CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FOOL’S PARADISE.
THE Signor came in with some suppressed excitement about him, which he concealed under an air of perfect calm, but which betrayed itself in the gleam of his eyes and the rapidity of his movements. He saw in a moment that he had bitterly disappointed Lottie, whose countenance changed as she saw him—changed from glowing expectation to that sudden pallor and sickness of departing hope which seems to carry all the life out of a face. He saw it, and he understood; he had the quickness of perception which belonged to his Italian origin, and he had, as we have said, a great deal that was feminine in him—this among the rest, that he could divine and read the meanings of a face. He saw at once what it was. She had expected, not him, but another. The Signor was very sorry for Lottie. He had been angry, almost spitefully angry, about her rejection of his favourite pupil; but she had made her peace with him last night, and all her offences had been condoned. He was very sorry for her. She had been looking for Ridsdale, and Ridsdale had not come. The Signor felt that he himself was a much safer and better visitor for her; but, all the same, he was sorry for Lottie. He bowed with a depth of respect, which, indeed, he showed to all ladies. He was more of an Italian than an Englishman in this point; he was always ceremonious and stately to women, bowing to the ground, taking the hand offered to him reverentially, as if he meant to kiss it. This ceremony gave Lottie a little time to recover herself, and after all it was very early. The voluntary was still sounding from the Abbey (how had the Signor got away so soon?), and though he had not appeared yet, that was not to say that he was not coming. She took her seat again, with the colour coming back.
“I do not know how to speak to you,” he said; “how to thank you for last night——”
“Oh! so long as you do not think me very presumptuous—very bold. I—could not help it. It was the music that went to my head,” said Lottie, very tremulous, giving a hasty glance at him and then turning her head away.
“It is just because the music goes to your head that I have such high hopes—Miss Despard,” said the Signor; “let bygones be bygones, won’t you? and let us be friends.”
“We never quarrelled that I know of,” said Lottie, slightly alarmed; and, for his part, the Signor was confused, thinking of Purcell, of whose misadventure he had, of course, no right to know.
“You were not pleased with me,” he said. “I did not worship your voice as some people do. I told you plainly that you wanted instruction. So you do still. Your voice is lovely, Miss Despard, and you have the soul of an artist. You can forget yourself. Little singers never forget themselves; they are always in the foreground, seeing their own personality everywhere; but it is very different with you.”
Lottie did not say anything in reply. She felt vaguely that he was giving her praise, but she did not mind. Was that someone coming in below? but it was only Captain Despard returning in after matins. The Signor, always so quick, felt again the flutter in her, and knew what her expectation was.
“You were once very angry with me for making a—an application to you. You thought I meant to be disrespectful? Ah, no. I could not fail of respect to a lady, Miss Despard; but I saw in you what I see still more clearly now.”
“Signor!” said Lottie, rousing herself up to seize the opportunity, with a bewildered feeling that it was right to do it, that if she did not do it now, she never might; and, finally, that to do it might propitiate fate and make it unnecessary to be done—“Signor—let me tell you first. I went to the Abbey yesterday on purpose to see you, to say to you—— ah, here is some one coming to interrupt us.”
“Yes, there is some one coming to interrupt us, ” cried the Signor almost bitterly; this time there could be no doubt who it was; “but first, one word before he comes. You were coming to tell me that you consented—that you would be my pupil?”
She could scarcely pay any attention to him, he saw. What a thing to think of, that a girl like this, a woman with genius, should let an empty-headed coxcomb come between her and all that was worth caring for, between her and Art! She gave him a confused, half-guilty look, which seemed like a confession of weakness, and nodded only in reply. Nodded! when a proposal was made to her such as the Muse might have made to her chief favourite, when the gates of the Palace of Art were being rolled open wide to admit her. In that moment, Lottie, all pre-occupied by the advent of a mere man of fashion, in music not more than a charlatan, in honour not much to brag of, gave her consent to the arrangement which was to fashion her life by—a nod. Heaven and earth! what a demonstration of female folly! Could the Signor be anything but vexed? He could hardly restrain his impatience, as Rollo came in, all eager and smiling, easy and cordial even to himself. The Signor, though he was as innocent of sentiment as old Pick, looked like nothing in the world so much as a scared, jealous, and despairing lover, watching, in spite of himself, the entrance of the conquering hero, for whom all the songs were sung and all the welcomes said.
“I might have known I should find Rossinetti here,” said Rollo, “as he is an earlier bird than I am. Where could we all flock this morning but here? You have been thanking Miss Despard for her divine singing last night. My life, what singing it was! I have never heard anything like it. Miss Despard, I have come to announce to you my conversion. I abjure opera as I abjure the pope. Henceforward Handel is my creed—so long as you are his interpreter,” he added, sinking his voice.
