The Project Gutenberg eBook of Within the Precincts, by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Within the Precincts Author: Mrs. Margaret Oliphant Release Date: April 24, 2021 [eBook #65153] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE PRECINCTS *** Contents of Volume I Contents of Volume II Contents of Volume III COLLECTION OF B R I T I S H A U T H O R S TAUCHNITZ EDITION. VOL. 1823. {vol.-I-1} WITHIN THE PRECINCTS BY MRS. OLIPHANT. IN THREE VOLUMES. COMPLETE TAUC HN I TZ EDI TI O N . By the same Author, The Chronicles of Carlingford: THE RECTOR AND THE DOCTOR’S FAMILY 1 vol. SALEM CHAPEL 2 vols. THE PERPETUAL CURATE 2 vols. MISS MARJORIBANKS 2 vols. PHŒBE, JUNIOR 2 vols. THE LAST OF THE MORTIMERS 2 vols. MARGARET MAITLAND 1 vol. AGNES 2 vols. MADONNA MARY 2 vols. THE MINISTER’S WIFE 2 vols. OMBRA 2 vols. MEMOIR OF COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT 2 vols. MAY 2 vols. INNOCENT 2 vols. FOR LOVE AND LIFE 2 vols. A ROSE IN JUNE 1 vol. THE STORY OF VALENTINE & HIS BROTHER 2 vols. WHITELADIES 2 vols. THE CURATE IN CHARGE 1 vol. MRS. ARTHUR 2 vols. CARITÀ 2 vols. YOUNG MUSGRAVE 2 vols. THE PRIMROSE PATH 2 vols. W I T H I N T H E P R E C I N C T S BY MRS. OLIPHANT, AUTHOR OF “THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” ETC. COPYRIGHT EDITION. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1879. {vol.-I-2} {vol.-I-3} The Right of Translation is reserved. C O N TEN TS OF VOLUME I. Page CHAPTER I. St. Michael’s 7 — II. The Chevaliers’ Lodges 23 — III. The Abbey Precincts 40 — IV. Lady Caroline 62 — V. At the Deanery 82 — VI. Law 103 — VII. A New Light 116 — VIII. Triumph and Terror 129 — IX. Visitors 150 — X. The Minor Canon 171 — XI. Another Evening at the Deanery 190 — XII. Brother and Sister 209 — XIII. Captain Despard 227 — XIV. The Workroom 242 — XV. Romance and Reality 261 — XVI. The Signor’s Household 279 W I T H I N T H E P R E C I N C T S . C HAP TER I . ST. MICHAEL’S. THE Abbey Church of St. Michael’s stands on a low hill in a flat and fertile country. The holy places which are sacred to the great archangel seem to settle naturally upon a mount; and this, one of the noblest structures consecrated under his name, had all the effect of a very high elevation—so wide-spreading was the landscape round, so vast the sweep of plain, fields, and woods, great parks and commons, and gleaming white villages like ships at sea, which could be seen from its walls and terraces. Though the settlement was ecclesiastical, the place had been walled and defensible in the days when danger threatened wealth whatever form it assumed. Danger, however, had long been far from the thoughts of the dignified corporation which held its reverend court upon the hill. The Abbey was as splendid as any cathedral, and possessed a dean and chapter, though no bishop. It was of Late Gothic, perpendicular and magnificent; and the walls and towers which still surrounded it, and even the old houses within the precincts, were older still than the Abbey, and could have furnished many “bits” to make the heart of a mediæval architect glad. The very turf which filled the quadrangle and clothed the slope of the Dean’s Walk was a production of centuries; the Chapter House was full of historical documents, and the library of rare books; and there were antiquarian fanatics who protested that the wealthy livings belonging to the Abbey, and its old endowments, were the least of its riches. Nor was this establishment on the hill confined to ecclesiastical interests only. The beautiful church was the chapel of an order of knighthood, and opposite to it—forming an integral part of the pile of buildings —was a line of small ancient houses, forming a kind of screen and inner wall of defence to the sacred citadel, which were the lodges of a supplementary order of pensioners—Chevaliers of St. Michael—which at the time of the foundation had given such a balance, as the Middle Ages loved, of Christian charity and help, to the splendour and braggadocio of the more glorious knights. Thus the little community which inhabited this noble old pile of buildings was varied and composite. The highest official in it was the costly and aristocratic Dean, the lowest the lay clerks, who were housed humbly in the shadow of the church in a little cloister of their own, and who daily filled the Abbey with the noblest music. The Deanery was close to the Abbey, and embraced in its irregular group of roofs the great tower, which showed for miles round, with its lighted windows, rising up into the night. The canons’ houses, if not equally fine, were still great old houses, standing on the edge of the hill, their walls rising straight from the green slopes dotted with trees, round the {vol.-I-4} {vol.-I-5} {vol.-I-6} {vol.-I-7} {vol.-I-8} {vol.