“No,” he said again, with a simplicity in which she could not help feeling a certain nobleness. “I would not have ventured, for I am not what you call a gentleman; but when I heard you were in trouble, I could not keep silent. I thought to myself, Miss Lottie shall not be unhappy because of having no home to go to——”
“Oh!” said Lottie, putting out her hand to stop him. She could not bear any more. Her heart was sick with the mortification of such a suit. She could have crushed and trampled upon her humble lover, in rage and shame, and yet she could not but see the generosity and truth in his heart. If he had been less worthy, it would have been less hard upon her. “It is not a thing that can be,” she cried hastily. “Oh, don’t say another word. I know you are kind, but it is not a thing that can be.”
“Not now?” he said, looking at her wistfully; “well: but perhaps another time? perhaps when you need it more—I am not in any hurry. Perhaps I am young to marry; the Signor thinks so. But another time, Miss Lottie? Whenever you want me, you have but to say the word.”
“Oh, don’t think of it. I will never, never say the word. Forget it altogether, Mr. Purcell. I am very, very much obliged to you, but indeed it can never be.”
The young man’s countenance fell. Then he recovered himself. “I can’t think you are taking everything into consideration. We should have a nice home, plenty of everything, and I should never spare trouble to give you everything you were used to——”
“Oh, go away, go away!” she cried.
And as they stood there, some one else, his shadow slowly moving before him, came round the corner of the pathway, among the chestnut-trees; and Purcell felt that his opportunity was over. He was not sorry for it. He had done what was set before him, and if he had not succeeded, he was not discouraged. There was still hope for another time.
CHAPTER XIX.
BUSINESS, OR LOVE?
It was not only in the mind of young Purcell that Lottie’s circumstances and prospects were the subject of thought. Rollo Ridsdale had not watched and worshipped as the young musician had done. Nor had he, even on his first introduction to her, looked upon Lottie as anything but the possessor of a beautiful voice, of which use might be made, for her benefit no doubt in the long run, but primarily for his own. She was not a divinity; she was not even a woman; she was a valuable stock-in-trade, a most important implement with which to work. Rollo had gone through a very effectual training in this kind. He had run through the little money he possessed so soon, and had learned the use of his wits so early, that the most energetic of tradesmen was not more alive to all the charms of gain than he. The means, perhaps, may be of a different kind, but it does not very much matter in principle whether a man is trained to sharp bargains in bric-à-brac or in cotton bales; and it is not essentially a loftier trade to speculate in pictures and china than in shares and stocks. This young aristocrat had kept his eyes very wide open to anything that might come in his way. He was not a director of companies chiefly because his poor little Honourable was not a sufficiently valuable possession to be traded upon, though it had some small value pecuniarily. Lord Courtland himself might indeed have made a few hundreds a year out of his title, but to his second son the name was not worth so much. It secured him some advantages. It gave him the entrée to places where things were to be “picked up,” and it helped him to puff and even to dispose of the wares which he might have in hand. It kept him afloat; it ameliorated poverty; it took away all objections to the sale and barter in which, profitably or unprofitably, he spent so much of his life. Had he gone upon the Stock Exchange, society might have made comments upon the strange necessity; but when Rollo’s collection of objets d’art was sold, nobody found anything to object to in the transaction, which put a comfortable sum in his pocket, and enabled him to go forth to fresh fields and pastures new; neither was there anything unbecoming his nobility in the enterprise which he had now in hand. Theatres are not generally a very flourishing branch of commerce; yet it cannot be denied that those who ruin themselves by them embark in the enterprise with as warm an inclination towards gain as any shopkeeper could boast of. Rollo had thought of Lottie’s voice as something quite distinct from any personality. It was a commodity he would like to buy, as he would have liked to buy a picture, or anything rare and beautiful, of which he could be sure that he would get more than his own money for it. In that, as in other things, he would have bought in the cheapest market and sold in the dearest. He would have thought it only right and natural to secure at a low rate the early services of a prima donna. A certain amount of enthusiasm no doubt mingled with the business; just as, had Rollo bought a picture and sold it again, he would have derived a considerable amount of enjoyment from it over and above the profit which went into his pocket; but still he would not have bought the picture, or sought out the future prima donna, on any less urgent and straightforward stimulus than that of gain. Probably, too, the artistic temperament—those characteristics which have to answer for so many things—influenced him more in the pursuit of the talent which was to make his fortune, than any man is ever influenced by bales of cotton or railway shares. To hear that “shirtings are firm” does not thrill the heart as it does to hear the melody of a lovely new voice, which you feel will pay you nobly by transporting the rest of the world as it does yourself. Neither could any amount of coupons fill you with delight like that small scrap of a Bellini by which you hope to faire fortune. But, nevertheless, to make his fortune was what Rollo thought of just as much as the man who sells dusters over his counter. If a new kind of duster could be found more efficacious than any previously known, a something that would dust by itself, that would sell by the million, no doubt the shopkeeper, too, would feel a moment’s enthusiasm; yet in this he would be quite inferior to the inventor of a new prima donna, who, added to his enjoyment of all that the public gave to hear her, would have the same enjoyment as had the public, without giving anything for it at all.
