[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D. W. ]

THE AMAZING MARRIAGE

By George Meredith

1895

BOOK 3. 

XX. STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN OLD SEAMAN, A LOVELY SERPENT, AND THE MORAL EFFECTS THAT MAY COME OF A BORROWED SHIRTXXI. IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WONDROUS MECHANISM OF OUR YOUNGER MANXXII. A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADYXXIII. IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEINXXIV. A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARMXXV. THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTIONXXVI. AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARDXXVII. WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOMXXVIII. BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS AVERTED

CHAPTER XX

STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN OLD SEAMAN, A LOVELY SERPENT, AND THE MORALEFFECTS THAT MAY COME OF A BORROWED SHIRT

Money of his father's enabled Gower to take the coach; and studies infog, from the specked brown to the woolly white, and the dripping torn, were proposed to the traveller, whose preference of Nature's face did notarrest his observation of her domino and petticoats; across which blanksheets he curiously read backward, that he journeyed by the aid of hisfather's hard-earned, ungrudged piece of gold. Without it, he would havebeen useless in this case of need. The philosopher could starve withequanimity, and be the stronger. But one had, it seemed here clearly, toput on harness and trudge along a line, if the unhappy were to have one'shelp. Gradual experiences of his business among his fellows wereteaching an exercised mind to learn in regions where minds unexercisedwere doctorial giants beside it. 

The study of gout was offered at Chinningfold. Admiral Fakenham's butlerrefused at first to take a name to his master. Gower persisted, statingthe business of his mission; and in spite of the very suspicious glibgood English spoken by a man wearing such a hat and suit, the butler wasinduced to consult Mrs. Carthew. 

She sprang up alarmed. After having seen the young lady happily marriedand off with her lordly young husband, the arrival of a messenger fromthe bride gave a stir the wrong way to her flowing recollections; thescenes and incidents she had smothered under her love of the comfortablestood forth appallingly. The messenger, the butler said, was nogentleman. She inspected Gower and heard him speak. An anomaly had cometo the house; for he had the language of a gentleman, the appearance of anondescript; he looked indifferent, he spoke sympathetically; and he wasfrank as soon as the butler was out of hearing. In return for thecompliment, she invited him to her sitting-room. The story of the youngcountess, whom she had seen driven away by her husband from the church ina coach and four, as being now destitute, praying to see her friends, inthe Whitechapel of London--the noted haunt of thieves and outcasts, bankrupts and the abandoned; set her asking for the first time, who wasthe man with dreadful countenance inside the coach? A previouslydisregarded horror of a man. She went trembling to the admiral, thoughhis health was delicate, his temper excitable. It was, she considered, an occasion for braving the doctor's interdict. 

Gower was presently summoned to the chamber where Admiral Fakenhamreclined on cushions in an edifice of an arm-chair. He told a plaintale. Its effect was to straighten the admiral's back, and enlarge ingrey glass a pair of sea-blue eyes. And, 'What's that? Whitechapel?'the admiral exclaimed, --at high pitch, far above his understanding. The particulars were repeated, whereupon the sick-room shook with, 'Greengrocer?' He stunned himself with another of the monstrous points inhis pet girl's honeymoon: 'A prizefight?'

To refresh a saving incredulity, he took a closer view of the messenger. Gower's habiliments were those of the 'queer fish, ' the admiral saw. Butthe meeting at Carlsruhe was recalled to him, and there was a worthyeffort to remember it. 'Prize-fight!--Greengrocer! Whitechapel!' herang the changes rather more moderately; till, swelling and purpling, hecried: 'Where's the husband?'

That was the emissary's question likewise. 

'If I could have found him, sir, I should not have troubled you. '

'Disappeared? Plays the man of his word, then plays the madman! Prize-fight the first day of her honeymoon? Good Lord! Leaves her at theinn?'

'She was left. '

'When was she left?'

'As soon as the fight was over--as far as I understand. '

The admiral showered briny masculine comments on that bridegroom. 

'Her brother's travelling somewhere in the Pyrenees--married my daughter. She has an uncle, a hermit. ' He became pale. 'I must do it. The rascalinsults us all. Flings her off the day he married her! It 's a slap inthe face to all of us. You are acquainted with the lady, sir. Would youcall her a red-haired girl?'

'Red-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with threads of fire. '

'She has the eyes for a man to swear by. I feel the loss of her, I cantell you. She was wine and no penalty to me. Is she much broken underit?--if I 'm to credit . . . I suppose I must. It floors me. '

Admiral Baldwin's frosty stare returned on him. Gower caught an image ofit, as comparable, without much straining, to an Arctic region smitten bythe beams. 

'Nothing breaks her courage, ' he said. 

'To be sure, my poor dear! Who could have guessed when she left my houseshe was on her way to a prizefight and a greengrocer's in Whitechapel. But the dog's not mad, though his bite 's bad; he 's an eccentricmongrel. He wants the whip; ought to have had it regularly from hisfirst breeching. He shall whistle for her when he repents; and he will, mark me. This gout here will be having a snap at the vitals if I don'tstart to-night. Oblige me, half a minute. '

The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to give support, stood, anddropped into the chair, signifying a fit of giddiness in the word 'Head. '

Before the stupor had passed, Mrs. Carthew entered, anxious lest theadmittance of a messenger of evil to her invalid should have been anerror of judgement. The butler had argued it with her. She belonged tothe list of persons appointed to cut life's thread when it strains, theirgeneral kindness being so liable to misdirection. 

Gower left the room and went into the garden. He had never seen a death;and the admiral's peculiar pallor intimated events proper to days of coldmist and a dripping stillness. How we go, was the question among hisproblems:--if we are to go! his youthful frame insistingly added. 

The fog down a wet laurel-walk contracted his mind with the chilling ofhis blood, and he felt that he would have to see the thing if he was tobelieve in it. Of course he believed, but life throbbed rebelliously, and a picture of a desk near a lively fire-grate, books and pen andpaper, and a piece of writing to be approved of by the Hesper of ladies, held ground with a pathetic heroism against the inevitable. He got hiswits to the front by walking faster; and then thought of the youngcountess and the friend she might be about to lose. She could number herfriends on her fingers. Admiral Fakenham's exclamations of the name ofthe place where she now was, conveyed an inky idea of the fall she hadundergone. Counting her absent brother, with himself, his father, andthe two Whitechapel girls, it certainly was an unexampled fall, to say ofher, that they and those two girls had become by the twist ofcircumstances the most serviceable of her friends. 

Her husband was the unriddled riddle we have in the wealthy young lord, --burning to possess, and making, tatters of all he grasped, the moment itwas his own. Glints of the devilish had shot from him at thegamingtables, --fine haunts for the study of our lower man. He could bemagnificent in generosity; he had little humaneness. He coveted beautyin women hungrily, and seemed to be born hostile to them; or so Gowerjudged by the light of the later evidence on unconsidered antecedentobservations of him. Why marry her to cast her off instantly? The crudephilosopher asked it as helplessly as the admiral. And, further, whatdid the girl Madge mean by the drop of her voice to a hum of enforcedendurance under injury, like the furnace behind an iron door? Older menmight have understood, as he was aware; he might have guessed, only hehad the habit of scattering meditation upon the game of hawk and fowl. 

Dame Gossip boils. Her one idea of animation is to have her dramatispersona in violent motion, always the biggest foremost; and, indeed, thatis the way to make them credible, for the wind they raise and thesuccession of collisions. The fault of the method is, that they do notinstruct; so the breath is out of them before they are put aside; for theuninstructive are the humanly deficient: they remain with us like thetolerated old aristocracy, which may not govern, and is but sociallyseductive. The deuteragonist or secondary person can at times tell usmore of them than circumstances at furious heat will help them to reveal;and the Dame will have him only as an index-post. Hence her endlessejaculations over the mystery of Life, the inscrutability of character, --in a plain world, in the midst of such readable people! To preserveRomance (we exchange a sky for a ceiling if we let it go), we must beinside the heads of our people as well as the hearts, more than shakingthe kaleidoscope of hurried spectacles, in days of a growing activity ofthe head. 

Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn on to fortune and thesight of his Hesper by Admiral Fakenham's order that the visitor was tostay at his house until he should be able to quit his bed, and journeywith him to London, doctor or no doctor. The doctor would not hear ofit. The admiral threatened it every night for the morning, every morningfor the night; and Gower had to submit to postponements balefullyaffecting his linen. Remonstrance was not to be thought of; for at amere show of reluctance the courtly admiral flushed, frowned, and beatthe bed where he lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was passingthrough the various complexions, and had approached the Nubian on its wayto negro. His natural candour checked the downward course. He mentionedto Mrs. Carthew, with incidental gravity, on a morning at breakfast, thatthis article of his attire 'was beginning to resemble London snow. ' Shewas amused; she promised him a change more resembling country snow. 'It will save me from buttoning so high up, ' he said, as he thanked her. She then remembered the daily increase of stiffness in his figure: and areflection upon his patient waiting, and simpleness, and lexicographerspeech to expose his minor needs, touched her unused sense of humour onthe side where it is tender in women, from being motherly. 

In consequence, she spoke of him with a pleading warmth to the CountessLivia, who had come down to see the admiral 'concerning an absurd butannoying rumour running over London. ' Gower was out for a walk. He knewof the affair, Mrs. Carthew said, for an introduction to her excuses ofhis clothing. 

'But I know the man, ' said Livia. 'Lord Fleetwood picked him upsomewhere, and brought him to us. Clever: Why, is he here?'

'He is here, sent to the admiral, as I understand, my lady. '

'Sent by whom?'

Having but a weak vocabulary to defend a delicate position, Mrs. Carthewstuttered into evasions, after the way of ill-armed persons; and namingherself a stranger to the circumstances, she feebly suggested that theadmiral ought not to be disturbed before the doctor's next visit; Mr. Woodseer had been allowed to sit by his bed yesterday only for tenminutes, to divert him with his talk. She protected in this wretchedmanner the poor gentleman she sacrificed and emitted such a smell ofsecresy, that Livia wrote three words on her card, for it to be taken toAdmiral Baldwin at once. Mrs. Carthew supplicated faintly; she wasunheeded. 

The Countess of Fleetwood mounted the stairs--to descend them with theknowledge of her being the Dowager Countess of Fleetwood! Henrietta hadspoken of the Countess of Fleetwood's hatred of the title of Dowager. But when Lady Fleetwood had the fact from the admiral, would she forbearto excite him? If she repudiated it, she would provoke him to fire 'oneof his broadsides, '--as they said in the family, to assert its and thatmight exhaust him; and there was peril in that. And who was guilty?Mrs. Carthew confessed her guilt, asking how it could have been avoided. She made appeal to Gower on his return, transfixing him. 

Not only is he no philosopher who has an idol, he has to learn that hecannot think rationally; his due sense of weight and measure is lost, thechoice of his thoughts as well. He was in the house with his devoutly, simply worshipped, pearl of women, and his whole mind fell to workwithout ado upon the extravagant height of the admiral's shirt-collarcutting his ears. The very beating of his heart was perplexed to knowwhether it was for rapture or annoyance. As a result he was buthistrionically master of himself when the Countess Livia or the nimbus ofthe lady appeared in the room. 

She received his bow; she directed Mrs. Carthew to have the doctorsummoned immediately. The remorseful woman flew. 

'Admiral Fakenham is very ill, Mr. Woodseer, he has had distracting news. Oh, no, the messenger is not blamed. You are Lord Fleetwood's friend andwill not allow him to be prejudged. He will be in town shortly. I knowhim well, you know him; and could you hear him accused of cruelty--and toa woman? He is the soul of chivalry. So, in his way, is the admiral. If he were only more patient! Let us wait for Lord Fleetwood's version. I am certain it will satisfy me. The admiral wishes you to step up tohim. Be very quiet; you will be; consent to everything. I was unawareof his condition: the things I heard were incredible. I hope the doctorwill not delay. Now go. Beg to retire soon. '

Livia spoke under her breath; she had fears. 

Admiral Baldwin lay in his bed, submitting to a nurse-woman-sign ofextreme exhaustion. He plucked strength from the sight of Gower andbundled the woman out of the room, muttering: 'Kill myself? Not half soquick as they'd do it. I can't rest for that Whitechapel of yours. Please fetch pen and paper: it's a letter. '

The letter began, 'Dear Lady Arpington. '

The dictation of it came in starts. Atone moment it seemed as if life'sending shook the curtains on our stage and were about to lift. An oldfriend in the reader of the letter would need no excuse for its jerkybrevity. It said that his pet girl, Miss Kirby, was married to the Earlof Fleetwood in the first week of last month, and was now to be found ata shop No. 45 Longways, Whitechapel; that the writer was ill, unable tostir; that he would be in London within eight-and-forty hours atfurthest. He begged Lady Arpington to send down to the place and havethe young countess fetched to her, and keep her until he came. 

Admiral Baldwin sat up to sign the letter. 

'Yes, and write "miracles happen when the devil's abroad"--done it !' hesaid, sinking back. 'Now seal, you'll find wax--the ring at my watch-chain. '

He sighed, as it were the sound of his very last; he lay like a sleepertwitched by a dream. There had been a scene with Livia. The dictatingof the letter took his remainder of strength out of him. 

Gower called in the nurse, and went downstairs. He wanted the address ofLady Arpington's town house. 

'You have a letter for her?' said Livia, and held her hand for it in away not to be withstood. 

'There's no superscription, ' he remarked. 

'I will see to that, Mr. Woodseer. '

'I fancy I am bound, Lady Fleetwood. '

'By no means. ' She touched his arm. 'You are Lord Fleetwood's friend. '

A slight convulsion of the frame struck the admiral's shirt-collar at hisears; it virtually prostrated him under foot of a lady so benign inoverlooking the spectacle he presented. Still, he considered; he hadwits alive enough, just to perceive a duty. 

'The letter was entrusted to me, Lady Fleetwood. '

'You are afraid to entrust it to the post?'

'I was thinking of delivering it myself in town. '

'You will entrust it to me. '

'Anything on earth of my own. '

'The treasure would be valued. This you confide to my care. '

'It is important. '

'No. '

'Indeed it is. '

'Say that it is, then. It is quite safe with me. It may be importantthat it should not be delivered. Are you not Lord Fleetwood's friend?Lady Arpington is not so very, very prominent in the list with you andme. Besides, I don't think she has come to town yet. She generally seesout the end of the hunting season. Leave the letter to me: it shall go. You, with your keen observation missing nothing, have seen that my unclehas not his whole judgement at present. There are two sides to a case. Lord Fleetwood's friend will know that it would be unfair to offer him upto his enemies while he is absent. Things going favourably here, I driveback to town to-morrow, and I hope you will accept a seat in mycarriage. '

He delivered his courtliest; he was riding on cloud. 

They talked of Baden. His honourable surrender of her defeated purse wasa subject for gentle humour with her, venturesome compliment with him. He spoke well; and though his hands were clean of Sir Meeson Corby'sreproach of them, the caricature of presentable men blushed absurdly andseemed uneasy in his monstrous collar. The touching of him again wouldnot be required to set him pacing to her steps. His hang of the headtestified to the unerring stamp of a likeness Captain Abrane could affixwith a stroke: he looked the fiddler over his bow, playing wonderfully toconceal the crack of a string. The merit of being one of her army ofadmirers was accorded to him. The letter to Lady Arpington was retained. 

