Full of these resolutions, Anne hurried home, intending to tell her father and mother all that had happened; but they were neither of them within. She flew to the mistress of the house, who had first recommended her to Mrs. Carver, and reproached her in the most moving terms which the agony of her mind could suggest. Her landlady listened to her with astonishment, either real or admirably well affected—declared that she knew nothing more of Mrs. Carver but that she lived in a large fine house, and that she had been very charitable to some poor people in Moorfields—that she bore the best of characters—and that if nothing could be said against her but by an orange-woman, there was no great reason to believe such scandal.
Anne now began to think that the whole of what she had heard might be a falsehood, or a mistake; one moment she blamed herself for so easily suspecting a person who had shown her so much kindness; but the next minute the emphatic words and warning looks of the woman recurred to her mind; and though they were but the words and looks of an orange-woman, she could not help dreading that there was some truth in them. The clock struck ten whilst she was in this uncertainty. The woman of the house urged her to go without farther delay to Mrs. Carver’s, who would undoubtedly be displeased by any want of punctuality; but Anne wished to wait for the return of her father and mother.
“They will not be back, either of them, these three hours, for your mother is gone to the other end of the town about that old bill of Colonel Pembroke’s, and your father is gone to buy some silk for weaving—he told me he should not be home before three o’clock.”
Notwithstanding these remonstrances, Anne persisted in her resolution: she took off the clothes which she had received from Mrs. Carver, and put on those which she had been used to wear. Her mother was much surprised, when she came in, to see her in this condition; and no words can describe her grief, when she heard the cause of this change. She blamed herself severely for not having made inquiries concerning Mrs. Carver before she had suffered her daughter to accept of any presents from her; and she wept bitterly, when she recollected the money which this woman had lent her husband.
“She will throw him into jail, I am sure she will—we shall be worse off a thousand times than ever we were in our worst days. The work that is in the loom, by which he hoped to get so much, is all for her, and it will be left upon our hands now; and how are we to pay the woman of this house for the lodgings?——Oh! I see it all coming upon us at once,” continued the poor woman, wringing her hands. “If that Colonel Pembroke would but let us have our own!—But there I’ve been all the morning hunting him out, and at last, when I did see him, he only swore, and said we were all a family of duns, or some such nonsense. And then he called after me from the top of his fine stairs, just to say, that he had ordered Close the tailor to pay us; and when I went to him there was no satisfaction to be got from him—his shop was full of customers, and he hustled me away, giving me for answer, that when Colonel Pembroke paid him, he would pay us, and no sooner. Ah! these purse-proud tradesfolk, and these sparks of fashion, what do they know of all we suffer? What do they care for us?—It is not for charity I ask any of them—only for what my own husband has justly earned, and hardly toiled for too; and this I cannot get out of their hands. If I could, we might defy this wicked woman—but now we are laid under her feet, and she will trample us to death.”
In the midst of these lamentations, Anne’s father came in: when he learned the cause of them, he stood for a moment in silence; then snatched from his daughter’s hand the bundle of clothes, which she had prepared to return to Mrs. Carver.
“Give them to me; I will go to this woman myself,” cried he with indignation: “Anne shall never more set her foot within those doors.”
“Dear father,” cried Anne, stopping him as he went out of the door, “perhaps it is all a mistake: do pray inquire from somebody else before you speak to Mrs. Carver—she looks so good, she has been so kind to me, I cannot believe that she is wicked. Do pray inquire of a great many people before you knock at the door.”
He promised that he would do all his daughter desired.
With most impatient anxiety they waited for his return: the time of his absence appeared insupportably long, and they formed new fears and new conjectures every instant. Every time they heard a footstep upon the stairs, they ran out to see who it was: sometimes it was the landlady—sometimes the lodgers or their visitors—at last came the person they longed to see; but the moment they beheld him, all their fears were confirmed. He was pale as death, and his lips trembled with convulsive motion. He walked directly up to his loom, and without speaking one syllable, began to cut the unfinished work out of it.