“Your servant,” she said, “instead of the one that is going away. I am an honest girl, though they all cast me off. I cannot sing but I can work—your servant, or else I cannot be your child.”
CHAPTER XLV.
CONCLUSION.
If this history had proposed to settle and bring to a dramatic conclusion even one single human life, the writer would falter here, feeling her task all unfulfilled; for what have we been able to do more than to bring our poor Lottie at the end of all things to a kind of dead-lock of all the possibilities of life? Such stoppages in the course of human affairs are, however, at least as common as a distinct climax or catastrophe. For one girl or boy whose life lies all fair before them after the first effort, how many are there who have to leave the chapter incomplete, and, turning their backs upon it, to try a second beginning, perhaps with less satisfaction, and certainly with a somewhat disturbed and broken hope! Lottie Despard had arrived at this point. Her love had not ended as happy loves end. It had been cut short by a cruel hand; her fabric of happiness had fallen to the ground; her visionary shelter, the house of her dreams, had crumbled about her, leaving nothing but bare walls and broken rafters. Her misery and dismay, the consternation of her young soul when, instead of that fair and pleasant future which was to be her resting-place, she found around her a miserable ruin, we have scarcely attempted to say. What words can tell such a convulsion and rending of earth and sky? She had believed in her lover, and in her love as something above the weakness of ordinary humanity. She had believed herself at last to have found in him the ideal after which she had sighed all her life. His generous ardour to help her whenever he found her in want of help, the enthusiasm of a love which she believed had been given at first sight, like the love the poets tell of, had filled Lottie’s heart with all the sweetness of a perfect faith. Impossible to say how she had trusted in him, with what pure and perfect delight and approbation her soul had given itself up to him, glad beyond all expression not only to find him hers, but to have found him at all, the one man known to her for whom no excuse had to be made. The discovery that he was a traitor killed her morally—at least it seemed so to the poor girl when, all crushed and bleeding from a hundred wounds, she was taken to the house of her friends. But even that was scarcely a more horrible blow than the stroke administered delicately by Augusta while still the injured soul had not staunched its own bleeding or recovered from the first mortal overthrow. The earth that had been so solid opened round her in yawning mouths of hell, leaving no ground to stand upon. There was nothing that was not changed. She had not only lost her future, which was all happiness, and in which she had believed like a child; but she had lost her past. She had been deceived; or, worse still, she had deceived herself, seeking her own overthrow. The knowledge that it had not been love that brought Rollo under her window first, that it was altogether another sentiment, business, regard for his own interests—seemed to throw upon herself the blame of all that came after. Soul and heart, the girl writhed under the consciousness of having thus anticipated and brought on her fate. So vain, so foolish, so easily deceived, who was in fault but herself? Those thoughts gave her a false strength, or feverish impassioned power for a time. It was her own doing. She had been the deceiver of herself.
But who could deliver her from the dying pangs of love in her heart, those longings which are unquenchable, those protestations of nature against loss, those visions of excuses that might still be made, and suggestions of impossible explanation which in her mind she knew to be impossible even while her fancy framed them? Sometimes Lottie would find herself dreaming unawares that someone else, not Rollo, had written that cruel letter; that it was not by his will he had left her to bear the brunt of her disappointment under the elm-tree; that it was a forgery, and he detained by some act of cruel treachery and deceit. Sometimes a flood of passionate longing and yearning would sweep over her—a longing only to see him, to hear his voice, to ask why, why he could have been so cruel. Love does not die in a moment, nor does it come to a violent end when the object is proved unworthy, as some people think. With Lottie it was a lingering and painful conclusion, full of memories, full of relentings; the ground that had been gained by days of painful self-suppression being lost by one sudden burst of remembrance, the sight of something that brought up before her one of the scenes that were past.
While this process was going on wistful looks were directed to Lottie’s lonely path by more than one spectator. The household of the Signor was deeply moved by the hapless fate of the young lady for whom young Purcell sighed with unavailing faithfulness. He could not be made to see that it was unavailing, and the Signor, blinded by his partiality for his pupil, did not or would not see it; and, as was natural, Mrs. Purcell could not understand the possibility of any girl being indifferent to John’s devotion. She thought Lottie’s troubles would indeed be at an end, and her future happiness secured, if her eyes were but opened to his excellence. So strong was this feeling in the mind of the family that the Signor himself took the matter in hand, and sallied forth with the anxious sympathy of all the household to put the case before Captain Temple, who was now recognised as Lottie’s guardian. “In every country but England,” the Signor said, “the friends arrange such matters. Surely it is much more judicious than the other way. There is some guarantee at least that it is not mere youthful folly. Now here is a young lady who is in very unfortunate circumstances, who has been obliged to leave her father’s house——”
“I beg your pardon, Signor,” said the Captain, trying hard to keep his temper, “but I do not think my house is a very bad exchange for Captain Despard’s.”
“Nobody who knows Captain Temple can have any doubt of that,” the Signor said with a wave of his hand, “but what can her situation be in your house? You are not her relation. She has no claim, she has no right, nothing to depend upon; and if anything were to happen to you——”
“To be sure,” said Captain Temple, with profound gravity, not untinctured with offence, “there is much to be said on that point. We are mortal like everybody else.”
Explanations were not the Signor’s strong point; he was wanting in tact everybody knew. “I am making a mess of it,” he said, “as I always do. Captain Temple, you are a man of sense, you know that marriage is something more than a matter of sentiment. John Purcell is a very rising musician, there is nothing in our profession he may not hope for; he loves Miss Despard, and he could give her a home. Will you not recommend her to consider his suit, and be favourable to him? His origin perhaps is an objection—but he is a very good fellow, and he could provide for her.”
Captain Temple kept his temper; he was always very proud of this afterwards. He bowed the Signor out, then came fuming upstairs to his wife. “Young Purcell!” he cried, “the housekeeper’s son! as if all that was wanted was somebody to provide for her; but when a man has that taint of foreign notions,” said the old Captain gravely, “nothing will wear it out.”