CAPTAIN TEMPLE was not happy about the events of that evening. He had begun to grow very fond of Lottie, and he was not pleased that she should have “made an exhibition of herself.” He went over it so often to his wife that Mrs. Temple learned the incident by heart. There was in her mind, mingled with an intense silent interest in the girl who was like her own, a feeling of repulsion too, equally intense and silent, which joined with the opposite sentiment, and kept Lottie as constantly present to her mind as she was in the Captain’s talk. And, though it sometimes appeared to her that she would die of this girl, who reminded her at every step that she had lost her child, yet she could not check her husband’s ever-flowing, continually repeated talk on the subject. Mrs. Temple thought this was all for his sake. Sometimes, in the bitterness of her loss, she would cry out that she loathed the very name of this other, who was so well and bright and full of life, while her child was dead and gone; but, notwithstanding, Lottie had gradually come to hold a large place in her life. How could she help thinking of her? Grudging her very life and brightness, repenting her grudge, praying God’s blessing on the girl whom she thus injured, avoiding her, fearing the sight of her, watching for her whom she feared; how could it be but that Mrs. Temple, in her lonely hours, should think of Lottie? She was the confidant now of the old Captain’s regret.
“I thought she was a sweet, modest girl,” he said, shaking his head; “shy, even—as I like a girl to be—very like—— My dear, I cannot bear a girl to make an exhibition of herself——”
“But if there was no one to see her, and if you were in the dark?”
“That is true, my dear; but if they did not see her they heard her. Such a voice! I wish you had been there—but that sort of public use of it—and to have the confidence to sing when she was not asked!” Captain Temple shook his head. He seemed to have done nothing but shake his head since last night.
“Do you think that the more she has a beautiful voice the less she should let it be heard?” said his wife. “I am not so taken up with this Miss Despard as you are; but still I think you are unjust to her.”
“Perhaps I am unjust to her. How can I help being taken up with her? If you knew her as well you would be taken up with her too. And I wish you did; it would be a comfort to you. In everything she does, her walk, every little gesture, I see something that reminds me—— I know you don’t like to speak of it, my dear.”
Mrs. Temple set her face like a rock while the old Captain talked on. He did nothing but speak of it, and she would not stop him. Had she not noticed the girl’s walk? When Lottie passed Mrs. Temple turned from the window, feeling as if some one had given her a blow. Yet what had she gone to the window for but to watch for Lottie? And she was more just to her than was the old Captain, who could not bear any falling off in his ideal, who thought that a girl should never make an exhibition of herself, and did nothing for a week after but shake his head.
The singing, however, made a great excitement in the Cloisters. It was only a select few who had been there to hear; and they thought it was all the Signor’s arrangement, who had provided for them so much greater a pleasure than they expected—or, rather, an additional pleasure. “Who was it?” everybody asked. Was it possible it could be little Rowley? But it was inconceivable that a mere child like that could have taken the contralto solo as well as the soprano. But was it certain that there was only one voice? The darkness was deceptive, and all the circumstances were so unusual, so out of the ordinary. When you came to think of it, it could not be one voice. It must have been little Rowley and Mellor, the big boy, whose contralto was famous. At that distance, and in the dark, it was easy to deceive yourself and think there was only one person singing. There was nothing talked about next morning but this wonderful incident, and both the people who had been there and the people who had not been there (who were piqued, and felt themselves neglected, as a matter of course) discussed it with the utmost excitement. Even before the hour of matins, old Pick, who was out upon his master’s business and Mrs. Purcell’s errands, was twice interviewed on the subject. The first time it was Rowley, the tenor, who assailed him, whose boy was the first soprano, and whose rights were attacked. “I should just like to know what the Signor is up to,” Rowley said. “He’s always got some new fad or other in his head. He’ll have us all up next into that organ-loft, like a set of Christy Minstrels. Hanged if I’ll go!”
“Anyhow, you’ll wait till you’re asked,” said old Pick.
“I don’t advise him to ask me. And, look here! I want to know who it was. If he’s bringing in somebody in the dark, on the sly, to put them boys’ noses out!—you never can tell what a foreign fellow’s up to. I don’t know a voice like that, not in the Abbey. If he’s smuggling in a new boy, without no warning, to take the bread out of folks’ mouths, by George, I won’t stand it! I’ll go to the Dean about it! Tomm y’s cried hisself hoarse. He couldn’t eat his breakfast, poor little beggar! and he’s got ‘Hear my prayer’ this morning. Hanged if I don’t think it’s all a scheme against me and my boy! That ain’t a child’s voice. There’s a touch of falsetto in it, if I know anything about music. It won’t last, not a month. I’ve heard them come out like that, that you could hear them a mile off, just before they break.”
