CHAPTER XLIII.
THE END OF THE DREAM.
CAPTAIN TEMPLE was an old soldier, whose habit it was to get up very early in the morning. He said afterwards that he had never got up so early as on that morning, feeling a certain pride in it, as showing the magical power of sympathy and tenderness. He woke before it was light. It had been raining in the night, and the morning was veiled with showers; when the light came at last, it was white and misty. He was ready to go out before anyone was stirring. Not a soul, not even the milkman, was astir in the Dean’s Walk. The blinds were still down over his neighbours’ windows. The only one drawn up, he noticed in passing, was Lottie’s. Was she too early, like himself? the question went through his mind as he passed. Poor child! her life was not a happy one. How different, he could not help feeling, how different his own girl would have been had she but been spared to them! He shook his white head, though he was all alone, wailing, almost remonstrating, with Providence. How strange that the blessing should be with those who did not know how to prize it, while those who did were left desolate! The Captain’s step rang through the silent place. There was no one about; the Abbey stood up grey and still with the morning mists softly breaking from about it, and here and there, behind and around, smoke rose from some homely roof, betraying the first signs of waking life, Captain Temple walked briskly to the Slopes; it was his favourite walk. He made one or two turns up and down all the length of the level promenade, thinking about her—how often she had come with him here: but lately she had avoided him. He paused when he had made two or three turns, and leaned over the low parapet wall, looking down upon the misty landscape. The river ran swiftly at the foot of the hill, shewing in a pale gleam here and there. The bare branches of the trees were all jewelled coldly with drops of rain. It began to drizzle again as he stood gazing over the misty wet champaign in the stillness of the early morning. He was the only conscious tenant of this wide world of earth and sky. Smoke rising from the houses in the town, and a faint stir was beginning; but here on the hill there was no stir or waking movement, save only his own.
What was that? a sound—he turned round quickly—he could not tell what it was; was there someone about after all, someone else as early as himself? But he could see nobody. There was not a step nor a visible movement, but there was a sense of a human presence, a feeling of somebody near him. He turned round with an anxiety which he could not explain to himself. Why should he be anxious? but it pleased him afterwards to remember that all his sensations this morning were strange, uncalled for, beyond his own control. He peered anxiously about among the bushes and bare stems of the trees. At last it seemed to him that he saw something in the corner of the bench under the elm-tree. He turned that way, now with his old heart beating, but altogether unprepared for the piteous sight that met his eyes. She was so slim, so slight, her dress so heavy and clinging with the rain, that a careless passer-by might never have seen her. He hurried to the place with a little cry. Her head drooped upon the rough wooden back of the seat, her hands were wrapped in her cloak, nothing visible of her but a face as white as death, and wet—was it with rain or with tears? Her eyes were closed, her long dark eyelashes drooping over her cheek. But for her frightful paleness she would have looked like a child who had lost its way, and cried itself to sleep. “Lottie!” cried the old man; “Lottie!” But she made no response. She did not even open her eyes. Was she sleeping, or, good God——! He put his hand on her shoulder. “Lottie, Lottie, my dear child!” he cried into her ear. When after a while a deep sigh came from her breast, the old man could have wept for joy. She was living then. He thought for a mo ment what was to be done; some help seemed indispensable to him; then rushed away down through the cloisters to the house of Mr. Ashford, which was one of the nearest. The Minor Canon was coming downstairs; he had something to do which called him out early. He paused in some surprise at the sight of his visitor, but Captain Temple stopped the question on his lips. “Will you come with me?” he cried; “come with me—I want you,” and caught him by the sleeve in his eagerness. Mr. Ashford felt that there was that in the old man’s haggard face which would not bear questioning. He followed him, scarcely able in the fulness of his strength to keep up with the nervous steps of his guide. “God knows if she has been there all night,” the Captain said. “I cannot get her to move. And now the whole place will be astir. If I could get her home before anybody knows! They have driven her out of her sweet senses,” he said, gasping for breath as he hurried along. “I came for you because you are her friend, and I could trust you. Oh, why is a jewel like that given to those who do not prize it, Mr. Ashford, and taken from those that do? Why is it? why is it? they have broken her heart.” The Minor Canon asked no questions; he felt that he too knew by instinct what it was. The rain had come on more heavily, small and soft, without any appearance of storm, but penetrating and continuous. The Captain hurried on to the corner where he had left her. Lottie had moved her head; she had been roused by his first appeal from the stupor into which she had fallen; her eyes were open, her mind slowly coming, if not to itself, at least to some consciousness of the external world and her place in it. The instinct that so seldom abandons a woman, that of concealing her misery, had begun to dawn in her—the first sign of returning life.
