CHAPTER XXII.
A CHANCE FOR LAW.
MR. ASHFORD took 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 a creditable 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 feel much 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 no ways 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 three small 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 stood aux prises with 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 and natural!—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 whether you 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 abandon her? It does you a great deal of credit,” said the Minor Canon, with warmth.
“Well, because of her in one way,” said Law; “because she is always so strong against it, and because I have no money for a start. You don’t suppose that I would mind otherwise? No; Lottie is all very well, but I don’t see why a man should give into her in everything. She will have to think for herself in future, and so shall I. So, if you will tell me what you think I could do, Mr. Ashford; I should say you don’t think I can do anything after that try,” said Law, with an upward glance of investigation, half-wistful, half-ashamed.
“Have you read English literature much? That tells nowadays,” said the Minor Canon. “If you were to give any weight to my opinion, I would tell you to get the papers for the army examination, and try for that.”
“Ah! that’s what I should like,” cried Law; “but it’s impossible. Fellows can’t live on their pay. Even Lottie would like me to go into the army. But it’s not to be done. You can’t live on your pay. English! Oh, I’ve read a deal of stories—Harry Lorrequer and Soapy Sponge, and that sort of—rot.”
“I am afraid that will not do much good,” said the Minor Canon, shaking his head. “And, indeed, I fear, if you are going to be successful, you must set to work in a more serious way. Perhaps you are good at figures—mathematics?—no!—science, perhaps—natural history——”
“If you mean the Zoological Gardens, I like that,” said Law, beginning to see the fun of this examination; “and I should be very fond of horses, if I had the chance. But that has nothing to say to an office. Figures, ha? yes, I know. But I always hated counting. I see you think there is nothing to be made of me. That is what I think myself. I have often told her so. I shall have to ’list, as I have told her.” Law looked at his companion with a little curiosity as he said this, hoping to call forth an alarmed protestation.
But Mr. Ashford was not horrified. He was about to say, “It is the very best thing you could do,” but stopped, on consideration, for Lottie’s sake.
“You are a man to look at,” he said, “though you are young. Has it never occurred to you till now to think what you would like to be? You did not think you could go on for ever stumbling over ten lines of Virgil? I beg your pardon, I don’t mean to be rude; but the most of us have to live by something, and a young man like you ought to have a notion what he is going to be about. You thought of the Civil Service?”
“I suppose Lottie did,” said Law, getting up and seizing his book. “It is all her doing, from first to last; it is she that has always been pushing and pushing. Yes; what’s the use of trying Virgil? I always felt it was all bosh. I don’t know it, and what’s more, I don’t want to know it. I am not one for reading; it’s not what I would ever have chosen; it is all Lottie, with her nagging and her pushing. And so I may go home and tell her you don’t think me fit for anything?” he added suddenly, with a slight break of unexpected feeling in his voice.
“Don’t do anything of the kind. If you would only be open with me, tell me what are your own ideas and intentions——”
“That’s what everybody says,” said Law, with a smile of half-amused superiority; “open your mind. But what if you’ve got no mind to open? I don’t care what I do; I don’t intend anything; get me in somewhere, and I’ll do the best I can. A fellow can’t speak any fairer than that.”
The Minor Canon looked at him with that gaze of baffled inquiry which is never so effectually foiled as by the candid youth who has no intentions of his own and no mind to open. Law stood before him, stretching out his useless strength, with his useless book again under his arm—a human being thoroughly wasted; no place for him in the Civil Service, no good use in any of the offices. Why shouldn’t he ’list if he wished it? It was the very best thing for him to do. But when Mr. Ashford thought of Lottie this straightforward conclusion died on his lips.
“Why couldn’t you live on your pay?” he said hurriedly. “It is only to exercise a little self-denial. You would have a life you liked and were fit for, and a young subaltern has just as much pay as any clerkship you could get. Why not make an effort, and determine to live on your pay? If you have the resolution you could do it. It would be better certainly than sitting behind a desk all day long.”
“Wouldn’t it!” said Law, with a deep breath. “Ah! but you wouldn’t require to keep a horse, sitting behind your desk; you wouldn’t have your mess to pay. A fellow must think of all that. I suppose you’ve had enough of me?” he added, looking up with a doubtful smile. “I may go away?”
“Don’t go yet.” There sprang up in the Minor Canon’s mind a kindness for this impracticable yet thoroughly practical-minded boy, who was not wise enough to be good for anything, yet who was too wise to plunge into rash expenses and the arduous exertion of living on an officer’s pay—curious instance of folly and wisdom, for even an officer’s pay was surely better than no pay at all. Mr. Ashford did not want to throw Law off, and yet he could not tell what to do with him. “Will you stay and try how much you can follow of young Uxbridge’s work?” he said. “I daresay you have not for the moment anything much better to do.”
Law gave a glance of semi-despair from the window upon the landscape, and the distance, and the morning sunshine. No! he had nothing better to do. It was not that he had any pleasures in hand, for pleasures cost money, and he had no money to spend; and he knew by long experience that lounging about in the morning without even a companion is not very lively. Still he yielded and sat down, with a sigh. Mere freedom was something, and the sensation of being obliged to keep in one place for an hour or two, and give himself up to occupation, was disagreeable; a fellow might as well be in an office at once. But he submitted. “Young Uxbridge?” he said. “What is he going in for? The Guards, I suppose.” Law sighed; ah! that was the life. But he was aware that for himself he might just as easily aspire to be a prince as a Guardsman. He took his seat at the table resignedly, and pulled the books towards him, and looked at them with a dislike that was almost pathetic. Hateful tools! but nothing was to be done without them. If he could only manage to get in somewhere by means of the little he knew of them, Law vowed in his soul he would never look at the rubbish again.