“Then you were there, Mr. Rowley?” said old Pick; “I thought there was only the folks from the Deanery there.”
“I wasn’t there. Catch me in the Abbey when I’m not wanted! I have enough of it, practising and bothering from morning till night. The Signor’s very good for the organ. I don’t say nothing against that; but he don’t know much about Englishmen. You do no justice to your voice when you never give yourself no rest; but he can’t understand that. I heard it outside. Pick, there’s a good old fellow, you know what it is yourself, and I’m sure we’re always glad to see you when you look in at our little place. Tell us what’s up—who is it? Tommy will have to go in time. I don’t say nothing against that. But he’s not twelve, poor little beggar, and his voice is as clear as a bell. He’s fit to fret himself into a fever if they take the first solos from him. Tell us what the Signor’s up to, and who he’s got coming in? I say it’s a shame,” said the tenor, rising again into vehemence. “Them that is on the spot, and belonging to the place, and bred up in the Abbey all their lives, hanged if they should be turned out for strangers! I don’t see the fun of that.”
“If you’ve done, Mr. Rowley, I think I’ll go,” said Pick; upon which Rowley swore under his breath that it wasn’t like an old friend to give a fellow no answer, and that he didn’t know what he and Tommy had done to offend the Signor. To this old Pick made no reply, being himself extremely indignant not to know anything about the mystery in question. He had heard of no new boy—“nor anything as is new,” Pick said to himself with warmth as he hurried through the enclosure which belonged to the lay clerks, where a great many people were at the doors and windows, and the excitement was general. It was natural that Pick should be indignant. So little as there ever was to hear or report within the Precincts, to think something should have happened under his very nose, in the Abbey, and he not know! The Signor was a good master, and the place was comfortable; but there are things which no man can be expected to stand. Even Mr. John had not said a word about any novelty. If he had told his mother, then the housekeeper had been as treacherous as the rest, and had not breathed a word to Pick. It was a thing that no man could be expected to put up with. Here were two ladies now bearing down upon him, full of curiosity—and that Pick should have to confess that he didn’t know!
“Oh, Pickering! you must know—who was it that was singing in the Abbey last night? A very extraordinary thing for the Signor to countenance. He did not ask us; he knew it would be of no use, for neither my husband nor I approve of such proceedings; making the Abbey, our beautiful Abbey, into a kind of music-hall! I hear it was a lady: the very worst taste, and anything so unecclesiastical! Women don’t exist in the Church—not as taking any part—but these are points which foreigners never will understand,” said the lady, with a sigh.
“It was odd having such a performance at all, for a few privileged persons. I thought the Abbey, at least,” said the second lady, “was for all.”
“Don’t go, Pickering; you haven’t answered my question. If I were you, being a man of experience, and having known the Abbey so long as you have done, I would give a hint to your master. You should tell him people here don’t like that sort of thing. It may do very well abroad, or even in town, where there are all sorts; but it does not do in St. Michael’s. You should tell him, especially as he is only half English, to be more careful. Stop a little, Pickering! You have not answered my question yet.”
“Beg your pardon, ma’am, but you didn’t give me no time,” said Pick.
“Do not be impertinent, Pickering. I asked you a plain question, and I told you what I should do in your place. A man like you, that has been so long about the Abbey, might be of great use to your master. You should tell him that in England a lady is never suffered to open her mouth in church. I never heard of anything so unecclesiastical. I wonder the Dean does not interfere—a man of good Church principles as he is, and with so much at stake. I really wonder the Dean does not interfere.”
“Oh, the Dean!” said the other lady; “and as for Church principles——”
But just then there was a tremble in the air with the first movement of the matin bells, and, without compromising his dignity or showing his ignorance, old Pick made good his escape. He went home in anything but an amiable state of mind, and went straight to the kitchen, where Mrs. Purcell was busy, as was natural at this time of the day, putting all in order and arranging for the Signor’s dinner. The luncheon Mary Anne was quite equal to, but some one was coming to dinner, for whom Mrs. Purcell intended to exercise all her powers. Pick went in with a fierce glow of indignant animation, with his roll of commissions fulfilled and unfulfilled.
“There’s no sweetbreads to be had,” he said, “till Saturday; they’ll save you a pair on Saturday, if you send the order with the man when he comes; but they’ll be six-and-six, if you think that too dear. (Dear! I should think it was dear. How much o’ that goes to the veal, I wonder, and the man as fed it?) And as for game! you might as well go a-shooting on the Slopes; and what there is bringing its weight in gold. I wouldn’t give in, if I was you, to that fashion about grouse. It’s all a fashion. Nobody ever thought of grouse in my young days, and coming after they’ve eat everything as they can set their face to. What should they want with it? I’ve brought you the lemons. Many a man wouldn’t be seen carrying a bag o’ lemons all the way up the hill; and everything’s kep’ from me, just because I’m too humble-minded, and don’t make no stand, nor mind what I do.”
