by Ellen Wood
Anne, his loving, gentle daughter, had been his constant companion and attendant. He had not been so ill as to lie in bed, but a great deal had to be done for him, especially in the matter of amusing what poor remnant of mind was left. She read to him, she talked to him, she wrapped great-coats about him, and took him out to walk on sunshiny days in the open walk by the laurels. It was well for Anne that she was thus incessantly occupied, for it diverted her mind from the misery left there by the unwarrantable conduct of Mr. Angerstyne. When a girl’s lover proves faithless, to dwell upon him and lament him brings to her a sort of painful pleasure: but that negative indulgence was denied to Anne Lewis: Henry Angerstyne was the husband of another, and she might not, willingly, keep him in her thoughts. To forget him, as she strove to do, was a hard and bitter task: but the indignation she felt at the man’s deceit and cruel conduct was materially helping her. Once, since, she had seen his name in the Times: it was amongst the list of visitors staying at some nobleman’s country-house. Henry Angerstyne. And the thrill that passed through her veins as the name caught her eye, the sudden stopping and then rushing violently onwards of her life’s blood, convinced her how little she had forgotten him.
“But I shall forget him in time,” she said to herself, pressing her hand upon her wildly-beating heart. “In time, God helping me.”
And from that moment she redoubled her care and thought for her father; and he died blessing her and her love for him.
Anne felt the loss keenly; though perhaps not quite so much so as she would have felt it had her later life been less full of suffering. It seemed to be but the last drop added to her cup of bitterness. She knew that to himself death was a release: he had ceased to find pleasure in life. And now she was left amidst strangers, or worse than strangers; she seemed not to have a friend to turn to in the wide world.
Dr. Lewis had died on Monday morning. This was Tuesday. Mrs. Lewis had been seeing people to-day and yesterday, giving her orders; but never once consulting Anne, or paying her the compliment to say, Would you like it to be this way, or that?
“How on earth any human being could have pitched upon this wretched out-of-the-world place, Crabb, to settle down in, puzzles me completely,” suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Lewis, bending forward to stir the fire.
“He must have been a lunatic,” acquiesced Julia, irreverently alluding to the poor man who was lying in the room above.
“Not a decent shop in the place! Not a dressmaker who can cut out a properly-fitting skirt! Be quiet, Fanny: you need not dance.”
“One does not know what to do,” grumbled Fanny, ceasing to shuffle, and returning to her seat. “But I should like to know, mamma, about our mourning.”
“I think I shall go to Worcester to-day and order it,” spoke up Mrs. Lewis, briskly, after a pause. “Necessity has no law; and we cannot get proper things unless I do. Yes, we will go: I don’t mind the weather. Julia, ring the bell.”
Anne — poor Anne — came in to answer the bell. She had no choice: Sally was out on an errand.
“Just see that we have a tray in with the cold meat, Anne, at half-past twelve. We must go to Worcester about the mourning — —”
“To Worcester!” involuntarily interrupted Anne, in her surprise.
“There’s no help for it, though of course it’s not the thing I would choose to do,” said Mrs. Lewis, coldly. “One cannot provide proper things here: bonnets especially. I will get you a bonnet at the same time. And we must have a bit of something, hot and nice, for tea, when we come home.”
“Very well,” sighed Anne.
In the afternoon, Anne sat in the same room alone, busy over some black work, on which her tears dropped slowly. When it was growing dusk, Mr. Coney and the young Rector of Timberdale came in together. Herbert Tanerton did not forget that his late stepfather and Dr. Lewis were half-brothers. Anne brushed away the signs of her tears, laid down her work, and stirred the fire into a blaze.
“Now, my lass,” said the farmer, in his plain, homely way, but he always meant kindly, “I’ve just heard that that stepmother of yours went off to Worcester to-day with those two dandified girls of hers, and so I thought I’d drop in while the coast was clear. I confess I don’t like her: and I say that somebody ought to look a bit to you and your interests.”