Gower deferred the further mention of the letter until a visit to theadmiral's chamber should furnish an excuse; and he had to wait for it. Admiral Baldwin's condition was becoming ominous. He sent messagesdownstairs by the doctor, forbidding his guest's departure until they twocould make the journey together next day. The tortured and blissfulyoung man, stripped of his borrowed philosopher's cloak, hung conscience-ridden in this delicious bower, which was perceptibly an antechamber ofthe vaults, offering him the study he thirsted for, shrank from, andmixed with his cup of amorous worship. 

CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WONDROUS MECHANISM OF OURYOUNGER MAN

The report of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham as having died in the arms of astranger visiting the house, hit nearer the mark than usual. He yieldedhis last breath as Gower Woodseer was lowering him to his pillow, shortlyafter a husky whisper of the letter to Lady Arpington; and that was oneof Gower's crucial trials. It condemned him, for the pacifying of adying man, to the murmur and shuffle, which was a lie; and the lie burnthim, contributed to the brand on his race. He and his father upheld asolitary bare staff, where the Cambrian flag had flown, before theirpeople had been trampled in mire, to do as the worms. His loathing ofany shadow of the lie was a protest on behalf of Welsh blood against anEnglish charge, besides the passion for spiritual cleanliness: withoutwhich was no comprehension, therefore no enjoyment, of Nature possible tohim. For Nature is the Truth. 

He begged the countess to let him have the letter; he held to thepetition, with supplications; he spoke of his pledged word, his honour;and her countenance did not deny to such an object as she beheld theright to a sense of honour. 'We all have the sentiment, I hope, Mr. Woodseer, ' she said, stupefying the worshipper, who did not see itmanifested. There was a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of commongrounds between them, accompanying the dead words. Mistress of theletter, and the letter safe under lock, the admiral dead, she had not tobestow a touch of her hand on his coatsleeve in declining to return it. A face languidly and benevolently querulous was bent on him, when he, so clever a man, resumed his very silly petition. 

She was moon out of cloud at a change of the theme. Gower journeyed toLondon without the letter, intoxicated, and conscious of poison;enamoured of it, and straining for health. He had to reflect at thejourney's end, that he had picked up nothing on the road, neither a thingobserved nor a thing imagined; he was a troubled pool instead of aflowing river. 

The best help to health for him was a day in his father's house. We areperpetually at our comparisons of ourselves with others; and they aremostly profitless; but the man carrying his religious light, to light thedarkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, as though the heartof him ran a mountain water through the grimy region, plucked at Gowerwith an envy to resemble him in practice. His philosophy, too, reproached him for being outshone. Apart from his philosophy, he stoodconfessed a bankrupt; and it had dwindled to near extinction. Adorationof a woman takes the breath out of philosophy. And if one had only tosay sheer donkey, he consenting to be driven by her! One has to sayworse in this case; for the words are, liar and traitor. 

Carinthia's attitude toward his father conduced to his emulous respectfor the old man, below whom, and indeed below the roadway of ordinaryprinciples hedged with dull texts, he had strangely fallen. The sight ofher lashed him. She made it her business or it was her pleasure to gothe rounds beside Mr. Woodseer visiting his poor people. She spoke ofthe scenes she witnessed, and threw no stress on the wretchedness, havingonly the wish to assist in ministering. Probably the great wretchednessbubbling over the place blunted her feeling of loss at the word ofAdmiral Baldwin's end; her bosom sprang up: 'He was next to father, 'was all she said; and she soon reverted to this and that house of thelodgings of poverty. She had descended on the world. There was ofcourse a world outside Whitechapel, but Whitechapel was hot about her;the nests of misery, the sharp note of want in the air, tricks of anurchin who had amused her. 

As to the place itself, she had no judgement to pronounce, except that:'They have no mornings here'; and the childish remark set her quiveringon her heights, like one seen through a tear, in Gower's memory. Scarceanything of her hungry impatience to meet her husband was visible: shehad come to London to meet him; she hoped to meet him soon: before herbrother's return, she could have added. She mentioned the goodness ofSarah Winch in not allowing that she was a burden to support. Money andits uses had impressed her; the quantity possessed by some, the utterneed of it for the first of human purposes by others. Her speech was notof so halting or foreign an English. She grew rapidly wherever she wasplanted. 

Speculation on the conduct of her husband, empty as it might be, wasnecessitated in Gower. He pursued it, and listened to his fathersimilarly at work: 'A young lady fit for any station, the kindest ofsouls, a born charitable human creature, void of pride, near in all she--does and thinks to the Shaping Hand, why should her husband forsake heron the day of their nuptials. 

She is most gracious; the simplicity of an infant. Can you imagine thedoing of an injury by a man to a woman like her?'

Then it was that Gower screwed himself to say:

'Yes, I can imagine it, I'm doing it myself. I shall be doing it tillI've written a letter and paid a visit. '

He took a meditative stride or two in the room, thinking withoutrevulsion of the Countess Livia under a similitude of the bell of theplant henbane, and that his father had immunity from temptation becauseof the insensibility to beauty. Out of which he passed to the writing ofthe letter to Lord Fleetwood, informing his lordship that he intendedimmediately to deliver a message to the Marchioness of Arpington fromAdmiral Baldwin Fakenham, in relation to the Countess of Fleetwood. Aduty was easily done by Gower when he had surmounted the task ofconceiving his resolution to do it; and this task, involving an offenceto the Lady Livia and intrusion of his name on a nobleman's recollection, ranked next in severity to the chopping off of his fingers by a mansuspecting them of the bite of rabies. 

An interview with Lady Arpington was granted him the following day. 

She was a florid, aquiline, loud-voiced lady, evidently having no seatfor her wonderments, after his account of the origin of his acquaintancewith the admiral had quieted her suspicions. The world had only to standbeside her, and it would hear what she had heard. She rushed to theconclusion that Lord Fleetwood had married a person of no family. 

'Really, really, that young man's freaks appear designed for the expresspurpose of heightening our amazement!' she exclaimed. 'He won't easilyget beyond a wife in the east of London, at a shop; but there's noknowing. Any wish of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham's I hold sacred. At leastI can see for myself. You can't tell me more of the facts? If LordFleetwood's in town, I will call him here at once. I will drive down tothis address you give me. She is a civil person?'

'Her breeding is perfect, ' said Gower. 

'Perfect breeding, you say?' Lady Arpington was reduced to a murmur. She considered the speaker: his outlandish garb, his unprotesting self-possession. He spoke good English by habit, her ear told her. She wasof an eminence to judge of a man impartially, even to the sufferance ofan opinion from him, on a subject that lesser ladies would have denied tohis clothing. Outwardly simple, naturally frank, though a tangle of thecomplexities inwardly, he was a touchstone for true aristocracy, as thehumblest who bear the main elements of it must be. Certain humorousturns in his conversation won him an amicable smile when he bowed toleave: they were the needed finish of a favourable impression. 

One day later the earl arrived in town, read Gower Woodseer's briefwords, and received the consequently expected summons, couched in a greatlady's plain imperative. She was connected with his family on thepaternal side. 