-I-9} foot of which a little red-roofed town had gathered; and the Abbey itself stood between those stately habitations and the humbler lodges of the Chevaliers, which shut off the lower level of sloping bank on the other side. The Dean himself was of a great family, and belonged not only to the nobility, but, higher still, to the most select circles of fashion, and had a noble wife and such a position in society as many a bishop envied; and among his canons were men not only of family, but possessed of some mild links of connection with the worlds of learning and scholarship,—even it was said that one had writ a book in days when books were not so common. The minor canons were of humbler degree; they formed the link between gods and men, so to speak—between the Olympus of the Chapter and the common secular sphere below. We will not deceive the reader nor buoy him up with hopes that this history concerns the lofty fortunes of the members of that sacred and superior class. To no such distinction can these humble pages aspire; our office is of a lowlier kind. On Olympus the doings are all splendid, if not, as old chronicles tell, much wiser than beneath, amid the humbler haunts of men. All that we can do is to tell how these higher circles looked, to eyes gazing keenly upon them from the mullioned windows which gave a subdued light to the little rooms of the Chevaliers’ lodges on the southern side of St. Michael’s Hill. These lodges were two storeys in height, with small rooms and very solid masonry, little gardens in front of them, and a tower at each end. Many creeping plants clung about the old walls, and especially there were clouds of Virginia creeper which made them glorious in autumn. It was, however, on a summer afternoon, at the time this history begins, that Lottie Despard—the only daughter of Captain Despard, a Chevalier not very long appointed to that office—sat, with her head out through the open window, framed between the mullions, watching the broad slope of the Dean’s Walk which lay between her and the church, and led to the Deanery and the heights beyond. The Deanery was at this moment the most important place in the world, not only to Lottie, but to many other spectators who thronged the slope beneath her window. For this day a great event had happened in St. Michael’s. The Dean’s only daughter, Augusta Huntington, had been married that morning with all the pomp imaginable. It had been like a royal wedding, sumptuous in ritual, in music, and fine company; and now, after taking a little repose during the time which the wedding-party spent at breakfast, the Abbey precincts were beginning to fill again with gazing groups, and all the people within were coming to their windows to see the bride and bridegroom go away. Lottie Despard was beyond all comparison the prettiest, and she was also the youngest, of all the ladies in the lodges. She was of Irish descent, and she had the whiteness of skin, the blackness of abundant hair, the deep blue eyes that so often go with Milesian blood. Such eyelashes had never been seen at St. Michael’s; indeed, they had never been seen anywhere “out of Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks!” some ill-natured critics said. Sometimes, when Lottie was specially pale or weary, they seemed to overshadow her face; but she was neither weary nor pale at this particular moment. She was in great excitement, on the contrary, and flushed with expectation. Though she was only the daughter of a poor Chevalier, Lottie had advantages which separated her from the rest of that little company. Her father was of good family, a point on which she insisted strenuously; and she herself was the possessor of a beautiful voice. The former particular would not have been of much advantage to her, for what was the Despards’ old and faded quality to the great people at St. Michael’s? But a voice is a different matter; and there had arisen between Miss Huntington and the Chevalier’s daughter a kind of intimacy very flattering (the neighbours thought) to Lottie. They had sung together so much and seen so much of each other, that the lodges expected nothing less than that Lottie would have been asked to the wedding, or even—greater honour still!—to be a bridesmaid; and Lottie herself had been wounded and disappointed beyond measure when she found herself left entirely out. But there was still the possibility that the bride might show she had not forgotten her humble friend altogether; and it was for this that Lottie was waiting so anxiously as the time of departure approached. A word, a sign, a wave of the hand surely would be vouchsafed to her as the carriage passed. Her heart was beating loudly as she leant out—a pretty sight to see from without, for the window was framed in luxuriant wreaths of green, with trailing tendrils of the young delicate leaves which in autumn flamed like scarlet flowers against the wall. The people who were gathering on the road below gave many a look at her. And, though the young ladies from the shops, who had got half-an-hour’s leave to see how their handiwork looked in the bride’s travelling-dress, were deeply sensible of the fact that a poor Chevalier’s daughter was not much richer than themselves, yet they could not help looking and envying Lottie, if only for the window at which she could sit in comfort and see everything that went on, instead of standing in the sun