Tales and Novels Volume IX Part 15

"There goes as good a Christian!" cried the Widow Levy, holding up her forefinger, and shaking it at Mr. Montenero the moment his back was turned: "didn't I tell ye so from the first? Oh! if he isn't a jewel of a Jew!--and the daughter the same!" continued she, following me as I walked up and down the hall: "the kind-hearted cratur, how tinder she looked at the fainting Jezabel--while the black woman turning from her in her quality scowls.--Oh! I seed it all, and with your own eyes, dear--but I hope they'll go--and once we get a riddance of them women.

I'll answer for the rest. Bad luck to the minute they come into the house! I wish the jantleman would be back--Oh! here he is--and will they go, jewel?" cried she, eagerly. "The ladies will stay," said Mr.

Montenero.

"Murder!--but you can't help it--so no more about it--but what arms have ye?"

No arms were to be found in the house but a couple of swords, a pair of pistols of Mr. Montenero's, and one gun, which had been left by the former proprietor. Mr. Montenero determined to write immediately to his friend General B--, to request that a party of the military might be sent to guard his house.

"Ay, so best, send for the dragoons, the only thing left on earth for us now: but don't let 'em fire on _the boys_--disperse 'em with the horse, asy, ye can, without a shot; so best--I'll step down and feel the pulse of all below."

While Mr. Montenero wrote, Berenice, alarmed for her father, stood leaning on the back of his chair, in silence.

"Oh! Mr. Harrington! Mr. Harrington!" repeated Lady Anne, "what will become of us! If Colonel Topham was but here! Do send to the Opera, pray, pray, with _my_ compliments--Lady Anne Mowbray's compliments--he'll come directly, I'm sure."

"That my son, Lord Mowbray, should be out of town, how extraordinary and how unfortunate!" cried Lady de Brantefield, "when we might have had his protection, his regiment, without applying to strangers."

She walked up and down the room with the air of a princess in chains.

The orange-woman bolted into the room, and pushed past her ladys.h.i.+p, while Mr. Montenero was sealing his note.

"Give it, jewel!--It's I'll be the bearer; for all your powdered men below has taken fright by the dread the first messenger got, and dares not be carrying a summons for the military through the midst of _them_: but I'll take it for yees--and which way will I go to get quickest to your general's? and how will I know his house?--for seven of them below bothered my brains."

Mr. Montenero repeated the direction--she listened coolly, then stowing the letter in her bosom, she stood still for a moment with a look of deep deliberation--her head on one side, her forefinger on her cheek-bone, her thumb under her chin, and the knuckle of the middle-finger compressing her lips.

"See, now, _they'll_ be apt to come up the stable lane for the back o'

the house, and another party of them will be in the square, in front; so how will it be with me to get into the house to yees again, without opening the doors for _them_, in case they are wid _ye_ afore I'd get the military up?--I have it," cried she.

She rushed to the door, but turned back again to look for her pipe, which she had laid on the table.

"Where's my pipe?--Lend it me--What am I without my pipe?"

"The savage!" cried Lady de Brantefield.

"The fool!" said Lady Anne.

The Widow Levy nodded to each of the two ladies, as she lit the pipe again, but without speaking to them, turned to us, and said, "If the boys would meet me without my pipe, they'd not know me; or smell something odd, and guess I was on some unlawful errand."

As she pa.s.sed Berenice and me, who were standing together, she hastily added, "Keep a good heart, sweetest!--At the last push, you have one will shed the heart's drop for ye!"

A quick, scarcely perceptible motion of her eye towards me marked her meaning; and one involuntary look from Berenice at that moment, even in the midst of alarm, spread joy through my whole frame. In the common danger we were drawn closer together--we _thought_ together;--I was allowed to help her in the midst of the general bustle.

It was necessary, as quickly as possible, to determine what articles in the house were of most value, and to place these in security. It was immediately decided that the pictures were inestimable.--What was to be done with them? Berenice, whose presence of mind never forsook her, and whose quickness increased with the occasion, recollected that the unfinished picture-gallery, which had been built behind the house, adjoining to the back drawing-room, had no window opening to the street: it was lighted by a sky-light; it had no communication with any of the apartments in the house, except with the back drawing-room, into which it was intended to open by large gla.s.s doors; but fortunately these were not finished, and, at this time, there was no access to the picture-gallery but by a concealed door behind the gobelin tapestry of the back drawing-room--an entrance which could hardly be discovered by any stranger. In the gallery were all the plasterers' trestles, and the carpenters' lumber; however, there was room soon made for the pictures: all hands were in motion, every creature busy and eager, except Lady de Brantefield and her daughter, who never offered the smallest a.s.sistance, though we were continually pa.s.sing with our loads through the front drawing-room, in which the two ladies now were. Lady Anne standing up in the middle of the room looked like an actress ready dressed for some character, but without one idea of her own. Her mind, naturally weak, was totally incapacitated by fear: she kept incessantly repeating as we pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, "Bless me! one would think the day of judgment was coming!"

Lady de Brantefield all the time sat in the most remote part of the room, fixed in a huge arm-chair. The pictures and the most valuable things were, by desperately hard work, just stowed into our place of safety, when we heard the shouts of the mob, at once at the back and front of the house, and soon a thundering knocking at the hall-door.

Mr. Montenero and I went to the door, of course without opening it, and demanded, in a loud voice, what they wanted.

"We require the papists," one answered for the rest, "the two women papists and the priest you've got within, to be given up, for your lives!"

"There is no priest here--there are no papists here:--two protestant ladies, strangers to me, have taken refuge here, and I will not give them up," said Mr. Montenero.