“Lottie, Lottie, my dear child, you must not sit here in the rain. Come, my pet, come. We have come to fetch you. Come to your mother, or at least to one who will be like a mother. Come, my poor dear, come home with me.” The old man was almost sobbing as he took into his her cold hands.
Lottie did her best to respond. She attempted to smile, she attempted to speak mechanically. “Yes,” she said, under her breath; “I will come—directly. It is—raining.” Her voice was almost gone; it was all they could do to make out what she said.
“And here is a kind friend who will give you his arm, who will help you along,” said Captain Temple. He stopped short—frightened by the change that came over her face; an awful look of hope, of wonder, woke in her eyes, which looked preternaturally large, luminous, and drowsy. She stirred in her seat, moving with a little moan of pain, and attempted to turn round to look behind her.
“Who is it?” she whispered. “Who is it? is it—you?”
Who did she expect it to be? Mr. Ashford, greatly moved, stepped forward quickly and raised her from her seat. It was no time for politeness. He drew her arm within his, not looking at her. “Support her,” he said quickly to Captain Temple, “on the other side.” The Minor Canon never looked at Lottie as he half carried her along that familiar way. He did not dare to spy into her secret, but he guessed at it. The hand which he drew through his arm held a letter. He knew none of the steps which had led to this, but he thought he knew what had happened. As for Captain Temple, he did not do much of his share of the work; he held her elbow with his trembling hand, and looked pitifully into her face, knowing nothing at all. “My poor dear,” he said, “you shall not go back—you shall not be made miserable; you are mine now. I have found you, and I shall keep you, Lottie. It is not like a stepmother that my Mary will be. My love, we will say nothing about it, we will not blame anyone; but now you belong to me.” What he said was as the babbling of a child to Lottie, and to the other who divined her; but they let him talk, and the old man seemed to himself to understand the position entirely. “They have driven her out of her senses,” he said to his wife; “so far as I can see she has been out on the Slopes all night, sitting on that bench. She will be ill, she is sure to be ill—she is drenched to the skin. Think if it had been our own girl! But I will never let her go into the hands of those wretches again.”
No one of the principal actors in this strange incident ever told the story, yet it was known all through the Abbey precincts in a few hours—with additions—that Captain Despard’s new wife had driven her step-daughter out of the house by her ill-usage; turned her to the door, some said; and that the poor girl, distracted and solitary, had spent the night on the Slopes, in the cold, in the rain, and had been found there by Captain Temple. “When we were all in our comfortable beds,” the good people cried with angry tears, and an indignation beyond words. Captain Despard came in from matins in a state of alarm indescribable, and besought his wife to keep indoors, not to allow herself to be seen. No one in the house had known of Lottie’s absence during the night. She was supposed to be “sulky,” as Polly called it, and shut up in her own room. When she did not appear at breakfast, indeed, there had been some surprise, and a slight consternation, but even then no very lively alarm. “She’s gone off, as she said she would,” Polly said, tossing her head; and the Captain had, though with some remorse and compunction, satisfied himself that it was only an escapade on Lottie’s part, which would be explained by the post, or which Law would know about, or Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. Law had gone out early, before breakfast. It was natural to suppose he would know—or still more likely that his sister had gone with him, on some foolish walk, or other expedition. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Polly cried, “but I shouldn’t break my heart, Harry, if they’d gone for good, and left us the house to ourselves.” When Captain Despard came in from matins, however, the case was very different; he came in pale with shame and consternation, and ready to blame his wife for everything. “This is what has come of your nagging and your impudence,” he said; and Polly flew to arms, as was natural, and there was a hot and dangerous encounter. The Captain went out, swearing and fuming, recommending her if she prized her own safety not to show herself out of doors. “You will be mobbed,” he said; “and you will well deserve it.”
