CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LOTTIE RESENTFUL.
LOTTIE was sadly disheartened by the events of that day. She came home alike depressed and indignant, her heart and her pride equally wounded. She had scarcely seen Rollo for the two intervening days, and the meeting at the Signor’s had appeared to her before it came a piece of happiness which was certain, and with which no one could interfere. He would resist all attempts to wile him away for that afternoon, she was sure; he would not disappoint her and take all her inspiration from her again. Since that last meeting under the elm-tree she had been more full of happy confidence in him than ever. His readiness and eagerness to take her away at once, overcoming, as she thought, all the scruples and prejudices of his class, in order to secure deliverance for her, had filled her mind with that soft glow of gratitude which it is so sweet to feel to those we love. The elation and buoyant sense of happiness in her mind had floated her over all the lesser evils in her path. What did they matter, what did anything mat ter, in comparison? She was magnanimous, tolerant, ready to believe the best, unready to be offended, because of this private solace of happiness in her bosom, but all the more for those undoubting certainties she had felt the contrast of the actual scene. She did not even think that Rollo might be innocent of his cousin’s visit, or that he knew nothing of her coming till he had walked unawares into the snare. Lottie did not know this. She saw him by Augusta’s side, talking to her and listening to her. She was conscious through all her being of the rustle of whispering behind her, which went on in spite of her singing. She would not look at him to see what piteous apologies he was making with his eyes, and when Mrs. O’Shaughnessy in sudden wrath dragged her away Lottie was glad of the sudden exit, the little demonstration of offence and independence of which she herself might have failed to take the initiative. She went home tingling with the wound, her nerves excited, her mind irritated. She would not go to meet him, as he had asked her. She went home instead, avoiding everybody, and shut herself up in her own room. She was discouraged too and deeply annoyed with herself, because in the presence of the unkindly critic who had been listening to her, Lottie felt she had not done well. Generally her only care, her only thought, was to please Rollo; but that day she would have wished for the inspiring power that now and then came upon her, as when she had sung in the Abbey not knowing of his presence. She would have liked to sing like that, overawing Augusta and her whispering; but she had not done so. She had failed while that semi-friend who was her enemy looked on. She felt, with a subtle certainty beyond all need of proof, that Augusta was her enemy. Augusta had at once suspected, though Rollo had said that she would never suspect; and she wanted to make her cousin see how little Lottie was his equal, how even in her best gifts she was nothing. It was bitter to Lottie to think that she had done all she could to prove Augusta right. Why was it that she could not sing then, as, two or three times in her life, she had felt able to sing, confounding all who had been unfavourable to her? Lottie chafed at the failure she had made. She was angry with herself, and this made her more angry both with Augusta and with him. In the heat of her self-resentment she began to sing over her music softly to herself, noting where she had failed. Had the Signor been within hearing how he would have rejoiced over that self-instruction. Her friends had been so much mortified that it opened her eyes to her own faults. She saw where she had been wrong. There is no such stimulant of excellence as the sense of having done badly. Lottie’s art education advanced under the sting of this failure as it had never done before. She threw herself into it with fervour. As she ran over the notes she seemed to hear the “sibilant s’s” behind her, pursuing her, and the chance words she had caught. “Like him—she did not care a straw for him.” “The old lady made it all up,” “and the settlements were astonishing.” That and a great deal more Lottie’s jealous ears had picked up, almost against her will, and the words goaded her on like so many pricks. She thought she never could suffer it to be possible that Augusta or any other fine lady should do less than listen when she sang again.
