Lady Anna

"Yes, Lady Lovel, – I have."

"You cannot see her."

"I came at her request."

"I know you did, but you cannot see her. You can be hardly so ignorant of the ways of the world, Mr. Thwaite, as to suppose that a young lady can receive what visitors she pleases without the sanction of her guardians."

"Lady Anna Lovel has no guardian, my lady. She is of age, and is at present her own guardian."

"I am her mother, and shall exercise the authority of a mother over her. You cannot see her. You had better go."

"I shall not be stopped in this way, Lady Lovel."

"Do you mean that you will force your way up to her? To do so you will have to trample over me; – and there are constables in the street. You cannot see her. You had better go."

"Is she a prisoner?"

"That is between her and me, and is no affair of yours. You are intruding here, Mr. Thwaite, and cannot possibly gain anything by your intrusion." Then she strode out in the passage, and motioned him to the front door. "Mr. Thwaite, I will beg you to leave this house, which for the present is mine. If you have any proper feeling you will not stay after I have told you that you are not welcome."

But Lady Anna, though she had not expected the coming of her lover, had heard the sound of voices, and then became aware that the man was below. As her mother was speaking she rushed down-stairs and threw herself into her lover's arms. "It shall never be so in my presence," said the Countess, trying to drag the girl from his embrace by the shoulders.

"Anna; – my own Anna," said Daniel in an ecstacy of bliss. It was not only that his sweetheart was his own, but that her spirit was so high.

"Daniel!" she said, still struggling in his arms.

By this time they were all in the parlour, whither the Countess had been satisfied to retreat to escape the eyes of the women who clustered at the top of the kitchen stairs. "Daniel Thwaite," said the Countess, "if you do not leave this, the blood which will be shed shall rest on your head," and so saying, she drew nigh to the window and pulled down the blind. She then crossed over and did the same to the other blind, and having done so, took her place close to a heavy upright desk, which stood between the fireplace and the window. When the two ladies first came to the house they had occupied only the first and second floors; – but, since the success of their cause, the whole had been taken, including the parlour in which this scene was being acted; and the Countess spent many hours daily sitting at the heavy desk in this dark gloomy chamber.

"Whose blood shall be shed?" said Lady Anna, turning to her mother.

"It is the raving of madness," said Daniel.

"Whether it be madness or not, you shall find, sir, that it is true. Take your hands from her. Would you disgrace the child in the presence of her mother?"

"There is no disgrace, mamma. He is my own, and I am his. Why should you try to part us?"

But now they were parted. He was not a man to linger much over the sweetness of a caress when sterner work was in his hands to be done. "Lady Lovel," he said, "you must see that this opposition is fruitless. Ask your cousin, Lord Lovel, and he will tell you that it is so."

"I care nothing for my cousin. If he be false, I am true. Though all the world be false, still will I be true. I do not ask her to marry her cousin. I simply demand that she shall relinquish one who is infinitely beneath her, – who is unfit to tie her very shoe-string."

"He is my equal in all things," said Lady Anna, "and he shall be my lord and husband."

"I know of no inequalities such as those you speak of, Lady Lovel," said the tailor. "The excellence of your daughter's merits I admit, and am almost disposed to claim some goodness for myself, finding that one so good can love me. But, Lady Lovel, I do not wish to remain here now. You are disturbed."

"I am disturbed, and you had better go."

"I will go at once if you will let me name some early day on which I may be allowed to meet Lady Anna, – alone. And I tell her here that if she be not permitted so to see me, it will be her duty to leave her mother's house, and come to me. There is my address, dear." Then he handed to her a paper on which he had written the name of the street and number at which he was now living. "You are free to come and go as you list, and if you will send to me there, I will find you here or elsewhere as you may command me. It is but a short five minutes' walk beyond the house at which you were staying in Bedford Square."

The Countess stood silent for a moment or two, looking at them, during which neither the girl spoke nor her lover. "You will not even allow her six months to think of it?" said the Countess.

"I will allow her six years if she says that she requires time to think of it."

"I do not want an hour, – not a minute," said Lady Anna.

The mother flashed round upon her daughter. "Poor vain, degraded wretch," she said.

"She is a true woman, honest to the heart's core," said the lover.