He went obediently; not unwillingly, let the deputed historian of theMarriage, turning over documents, here say. He went to Lady Arpingtondisposed for marital humaneness and jog-trot harmony, by condescension;equivalent to a submitting to the drone of an incessant psalm at the drumof the ear. He was, in fact, rather more than inclined that way. Whenvery young, at the age of thirteen, a mood of religious fervour hadspiritualized the dulness of Protestant pew and pulpit for him. Anotherfit of it, in the Roman Catholic direction, had proposed, during hislatest dilemma, to relieve him of the burden of his pledged word. He hadplunged for a short space into the rapturous contemplation of a monasticlife--'the clean soul for the macerated flesh, ' as that fellow Woodseersaid once: and such as his friend, the Roman Catholic Lord Feltre, moodily talked of getting in his intervals. He had gone down to a youngand novel trial establishment of English penitents in the forest of aMidland county, and had watched and envied, and seen the escape from alifelong bondage to the 'beautiful Gorgon, ' under cover of a whiteflannel frock. The world pulled hard, and he gave his body into chainsof a woman, to redeem his word. 

But there was a plea on behalf of this woman. The life she offeredmight have psalmic iteration; the dead monotony of it in prospect did, nevertheless, exorcise a devil. Carinthia promised, it might seem tochase and keep the black beast out of him permanently, as she could, he now conceived: for since the day of the marriage with her, the devilinhabiting him had at least been easier, 'up in a corner. '

He held an individual memory of his bride, rose-veiled, secret to themboth, that made them one, by subduing him. For it was a charm; an actualfeminine, an unanticipated personal, charm; past reach of tongue to name, wordless in thought. There, among the folds of the incense vapours ofour heart's holy of holies, it hung; and it was rare, it was distinctiveof her, and alluring, if one consented to melt to it, and accepted forcompensation the exorcising of a devil. 

Oh, but no mere devil by title!--a very devil. It was alert and frisky, flushing, filling the thin cold idea of Henrietta at a thought; and inthe thought it made Carinthia's intimate charm appear as no better than athing to enrich a beggar, while he knew that kings could never commandthe charm. Not love, only the bathing in Henrietta's incomparable beautyand the desire to be, desire to have been, the casket of it, broke theworld to tempest and lightnings at a view of Henrietta the married woman--married to the brother of the woman calling him husband:--'It is myhusband. ' The young tyrant of wealth could have avowed that he did notlove Henrietta; but not the less was he in the swing of a whirlwind atthe hint of her loving the man she had married. Did she? It might betried. 

She? That Henrietta is one of the creatures who love pleasure, loveflattery, love their beauty: they cannot love a man. Or the love is aship that will not sail a sea. 

Now, if the fact were declared and attested, if her shallowness were seenproved, one might get free of the devil she plants in the breast. Absolutely to despise her would be release, and it would allow of histasting Carinthia's charm, reluctantly acknowledged; not 'money of thecountry' beside that golden Henrietta's. 

Yet who can say?--women are such deceptions. Often their fairest, apparently sweetest, when brought to the keenest of the tests, aregraceless; or worse, artificially consonant; in either instance barren ofthe poetic. Thousands of the confidently expectant among men have beenunbewitched; a lamentable process; and the grimly reticent and the loudlydiscursive are equally eloquent of the pretty general disillusion. Howthey loathe and tear the mask of the sham attraction that snatched themto the hag yoke, and fell away to show its grisly horrors within theround of the month, if not the second enumeration of twelve by the clock!Fleetwood had heard certain candid seniors talk, delivering their mindsin superior appreciation of unpretentious boor wenches, nature'sproducts, not esteemed by him. Well, of a truth, she--'Red Hair andRugged Brows, ' as the fellow Woodseer had called her, in alternation with'Mountain Face to Sun'--she at the unveiling was gentle, surpassingly;graceful in the furnace of the trial. She wore through the critic ordealhis burning sensitiveness to grace and delicacy cast about a woman, andwas rather better than not withered by it. 

On the borders between maidenly and wifely, she, a thing of flesh likeother daughters of earth, had impressed her sceptical lord, inclining tocontempt of her and detestation of his bargain, as a flitting hue, ethereal, a transfiguration of earthliness in the core of the earthlyfurnace. And how?--but that it must have been the naked shining forth ofher character, startled to show itself:--'It is my husband':--it musthave been love. 

The love that they versify, and strum on guitars, and go crazy over, andend by roaring at as the delusion; this common bloom of the ripeness of aseason; this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to vanquish himin his mastery, snare him in her surrender. It must have been theveritable passion: a flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in theyewwood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of veryfavourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night, -love wasthe explicable magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, shehad not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta, illuminedwith such a love, would outdo all legends, all dreams of the tale oflove. Would she? For credulous men she would be golden coin of thecurrency. She would not have a particular wild flavour: charm as of therunning doe that has taken a dart and rolls an eye to burst the hunter'sheart with pity. 

Fleetwood went his way to Lady Arpington almost complacently, havingfought and laid his wilder self. He might be likened to the doctor'spatient entering the chemist's shop, with a prescription for a drug ofhealing virtue, upon which the palate is as little consulted as arobustious lollypop boy in the household of ceremonial parents, who haverung for the troop of their orderly domestics to sit in a row and hearkenthe intonation of good words. 

CHAPTER XXII

A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY

The bow, the welcome, and the introductory remarks passed rapidly as thepull at two sides of a curtain opening on a scene that stiffenscourtliness to hard attention. 

After the names of Admiral Baldwin and 'the Mr. Woodseer, ' the name ofWhitechapel was mentioned by Lady Arpington. It might have been the nameof any other place. 

'Ah, so far, then, I have to instruct you, ' she said, observing the youngearl. 'I drove down there yesterday. I saw the lady calling herselfCountess of Fleetwood. By right? She was a Miss Kirby. '

'She has the right, ' Fleetwood said, standing well up out of a dischargeof musketry. 

'Marriage not contested. You knew of her being in that place?--I can'tdescribe it. '

'Your ladyship will pardon me?'

London's frontier of barbarism was named for him again, and in a tone topenetrate. 

He refrained from putting the question of how she had come there. 

As iron as he looked, he said: 'She stays there by choice. '

The great lady tapped her foot on the floor. 

'You are not acquainted with the district. '

'One of my men comes out of it. '

'The coming out of it ! . . . However, I understand her story, thatshe travelled from a village inn, where she had been left-withoutresources. She waited weeks; I forget how many. She has a descriptionof maid in attendance on her. She came to London to find her husband. You were at the mines, we heard. Her one desire is to meet her husband. But, goodness! Fleetwood, why do you frown? You acknowledge themarriage, she has the name of the church; she was married out of that oldLord Levellier's house. You drove her--I won't repeat the flightybusiness. You left her, and she did her best to follow you. Will theyoung men of our time not learn that life is no longer a game when theyhave a woman for partner in the match!

You don't complain of her flavour of a foreign manner? She can't be sovery . . . Admiral Baldwin's daughter has married her brother; and heis a military officer. She has germs of breeding, wants only a littlerub of the world to smooth her. Speak to the point:--do you meet herhere? Do you refuse?'

'At present? I do. '

'Something has to be done. '

'She was bound to stay where I left her. '

'You are bound to provide for her becomingly. '

'Provision shall be made, of course. '

'The story will . . . Unless--and quickly, too. '

I know, I know!'

Fleetwood had the clang of all the bells of London chiming Whitechapel athim in his head, and he betrayed the irritated tyrant ready to decreefire and sword, for the defence or solace of his tender sensibilities. 

The black flash flew. 

'It 's a thing to mend as well as one can, ' Lady Arpington said. 'I amnot inquisitive: you had your reasons or chose to act without any. Gether away from that place. She won't come to me unless it 's to meet herhusband. Ah, well, temper does not solve your problem; husband you are, if you married her. We'll leave the husband undiscussed: with thisreserve, that it seems to me men are now beginning to play themisunderstood. '

'I hope they know themselves better, ' said Fleetwood; and he begged forthe name and number of the house in the Whitechapel street, where she whowas discernibly his enemy, and the deadliest of enemies, had now herdwelling. 

