Lady Anna Part 50

"I don't think my brother would like it."

"He will if you tell him. And we must make a gentleman of him."

"My dear Frederic, you can never wash a blackamoor white."

"Let us try. Don't you oppose it. It behoves me, for my honour, to show her some regard after what she has done for me."

Aunt Julia shook her head, and muttered to herself some further remark about negroes. The inhabitants of the Yoxham rectory,--who were well born, ladies and gentlemen without a stain, who were hitherto free from all base intermarriages, and had nothing among their male cousins below soldiers and sailors, parsons and lawyers, who had successfully opposed an intended marriage between a cousin in the third degree and an attorney because the alliance was below the level of the Lovels, were peculiarly averse to any intermingling of ranks. They were descended from ancient earls, and their chief was an earl of the present day. There was but one t.i.tled young lady now among them,--and she had only just won her right to be so considered.

There was but one Lady Anna,--and she was going to marry a tailor!

"Duty is duty," said aunt Julia as she hurried away. She meant her nephew to understand that duty commanded her to shut her heart against any cousin who could marry a tailor.

The lord next attacked aunt Jane. "You wouldn't mind having her here?"

"Not if your uncle thought well of it," said Mrs. Lovel.

"I'll tell you what my scheme is." Then he told it all. Lady Anna was to be invited to the rectory. The tailor was to be entertained somewhere near on the night preceding his wedding. The marriage was to be celebrated by his uncle in Yoxham Church. Sir William was to be asked to join them. And the whole thing was to be done exactly as though they were all proud of the connection.

"Does your uncle know?" asked Mrs. Lovel, who had been nearly stunned by the proposition.

"Not quite. I want you to suggest it. Only think, aunt Jane, what she has done for us all!" Aunt Jane couldn't think that very much had been done for her. They were not to be enriched by the cousin's money. They had never been interested in the matter on their own account. They wanted nothing. And yet they were to be called upon to have a tailor at their board,--because Lord Lovel was the head of their family. But the Earl was the Earl; and poor Mrs. Lovel knew how much she owed to his position. "If you wish it of course I'll tell him, Frederic."

"I do wish it;--and I'll be so much obliged to you."

The next morning the parson had been told all that was required of him, and he came down to prayers as black as a thunder-cloud. It had been before suggested to him that he should give the bride away, and though he had grievously complained of the request, he knew that he must do it should the Earl still demand it. He had no power to oppose the head of the family. But he had never thought then that he would be asked to pollute his own rectory by the presence of that odious tailor. While he was shaving that morning very religious ideas had filled his mind. What a horrible thing was wickedness! All this evil had come upon him and his because the late Earl had been so very wicked a man! He had sworn to his wife that he would not bear it.

He had done and was ready to do more almost than any other uncle in England. But this he could not endure. Yet when he was shaving, and thinking with religious horror of the iniquities of that iniquitous old lord, he knew that he would have to yield. "I dare say they wouldn't come," said aunt Julia. "He won't like to be with us any more than we shall like to have him." There was some comfort in that hope; and trusting to it the rector had yielded everything before the third day was over.

"And I may ask Sir William?" said the Earl.

"Of course we shall be glad to see Sir William Patterson if you choose to invite him," said the rector, still oppressed by gloom.

"Sir William Patterson is a gentleman no doubt, and a man of high standing. Of course I and your aunt will be pleased to receive him.

As a lawyer I don't think much of him;--but that has nothing to do with it." It may be remarked here that though Mr. Lovel lived for a great many years after the transactions which are here recorded, he never gave way in reference to the case that had been tried. If the lawyers had persevered as they ought to have done, it would have been found out that the Countess was no Countess, that the Lady Anna was no Lady Anna, and that all the money had belonged by right to the Earl. With that belief,--with that profession of belief,--he went to his grave an old man of eighty.

In the meantime he consented that the invitation should be given. The Countess and her daughter were to be asked to Yoxham;--the use of the parish church was to be offered for the ceremony; he was to propose to marry them; the Earl was to give the bride away; and Daniel Thwaite the tailor was to be asked to dine at Yoxham Rectory on the day before the marriage! The letters were to be written from the rectory by aunt Julia, and the Earl was to add what he pleased for himself. "I suppose this sort of trial is sent to us for our good,"

said the rector to his wife that night in the sanct.i.ty of their bedroom.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THINGS ARRANGE THEMSELVES.

But the Countess never gave way an inch. The following was the answer which she returned to the note written to her by aunt Julia;--

"The Countess Lovel presents her compliments to Miss Lovel. The Countess disapproves altogether of the marriage which is about to take place between Lady Anna Lovel and Mr. Daniel Thwaite, and will take no part in the ceremony."

"By heavens,--she is the best Lovel of us all," said the rector when he read the letter.

This reply was received at Yoxham three days before any answer came either from Lady Anna or from the tailor. Daniel had received his communication from the young lord, who had called him "Dear Mr.

Thwaite," who had written quite familiarly about the coming nuptials with "his cousin Anna,"--had bade him come down and join the family "like a good fellow,"--and had signed himself, "Yours always most sincerely, Lovel." "It almost takes my breath away," said the tailor to his sweetheart, laughing.