“And I, coming over upon much the same errand, met Mr. Coney at the gate,” added Herbert Tanerton, with a smile as near geniality as he ever gave. “I wish to express my deep regret for your loss, Miss Lewis, and to assure you of my true sympathy. You will think my visit a late one, but I had a — a service this afternoon.” He would not say a funeral.
“You are both very, very kind,” said Anne, her eyes again filling, “and I thank you for thinking of me. I feel isolated from all: this place at best is strange to me after my life’s home in France. It seems that I have not a friend in the world.”
“Yes, you have,” said the farmer; “and if my wife had not been staying with our sick daughter at Worcester, she’d have been in to tell you the same. My dear, you are just going, please, to make a friend of me. And you won’t think two or three questions, that I should like to put, impertinent, will you?”
“That I certainly will not,” said Anne.
“Well, now, to begin with: Did your father make a will?”
“Oh yes. I hold it.”
“And do you chance to know how the property is left?”
“To me. No name but my own is mentioned in it.”
“Then you’ll be all right,” said Mr. Coney. “I feared he might have been leaving somebody else some. You will have about two hundred and fifty pounds a-year; and that’s enough for a young girl. When your father first came over, he spoke to me of his income and his means.”
“I — I fear the income will be somewhat diminished from what it was,” hesitated Anne, turning red at having to confess so much, because it would tell against her stepmother. “My father has had to sell out a good deal lately, to entrench upon his capital. I think the trouble it gave him hastened his end.”
“Sell out for what?” asked old Coney.
“For bills, and — and debts, that came upon him.”
“Her bills? Her debts?”
Anne did not expressly answer, but old Coney caught up the truth, and nodded his head in wrath. He as good as knew it before.
“Well, child, I suppose you may reckon, at the worst, on a clear two hundred a-year, and you can live on that. Not keep house, perhaps; and it would be very lonely for you also. You will have to take up your abode with some pleasant family: many a one would be glad to have you.”
“I should like to go back to France,” sighed Anne, recalling the misery that England had brought her: first in her new stepmother, then in Mr. Angerstyne, and now in her father’s death. “I have many dear friends in France who will take every care of me.”
“Well, I don’t know,” cried old Coney, with a blank look. “France may be very well for some people; but I’d almost as lieve go to the gallows as there. Don’t you like England?”
“I should like it well, if I — if I could be happy in it,” she answered, turning red again at the thought of him who had marred her happiness. “But, you see, I have no ties here.”
“You must make ties, my lass.”
“How much of the income ought I to pay over yearly to Mrs. Lewis, do you think?” she questioned. “Half of it?”
“Half! No!” burst forth old Coney, coughing down a strong word which had nearly slipped out. “You will give her none. None. A pretty idea of justice you must have, Anne Lewis.”
“But it would be fair to give it her,” argued Anne. “My father married her.”
“Oh, did he, though! She married him. I know. Other folks know. You will give her none, my dear, and allow her none. She is a hard, scheming, deceitful brickbat of a woman. What made her lay hold of your poor weakened father, and play off upon him her wiles and her guiles, and marry him, right or wrong?” ran on old Coney, getting purple enoug
h for apoplexy. “She did it for a home; she did it that she might get her back debts paid; that’s what. She has had her swing as long as his poor life lasted, and put you down as if you were a changeling; we have all seen that. Now that her short day’s over, she must go back again to her own ways and means. Ask the parson there what he thinks.”
The parson, in his cold sententious way, that was so much more suited to an old bishop than a young rector, avowed that he thought with Mr. Coney. He could not see that Mrs. Lewis’s few months of marriage entitled her (all attendant circumstances being taken into consideration) to deprive Miss Lewis of any portion of her patrimony.
“You are sure you have got the will all tight and safe?” resumed Mr. Coney. “I wouldn’t answer for her not stealing it. Ah, you may laugh, young lassie, but I don’t like that woman. Miss Dinah Lake was talking to me a bit the other day; she don’t like her, either.”