Her immediate rush to that place, the fixing of herself there for anassault on him, was a move worthy the daughter of the rascal OldBuccaneer; it compelled to urgent measures. He, as he felt horribly inpencilling her address, acted under compulsion; and a woman prodded thegoad. Her mask of ingenuousness was flung away for a look of craft, which could be power; and with her changed aspect his tolerance changedto hatred. 

'A shop, ' Lady Arpington explained for his better direction: 'potatoes, vegetable stuff. Honest people, I am to believe. She is indifferent toher food, she says. She works, helping one of their ministers--one oftheir denominations: heaven knows what they call themselves! Anything toescape from the Church! She's likely to become a Methodist. With LordFeltre proselytizing for his Papist creed, Lord Pitscrew a declaredMohammedan, we shall have a pretty English aristocracy in time. Well, she may claim to belong to it now. She would not be persuaded againstvisitations to pestiferous hovels. What else is there to do in such aplace? She goes about catching diseases to avoid bilious melancholy inthe dark back room of a small greengrocer's shop in Whitechapel. There--you have the word for the Countess of Fleetwood's present address. '

It drenched him with ridicule. 

'I am indebted to your ladyship for the information, ' he said, andmaintained his rigidity. 

The great lady stiffened. 

'I am obliged to ask you whether you intend to act on it at once. Theadmiral has gone; I am in some sort deputed as a guardian to her, and Iwarn you--very well, very well. In your own interests, it will be. Ifshe is left there another two or three days, the name of the place willstick to her. '

'She has baptized herself with it already, I imagine, ' said Fleetwood. 'She will have Esslemont to live in. '

'There will be more than one to speak as to that. You should know her. '

'I do not know her. '

'You married her. '

'The circumstances are admitted. '

'If I may hazard a guess, she is unlikely to come to terms without aprevious interview. She is bent on meeting you. '

'I am to be subjected to further annoyance, or she will take the name ofthe place she at present inhabits, and bombard me with it. Those are theterms. '

'She has a brother living, I remind you. '

'State the deduction, if you please, my lady. '

'She is not of 'a totally inferior family. '

'She had a father famous over England as the Old Buccaneer, and is adiligent reader of his book of MAXIMS FOR MEN. '

'Dear me! Then Kirby--Captain Kirby! I remember. That's her origin, is it?' the great lady cried, illumined. 'My mother used to talk of theCressett scandal. Old Lady Arpington, too. At any rate, it ended intheir union--the formalities were properly respected, as soon as theycould be. '

'I am unaware. '

'I detest such a tone of speaking. Speaking as you do now--married tothe daughter? You are not yourself, Lord Fleetwood. '

'Quite, ma'am, let me assure you. Otherwise the Kirby-Cressetts would bedictating to me from the muzzle of one of the old rapscallion's Maxims. They will learn that I am myself. '

'You don't improve as you proceed. I tell you this, you'll not have mefor a friend. You have your troops of satellites; but take it as equalto a prophecy, you won't have London with you; and you'll hear of LordFleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess till your ears ache. '

The preluding box on them reddened him. 

'She will have the offer of Esslemont. '

'Undertake to persuade her in person. '

'I have spoken on that head. '

'Well, I may be mistaken, --I fancied it before I knew of the pair shesprings from: you won't get her consent to anything without yourconsenting to meet her. Surely it's the manlier way. It might besettled for to-morrow, here, in this room. She prays to meet you. '

With an indicated gesture of 'Save me from it, ' Fleetwood bowed. 

He left no friend thinking over the riddle of his conduct. She was aloud-voiced lady, given to strike out phrases. The 'WhitechapelCountess' of the wealthiest nobleman of his day was heard by her onLondon's wagging tongue. She considered also that he ought at least havepropitiated her; he was in the position requiring of him to do somethingof the kind, and he had shown instead the dogged pride which calls for awhip. Fool as he must have been to go and commit himself to marriagewith a girl of whom he knew nothing or little, the assumption of pridebelonged to the order of impudent disguises intolerable to behold andnot, in a modern manner, castigate. 

Notwithstanding a dislike of the Dowager Countess of Fleetwood, LadyArpington paid Livia an afternoon visit; and added thereby to the stockof her knowledge and the grounds of her disapprobation. 

Down in Whitechapel, it was known to the Winch girls and the Woodseersthat Captain Kirby and his wife had spent the bitterest of hours invainly striving to break their immoveable sister's will to remain there. 

At the tea-time of simple people, who make it a meal, Gower's appetitefor the home-made bread of Mary Jones was checked by the bearer of ashort note from Lord Fleetwood. The half-dozen lines were cordial, breathing of their walk in the Austrian highlands, and naming a renownedcity hotel for dinner that day, the hour seven, the reply yes or no bymessenger. 

'But we are man to man, so there's no "No" between us two, ' the notesaid, reviving a scene of rosy crag and pine forest, where there had beenphilosophical fun over the appropriate sexes of those our most importantfighting-ultimately, we will hope, to be united-syllables, and the whenfor men, the when for women, to select the one of them as their weapon. 

Under the circumstances, Gower thought such a piece of writing to himmagnanimous. 

'It may be the solution, ' his father remarked. 

Both had the desire; and Gower's reply was the yes, our brave male word, supposed to be not so compromising to men in the employment of it as aform of acquiescence rather than insistent pressure. 

CHAPTER XXIII

IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN

Right soon the London pot began to bubble. There was a marriage. 

'There are marriages by the thousand every day of the year that is notconsecrated to prayer for the forgiveness of our sins, ' the OldBuccaneer, writing it with simple intent, says, by way of preface to aseries of Maxims for men who contemplate acceptance of the yoke. 

This was a marriage high as the firmament over common occurrences, blackas Erebus to confound; it involved the wreck of expectations, disastrouseclipse of a sovereign luminary in the splendour of his rise, Phaethon'sdescent to the Shades through a smoking and a crackling world. Assertedhere, verified there, the rumour gathered volume, and from a serpent ofvapour resolved to sturdy concrete before it was tangible. Contradictionretired into corners, only to be swept out of them. For this marriage, abominable to hear of, was of so wonderful a sort, that the story filledthe mind, and the discrediting of the story threatened the great world'scranium with a vacuity yet more monstrously abominable. 

For he, the planet Croesus of his time, recently, scarce later than lastnight, a glorious object of the mid-heavens above the market, has beenenveloped, caught, gobbled up by one of the nameless little witchesriding after dusk the way of the wind on broomsticks-by one of them!She caught him like a fly in the hand off a pane of glass, gobbled himwith the customary facility of a pecking pullet. 

But was the planet Croesus of his time a young man to be so caught, sogobbled?

There is the mystery of it. On his coming of age, that young man gavesign of his having a city head. He put his guardians deliberately aside, had his lawyers and bailiffs and stewards thoroughly under control:managed a particularly difficult step-mother; escaped the snares of herlovely cousin; and drove his team of sycophants exactly the road he choseto go and no other. He had a will. 

The world accounted him wildish?

Always from his own offset, to his own ends. Never for another'sdictation or beguilement. Never for a woman. He was born with asuspicion of the sex. Poetry decorated women, he said, to lime anddrag men in the foulest ruts of prose. 

We are to believe he has been effectively captured?

It is positively a marriage; he admits it. 

Where celebrated?

There we are at hoodman-blind for the moment. Three counties claim thechurch; two ends of London. 

She is not a person of society, lineage?

Nor of beauty. She is a witch; ordinarily petticoated and not squeakinglike a shrew-mouse in her flights, but not a whit less a moon-shadewitch. The kind is famous. Fairy tales and terrible romances tell ofher; she is just as much at home in life, and springs usually from themire to enthral our knightliest. Is it a popular hero? She has him, sooner or later. A planet Croesus? He falls to her. 

