayers regularly heaven sends somebody to hear them. Oh, yes; there is always somebody sent to hear them. But you are quite right to allow nothing to be said about it, my child,” said the Captain. “Not a word, on the honour of a gentleman. Your feelings shall be respected. But it may be a comfort to you, my love, to feel that whatever happens your father is behind you, Lottie—knows and approves. My dear, I say no more.”
“By Jove! What is it?” cried Law.
“It is nothing to you,” said his father. “But look here, Law. See that you don’t go out all over the place and leave your sister by herself, without anyone to take care of her. My engagements I can’t always give up, but don’t let me hear that there’s nobody to walk across the road with Lottie when she’s asked out.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Law. “I thought they’d had enough of you at the Deanery, Lottie. That’s going to begin again, then, I suppose?”
“I am not invited to the Deanery,” said Lottie, with as much state and solemnity as she could summon up, though she trembled; “neither is it going to begin again. There is no occasion for troubling Law or you either. I always have taken care of myself hitherto, and I suppose I shall do it till the end.”
“You need not get on your high horse, my child,” said Captain Despard, blandly. “Don’t suppose that I will interfere; but it will be a consolation to you to remember that your father is watching over you, and that his heart goes with you,” he added, with an unctuous roll in his voice. He laid his hand for a moment on her head, and said, “Bless you, my love,” before he turned away. The Captain’s emotion was great; it almost brought the tears to his manly eyes.
“Whatisthe row?” said Law, when his father had gone. Law’s attention had been fully occupied duringthe service with his own affairs, and he did not know of the reappearance of Rollo. “One would think he was going to cry over you, Lottie. What have you done? Engagements! he has always got some engagement or other. I never knew a fellow with such a lot of friends—I shouldn’t wonder if he was going to sup somewhere to-night. I wonder what they can see in him,” said Law, with a sigh.
“Law, are you going out too?”
“Oh, I suppose so; there is nothing to do in the house. What do you suppose a fellow can do? Reading is slow work; and, besides, it’s Sunday, and it’s wrong to work on Sunday. I shall go out and look round a bit, and see if I can see anyone I know.”
“Do you ever think, I wonder,” said Lottie—“papa and you—that if it is so dull for you in the house, it must sometimes be a little dull for me?”
She was not in the habit of making such appeals, but to-night there was courage and a sense of emancipation in her which made her strong.
“You? Oh, well, I don’t know—you are a girl,” said Law, “and girls are used to it. I don’t know what you would do if you wanted to have a little fun, eh? I dare say you don’t know yourself. Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if it was dull; but what can anyone do? It’s nature, I suppose,” said Law. “There isn’t any fun for girls, as there is for us. Well, is there? How should I know?”
But there was “fun” for Emma and her sisters of the workroom, Law reminded himself with a compunction. “I’ll tell you what, Lottie,” he said hastily; “you must just do as other girls do. You must get some one to walk with you, and talk, and all that, you know. There’s nothing else to be done; and you might have plenty. There’s that singing fellow, that young Purcell; they say he’s in love with you. Well, he’s better than nobody; and you could give him the sack as soon as you saw somebody you liked better. I thought at one time that Ridsdale——”
“I think, Law,” said Lottie, “you had better go out for your walk.”
He laughed. He was half-pleased to have roused and vexed her, yet half-sorry too. Poor Lottie! Now that she was abandoned by her grand admirer and all her fine friends, it must be dull for her, staying in the house by herself; but then what could he do, or anyone? It was nature. Nature, perhaps, might be to blame for not providing “fun” for girls, but it was not for Law to set nature right. When he had got his hat, however, and brushed his hair before going out, he came back and looked at Lottie with a compunction. He could not give up meeting Emma in order to take his sister for a walk, though, indeed, this idea actually did glance across his mind as a rueful possibility. No, he could not go; he had promised Emma to meet her in the woods, and he must keep his word. But hewas very sorry for Lottie. What a pity she had not some one of her own—Purcell, if nobody better! and then, when the right one came, she might throw him off. But Law did not dare to repeat his advice to this effect. He went and looked at her remorsefully. Lottie had seated herself upstairs in the little drawing-room; she was leaning her elbow on the ledge of the little deep window, and her head upon her hand. The attitude was pensive; and Law could not help thinking that to be a girl, and sit there all alone looking out of a window instead of roaming about as he did, would be something very terrible. The contrast chilled him and made him momentarily ashamed of himself. But then he reflected that there were a great many people passing up and down, and that he had often heard people say it was amusing to sit at a window. Very likely Lottie thought so; probably, on the whole, she liked that better than going out. This must be the case, he persuaded himself, or else she would have been sure to manage to get some companion; therefore he said nothing to her, but went downstairs very quietly and let himself out softly, not making any noise with the door. Law had a very pleasant walk with Emma under the trees, and enjoyed himself, but occasionally there would pass a shadow over him as he thought of Lottie sitting at the window in the little still house all alone.