Young Uxbridge, when he came in spick and span, in the freshest of morning coats and fashionable ties—for which things Law had a keen eye, though he could not indulge in them—looked somewhat askance at the slouching figure of the new pupil. But, though he was the son of a canon and in the best society, young Uxbridge was not more studious, and he was by nature even less gifted, than Law. Of two stupid young men, one may have all the advantage over another which talent can give, without having any talent to brag of. Law was very dense with respect to books, but he understood a great deal more quickly what was said to him, and had a play of humour and meaning in his face, and sense of the amusing and absurd, if nothing more, which distinguished him from his companion, who was steadily level and obtuse all round, and never saw what anything meant. Thus, though one knew more than the other, the greater ignoramus was the more agreeable pupil of the two; and the Minor Canon began to take an amused interest in Law as Law. He kept him to luncheon after the other was gone, and encouraged the boy to talk, giving him such a meal as Law had only dreamt of. He encouraged him to talk, which perhaps was not quite right of Mr. Ashford, and heard a great deal about his family, and found out that, though Lottie was right, Law was not perhaps so utterly wrong as he thought. Law was very wrong; yet when he thus heard both sides of the question, the Minor Canon perceived that it was possible to sympathise with Lottie in her forlorn and sometimes impatient struggle against the vis inertiæ of this big brother, and yet on the other hand to have an amused pity for the big brother, too, who was not brutal but only dense, gaping with wonder at the finer spirit that longed and struggled to stimulate him into something above himself. So stimulated Law never would be. He did not understand even what she wanted, what she would have; but he was not without some good in him. No doubt he would make an excellent settler in the back-woods, working hard there though he would not work here, and ready to defend himself against any tribe of savages; and he would not make a bad soldier. But to be stimulated into a first-class man in an examination, or an any-class man, to be made into a male Lottie of fine perceptions and high ambition, that was what Law would never be.
“But she is quite right,” said Law; “something must be done. I suppose you have heard, Mr. Ashford, as everybody seems to have heard, that the governor is going to marry again?”
“I did hear it. Will that make a great difference to your sister and you?”
“Difference? I should think it would make a difference. As it happens, I know P——, the woman he is going to marry. She makes no secret of it that grown-up sons and daughters shouldn’t live at home. I shall have to leave, whatever happens; and Lottie—well, in one way Lottie has more need to leave than I have: I shouldn’t mind her manners and that sort of thing—but Lottie does mind.”
“Very naturally,” said the Minor Canon.
“Perhaps,” said Law; “but I don’t know where she gets her ideas from, for we never were so very fine. However, I might stand it, but Lottie never will be able to stand it; and the question follows, what is she to do? For myself, as I say, I could ’list, and there would be an end of the matter.”
“But in that case you would not be of much use to your sister.”
Law shrugged his shoulders. “I should be of use to myself, which is the first thing. And then, you know—but perhaps you don’t know—all this is obstinacy on Lottie’s part, for she might be as well off as anyone. She might, if she liked, instead of wanting help, be able to help us all. She might start me for somewhere or other, or even make me an allowance, so that I could get into the army in the right way. When I think of what she is throwing away it makes me furious; she might make my fortune if she liked—and be very comfortable herself, too.”
“And how is all this to be done?” said the Minor Canon somewhat tremulously, with a half-fantastic horror in his mind of some brutal alternative that might be in Lottie’s power, some hideous marriage or sacrifice of the conventional kind. He waited for Law’s answer in more anxiety than he had any right to feel, and Law on his side had a gleam of righteous indignation in his eyes, and for the moment felt himself the victim of a sister’s cruelty, defrauded by her folly and unkindness of a promotion which was his due.
“Look here,” he said solemnly; “all this she could do without troubling herself one bit, if she chose; she confessed it to me herself. The Signor has made her an offer to bring her out as a singer, and to teach her himself first for nothing. That is to say, of course, she would pay him, I suppose, when he had finished her, and she had got a good engagement. You know they make loads of money, these singers—and she has got as fine a voice as any of them. Well, now, fancy, Mr. Ashford, knowing that she could set us all up in this way, and give me a thorough good start—she’s refused; and after that she goes and talks about me!”
For a moment Mr. Ashford was quite silenced by this sudden assault. A bold thrust is not to be met by fine definitions, and for the first moment the Minor Canon was staggered. Was there not some natural justice in what the lout said? Then he recovered himself.
“But,” he said, “there are a great many objections to being a singer.” He was a little inarticulate, the sudden attack having taken away his breath. “A lady might well have objections; and the family might have objections.”
“Oh! I don’t mind,” said Law; “if I did I should soon have told her; and you may be sure the governor doesn’t mind. Not likely! The thing we want is money, and she could make as much money as ever she pleases. And yet she talks about me! I wish I had her chance; the Signor would not have to speak twice; I would sing from morning to night if they liked.”
“Would you work so hard as that? Then why don’t you work a little at your books; the one is not harder than the other?”
“Work! Do you call singing a lot of songs work?” said the contemptuous Law.