That is, if his people fail to attach him in legal bonds to a damsel of acorresponding birth on the day when he is breeched. 

Small is her need to be young--especially if it is the man who is veryyoung. She is the created among women armed with the deadly instinct forthe motive force in men, and shameless to attract it. Self-respectingwomen treat men as their tamed housemates. She blows the horn of thewild old forest, irresistible to the animal. O the droop of the eyelids, the curve of a lip, the rustle of silks, the much heart, the neat ankle;and the sparkling agreement, the reserve--the motherly feminine petitionthat she may retain her own small petted babe of an opinion, legitimateor not, by permission of superior authority!--proof at once of herintelligence and her appreciativeness. Her infinitesimal spells areseen; yet, despite experience, the magnetism in their repulsive displayis barely apprehended by sedate observers until the astounding capture isproclaimed. It is visible enough then:--and O men! O morals! If shecan but trick the smallest bit in stooping, she has the pick of men. 

Our present sample shows her to be young: she is young and a foreigner. Mr. Chumley Potts vouches for it. Speaks foreign English. He thinks hermore ninny than knave: she is the tool of a wily plotter, picked up offthe highway road by Lord Fleetwood as soon as he had her in his eye. Sir Meeson Corby wrings his frilled hands to depict the horror of thehands of that tramp the young lord had her from. They afflict himmalariously still. The man, he says, the man as well was an infatuation, because he talks like a Dictionary Cheap Jack, and may have had aneducation and dropped into vagrancy, owing to indiscretions. LordFleetwood ran about in Germany repeating his remarks. But the man isreally an accomplished violinist, we hear. She dances the tambourinebusiness. A sister of the man, perhaps, if we must be charitable. Theyare, some say, a couple of Hungarian gypsies Lord F. Found at a show andbrought over to England, and soon had it on his conscience that he oughtto marry her, like the Quixote of honour that he is; which is equal tosaying crazy, as there is no doubt his mother was. 

The marriage is no longer disputable; poor Lady Fleetwood, whatever herfaults as a step-mother, does no longer deny the celebration of amarriage; though she might reasonably discredit any such story if he, on the evening of the date of the wedding day, was at a Ball, seen by herat the supper-table; though it is admitted he left the Ball-room atnight. But the next day he certainly was in his place among the Peersand voted against the Government, and then went down to his estates inWales, being an excellent holder of the reins, whether on the coach boxor over the cash box. 

More and more wonderful, we hear that he drove his bride straight fromthe church to the field of a prizefight, arranged for her specialdelectation. She doats on seeing blood-shed and drinking champagne. Young Mr. Mallard is our authority; and he says, she enjoyed it, andcheered the victor for being her husband's man. And after the shockingexhibition, good-bye; the Countess of Fleetwood was left sole occupant ofa wayside inn, and may have learnt in her solitude that she would havebeen wise to feign disgust; for men to the smallest degree cultivated areunable to pardon a want of delicacy in a woman who has chosen them, asthey are taught to think by their having chosen her. 

So talked, so twittered, piped and croaked the London world over theearly rumours of the marriage, this Amazing Marriage; which it got to becalled, from the number of items flocking to swell the wonder. 

Ravens ravening by night, poised peregrines by day, provision-merchantsfor the dispensing of dainty scraps to tickle the ears, to arm thetongues, to explode reputations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and scourgedboth innocence and naughtiness; innocence, on the whole, the least, whentheir withering suspicion of it had hunted the unhappy thing to the bankof Ophelia's ditch. Mallard and Chumley Potts, Captain Abrane, SirMeeson Corby, Lord Brailstone, were plucked at and rattled, put to theblush, by a pursuit of inquiries conducted with beaks. High-nosed dameswill surpass eminent judges in their temerity on the border-line whereAhem sounds the warning note to curtained decency. The courtly M. De St. Ombre had to stand confused. He, however, gave another version ofCaptain Abrane's 'fiddler, ' and precipitated the great ladies into thereflection, that French gentlemen, since the execrable French Revolution, have lost their proper sense of the distinctions of Class. Hommed'esprit, applied to a roving adventurer, a scarce other than vagabond, was either an undiscriminating epithet or else a further example of theFrench deficiency in humour. 

Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry has it from SirMeeson Corby, who had it from the poor dowager, that Lord Fleetwood hasinstalled the man in his house and sits at the opposite end of his table;fished him up from Whitechapel, where the countess is left servingoranges at a small fruit-shop. With her own eyes, Lady Arpington saw herthere; and she can't be got to leave the place unless her husband driveshis coach down to fetch her. That he declines to do; so she remains theWhitechapel Countess, all on her hind heels against the offer of ashilling of her husband's money, if she 's not to bring him to his knees;and goes about at night with a low Methodist singing hymns along thosedreadful streets, while Lord Fleetwood gives gorgeous entertainments. One signal from the man he has hired, and he stops drinking--he will stopspeaking as soon as the man's mouth is open. He is under a completefascination, attributable, some say, to passes of the hands, which theman won't wash lest he should weaken their influence. 

For it cannot be simply his violin playing. They say he was a pupil ofa master of the dark art in Germany, and can practise on us to make usthink his commonest utterances extraordinarily acute and precious. LordFleetwood runs round quoting him to everybody, quite ridiculously. Butthe man's influence is sufficient to induce his patron to drive down andfetch the Whitechapel Countess home in state, as she insists--if the manwishes it. Depend upon it he is the key of the mystery. 

Totally the contrary, Lady Arpington declares! the man is a learned man, formerly a Professor of English Literature in a German University, and noconnection of the Whitechapel Countess whatever, a chance acquaintance atthe most. He operates on Lord Fleetwood with doses of German philosophy;otherwise, a harmless creature; and has consented to wash and dress. Itis my lord who has had the chief influence. And the Countess Livia nowbacks him in maintaining that there is nowhere a more honest young man tobe found. She may have her reasons. 

As for the Whitechapel Countess . . . The whole story of the OldBuccaneer and Countess Fanny was retold, and it formed a terrific halo, presage of rains and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl hadincomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two had a son and a daughterborn aboard:--in wedlock, we trust. The girl may be as wild a one as themother. She has a will as determined as her husband's. She is offeredEsslemont, the earl's Kentish mansion, for a residence, and she will noneof it until she has him down in the east of London on his knees toentreat her. The injury was deep on one side or the other. It may bealmost surely prophesied that the two will never come together. Willeither of them deal the stroke for freedom? And which is the likelier?

Meanwhile Lord Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess composed the laughof London. Straightway Invention, the violent propagator, sprang fromhis shades at a call of the great world's appetite for more, and, rushingupon stationary Fact, supplied the required. Marvel upon marvel wasrecounted. The mixed origin of the singular issue could not be examined, where all was increasingly funny. 

Always the shout for more produced it. She and her band of Whitechapelboys were about in ambush to waylay the earl wherever he went. She stoodknocking at his door through a whole night. He dared not lug her beforea magistrate for fear of exposure. Once, riding in the park with a troopof friends he had a young woman pointed out to him, and her finger waslevelled, and she cried: 'There is the English nobleman who marries agirl and leaves her to go selling cabbages!'

He left town for the Island, and beheld his yacht sailing the Solent:--my lady the countess was on board! A pair of Tyrolese minstrels in thesquare kindled his enthusiasm at one of his dinners; he sent them asovereign; their humble, hearty thanks were returned to him in the nameof Die Grafin von Fleetwood. 

The Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry sifted their best. They let passincredible stories: among others, that she had sent cards to the nobilityand gentry of the West End of London, offering to deliver sacks ofpotatoes by newly-established donkey-cart at the doors of theirresidences, at so much per sack, bills quarterly; with the postscript, Vive L'aristocratie! Their informant had seen a card, and the stamp ofthe Fleetwood dragoncrest was on it. 

