IT IS TOO LATE.
The Countess had resolved that she would let their visitor depart
without saying a word to him. Whatever might be the result of the
interview, she was aware that she could not improve it by asking any
question from the young lord, or by hearing any account of it from
him. The ice had been broken, and it would now be her object to have
her daughter invited down to Yoxham as soon as possible. If once the
Earl's friends could be brought to be eager for the match on his
account, as was she on her daughter's behalf, then probably the thing
might be done. For herself, she expected no invitation, no immediate
comfort, no tender treatment, no intimate familiar cousinship. She
had endured hitherto, and would be contented to endure, so that
triumph might come at last. Nor did she question her daughter very
closely, anxious as she was to learn the truth.
Could she have heard every word that had been spoken she would have
been sure of success. Could Daniel Thwaite have heard every word he
would have been sure that the girl was about to be false to him. But
the girl herself believed herself to have been true. The man had been
so soft with her, so tender, so pleasant,--so loving with his sweet
cousinly offers of affection, that she could not turn herself against
him. He had been to her eyes beautiful, noble,--almost divine. She
knew of herself that she could not be his wife,--that she was not fit
to be his wife,--because she had given her troth to the tailor's son.
When her cousin touched her check with his lips she remembered that
she had submitted to be kissed by one with whom her noble relative
could hold no fellowship whatever. A feeling of degradation came
upon her, as though by contact with this young man she was suddenly
awakened to a sense of what her own rank demanded from her. When
her mother had spoken to her of what she owed to her family, she
had thought only of all the friendship that she and her mother had
received from her lover and his father. But when Lord Lovel told
her what she was,--how she should ever be regarded by him as a dear
cousin,--how her mother should be accounted a countess, and receive
from him the respect due to her rank,--then she could understand
how unfitting were a union between the Lady Anna Lovel and Daniel
Thwaite, the journeyman tailor. Hitherto Daniel's face had been noble
in her eyes,--the face of a man who was manly, generous, and strong.
But after looking into the eyes of the young Earl, seeing how soft
was the down upon his lips, how ruddy the colour of his cheek, how
beautiful was his mouth with its pearl-white teeth, how noble the
curve of his nostrils, after feeling the softness of his hand, and
catching the sweetness of his breath, she came to know what it might
have been to be wooed by such a one as he.
But not on that account did she meditate falseness. It was settled
firm as fate. The dominion of the tailor over her spirit had lasted
in truth for years. The sweet, perfumed graces of the young nobleman
had touched her senses but for a moment. Had she been false-minded
she had not courage to be false. But in truth she was not
false-minded. It was to her, as that sunny moment passed across her,
as to some hard-toiling youth who, while roaming listlessly among
the houses of the wealthy, hears, as he lingers on the pavement of
a summer night, the melodies which float upon the air from the open
balconies above him. A vague sense of unknown sweetness comes upon
him, mingled with an irritating feeling of envy that some favoured
son of Fortune should be able to stand over the shoulders of that
singing syren, while he can only listen with intrusive ears from the
street below. And so he lingers and is envious, and for a moment
curses his fate,--not knowing how weary may be the youth who stands,
how false the girl who sings. But he does not dream that his life is
to be altered for him, because he has chanced to hear the daughter of
a duchess warble through a window. And so it was with this girl. The
youth was very sweet to her, intensely sweet when he told her that he
would be a brother, perilously sweet when he bade her not to grudge
him one kiss. But she knew that she was not as he was. That she had
lost the right, could she ever have had the right, to live his life,
to drink of his cup, and to lie on his breast. So she passed on,
as the young man does in the street, and consoled herself with the
consciousness that strength after all may be preferable to sweetness.
And she was an honest girl from her heart, and prone to truth, with a
strong glimmer of common sense in her character, of which her mother
hitherto had been altogether unaware. What right had her mother to
think that she could be fit to be this young lord's wife, having
brought her up in the companionship of small traders in Cumberland?
She never blamed her mother. She knew well that her mother had done
all that was possible on her behalf. But for that small trader they
would not even have had a roof to shelter them. But still there was
the fact, and she understood it. She was as her bringing up had made
her, and it was too late now to effect a change. Ah yes;--it was
indeed too late. It was all very well that lawyers should look upon
her as an instrument, as a piece of goods that might now, from the
accident of her ascertained birth, be made of great service to the
Lovel family. Let her be the lord's wife, and everything would be
right for everybody. It had been very easy to say that! But she
had a heart of her own,--a heart to be touched, and won, and given
away,--and lost. The man who had been so good to them had sought
for his reward, and had got it, and could not now be defrauded. Had
she been dishonest she would not have dared to defraud him; had she
dared, she would not have been so dishonest.
"Did you like him?" asked the mother, not immediately after the
interview, but when the evening came.
"Oh yes,--how should one not like him?"
"How indeed! He is the finest, noblest youth that ever my eyes rested
on, and so like the Lovels."
"Was my father like that?"
"Yes indeed, in the shape of his face, and the tone of his voice, and
the movement of his eyes; though the sweetness of the countenance was
all gone in the Devil's training to which he had submitted himself.