While Lottie sat there cold in the wintry twilight (yet warm with injured pride and mortification) till there was scarcely light enough to see, humming over her music, Rollo, getting himself with difficulty free of his cousin and all the visitors and commotion of the Deanery, rushed up to the elm-tree, and spent a very uncomfortable moment there, waiting in the cold, and wondering if it was possible that she would not come. It did not occur to him that Lottie, always so acquiescent and persuadable, could stand out now, especially as he was not really to blame. He stood about under the elm, now and then taking a little walk up and down to keep himself warm, watching the light steal out of the wide landscape and everything darken round him, for half and hour and more. No one was there; not an old Chevalier ventured upon a turn in the dark, not a pair of lovers confronted the north wind. Rollo shivered, though he was more warmly clad than Lottie would have been. He walked up and down with an impatience that helped to keep him warm, though with dismay that neutralised that livelier feeling. He had no desire to lose his love in this way. It might be foolish to imperil his comfort, his position, his very living, for her, but yet now at least Rollo had no intention of throwing her away. He knew why she sang badly that afternoon, and instead of alarming him this knowledge brought a smile upon his face. Augusta had behaved like a woman without a heart, and Lottie was no tame girl to bear whatever anyone pleased, but a creature full of fire and spirit, not to be crushed by a fashionable persecutor. Rollo felt it hard that he should wait in the cold, and be disappointed after all; but he was not angry with Lottie. She had a right to be displeased. He was all the more anxious not to lose her, not to let her get free from him, that she had thus asserted herself. His love, which had been a little blown about by those fashionable gales that had been blowing round him, blazed up all the hotter for this temporary restraint put upon it. She who had trusted him with such an exquisite trust only the other evening, who had not in her innocence seen anything but devotion in the sudden proposal into which (he persuaded himself) only passion could have hurried him—her first rebellion against him tightened the ties that bound him to her. Give her up! it would be giving up heaven, throwing away the sweetest thing in his life. He was cold, but his heart burned as he paced his little round, facing the north wind and listening for every rustling sound among the withered leaves that lay around him, thinking it might be her step. The darkness, and the chill, and the solitude all seemed to show him more clearly how sweet the intercourse had been which had made him unconscious of either darkness or cold before. Augusta repeating her endless monotonous stories of universal guile and selfishness had made him half ashamed of his best feelings. He was ashamed now of her and her influence, ashamed of having been made her tool for the humiliation of his love. What a difference there was between them! Was there anyone else in the world so tender, so pure, so exquisite in her love and trust, as Lottie, the creature whose sensitive heart he had been made to wound? When at last, discouraged and penitent, he turned homeward, Rollo had the intention trembling in his mind of making Lottie the most complete amends for everything that had ever been done to harm her. He paused at the gates of the cloister, and looked across at the light in her window with a yearning which sur prised him. He seemed to have a thousand things to say to her, and to be but half a being when he had not her to confide in, to tell all his affairs to—although he had never told her one of his affairs. This fact did not seem to affect his longing. He went so far as to walk across the Dean’s Walk, to see what he thought was her shadow on the blind. It was not Lottie’s shadow, but Polly’s, who had taken her place; but this the lover did not know.
Meanwhile Lottie had been disturbed in her seclusion by a sharp knock at her door. “Do you mean to stay there all night, Miss?” cried Polly’s sharp voice. “You might pay me the compliment to keep me company now and again as long as you stay in my house. If you think it is civil to stay there, shut up in your room, and me all alone in the drawing-room, I don’t. I can’t think where your hearts is, you two,” Polly went on, a whimper breaking into the tone of offence with which she spoke. “To see one as is not much older than yourself, and never did you no harm, and not a soul to keep her company. Was it for that I give up all my own folks, to come and sit dressed up in a corner because I’m Mrs. Despard, and never see a soul?”
Lottie had opened her door before this speech was half done. She said with a little alarm, “Please don’t speak so loud. We need not let the maid in the kitchen know. ”
“Do you think I care for the maid in the kitchen? She’s my servant. I’ll make her know her place. Never one of them sort of folks takes any freedom with me. I have always been known for one as allowed no freedoms—no, nor no followers, nor perquisites, nor nothing of the kind. They soon find out as I ain’t one to be turned round their finger. Now you,” said Polly, leading the way into the little drawing-room, “you’re one of the soft sort. I dare say they did what they liked with you!”
“I don’t think so,” said Lottie, following. She put her music softly down upon the old piano, which Polly had swathed in a cover, and the changed aspect of the room moved her half to laughter, half to anger and dismay.
“There are few as knows themselves,” said Polly. “That girl, that Mary as you had, I couldn’t have put up with her for a day. Some folks never sees when things is huggermugger, but I’m very particular. Your Pa—dear, good, easy man—I dare say he’s put up with a deal; but to be sure no better was to be expected, for you never had no training, I suppose?”