He has enemies, was variously said of the persecuted nobleman. But itwas nothing worse than the parasite that he had. This was the parasite'sgentle treason. He found it an easy road to humour; it pricked the slugfancy in him to stir and curl; gave him occasion to bundle and bustle hispatron kindly. Abrane, Potts, Mallard, and Sir Meeson Corby werepersonages during the town's excitement, besought for having something tosay. Petrels of the sea of tattle, they were buoyed by the hubbub theycreated, and felt the tipsy happiness of being certain to rouse the laughwherever they alighted. Sir Meeson Corby, important to himself in aneminent degree, enjoyed the novel sense of his importance with hisfellows. They crowded round the bore who had scattered them. 

He traced the miserable catastrophe in the earl's fortunes to the cunningof the rascal now sponging on Fleetwood and trying to dress like agentleman: a convicted tramp, elevated by the caprice of the youngnobleman he was plotting to ruin. Sir Meeson quoted Captain Abrane'slatest effort to hit the dirty object's name, by calling him 'Fleetwood'sMr. Woodlouse. ' And was the rascal a sorcerer? Sir Meeson spoke of himin the hearing of the Countess Livia, and she, previously echoing hisdisgust, corrected him sharply, and said: 'I begin to be of Russett'sopinion, that his fault is his honesty. ' The rascal had won or partlywon the empress of her sex! This Lady Livia, haughtiest and mostfastidious of our younger great dames, had become the indulgent critic ofthe tramp's borrowed plumes! Nay, she would not listen to a depreciatoryword on him from her cousin Henrietta Kirby-Levellier. 

Perhaps, after all, of all places for an encounter between the Earl ofFleetwood and the countess, those vulgar Gardens across the water, longsince abandoned by the Fashion, were the most suitable. Thither one fairJune night, for the sake of showing the dowager countess and herbeautiful cousin, the French nobleman, Sir Meeson Corby, and others, whatwere the pleasures of the London lower orders, my lord had the whim toconduct them, --merely a parade of observation once round;--the ladiesveiled, the gentlemen with sticks, and two servants following, one ofwhom, dressed in quiet black, like the peacefullest of parsons, was mylord's pugilist, Christopher Ives. 

Now, here we come to history: though you will remember what History is. 

The party walked round the Gardens unmolested nor have we grounds forsupposing they assumed airs of state in the style of a previousgeneration. Only, as it happened, a gentleman of the party was a wag; noless than the famous, well-seasoned John Rose Mackrell, bent on amusingMrs. Kirby-Levellier, to hear her lovely laughter; and his wit and hisanecdotes, both inexhaustible, proved, as he said, 'that a dried fish isno stale fish, and a smoky flavour to an old chimney story will oftenrender it more piquant to the taste than one jumping fresh off theincident. ' His exact meaning in 'smoky flavour' we are not to know; butwhether that M. De St. Ombre should witness the effect of English humourupon them, or that the ladies could permit themselves to laugh, theirvoices accompanied the gentlemen in silvery volleys. There had been'Mackrell' at Fleetwood's dinner-table; which was then a way of sayingthat dry throats made no count of the quantity of champagne imbibed, owing to the fits Rose Mackrell caused. However, there was loud laughteras they strolled, and it was noticed; and Fleetwood crying out, 'Mackrell! Mackrell!' in delighted repudiation of the wag's last sally, the cry of 'Hooray, Mackrell !' was caught up by the crowd. They werenot the primary offenders, for loud laughter in an isolated party is badbreeding; but they had not the plea of a copious dinner. 

So this affair began; inoffensively at the start, for my lord was good-humoured about it. 

Kit Ines, of the mercurial legs, must now give impromptu display of hisdancing. He seized a partner, in the manner of a Roman the Sabine, sureof pleasing his patron; and the maid, passing from surprise to merriment, entered the quadrille perforce, all giggles, not without emulation, forshe likewise had the passion for the dance. Whereby it befell that thepair footed in a way to gather observant spectators; and if it had notbeen that the man from whom the maid was willy-nilly snatched, conceivedresentment, things might have passed comfortably; for Kit's quips andcuts and high capers, and the Sunday gravity of the barge face while thelegs were at their impish trickery, double motion to the music, won thecrowd to cheer. They conjectured him to be a British sailor. But thedestituted man said, sailor or no sailor, --bos'en be hanged! he shouldpay for his whistle. 

Honourably at the close of the quadrille, Kit brought her back; none theworse for it, he boldly affirmed, and he thanked the man for the shortloan of her. --The man had an itch to strike. Choosing rather to bestruck first, he vented nasty remarks. My lord spoke to Kit and movedon. At the moment of the step, Rose Mackrell uttered something, awaggery of some sort, heard to be forgotten, but of such instantaneouseffect, that the prompt and immoderate laugh succeeding it mightreasonably be taken for a fling of scorn at himself, by an injured man. They were a party; he therefore proceeded to make one, appealing toEnglish sentiment and right feeling. The blameless and repentant maidplucked at his coat to keep him from dogging the heels of the gentlemen. Fun was promised; consequently the crowd waxed. 

'My lord, ' had been let fall by Kit Ines. Conjoined to 'Mackrell, ' itrang finely, and a trumpeting of 'Lord Mackrell' resounded. LordMackrell was asked for 'more capers and not so much sauce. ' Various fishtook part in his title of nobility. The wag Mackrell continuing to bediscreetly silent, and Kit Ines acting as a pacific rearguard, the crowdfell in love with their display of English humour, disposed to the surlysatisfaction of a big street dog that has been appeased by a smallerone's total cessation of growls. 

All might have gone well but for the sudden appearance of two figures ofyoung women on the scene. They fronted the advance of the procession. They wanted to have a word with Lord Mackrell. Not a bit of it--he won'tlisten, turns away; and one of the pair slips round him. It's regularimploring: 'my lord! my lord!'

O you naughty Surrey melodram villain of a Lord Mackrell! Listen to theyoung woman, you Mackrell, or you'll get Billingsgate! Here's Mr. Jig-and-Reel behind here, says she's done him! By Gosh! What's up now?

One of the young ladies of the party ahead had rushed up to the youngwoman dodging to stand in Lord Mackrell's way. The crowd pressed to see. Kit Ines and his mate shouldered them off. They performed an envelopmentof the gentlemen and ladies, including the two young women. Kit left hismate and ran to the young woman hitherto the quieter of the two. Herattled at her. But she had a tongue of her own and rattled it at him. What did she say?

Merely to hear, for no other reason, ' a peace-loving crowd of clerks andtradesmen, workmen and their girls, young aspirants to the professions, night-larks of different classes, both sexes, there in that place forsimple entertainment, animated simply by the spirit of English humour, contracted, so closing upon the Mackrell party as to seem threatening tothe most orderly and apprehensive member of it, who was the baronet, SirMeeson Corby. 

He was a man for the constables in town emergencies, and he shouted. 'Cock Robin crowing' provoked a jolly round of barking chaff. The noisein a dense ring drew Fleetwood's temper. He gave the word to Kit Ines, and immediately two men dropped; a dozen staggered unhit. The fistsworked right and left; such a clearing of ground was never seen forsickle or scythe. And it was taken respectfully; for Science proclaimedher venerable self in the style and the perfect sufficiency of thestrokes. A bruiser delivered them. No shame to back away before abruiser. There was rather an admiring envy of the party claiming thenimble champion on their side, until the very moderate lot of theMackrells went stepping forward along the strewn path with stickspointed. 