“Yes,” said the Signor. “Miss Despard will sing very well if she works; but we are far yet from the highest excellence of which such a voice as hers is capable. I will take my leave now. Perhaps you have a friend who would bring you to my house? that would be the best. No doubt I could come here; but if you will come to my house, my piano is a very good one, and that would be the best. Don’t think it is anything to be remarked; my pupils constantly do it. They bring a maid with them, or, if it is needful, I send for Mrs.——, for my housekeeper. My young ladies are most unflatteringly at their ease with me.”
“You are going to take lessons?” Rollo asked quickly. “I congratulate you, Rossinetti. My good fellow, you are a great genius, and I know very little, but I never was so envious of you before. All the same you know lessons are—teaching is—well, we must admit, not much more than a pretence in the present case. The habit of singing, that is all Miss Despard wants.”
“You must pardon me that I don’t agree with you,” the Signor said, somewhat stiffly. “Miss Despard does not want flattery from me. She will get plenty of that by and by; but she does want teaching, senza complimenti, and that she shall have if she will take it. It rests with her whether or not she will take it. If she does take it as I would have her do—then,” said the Signor, with a gleam in his eyes of suppressed enthusiasm, “then I flatter myself——”
Rollo was provoked. Though he was very sweet-tempered, he did not like to be crowed over in this way, and his pleasant hyperbole flattened out; besides, there is something in the presence of a young woman which makes men, ever so slightly pitted against each other, pugnacious. He laughed. “I see,” he said, “you won’t flatter Miss Despard, Rossinetti, but you flatter yourself.”
“I will send you word about hours,” said the Signor hastily. “I beg your pardon, I did not quite catch your last observation. Good morning, Miss Despard. To-morrow or after to-morrow I shall hope to begin.”
“Good-bye, for the moment; we shall meet later,” said Rollo, with a smile and a nod, turning to open the door for his—not rival certainly, but competitor. He opened the door and closed it behind the Signor with quite unnecessary attention, his face full of sup pressed laughter and malicious satisfaction. Rollo felt that he remained master of the field. He came back to where Lottie, agitated and happy, was sitting, rubbing his hands with triumph. “The Signor is an excellent musician, but he is a prig, Miss Despard, if you will permit the word; and now that we have got rid of him,” said Rollo, dropping into that other seat beside her, “let me say——”
What did he say? Lottie remembered most of the words for years and years. When she heard the sound of them again in other conversations, in sentences that had no relation to her, from other people, and even addressed to other people, she would hold her breath. Foolish girl! they were well-worn words, such as perhaps every woman possessing such a gift, or even a much smaller gift than Lottie’s, has heard to weariness; but the most common approbation, which afterwards becomes the mere accompaniment and petty murmur of existence, one time in one’s life is divine—as he told her her voice was, as he let her infer she too was, and everything about her. Lottie was not used to anything like flattery. Even in the best of circumstances, fathers and brothers are seldom enthusiastic; and kind Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, though she had given her countenance to Rowley’s lessons, did not in the least conceal that she was bored by them; and the tenor was a great deal too much occupied with his own voice, and the compliments that had been paid to him, to leave him much time for complimenting his pupil. It was true that the Signor’s wish to teach her was of itself the essence of flattery; but he never had given her any credit for her singing, and always had seen the faults of it. So that it was Rollo who had first revealed to her that heaven of praise which is so doubly sweet to the neophyte when it is supposed to be not her excellence, but his love, which inspires it. Lottie had no defence against the enthusiasm, the admiration, the rhapsodies of her companion. If they were excessive, that was not because he was failing in truth, but only abounding in love. So she thought. The very atmosphere around her turned into happiness. Her eyes were dazzled with it. She could not look at him nor lift her face except in momentary sudden glances, so much was the air full of this suffused, subdued, but penetrating glory. And, strangely enough, though he did not feel half so much as she supposed him to feel, Rollo himself was moved by this something in the air which rayed out from her exquisite dawn of bliss and of love. He said naturally a great deal more than he intended—and, what was more wonderful, he felt a great deal more than he could have supposed possible—and without the least purpose or thought, dropped moment by moment deeper and deeper into that curious kind of rapture which is tolerably expressed by the phrase, falling in love. Reason had nothing to do with it, nor intention; and he had not come here driven by a passion which was more strong than he was, as Lottie thought. But, nevertheless, whether it was the magnetic influence of that sentiment in her which he had called forth without knowing it, and which now touched him with sympathetic life: or the more commonplace result of her beauty, and of their close propinquity, and her loneliness, and the generous impulse of protection and kindness that was in him: certain it is that all Lottie’s ideas of him realised themselves in the young man’s mind in the most miraculous way. He had always been, all his friends knew, ridiculously sympathetic all his life. Never before had it taken this precise form; but then, never before had Rollo met with the same combination