Anne was smiling at his vehement partisanship. She rose, unlocked a desk that stood on the side-table, and brought out a parchment, folded and sealed. It was subscribed, “Will of Thomas Lewis, M.D.”
“Here it is,” she said. “Papa had it drawn up by an English lawyer just before we left France. He gave it to me, as he was apt to mislay things himself, charging me to keep it safely.”
“And mind you do keep it safely,” enjoined old Coney. “It won’t be opened, I suppose, till after the funeral’s over.”
“But wait a minute,” interposed the clergyman. “Does not marriage — a subsequent marriage — render a will invalid?”
“Bless my heart, no: much justice there’d be in that!” retorted old Coney, who knew about as much of law as he did of the moon. And Mr. Tanerton said no more; he was not certain; and supposed the older and more experienced man might be right.
Anne sighed as she locked up the will again. She was both just and generous; and she knew she should be sure to hand over to Mrs. Lewis the half of whatever income it might give her.
“Well, my girl,” said the farmer, as they prepared to leave, “if you want me, or anything I can do, you just send Sally over, and I’ll be here in a jiffy.”
“It is to be at Timberdale, I conclude?” whispered Herbert Tanerton, as he shook hands. Anne knew that he alluded to the funeral; and the colour came up in her face as she answered —
“I don’t know. My father wished it; he said he wished to lie beside his brother. But Mrs. Lewis — here they come, I think.”
They came in with snowy bonnets and red noses, stamping the slush off their shoes. It was a good walk from the station. Mrs. Lewis had expected to get a fly there; one was generally in waiting: but some one jumped out of the train before she did, and secured it. It made her feel cross and look cross.
“Such a wretched trapes!” she was beginning in a vinegar tone; but at sight of the gentlemen her face and voice smoothed down to oil. She begged them to resume their seats; but they said they were already going.
“We were just asking about the funeral,” the farmer stayed to say. “It is to be at Timberdale?”
Up went Mrs. Lewis’s handkerchief to her eyes. “Dear Mr. Coney, I think not. Crabb will be better.”
“But he wished to lie at Timberdale.”
“Crabb will be so much cheaper — and less trouble,” returned the widow, with a sob. “It is as well to avoid useless expense.”
“Cheaper!” cried old Coney, his face purple again with passion, so much did he dislike her and her ways. “Not cheaper at all. Dearer. Dearer, ma’am. Must have a hearse and coach any way: and Herbert Tanerton here won’t charge fees if it’s done at Timberdale.”
“Oh, just as you please, my dear sir. And if he wished it, poor dear! Yes, yes; Timberdale of course. Anywhere.”
They got out before she had dried her eyes — or pretended at it. Julia and Fanny then fetched in some bandboxes which had been waiting in the passage. Mrs. Lewis forgot her tears, and put back her cloak.
“Which is Anne’s?” she asked. “Oh, this one” — beginning to undo one of the boxes. “My own will be sent to-morrow night. I bought yours quite plain, Anne.”
Very plain indeed was the bonnet she handed out. Plain and common, and made of the cheapest materials; one that a lady would not like to put upon her head. Julia and Fanny were trying theirs on at the chimney-glass. Gay bonnets, theirs glistening with jet beads and black flowers. The bill lay open on the table, and Anne read the cost: her own, twelve shillings; the other two, thirty-three shillings each. Mrs. Lewis made a grab at the bill, and crushed it into her pocket.
“I knew you would prefer it plain,” said she. “For real mourning it is always a mistake to have things too costly.”
“True,” acquiesced Anne; “but yet — I think they should be good.”
It seemed to her that to wear this bonnet would be very like disrespect to the dead. She silently determined to buy a better as soon as she had the opportunity of doing so.
Of all days, for weather, the one of the funeral was about the worst. Sleet, snow, rain, and wind. The Squire had a touch of lumbago; he could not face it; and old Coney came bustling in to say that I was to attend in his place. Anne wanted Johnny Ludlow to go all along, he added; her father had liked him; only there was no room before in the coach.