Lottie was almost too much taken by surprise to reply—she, who had felt that if there was one thing in the world she could do it was house-keeping! The confusion that is produced in the mind by the sudden perception of another’s opinion of us which is diame trically opposed to our own seized her; otherwise she would have been roused to instant wrath. This, which was something so entirely opposite to what she could have expected, raised only a kind of ludicrous bewilderment in her mind. “I—don’t know what you mean,” said Lottie. “Papa has not very much money to give for house-keeping. Perhaps you are making a mistake.”
“Oh, it is likely that I should make a mistake! Do you think I don’t know my own husband’s income? Do you think,” said Polly with scorn, “that he has any secrets from me?”
Lottie was cold with her imprisonment in her fireless room. She drew her little chair to the blazing fire and sat down by the side. Polly had placed herself in the largest chair in the room, directly in front of it. The fire was heaped up in the little grate, and blazed, being largely supplied. It was very comfortable, but it went against the rules of the economy which Lottie had strenuously prescribed to herself. “Papa spends a great deal of money himself,” she said; “you will find that you must be very sparing at home.”
“My dear,” said Polly in a tone of condescending patronage which brought the colour to Lottie’s face, “I am not one as can be sparing at home. Pinching ain’t my way. I couldn’t do it, not if I was to be made a countess for it. Some folks can scrape and cut down and look after everything, but it ain’t my nature. What I like is a free hand. Plenty to eat and plenty to drink, and no stinting nowhere—that’s what will always be the law in my house.”
Lottie made no reply. She felt that it was almost a failure from her duty to put out her hands to the warmth of the too beautiful fire. Some one would have to suffer for it. Her mind began to run over her own budget of ways and means, to try, as had been her old habit, where she could find something to cut off to make up for the extravagance. “These coals burn very fast,” she said at last. “They are not a thrifty kind. I used to have the——”
“I know,” said Polly, “you used to have slates and think it was economy—poor child!—but the best for me: the best is always the cheapest in the end. If anyone thinks as I will put up with seconds, either coals or bread!—but since we’re on the subject of money,” continued Polly, “I’ll tell you my mind, Miss, and I don’t mean it unfriendly. The thing as eats up my husband’s money, it ain’t a bright fire or a good dinner, as is his right to have; it’s your brother Law, Miss, and you.”
“You have told me that before,” Lottie said, with a strenuous effort at self-control.
“And I’ll tell it you again—and again—till it has its effect,” cried Polly: “it’s true. I don’t mean to be unfriendly. I wonder how you can live upon your Pa at your age. Why, long before I was your age I was doing for myself. My Pa was very respectable, and everybody belonging to us; but do you think I’d have stayed at home and eat up what the old folks had for themselves? They’d have kept me and welcome, but I wouldn’t hear of it. And do you mean to say,” said Polly, folding her arms and fixing her eyes upon her step-daughter, “as you think yourself better than me?”
Lottie returned the stare with glowing eyes, her lips falling apart from very wonder. She gave a kind of gasp of bewilderment, but made no reply.
“I don’t suppose as you’ll say so,” said Polly; “and why shouldn’t you think of your family as I did of mine? You mightn’t be able to work as I did, but there’s always things you could do to save your Pa a little money. There’s lessons. There’s nothing ungenteel in lessons. I am not one as would be hard upon a girl just starting in the world. You’ve got your room here, that don’t cost you nothing; and what’s a daily governess’s work? Nothing to speak of—two or three hours’ teaching (or you might as well call it playing), and your dinner with the children, and mostly with the lady of the house—and all the comforts of ’ome after, just as if you wasn’t out in the world at all; a deal different from sitting at your needle, working, working, as I’ve done, from morning to night.”
“But I don’t know anything,” said Lottie. “I almost think you are quite right. Perhaps it is all true; it doesn’t matter nowadays, and ladies ought to work as well as men. But—I don’t know anything.” A half-smile came over her face. Notwithstanding that she was angry with Rollo, still—he who would have carried her away on the spot rather than that she should bear the shadow of a humiliation at home—was it likely——? Lottie’s mind suddenly leaped out of its anger and resentment with a sudden rebound. He did not deserve that she should be so angry with him. Was it his fault? and in forgiving him her temper and her heart got suddenly right again, and all was well. She even woke to a little amusement in the consciousness that Polly was advising her for her good. The extravagant coals, the extravagant meals, would soon bring their own punishment; and though Lottie could not quite free herself from irritation on these points, yet she was amused by the thought of all this good advice.
