DANIEL THWAITE ALONE.
There were two persons in the court who heard the statement of the
Solicitor-General with equal interest,--and perhaps with equal
disapprobation,--whose motives and ideas on the subject were exactly
opposite. These two were the Rev. Mr. Lovel, the uncle of the
plaintiff, and Daniel Thwaite, the tailor, whose whole life had been
passed in furthering the cause of the defendants. The parson, from
the moment in which he had heard that the young lady whom he had
entertained in his house had engaged herself to marry the tailor,
had reverted to his old suspicions,--suspicions which, indeed, he
had never altogether laid aside. It had been very grievous to him to
prefer a doubtful Lady Anna to a most indubitable Lady Fitzwarren.
He liked the old-established things,--things which had always been
unsuspected, which were not only respectable but firm-rooted. For
twenty years he had been certain that the Countess was a false
countess; and he, too, had lamented with deep inward lamentation over
the loss of the wealth which ought to have gone to support the family
earldom. It was monstrous to him that the property of one Earl Lovel
should not appertain to the next Earl. He would on the moment have
had the laws with reference to the succession of personal property
altered, with retrospective action, so that so great an iniquity
should be impossible. When the case against the so-called Countess
was, as it were, abandoned by the Solicitor-General, and the
great interests at stake thrown up, he would have put the conduct
of the matter into other hands. Then had come upon him the
bitterness of having to entertain in his own house the now almost
undisputed,--though by him still suspected,--heiress, on behalf of
his nephew, of a nephew who did not treat him well. And now the
heiress had shown what she really was by declaring her intention
of marrying a tailor! When that became known, he did hope that the
Solicitor-General would change his purpose and fight the cause.
The ladies of the family, the two aunts, had affected to disbelieve
the paragraph which Lady Fitzwarren had shown them with so much
triumph. The rector had declared that it was just the kind of thing
that he had expected. Aunt Julia, speaking freely, had said that it
was just the kind of thing which she, knowing the girl, could not
believe. Then the rector had come up to town to hear the trial, and
on the day preceding it had asked his nephew as to the truth of the
rumour which had reached him. "It is true," said the young lord,
knitting his brow, "but it had better not be talked about."
"Why not talked about? All the world knows it. It has been in the
newspapers."
"Any one wishing to oblige me will not mention it," said the Earl.
This was too bad. It could not be possible,--for the honour of all
the Lovels it could not surely be possible,--that Lord Lovel was
still seeking the hand of a young woman who had confessed that
she was engaged to marry a journeyman tailor! And yet to him, the
uncle,--to him who had not long since been in loco parentis to the
lord,--the lord would vouchsafe no further reply than that above
given! The rector almost made himself believe that, great as might
be the sorrow caused by such disruption, it would become his duty to
quarrel with the head of his family!
He listened with most attentive ears to every word spoken by the
Solicitor-General, and quarrelled with almost every word. Would not
any one have imagined that this advocate had been paid to plead
the cause, not of the Earl, but of the Countess? As regarded the
interests of the Earl, everything was surrendered. Appeal was made
for the sympathies of all the court,--and, through the newspapers,
for the sympathies of all England,--not on behalf of the Earl who was
being defrauded of his rights, but on behalf of the young woman who
had disgraced the name which she pretended to call her own,--and
whose only refuge from that disgrace must be in the fact that to that
name she had no righteous claim! Even when this apostate barrister
came to a recapitulation of the property at stake, and explained the
cause of its being vested, not in land as is now the case with the
bulk of the possessions of noble lords,--but in shares and funds and
ventures of commercial speculation here and there, after the fashion
of tradesmen,--he said not a word to stir up in the minds of the
jury a feeling of the injury which had been done to the present Earl.
"Only that I am told that he has a wife of his own I should think
that he meant to marry one of the women himself," said the indignant
rector in the letter which he wrote to his sister Julia.
And the tailor was as indignant as the rector. He was summoned as a
witness and was therefore bound to attend,--at the loss of his day's
work. When he reached the court, which he did long before the judge
had taken his seat, he found it to be almost impossible to effect
an entrance. He gave his name to some officer about the place,
but learned that his name was altogether unknown. He showed his
subpoena and was told that he must wait till he was called. "Where
must I wait?" asked the angry radical. "Anywhere," said the man in
authority; "but you can't force your way in here." Then he remembered
that no one had as yet paid so dearly for this struggle, no one had
suffered so much, no one had been so instrumental in bringing the
truth to light, as he, and this was the way in which he was treated!
