CHAPTER X.—HOW LOTTE FULFILLED HER TRUST.
Among the faithless faithful only she,
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
Her loyalty she kept, her love, her zeal:
Nor number nor example with her wrought,
To swerve from truth or change her constant mind.
—Milton.
And now Lotte Clinton was again alone in the world—-again with her face confronting her situation, prepared to sustain her cross with the meek fortitude she had always hitherto displayed.
She had nourished in secret her hope that one day she should meet with some sound-hearted singleminded youth, who would love her for herself, and whom she should love, and heartily too, for the selfsame qualification. It was only the natural promptings of a young girl’s heart; it would, indeed, have been unnatural for her not to have entertained some such notion.
She had met the man who had gained her heart—her first love, her soul’s idolatry.
He was not the man she had pictured. She had never sketched out such a figure, such a face as Mark possessed. She had never, indeed, created a model. She had hoped only for a manly loving heart, and Mark presented himself, carrying off her affection by a coup de main, without any of those considerations she had deemed essential to love being consulted in the matter.
Oh, she loved him truly, dearly, faithfully, and with the most pure unselfishness. No greater happiness could she conceive than being his wife. Yet to her clear mind there were duties superior to her deep affection, and she bent to them. She swerved not from them, even though her heart broke in the task.
The night that Mark went away she prayed for his happiness with earnest sincerity, and though she might never, never see him more, and her future life be thus made sad and cheerless, she sent up an entreaty that their separation might never sit heavy on his heart.
A week had passed away. She was pale, and a dull settled expression had fastened itself upon her once lively, intelligent open face. She had not seen her brother Charley since Mark’s departure, and her only solace had been Helen Grahame’s child.
She had hitherto loved it—now she doated upon it. It seemed all that she had left to love, and to love her; for that the child was most fondly attached to her there could be no doubt. She had had him christened by the name of Hugh Riversdale Grahame, and she had stood as godmother to him, resolving to fulfill firmly, faithfully, and justly that sacred responsibility in the absence of his own mother, of whom, since the night she left her so strangely, she had nothing heard.
One morning she was seated alone; she had laid the little Hugh down in his tiny bed for his morning’s sleep, and she was bending over her work with her accustomed close application. She thought of Mark; it was not possible to keep down thoughts of him. He never would come back to her—there seemed little doubt of that. How, indeed, she hardly hoped for it, hardly wished for it; for, despite her adoration of him—-it was no less—she seemed to feel acutely disparity of their positions, and that it would have proved an effectual barrier to their peace if united. She thought of his parting words, and her eyes filled with tears. He would not bid her adieu—he felt their parting so deeply—yes, he loved her; she was sure of that, and an involuntary “God bless him,” escaped her lips as her head sank upon her bosom, and the fast falling tears bedewed the work in her trembling hands.
“Sweet! sweet! sweet!” chirruped the little canary.
“Dear little dick!” she thought, as the bird’s rapidly repeated call attracted her attention, “the little darling sees that I am sad and would comfort me.”
She raised her eyes, and, lo, a woman stood before her.
One glance—it was Helen Grahame.
With an almost suffocating cry, Lotte rose to her feet.
Helen clasped her hands and cowered before her.
“Oh, Lotte, Lotte,” she murmured.
Had she have spoken, and explained for a thousand years, she could not have so clearly convinced Lotte that her mysterious absence had been involuntary, as she did by the utterance of those two words.
“I see it all! I see it all!” she exclaimed, with
Jut quivering lips. “You are not to blame, Miss Grahame.”
Helen, with a gasp of ecstacy, caught Lotte in her arms. She embraced her passionately.
“Oh! Lotte, my sweet, faithful, enduring friend,” she sobbed, “what do I not owe to you? Only teach me how—in some way—I may try to repay you for all the suffering I have occasioned you; for your faithfulness; for your blessed charity; for your dear, dear womanly sympathies; and for that service, inestimable in its value, which—never, never fainting under its sharp exactions—you have rendered me. Oh! Lotte, my own darling Lotte, had you been my sister, a fond, unselfish sister, I might have expected some such ministering; but from you, on whom I had no claim—not even that of mere acquaintanceship—how can I sufficiently appreciate it?—how strive to evince to you the feeling it has raised up in my heart toward you. Heaven bless you, dearest! I will try to show you how I estimate you, for I am rich, Lotte, and—and I can look the world in the face now bravely—ay, like a queen—but not unless you share it with me. No, Lotte, my love, my truest, dearest friend! You shared with me all you had in the world when there was no prospect—ay! and no wish on your part that I should return it—and now I am wealthy again, you shall share it all with me. It is my husband’s wish—my husband, Lotte, my husband—my little child’s father, Lotte.”