But indeed, for that evening at least, Lottie wasnot much to be pitied. She had her dreams to fall back upon. She had what is absolutely necessary to happiness—not only something to look back to, but something to look forward to. That is the true secret of bliss—something that is coming. With that to support us can we not bear anything? After a while, no doubt, Lottie felt, as she had often felt before, that it was dull. There was not a sound in the little house; everybody was out except herself; and it was Sunday, and she could not get her needlework to occupy her hands and help on her thoughts. As the brightness waned slowly away, and the softness of the evening lights and then the dimness of the approaching dark stole on, Lottie had a great longing to get out of doors; but she could not go and leave the house, for even the maid was out, having her Sunday walk with her young man. It was astonishing how many girls had gone wandering past the window, each with her young man. Not much wonder, perhaps, that Law had suggested this sole way of a little “fun” for a girl. Poor Law! he did not know any better; he did not mean any harm. She laughed now at the suggestion which had made her angry at the time, for to-night Lottie could afford to laugh. But when she heard the maid-servant come in, Lottie, wearied with her long vigil, and longing for a breath of cool air after the confinement of the house, agreed with herself that there would be no harm in taking one little turn upon the slopes. Thetownspeople had mostly gone. Now and then a couple of the old Chevaliers would come strolling homeward, having taken a longer walk in the calm of the Sunday evening than their usual turn on the Slopes. Captain Temple and his wife had gone by arm-in-arm. Perhaps they had been down to the evening service in the town, perhaps only out for a walk, like everybody else. Gradually the strangers were disappearing; the people that belonged to the Precincts were now almost the only people about, and there was no harm in taking a little walk alone; but it was not a thing Lottie cared much to do. With a legitimate errand she would go anywhere; but for a walk! The girl was shy, and full of all those natural conventional reluctances which cannot be got out of women; but she could not stay in any longer. She went out with a little blue shawl folded like a scarf—as was the fashion of the time—over her shoulders, and flitted quickly along the Dean’s Walk to the slopes. All was sweet in the soft darkness and in the evening dews, the grass moist, the trees or the sky sometimes distilling a palpable dewdrop, the air coming softly over all those miles of country to touch with the tenderest salutation Lottie’s cheek. She looked out upon the little town nestling at the foot of the hill with all its twinkling lights, and upon the stars that shone over the long glimmer of the river, which showed here and there, through all the valley, pale openings of light in the dark country.How sweet and still it was! The openness of the horizon, the distance, was the thing that did Lottie good. She cast her eyes to the very farthest limit of the world that lay within her sight and drew a long breath. Perhaps it was this that caught the attention of some one who was passing. Lottie had seated herself in a corner under a tree, and she did not see this wayfarer, who was behind her; and the reader knows that she did not sigh for sorrow, but only to relieve a bosom which was very full of fanciful anticipations, hopes, and dreams. It was not likely, however, that Mr. Ashford would know that. He too was taking his evening walk; and when he heard the sigh in which so many tender and delicious fancies exhaled into the air, he thought—who could wonder?—that it was somebody in trouble; and, drawing a little nearer to see if he could help, as was the nature of the man, found to his great surprise—as she, too, startled, turned round her face upon him—that it was Lottie Despard who was occupying the seat which was his favourite seat also. They both said “I beg your pardon” simultaneously, though it would be hard to tell why.
“I think I have seen you here before,” he said. “You like this time of the evening, Miss Despard, like myself—and this view?”
“Yes,” said Lottie; “but I have been sitting indoors all the afternoon, and got tired of it at last. I did notlike to come out all by myself; but I thought no one would see me now.”