“What’s been kep’ from you, Pick?” said Mrs. Purcell, pausing in her work to look at him. Then she added, “There’s been a deal of talking in the study. I’ve picked up a word or two about some woman, for they were going on about She; and She—but whether it’s that Miss Despard, or who it is, John’s never said a word to me.”
“It don’t need a witch to tell that it’s a woman,” said Pick; but he was relieved. “That fellow Rowley’s been at me, and one of the ladies round the corner; but they both had so much to say that I got off, and neither the one nor the other found out as I hadn’t a notion what they were talking about,” the old man added, with a chuckle. “It’s some new voice, as far as I can make out, as master has got hold of for the Abbey: and quite right too. Tommy Rowley’s got a pretty little bit of a voice, and he’s only twelve; but some voices goes sooner than others. The ladies thought as it was a woman; but that’s impossible. They were quite in a way. They said it was uneck—some thin’ or other—Dissenting-like, as I took it up—and that the Signor ought to be ashamed of hisself——”
“Master?” said Mrs. Purcell, opening her eyes wide; “but I hope you didn’t stand there and hear them say any harm of the Signor?”
“They told me as I was to give him good advice,” said Pick, still chuckling; “but all the same, ma’am, I don’t think as Mr. John should keep a thing from his mother. Where’s the young man as owes as much to his mother as that young man owes to you?”
“Not to me, to his own deservings; he’s been a lad that has done credit to everyone as has been kind to him, Pick, and never forgets nobody as has been kind to him; but he’s not the young man he was. He’s lost all his smiles and his fun since he had that disappointment. I don’t wish Miss Despard no harm, but I wish she had been a hundred miles from here, and my John had never seen her. Young women have a great deal to answer for,” said Mrs. Purcell, with a sigh.
“Young women haven’t much to answer for, so far as I’m concerned; nor master neither, so far as I can see,” said Pick, going off to his work with a comfortable consciousness that, this being the case, it did not matter so much about Mr. John.
But, if the community was thus stirred in general, words cannot tell the excitement that this strange incident created in the organ-loft. The Signor told Purcell after, that he could not tell what it was that made him go on when he had come to an end of the “Pastoral Symphony,” and play “There were Shepherds.” He had not meant to do it. He had intended to make the other the finale of his performance. There was such a feeling of night in it, the Signor said, the grass growing in the dark, and the stars shining, and the dew coming down. He meant to end there; he knew Mr. Ridsdale was a modern man and an opera man, and did not care so very much for Handel. Still he had meant to end with that; but when it came to the last chords he was not his own master, and he went on. As for Purcell, there was no need for anyone to tell him whose that voice was. Though he was at the moment helping to “blow,” he nearly compromised the whole performance by darting to the other side of the organ-loft and gazing down into the darkness to see her. Happily the other man who was there, the professional blower, was taken by no such vagaries and kept on steadily. “And I saw her,” Purcell said, “standing in the moonlight with all the colours of the rainbow about her, like the nimbus round the heads in Mr. Clayton’s new window.” The young fellow was quite struck by this sight. He thought it must mean something: he thought even she must be relenting towards himself, and had taken this strange way of showing it. The Signor was greatly moved too, but he did not take that view of the subject. He was a true artist himself, and he knew that there are impulses which get the better of people who are of this race. He patted his assistant on the arm, and told him not to build on it. But what then could it mean? young Purcell said; and it was difficult to answer. They both of them came down from their lofty gallery afterwards in great excitement, and the Signor, confused, received the enthusiastic thanks of his audience. “What a pleasure you have given us!” they said; “you have been better than your word. What exquisite playing, and what an exquisite voice! You don’t mean to say that was a boy, Signor?”—They asked the question, but they all believed, of course, that it was a boy. To think that little Rowley, because it was dark and nobody saw him, should have been able to sing like that! No one suspected the truth except Rollo Ridsdale, who came up to the musician in the dark nave and gripped him by the arm, so that he hurt the sensitive Italian-Englishman, whose nerves were all on the surface. “Did you do it on purpose?” Rollo cried, excited too—“I shall give up the opera and take to oratorios—did you do it on purpose?” “Did you do it on purpose?” said the Signor, who up to this moment had supposed in his excitement that Ridsdale’s coming must have had something to do with it. But after that question, which Rollo did not distinctly hear, the Signor changed his tone and hid his own astonishment, and accepted the applauses addressed to him on the admirable device by which he had given his hearers a double pleasure. And Purcell and he went home with their heads full of a hundred conjectures. Who had brought her in? how did she know of it even? Old Wykeham had kept his own counsel—he did not know whether he might not be supposed to have taken too much upon him had it been known; and, though he heard the two musicians talking of this miracle, he threw no light upon it, which he might have done so easily. Who could have told her? who could have brought her in? Purcell could not but think that her coming was a sign of relenting, that she was thus making a kind of celestial intimation that all was not over. This raised him into a very ecstasy of hope.