Had there been any justice in those concerned a seat would have been
provided for him in the court, even though his attendance had not
been required. There were hundreds there, brought thither by simple
curiosity, to whom priority of entrance into the court had been
accorded by favour, because they were wealthy, or because they were
men of rank, or because they had friends high in office. All his
wealth had been expended in this case; it was he who had been the
most constant friend of this Countess; but for him and his father
there might probably have been no question of a trial at this day.
And yet he was allowed to beg for admittance, and to be shoved out of
court because he had no friends. "The court is a public court, and is
open to the public," he said, as he thrust his shoulders forward with
a resolution that he would effect an entrance. Then he was taken in
hand by two constables and pushed back through the doorway,--to the
great detriment of the apple-woman who sat there in those days.
But by pluck and resolution he succeeded in making good some inch of
standing room within the court before the Solicitor-General began his
statement, and he was able to hear every word that was said. That
statement was not more pleasing to him than to the rector of Yoxham.
His first quarrel was with the assertion that titles of nobility are
in England the outward emblem of noble conduct. No words that might
have been uttered could have been more directly antagonistic to his
feelings and political creed. It had been the accident of his life
that he should have been concerned with ladies who were noble by
marriage and birth, and that it had become a duty to him to help to
claim on their behalf empty names which were in themselves odious to
him. It had been the woman's right to be acknowledged as the wife of
the man who had disowned her, and the girl's right to be known as
his legitimate daughter. Therefore had he been concerned. But he had
declared to himself, from his first crude conception of an opinion
on the subject, that it would be hard to touch pitch and not be
defiled. The lords of whom he heard were, or were believed by
him to be, bloated with luxury, were both rich and idle, were
gamblers, debauchers of other men's wives, deniers of all rights
of citizenship, drones who were positively authorised to eat the
honey collected by the working bees. With his half-knowledge, his
ill-gotten and ill-digested information, with his reading which had
all been on one side, he had been unable as yet to catch a glimpse of
the fact that from the ranks of the nobility are taken the greater
proportion of the hardworking servants of the State. His eyes saw
merely the power, the privileges, the titles, the ribbons, and the
money;--and he hated a lord. When therefore the Solicitor-General
spoke of the recognised virtue of titles in England, the tailor
uttered words of scorn to his stranger neighbour. "And yet this man
calls himself a Liberal, and voted for the Reform Bill," he said.
"In course he did," replied the stranger; "that was the way of his
party." "There isn't an honest man among them all," said the tailor
to himself. This was at the beginning of the speech, and he listened
on through five long hours, not losing a word of the argument,
not missing a single point made in favour of the Countess and her
daughter. It became clear to him at any rate that the daughter would
inherit the money. When the Solicitor-General came to speak of
the nature of the evidence collected in Italy, Daniel Thwaite was
unconsciously carried away into a firm conviction that all those
concerned in the matter in Italy were swindlers. The girl was no
doubt the heiress. The feeling of all the court was with her,--as he
could well perceive. But in all that speech not one single word was
said of the friend who had been true to the girl and to her mother
through all their struggles and adversity. The name of Thomas Thwaite
was not once mentioned. It might have been expedient for them to
ignore him, Daniel, the son; but surely had there been any honour
among them, any feeling of common honesty towards folk so low in
the scale of humanity as tailors, some word would have been spoken
to tell of the friendship of the old man who had gone to his grave
almost a pauper because of his truth and constancy. But no;--there
was not a word!
And he listened, with anxious ears, to learn whether anything would
be said as to that proposed "alliance,"--he had always heard it
called an alliance with a grim smile,--between the two noble cousins.
Heaven and earth had been moved to promote "the alliance." But the
Solicitor-General said not a word on the subject,--any more than he
did of that other disreputable social arrangement, which would have
been no more than a marriage. All the audience might suppose from
anything that was said there that the young lady was fancy free and
had never yet dreamed of a husband. Nevertheless there was hardly
one there who had not heard something of the story of the Earl's
suit,--and something also of the tailor's success.