as they had to do. They forgot her, however, and everything else as the carriage drove up to the Deanery to take the bridal pair away. The Dean’s daughter was so much the princess of the community that a compromise had been made between popularity and decorum; and it was in a carriage partially open, that an admiring people might behold her as she passed, that she was to drive away. There was the usual long waiting at the door while the farewells were made, during which time the outside world looked on respectfully; and then, with a crowd of “good-byes” thrown after her, and a few—but only a very few, for the Deanery was nothing if not decorous—white satin slippers, and a prance and dash of the impatient horses, and a flourish of the coachman’s whip, and a parting gleam of the wedding favour on his breast, the bridal pair rolled rapidly past, and all was over. How quickly they went, everybody said, and how well she looked; and how well that brown dress looked, though it had been thought rather dowdy for such an occasion; and the feather in the hat, how well it matched, about which there had been so much trouble! Some, who had the time, paused to see the wedding guests disperse, and catch other beatific glimpses of fine bonnets and gay dresses; but most of the spectators, after this last and crowning point of the performance, streamed down the slope and out at the great gateway, and were seen no more. Lottie drew in her head from the window the moment the carriage passed. She grew red when other people grew pale, being pale by nature; and her face was crimson as she withdrew it from the opening, and came in again to the little room in which most of her life was spent. Her lips were closed very tight, her soft forehead contracted; the fire in her blue eyes, gleaming with anger and disappointment, was (most unwillingly) quenched in tears. She clasped her hands together with a vehement clasp. “It would have cost so little to give a look!” she cried; then bit her lips and clenched her hands and stamped her foot upon the floor, in a forlorn but vigorous effort to restrain her tears. “What does it matter to you?” said a tall young fellow, sufficiently like Lottie to prove himself her brother, who had looked out lazily over her head while the carriage was passing. He had his hands in his pockets and a slouching gait generally, and looked too big for the little room. She had almost pushed against him in her rapid movement, for his movements were never rapid; and he had not had time to take one hand out of his pocket before she flashed round upon him with two red spots on her cheeks and fury in her heart. “What does it matter? Oh, nothing! nothing!” cried Lottie. “Why should anything matter? It only shows me a little more, a very {vol.-I-10} {vol.-I-11} {vol.-I-12} {vol.-I-13} {vol.-I-14} little more, how cold the world is, and that nobody has a heart!” “Few people have very much, I suppose,” said the young man; “at least, so the governor says. But what good or harm could it do you to have a parting sign from her? I knew she would never give it you. I knew she would be thinking of nobody but herself——” “What did you know about it?” cried the girl. “You were never a friend of hers! you were never begged and prayed to go and sing at the Deanery! she never came down the Abbey Hill to look for you! But me she has done all that for; and when I thought just for once she would let everybody see that Lottie Despard was a friend—Oh, Law, for the love of Heaven, go and work at something, and don’t stand there staring at me!” “What am I to work at?” said the young man, with a yawn. “It’s past working hours; besides, in summer how can anyone work? I can’t make head nor tail of that Euclid when the sun is shining.” “But when the sun is not shining, Law?” “Oh! then,” said the youth, with a smile breaking over his somewhat cloudy face, “I can make out the head, but not the tail, and the sting is in the tail, you know! Good-bye, Lottie, and never mind any mother’s daughter of them. They cannot make us anything but what we are, whatever they may do.” “And what are we?” said Lottie to herself, as her brother strolled lazily out. There was more air to breathe when he was gone, which was something. She sat down upon the little old faded sofa, and shed a few more bitter tears of disappointment and mortification. We all like to think well of ourselves when that is possible; to think well of our belongings, our people, our position in the world—all that makes up that external idea of us which we make acquaintance with years before we know our own real being. No one can tell what the atmosphere of well-being, of external credit, and public esteem is to a child; and this Lottie had never known. They had been poor, but poverty is no hindrance to that feeling of harmony with the world around which is the higher soul of respectability. But there had not been much about the Despards to respect. The father had been a good officer in his day, and, if he had not been without money and interest, and everything that could help him on, might have been distinguished in