“I’m going to put my hat on,” said Polly, “and let them all see what a coward you are, as won’t stand up for your wife.” But when he had slammed the door emphatically after him, Polly sat down and had a good cry, and did not put on her hat. Oh, what a foolish thing it is, she repeated, to marry a man with grown-up children! It was nature, and not anything she had done, that was in fault.
Lottie made no resistance when she found herself in Mrs. Temple’s care. To have her wet things taken off, to have a hundred cares lavished upon her, as she lay aching and miserable in the bed that had been prepared for her, soothed her at least, if they did nothing more. Chilled in every bit of her body, chilled to her heart, the sensation of warmth, when at last it stole over her, broke a little the stony front of her wretchedness. She never knew how she had passed that miserable night. The fabric of her happiness had fallen down on every side, and crushed her. Her heart had been so confident, her hopes so certain. She had not doubted, as women so often do, or even thought it within the compass of possibility that Rollo could fail her. How could she suppose it? and, when it came, she was crushed to the ground. The earth seemed to have opened under her feet; everything failed her when that one thing in which all her faith was placed failed. She had sat through the darkness, not able to think, conscious of nothing but misery, not aware how the time was passing, taking no note of the coming of the night, or of the bewildering chimes from the Abbey of hour after hour and quarter after quarter. Quarter or hour, what did it matter to her? what did she know of the hurrying, flying time, or its stupefying measures? It began to rain, and she did not care. She cared for nothing—not the cold, nor the dark, nor the whispering of the night wind among the bare branches, the mysterious noises of the night. The pillars of the earth, the arch of the sweet sky, had fallen. There was nothing in all the world but dismal failure and heart-break to Lottie. In the long vigil, even the cause of this horrible downfall seemed to fade out of her mind. The pain in her heart, the oppression of her brain, the failing of all things—hope, courage, faith—was all she was conscious of. Rollo—her thoughts avoided his name, as a man who is wounded shrinks from any touch; and at last everything had fallen into one stupor of misery. That it was the night which she was spending there, under the dark sky, just light enough to show the darker branches waving over it, the rain falling from it, Lottie was unconscious. She had nowhere to go, she had no wish to go anywhere; shelter was indifferent to her, and one place no more miserable than another. When Captain Temple roused her, there came vaguely to her mind a sense that her feelings must be hid, that she must try to be as other people, not betraying her own desolation; and this was the feeling that again woke feebly in her when Mrs. Temple took her place by the bedside where Lottie was lying. She tried to make some feeble excuse, an excuse which in the desperation of her mind did not sound so artificial as it was. “I give you a great deal of trouble,” she faltered.
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Temple, with tears, “do not say so; let me do what I can for you—only trust in me, trust in me.”
Lottie could not trust in anyone. She tried to smile. She was past all confidences, past all revela tion of herself or her trouble. And thus she lay for days, every limb aching with the exposure, her breathing difficult, her breast throbbing, her heart beating, her voice gone.
