“And you call that nothing, ye thankless creature! It’s spoilt ye are, Lottie, me darling, and I always said that was what would come of it. She asked you to tea? sure it’ll be afternoon tea for one of the practisings, like it was in Miss Augusta’s day?”
“No! I am to go in after dinner. It is not the first time, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy; Augusta has often asked me. What else did I get my white frock for?—for there are no parties here to go to. She used to say: ‘Come in, and bring your music.’ It is not me they want, it is my voice,” said Lottie assuming a superiority of wisdom which she did not possess.
“All in good time, me dear,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. “And did my Lady Caroline bid you to bring your music, too? The daughter is one thing, and the mother is clean another. I hope you’ve got your frock in order me darlin’; clean and nice and like a lady? You should send it to Mrs. Jones to iron it out; she’s the plague of my life, but she’s a beautiful clear starcher—that I will say for her; and if you want a ribbon or so, me jewel, or anything I have that ye may take a fancy to—there’s my brooch with O’Shaughnessy’s miniature, sure ne’er a one of them would find out who it was. You might say it was your grandpapa, me honey, in his red coat, with his medals; and fine he’d look on your white frock——”
“Thank you!” said Lottie in alarm; “but I never wear anything, you know, except poor mamma’s little pearl locket.”
“Sure I know,” said the old woman, with a laugh; “a body can’t wear what they haven’t got! But you needn’t turn up your little nose at my big brooch, for when it was made it was the height of the fashion, and now everything that’s old is the height of the fashion. And so me Lady Caroline, that’s too grand to say ‘Good morning to ye, ma’am,’ or ‘Good evening to ye,’ after ye’ve been her neighbour for a dozen years, stops her grand carriage to bid this bit of a girl to tea, and Miss Lottie takes it as cool as snowballs, if ye please. Well, well, honey! I don’t envy ye, not I; but you’re born to luck as sure as the rest of us are born to trouble, and that all the Abbey can see.”
“I born to luck! I don’t think there is much sign of it,” said Lottie, though with a tumultuous leap of the heart which contradicted the words. “And what is there, I should like to know, that all the Abbey can see?”
“If you think I’m going to tell you the nonsense that is flying about, and put fancies in your little head!” said the old Irishwoman, “go your ways, and see that your frock’s in order; and I’ll run in and see you dressed, me pet, and I’ll bring the brooch and the box with me best ribbons; may be at the last you’ll change your mind.”
Lottie went home with her head in the clouds; was she indeed “born to luck”? Was she going to be transplanted at once without the tedious probation which even in poetry, even in story-books, the good heroine has generally to go through, into that heaven of wealth and rank and luxurious surroundings which she felt to be her proper sphere? It was not that Lottie cared for luxury in its vulgarer forms; she liked what was beautiful and stately—the large noble rooms, the dignified aspect which life bore when unconnected with those small schemes and strugglings in which her existence was spent; but above all she liked, it must be allowed, to be uppermost, to feel herself on the highest round of the ladder—and hated and resisted with all her soul the idea of being inferior to anybody. This was the thing above all others which Lottie could not bear. She had been brought up with the idea that she belonged by right of nature to the upper classes, a caste entirely removed by immutable decree of Providence from shop-keepers and persons engaged in trade, and to whom it was comparatively immaterial whether they were poor or rich, nothing being able to alter the birthright which united them with all that was high and separated them from all that was low. But this right had not been acknowledged at St. Michael’s. She and her family had been mixed up in the crowd along with the O’Shaughnessys, and other unexalted people; and nobody, not even the O’Shaughnessys, had been impressed by the long descent of the Despard family and its unblemished gentility. Something else then evidently was requisite to raise her to her proper place, to the sphere to which she belonged. Lottie would not have minded poverty, or difficulty, or hard work, had she been secure of her “position”; but that was just the thing of which in present circumstances she was least secure. It was for this reason that Lady Caroline’s notice was sweet to her—for this that she had been so deeply disappointed when no sign of amity was accorded to her on the wedding-day. And this was why her heart leapt with such bewildering hope and excitement at the new event in her career. She did not know Mr. Ridsdale; perhaps his admiration or even his love were little worth having; and nothing but what are called interested motives could have possibly moved Lottie to the thrill of pleasure with which she contemplated his supposed attachment. A girl whose head is turned by the mere idea of a lover who can elevate her above her neighbours, without any possibility of love on her part to excuse the bedazzlement, is not a very fine or noble image; yet Lottie’s head was turned, not vulgarly, not meanly, but with an intoxication that was full of poetry and all that is most ethereal in romance. A tender, exquisite gratitude to the man who thus seemed to have chosen her, without any virtue of hers, filled her heart; and to the great lady who, though so lofty, and usually cold as marble to the claims of those beneath her, could thus forget her pride for Lottie. This feeling of gratitude softened all the other emotions in her mind. She was ready to be wooed, but then the very manner of the first step in this process, the lingering outside her window, which was a sign of the tenderest, most delicate, and reverential love-making (but she did not think it so in the case of poor young Purcell), showed what a respectful, ethereal, poetical wooing it would be. Thus Lottie’s whole being was full of the most tremulous, delicious happiness, all made up of hope and anticipation, and grateful admiration of the fine generous sentiments of her supposed lover, even while it was founded, as you may say, on self-interest and ambition, and sentiments which were not generous at all.