“Yes, yes,” cried the Squire, “Johnny, of course. He is not afraid of lumbago. Make haste and get into your black things, lad.”
Well, it was shivery, as we rolled along in the creaky old mourning-coach, behind the hearse: Mr. Coney and the Podds’ lawyer-cousin from Birmingham on one side; I and Cole, the doctor, opposite. The sleet pattered against the windows, the wind whistled in our ears. The lawyer kept saying “eugh,” and shaking his shoulders, telling us he had a cold in his head; and looked just as stern as he had at the wedding.
All was soon over: Herbert Tanerton did not read slowly to-day: and we got back to Maythorn Bank. Cole had left us: he stopped the coach en route, and cut across a field to see a patient: but Mr. Coney drew me into the house with him after the lawyer.
“We will go in, Johnny,” he whispered. “The poor girl has no relation or friend to back her up, and I shall stay with her while the will’s read.”
Mrs. Lewis, in a new widow’s cap as big as a house, and the two girls in shining jet chains, were sitting in state. Anne came in the next minute, her face pale, her eyes red. We all sat down; and for a short time looked at one another in silence, like so many mutes.
“Any will to be read? I am told there is one,” spoke the lawyer — who had, as Fanny Podd whispered to me, a wife at home as sour as himself. “If so, it had better be produced: I have to catch a train.”
“Yes, there is a will,” answered old Coney, glad to find that Anne, as he assumed, had mentioned the fact. “Miss Lewis holds the will. Will you get it, my dear?”
Anne unlocked the desk on the side-table, and put the will into Mr. Coney’s hand. Without saying with your leave or by your leave, he broke the seals, and clapped on his spectacles.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Lewis asked old Coney, from her seat on the sofa.
“Dr. Lewis’s will, ma’am. Made in France, I believe: was it not, Miss Anne?”
“My dear, sweet creature, it is so much waste paper,” spoke Mrs. Lewis, smiling sweetly upon Anne. “My deeply lamented husband’s last will and testament was made long since he left France.”
Pulling up the sofa-cushion at her elbow, she produced another will, and asked the lawyer if he would be good enough to unseal and read it. It had been made, as the date proved, at Cheltenham, the day after she and Dr. Lewis were married; and it left every earthly thing he possessed to “his dear wife, Louisa Jane Lewis.”
Old Coney’s face was a picture. He stared alternately at the will in his hands, at the one just read by the lawyer. Anne stood meekly by his side; looking as if she did not understand matters.
“That can’t stand good!” spoke the farmer, in his honest indignation. “The money can’t go to you, ma’am” — turning his bur
ly form about to face Mrs. Lewis, and treading on my toes as he did it. “The money is this young lady’s; part of it comes from her own mother: it can’t be yours. Thomas Lewis must have signed the will in his sleep.”
“Does a daughter inherit before a wife, dear sir?” cried Mrs. Lewis, in a voice soft as butter. “It is the most just will my revered husband could have made. I need the money: I cannot keep on the house without it. Anne does not need it: she has no house to keep.”
“Look here,” says old Coney, buttoning his coat and looking fiercely at the company. “It’s not my wish to be rude to-day, remembering what place we came straight here from; but if you don’t want to be put down as — as schemers, you will not lose an hour in making over the half of that income to Anne Lewis. It is what she proposed to do by you, madam, when she thought all was left to her,” he added, brushing past Mrs. Lewis. “Come along, Johnny.”
The time went on. Mrs. Lewis kept all the money. She gave notice to leave the house at Midsummer: but she had it on her hands until then, and told people she should die of its dulness. So far as could be known, she had little, if any, income, except that which she inherited from Dr. Lewis.
Anne’s days did not pass in clover. Treated as of no moment, she was made fully to understand that she was only tolerated in what was once her own home; and she had to make herself useful in it from morning till night, just like a servant. Remembering what had been, and what was, Anne felt heart-broken, submitting patiently and unresistingly to every trial; but a reaction set in, and her spirit grew rebellious.