The Signor had other thoughts. He thought of nothing else all night; the sympathy and comprehension of an artist filling his mind and driving away the almost dislike with which, after her rejection of his protégé, he had been disposed to regard Lottie. Whatever might happen to Purcell, here was something which had never happened to himself in his life before. No doubt it had been a sudden impulse, like that which had made her fly trembling and pale with excitement, from himself and them all, in the drawing-room of the Deanery. This time the impulse had been the other way, and she had obeyed it. He had subjugated her by waiting her time, and, by what was much more pleasant to think of, the spell of his music, which had gone to her heart. Let it not be supposed that any sentiment about Lottie had begun to creep into the Signor’s heart. Young women, as Pick said, had little to answer for as far as he was concerned. He was all artist and not much else; but, with a glow through his being which answered, let us suppose, to the high throb of satisfaction which goes through persons who talk about their hearts, he said to himself, “She shall not escape me this time!” He knew more of Lottie than Rollo Ridsdale did. And he knew that he could make more of her than Rollo could make of her. He could make of her much more than was dreamed of in Rollo’s philosophy. He knew what she needed, and he could give it to her. In his hands, the Signor thought, this simple English girl might rise to the level of the Malibrans, of the Pastas. There should be no one able to stand before her.
It is to be feared he was thinking of this more than of the music as he played through King in F, which was the service for that morning. And he left Purcell to play the voluntary and stole out unobserved, though it was indecorous, before the congregation had dispersed. He threaded through the dim aisles and the cloisters, before Wykeham had time to call attention to him by hobbling after him with his jangling keys. He, like Lottie, had resolved to give himself no time to think of it, to do it at once. Ridsdale!—What a vain fool he was, talking about giving up opera and taking to oratorios! What could he do with her, if he had got her? His manager had rejected Lottie, and gone off after that voice at Milan. What fools they all were! and what would be the advantage to Ridsdale of having this voice untrained on his hands? What could he do with her? but there was nothing she might not do under the guidance of the Signor.
It was still early when he reached the little house: Lottie had not attempted to go out this morning to see the Signor, she was too much shaken by her escapade of last night. How could she have done it? She, who had loathed the idea of becoming a singer! She had made a singer of herself by her own act and deed, and she felt the full meaning of what she had done. She had got up early, unable in her excitement to sleep, and tingling still with the consequences of this strange, unpremeditated, unintended self-betrayal. What was it that had made her do it? She had got her work, and she had placed herself near the window—not so near as to be seen, yet near enough to be able to glance out and see anyone who might be coming that way. There were things to be done in the house, domestic operations of more importance than the needlework. But Lottie said to herself that they could wait—oh, they could wait! In the meantime what was best was, that she should be ready in case anyone called, ready to see anybody that might come over the road across the sunshine, in the morning quiet. “Good night; but only till to-morrow”—what was it that had conveyed to her the consciousness that he was there? The Abbey had been dark—she had not been thinking of him—certainly she had not known that he was looked for; and yet, what but the sense that he was there would have made her do what she had done? She had sung unwillingly, unwittingly, in spite of herself, because he was there. It all seemed quite plain to Lottie. He it was (she thought) who had first made her aware that this gift of hers was anything worth thinking of; he it was who had first given her the supreme pleasure of consciousness, who had shown to her the happiness she could bestow. Her voice (as she thought), if after all it was really worth anything, if it was the thing he thought it, the thing it sounded like last night—belonged to him. It was his spiritually; he had discovered it, and revealed it to herself. She had not been aware what she was doing; but unconsciously it was to him she was singing, when her voice escaped from her: it was a welcome to him—and he had accepted it as his welcome. Lottie gave a glance from her window, and thought she saw some one coming across the broad sunshine in the Dean’s Walk. Her heart gave a louder beat—he was coming. She made no mystery now about it; the preliminaries were all over. He came for her—who else? he had never concealed it; he had come for her long ago. She could not tell how long ago it was since he had first caught a glimpse of her at the window. Always since then it had been for her that he came: content at first to watch outside her window; then, with a lover’s ingenuity, finding out ways of meeting her; then venturing, bold yet timid, always reverential, to her home—and now at length what was coming? He was coming. And she had withdrawn the veil from her heart, and seen and acknowledged what was there. It was for him she sang: without knowing it, her heart had been aware of his presence; and now he was coming. Lottie drew back in the shade of the great leaves which garlanded her window. The next moment he would be here——