This had been the simple enthusiasm in Rollo’s mind up to his last meeting with Lottie Despard. He had pursued her closely that he might fully understand and know all the qualities of her voice—of the slave he wanted to buy: to know exactly what training it would want, and how much would have to be done to it before it could appear before the public, and begin to pay back what he had given for it. And point by point, as he pursued this quest of his, he had noted in her the qualities of beauty, the grace, the expression, the perfection of form and feature, which were so many additional advantages. The rush of colour to her cheek, of spirit or softness to her eyes, had delighted him, as proving in her the power to be an actress as well as a singer. He studied all her looks, interpreted her character to himself, and watched her movements with this end, with a frank indifference to every other, not even thinking what interpretation might be put, what interpretation she might herself put, upon this close and anxious attention. It was not till the evening when, overcome by the feelings which music and excitement had roused in her, Lottie had fled alone to her home, avoiding his escort, that he had suddenly awoke to the consciousness that it was no mere voice, but a young and beautiful woman, with whom he was dealing. The awakening gave him a shock—yet there was pleasure in it, and a flattering consciousness that his prima donna had all along been regarding him in no abstract, but an entirely individual, way. Rollo had been brought up among artificial sentiments. He had been used to hear people talk of the effect of music upon their imagination—of the sensations it gave them, and the manner in which they were dominated by it. But he had never seen any one honestly moved like Lottie—abandoning the sphere of her social success, silent in the height of her triumph. When he saw that she could not and would not sing again after that wonderful sacred song, he was himself more vividly impressed than he had ever been by music. It took her voice from her, and her breath—transported her out of herself. How strange it was, yet how real, how natural! just (when you came to think of it) as a pure and elevated mind ought to be touched: though he had never yet seen the fumes of art get so completely into any head before. The reality of Lottie’s emotion had awakened Rollo. He was not touched himself by Handel, but he was touched by Lottie. He suddenly saw her through the mist of his own preconceived ideas, and through the cloud of conventionalities, those of art and those of society alike. Never in his life before had he so suddenly and distinctly come in contact with a genuine human creature, as God had made her—feeling, moving, living according to the dictates of nature, not as she had been trained to live and feel. This is not to say that he had met with no genuine people in his life. His father and mother were real enough, and so was his aunt, Lady Caroline—very real, each in his or her little setting of conveniences and necessities. He knew them, and was quite indifferent to knowing them. But Lottie was altogether detached from the atmosphere in which these good people lived. And he had discovered her suddenly, making acquaintance with her in a moment—finding her out as an astronomer, all alone with the crowds of heaven, finds out a new star. This was how it made so great an impression on him. He had discovered her, standing quite alone among all the women who knew how to express and to control their emotions. She was not trained either to one or the other. The emotion, the enthusiasm in her got the upper hand of her, not she of them. A man who is only used to men and women in the secondary stages of well-sustained emotion is apt to be doubly impressed by the sight of genuine and artless passion, of whatever kind it may be. He went to town thinking not of the prima donna he had found, but of the woman who had suddenly made heaven and earth real to him, as they were to her. He posted up to London—that is, he flew thither in the express train, according to the dictates of his first impulse; but he was so entirely carried away by this second one, that he had almost forgotten his primary purpose altogether. “Ah! that is it,” he said to himself when the prima donna idea once more flashed across his mind. He did not want to lose sight of this, or to be negligent of anything that would help to make his fortune.