When the court broke up Daniel Thwaite had reached standing-room,
which brought him near to the seat that was occupied by Serjeant
Bluestone. He lingered as long as he could, and saw all the
barristers concerned standing with their heads together laughing,
chatting, and well pleased, as though the day had been for them a day
of pleasure. "I fancy the speculation is too bad for any one to take
it up," he heard the Serjeant say, among whose various gifts was not
that of being able to moderate his voice. "I dare say not," said
Daniel to himself as he left the court; "and yet we took it up when
the risk was greater, and when there was nothing to be gained." He
had as yet received no explicit answer to the note which he had
written to the Countess when he sent her the copy of his father's
will. He had, indeed, received a notice from Mr. Goffe that the
matter would receive immediate attention, and that the Countess hoped
to be able to settle the claim in a very short time. But that he
thought was not such a letter as should have been sent to him on
an occasion so full of interest to him! But they were all hard and
unjust and bad. The Countess was bad because she was a Countess,--the
lawyers because they were lawyers,--the whole Lovel family because
they were Lovels. At this moment poor Daniel Thwaite was very bitter
against all mankind. He would, he thought, go at once to the Western
world of which he was always dreaming, if he could only get that sum
of £500 which was manifestly due to him.
But as he wandered away after the court was up, getting some wretched
solitary meal at a cheap eating-house on his road, he endeavoured to
fix his thoughts on the question of the girl's affection to himself.
Taking all that had been said in that courtly lawyer's speech this
morning as the groundwork of his present judgment, what should he
judge to be her condition at the moment? He had heard on all sides
that it was intended that she should marry the young Earl, and it
had been said in his hearing that such would be declared before the
judge. No such declaration had been made. Not a word had been uttered
to signify that such an "alliance" was contemplated. Efforts had
been made with him to induce him to withdraw his claim to the girl's
hand. The Countess had urged him, and the lawyers had urged him.
Most assuredly they would not have done so,--would have in no wise
troubled themselves with him at all,--had they been able to prevail
with Lady Anna. And why had they not so prevailed? The girl,
doubtless, had been subjected to every temptation. She was kept
secure from his interference. Hitherto he had not even made an effort
to see her since she had left the house in which he himself lived.
She had nothing to fear from him. She had been sojourning among those
Lovels, who would doubtless have made the way to deceit and luxury
easy for her. He could not doubt but that she had been solicited to
enter into this alliance. Could he be justified in flattering himself
that she had hitherto resisted temptation because in her heart of
hearts she was true to her first love? He was true. He was conscious
of his own constancy. He was sure of himself that he was bound to her
by his love, and not by the hope of any worldly advantage. And why
should he think that she was weaker, vainer, less noble than himself?
Had he not evidence to show him that she was strong enough to resist
a temptation to which he had never been subjected? He had read of
women who were above the gilt and glitter of the world. When he was
disposed to think that she would be false, no terms of reproach
seemed to him too severe to heap upon her name; and yet, when he
found that he had no ground on which to accuse her, even in his own
thoughts, of treachery to himself, he could hardly bring himself to
think it possible that she should not be treacherous. She had sworn
to him, as he had sworn to her, and was he not bound to believe her
oath?
Then he remembered what the poet had said to him. The poet had
advised him to desist altogether, and had told him that it would
certainly be best for the girl that he should do so. The poet had not
based his advice on the ground that the girl would prove false, but
that it would be good for the girl to be allowed to be false,--good
for the girl that she should be encouraged to be false, in order that
she might become an earl's wife! But he thought that it would be bad
for any woman to be an earl's wife; and so thinking, how could he
abandon his love in order that he might hand her over to a fashion
of life which he himself despised? The poet must be wrong. He would
cling to his love till he should know that his love was false to him.
Should he ever learn that, then his love should be troubled with him
no further.
But something must be done. Even, on her behalf, if she were true to
him, something must be done. Was it not pusillanimous in him to make
no attempt to see his love and to tell her that he at any rate was
true to her? These people, who were now his enemies, the lawyers and
the Lovels, with the Countess at the head of them, had used him like
a dog, had repudiated him without remorse, had not a word even to say
of the services which his father had rendered. Was he bound by honour
or duty to stand on any terms with them? Could there be anything due
to them from him? Did it not behove him as a man to find his way
into the girl's presence and to assist her with his courage? He did
not fear them. What cause had he to fear them? In all that had been
between them his actions to them had been kind and good, whereas they
were treating him with the basest ingratitude.
But how should he see Lady Anna? As he thought of all this he
wandered up from Westminster, where he had eaten his dinner, to
Russell Square and into Keppel Street, hesitating whether he would
at once knock at the door and ask to see Lady Anna Lovel. Lady Anna
was still staying with Mrs. Bluestone; but Daniel Thwaite had not
believed the Countess when she told him that her daughter was not
living with her. He doubted, however, and did not knock at the door.