his profession. But those were the days of “purchase,” and Captain Despard had remained Captain Despard, and had bitterly resented the fact. His wife, too, though she was Lottie’s mother, had not been of a kind to reclaim for her husband the failing credit of his life. They had lived as most poor officers on half pay, with pretensions to gentility and hankerings after pleasure, do live. They were in debt all round, as need not be said; and Mrs. Despard’s life would have been rendered miserable by it if she had not escaped from the contemplation by means of every cheap merry-making or possible extravagance she could attain to. All had been huggermugger in Lottie’s early life; a life not destitute of amusements, indeed, but full of bitterness, small mortifications, snubs, and the cold shoulder of social contempt. Lottie herself had heard in childish quarrels, through the frank recriminations of her childish companions, the frankest statements of what other people thought of her parents; and this had opened her baby eyes prematurely to the facts of the case. It must be supposed that there was some respectable grandpapa, some precise and orderly aunt in the Despard kindred, who had given to Lottie a nature so different from that of her immediate progenitors. As she grew older everything about her had looked to Lottie as the fairy splendour looked in the eyes of the disenchanted human spectator. Her mother’s gay dresses, which she once thought so pretty, came to look like the miserable finery they were; her mother’s gaiety had become noise and excitement. Her father’s grand air grew the poorest false pretension; for must he not know, Lottie thought, how everybody spoke of him, how little anyone thought of his assumption? And the house was miserable, dirty, disorderly, mean, and gaudy, full of riot and waste and want and poverty—one day a feast, another nothing. Even careless Law—the big boy who was too much at home, who was scarcely ever at school, and who often had no clothes to go out in—even Law saw how wretched it was at home, though he was hopeless as well as careless, and asked his sister what was the good of minding, what could they do? But Lottie was not of the kind which can let ill alone, or well either, for that matter. She did mind; and as she grew older, every week, every day, added to the flame of impatience in her. Just, however, when ruin seemed coming beyond the possibility of further staving-off, Mrs. Despard fell ill and died; and Lottie at sixteen was left alone, miserable, with remorseful thoughts of having secretly blamed the mother who was now out of reach, and to whom she could never make amends for those injurious secret fault-findings; and full of anxieties unspeakable—forlorn wonderings what she was to do, and eagerness to do something. Her grief, however, was lightened by the feeling that now she had everything in her hands and could “make a change,”— even when it was made more heavy by the thought that she had found fault in her heart with the mother who was dead. It seemed to the girl that she must be able, by dint of devoting herself to it, to change everything—to keep the house in order if she did it with her own hands, to pay the bills, wherever the money came from. She was overflowing with life and energy and activity, and disapproved of all the ways of the past. She was like a new king coming to the throne, a new ministry of idealists bent upon undoing all their predecessors had done, and doing everything as it ought to be done. Alas, poor Lottie! the young king with all the stiff precedents of a hundred years against him, the young ministry confronted by a thousand problems, and finding their ideal pronounced impracticable on every side, were nothing to the heaven-born reformer of the household with a pleasure loving impecunious father to whom debt was second nature, and who had always preferred fun to respectability. And she dashed at her reforms too boldly, as was natural to her age, insisting upon brushings and sweepings till Betty threw up her situation, and asking for money till her father swore at her. “It is to pay the bills, papa! I want to pay the bills!” she had said, reduced to plead for that which she thought she had a right to demand. “D —— the bills!” was all Captain Despard replied. And even Law, when Lottie tried to order him off to school, was unmanageable. He was no reformer like his sister, but on the whole preferred going just when it suited him and lounging at home between whiles. To be sure home was less amusing now that poor mammy, as they called her, was gone. Her laughter and her complaints, and her odd visitors, and all her slipshod ways, had kept noise and movement, if nothing more, about the house. The tawdry women and the shabby men who had been her friends were all afraid of the dulness which naturally follows a death in the family. Some of these women, indeed, had come to Lottie all tears and kisses, offering to stay with her, and asking what they could do; but their sympathy did not comfort the girl, who even in her deepest grief was all tingling with plans and desires to be doing, and an eager activity and impatience to make the changes she wished. But they fluttered away, every one, when the first excitement was over and the dulness that is inevitable fell upon the house. To do them justice there was not one among them who would not have come daily to “sit with” Lottie, to comfort her with all the news that was going, and tell her that she must not mope. But Lottie wanted none of their consolations, and did not miss her mother’s friends when they abandoned her. {vol.