Downstairs there was many an anxious talk over her between the three most intimately concerned. The old Captain held by his simple idea that she had been driven from home by her stepmother, that idea which all the Abbey had adopted. The Minor Canon was not of that opinion. He came every day to ask for the patient, and would sit and listen to all they could tell him, and to the Captain’s tirades against Polly. “I think there was something more than that,” he would say. And Mrs. Temple looked at him with a look of understanding. “I think so too,” she said. Mrs. Temple had disengaged out of Lottie’s cold hand the letter which she had been grasping unawares. She had not been able to resist looking at it, telling herself that she ought to know what was the cause. These two alone had any idea of it, and no one spoke to Lottie, nor did she speak to anyone of the cause of her vigil. She lay in a silent paradise of warmth and rest, cared for and watched at every turn she made, as she had never been in her life before. And by degrees the pain stole out of her limbs, her cough was got under, and the fever in her veins subdued. Of two things only Lottie did not mend. Her heart seemed dead in her bosom, and her voice was gone. She could neither sing any more, nor be happy any more; these are things which neither doctor nor nurse can touch, but for all the rest her natural health and strength soon triumphed. Her brain, which had tottered for a moment, righted itself and regained its force. She had no fever, though everybody expected it. She did not fall into “a decline,” as was universally thought. She got better, but she did not get happy, nor did she recover her voice. When she was able to be brought downstairs, the good people who had taken her up made a little fête of her recovery. Mr. Ashford was asked to dinner, and the room was filled with flowers, rare hothouse flowers, on which the old Captain spent a great deal more than he could afford to spend. “To please the poor child, my dear,” he said, apologetically; and Mrs. Temple had not a word to say. She winced still when in his simple way he would speak of “our own girl,” but in her heart she made a kind of religion of Lottie, feeling sometimes, poor soul, as if she were thus heaping coals of fire, whatever they may be, upon the head—though it might be blasphemy to put it into words—of Him who had bereaved her. He had taken her child from her, and she had been angry, and perhaps had sinned in the bitterness of her grief; but now here was a child who was His—for are not all the helpless His?—whom she would not cast from her, whom she would take to her bosom and cherish, to show Him (was it?) that she was more tender than even the Father of all. “Thou hast taken mine from me, but I have not closed my heart to thine,” was what, all unawares, the woman’s heart said; for she was angry still, being a mother, and unable to see why she should have been bereaved.
A few days after Lottie had begun to be brought downstairs (for this was done without any will of hers), a visit was paid to her which had no small effect upon her life. She was seated in the invalid’s place near the fire, a little table by her side with flowers on it, and a new book, and Punch, and the illustrated papers, all the little innocent gâteries of which the old Captain could think, the trifles which make the days of a happy convalescent sweet, and which Lottie tried hard to look as if she cared for; and with Mrs. Temple near her, watching her to see lest she should be too warm or too cold, lest she should want anything, with the anxious care of a mother. There was a prancing of horses outside the door, a tremendous knock, a rustle of silk, and wafting of perfume, and the door was opened and Mrs. Daventry announced. Augusta came in with a sweep which filled Mrs. Temple’s little drawing-room. There did not seem room for its legitimate inmates in that redundant presence. Mrs. Temple ran to her patient, thinking Lottie was about to faint, but she recovered herself enough to smile faintly at Augusta when she spoke, which was as much as she did to anyone. Augusta seated herself opposite the convalescent, her train falling round her in heavy masses—the one all wealth and commotion and importance, the other so pale, so slight in her weakness, her brown merino dress hanging loosely upon her. Mrs. Temple was not made much account of by the fine lady, who made her a slight salutation, half bow, half curtsey, and took no further notice of “the people of the house.”
“Well,” she said, “how are you, and what has been the matter? There are the most extraordinary stories told about you. I have come to find out what is really the matter, Lottie. Mamma wishes to know too. You know you were always a kind of favourite with mamma.”
“I will tell you about her illness,” said Mrs. Temple. “She is scarcely well enough yet to enter into details.”
“Oh,” said Augusta, gazing blankly upon the “person of the house,”—then she returned to Lottie again. “I don’t want you to enter into details; but they say the most extraordinary things; they say you were turned out of doors, and stayed all night on the Slopes—that, of course, can’t be true—but I wish you would tell me what is true, that I may give the right version of the story. Mamma is quite anxious to know. ”
“Lottie, my dear, I will tell Mrs. Daventry,” said Mrs. Temple, “it is too much for you;” and she held her point and recounted her little story with a primness which suited her voice and manner. Many were the demonstrations of impatience which the fine lady made, but it was not in her power to struggle against Mrs. Temple’s determination. She turned to Lottie again as soon as the tale was told.
“Is that true? Only a very bad cold, and influenza from getting wet? Oh, we heard a great deal more than that; and your voice—we heard you had quite lost your voice. I promised the Signor to inquire. He is quite anxious, he always thought so much of your voice. He is an odd man,” said Augusta, giving a blow in passing, “he thinks so differently from other people about many things. I promised to find out for him all about it. Have you really, really lost your voice, as everybody says?”