of circumstances. He had flirted with a great many people, and foolish girls, who were not prudent enough to remember his younger brotherhood and impecunious position, had liked his company and been very willing to roam along the first beginnings of the primrose path by his side; but nothing more than the lightest exchanges of sentiment had ever come to pass. And then he had believed of several women that they were “making a set” at him, and desiring to “catch” him. No degree of younger brotherhood, no amount of impecuniosity, will prevent a man from thinking that some woman or other is trying to “catch” him; but never in all his life had Rollo come across a creature like Lottie, simply, solemnly, gratefully convinced that he was in love with her. Lottie had not been in love with him when she thought she found this out. But her certainty as to his sentiments had been absolute. And now this certainty was realising itself. It was a very different thing from the love which points directly and, as a matter of course, to the natural conclusion. He thought of nothing of the kind. He did not choose her out of all the world, as Lottie thought. But it came to very much the same thing as they sat together, talking about everything, dropping into mutual confidences, wasting the sweet autumnal morning. Lottie knew that all her domestic businesses were waiting for her, but did not care. And Rollo knew that, if he were questioned as to where he had been, he would have to invent an explanation other than the true one. But what did this matter? They sat and talked, forgetting even music, which was the one thing hitherto which had occupied them when together. He did not ask her to sing to him, which was a thing which made Lottie very happy, notwithstanding that it was his admiration of her voice only which had made her recognise and be glad of that possession. She had sung for him gladly, but now she was more pleased not to be asked to sing. What did they want with music? It would be hard to describe how well they came to know each other during that long morning’s talk. He told her about himself, and she told him about herself, and thus they skimmed over very dangerous ground as to the beginning of their own acquaintance. Lottie, with a girl’s shrinking from premature avowal, hurried over that point lest he might perhaps tell her how he had seen her, and dreamed of her, long before he dared claim acquaintance. Poor Lottie! but for that fond delusion she might have heard the real cause of his first eagerness to make her acquaintance, and been disenchanted. But what would it have mattered? By this time, things had gone too far to make it an advantage to her now to be undeceived.
This was the beginning of the time which was the crown and flower of life to Lottie Despard. Deceived, and yet not deceived; creating really the sentiment which she believed in, yet not as she believed it: she herself all simple and trustful, impassioned in everything she undertook, then and there, to the last fibre of her being, gave her heart to Rollo Ridsdale—loved him, believing herself as fully justified as ever woman was, by the possession of his love, to bestow her own; and bestowing it purely, freely, without doubt or arrière pensée. His rank and the pleasure of thinking that some one out of the world above her, the world which she aspired to, and felt herself to belong to, was seeking her, had dazzled Lottie at the first;—but by this time it did not matter to her who or what Rollo was. Sometimes even, she thought that she would prefer him to be more on her own level: then stopped and reproved herself proudly for wanting to take anything from him who deserved everything. His position as a patrician, his supposed wealth (how was Lottie to know that such a man, possessing everything, could be just as poor, and perhaps not much more honourable in respect to debt and such matters, than her father?), the grace and nobleness of all his surroundings, were part of his nature, she thought in her simplicity. To shut him up in small rooms, confine him to the limited horizon of common life, and its poor little routine of duties, would be to take something from Rollo; and she did not want to take anything from him, rather to add any honour and glory that might be wanting. She did not know how long or how short a time they had been together on that wonderful morning before they first began to talk (as Lottie said) like friends. It lasted no more than a moment, and yet it was a new life all luminous and great, throwing the twenty years of the other life which had preceded it, entirely into shade. She had to stand still to steady herself and accustom her eyes to the ordinary atmosphere when he went away. Everything was changed. Her head went round. She did not know how to go downstairs (too late, much too late!) and look after the household matters which she had postponed; and when she did go to them, went hazily like one in a dream. What a change had come upon life! Yesterday, even Rollo was no more than a distant vision of possibilities to her; now she seemed to know him thoroughly, to know all about him; to feel that she could tell him whatever might happen, that it would be natural to confide everything to him—everything! her heart threw wide open its doors. She did not think even that he might wonder to find himself so entirely received into her life. Lottie had none of the experience which the most ordinary encounter with the world, which even ballroom tattle and the foolish commerce of flirtations give. She came to this first chapter, all innocent and original in heart and thought, with the frankness as well as the timidity of a nature unalarmed and (in this kind) knowing no evil. Love was to her an angel, the first of the angels—inspiring awe, but no terror. She went to her work feeling as if she walked to some noble strain of music. Nothing could irritate her, nothing put her out.
