What an opportunity was this of seizing hold upon her—of overcoming any objection that might arise! Rollo felt himself Lottie’s best friend as he heard of this complication. While she might help to make his fortune he could make her independent, above the power of any disreputable father or undesirable home. He could not bear to think that such a girl should be lost in conditions so wretched, and, though the Dean was obdurate, he did not lose hope. But between Thursday and Monday is not a very long time for such negotiations, and the Manager was entirely preoccupied by his Milanese, whom another impresario was said to be on the track of, and in whom various connoisseurs were interested. It is impossible to describe the scorn and incredulity with which Rollo himself heard his partner’s account of this new singer. He put not the slightest faith in her.
“I know how she will turn out,” he said. “She will shriek like a peacock; she will have to be taught her own language; she will be coached up for one rôle and good for nothing else; and she will smell of garlic enough to kill you.”
“Oh, garlic will never kill me!” said the vulgar partner who gave Rollo so much trouble.
In the meantime he wrote to the Signor to see what could be done, and begged with the utmost urgency that he would arrange something. “Perhaps the old Irishwoman next door would receive us,” Rollo said, “even if she has got no piano. Try, my dear Rossinetti, I implore you; try your best.” The Signor was very willing to serve the Dean’s nephew; but he was at the moment very much put out by Lottie’s reception of young Purcell, as much as if it had been himself that had been refused.
“Who is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and how am I to communicate with her?” he cried; and he did not throw himself into the work with any zeal. All that he would do at last, moved by Rollo’s repeated letters, was to bid him bring his friend down to the service on Sunday afternoon, when he would see Lottie at least, and hear something of her voice. The Manager grinned at this invitation. He was not an enthusiast for Handel, and shrugged his shoulders at sacred music generally as much out of his line; but he ended, having no better engagement on hand, by consenting to go. It was the end of the season; the opera was over, and all its fashionable patrons dispersed; and St. Michael’s was something to talk of at least. So the two connoisseurs arrived on a warm afternoon of early August, when the grey pinnacles of the Abbey blazed white in excessive sunshine, and the river showed like glowing metal here and there through the broad valley, too brilliant to give much refreshment to the eyes.
As it happened, it was a chance whether Lottie would attend the service that afternoon at all. She was sorry for poor Purcell, and embarrassed to face the congregation in the Abbey, some of whom at least must know the story. She was certain the Signor knew it, from the glance he had thrown at her; and Mrs. Purcell, she felt sure, would gloom at her from the free seats, and the hero himself look wistful and reproachful from the organ-loft. She had very nearly made up her mind not to go. Would it not be better to go out on the slopes, and sit down under a tree, and hear the music softly pealing at a distance, and get a little rest out of her many troubles? Lottie had almost decided upon this, when suddenly, by a caprice, she changed her mind and went. Everything came true as she had divined. Mrs. Purcell fixed her eyes upon her from the moment she sat down in her place, with a gloomy interest which sadly disconcerted Lottie; and so did old Pick, who sat by his fellow servant and chuckled over the conclusion of Mr. John’s romance; while once at least Lottie caught the pale dulness of the Signor’s face looking disapproval, and at every spare moment the silent appeal of Purcell’s eyes looking down from over the railing of the organ-loft. Lottie’s heart revolted a little in resistance to all these pitiful and disapproving looks. Why should they insist upon it? If she could not accept young Purcell, what was it to the Signor and old Pick?—though his mother might be forgiven if she felt the disappointment of her boy. The girl shrank a little from all those glances, and gave herself up altogether to her devotions. Was it to her devotions? There was the Captain chanting all the responses within hearing, cheerful and self-confident, as if the Abbey belonged to him; and there, too, was Law, exchanging glances of a totally different description with the people in the free seats. It was to two fair-haired girls whom Lottie had seen before—who were, indeed, constant in their attendance on the Sunday afternoon—that Law was signalling; and they, on their part, tittered and whispered, and looked at the Captain in his stall, and at another woman in a veil whom Lottie did not make out. This was enough to distract her from the prayers, to which, however, if only to escape from the confusion of her own thoughts, she did