"Then we'll pull down the house."

"The military will be here directly," said Mr. Montenero, coolly; "you had better go away."

"The military!--then make haste, boys, with the work."

And with a general cry of "No papists!--no priests!--no Jews!--no wooden shoes!" they began with a volley of stones against the windows. I ran to see where Berenice was. It had been previously agreed among us, that she and her guests, and every female in the house, should, on the first alarm, retire into a back room; but at the first shout of the mob, Lady de Brantefield lost the little sense she ever possessed: she did not faint, but she stiffened herself in the posture in which she sat, and with her hands turned down over the elbows of the huge chair, on which her arms were extended, she leaned back in all the frightful rigidity of a corpse, with a ghastly face, and eyes fixed.

Berenice, in vain, tried to persuade her to move. Her ideas were bewildered or concentrated. Only the obstinacy of pride remained alive within her.

"No," she said, "she would never move from that spot--she would not be commanded by Jew or Jewess."

"Don't you hear the mob--the stones at the windows?"

"Very well. They would all pay for it on the scaffold or the gibbet."

"But if they break in here you will be torn to pieces."

"No--those only will be sacrificed who _have sacrificed_. A 'de Brantefield'--they dare not!--I shall not stir from this spot. Who will presume to touch Lady de Brantefield?"

Mr. Montenero and I lifted up the huge chair on which she sat, and carried her and it into the back room.

The door of this room was scarcely shut, and the tapestry covering but just closed over the entrance into the picture-gallery, when there was a cry from the hall, and the servants came rus.h.i.+ng to tell us that one of the window-shutters had given way.

Mr. Montenero, putting the pistols into my hand, took the gun, ran down stairs, and stationed himself so as to defend the entrance to the window, at which the people were pelting with stones; declaring that he would fire on the first man who should attempt to enter.

A man leaped in, and, in the struggle, Mr. Montenero's gun was wrested from him.

On my presenting a pistol, the man scrambled out of the window, carrying away with him the prize he had seized.

At this moment the faithful Jacob appeared amongst us as if by miracle.

"Master, we are safe," said he, "if we can defend ourselves for a few minutes. The orange-woman delivered your letter, and the military are coming. She told me how to get in here, through the house that is building next door, from the leads of which I crept through a trap-door into your garret."

With the pistols, and with the a.s.sistance of the servants who were armed, some of them with swords, and others with whatever weapons came to hand, we made such a show of resistance as to keep the mob at bay for some moments.

"Hark!" cried Jacob; "thank Heaven, there's the military!" There was a sudden cessation of stones at the window. We heard the joyful sound of the horses' hoofs in the street. A prodigious uproar ensued, then gradually subsided. The mob was dispersed, and fled in different directions, and the military followed. We heard them gallop off. We listened till not a sound, either of human voice or of horse's foot, was to be heard. There was perfect silence; and when we looked as far as our eyes could reach out of the broken window, there was not a creature to be seen in the square or in the line of street to which it opened.

We ran to let out our female prisoners; I thought only of Berenice--she, who had shown so much self-possession during the danger, seemed most overpowered at this moment of joy; she threw her arms round her father, and held him fast, as if to convince herself that he was safe. Her next look was for me, and in her eyes, voice, and manner, when she thanked me, there was an expression which transported me with joy; but it was checked, it was gone the next moment: some terrible recollection seemed to cross her mind. She turned from me to speak to that odious Lady de Brantefield. I could not see Mr. Montenero's countenance, for he, at the same instant, left us, to single out, from the crowd a.s.sembled in the hall, the poor Irishwoman, whose zeal and intrepid grat.i.tude had been the means of our deliverance. I was not time enough to hear what Mr.

Montenero said to her, or what reward he conferred; but that the reward was judicious, and that the words were grateful to her feelings in the highest degree, I had full proof; for when I reached the hall, the widow was on her knees, with hands uplifted to Heaven, unable to speak, but with tears streaming down her hard face: she wiped them hastily away, and started up.

"It's not a little thing brings me to this," said she; "none ever drew a tear from my eyes afore, since the boy I lost."

She drew the hood of her cloak over her head, and pushed her way through the servants to get out of the hall-door; I unbolted and unchained it for her, and as I was unlocking it, she squeezed up close to me, and laying her iron hand on mine, said in a whisper, "G.o.d bless yees! and don't forget my thanks to the sweet _Jewish_--I can't speak 'em now, 'tis you can best, and joined in my prayers ye shall ever be!" said our guardian angel, as I opened the door; and as she pa.s.sed out, she added, "You are right, jewel--she's worth all the fine ladies in Lon'on, feathers an' all in a bag."

I had long been entirely of the Widow Levy's opinion, though the mode of expression would never have occurred to me. What afterwards became of Lady Anne and of her mother this night, I do not distinctly recollect.

Lady de Brantefield, when the alarm was over, I believe, recovered her usual portion of sense, and Lady Anne her silly spirits; but neither of them, I know, showed any feeling, except for themselves. I have an image of Lady de Brantefield standing up, and making, at parting, such ungracious acknowledgments to her kind hostess and generous protector, as her pride and her prejudices would permit. Both their ladys.h.i.+ps seemed to be in a hurry to get out of the house, and I know that I rejoiced in their departure. I was in hopes of one moment, one explanatory word or look from Berenice. She was retiring to her own apartment, as I returned, with her father, after putting those two women into their carriage.

"I am now quite convinced," said Mr. Montenero, smiling, "that Mr.

Harrington never could have been engaged or attached to Lady Anne Mowbray."

"Is it possible you ever imagined?"