"They are cousins, you know," said Lady Anna. "And there was a little girl there I loved so much."

"They can't but despise me, you know," said the tailor.

"Why should any one despise you?"

"No one should,--unless I be mean and despicable. But they do,--you may be sure. It is only human nature that they should. We are made of different fabric,--though the stuff was originally the same. I don't think I should be at my ease with them. I should be half afraid of their gilt and their gingerbread, and should be ashamed of myself because I was so. I should not know how to drink wine with them, and should do a hundred things which would make them think me a beast."

"I don't see why you shouldn't hold up your head with any man in England," said Lady Anna.

"And so I ought;--but I shouldn't. I should be awed by those whom I feel to be my inferiors. I had rather not. We had better keep to ourselves, dear!" But the girl begged for some delay. It was a matter that required to be considered. If it were necessary for her to quarrel with all her cousins for the sake of her husband,--with the bright faineant young Earl, with aunts Jane and Julia, with her darling Minnie, she would do so. The husband should be to her in all respects the first and foremost. For his sake, now that she had resolved that she would be his, she would if necessary separate herself from all the world. She had withstood the prayers of her mother, and she was sure that nothing else could move her. But if the cousins were willing to accept her husband, why should he not be willing to be accepted? Pride in him might be as weak as pride in them. If they would put out their hands to him, why should he refuse to put out his own? "Give me a day, Daniel, to think about it." He gave her the day, and then that great decider of all things, Sir William, came to him, congratulating him, bidding him be of good cheer, and saying fine things of the Lovel family generally. Our tailor received him courteously, having learned to like the man, understanding that he had behaved with honesty and wisdom in regard to his client, and respecting him as one of the workers of the day; but he declared that for the Lovel family, as a family,--"he did not care for them particularly." "They are poles asunder from me," he said.

"Not so," replied Sir William. "They were poles asunder, if you will.

But by your good fortune and merit, if you will allow me to say so, you have travelled from the one pole very far towards the other."

"I like my own pole a deal the best, Sir William."

"I am an older man than you, Mr. Thwaite, and allow me to a.s.sure you that you are wrong."

"Wrong in preferring those who work for their bread to those who eat it in idleness?"

"Not that;--but wrong in thinking that there is not hard work done at the one pole as well as the other; and wrong also in not having perceived that the best men who come up from age to age are always migrating from that pole which you say you prefer, to the antipodean pole to which you are tending yourself. I can understand your feeling of contempt for an idle lordling, but you should remember that lords have been made lords in nine cases out of ten for good work done by them for the benefit of their country."

"Why should the children of lords be such to the tenth and twentieth generation?"

"Come into parliament, Mr. Thwaite, and if you have views on that subject opposed to hereditary peerages, express them there. It is a fair subject for argument. At present, I think that the sense of the country is in favour of an aristocracy of birth. But be that as it may, do not allow yourself to despise that condition of society which it is the ambition of all men to enter."

"It is not my ambition."

"Pardon me. When you were a workman among workmen, did you not wish to be their leader? When you were foremost among them, did you not wish to be their master? If you were a master tradesman, would you not wish to lead and guide your brother tradesmen? Would you not desire wealth in order that you might be a.s.sisted by it in your views of ambition? If you were an alderman in your borough, would you not wish to be the mayor? If mayor, would you not wish to be its representative in Parliament? If in Parliament, would you not wish to be heard there? Would you not then clothe yourself as those among whom you lived, eat as they ate, drink as they drank, keep their hours, fall into their habits, and be one of them? The theory of equality is very grand."

"The grandest thing in the world, Sir William."

"It is one to which all legislative and all human efforts should and must tend. All that is said and all that is done among people that have emanc.i.p.ated themselves from the thraldom of individual aggrandizement, serve to diminish in some degree the distance between the high and the low. But could you establish absolute equality in England to-morrow, as it was to have been established in France some half century ago, the inequality of men's minds and character would re-establish an aristocracy within twenty years. The energetic, the talented, the honest, and the unselfish will always be moving towards an aristocratic side of society, because their virtues will beget esteem, and esteem will beget wealth,--and wealth gives power for good offices."

"As when one man throws away forty thousand a year on race-courses."

"When you make much water boil, Mr. Thwaite, some of it will probably boil over. When two men run a race, some strength must be wasted in fruitless steps beyond the goal. It is the fault of many patriotic men that, in their desire to put down the evils which exist they will see only the power that is wasted, and have no eyes for the good work done. The subject is so large that I should like to discuss it with you when we have more time. For the present let me beg of you, for your own sake as well as for her who is to be your wife, that you will not repudiate civility offered to you by her family. It will show a higher manliness in you to go among them, and accept among them the position which your wife's wealth and your own acquirements will give you, than to stand aloof moodily because they are aristocrats."

"You can make yourself understood when you speak, Sir William."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said the lawyer, smiling.

"I cannot, and so you have the best of me. But you can't make me like a lord, or think that a young man ought to wear a silk gown."

"I quite agree with you that the silk gowns should be kept for their elders," and so the conversation was ended.