“Lottie is upstairs,” he said. “She wants me to take her with me, but I have told her I can’t take her with me. I wish you would say a word to her.”
Law rushed away with a secret chuckle when he had sent to his sister a new suitor to console her. If one lover proves unsatisfactory, what can be better than to replace him by another? Law felt himself bound in gratitude and honour to do all that he could for Mr. Ashford, who had been so kind to him; and was it not evidently the best thing—far the best thing for Lottie too?
The Minor Canon went upstairs with a little quickening of his pulse. He had been a great deal about Captain Temple’s little house since the morning when he had brought Lottie there, and her name and the thought of her had been in his mind constantly. He had not defended himself against this preoccupation, for would it not have been churlish to put the poor girl out of his mind when she was so desolate, and had no other place belonging to her? Rather he had thrown open all his doors and taken in her poor pale image, and made a throne for her, deserted, helpless, abandoned as she was. A generous soul cannot take care of itself when a friend is in trouble. Mr. Ashford, who had been on the edge of the precipice, half consciously, for some time, holding himself back as he could, thinking as little about her as he could, now let himself go. He felt as the Quixotes of humanity are apt to feel, that nothing he could give her should be withheld now. If it did not do her any good, still it would be something—it was all he could do. He let himself go. He thought of her morning and night, cherishing her name in his heart. Poor Lottie—life and love had alike been traitors to her. “Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I,” he said, as once was said rashly to a greater than man. What could he ever be to her, wrung as her heart was by another? but that did not matter. If it was any compensation to her, she should have his heart to do what she liked with. This was the sentiment in the mind of the Minor Canon, who ought, you will say, to have known better, but who never had been practical, as the reader knows. He went upstairs with his heart beating. How gladly he would have said a hundred words to her, and offered her all he had, to make up for the loss of that which she could not have. But what his generosity would have thrown at her feet, his delicacy forbade him to offer. Lottie, in her disappointment and desertion (which he only divined, yet was certain of) was sacred to him. Mrs. Temple was absent about her household concerns, and there was nobody in the drawing-room upstairs except Lottie, who in her excitement and despair did not hear his step, nor think that anyone might be coming. She was walking about the room, with her hands clasped and strained against her breast, her weak steps full of feverish energy, her eyes glowing with a fire of despair. “What shall I do? what shall I do?” she was moaning in the anguish of her heart.
When Ernest Ashford opened the door, her back was turned to him, so that he heard this moan, and saw the passionate misery of her struggle, before she knew that he was there. When she saw him a momentary gleam of anger came over her face; then she put force upon herself, and dropped her hands by her side like a culprit, and tried to receive him as she ought. As she ought—for was not he her brother’s benefactor, whom all this time she had been neglecting, not thanking him as he had a right to be thanked? The change from that anguish and despair which she had been indulging when alone, to the sudden softening of courtesy and compunction and gratitude which, after a pathetic momentary interval of struggling with herself, came over her face, was one of those sudden variations which had transported Rollo in the beginning of their acquaintance by its power of expression. But this change, which would have pleased the other, went to the heart of the Minor Canon, to whom Lottie had never appeared in the light of an actress or singer, but only as herself.
“Mr. Ashford,” she said faintly. “I wanted to see you—to thank you——”
She was trembling, and he came up to her tenderly—but with a tenderness that never betrayed its own character—grave and calm, for all that his heart was beating—and took her hand and arm into his, and led her to her chair. “You must not thank me for anything,” he said.
“For Law——”
“No; not for Law. If it would give you any ease or any comfort, you should have everything I have. That is not saying much. You should have all I can do or think,” he said, with a thrill in his voice, which was all that betrayed his emotion. “The misery of human things is that all I can do is not what you want, Lottie—and that what you want is out of my power.”
He asked no permission to call her by her name; he was not aware he did it—nor was she.
“I want nothing,” she said, with a passionate cry. “Oh, do not think I am so miserable and weak. I want nothing. Only, if Law could take me with him—take me away—to a new place—to a new life.”