It was curious that Lottie, who had never been concerned about her voice, who had never cared anything about it, who had not wanted to be a singer at all, should feel, even in the midst of the greater and deeper unhappiness that possessed her, a distinct sting of pain as she heard this question. Her paleness was flushed with a sudden painful colour. She looked at Mrs. Temple wistfully again.
“You can hear that she is hoarse,” said Mrs. Temple; “a very common consequence of a cold. She has lost her voice for the moment, but we hope to find it again.”
“I think she must be dumb altogether, as she never answers me,” said Augusta, fretfully. Then she tried another subject, with a triumphant certainty of success. “I don’t know if you have heard of our trouble,” she said, looking at her black dress. “You remember, Lottie, my cousin, Mr. Ridsdale? Oh, yes; you knew him a little, I think.”
Once more Lottie’s pale face flushed with painful overwhelming colour. She looked up with alarmed and troubled eyes.
“Oh, I see you remember him; he was such a flirt, he was always making himself agreeable to women. It did not matter who they were,” said Augusta, fixing her eyes on her victim’s face, “or what class of people, so long as they were at all nice-looking, or could sing, or draw, or anything. I remember I sent him out to try whether he could not hear you sing the very day I was married. He was another of the people who believed in you, Lottie. He did not hear you then, so he made mamma ask you, you remember. He had something to do with a new opera company, and he was always on the look-out for a new voice.”
Once more Lottie turned her eyes upon Mrs. Temple, eyes full of anguish and wonder. Who else could she turn to?—not to the cruel executioner who sat opposite to her, with a lurking smile about her heartless mouth. How cruel a woman can be with a fair face, and no signs of the savage in her! Augusta saw that her arrow had struck home, and was encouraged to do more.
“Oh, yes; he was in a great state about your voice. He said it would make his fortune and yours too. He was always ridiculously sanguine. You know how he used to flatter you, Lottie, and go to all your lessons. Oh, you must not tell me that you don’t remember, for I could see you liked it. Well,” said Augusta, who did not lose a single change of colour, no quiver of her victim’s lips, or flutter of her bosom, “that sort of thing is all over now. Oh, I daresay he will continue to take a great interest as an amateur; but his position is now entirely changed. My poor cousin Ridsdale, Rollo’s eldest brother, was killed in the hunting-field about a fortnight ago. Such a shock for us all! but it has made a great change for Rollo. He is Lord Ridsdale now, and my uncle Courtland’s heir. His servant came last Friday week to fetch some things he had left at the Deanery—for he had gone away for the day only, not knowing what had happened. Poor fellow; and yet, of course, though he was truly grieved and all that, it is great good fortune for him. We are not likely now” Augusta added, with a faint smile, “to see much of him here.”
Lottie did not say a word. She sat, no longer changing colour, perfectly pale, with the great blue eyes that had so expanded and dilated during her illness, fixed upon the vacant air. To hear him named was still something, and filled her with a sick excitement, an anguish of interest and agitation. After the long silence, after the cutting of all ties, after his cruel desertion of her, after the blow which had all but killed her, to hear of him had been something. Pain—yet a pain she was more eager to undergo than to meet any pleasure. But Lottie had not calculated upon the cruel, treacherous, yet careless, blow which fell upon her now, upon her quivering wounds. To hear her voice, was that what it was? not to see her because he loved her, but to hear her singing. Till now she had at least had her past. He was false, and had forsaken her, she knew, but once he had loved her; the Rollo who gazed up in the moonlight at her window had still been hers, though another Rollo had betrayed her trust and broken her heart. But now! the blood ebbed away from her face, and seemed to fail from her heart; the beating of it grew confused and muffled in her ears. She gazed with her great eyes, all strained and pained with gazing, at nothing. To hear her sing, not seeking her, but only running after a new voice! She sat with her hands clasped upon her lap in a kind of piteous appeal, and sometimes would look at the one and then the other, asking them—was it true, could it be true?
“I must go,” said Augusta, having fired her shot, “and I am glad to have such a good account of you. Only a bad cold and a hoarseness, such as are quite common. Mamma will be pleased to hear, and so will the Signor. I can’t tell him anything about your voice, because you have not let me hear it, Lottie. Oh, quite prudent—much the best thing not to use it at all; though with an old friend, to be sure—you look rather ill, I am bound to say.”