“That’s nonsense,” said Polly promptly. “Now here’s a way you could begin at once, and it would be practice for you, and it would show at least that you was willing. I’ve been very careless,” she said, getting up from her chair and opening the old piano. She had to push off the cover first, and the noise and commotion of this complicated movement filled Lottie with alarm. “I’ve done as a many young ladies do before they see how silly it is. I’ve left off my music. You mayn’t believe it, but it’s true. I can’t tell even if I know my notes,” said Polly, jauntily but clumsily placing her hands upon the keyboard and letting one finger fall heavily here and there like a hammer. “I don’t remember a bit. It’s just like a great silly, isn’t it? But you never think when you are young, when your head’s full of your young man and all that sort of thing. It’s when you’ve settled down, and got married, and have time to think, that you find it out.”
Polly was a great deal less careful of her language as she became accustomed to her new surroundings. She was fully herself by this time, and at her ease. She sat down before the piano and ran her finger along the notes. “It’s scandalous,” she said. “We’re taught when we’re young, and then we thinks no more of it. Now, Miss, if you was willing to do something for your living, if you was really well disposed and wanted to make a return, you might just look up some of your old lesson-books and begin with me. I’d soon pick up,” said Polly, making a run of sound up and down the keys with the back of her fingers, and thinking it beautiful; “it would come back to me in two or three lessons. You needn’t explain nothing about it; we might just say as we were learning some duets together. It would all come back to me if you would take a little trouble; and I shouldn’t forget it. I never forget it when anyone’s of use to me.”
“But,” cried Lottie, who had been vainly endeavouring to break in, “I cannot play.”
“Cannot play!” Polly turned round upon the piano-stool with a countenance of horror. Even to turn round upon that stool was something delightful to her, like a lady in a book, like one of the heroines in the Family Herald; but this intimation chilled the current of her blood.
“No—only two or three little things, and that chiefly by ear. I never learned as I ought. I hated it; and I was scarcely ever taught, only by—someone who did not know much,” said Lottie with a compunction in her mind. Only by someone who did not know much—This was her mother, poor soul, whom Polly had replaced. Lottie’s heart swelled as she spoke. Poor, kind, silly mamma! she had not known very much; but it seemed cruel to allow it in the presence of her supplanter.
“Goodness—gracious—me!” said Polly. She said each word separately, as if she were telling beads. She cast at Lottie a glance of sovereign contempt. “You to set up for being a lady,” she cried, “and ca n’t play the piano! I never heard of such a thing in all my born days.”
If she had claimed not to be able to work, Polly could have understood it; but if there is a badge of ladyhood, or even a pretence at ladyhood, in the world, is it not this? She was horrified; it felt like a coming down in the world even to Polly herself.
Again Lottie did not make any reply. She was simple enough to be half ashamed of herself and half angry at the criticism which for the first time touched her; for it was a fact that she was ignorant, and a shameful fact. She could not defend, but she would not excuse herself. As for Polly, there was in her a mingling of triumph and regret.
“I am surprised,” she said. “I thought one who pretended to be a lady ought at least to know that much. And you ought to be a lady, I am sure, if ever anyone was, for your Pa is a perfect gentleman. Dear, dear—if you can’t play the piano, goodness gracious, what have you been doing all your life? That was the one thing I thought was sure—and you are musical, for I’ve heard as you could sing. If it’s only that you won’t take any trouble to oblige,” said Polly angrily, “say it out. Oh, it won’t be no surprise to me. I’ve seen it in your face already—say it out!”
“I have told you nothing but the truth,” said Lottie. “I am sorry for it. I can sing—a little—but I can’t play.”
“It’s just the same as if you said you could write but couldn’t read,” said Polly; “but I’ve always been told as I’ve a nice voice. It ain’t your loud kind, that you could hear from this to the Abbey, but sweet—at least so folks say. You can teach me to sing if you like,” she said, after a pause. “I never learned singing. One will do as well as the other, and easier too.”
This was a still more desperate suggestion. Lottie quailed before the task that was offered to her. “I can show you the scales,” she said doubtfully; “that is the beginning of everything; but singing is harder to teach than playing. The Signor thinks I don’t know anything. They say I have a voice, but that I don’t know how to sing.”