-I-15} {vol.-I-16} {vol.-I-17} {vol.-I-18} {vol.-I-19} {vol.-I-20} She did not miss them, but Law did. Yet he would not go to school; he sat and made faces at her when she ordered and scolded him. “If I didn’t do what she told me, do you think I will do what you tell me?” said Law; and then Lottie wept and prayed. “What will become of you, Law? what will you ever be good for? Papa has no money to leave us, and you will not be able to do anything.” “Who said I wanted to do anything?” said Law flippantly; and then, “who said I should not be able to do anything?” he added, with offence. “I can pick it up whenever I like.” But Lottie, preternaturally, awfully wise, feeling the burden of the world upon her shoulders, knew that he could not pick it up when he pleased. She knew that education had to be acquired painfully, not sipped a little mouthful at a time. She had never had any education herself, but yet she knew this, as she knew so many things, by instinct, by constant critical observation of the habits which she disapproved. There are few more vigorously successful ways of finding out what is right, than by living among people whom we feel indignantly to be wrong. “You may think what you like,” she said, “Law—but I know that you cannot learn anything in that way. Three days at home and one at school! I wonder they let you go at all. I wonder they don’t turn you out. I wonder they did not turn you out long ago!” “And that is just what they are always threatening to do,” said Law laughing; “but they have not the heart of a mouse, the fellows at the grammar-school. And they’ll never do it, though I shouldn’t mind. I should be free then, and never have to trouble my head about anything at all.” “You’ll have to trouble your head when you have to work and don’t know how,” said Lottie. “Oh, if I was a boy! It’s no use wishing, I am only a girl; and you are a great lump, neither one nor the other; but if I were only a boy, and could get something to do, and a little money to pay those bills——” “Oh, dash the bills, as papa says. He doesn’t say ‘dash,’ ” said Law, with provoking calm; “but, then, I mustn’t swear.” “Oh, Law, I should like to beat you!” said Lottie, clenching her little fists in impotent anger and setting her teeth. But Law only laughed the more. “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. C HAP TER I I . 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 {vol.-I-21} {vol.-I-22} {vol.-I-23} {vol.-I-24} {vol.-I-25} 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. It was a pittance. Lottie stood where he left her gazing after him, her veins tingling with mingled disappointment and pleasure. To the inexperienced it seems always possible to do a great deal with a little, and the power of paying bills at all seemed a heavenly power. But Captain Despard chuckled to himself as he went away. He had purchased by that fine address the right to be disagreeable ever after, to wave his hand loftily, and to decline all knowledge of details. “Keep to your bargain, my dear, and I’ll keep to mine,” he had the right to say; and whereas some of his former income always had to be wasted upon the household, let him make what resistance he would, at least that would be the case no longer. Thus Lottie had her way, but in such a changed form that it no longer seemed her way. With the addition of the St. Michael’s allowance she had hoped that there would be plenty for all needs; but what was she to do with the St. Michael’s allowance and no more? Nevertheless, Lottie plucked up a heart. To feel that she had something was always exhilarating, and inexperience has wild hopes which knowledge does not venture to share. Her little room was full for a week after of little bits of paper scribbled over with calculations. She was determined to do it. If the dinner was not good enough for papa, he must just go and dine elsewhere. And there was no Betty to make herself disagreeable, but only a young girl, whom Lottie, heaven save her! meant to train. Once a week or so Law and she could very well do without a dinner. They were both still great on bread and butter, and capable, not knowing anything about digestion, of swallowing innumerable cups of tea. Her fond hopes of furniture and “picking up things” to make the little old house pretty, must be relinquished, it was true; but, still, at nineteen one can put up with a great deal in the present. There is always the future, so much of the future, like the sky and the plain from St. Michael’s Hill, spreading above, below, everywhere, without limit or bound, save in the eyes which can