That evening Lottie went out upon the Slopes in the dusk to breathe the evening air and give herself that fresher, sweeter medium for her dreams. Law was out, the Captain was out as usual; and the little house was very still with only Mary in the kitchen (for most of her time hanging about the back entrance looking for the baker), and Lottie upstairs. Somehow to-night Lottie did not wait for Captain Temple, who had constituted himself her escort, but as soon as it began to be really evening stole out by herself and made her way quickly up the Dean’s Walk, not anxious to join anyone. She wanted to be alone for her thoughts. It was not that the slightest idea of meeting Rollo entered into her mind—how should it? The dinners at the Deanery were not like the afternoon meal in the Chevaliers’ lodges, out of which all the inhabitants streamed as soon as that was over, to get the good of the summer night. Summer—for, though it was beginning to be autumn, it was still summer—warm, soft, delicious evenings with so much dusk in them, and misty sweetness. Lottie wanted nothing at that moment of dreamy happiness but silence and her own thoughts; more, however, was in store for her. The Deanery dinner was a family dinner that evening, and while the Dean read the evening paper, and Lady Caroline put up her feet on the sofa, what was a young man to do? He said he would go over to the Signor’s and talk music and smoke a cigar; and the elder people, though they were fond of Rollo, were not sorry to be rid of him. He wanted, perhaps, to enjoy his triumph over the Signor, or to find out what his plans were and expectations of Lottie’s voice; or, perhaps, only he wanted a little variety, feeling the company of his venerated relations too much pleasure. But, though he was not so full of dreams as Lottie, something of the same charmed mood was in his mind. And when caprice made him take the turn up to the Slopes also, instead of going the other way through the Cloisters to the musician’s house—and when the two caught sight of each other, they both started with genuine surprise, and there was on Lottie’s side even a little alarm. She was too shy to beg him in so many words to go away, but it was only the want of courage which kept her from saying so. It was too much; it did not seem right to meet him again; but then Lottie reflected that to the merest acquaintance she was bound to be polite. Mr. Ridsdale had the same thought. He was unfeignedly delighted to see her, finding this way of escape from all possibility of dulness much more complete than he thought; but yet he felt that perhaps a second encounter so soon, and in a place open to all eyes, might be dangerous; notwithstanding, what could a man do? He was bound to be civil. He could not run away from a lady when he met her, simply because he admired her—a reason, on the contrary, to keep him by her side. So they took a stroll together, this way and that way, from one end to the other: it was not a very long way. He told her that he was going to the Signor’s, and she accepted the explanation very demurely, notwithstanding the fact that the Signor lived on the lower side of the Deanery and this was on the upper side; and she told him that she had only just come out, having missed Captain Temple, who would appear presently:—“He is my usual companion—he is very old, the oldest of all the Chevaliers—and he is very, very kind to me.” Each accepted what the other thus said with a kind of solemnity; and they made two turns up and down, stopping now and then to look out upon the plain so broad and blue, with the soft autumn mists hanging on the horizon. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” Rollo said; and they stood still and gazed, following the river in its silvery windings, and silent as if their minds were absorbed in these atmospheric influences and that dusky bridal of the earth and sky. When Captain Temple came up Rollo asked to be introduced to him, and was very civil. “Miss Despard has been waiting for you, and I have kept her company,” he said, so that the old Captain thanked him civilly, if a little stiffly; and then the two turned their backs upon each other, Rollo hastening down to the Cloisters to keep, as he said, his appointment, and Lottie turning away without so much as a parting glance, without shaking hands. Captain Temple, alarmed at first, took heart, and thought it was nothing but politeness when he saw how they parted. “You were quite right, my dear, quite right to wait, and I am much obliged to Mr. Ridsdale; I cannot think how I missed you.” Lottie did not make a direct reply, but compelled herself to talk, and very demurely, with much praise of the lovely night, went with him home.
If Captain Temple had but known! And after this how many meetings there were, so happily accidental, so easily explainable, and yet requiring no such ex planation! How well they began to know each other’s habits and each other’s likings; and how sweet were all the dewy misty paths in that fool’s paradise! or on the Slopes, if you prefer it; it does not matter much about a name.