LOTTIE went up the Dean’s Walk hastily, feeling as if she had taken flight. And she was taking flight. She could not bear to meet the people coming from the Abbey, among whom no doubt her father and his wife would be. Lottie was scarcely aware that there was anything else in her mind. She hurried to the Slopes as the natural refuge of her trouble. The wind blowing fresh in her face, the great sweep of distance, the air and the clouds, the familiar rustle of the trees, seemed to have become part of her, a necessity of her living. And the Slopes were almost deserted now. In October the night comes early, the afternoon is short, even before the winds become chill; already it was darkening, though the afternoon service was but newly over. The trees were beginning to lose their gorgeous apparel: every breeze shook down hosts of leaves, shreds of russet brown and pale gold; the wind was wistful and mournful, with a sigh in it that promised rain. Lottie saw nobody about. She stole through the trees to her favourite corner, and leaned upon the low parapet, looking over the familiar scene. She was so familiar with it, every line; and yet it seemed to her to-night like scenery in a theatre which by-and-by would collapse and split asunder, and give place to something different. It would vanish from her sight, and in place of it there would appear the dim background of one of the little rooms at home, with a figure in a blue gown relieved against it, tossing about a mountain of braids and plaits. Lottie did not feel sure that this figure would not appear at her very side, lay an imperative hand on her shoulder, and order her to give up the secrets of her own being. Thus she carried her care within her. She stood leaning over the parapet, with the trees rustling around, scarcely aware what she was thinking of. Did she expect anyone? She would have said, No. The night was overcast and growing dismal, why should she expect anyone? What reason could he have for coming out here? He could have no instinctive knowledge of her misery, to bring him, and he had no longer that excuse of his cigar after dinner as on the happy nights when the air was still like summer. No! it was only for the stillness, only for the air, only to fling her troublesome thoughts out to the horizon and empty her mind, and thus feel it possible to begin again, that she had come. And never had that stillness been so still before. By-and-by this scene would melt away, and it would be the little dining-room in the Lodge, with the white tablecloth and the lamp lighted upon it. She had been weary of her home, she had half despised it; but never had she been disgusted, afraid of it, never loathed the thought of going back to it before. And she could not talk to anybody about this; they were all very kind, ready to be sorry for her, to do anything they could for her, but she could not bear their sympathy to-night.
All at once, in the silence which was so full of the whisper of the leaves and the sighs of the wind, that she had not heard any footstep, there came a voice close to her elbow which made Lottie start.
“Is it really you, Miss Despard? I had almost given up hopes;—and alone! I thought you were never to be alone again?” said Rollo, with pleasure in his voice.
How it startled her! She looked round upon him with so much fright in her eyes that he was half vexed, half angered. Was it possible that Lottie after all was just like the rest, pretending to be astonished by his appearance when she knew as well——
“You surely are not surprised to see me?” he said, with a short laugh.
“I did not think of seeing you,” she said quietly, and looked away from him again.
Rollo was angry, yet he was touched by something in her tone; and there must be something to cause this sudden change. She had always been so frank and simple in her welcome of him, always with a light of pleasure on her face when he came in sight; but she would not so much as let him see her face now. She looked round with that first start, then turned again and resumed her dreamy gaze into the night. And there was dejection in every line of her figure as she stood dimly outlined against the waning light. Suddenly there came into Rollo’s mind a recollection that he had heard something to account for this, without accusing her of petty pretence or affectation.
“Something has happened,” he said, with a sense of relief which surprised himself. “I remember now. I fear you are not happy about it.”
“No,” she said, with a sigh. Then Lottie made a little effort to recover herself; perhaps he would not care about her troubles. “It has been a great shock,” she said, “but perhaps it may not be so bad after a while.”
“Tell me,” said Rollo; “you know how much interest I take in everything that concerns you. Surely, Miss Despard, after this long time that we have been seeing each other, you know that? Won’t you tell me? I cannot bear to see you so sad, so unlike yourself.”
“Perhaps that is the best thing that could happen, ” said Lottie, “that I should be unlike myself. I wish I could be like someone with more sense; I have been so foolish! Everybody knows that we are poor; I never concealed it, but I never thought—— Oh! how silly we have been, Law and I! I used to scold him, but I never saw that I was just the same myself. We ought to have learned to do something, if it were only a trade. We are both young and strong, but we are good for nothing, not able to do anything. I used to scold him: but I never thought that I was just as bad myself.”