only reach a certain distance. So Lottie comforted herself for “just now,” and marched on into her life, colours flying and drums beating, taking as little heed as she could of those stragglers who would always fall out of the ranks—her father always shuffling off to some new haunt or other, the places which such men find out by instinct in the least-known locality, and large loose-limbed Law, whose vague career was always dubious, and who could not keep step. Never mind! Lottie herself set out, brave, head erect, eyes straight, all her faculties in fullest attention to the roll of her own cheerful drum. The earliest part of her career here, however, was brightened yet disturbed by a discovery which considerably confused her mind in her outset, and seemed to open better prospects before her. Lottie found out that she had a voice. She had known that she could sing long before, and had performed many a time in the little parlour at Fairford to the admiration of all hearers, singing every new comic song that burst upon the little provincial world from the music-halls in London, and knowing no better, so long as she was a child. There was no harm in the songs she sang, nothing but absolute silliness and flippancy, such as are natural to that kind of production; but as Lottie grew into womanhood, and began by instinct to know better, she gave them up, and knowing no others except some ancient sentimental ditties of her mother’s, gave up singing so far as a musical creature can give up what is another kind of breathing to her. But when she heard the choir in the Abbey church, Lottie woke up, with such a delightful discovery of what music was, and such an ecstatic finding out of her own powers, as words cannot express. She had an old jingling worn-out piano, and had “learned to play” from her mother, who knew nothing about it, except as much as could be taught to a school-girl twenty years before; but this meagre instruction, and the bad instrument, and the half-dozen “pieces” which were all Mrs. Despard’s musical library, had not attracted the pupil, and it was not till she heard the organ pealing through St. Michael’s, and the choristers singing like angels—though they were not like angels out of doors—that Lottie awoke to a real consciousness of her own gift. She had never had any education {vol.-I-26} {vol.-I-27} {vol.-I-28} {vol.-I-29} {vol.-I-30} {vol.-I-31} herself. Though she was so anxious for school for Law, it had not occurred to her that she wanted any schooling. Lottie was narrow- minded and practical. She did not understand self-culture. She wanted Law to learn, because without education he could not do anything worth speaking of, could not earn any money, could not get on in the world. Perhaps it is true that women have a natural inclination to calculate in this poor way. She did not care a straw for the cultivation of Law as Law—but that he should be made good for something, get a good situation, have some hopes of comfort and prosperity. For herself, what did it matter? She never could know enough to teach, and Captain Despard would not let his daughter teach; besides, she had plenty to do at home, and could not be spared. She could read and write, and do her accounts, the latter very well indeed; and she had learned to “play” from her mother, and she could sew, rather badly at first, rather well now by dint of practice. What did a girl want more? But Lottie discovered now that a girl might want more. “Is there any place where they will teach you to sing without money?” she said one day to old Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, her next- door neighbour, the old lady of all her neighbours whom Lottie liked best. “Me jewel!” cried the old lady; “is it without paying youre meaning? They send an account if you do but look at them here, me dear.” “All of them?” said Lottie; “for I can sing, and I should like to learn to sing; but, you know, I can’t pay—much——” “I know; nothing at all, if you’re like us, me honey. But maybe you’re better off. O’Shaughnessy, we don’t make a secret of it, rose from the ranks, and we’ve never had a penny—I don’t care who knows it—barring our pay.” “We are not like that,” said Lottie, drawing herself up. “Papa was always a gentleman” (“Then I don’t give much for such gentlemen,” murmured the other Chevalier’s lady, under her breath), “and we have a little. That is—I mean, that he has a little—papa has a little”—the girl said on the edge of a confidence; and then stopped suddenly short. “It don’t do much for the children, I’ll go bail,” said the old lady. “That’s the worst of fine gentlemen, me dear. O’Shaughnessy he asks me for a shillin’ when he wants it, bless him—and that’s the only way when there’s small pay. Singing, is it? If you’re always to make such a stand on being a lady, me friend Lottie, I don’t see how I can help you; but if you will come in free and comfortable, and take a dish of tay when Rowley’s there—oh, to be sure, puff! my lady’s off—but there’s no harm in him; and he’ll make you die with laughin’ at him, him and his airs—but they tell me he has the best