And with what a flutter at her heart she put out her white muslin frock, which (not having any confidence in Mrs. Jones) she ironed herself most carefully and skilfully, with such interest in keeping it fresh as no Mrs. Jones in the world could have. For girls who have no ornaments to speak of, how kind summer is providing roses, which are always the most suitable of decorations! One knot of them in her hair and one at her breast—what could Lottie want more? Certainly not the big brooch with Major O’Shaughnessy in his red coat, which her old friend was so anxious to pin the roses with. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy thought it would be “such a finish,” and prove satisfactorily that it was not poverty but fancy that made Lottie decorate herself with fresh flowers instead of the fine artificial wreath with a nice long trail down the back, which was what the old lady herself would have preferred. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, however, was mollified by the girl’s acceptance of the Indian shawl which she brought to wrap her in. “And you might just carry it into the room with you, me dear, as if ye thought ye might feel chilly,” said the old lady, “for it’s a beauty, and I should like me Lady Caroline to see it. I doubt if she’s got one like it. Good-night and a pleasant evening to ye, me honey,” she cried, as, under charge of Law, and with her dress carefully folded up, Lottie with her beating heart went across the broad gravel of the Dean’s Walk to the Deanery door. It was a lovely summer night, not dark at all, and the Signor was practising in the Abbey, and the music rolling forth in harmonious thunders rose, now more, now less distinct, as the strain grew softer or louder. A great many people were strolling about, loitering, when Lottie came out, skimming over the road in her little white shoes, with the roses in her hair. All the rest of her modest splendours were hidden by the shawl, but these could not be hidden. The people about all turned their heads to look at her. She was going to the Deanery. It was the same in St. Michael’s as visiting the Queen.
The Dean’s dinner party had been of a slightly heavy description. There were several of the great people from the neighbourhood, county people whom it was necessary to ask periodically. It was so distinctly made a condition, at the beginning of this story, that we were not to be expected to describe the doings on Olympus, nor give the reader an insight into the behaviour of the gods and goddesses, that we feel ourselves happily free from any necessity of entering into the solemn grandeur of the dinner. It was like other dinners in that region above all the clouds. The ladies were fair and the gentlemen wise, and they talked about other ladies and gentlemen not always perhaps equally wise or fair. Mr. Rollo Ridsdale was the greatest addition to the party. He knew all the very last gossip of the clubs. He knew what Lord Sarum said to Knowsley, upbraiding him for the indiscretion of his last Guildhall speech. “But everybody knows that Knowsley is nothing if not indiscreet,” Rollo said; and he knew that, after all, whatever anyone might say to the contrary, Lady Martingale had gone off with Charley Crowther, acknowledging that nothing in the world was of any consequence to her in comparison. “Such an infatuation!” for, as everybody knew, Charley was no Adonis. Lady Caroline shook her head over this, as she ate her chicken (or probably it was something much nicer than chicken that Lady Caroline ate). And thus the menu was worked through. There was but one young lady in the party, and even she was married. In Augusta’s time the young people were always represented, but it did not matter so much now. When all these ladies rose at last in their heavy dresses that swept the carpet, and in their diamonds which made a flicker and gleam of light about their heads and throats, and swept out to the drawing-room: all, with that one exception, over middle age, all well acquainted with each other, knowing the pedigrees and the possessions each of each, and with society in general for their common ground, the reader will tremble to think of such a poor little thing as Lottie, in her white muslin, with the roses in her hair, standing trembling in a corner of the big drawing-room, and waiting for the solemn stream of silk and satin, and society, in which she would have been engulfed at once, swallowed up and seen no more. And what would have happened to Lottie, had she been alone, without anyone to stand by her in the midst of this overflowing, we shrink from contemplating; but happily she had already found a companion to hold head with her against the stream.