Lady Anna Part 49

Mr. Goffe replied that the proposal was made in accordance with the advice of the Solicitor-General.

"I'll have nothing to do with such a settlement," said the tailor.

"Lady Anna has given away half her money, and may give away the whole if she pleases. She will be the same to me whether she comes full-handed or empty. But when she is my wife her property shall be my property,--and when I die there shall be no such abomination as an eldest son." Mr. Goffe was persuasive, eloquent, indignant, and very wise. All experience, all usage, all justice, all tradition, required that there should be some such settlement as he had suggested. But it was in vain. "I don't want my wife to have anything of her own before marriage," said he; "but she certainly shall have nothing after marriage,--independent of me." For a man with sound views of domestic power and marital rights always choose a Radical! In this case there was no staying him. The girl was all on his side, and Mr. Goffe, with infinite grief, was obliged to content himself with binding up a certain portion of the property to make an income for the widow, should the tailor die before his wife. And thus the tailor's marriage received the sanction of all the lawyers.

A day or two after this Daniel Thwaite called upon the Countess.

It was now arranged that they should be married early in July, and questions had arisen as to the manner of the ceremony. Who should give away the bride? Of what nature should the marriage be? Should there be any festival? Should there be bridesmaids? Where should they go when they were married? What dresses should be bought? After what fashion should they be prepared to live? Those, and questions of a like nature, required to be answered, and Lady Anna felt that these matters should not be fixed without some reference to her mother.

It had been her most heartfelt desire to reconcile the Countess to the marriage,--to obtain, at any rate, so much recognition as would enable her mother to be present in the church. But the Countess had altogether refused to speak on the subject, and had remained silent, gloomy, and impenetrable. Then Daniel had himself proposed that he would see her, and on a certain morning he called. He sent up his name, with his compliments, and the Countess allowed him to be shown into her room. Lady Anna had begged that it might be so, and she had yielded,--yielded without positive a.s.sent, as she had now done in all matters relating to this disastrous marriage. On that morning, however, she had spoken a word. "If Mr. Thwaite chooses to see me, I must be alone." And she was alone when the tailor was shown into the room. Up to that day he had worn his arm in a sling,--and should then have continued to do so; but, on this visit of peace to her who had attempted to be his murderer, he put aside this outward sign of the injury she had inflicted on him. He smiled as he entered the room, and she rose to receive him. She was no longer a young woman;--and no woman of her age or of any other had gone through rougher usage;--but she could not keep the blood out of her cheeks as her eyes met his, nor could she summon to her support that hard persistency of outward demeanour with which she had intended to arm herself for the occasion. "So you have come to see me, Mr. Thwaite?" she said.

"I have come, Lady Lovel, to shake hands with you, if it may be so, before my marriage with your daughter. It is her wish that we should be friends,--and mine also." So saying, he put out his hand, and the Countess slowly gave him hers. "I hope the time may come, Lady Lovel, when all animosity may be forgotten between you and me, and nothing be borne in mind but the old friendship of former years."

"I do not know that that can be," she said.

"I hope it may be so. Time cures all things,--and I hope it may be so."

"There are sorrows, Mr. Thwaite, which no time can cure. You have triumphed, and can look forward to the pleasures of success. I have been foiled, and beaten, and broken to pieces. With me the last is worse even than the first. I do not know that I can ever have another friend. Your father was my friend."

"And I would be so also."

"You have been my enemy. All that he did to help me,--all that others have done since to forward me on my way, has been brought to nothing--by you! My joys have been turned to grief, my rank has been made a disgrace, my wealth has become like ashes between my teeth;--and it has been your doing. They tell me that you will be my daughter's husband. I know that it must be so. But I do not see that you can be my friend."

"I had hoped to find you softer, Lady Lovel."

"It is not my nature to be soft. All this has not tended to make me soft. If my daughter will let me know from time to time that she is alive, that is all that I shall require of her. As to her future career, I cannot interest myself in it as I had hoped to do.

Good-bye, Mr. Thwaite. You need fear no further interference from me."

So the interview was over, and not a word had been said about the attempt at murder.

CHAPTER XLVI.

HARD LINES.

At the time that the murder was attempted Lord Lovel was in London,--and had seen Daniel Thwaite on that morning; but before any confirmed rumour had reached his ears he had left London again on his road to Yoxham. He knew now that he would be endowed with something like ten thousand a year out of the wealth of the late Earl, but that he would not have the hand of his fair cousin, the late Earl's daughter. Perhaps it was as well as it was. The girl had never loved him, and he could now choose for himself;--and need not choose till it should be his pleasure to settle himself as a married man. After all, his marriage with Lady Anna would have been a constrained marriage,--a marriage which he would have accepted as the means of making his fortune. The girl certainly had pleased him;--but it might be that a girl who preferred a tailor would not have continued to please him. At any rate he could not be unhappy with his newly-acquired fortune, and he went down to Yoxham to receive the congratulation of his friends, thinking that it would become him now to make some exertion towards reconciling his uncle and aunt to the coming marriage.

"Have you heard anything about Mr. Thwaite?" Mr. Flick said to him the day before he started. The Earl had heard nothing. "They say that he has been wounded by a pistol-ball." Lord Lovel stayed some days at a friend's house on his road into Yorkshire, and when he reached the rectory, the rector had received news from London. Mr. Thwaite the tailor had been murdered, and it was surmised that the deed had been done by the Countess. "I trust the papers were signed before you left London," said the anxious rector. The doc.u.ments making over the property were all right, but the Earl would believe nothing of the murder. Mr. Thwaite might have been wounded. He had heard so much before,--but he was quite sure that it had not been done by the Countess. On the following day further tidings came. Mr. Thwaite was doing well, but everybody said that the attempt had been made by Lady Lovel. Thus by degrees some idea of the facts as they had occurred was received at the rectory.