Lottie sat still in the same attitude after this cruel visitor was gone, all her thoughts going back upon that time, which after all was only a few months, yet which seemed her life. She had given him up, or rather she had accepted his abandonment of her, without a struggle, without a hope; it had been to her as a doom out of Heaven. She had not even blamed him. It had killed her, she thought. She had not resisted, but it had killed her. Now, however, she could not submit. In her heart she fought wildly against this last, most cruel blow. He was not hers, he was cut off from her, by his own murderous hand; but to give up the lover who had loved her before he knew her, who had watched under her window and wiled her heart away, that she could not do. She fought against it passionately in her soul. The afternoon went on without a sound, nothing but the ashes softly falling from the fire, the soft movement of Mrs. Temple’s arm as she worked; but the silence tingled all the time with the echo of Augusta’s words, and with the hot conflict of recollections in her own heart, opposing and denying them. Mrs. Temple worked quietly by and watched, divining something of the struggle, though she did not know what it was. At last, all at once in the stillness, the girl broke forth passionately: “Oh, no, no,” she cried, “not that! I will not believe it. Not that; it is not true.”
“What is not true, dear? tell me,” her companion said, laying down her work, and coming forward with tender hands outstretched, and pity in her eyes.
“You heard her,” Lottie said, “you heard her. That it was to hear me singing—that it was all for my voice. No, no, not that! It could not be—that was not true. You could not believe that was true.”
And Lottie looked at her piteously, clasping her hands, entreating her with those pathetic eyes for a little comfort. “Not that, not that,” she said. “My singing, was it likely? Oh you cannot think that!” she cried.
Mrs. Temple did all she could to soothe her. “My poor child, it is all over—over and ended—what does it matter now?”
“It matters all the world to me,” Lottie cried. Kind as her new guardian was, she could not understand that even when her happiness and her hopes were all crushed, it was a bitterness more exquisite, a sting the girl could not bear to believe that her foundations had been sand, that she had been deluded from the beginning, that the love she trusted in had never been. This sting was so keen and sharp that it woke her from the apathy of despair that was creeping over her. She was roused to struggle, to a passion of resistance and denial. “How can anyone but I know how it was? It all came from that; without that I should never have thought—we should never have met. It was the beginning. How can anyone know but me?” she cried, contending as against some adversary. When the first strain of this conflict was over, she turned, faltering, to her kind guardian. “I had a letter,” she said; “it was the letter. I cannot find it.” She gave her a look of entreaty which went to Mrs. Temple’s heart.
“I have got your letter, Lottie. I have it in my desk, put away. No one has seen it. Let me put it into the fire.”
“Ah, no! perhaps there may be something in it different from what I thought.”
She held out her hands supplicating, and Mrs. Temple went to her desk and took out an envelope. Within was something all stained and blurred. The rain had half washed the cruel words away. Once for all, as Rollo’s last act and deed, and suicidal exit from this history, the letter shall be copied here. Imagine how Lottie had been sitting, all happiness and soft agitation and excitement, waiting for him when this curt epistle came: —
“DEAR LOTTIE,—
“An extraordinary change has happened in my life—not my doing, but that of Providence. It gives me new duties, and a new existence altogether. What we have been thinking of cannot be. It is impossible in every way. For me to do what I promised to you was, when we parted, a sacrifice which I was willing to make, but now is an impossibility. I am afraid you will feel this very much—and don’t think I don’t feel it; but it is an impossibility. I have things to do and a life to lead that makes it impossible. I hope soon someone will be raised up for you when you want it most, to give you the help and assistance I would so gladly have given. Could I but know that you assented to this, that you saw the reason for my conduct, I should be as happy as I now can ever be; and I hope that you will do so when you can look at it calmly. Farewell, dear Lottie, think of me with as little anger as you can, for it is not I, but Providence. Your voice will soon make you independent; it is only a momentary disappointment, I know, and I cannot help it. To do what we settled to do is now an impossibility—an impossibility. Dear Lottie, farewell!
“R. R.”
Underneath, Forgive me was scrawled hastily, as if by an afterthought.