“Don’t say so, don’t say so! You were quite right to scold him; men ought to work. But you” cried Rollo with real agitation, “it is not to be thought of. You! don’t speak of such a thing. What is the world coming to, when you talk of working, while such a fellow as I——”
“Ah! that is quite different,” said Lottie. “You are rich, or, at least, you are the same as if you were rich; but we are really poor, we have no money: and everything we have, it is papa’s. I suppose he has a right to do whatever he likes with it; it seems strange, but I suppose he has a right. And, then, what is to become of us? How could I be so silly as not to think of that before? It is all my own fault; don’t think I am finding fault with papa, Mr. Ridsdale. I suppose he has a right, and I don’t want to grumble; it only—seems natural—to tell you.” Lottie did not know what an admission she was making. She sighed again into that soft distant horizon, then turned to him with a smile trembling about her lips. It was a relief to tell him—she could speak to him as she could not speak to Captain Temple or Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, though she had known them so much longer. “Perhaps I am only out of temper,” she said. She could not but feel more light of heart standing beside him with nobody near; they seemed to belong to each other so.
“How good, how sweet of you to say so,” he cried. “Then treat me as if it were natural; come and sit down—nobody will interrupt us—and tell me everything I want to know.”
They had met together in Lottie’s little drawing-room before, in the eye of day, and three or four times under Lady Caroline’s eye; but never before like this, in the twilight, all alone in the world, as it were, two of them, and no more. Lottie hesitated for a moment; but what could be wrong in it? There was nobody to disturb them, and her heart was so full; and to talk to him was so pleasant. She seemed able to say more to him than to any other. He understood her at half a word, whereas to the others she had to say everything, to say even more than she meant before they saw what she meant. She sat down, accordingly, in the corner of the seat, and told him all that had happened; herself beginning to see some humour in it as she told the story, half laughing one moment, half crying the next. And Rollo went into it with all his heart. All their meetings had produced their natural effect; for the last fortnight he had felt that he ought to go away, but he had not gone away. He could not deprive himself of her, of their intercourse, which was nothing yet implied so much, those broken conversations, and the language of looks, that said so much more than words. Never, perhaps, had his intercourse with any girl been so simple, yet so unrestrained. If the old Captain sometimes looked at him with suspicion, he was the only one who did so; and Lottie had neither suspicion nor doubt of him, nor had any question as to his “intentions” arisen in her mind. She told him her grief now, not dully, with the heavy depression that cannot be moved, but with gleams of courage, of resolution, even of fun, unable to resist the temptation of Polly’s absurdity, seeing it now as she had not been able to see it before. “I never knew before,” she said fervently, “what a comfort it was to talk things over—but, then, whom could I talk them over with? Law, who thinks it best not to think, never to mind—but sometimes one is obliged to mind: or Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, whom I cannot say everything to—— or;—Mr. Ridsdale!” said Lottie, in alarm—“pray, pray forgive me if I have bored you. I have been pouring out everything to you. I never thought—I did not intend——”
“Don’t tell me that,” he said. “I hoped you did intend to confide in me, to trust to my sympathy. Who can be so much interested? to whom can it be so important——?” He leaned forward closer to her, and Lottie instinctively drew away from him a hairs-breadth; but she thought that quite natural too, as natural as that she should be able to speak to him better than to anyone else. They had both made the whole avowal of their hearts in saying these words; but it had not been done in words which frightened either or changed their position towards each other. Meanwhile she was content enough, quieted by the sense of leaning her trouble upon him, while he was gradually growing into agitation. Lottie had got all her emergency required—his sympathy, his support, the understanding that was so dear to her. After all her trouble she had a moment of ease; her heart was no longer sore, but soothed with the balm of his tender pity and indignation.
But that which calmed Lottie threw Rollo into ever-increasing agitation. A man who has said so much as that to a girl, especially to one who is in difficulty and trouble, is bound even to himself to say more. The crisis began for him where for her it momentarily ended. To love her and as good as tell her so, to receive, thus ingenuously given, that confession of instinctive reliance upon him which was as good as a betrayal of her love; and to let her go and say nothing more—could a man do that and yet be a man? Rollo was not a man who had done right all the days of his life. He had been in very strange company, and had gone through many an adventure; but he was a man whom vice had never done more than touch. Even among people of bad morals he had not known how to abandon the instincts of honour; and in such an emergency what was he to do? Words came thronging to his lips, but his mind was distracted with his own helplessness. What had he to offer? how could he marry? he asked himself with a kind of despair. Yet something must be thought of, something suggested. “Lottie,” he said after that strange pause—“Lottie—I cannot call you Miss Despard any more, as if I were a stranger. Lottie, you know very well that I love you. I am as poor as you are, but I cannot bear this. You must trust to me for everything—you must—Lottie, you are not afraid to trust yourself to me—you don’t doubt me?” he cried. His mind was driven wildly from one side to another. Marry! how could he marry in his circumstances? Was it possible that there was anything else that would answer the purpose, any compromise? His heart beat wildly with love and ardour and shame. What would she say? Would she understand him, though he could not understand himself?
