Lady Anna

by Anthony Trollope

"Yes, Lady Lovel. There is her letter."

"She has deceived me again," said the Countess, tearing the letter into atoms. But the Serjeant so far frightened her that she was induced to promise that Mrs. Bluestone should see Lady Anna on the following morning,—stipulating, however, that Mrs. Bluestone should see herself before she went up-stairs.

On the following morning Mr. Goffe came early. But Mr. Goffe could give his client very little comfort. He was, however, less uncomfortable than the Serjeant had been. He was of opinion that Lady Anna certainly ought to go abroad, in obedience to her mother's instructions, and was willing to go to her and tell her so, with what solemnity of legal authority he might be able to assume; but he could not say that anything could be done absolutely to enforce obedience. Mr. Goffe suggested that perhaps a few gentle words might be successful. "Gentle words!" said the Countess, who had become quite unable to restrain herself. "The harshest words are only too gentle for her. If I had known what she was, Mr. Goffe, I would never have stirred in this business. They might have called me what they would, and it would have been better." When Mr. Goffe came downstairs he had not a word to say more as to the efficacy of gentleness. He simply remarked that he did not think the young lady could be induced to go, and suggested that everybody had better wait till the Solicitor-General returned to town.

Then Mrs. Bluestone came, almost on the heels of the attorney;—poor Mrs. Bluestone, who now felt that it was a dreadful grievance both to her and to her husband that they had had anything to do with the Lovel family! She was very formal in her manner,—and, to tell the truth for her, rather frightened. The Serjeant had asked her to call and see Lady Anna Lovel. Might she be permitted to do so? Then the Countess burst forth with a long story of all her wrongs,—with the history of her whole life. Not beginning with her marriage,—but working back to it from the intense misery, and equally intense ambition of the present hour. She told it all; how everybody had been against her,—how she had been all alone at the dreary Grange in Westmoreland,—how she had been betrayed by her husband, and turned out to poverty and scorn;—how she had borne it all for the sake of the one child who was, by God's laws and man's, the heiress to her father's name; how she had persevered,—intermingling it all with a certain worship of high honours and hereditary position with which Mrs. Bluestone was able in some degree to sympathise. She was clever, and words came to her freely. It was almost impossible that any hearer should refuse to sympathise with her,—any hearer who knew that her words were true. And all that she told was true. The things which she narrated had been done;—the wrongs had been endured;—and the end of it all which she feared, was imminent. And the hearer thought as did the speaker as to the baseness of this marriage with the tailor,—thought as did the speaker of the excellence of the marriage with the lord. But still there was something in the woman's eye,—something in the tone of her voice, something in the very motion of her hands as she told her story, which made Mrs. Bluestone feel that Lady Anna should not be left under her mother's control. It would be very well that the Lovel family should be supported, and that Lady Anna should be kept within the pale of her own rank. But there might be things worse than Lady Anna's defection,—and worse even than the very downfall of the Lovels.

After sitting for nearly two hours with the Countess, Mrs. Bluestone was taken up-stairs. "Mrs. Bluestone has come to see you," said the Countess, not entering the room, and retreating again immediately as she closed the door.

"This is very kind of you, Mrs. Bluestone," said Lady Anna, who was sitting crouching in her dressing-gown over the fire. "But I thought that perhaps the Serjeant would come." The lady, taken off her guard, immediately said that the Serjeant had been there on the preceding evening. "And mamma would not let me see him! But you will help me!"

In this interview, as in that below, a long history was told to the visitor, and was told with an eloquent energy which she certainly had not expected. "They talk to me of ladies," said Lady Anna. "I was not a lady. I knew nothing of ladies and their doings. I was a poor girl, friendless but for my mother, sometimes almost without shoes to my feet, often ragged, solitary, knowing nothing of ladies. Then there came one lad, who played with me;—and it was mamma who brought us together. He was good to me, when all others were bad. He played with me, and gave me things, and taught me,—and loved me. Then when he asked me to love him again, and to love him always, was I to think that I could not,—because I was a lady! You despise him because he is a tailor. A tailor was good to me, when no one else was good. How could I despise him because he was a tailor? I did not despise him, but I loved him with all my heart."

"But when you came to know who you were, Lady Anna—"

"Yes;—yes. I came to know who I was, and they brought my cousin to me, and told me to love him, and bade me be a lady indeed. I felt it too, for a time. I thought it would be pleasant to be a Countess, and to go among great people; and he was pleasant, and I thought that I could love him too, and do as they bade me. But when I thought of it much,—when I thought of it alone,—I hated myself. In my heart of hearts I loved him who had always been my friend. And when Lord Lovel came to me at Bolton, and said that I must give my answer then,—I told him all the truth. I am glad I told him the truth. He should not have come again after that. If Daniel is so poor a creature because he is a tailor,—must not I be poor who love him? And what must he be when he comes to me again after that?"

When Mrs. Bluestone descended from the room she was quite sure that the girl would become Lady Anna Thwaite, and told the Countess that such was her opinion. "By the God above me," said the Countess rising from her chair;—"by the God above me, she never shall." But after that the Countess gave up her project of forcing her daughter to go abroad. The old lady of the house was told that the rooms would still be required for some weeks to come,—perhaps for months; and having had a conference on the subject with Mrs. Bluestone, did not refuse her consent.