her very best to give full attention. But—— She put up her prayer-book in front of her face, and hid herself at least from all the crowd, so full each of his and her own concerns. She was silent during the responses, hearing nothing but her father’s voice with its tone of proprietorship, and only allowed herself to sing when the Captain’s baritone was necessarily silent. Lottie’s voice had become known to the people who sat near her. They looked for her as much as they looked for little Rowley himself, who was the first soprano; but to-day they did not get much from Lottie. Now and then she forgot herself, as in the “Magnificat,” when she burst forth suddenly unawares, almost taking it out of the hands of the boys; but while she was singing Lottie came to herself almost as suddenly, and stopped short, with a quaver and shake in her voice as if the thread of sound had been suddenly broken. Raising her eyes in the midst of the canticle, she had seen Rollo Ridsdale within a few places of her, holding his book before him very decorously, yet looking from her to a large man by his side with unmistakable meaning. The surprise of seeing him whom she believed to be far away, the agitation it gave her to perceive that she herself was still the chief point of interest to him, and the sudden recalling thus of her consciousness, gave her a shock which extinguished her voice altogether. There was a thrill in the music as if a string had broken; and then the hymn went on more feebly, diminished in sweetness and volume, while she stood trembling, holding herself up with an effort. He had come back again, and again his thoughts were full of her, his whole attention turned to her. An instantaneous change took place in Lottie’s mind. Instead of the jumble of annoyances and vexations that had been around her—the reproachful looks on one side, the family discordance on the other—her father and Law both jarring with all that Lottie wished and thought right—a flood of celestial calm poured into her soul. She was no longer angry with the two fair-haired girls who tittered and whispered through the service, looking up to Law with a hundred telegraphic communications. She was scarcely annoyed when her father’s voice pealed forth again in pretentious incorrectness. She did not mind what was happening around her. The sunshine that came in among the pinnacles and fretwork above in a golden mist, lighting up every detail, yet confusing them in a dazzle and glory which common eyes could not bear, made just such an effect on the canopies of the stalls as Rollo’s appearance made on Lottie’s mind. She was all in a dazzle and mist of sudden calm and happiness which seemed to make everything bright, yet blurred everything in its soft, delicious glow.
“Don’t think much of her,” said the Manager, as they came out. The two were going back again at once to town, but Rollo’s partner had supposed that at least they would first pay a visit to the Deanery. He was a man who counted duchesses on his roll of acquaintances, but he liked to add a Lady Caroline whenever the opportunity occurred, and deans, too, had their charm. He was offended when he saw that Rollo had no such intention, and at once divined that he was not considered a proper person to be introduced to the heads of such a community. This increased his determination not to yield to his partner in this fancy of his, which, indeed, he had always considered presumptuous, finding voices being his own share of the work—a thing much too important to be trusted to an amateur. “The boy has a sweet little pipe of his own; but as for your prima donna, Ridsdale, if you think that sort of thing would pay with us—— No, no! my good fellow; she’s a deuced handsome girl, and I wish you joy; I don’t wonder that she should have turned your head; but for our new house, not if I know it, my boy. A very nice voice for an amateur, but that sort of thing does not do with the public.”
“You scarcely heard her at all; and the few notes she did sing were so mixed up with those scrubby little boys——”
“Oh! I heard her, and I don’t care to hear her again—unless it were in a drawing-room. Why, there’s Rossinetti,” said the impresario; “he’ll tell you just the same as I do. Do you know what we’re down here for, Rossinetti, eh? Deluded by Ridsdale to come and hear some miraculous voice; and it turns out to be only a charming young lady who has bewitched him, as happens to the best of us. Pretty voice for a drawing-room, nice amateur quality; but for the profession—— I tell him you must know that as well as I.”
“Come into my place and rest a little; there is no train just yet,” said the Signor. He had left Purcell to play the voluntary, and led the strangers through the nave, which was still crowded with people listening to the great strains of the organ. “Come out this way” he said; “I don’t want to be seen. Purcell plays quite as well as I do; but if they see me they will stream off, and hurt his feelings. Poor boy! he has had enough to vex him already.”