“Mr. Ashford,” said Law, “you will do her more good than I should. What have I been to poor Lottie? Only a trouble. Two of us—no; I can’t take even that to myself. I’ve worried her more than anything else. She would be the first to thank you. You know a man——?”
“I know a man,” said the Minor Canon—“I had forgotten him till now—a man who owes me a good turn; and I think he would pay it. If I were sure you would really do your best, and not forget the claims she has upon your kindness——”
“Would you like me to send for her as soon as I had a home for her?” Law asked with fervour. There was a subdued twinkle in his eye, but yet he was too much in earnest not to be ready to make any promise.
“That would be the right thing to do,” said the Minor Canon with excessive gravity, “though perhaps the bush is not exactly the kind of place to suit her. If you will promise to do your very best——”
“I will,” said the lad, “I will. I am desperate otherwise; you can see for yourself, Mr. Ashford. Give me only an opening; give me anything that I can work at. If I were to ’list I never should make much money by that. There’s only just this one thing,” said Law: “If I had a friend to go to, and a chance of employment, and would promise to pay it back, I suppose I might get a loan somewhere—a loan on good interest,” he continued, growing anxious and a little breathless—“perhaps from one of those societies, or some old money-lender, or something—to take me out?”
The Minor Canon laughed. “If this is what you are really set upon, and you will do your best,” he said, “I will see your father, and you need not trouble your mind about the interest. Perhaps we shall be able to manage that.”
“Oh, Mr. Ashford, what a good fellow you are! what a good friend you are!” cried Law, beaming with happiness. The tears once more came into his eyes, and then there came a glow of suppressed malice and fun behind that moisture. “Lottie will be more obliged even than I,” he said; “and I could send for her as soon as I got settled out there.”
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 matter, 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 surprised 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.