“Surely you may come here in all safety by yourself.” The Minor Canon had too much good breeding to suggest any need of a companion or any pity for the girl left alone. Then he said suddenly, “This is an admirable chance for me. The first time we met, Miss Despard, you mentioned something about which you wished to consult me——”
“Ah!” cried Lottie, coming back out of her dreams. Yes, she had wanted to consult him, and the opportunity must not be neglected. “It was about Law, Mr. Ashford. Law—his name is Lawrence, you know, my brother; he is a great boy, almost a man—more than eighteen. But I am afraid he is very backward. I want him so very much to stand his examination. It seems that nothing—nothing can be done without that now.”
“His examination—for what?”
“Oh, Mr. Ashford,” said Lottie, “for anything! I don’t mind what it is. I thought, perhaps, if you would take him it would make him see the good of working. We are—poor; I need not make any fuss about saying that; here we are all poor; and if I could but see Law in an office earning his living, I think,” cried Lottie, with the solemnity of a martyr, “I think I should not care what happened. That was all. Iwanted him to come to you, that you might tell us what he would be fit for.”
“He would make a good soldier,” said Mr. Ashford, smiling; “though there is an examination for that too.”
“There are examinations for everything, I think,” said Lottie, shaking her head mournfully; “that is the dreadful thing; and you see, Mr. Ashford, we are poor. He has not a penny; he must work for his living; and how is he to get started? That is what I am always saying. But what is the use of speaking? You know what boys are. Perhaps if I had been able to insist upon it years ago—but then I was very young too. I had no sense, any more than Law.”
The Minor Canon was greatly touched. The evening dew got into his eyes—he stood by her in the soft summer darkness, wondering. He was a great deal older than Lottie—old enough to be her father, he said to himself; but he had no one to give him this keen, impatient anxiety, this insight into what boys are. “Was there no one but you to insist upon it?” he said, in spite of himself.
“Well,” said Lottie meditatively, “do gentlemen—generally—take much trouble about what boys are doing? I suppose they have got other things to think of.”
“You have not much opinion of men, Miss Despard,” said the Minor Canon, with a half-laugh.
“Oh, indeed I have!” cried Lottie. “Why do you say that? I was not thinking about men—but only—— And then boys themselves, Mr. Ashford; you know what they are. Oh! I think sometimes if I could put some of me into him. But you can’t do that. You may talk, and you may coax, and you may scold, and try every way—but what does it matter? If a boy won’t do anything, what is to be done with him? That is why I wanted so much, so very much, to bring him to you.”
“Miss Despard,” said the Minor Canon, “you may trust me that if there is anything I can do for him I will do it. As it happens, I am precisely in want of some one to—to do the same work as another pupil I have. That would be no additional trouble to me, and would not cost anything. Don’t you see? Let him come to me to-morrow and begin.”
“Oh, Mr. Ashford,” said Lottie, “I knew by your face you were kind—but how very, very good you are! But then,” she added sorrowfully, “most likely he could not do the same work as your other pupil. I am afraid he is very backward. If I were to tell you what he is doing you might know. He is reading Virgil—a book about as big as himself,” she said, with a little laugh, that was very near crying. “Won’t you sit down here?”
“Virgil is precisely the book my other pupil is doing,” said Mr. Ashford, laughing too, very tenderly,at her small joke, poor child! while she made room for him anxiously on the bench. There they sat together for a minute in silence—all alone, as it might be, in the world, nothing but darkness round them, faint streaks of light upon the horizon, distant twinkles of stars above and homely lamps below. The man’s heart softened strangely within him over this creature, who, for all the pleasure she had, came out here, and apologised to him for coming alone. She who, neglected by everybody, had it in her to push forward the big lout of a brother into worthy life, putting all her delicate strength to that labour of Hercules—he felt himself getting quite foolish, moved beyond all his experiences of emotion, as, at her eager invitation, he sat down there by her side.
And as he did so other voices and steps became audible among the trees of somebody coming that way. Lottie had turned to him, and was about to say something, when the sound of the approaching voices reached them. He could see her start—then draw herself erect, close into the corner of the bench. The voices were loudly pitched, and attempted no concealment.
“La, Captain, how dark it is! Let’s go home; mother will be looking for us,” said one.
“My dear Polly,” said the other—and though Mr. Ashford did not know Captain Despard, he divined the whole story in a moment as the pair brushed pastarm-in-arm—“my dear Polly, your home will be very close at hand next time I bring you here.”
Lottie said nothing—her heart jumped up into her throat, beating so violently that she could not speak. And to the Minor Canon the whole family story seemed to roll out like the veiled landscape before him as he looked compassionately at the girl sitting speechless by his side, while her father and his companion, all unconscious in the darkness, brushed against her, sitting there unseen under the shadowy trees.