And you too are like him, though darker, and with something of the
Murrays' greater breadth of face. But I can remember portraits at
Lovel Grange,--every one of them,--and all of them were alike. There
never was a Lovel but had that natural grace of appearance. You will
gaze at those portraits, dear, oftener even than I have done; and you
will be happy where I was,--oh--so miserable!"
"I shall never see them, mamma."
"Why not?"
"I do not want to see them."
"You say you like him?"
"Yes; I like him."
"And why should you not love him well enough to make him your
husband?"
"I am not fit to be his wife."
"You are fit;--none could be fitter; none others so fit. You are as
well born as he, and you have the wealth which he wants. You must
have it, if, as you tell me, he says that he will cease to claim it
as his own. There can be no question of fitness."
"Money will not make a girl fit, mamma."
"You have been brought up as a lady,--and are a lady. I swear I
do not know what you mean. If he thinks you fit, and you can like
him,--as you say you do,--what more can be wanted? Does he not wish
it?"
"I do not know. He said he did not, and then,--I think he said he
did."
"Is that it?"
"No, mamma. It is not that; not that only. It is too late!"
"Too late! How too late? Anna, you must tell me what you mean. I
insist upon it that you tell me what you mean. Why is it too late?"
But Lady Anna was not prepared to tell her meaning. She had certainly
not intended to say anything to her mother of her solemn promise to
Daniel Thwaite. It had been arranged between him and her that nothing
was to be said of it till this law business should be all over. He
had sworn to her that to him it made no difference, whether she
should be proclaimed to be the Lady Anna, the undoubted owner of
thousands a year, or Anna Murray, the illegitimate daughter of the
late Earl's mistress, a girl without a penny, and a nobody in the
world's esteem. No doubt they must shape their life very differently
in this event or in that. How he might demean himself should this
fortune be adjudged to the Earl, as he thought would be the case when
he first made the girl promise to be his wife, he knew well enough.
He would do as his father had done before him, and, he did not
doubt,--with better result. What might be his fate should the wealth
of the Lovels become the wealth of his intended wife, he did not yet
quite foreshadow to himself. How he should face and fight the world
when he came to be accused of having plotted to get all this wealth
for himself he did not know. He had dreams of distributing the
greater part among the Lovels and the Countess, and taking himself
and his wife with one-third of it to some new country in which they
would not in derision call his wife the Lady Anna, and in which he
would be as good a man as any earl. But let all that be as it might,
the girl was to keep her secret till the thing should be settled.
Now, in these latter days, it had come to be believed by him, as by
nearly everybody else, that the thing was well-nigh settled. The
Solicitor-General had thrown up the sponge. So said the bystanders.
And now there was beginning to be a rumour that everything was to
be set right by a family marriage. The Solicitor-General would not
have thrown up the sponge,--so said they who knew him best,--without
seeing a reason for doing so. Serjeant Bluestone was still indignant,
and Mr. Hardy was silent and moody. But the world at large were
beginning to observe that in this, as in all difficult cases, the
Solicitor-General tempered the innocence of the dove with the wisdom
of the serpent. In the meantime Lady Anna by no means intended to
allow the secret to pass her lips. Whether she ever could tell her
mother, she doubted; but she certainly would not do so an hour too
soon. "Why is it too late?" demanded the Countess, repeating her
question with stern severity of voice.
"I mean that I have not lived all my life as his wife should live."
"Trash! It is trash. What has there been in your life to disgrace
you. We have been poor and we have lived as poor people do live. We
have not been disgraced."
"No, mamma."
"I will not hear such nonsense. It is a reproach to me."
"Oh, mamma, do not say that. I know how good you have been,--how you
have thought of me in every thing. Pray do not say that I reproach
you!" And she came and knelt at her mother's lap.
"I will not, darling; but do not vex me by saying that you are unfit.
There is nothing else, dearest?"
"No, mamma," she said in a low tone, pausing before she told the
falsehood.
"I think it will be arranged that you shall go down to Yoxham. The
people there even are beginning to know that we are right, and are
willing to acknowledge us. The Earl, whom I cannot but love already
for his gracious goodness, has himself declared that he will not
carry on the suit. Mr. Goffe has told me that they are anxious to see
you there. Of course you must go,--and will go as Lady Anna Lovel.
Mr. Goffe says that some money can now be allowed from the estate,
and you shall go as becomes the daughter of Earl Lovel when visiting
among her cousins. You will see this young man there. If he means
to love you and to be true to you, he will be much there. I do not
doubt but that you will continue to like him. And remember this,
Anna;--that even though your name be acknowledged,--even though all
the wealth be adjudged to be your own,--even though some judge on the
bench shall say that I am the widowed Countess Lovel, it may be all
undone some day,--unless you become this young man's wife. That woman
in Italy may be bolstered up at last, if you refuse him. But when you
are once the wife of young Lord Lovel, no one then can harm us. There
can be no going back after that." This the Countess said rather to
promote the marriage, than from any fear of the consequences which
she described. Daniel Thwaite was the enemy that now she dreaded, and
not the Italian woman, or the Lovel family.
Lady Anna could only say that she would go to Yoxham, if she were
invited there by Mrs. Lovel.