Within the Precincts

by Mrs. Oliphant

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 revelation 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.