THE TAILOR OF KESWICK.
Old Thomas Thwaite was at this time up in London about the business
of the Countess, but had no intention of residing there. He still
kept his shop in Keswick, and still made coats and trousers for
Cumberland statesmen. He was by no means in a condition to retire
from business, having spent the savings of his life in the cause of
the Countess and her daughter. Men had told him that, had he not
struck the Earl in the yard of the Crown at Keswick, as horses were
being brought out for the lord's travelling carriage, ample provision
would have been made by the rich old sinner for his daughter. That
might have been so, or might not, but the saying instigated the
tailor to further zeal and increased generosity. To oppose an Earl,
even though it might be on behalf of a Countess, was a joy to him; to
set wrong right, and to put down cruelty and to relieve distressed
women was the pride of his heart,--especially when his efforts were
made in antagonism to one of high rank. And he was a man who would
certainly be thorough in his work, though his thoroughness should
be ruinous to himself. He had despised the Murrays, who ought to
have stuck to their distant cousin, and had exulted in his heart
at thinking that the world would say how much better and truer had
been the Keswick tailor than the well-born and comparatively wealthy
Scotch relations. And the poets of the lakes, who had not as yet
become altogether Tories, had taken him by the hand and praised him.
The rights of the Countess and the wrongs of the Countess had become
his life. But he still kept on a diminished business in the north,
and it was now needful that he should return to Cumberland. He had
heard that renewed offers of compromise were to be made,--though
no idea of the proposed marriage between the distant cousins had
been suggested to him. He had been discussing the question of some
compromise with the Countess when she spoke to him respecting his
son; and had recommended that certain terms should, if possible, be
effected. Let the money be divided, on condition that the marriage
were allowed. There could be no difficulty in this if the young
lord would accede to such an arrangement, as the marriage must
be acknowledged unless an adverse party should bring home proof
from Italy to the contrary. The sufficiency of the ceremony in
Applethwaite Church was incontestable. Let the money be divided, and
the Countess be Countess Lovel, and Lady Anna be the Lady Anna to all
the world. Old Thomas Thwaite himself had seemed to think that there
would be enough of triumph in such a settlement. "But the woman might
afterwards be bribed to come over and renew her claim," said the
Countess. "Unless it be absolutely settled now, they will say when I
am dead and gone that my daughter has no right to her name." Then the
tailor said that he would make further inquiry how that might be. He
was inclined to think that there might be a decision which should be
absolute, even though that decision should be reached by compromise
between the now contending parties.
Then the Countess had said her word about Daniel Thwaite the son, and
Thomas Thwaite the father had heard it with ill-concealed anger. To
fight against an Earl on behalf of the Earl's injured wife had been
very sweet to him, but to be checked in his fight because he and his
were unfit to associate with the child of that injured wife, was very
bitter. And yet he had sense to know that what the Countess said to
him was true. As far as words went, he admitted the truth; but his
face was more eloquent than his words, and his face showed plainly
his displeasure.
"It is not of you that I am speaking," said the Countess, laying her
hand upon the old man's sleeve.
"Daniel is, at any rate, fitter than I," said the tailor. "He has
been educated, and I never was."
"He is as good as gold. It is not of that I speak. You know what I
mean."
"I know very well what you mean, Lady Lovel."
"I have no friend like you, Mr. Thwaite;--none whom I love as I do
you. And next to you is your son. For myself, there is nothing that
I would not do for him or you;--no service, however menial, that I
would not render you with my own hands. There is no limit to the
gratitude which I owe you. But my girl is young, and if this burden
of rank and wealth is to be hers,--it is proper that she do honour to
it."
"And it is not honourable that she should be seen speaking--to a
tailor?"
"Ah,--if you choose to take it so!"
"How should I take it? What I say is true. And what you say is true
also. I will speak to Daniel." But she knew well, as he left her,
that his heart was bitter against her.