“Mr. Ridsdale!” cried Lottie, shrinking back from him a little. She covered her face with her hands and began to cry, being overcome with so many emotions, one heaped on another. At another moment she would not have been surprised; she would have been able to lift her eyes to the glow of the full happiness which, in half-light, had been for weeks past the illumination of her life. But for the moment it dazzled her. She put up her hands between her and that ecstasy of light.
As for Rollo, very different were the thoughts in his mind. He thought Lottie as wise as himself: he thought she had investigated his words; had not found in them the one that is surety for all, and shrank from him. Shame overwhelmed him: the agony of a mind which was really honest and a heart which was full of tenderness, yet found themselves on the verge of dishonour. “Lottie!” he cried with anguish in his voice, “you do not understand me—you will not listen to me. Do not shrink as if I meant any harm.”
Then she uncovered her face, and he saw dimly through the twilight a countenance all trembling with emotion and happiness and astonishment. “Harm!” she said, with wonder in her voice—“harm!” His heart seemed to stand still, and all his confused thinkings broken off in the unspeakable contrast between the simplicity of her innocence thinking no evil, and the mere knowledge in his mind which, if nothing more, made guilt possible. Such a contrast shamed and horrified, and filled with an adoration of penitence, the man who might have drawn her into evil, ambiguously, had it been possible. He found himself with one knee on the cold gravel, before he knew, pressing his suit upon her with passion. “Lottie, you must marry me, you must be my wife, you must let me be the one to work, to take care of you, to protect you from all trouble,” he cried. But what did Lottie want with those more definite words which he had thought she missed and waited for? Had she not known his secret long ago before he ever spoke a word to her? Had she not been led delicately, tenderly, step by step, through infinite dreams and visions, towards this climax? She cried with happiness and trouble, and the sense of deliverance.
“Oh, why should you kneel to me?” she said. “Do you think it needs that?” While he, more happy than ever he had been in his life, alarmed, disturbed, shaken out of all his habits and traditions, held her fast, like a new-found treasure, and lavished every tender word upon her that language could supply. He owed her a million apologies, of not one of which Lottie was con scious. How could it have been possible for her to suppose that even for a second, in his inmost thoughts, he had been less than reverent of her? And he—had he meant any harm! He did not think he had meant any harm; yet how, in the name of heaven, was he to marry—how was he to marry—in his present circumstances? While he was pouring out upon Lottie his love and worship, telling her how she had gathered to herself day by day all his thoughts and wishes, this question rose up again in his heart.
“I know,” said Lottie, very low—her voice still trembling with the first ecstasy of feeling. It was like the dove’s voice, all tenderness and pathos, coming out of her very heart. “I guessed it long—oh, long ago——”
“How did you do that? Whisper, darling—tell me—when did you first think——?”
Is not this the A B C of lovers? and yet her tone implied a little more than the happy divining of the easy secret. She laughed softly—a variety of music in his ear—the two faces were so close.
“You did not think I knew anything about it. I saw you—looking up at my window—the very night of the wedding. Do you remember?” Again Lottie’s low happy laugh broke into the middle of her words. “I could not think what it meant. And then another time before I knew you—and then—— You did not suppose I saw you. I could not believe it,” she said, with a soft sigh of content. Laugh or sigh, what did it matter, they meant the same: the delight of a discovery which was no discovery—the happy right of confessing a consciousness which she dared not have betrayed an hour ago—of being able to speak of it all: the two together, alone in all the world, wanting nothing and no one. This was what Lottie meant. But her disclosures struck her lover dumb. What would she say if she knew his real object then? A prima donna who was to make his fortune—a new voice to be produced in an opera! He shuddered as he drew her closer to him, with terror—with compunction, though he had meant no harm. And he loved her now if he did not love her then; with all his heart now—all the more tenderly, he thought, that she had mistaken him, that she had been so innocently deceived.
By this time it had got dark, though they did not observe it; yet not quite dark, for it is rarely dark out of doors under the free skies, as it is within four walls. It was Lottie who suddenly awoke to this fact with a start.