voice and the best method of any of the lay clerks.” “A singing man!” “Well, and that was what ye wanted!” said the old woman. “You know as well as me, Miss Lottie, there’s no singin’ woman here.” Lottie protested that she could not consent to appear in such company—that papa would not allow it—that it was impossible. But she ended by promising to “run in” before old Major O’Shaughnessy began his rubber, and see this singing man. And the result was that, half out of friendship for his Irish hosts who did not pretend to be above him, and half out of pride to be interrogated so graciously about his invalid daughter by a young lady who gave herself such airs, Rowley, the first tenor, agreed for so low a rate as had never been heard of before to train Miss Despard’s beautiful voice. “If the young lady had been a little boy, and if the Signor could but ha’ gotten hold on it!” Rowley said, in enthusiasm. It was the voice, which is impersonal, of which he spoke, and the Signor was the organist. But good fortune had not as yet thrown him in Lottie’s way. Soon, however, Rowley began to whisper it about that he had got a pupil who was quite good enough for Exeter Hall, if not for the Italian Opera, and the whole community was interested. Lottie herself, and her pretty looks, had not attracted any notice—but a voice was a very different matter. And then it was that steps were taken to make, for Lottie’s behalf, a practicable gap in the hedge of prickles which surrounded the Cloisters and kept intruders out. Miss Despard was invited to join the St. Michael’s Choral Society, in which the Divinities on the hill did not disdain to mingle their voices even with the lower-born outside the Abbey walls. And when it became known what a voice Lottie’s was, a remarkable thing happened. The Dean called! It was not Lady Caroline, but the Dean; and a gentleman’s visit, as is well known, is not the same thing as a lady’s. But Lottie, who knew nothing of the laws of society, was flattered and happy, and saw a hundred lovely visions unfolding before her when the Dean invited her to go to a private practice, which was then going on in the Deanery drawing-room. “My daughter bade me fetch you, Miss Despard, if you would be good enough to come,” he said, gravely; but waited very impatiently till she was ready, in great terror lest “the father” should make his appearance, and his visit be construed into a call upon Captain Despard. Lottie put on her hat with her heart leaping and bounding. At last she had done it! At last Paradise was opening before the Peri! At last the wrongs of fate were to be set right, and herself conveyed back into her natural sphere. She went by the Dean’s side demurely, with downcast eyes, across the slope to the Deanery garden. The very stones felt elastic under her feet, there was a ringing of excitement and delight in the air and in her ears. She arrived breathless at the door, though they had not walked fast. So absorbed was she by all that was about to happen that Lottie never thought of the sensation that ran through the Abbey when the Dean was seen walking to his own dignified door in company with Captain Despard’s daughter. Miss Despard? Lottie? The Chevaliers, and their wives and daughters, could not believe their eyes. Lottie held her head as high as usual when she came back. It no longer drooped with diffidence and delight. Once more she had come down with a jar into the realms of reality from those of hope. She was not received with open arms in that higher celestial world. Miss Augusta Huntington said, “How do you do, Miss Despard?” very sweetly, but Lady Caroline only bowed with her eyelids—a new mode of salutation which Lottie did not understand—and kept aloof; and no one else said anything to Lottie, except about the music. They gave her a cup of tea when all was over, but Lottie had to drink it in silence, while the others laughed and chatted. She was not of them, though they had brought her among them for the sake of her voice. “Are you going, Miss Despard?” said the Dean’s daughter, putting on the same sweet smile. “We are so much obliged to you for coming. The next practice is next Tuesday. Will you come as early as possible, please?” It was on Lottie’s lips to say “No”—to tell them that she was a lady too, a better gentlewoman than they were, since she would not have treated any stranger so. But she was fortunately too shy to say anything, and made her exit hastily, and not so gracefully as the others, who were at home. But she would not allow, even to herself, that she had come down again in that painful tussle with reality, which is so much different from dreams. She kept very quiet and said nothing, which seemed the wisest way. And as she walked home with a much more stately gravity than was her wont—a state put on to console herself for {vol.-I-32} {vol.-I-33} {vol.-I-34} {vol.-I-35} {vol.