“You had better not,” he said, when he had got over his laugh, “for I am a deal stronger than you.”
And so he was, and so were they all, much stronger than poor Lottie; even Betty, who would not scrub, but who was too well used to all the ways of the family and aware of all their troubles, to be sent away. She fought for a time hard and bitterly, striving with all her might to clean, and to dust, and to keep things straight, to the infinite discontent of everybody concerned. But yet perhaps the girl’s struggles were not utterly without use; for when the next astonishing change came in their lives, and their little income was suddenly increased by half, and a removal made necessary, Captain Despard, of his own accord, turned Lottie’s despair in a moment into hope and joy. He said, “Now, Lottie, you shall have things your own way. Now you shall see what you can do. This is a new start for us all. If you can keep us respectable, by Jove, you shall, and nobody shall stop you. A man ought to be respectable when he’s made a Chevalier of St. Michael.” Lottie’s heart leaped up, up from where it lay fathoms deep in unutterable depression and discouragement. “Oh, papa, papa, do you mean it? Will you keep your word?” she cried, happy yet dubious; and how he kept it, but with a difference, and how they set out upon this new chapter in their career, shall be told before we come back again to Lottie in her proper person, in the little drawing room in the Chevaliers’ quarters within the Abbey precincts, on Miss Huntington’s wedding-day.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHEVALIERS’ LODGES.
The name of a Chevalier of St. Michael sounds very splendid to innocent and uninstructed ears. It is a title which stands alone in England at least. Poor Knights have been heard of both in flesh and blood and in confectionery, in other places; but the title Chevalier is preserved in St. Michael’s, and there alone. Lottie thought it very imposing, and her heart leaped, partly with a sense of her own injustice all her life to her father, of whose merits, in youthful irreverence, she had hitherto thought but little. He must be, she thought involuntarily, a great deal braver, better, and altogether of more importance than she had supposed, when his qualities could win him such a distinction from his country; for that it was a distinction accorded by the country Lottie had no manner of doubt in those days. She was overawed and overjoyed: first of all on account of the people in Fairford, where they had hitherto lived, and who had shown but little respect for the family: but much more on her own account. She felt reconciled to herself, to her kind, to all her circumstances, when she reflected that she was the daughter of a Chevalier of St. Michael, and that Betty would never leave Fairford, and that Captain Despard had expressed himself in favour of respectability as a thing to be cultivated. Life suddenly took a new aspect to her. She thought they would be able to shake off every incumbrance when they went away. Her father would henceforward live a stately and dignified life as became his position. He would not haunt the place where billiards were played, and wear a number of shabby coats, each worse than the other, but every one with a flower in it. The flower, which most people would have thought a softening clause, was intolerable to Lottie; it looked like a piece of braggadocio, a wilful defiance of public opinion or declaration of independence. But henceforward if he must wear a flower it must be at least in a tolerable coat; henceforward he would be trim and smooth, and come in at a respectable hour; henceforward there should be no bills except weekly ones, and Law should go to school—nay, Law was too old for school now—but at least he would read with a tutor, and grow into a creature of whom his sister might be proud. Perhaps this was but another way of expressing the domestic tyranny of which Lottie’s will was full. She was so anxious to be able to be proud of her father and brother; was not that another way of saying that she wanted to get them up, or down, to her feminine standard, and control and bind and keep them at her apron-string? So, perhaps, a cynic might have said. But Lottie was unconscious of any such intention. She was eager to have something which she had not, the opposite of what she had—and thus, too, it may be said, she fell into a commonplace.
But when the family got to St. Michael’s, Lottie’s hopes came to a melancholy conclusion. Not only did Captain Despard remain very much the same, which was a thing that most people anticipated—and Law decline the tutor, upon whom Lottie had set her heart, but St. Michael’s itself and the Chevaliership turned out something very different from the girl’s exalted expectations. She found that this office was not looked upon on the spot as a reward of distinguished merit bestowed by the country, but only as a sort of retiring pension for a number of old soldiers whose friends had interest enough to have them thus provided for. She found a hierarchy of a totally different kind constituted and reigning, in which the Chevaliers had no place. And she found herself—she whose chief inspiration was this proud and eager desire to be somebody—in a place where she could never be other than nobody, and where no nobler self-denial on the part of her father, no virtue in Law, could call forth the acclamation of the world. In Fairford there were people as poor as themselves whom all the world thought well of, and of whom Lottie was envious; but here she was one of a class who were poor among the rich, and did not get the social honours which many of them deserved; while at the same time, close before her eyes, daily visible, appeared another class which seemed to fulfil all Lottie’s requirements: refined people with beautiful houses, living serene in an atmosphere of universal respect. But alas, these were ecclesiastical people, not the Chevaliers: and showed little disposition to notice Lottie. Lottie did not like this. She had expected something so different. Society, she thought, and a brighter world were going to open upon her; and lo! nothing at all opened upon her that was new. It is very hard, especially when you feel yourself to be, as the proverb says, as good a gentleman as the king, to find yourself in contact with a higher class which ignores you. Most of us have to bear something of the kind, and learn to take it with philosophy. But Lottie was very young and sadly disappointed. Nobody took any notice of her save the other Chevaliers, their wives and daughters, and these were not very much more splendid people than the society she had been used to. Lottie was sore, and disappointed, and humbled in her own conceit.
And there was another way in which the word of promise was kept to her ear, with far other meaning than she had hoped. Captain Despard had a very serious interview with his daughter when they arrived in their little house. He called her out of the little box which was her drawing-room to the other little box where he had established himself, and deigned to enter upon the question of income.
“Now, Lottie,” he said, “you have chosen to bother me lately about money, and expressed views which I could not sanction about weekly bills.”
“Only to save you trouble, papa,” said Lottie; “if we do it every week, we may hope to keep within our income; but how can you ever do that when you leave butchers and bakers for a year?”
“My child,” said Captain Despard, with his grand air, “circumstances have enabled me to yield to your wishes. I don’t say if it’s a system I approve or don’t approve. I say to myself, Lottie is my only girl, and she is like her dear mother; she shall have her way. From this day, my dear, the new income which I receive from my country will go straight into your hands. It is but a pittance. A poor soldier stands a poor chance in these times, but such as it is, my love, it shows your father’s trust in you. Take it, Lottie, and pay your bills according to your pleasure. I will ask no questions; weekly, monthly, or once a quarter, as long as I have a bit of dinner and a cup of coffee when I want it. Your father’s confidence in you is perfect, Lottie, and I leave it all to you.”
“Papa!” said the girl, trembling, half delighted, half frightened, half taken in by that grand air. But he would hear no more. He kissed her forehead with the favourite action of the père noble, and hurried away. “No thanks, my child; no thanks,” he said.