“It must be late—I must go home,” she said. And when she looked about among the ghostly trees which waved and bent overhead, sombre and colourless in the dark—she thought, with a thrill of horror, that hours must have passed since she came here. Rollo too was slightly alarmed. They were neither of them in a condition to measure time; and though so much had happened, it had flown like a moment. They came out from among the trees in the happy gloom, arm-in-arm. Nobody could recognise them, so dark as it was—and indeed nobody was in the way to recognise them—and the Abbey clock struck as they emerged upon the Dean’s Walk, reassuring them. Rollo was still in time for dinner, though Lottie might be too late for tea; and the relief of discovering that it was not so late as they thought gave them an excuse for lingering. He walked to the Lodges with her, and then she turned back with him; and finally they strayed round the Abbey in the darkness, hidden by it, yet not so entirely hidden as they thought. Only one little jar came to the perfect blessedness of this progress homeward.
“Shall you tell them?” Lottie whispered, just before she took leave of her lover, with a movement of her hand towards the Deanery.
This gave Rollo a serrement de cœur. He replied hastily, “Not to-night,” with something like a shiver, and then he added, “Where shall I see you to-morrow?”
This question struck Lottie with the same shock and jar of feeling. Would not he come and claim her to-morrow? This was what she had thought. She did not know what to reply, and a sudden sensation of undefined trouble—of evil not yet so entirely over as she hoped—came into her mind; but he added, before she could speak—
“In the old place—that blessed corner which I love better than any other in the world. Will you come while everybody is at the Abbey, Lottie? for we must talk over everything.”
This melted the little momentary vexation away, and she promised. And thus they parted perforce—opposite Captain Despard’s door. How glad Lottie was that the door was open! It stood open all through the summer, and the habits of the summer were scarcely over. By the light in the dining-room downstairs and the sound of the voices she divined that tea was not yet over. But she was not able to encounter Mrs. Despard to-night. She did not want to see anyone. Her heart was still so full of delicious tumult, her eyes of sweet tears. She had gone out so sorrowful, so indignant, not knowing what was to become of her. And now she knew what was to become of her—the most beautiful, happy fate. He had said he was poor. What did it matter if he was poor? Was she not used to that? Lottie knew, and said to herself with secret joy, that she was the right wife for a poor man. He might have got the noblest of brides, and she would not have been so fit for him; but she was fit for that post if ever a young woman was. She would take care of the little he had, which one might be sure he would never do himself—he was too generous, too kind for that; Lottie loved him for his prodigality, even while she determined to control it. She would take care of him and do everything for him, as no woman used to wealth could do. And she would spur him on so that he should do great things—things which he had not done heretofore, only because he had not stimulus enough. He should have stimulus enough now, with a wife who would exult in all he did, and support him with sympathy and help. It was not any passive position that she mapped out for herself. She knew what it meant to be poor, far better than Rollo did. And she did not mind it. Why should she mind it? She had been used to it all her life. She would not care what she did. But he should never have to blush for his wife as a drudge. She would never forget her position, and his position, which was so much greater than hers. This was the first time that Lottie thought of his position. She did so now with a heightening of colour, and louder throb of her heart. By this time she was sitting in her own room without even a candle, glad of the seclusion and of the darkness in which she could think, unbetrayed even to herself. Her heart gave a bound, and a flush came to her cheek. There could be no doubt now about her position. No one could dream, no one could think that Rollo’s wife was ever to be looked down upon. This gave her a distinct thrill of pleasure; and then she passed it by, to return to a dearer subject—Himself! how anxious he had been! as if it were possible she could have resisted his love. He had wooed her, she thought, as if she had been a princess—doubling Lottie’s happiness by doing in this respect the thing she felt to be most right and fit, though, oh! so unnecessary in respect to herself! Could he really have any doubt how it would turn out? The thought of this humility in her hero brought tears of love and happiness to Lottie’s eyes. Was she the same girl who had sat here in gloom and darkness only last night, wondering what was to become of her? But how was she to know how soon fate would unfold like a flower, and show her what was in store for her? How happy she was—how good, how thankful to God—how charitable to others! She could have gone downstairs and said something kind even to Polly, had it not been for fear of betraying herself. Everything that was tender and sweet blossomed out in her heart. She was so happy. Is not that the moment in which the heart is most pure, most kind, most humble and tender? God’s hand seemed to be touching her, blessing her—and she in her turn was ready to bless all the world.