"You shall come to-morrow," said the Countess. "Do you hear me, Anna? – he shall come to-morrow. There shall be an end of this in some way, and I am broken-hearted. My life is over for me, and I may as well lay me down and die. I hope God in his mercy may never send upon another woman, – upon another wife, or another mother, – trouble such as that with which I have been afflicted. But I tell you this, Anna; that what evil a husband can do, – even let him be evil-minded as was your father, – is nothing, – nothing, – nothing to the cruelty of a cruel child. Go now, Mr. Thwaite; if you please. If you will return at the same hour to-morrow she shall speak with you – alone. And then she must do as she pleases."

"Anna, I will come again to-morrow," said the tailor. But Lady Anna did not answer him. She did not speak, but stayed looking at him till he was gone.

"To-morrow shall end it all. I can stand this no longer. I have prayed to you, – a mother to her daughter; I have prayed to you for mercy, and you will show me none. I have knelt to you."

"Mamma!"

"I will kneel again if it may avail." And the Countess did kneel. "Will you not spare me?"

"Get up, mamma; get up. What am I doing, – what have I done that you should speak to me like this?"

"I ask you from my very soul, – lest I commit some terrible crime. I have sworn that I would not see this marriage, – and I will not see it."

"If he will consent I will delay it," said the girl trembling.

"Must I beg to him then? Must I kneel to him? Must I ask him to save me from the wrath to come? No, my child, I will not do that. If it must come, let it come. When you were a little thing at my knees, the gentlest babe that ever mother kissed, I did not think that you would live to be so hard to me. You have your mother's brow, my child, but you have your father's heart."

"I will ask him to delay it," said Anna.

"No; – if it be to come to that I will have no dealings with you. What; that he, – he who has come between me and all my peace, he who with his pretended friendship has robbed me of my all, that he is to be asked to grant me a few weeks' delay before this pollution comes upon me, – during which the whole world will know that Lady Anna Lovel is to be the tailor's wife! Leave me. When he comes to-morrow, you shall be sent for; – but I will see him first. Leave me, now. I would be alone."

Lady Anna made an attempt to take her mother's hand, but the Countess repulsed her rudely. "Oh, mamma!"

"We must be bitter enemies or loving friends, my child. As it is we are bitter enemies; yes, the bitterest. Leave me now. There is no room for further words between us." Then Lady Anna slunk up to her own room.

CHAPTER XLIII.

DANIEL THWAITE COMES AGAIN

The Countess Lovel had prepared herself on that morning for the doing of a deed, but her heart had failed her. How she might have carried herself through it had not her daughter came down to them, – how far she might have been able to persevere, cannot be said now. But it was certain that she had so far relented that even while the hated man was there in her presence, she determined that she would once again submit herself to make entreaties to her child, once again to speak of all that she had endured, and to pray at least for delay if nothing else could be accorded to her. If her girl would but promise to remain with her for six months, then they might go abroad, – and the chances afforded them by time and distance would be before her. In that case she would lavish such love upon the girl, so many indulgences, such sweets of wealth and ease, such store of caresses and soft luxury, that surely the young heart might thus be turned to the things which were fit for rank, and high blood, and splendid possessions. It could not be but that her own child, – the child who a few months since had been as gentle with her and as obedient as an infant, – should give way to her as far as that. She tried it, and her daughter had referred her prayer, – or had said that she would refer it, – to the decision of her hated lover; and the mother had at once lost all command of her temper. She had become fierce, – nay, ferocious; and had lacked the guile and the self-command necessary to carry out her purpose. Had she persevered Lady Anna must have granted her the small boon that she then asked. But she had given way to her wrath, and had declared that her daughter was her bitterest enemy. As she seated herself at the old desk where Lady Anna left her, she swore within her own bosom that the deed must be done.

Even at the moment when she was resolving that she would kneel once more at her daughter's knees, she prepared herself for the work that she must do, should the daughter still be as hard as stone to her. "Come again at one to-morrow," she said to the tailor; and the tailor said that he would come.