Her voice sank low, and she hid her weeping eyes on Lotte’s neck.
What! not a word, Lotte—not one little word to say?
No—not one!
At another time, she would have pressed some composure into her service, had it been ever so small; now she could not keep back her deep emotion, nor enlist a word to express even one of the many thoughts crowding, crashing through her brain.
Her whole frame appeared convulsed; she staggered as if she would sink to the seat, but Helen clung to her, sustained her, laid her weeping face upon her bosom.
“Rest thou there, darling!” she murmured. “Oh, Lotte, I am so happy to hold you again in my arms—no more struggles with the world, Lotte; no more unthreading of the web of life with a threaded needle. Dry your tears, my own darling and true heart, for if one mortal can ensure another’s happiness, I will compass yours.”
Happiness, and parted for ever from Mark!
Lotte could not refrain weeping, and Helen, finding it was so, hushed her own quivering voice, and wiped the trembling lids of Lotte; and kissed her pale cheek and forehead, pressing her again and again to her heart.
Lotte at length summoned her old strength of purpose, and putting down with a firm hand the uprising thoughts of her still desolate and lonely condition in life, she strove to obey Helen’s injunctions to light up her sweet pleasant eyes with a smile; and, after one or two efforts, she cleared her aching throat so as to speak.
“In all sincerity,” she said, “I am happy, oh, very happy to see you again and to hear such glad tidings, but I—I am sure I ought not to be thus encircled by your kind arms. You overrate what I have done, and our stations——”
Helen placed her hands over her mouth.
“Do not pain my heart, Lotte; do not wound me. If you talk to me in that strain, I shall fear that the old contemptible pride I once possessed had made me act so as to cause you to believe that I am hollow and deceptive, and eaten up with a fatuity of which I have long known the worthlessness. You have taught me that difference of station is levelled by human worth—what do I say—oh, Lotte, no station is so high as that held by one in right of truth and honour and virtue. Station, Lotte! If it were of us two to kneel to the one most elevated and entitled to the exercise of a noble pride, it would be for me to bend my knee——”
Lotte placed her hand before Helen’s mouth.
“It is my turn now,” she said, with a playful smile—sad though its expression still was. “Pray, do not speak to me about myself,” she added, almost mournfully, “for, indeed, it makes me feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, but let us talk of him in search of whom, in spite of your tender and kind words to me, your anxious eyes are wandering—little pet.”
“My boy! my dear, dear boy! where is he?” said Helen, with a spasmodic action of her throat, as she clutched Lotte’s shoulder.
Lotte smiled again one of her old, sweet smiles.
“He is so well, and so beautiful,” she whispered, “and such a dear, dear little darling.”
She took Helen’s hand, and on tiptoe they went together into the adjoining room. In a small wicker berceaunette, daintily trimmed with white muslin and pink ribbons, which had cost Lotte at least a dozen dinners, if not more, lay, sleeping, Helen’s child.
Rosy-faced, handsome-featured, and healthy-looking, he lay there a very picture. He slept lightly and pleasantly, and seemed a very cherub of happiness.
The devoted attention paid to him was evidenced in his own appearance and in everything surrounding him.
Once again Helen caught Lotte in her arms and passionately kissed her and sobbed wildly. Then she released herself and suddenly hurried from the room, to Lotte’s intense surprise.
She was about to follow her when she saw her hastening back, light of foot, bringing with her a gentleman. Lotte was at no loss to guess who he was.
Helen led her husband to the side of the sleeping child. She pointed to it, and in low quivering tones she exclaimed—
“Thus has she fulfilled her trust!”
Hugh gazed on his child, and then he turned to Lotte. She could see his eyes were humid, He caught her hands and sank on his knees with a sudden impulse before her.
She started; and as he pressed his lips almost impetuously on her hands, she struggled to withdraw them, crying—
“Pray rise, sir, pray do; I entreat you to do so. You distress me—you pain me, indeed you do.”
But Hugh still detained her.