"You don't mean that you want us to have Mr. Thwaite here?" said the rector, holding up his hands, upon hearing a proposition made to him by his nephew a day or two later.

"Why not, uncle Charles?"

"I couldn't do it. I really don't think your aunt could bring herself to sit down to table with him."

"Aunt Jane?"

"Yes, your aunt Jane,--or your aunt Julia either." Now a quieter lady than aunt Jane, or one less likely to turn up her nose at any guest whom her husband should choose to entertain, did not exist.

"May I ask my aunts?"

"What good can it do, Frederic?"

"He's going to marry our cousin. He's not at all such a man as you seem to think."

"He has been a journeyman tailor all his life."

"You'll find he'll make a very good sort of gentleman. Sir William Patterson says that he'll be in Parliament before long."

"Sir William! Sir William is always meddling. I have never thought much about Sir William."

"Come, uncle Charles,--you should be fair. If we had gone on quarrelling and going to law, where should I have been now? I should never have got a shilling out of the property. Everybody says so. No doubt Sir William acted very wisely."

"I am no lawyer. I can't say how it might have been. But I may have my doubts if I like. I have always understood that Lady Lovel, as you choose to call her, was never Lord Lovel's wife. For twenty years I have been sure of it, and I can't change so quickly as some other people."

"She is Lady Lovel now. The King and Queen would receive her as such if she went to Court. Her daughter is Lady Anna Lovel."

"It may be so. It is possible."

"If it be not so," said the young lord thumping the table, "where have I got the money from?" This was an argument that the rector could not answer;--so he merely shook his head. "I am bound to acknowledge them after taking her money."

"But not him. You haven't had any of his money. You needn't acknowledge him."

"We had better make the best of it, uncle Charles. He is going to marry our cousin, and we should stand by her. Sir William very strongly advises me to be present at the marriage, and to offer to give her away."

"The girl you were going to marry yourself!"

"Or else that you should do it. That of course would be better."

The rector of Yoxham groaned when the proposition was made to him.

What infinite vexation of spirit and degradation had come to him from these spurious Lovels during the last twelve months! He had been made to have the girl in his house and to give her precedence as Lady Anna, though he did not believe in her; he had been constrained to treat her as the desired bride of his august nephew the Earl,--till she had refused the Earl's hand; after he had again repudiated her and her mother because of her base attachment to a low-born artisan, he had been made to re-accept her in spirit, because she had been generous to his nephew;--and now he was asked to stand at the altar and give her away to the tailor! And there could come to him neither pleasure nor profit from the concern. All that he had endured he had borne simply for the sake of his family and his nephew. "She is degrading us all,--as far as she belongs to us," said the rector. "I can't see why I should be asked to give her my countenance in doing it."

"Everybody says that it is very good of her to be true to the man she loved when she was poor and in obscurity. Sir William says--"

"---- Sir William!" muttered the rector between his teeth, as he turned away in disgust. What had been the first word of that minatory speech Lord Lovel did not clearly hear. He had been brought up as a boy by his uncle, and had never known his uncle to offend by swearing. No one in Yoxham would have believed it possible that the parson of the parish should have done so. Mrs. Grimes would have given evidence in any court in Yorkshire that it was absolutely impossible. The archbishop would not have believed it though his archdeacon had himself heard the word. All the man's known antecedents since he had been at Yoxham were against the probability.

The entire close at York would have been indignant had such an accusation been made. But his nephew in his heart of hearts believed that the rector of Yoxham had d.a.m.ned the Solicitor-General.

There was, however, more cause for malediction, and further provocations to wrath, in store for the rector. The Earl had not as yet opened all his budget, or let his uncle know the extent of the sacrifice that was to be demanded from him. Sir William had been very urgent with the young n.o.bleman to accord everything that could be accorded to his cousin. "It is not of course for me to dictate," he had said, "but as I have been allowed so far to give advice somewhat beyond the scope of my profession, perhaps you will let me say that in mere honesty you owe her all that you can give. She has shared everything with you, and need have given nothing. And he, my lord, had he been so minded, might no doubt have hindered her from doing what she has done. You owe it to your honour to accept her and her husband with an open hand. Unless you can treat her with cousinly regard you should not have taken what has been given to you as a cousin. She has recognised you to your great advantage as the head of her family, and you should certainly recognise her as belonging to it. Let the marriage be held down at Yoxham. Get your uncle and aunt to ask her down. Do you give her away, and let your uncle marry them.

If you can put me up for a night in some neighbouring farm-house, I will come and be a spectator. It will be for your honour to treat her after that fashion." The programme was a large one, and the Earl felt that there might be some difficulty.

But in the teeth of that dubious malediction he persevered, and his next attack was upon aunt Julia. "You liked her;--did you not?"

"Yes;--I liked her." The tone implied great doubt. "I liked her, till I found that she had forgotten herself."

"But she didn't forget herself. She just did what any girl would have done, living as she was living. She has behaved n.o.bly to me."

"She has behaved no doubt conscientiously."

"Come, aunt Julia! Did you ever know any other woman to give away ten thousand a-year to a fellow simply because he was her cousin? We should do something for her. Why should you not ask her down here again?"