-I-36} humiliation and disappointment, and to vindicate, so to speak, her own dignity to herself, but which the lookers-on gave a very different interpretation of—Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, nodding and smiling, and in a state of great excitement, threw up the window and called to her, as she was going past. “Come up, come up, and tell me all about it,” the old lady said, so audibly that some of the ladies and gentlemen who had been in the Deanery turned round to look, and smiled at each other, making Lottie furious. As she could not stand there and explain before all the world, Lottie obeyed the call, and rushing upstairs to the kind old Irishwoman’s little bit of a drawing- room, appeared, crimson with shame and wrath at the door. “How could you call out so loud and make them laugh?” she said, with a strong inclination to burst into hot tears. “Laugh, was it? and sure I’m ready to laugh too. To see you and his Reverence the Dean, Miss Lottie—no less would serve you! —arm in arm like a pair of young——” “We were not arm in arm,” said Lottie, stamping her foot. Then she had the sense to perceive that the wicked old Irishwoman would but laugh the more at her petulance. She put her music on the table with a recovery of her dignified manners, and sat down. “What did he say to ye? and what did me Lady Caroline say to ye? and were they all wild over yer beautiful voice, me honey?” said the old lady. “Come, take off your hat, me pet, and ye shall have the best cup o’ tea in the Abbey. And tell me all about it,” she said. “I have had a cup of tea, thank you,” said Lottie. “Oh, yes, they are all nice enough. Nobody talked to me—but then, I didn’t expect them to talk to me. They wanted me to sing—and I sang; and that was all.” “And what more would you have, me jewel?” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. “Now, you take my advice, Lottie. I’m old, and I know the world. Take what you can get, me dear, and wait till your time comes. Don’t go and take offence and throw up the cards, and lose all you’ve got for a tantrum. Tantrums pass off, but life goes on. If they don’t speak to you, it’s their loss, for you have a clever little tongue o’ your own. And you’ll not be long there till they find out that. Don’t say a word, me honey. I’ll not bother you; but never take offence with the gentry——” “The gentry!” cried the girl furious, starting to her feet. “I am as much a lady as any of them—and more, for I would not be such —— I would not be unkind——” “Well—well—well! There, I have put my foot in it!” said the old lady. “I was thinking of meself, me dear, as if ye were a girl of my own. But you are a lady, honey; one has but to look at you,” said the astute old woman; “and just you wait a bit, and all will come as it ought—sure, I know it will.” Lottie did not much trust the assurance, but she took the advice, feeling a quick admonition within herself as to the absurdity of her complaint, and the horrible possibility of anybody supposing that she felt herself not to be of the gentry, as good as any Dean’s daughter. So she went to the next practice, taking no notice of any want of courtesy: and the result was that there arose a kind of intimacy, as has been indicated, between Miss Huntington at the Deanery and the daughter of the Chevalier—an intimacy, indeed, of a peculiar kind, in which all that was given came from the side of the poorer and more insignificant, and the great young lady was content with taking all that poor Lottie was so willing to give. She sang the solos in their private little concerts, and though her science was less perfect than her voice, her ear was so good that Lottie was able to be of a great deal of use. They sent for her when they had parties, when there was anyone who wanted entertaining, and put Lottie to the only unnecessary personal expense she had ever gone into—a white muslin frock to make her presentable among that fine company. And thus she had gone and come, and had been called upon on all occasions, but without making any nearer advance than at first. Lady Caroline still made her a little inclination of her eyelids, though now and then she went so far as to say, “How do you do, Miss Despard?” All of this, however, Lottie would have pardoned, if the bride, when she went away, had but at least remembered her, and made her some little sign of farewell. C HAP TER I I I . THE ABBEY PRECINCTS. THE bells began to ring for evensong soon after the bridal party dispersed. Some of them, indeed, stayed for the beautiful service, which was a thing that visitors from a distance thought a great deal of, and there were a number of fine bonnets and dresses in the stalls when Lottie went in. The daily service was part of the daily life of the dwellers in the Abbey. There were those who went for devotion, and those who went for the music, and those who went because they had nothing else to do. It was an occupation and an amusement at the same time, and some people thought it a duty. To listen to the service more or less critically, to note if any of the boys’ voices were breaking, and whether Rowley sniffed as usual, or Bowler, the great bass, was hoarse; to observe how the minor canons sang, if they were in too great a hurry to get through the service, and who it was that read the lessons; to look a...