The old man did speak to his son, sitting with him up in the bed-room
over that which the Countess occupied. Old Thomas Thwaite was a
strong man, but his son was in some respects stronger. As his father
had said of him, he had been educated,--or rather instructed; and
instruction leads to the power of thinking. He looked deeper into
things than did his father, and was governed by wider and greater
motives. His father had been a Radical all his life, guided thereto
probably by some early training, and made steadfast in his creed by
feelings which induced him to hate the pretensions of an assumed
superiority. Old Thwaite could not endure to think that one man
should be considered to be worthier than another because he was
richer. He would admit the riches, and even the justice of the
riches,--having been himself, during much of his life, a rich man in
his own sphere; but would deny the worthiness; and would adduce, in
proof of his creed, the unworthiness of certain exalted sinners. The
career of the Earl Lovel had been to him a sure proof of the baseness
of English aristocracy generally. He had dreams of a republic in
which a tailor might be president or senator, or something almost
noble. But no rational scheme of governance among mankind had ever
entered his mind, and of pure politics he knew no more than the
journeyman who sat stitching upon his board.
But Daniel Thwaite was a thoughtful man who had read many books.
More's Utopia and Harrington's Oceana, with many a tale written
in the same spirit, had taught him to believe that a perfect form
of government, or rather of policy, under which all men might be
happy and satisfied, was practicable upon earth, and was to be
achieved,--not merely by the slow amelioration of mankind under
God's fostering ordinances,--but by the continued efforts of good and
wise men who, by their goodness and wisdom, should be able to make
the multitude believe in them. To diminish the distances, not only
between the rich and the poor, but between the high and the low, was
the grand political theory upon which his mind was always running.
His father was ever thinking of himself and of Earl Lovel; while
Daniel Thwaite was considering the injustice of the difference
between ten thousand aristocrats and thirty million of people, who
were for the most part ignorant and hungry. But it was not that he
also had not thoughts of himself. Gradually he had come to learn that
he need not have been a tailor's foreman in Wigmore Street had not
his father spent on behalf of the Countess Lovel the means by which
he, the son, might already have become a master tradesman. And yet
he had never begrudged it. He had been as keen as his father in the
cause. It had been the romance of his life, since his life had been
capable of romance;--but with him it had been no respect for the
rank to which his father was so anxious to restore the Countess,
no value which he attached to the names claimed by the mother and
the daughter. He hated the countess-ship of the Countess, and
the ladyship of the Lady Anna. He would fain that they should
have abandoned them. They were to him odious signs of iniquitous
pretensions. But he was keen enough to punish and to remedy the
wickedness of the wicked Earl. He reverenced his father because he
assaulted the wicked Earl and struck him to the ground. He was heart
and soul in the cause of the injured wife. And then the one thing on
earth that was really dear to him was the Lady Anna.
It had been the romance of his life. They had grown up together as
playmates in Cumberland. He had fought scores of battles on her
behalf with those who had denied that she was the Lady Anna,--even
though he had then hated the title. Boys had jeered him because of
his noble little sweetheart, and he had exulted at hearing her so
called. His only sister and his mother had died when he was young,
and there had been none in the house but his father and himself. As
a boy he had ever been at the cottage of the Countess, and he had
sworn to Lady Anna a thousand times that he would do and die in her
service. Now he was a strong man, and was more devoted to her than
ever. It was the great romance of his life. How could it be brought
to pass that the acknowledged daughter of an Earl, dowered with
enormous wealth, should become the wife of a tailor? And yet such
was his ambition and such his purpose. It was not that he cared for
her dower. It was not, at any rate, the hope of her dower that had
induced him to love her. His passion had grown and his purpose had
been formed before the old Earl had returned for the last time to
Lovel Grange,--when nothing was known of the manner in which his
wealth might be distributed. That her prospect of riches now joined
itself to his aspirations it would be an affectation to deny. The man
who is insensible to the power which money brings with it must be a
dolt; and Daniel Thwaite was not a dolt, and was fond of power. But
he was proud of heart, and he said to himself over and over again
that should it ever come to pass that the possession of the girl was
to depend on the abandonment of the wealth, the wealth should be
abandoned without a further thought.
It may be imagined that with such a man the words which his father
would speak to him about the Lady Anna, suggesting the respectful
distance with which she should be approached by a tailor's foreman,
would be very bitter. They were bitter to the speaker and very bitter
to him who heard them. "Daniel," said the father, "this is a queer
life you are leading with the Countess and Lady Anna just beneath
you, in the same house."
"It was a quiet house for them to come to;--and cheap."