“Pardon me!” he said, speaking rapidly and earnestly. “The position is not derogatory to me; it is a tribute to your worth. This is no occasion for cold form. I kneel to you in intense thankfulness; it is the prompting—the outpouring of a full heart. You saved my Helen! she who is dearer to me than life itself; you have saved and tenderly nurtured our child! By these two acts you have also rescued me from destruction and eternal perdition. I kneel to you that I may give some sign of the keen sense of my indebtedness to you—that you may in the coming time feel entitled to the position in which it is my intention to place you—justly entitled without one shrinking impulse or doubting impression. On my knees I thank you”—he rose up—“in my heart I treasure the memory of your service, and by my future acts I will strive to show how deeply and dearly I estimate it.”
Lotte faltered out some confused response, and ran out of the room to conceal her emotion.
By this time the little fellow, nestled in the cradle, had opened his infantile eyes, and turning them upon his mother, smiled.
To be sure she caught him up enraptured, and pressing him to her heart covered him with a thousand kisses; and then he was called upon to undergo the same process at the hands and lips of his father.
Then they adjourned, bearing their little treasure with them, to the adjoining apartment, where they found Lotte trying to get up an appearance as though she had no notion of tears.
Ah! Helen watched her expressive face, perused its lineaments with attentive scrutiny, and she saw there written a sadness too deep and settled to be ousted by any attempt to smile and seem gratified and overjoyed at another’s happiness. Not but that Lotte was delighted at Helen’s evident felicity, yet the surrender of her young pure heart to one who was gone no more to return to her, was a grief which resisted all her efforts to bury it deep in her own bosom without leaving an outward sign to mark its grave.
Helen, so well versed in the language of Lotte’s heart, interpreted by her sweet sad eyes and the play of her features that there was hidden anguish which, at whatever cost of pain, she sought to conceal, so that it might not disturb her new-found happiness.
“I will probe to that deep-seated sorrow,” thought Helen, “and if it is to be rooted out, it shall have no long-continued home in her dear heart.”
She, however, said nothing upon that subject now. She explained those causes for her absence and silence which which the reader is acquainted, adding that the sea-voyage her husband had taken her had rapidly produced the desired effect, for they had scarcely landed when she was fully restored to her intellect, remembered all that had happened, and did not rest until she was on her homeward voyage—indeed, until she had discovered Lotte, and presented herself before her.
Mutual revelations were made. Lotte furnishing a history of what had happened to her since Helen had left her, omitting from the narration the character of Mark Wilton.
When all these recitals had ended, Helen made known her intention of not leaving the apartments in which they were sitting without Lotte.
The latter shook her head, with a sad smile on her face, as the announcement was made to her; but Helen, with great decision, declined to accept any denial from her.
“I am prepared for all your objections,” she said; “in fact, Lotte, I have invented some for you, and have discussed them with Hugh only to most triumphantly defeat them every one.”
Then she ran hastily over them, suggesting all that Lotte really did feel in opposition to the scheme, with much more, but only to answer and refute all the adverse arguments.
And so Lotte was to be a lady after all—to have a fortune, and ride in a carriage of her own.
The wealth to which Hugh had succeeded would enable him to settle upon her an amount that would do this without in any degree inconveniently trenching upon his very large resources; and as there was really no consistent argument she could offer for its rejection, she, with swimming eyes of gratefulness, expressed her thanks and her hopes to be proved worthy such generous liberality.
Perhaps there was some latent incentive which might have helped to overcome her indisposition to accept an obligation so great, and perhaps a flush heightened the hue of her features as a passing thought suggested the poor sempstress passing before the eyes of old Mr. Wilton in her own carriage, even though he refused to receive her into his family.
Helen kissed her cheek affectionately, and said, delightedly—
“There is nothing, then, to step in between our arrangement.”
“Except your humble servant,” said a strange voice.
Both females uttered a startled cry, and Hugh jumped up and turned upon the intruder.
It was Nathan Gomer who stood near the door.
The same strange, almost unearthly grin was upon his face as usual, and he chuckled as he observed the utter surprise with which he was regarded.
Neither Helen nor her husband knew him; the former gazed on him with terror, the latter with haughty indignation at what he considered rude audacity.
Lotte knew him in an instant, though she had seen him but once, when he suddenly appeared as the friend of Flora Wilton, in the old abode at Clerkenwell.
In an instant she felt sure that his visit was to her; and she had a strange presentiment that whatever he directed her to do she must perform.