When she was alone she seated herself on her accustomed chair and opened the old desk with a key that had now become familiar to her hand. It was a huge piece of furniture, – such as is never made in these days, but is found among every congregation of old household goods, – with numberless drawers clustering below, with a vast body, full of receptacles for bills, wills, deeds, and waste-paper, and a tower of shelves above, ascending almost to the ceiling. In the centre of the centre body was a square compartment, but this had been left unlocked, so that its contents might be ready to her hand. Now she opened it and took from it a pistol; and, looking warily over her shoulder to see that the door was closed, and cautiously up at the windows, lest some eye might be spying her action even through the thick blinds, she took the weapon in her hand and held it up so that she might feel, if possible, how it would be with her when she should attempt the deed. She looked very narrowly at the lock, of which the trigger was already back at its place, so that no exertion of arrangement might be necessary for her at the fatal moment. Never as yet had she fired a pistol; – never before had she held such a weapon in her hand; – but she thought that she could do it when her passion ran high.

Then for the twentieth time she asked herself whether it would not be easier to turn it against her own bosom, – against her own brain; so that all might be over at once. Ah, yes; – so much easier! But how then would it be with this man who had driven her, by his subtle courage and persistent audacity, to utter destruction? Could he and she be made to go down together in that boat which her fancy had built for them, then indeed it might be well that she should seek her own death. But were she now to destroy herself, – herself and only herself, – then would her enemy be left to enjoy his rich prize, a prize only the richer because she would have disappeared from the world! And of her, if such had been her last deed, men would only say that the mad Countess had gone on in her madness. With looks of sad solemnity, but heartfelt satisfaction, all the Lovels, and that wretched tailor, and her own daughter, would bestow some mock grief on her funeral, and there would be an end for ever of Josephine Countess Lovel, – and no one would remember her, or her deeds, or her sufferings. When she wandered out from the house on that morning, after hearing that Daniel Thwaite would be there at one, and had walked nearly into the mid city so that she might not be watched, and had bought her pistol and powder and bullets, and had then with patience gone to work and taught herself how to prepare the weapon for use, she certainly had not intended simply to make the triumph of her enemy more easy.

And yet she knew well what was the penalty of murder, and she knew also that there could be no chance of escape. Very often had she turned it in her mind, whether she could not destroy the man so that the hand of the destroyer might be hidden. But it could not be so. She could not dog him in the streets. She could not get at him in his meals to poison him. She could not creep to his bedside and strangle him in the silent watches of the night. And this woman's heart, even while from day to day she was meditating murder, – while she was telling herself that it would be a worthy deed to cut off from life one whose life was a bar to her own success, – even then revolted from the shrinking stealthy step, from the low cowardice of the hidden murderer. To look him in the face and then to slay him, – when no escape for herself would be possible, that would have in it something that was almost noble; something at any rate bold, – something that would not shame her. They would hang her for such a deed! Let them do so. It was not hanging that she feared, but the tongues of those who should speak of her when she was gone. They should not speak of her as one who had utterly failed. They should tell of a woman who, cruelly misused throughout her life, maligned, scorned, and tortured, robbed of her own, neglected by her kindred, deserted and damned by her husband, had still struggled through it all till she had proved herself to be that which it was her right to call herself; – of a woman who, though thwarted in her ambition by her own child, and cheated of her triumph at the very moment of her success, had dared rather to face an ignominious death than see all her efforts frustrated by the maudlin fancy of a girl. Yes! She would face it all. Let them do what they would with her. She hardly knew what might be the mode of death adjudged to a Countess who had murdered. Let them kill her as they would, they would kill a Countess; – and the whole world would know her story.

That day and night were very dreadful to her. She never asked a question about her daughter. They had brought her food to her in that lonely parlour, and she hardly heeded them as they laid the things before her, and then removed them. Again and again did she unlock the old desk, and see that the weapon was ready to her hand. Then she opened that letter to Sir William Patterson, and added a postscript to it. "What I have since done will explain everything." That was all she added, and on the following morning, about noon, she put the letter on the mantelshelf. Late at night she took herself to bed, and was surprised to find that she slept. The key of the old desk was under her pillow, and she placed her hand on it the moment that she awoke. On leaving her own room she stood for a moment at her daughter's door. It might be, if she killed the man, that she would never see her child again. At that moment she was tempted to rush into her daughter's room, to throw herself upon her daughter's bed, and once again to beg for mercy and grace. She listened, and she knew that her daughter slept. Then she went silently down to the dark room and the old desk. Of what use would it be to abase herself? Her daughter was the only thing that she could love; but her daughter's heart was filled with the image of that low-born artisan.