"Quiet enough, and as cheap as any, I dare say;--but I don't know
whether it is well that you should be thrown so much with them. They
are different from us." The son looked at his father, but made no
immediate reply. "Our lot has been cast with theirs because of their
difficulties," continued the old man, "but the time is coming when we
had better stand aloof."
"What do you mean, father?"
"I mean that we are tailors, and these people are born nobles."
"They have taken our help, father."
"Well; yes, they have. But it is not for us to say anything of that.
It has been given with a heart."
"Certainly with a heart."
"And shall be given to the end. But the end of it will come soon now.
One will be a Countess and the other will be the Lady Anna. Are they
fit associates for such as you and me?"
"If you ask me, father, I think they are."
"They don't think so. You may be sure of that."
"Have they said so, father?"
"The Countess has said so. She has complained that you call her
daughter simply Anna. In future you must give her a handle to
her name." Daniel Thwaite was a dark brown man, with no tinge of
ruddiness about him, a thin spare man, almost swarthy, whose hands
were as brown as a nut, and whose cheeks and forehead were brown. But
now he blushed up to his eyes. The hue of the blood as it rushed to
his face forced itself through the darkness of his visage, and he
blushed, as such men do blush,--with a look of indignation on his
face. "Just call her Lady Anna," said the father.
"The Countess has been complaining of me then?"
"She has hinted that her daughter will be injured by your
familiarity, and she is right. I suppose that the Lady Anna Lovel
ought to be treated with deference by a tailor,--even though the
tailor may have spent his last farthing in her service."
"Do not let us talk about the money, father."
"Well; no. I'd as lief not think about the money either. The world is
not ripe yet, Daniel."
"No;--the world is not ripe."
"There must be earls and countesses."
"I see no must in it. There are earls and countesses as there used to
be mastodons and other senseless, over-grown brutes roaming miserable
and hungry through the undrained woods,--cold, comfortless, unwieldy
things, which have perished in the general progress. The big things
have all to give way to the intellect of those which are more finely
made."
"I hope men and women will not give way to bugs and fleas," said the
tailor, who was wont to ridicule his son's philosophy.
The son was about to explain his theory of the perfected mean size of
intellectual created beings, when his heart was at the present moment
full of Anna Lovel. "Father," he said, "I think that the Countess
might have spared her observations."
"I thought so too;--but as she said it, it was best that I should
tell you. You'll have to marry some day, and it wouldn't do that you
should look there for your sweetheart." When the matter was thus
brought home to him, Daniel Thwaite would argue it no further. "It
will all come to an end soon," continued the old man, "and it may
be that they had better not move till it is settled. They'll divide
the money, and there will be enough for both in all conscience. The
Countess will be the Countess, and the Lady Anna will be the Lady
Anna; and then there will be no more need of the old tailor from
Keswick. They will go into another world, and we shall hear from them
perhaps about Christmas time with a hamper of game, and may be a
little wine, as a gift."
"You do not think that of them, father."
"What else can they do? The lawyers will pay the money, and they
will be carried away. They cannot come to our house, nor can we go
to theirs. I shall leave to-morrow, my boy, at six o'clock; and my
advice to you is to trouble them with your presence as little as
possible. You may be sure that they do not want it."
Daniel Thwaite was certainly not disposed to take his father's
advice, but then he knew much more than did his father. The above
scene took place in the evening, when the son's work was done. As he
crept down on the following morning by the door of the room in which
the two ladies slept, he could not but think of his father's words,
"It wouldn't do that you should look there for your sweetheart." Why
should it not do? But any such advice as that was now too late. He
had looked there for his sweetheart. He had spoken, and the girl had
answered him. He had held her close to his heart, and had pressed her
lips to his own, and had called her his Anna, his well-beloved, his
pearl, his treasure; and she,--she had only sighed in his arms, and
yielded to his embrace. She had wept alone when she thought of it,
with a conscious feeling that as she was the Lady Anna there could be
no happy love between herself and the only youth whom she had known.
But when he had spoken, and had clasped her to his heart, she had
never dreamed of rebuking him. She had known nothing better than he,
and desired nothing better than to live with him and to be loved by
him. She did not think that it could be possible to know any one
better. This weary, weary title filled her with dismay. Daniel, as
he walked along thinking of her embrace, thinking of those kisses,
and thinking also of his father's caution, swore to himself that the
difficulties in his way should never stop him in his course.