Mr. Ashfordtook Lottie home that evening, walking with her to her own door. There was not much said; for, notwithstanding the armour of personal hope and happiness which she had put on, the shock of this personal encounter with her father and the woman who was to be her father’s wife made the girl tremble with secret excitement, in spite of herself. The woman: it was this, the sight and almost touch of this new, unknown, uncomprehended being brushing past her in the darkness which overwhelmed Lottie. That first contact made the girl sick and faint. She could not talk to Mr. Ashford any more—her voice seemed to die out of her throat, where her heart was fluttering. She could not think even what she had been saying. It was all confused, driven aside into a corner, by that sudden apparition. Mr. Ashford, on his side, said little more than Lottie. It seemed to him that he had a sudden insight into all that was happening. He had heard, though without paying much attention, the common gossip about Captain Despard, who was not considered by anybody within the Precincts as acreditable inmate; but this curious little scene, of which he had been a witness, had placed him at once in the midst of the little drama. He seemed to himself to have shared in the shock Lottie had received. He walked softly by her side, saying little, full of compassion, but too sympathetic even to express his sympathy. He would not hurt her by seeming to be sorry for her. When they parted he held her hand for a moment with a kind, serious grasp, as if he had been her father, and said:
“You will send him to me to-morrow, Miss Despard? I shall expect him to-morrow.”
“Oh—Law!” she said, with a little start and recovery. Poor Law had gone out of her mind.
“Poor child!” he said, as he turned towards his house; but before he had crossed the road he was met by Captain Temple coming the other way.
“Was that Miss Despard?” asked the old man. “Is it she you were saying good-night to? My wife told me she had gone towards the Slopes, and I was on my way to bring her home.”
“I met her there, and I have just brought her home,” said the Minor Canon. He could scarcely make out in the dark who his questioner was.
“That is all right—that is all right,” said the old Chevalier. “She is left too much alone, and she should have some one to take care of her. I feelmuch obliged to you, Mr. Ashford, for I take a great interest in the young lady.”
“It is—Captain Temple?” said Mr. Ashford, peering at the old man with contracted, short-sighted eyes. “I beg your pardon. Yes, Miss Despard is quite safe; she has been talking to me about her brother. What kind of boy is he? I only know he is a big fellow, and not very fond of his work.”
Captain Temple shook his head. “What can you expect? It is not the boy’s fault; but she is the one I take an interest in. You know I had once a girl of my own—just such another, Mr. Ashford—just such another. I always think of her when I see this pretty creature. Poor things—how should they know the evil that is in the world? They think everybody as good as themselves, and when they find out the difference it breaks their sweet hearts. I can’t look at a young girl like that, not knowing what her next step is to bring her, without tears in my eyes.”
The Minor Canon did not make any reply; his heart was touched, but not as Captain Temple’s was touched. He looked back at the dim little house, where as yet there were no lights—not thinking of Lottie as an all-believing and innocent victim, but rather as a young Britomart, a helmeted and armed maiden, standing desperate in defence of her little stronghold against powers of evil which she was noways ignorant of. It did not occur to him that these images might be conjoined, and both be true.
“I take a great interest in her,” said old Captain Temple again, “and so does my wife, Mr. Ashford. My wife cannot talk of our loss as I do; but, though she says little, I can see that she keeps her eye upon Lottie. Poor child! She has no mother, and, for that matter, you might say no father either. She has a claim upon all good people. She may be thrown in your way sometimes, when none of us can be of any use to her. It would make me happy if you would say that you would keep an eye upon her too, and stand by her when she wants a friend.”
“You may be sure I will do that—if ever it should be in my power.”
“Thanks. You will excuse me speaking to you? Most people allow the right we have in our trouble to think of another like our own. I am quite happy to think you will be one of her knights too, Mr. Ashford. So will my wife. Ah, we owe a great deal—a great deal—to innocence. Good night, and my best thanks.”