All remained silent for a minute—then Nathan smiled.
“You seem slightly astonished,” he said; “didn’t expect to see me. Ha! ha! I’m fond of creating a sensation. You don’t know me,” he said, nodding to Helen. “You do,” he exclaimed to Lotte, “and I have business with you both. Firstly, Miss Clinton, understand that I have had your character painted to me in most glowing language by a young man—nay, never turn so crimson, for the young lady by your side has just described you in highly favourable terms, and it is not the custom for young ladies to fall into extravagancies of encomium upon individuals of their own sex; so you ought not to look so very rosy when you hear that a young man extolled your virtues, even more highly than he did your pretty face and form. I don’t expect you, however, to continue the colour on your brow when I say, that having investigated the truth of his allegations, I have found not one over estimated—that you are truly worthy of and deserving the reward which your friend at your side has offered to your superior merits——”
“If you knew how distasteful to my ears are these praises,” interrupted Lotte, gravely, “indeed, sir, you would not follow the example of generous people, whose extreme kindness of heart leads them to speak and to think far too highly of me. It is as if truthfulness, faithfulness and singleness of purpose were not common to us all.”
“Ah, yes, very good,” returned Nathan, “the only thing is, that the possession of all those qualities by one individual is uncommon—a leetle—-I say, rather uncommon. But I won’t, if you wish it, tell you what I think, but I will ask you if you will be guilty of one more act of unselfish service. You have just entered into an arrangement fraught with every possible comfort and happiness: I have come to place myself between you and the realization of immunity from care, privation, and unwearying toil. To be brief, Mr. Wilton, senior, has been wounded by an assassin, and lies helpless and delirious upon his bed at Harleydale. His daughter Flora—you know her well, of course—also has been placed in a position of danger, which, together with the shock occasioned by the attack on her father, has placed her on a bed of sickness. Mr. Wilton has none but hired nurses therefore. Now, Mr. Mark Wilton——”
Lotte turned pale at the name; Nathan saw it. He cleared his throat.
“I say that Mr. Mark Wilton bethought himself of you. I will not pretend to enter on all the incentives which induced him to request you to take the unthankful and trying office of nurse to his father—at least, in tending him more as a daughter”—he laid a strong emphasis on that word—“than as a nurse. No doubt he will satisfactorily explain himself to you; but I may say that, knowing all the circumstances, I feel that the request is a strong one, its compliance hardly to be expected, and that some more than common motive has led to the suggestion. However, as requested, I put the proposition to you; it is for you to accept or decline it.”
Before he had finished, ten thousand reasons why she should not go had flashed through her brain, yet the one soul-possessing idea—her love for Mark—determined her to comply with Mark’s wish.
She was one who never let the sun go down on her wrath. She had forgiven old Wilton’s harsh words although they had so pained her. Now she had no hope that all the attention, care, and service she might be called upon to bestow would remove his objections to her; nevertheless she should be able to do some good for Mark’s sake; and if the parting with him for ever took place beneath the roof of his father, it would not be embittered, at least, by the remembrance that she had granted the aid he had asked of her.
She wiped hastily from her eyelids the tears which memories awakened by Nathan Gomer had gathered there, and said to him simply—
“I will go with you, sir, to Harleydale.”
For a moment the nostrils of Nathan were widely inflated, and he gave a very perceptible gulp.
“Hem!” he ejaculated, clearing his throat. “We will be off in two hours from this, so, lassie, make your preparations, and only one box, if you please—I say, only one box.”
Then he turned to Helen, and said—
“Madam, I know you, though you are unacquainted with me. Pardon me if I tell you matters are going on sadly in your father’s house. The family pride has had a dreadful fall. Your father is absent, your sister Margaret has—I say your sister Margaret has left her home, and your mother is confined to her bed in serious illness, with Evangeline, your sister, as her sole attendant; for the myrmidons of the law are in the house, and the servants have decamped.”
Helen listened to him like one in a dream; then she turned to her husband, and said to him—
“Hugh, we will proceed there this moment.”
He silently, but readily acquiesced; and with a few hasty loving words to Lotte concerning the future, Helen embraced her and departed, taking Lotte’s “pet” with her and her husband.
Two hours subsequently, Lotte Clinton, in the careful charge of Nathan Gomer, was on her way to Harleydale, wondering what new trial fate had in store for her.