“The fact is,” cried Polly, shutting down the piano with a loud bang and jar which made the whole instrument thrill, and snapped an old attenuated chord which went out of existence with a creak and a groan, “the fact is, you don’t want to do nothing for me. You don’t think me good enough for you. I am only your father’s wife, and one as has a claim upon your respect, and deserves to have the best you can do. If it was one of your fine ladies as don’t care a brass farthing for you—oh, you’d sing and you’d play the piano safe enough: but you’ve set your mind against me. I seen it the first day I came here—and since then the life you’ve led me! Never a civil word—never a pleasant look; yes and no, with never a turn of your head; you think a deal of yourself. And you needn’t suppose I care—not I—not one bit; but you shan’t stand up to my face and refuse whatever I ask you. You’ll have to do what I tell you or you’ll have to go.”
“I will go,” said Lottie in a low voice. She thought of Rollo’s sudden proposal, of the good people whom he said he would take her to, of the sudden relief and hope, the peace and ease that were involved. Ought she not to take him at his word? For the moment she thought she would do so. She would let him know that she was ready, ready to go anywhere, only to escape from this. How foolish she had been to be angry with Rollo—he who wanted nothing better than to deliver her at a stroke, to carry her away into happiness. Her heart softened with a great gush of tenderness. She would yield to him; why should she not yield to him? She might think that he ought to marry his wife from her father’s house, but he had not seemed to think so. He thought of nothing but to deliver her from this humiliation—and what would it matter to him? a poor Chevalier’s house or a poor quiet lodging, what would it matter? She would go. She would do as Rollo said.
“You will go?” cried Polly; “and where will you go? Who have you got to take you in? People ain’t so fond of you. A woman as can do nothing for herself, who wants her? and isn’t even obliging. Oh, you are going to your room again, to be sulky there? But I tell you I won’t have it. You shall sit where the family sits or you shall go out of the place altogether. And you’ll come to your meals like other people, and you’ll mix with them as is there, and not set up your white face, as if you were better than all the world. You’re not so grand as you think you are, Miss Lottie Despard. If it comes to that I’m a Despard as well as you; and I’m a married woman, with an ’usband to work for me—an ’usband,” cried Polly, “as doesn’t require to work for me, as has enough to keep me like a lady—if it wasn’t that he has a set of lazy grown-up children as won’t do nothing for themselves, but eat us out of ’ouse and ’ome!”
Was it possible that this humiliation had come to Lottie—to Lottie of all people—she who had felt that the well-being of the house hung upon her, and that she alone stood between her family and utter downfall? She sat still, not even attempting now to escape, her ears tingling, her heart beating. It was incredible that it was she, her very self, Lottie, who was bearing this. It must be a dream; it was impossible that it could be true.
And thus Lottie sat the whole of the evening, too proud to withdraw, and bore the brunt of a long series of attacks, which were interrupted, indeed, by the supper, to which Polly had to give some personal care, and by Captain Despard’s entrance and Law’s. Polly told her story to her husband with indignant vehemence. “I asked her,” she said, “to help me a bit with my music—I know you’re fond of music, Harry—and I thought we’d learn up some duets or something, her and me, to please you; and she says she can’t play the piano! and, then, not to show no offence, I said as singing would do just as well, and then she says she can’t sing!” The Captain received this statement with much caressing of his wife and smoothing of her ruffled plumes. He said, “Lottie, another time you’ll pay more attention,” with a severe aspect; and not even Law had a word to say in her defence. As to Law, indeed, he was very much preoccupied with his own affairs; his eyes were shining, his face full of secret importance and meaning. Lottie saw that he was eager to catch her eye, but she did not understand the telegraphic communications he addressed to her. Nor did she understand him much better when he pulled her sleeve and whispered, “I am going to Australia,” when the tedious evening was over. Law’s career had fallen out of her thoughts in the troubles of those few weeks past. She had even ceased to ask how he was getting on, or take any interest in his books; she remembered this with a pang when she found herself at last safe in the shelter of her room. She had given up one part of her natural duty when the other was taken from her. Australia? What could he mean? She thought she would question him to-morrow; but to-morrow brought her another series of petty struggles, and once more concentrated her mind upon her own affairs.