Mr. Ashford could not smile at the kind old Chevalier and his monomania. He went home very seriously to his dark little house, where no one had lighted his lamp. He was not so well served as the Signor. There was a faint light on the stairs, but none in his dark wainscoted library, where the threesmall deep windows were more than ever like three luminous yet dim pictures hanging upon a gloomy wall. When he had lighted his reading-lamp the pictures were put out, and the glimmering dim interior, with its dark reflections and the touches of gilding and faded brown of his books, came into prominence. He half smiled to think of himself as one of Lottie Despard’s knights; but outside of this calm and still place what a glimpse had been afforded him of the tumults and miseries of the common world, within yet outside all the calm precincts of ordered and regular life! The girl with whom he had been talking stoodaux priseswith all these forces, while he, so much more able for that battle, was calm and sheltered. To see her struggling against the impassibility of a nature less noble than her own—to think of her all forlorn and solitary, piteous in her youth and helplessness, on the verge of so many miseries, wrung his heart with pity, with tenderness, with—— Was it something of envy too? All the powers of life were surging about Lottie, contending in her and around her; forces vulgar yet powerful, calling forth in that bit of a girl, in that slim creature, made, the man thought, for all the sweetness and protections of life, all its heroic qualities instead—while for such as he, thirty-five, and a man, fate held nothing but quiet, and mastery of all circumstances, Handel and the Abbey! What a travesty and interchange of all that was fit andnatural!—for him ought to be the struggle, for her the peace; but Providence had not ordained it so.
How often is this so! times without number; the weak have to struggle while the strong look on. Women and children labour while full-grown men rest; the sick and the feeble have all the powers of darkness to encounter, while the athlete yawns his unoccupied force away. So this strange paradox of a world runs on. The Minor Canon, who was of very gentle mould, with a heart open as day to melting charities, sat and thought of it with a giddiness and vertigo of the heart. He could not change it. He could not take up Lottie’s trouble and give her his calm. One cannot stand in another’s place—not you in mine, nor I in yours—though you may be a hundred times more capable of my work than I. This was what Ernest Ashford thought sitting among his peaceful books, and following Lottie Despard in imagination into the little lodge which was her battlefield. Sympathy gave him the strongest mental perception of all that took place there. The only thing he had no clue to was the sweet and secret flood of consolation which subdued her sense of all her troubles—which already had drowned the dread of the future, and floated over with brightness the difficulties of the present in Lottie’s heart.
Next morning Law arrived at the house of the Minor Canon, considerably to his own surprise, with his big Virgil under his arm. “I don’t know whetheryou meant it, or if she understood you,” he said, shy and uncomfortable, looking down at his shoes, and presenting the top of his head rather than his face to Mr. Ashford’s regard, “but my sister said——”
“Yes; I meant it fully. Sit down and tell me what you have been doing, and whereabouts you are in your work. I have a pupil coming presently with whom probably you might read——”
“Well, you must know that I haven’t been what you might call working very hard, you know,” said Law, still butting at his future instructor with the top of his head. He sat down as Mr. Ashford directed him, but he did not give up the earnest contemplation of his boots. “It isn’t so easy to get into the way of it when you’re working alone. I left school a long time ago—and I don’t know that it was much of a school—and latterly I was a little bit irregular—and so, you know——”
“I see,” said the Minor Canon; “however, it is not too late to do better. What is that big book under your arm—Virgil? Very well. Construe a passage for me, and let me see how you get on.”
“Shall I do a bit I know, or a bit I don’t know?” said Law, raising his head this time with a doubtful gleam, half of merriment. “Of course, I want to put my best foot foremost—but I don’t want to take you in all the same.”
“I must trust you entirely on that point—or give me the book, I will choose, and chance shall decide.”
“Oh, hang it!” said Law under his breath. He would have been honest and avowed what he knew; but this kind of Sortes did not please him. The perspiration came out on his forehead. Of course it was a very hard bit, or what Law thought a very hard bit, that turned up—and the way in which he struggled through it, growing hotter and hotter, redder and redder, was a sight to see.
“That will do,” Mr. Ashford said, compassionate, yet horrified. “That will do.” And he took the book out of his would-be pupil’s hands with a sigh, and smoothed down the page, which Law had ruffled in his vain efforts, with a regretful touch, as though asking pardon of Virgil. “Suppose we have a little talk on this subject?” he said. “No doubt you have made up your mind what you would like to do?”
“Not I,” said Law. “It will have to be some office or other—that’s the only way in which a fellow who has no money seems to be able to make a living. A very poor living, so far as I hear—but still it is something, I suppose. That is not what I would like by nature. I’d like to go out to Australia or New Zealand. I hate the notion of being cooped up to a desk. But I suppose that is how it will have to be.”
“Because of your sister? You would not abandonher? It does you a great deal of credit,” said the Minor Canon, with warmth.