If they had walked it like gentlemen, they would have been allowed to getthrough. An aggressive minority, and with Cock Robin squealing forconstables in the midst, is that insolent upstart thing which howls tohave a lesson. The sticks were fallen on; bump came the mass. Kit Ineshad to fight his way back to his mate, and the couple scoured a clearishring, but the gentlemen were at short thrusts, affable in tone, to cheerthe spirits of the ladies:--'All right, my friend, you're a triflemistaken, it 's my stick, not yours. ' Therewith the wrestle for thestick. 

The one stick not pointed was wrenched from the grasp of Sir MeesonCorby; and by a woman, the young woman who had accosted my lord; not acommon young woman either, as she appeared when beseeching him. Herstature rose to battle heights: she made play with Sir Meeson Corby'sebony stick, using it in one hand as a dwarf quarterstaff to flail thesconces, then to dash the point at faces; and she being a woman, a girl, perhaps a lady, her cool warrior method of cleaving way, without so muchas tightening her lips, was found notable; and to this degree (vouchedfor by Rose Mackrell, who heard it), that a fellow, rubbing his head, cried: 'Damn it all, she's clever, though!' She took her station besideLord Fleetwood. 

He had been as cool as she, or almost. Now he was maddened; she defendedhim, she warded and thrust for him, only for him, to save him a touch;unasked, undesired, detested for the box on his ears of to-morrow'spublic mockery, as she would be, overwhelming him with ridicule. Haveyou seen the kick and tug at the straps of the mettled pony in stablesthat betrays the mishandling of him by his groom? Something so didFleetwood plunge and dart to be free of her, and his desperate soul criedout on her sticking to him like a plaster!

Welcome were the constables. His guineas winked at their chief, as fairwomen convey their meanings, with no motion of eyelids; and the officersof the law knew the voice habituated to command, and answered two wordsof his: 'Right, my lord, ' smelling my lord in the unerring manner ofthose days. My lord's party were escorted to the gates, not a littlejeered; though they by no means had the worst of the tussle. But thepuffing indignation of Sir Meesan Corby over his battered hat and tornfrill and buttons plucked from his coat, and his threat of themagistrates, excited the crowd to derisive yells. 

My lord spoke something to his man, handing his purse. 

The ladies were spared the hearing of bad language. They, according tothe joint testimony of M. De St. Ombre and Mr. Rose Mackrell, comportedthemselves throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race. Bothgentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown Britomart who had done suchgallant service with Sir Meeson's ebony wand. He was beginning to fussvociferously about the loss of the stick--a family stick, goldheaded, thefamily crest on it, priceless to the family--when Mrs. Kirby-Levellierhanded it to him inside the coach. 

'But where is she?' M. De St. Ombre said, and took the hint of Livia'stouch on his arm in the dark. 

At the silence following the question, Mr. Rose Mackrell murmured, 'Ah!'

He and the French gentleman understood that there might have been amanifestation of the notorious Whitechapel Countess. 

They were two; and a slower-witted third was travelling to his ideas onthe subject. Three men, witnesses of a remarkable incident in connectionwith a boiling topic of current scandal, --glaringly illustrative of it, moreover, --were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if they had beensworn to secresy. Fleetwood knew it, and he scorned to solicit them; anexaction of their idle vows would be merely the humiliation of himself. So he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as the ultraconvivial give thelast wink of reason to the wine-cup. Persecuted as he was, nothingremained for him but the nether-sublime of a statuesque desperation. 

That was his feeling; and his way of cloaking it under light sallies atSir Meeson and easy chat with Henrietta made it visible to her, from itsbeing the contrary of what the world might expect a proud young noblemanto exhibit. She pitied him: she had done him some wrong. She read intohim, too, as none else could. Seeing the solitary tortures behind thepleasant social mask, she was drawn to partake of them; and the maskseemed pathetic. She longed to speak a word in sympathy or relieve herbosom of tears. Carinthia had sunk herself, was unpardonable, hardlymentionable. Any of the tales told of her might be credited after this!The incorrigible cause of humiliation for everybody connected with herpictured, at a word of her name, the crowd pressing and the London worldacting audience. Livia spoke the name when they had reached their houseand were alone. Henrietta responded with the imperceptible shrug whichis more eloquent than a cry to tell of the most monstrous of loads. Mylord, it was thought by the ladies, had directed his man to convey hersafely to her chosen home, whence she might be expected very soon to beissuing and striking the gong of London again. 

CHAPTER XXIV

A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM

Ladies who have the pride of delicate breeding are not more than ratherviolently hurled back on the fortress it is, when one or other of thegross mishaps of circumstance may subject them to a shock: and thishappening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sustained by the withinand the without to keep a smooth countenance, however severe theiraffliction. Men of heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosionsshake them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the monstrous grotesqueof the scene at the Gardens, Livia and Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only, thefair cousins were unable to perceive a comic element in the scene: and ifthe world was for laughing, as their instant apprehension foresaw it, theworld was an ignoble beast. They did not discuss Carinthia's latestcraziness at night, hardly alluded to it while they were in theinterjectory state. 

Henrietta was Livia's guest, her husband having hurried away to Vienna:'To get money! money!' her angry bluntness explained his absence, anddealt its blow at the sudden astounding poverty into which they hadfallen. She was compelled to practise an excessive, an incredibleeconomy:--'think of the smallest trifles!' so that her Chillon travelledunaccompanied, they were separated. Her iterations upon money were thevile constraint of an awakened interest and wonderment at its powers. She, the romantic Riette, banner of chivalry, reader of poetry, struck aline between poor and rich in her talk of people, and classed herselfwith the fallen and pinched; she harped on her slender means, on theenforced calculations preceding purchases, on the living in lodgings;and that miserly Lord Levellier's indebtedness to Chillon--large sums!and Chillon's praiseworthy resolve to pay the creditors of her father'sestate; and of how he travelled like a common man, in consequence of themoney he had given Janey--weakly, for her obstinacy was past endurance;but her brother would not leave her penniless, and penniless she had beenfor weeks, because of her stubborn resistance to the earl--quiteunreasonably, whether right or wrong--in the foul retreat she had chosen;apparently with a notion that the horror of it was her vantage groundagainst him: and though a single sign of submission would place therichest purse in England at her disposal. 'She refuses Esslemont! Sheinsists on his meeting her! No child could be so witless. Let him bethe one chiefly or entirely to blame, she might show a little tact--forher brother's sake! She loves her brother? No: deaf to him, to me, toevery consideration except her blind will. '

Here was the skeleton of the love match, earlier than Livia had expected. 

It refreshed a phlegmatic lady's disposition for prophecy. Loversabruptly tossed between wind and wave may still be lovers, she knew: butthey are, or the weaker of the two is, hard upon any third person whotugs at them for subsistence or existence. The condition, if they aremuch beaten about, prepares true lovers, through their mutual tenderness, to be bitterly misanthropical. 

Livia supposed the novel economic pinches to be the cause of Henrietta'sunwonted harsh judgement of her sister-in-law's misconduct, or the crudeexpression of it. She could not guess that Carinthia's unhappiness inmarriage was a spectre over the married happiness of the pair fretted bythe conscience which told them they had come together by doing much tobring it to pass. Henrietta could see herself less the culprit when sheblamed Carinthia in another's hearing. 

After some repose, the cousins treated their horrible misadventure as apiece of history. Livia was cool; she had not a husband involved in it, as Henrietta had; and London's hoarse laugh surely coming on them, sparedher the dread Henrietta suffered, that Chillon would hear; the mostsensitive of men on any matter touching his family. 

'And now a sister added to the list! Will there be names, Livia?'

'The newspapers!' Livia's shoulders rose. 

'We ought to have sworn the gentlemen to silence. '

'M. De St. Ombre is a tomb until he writes his Memoirs. I hold SirMeeson under lock. But a spiced incident, a notorious couple, --ananecdotal witness to the scene, --could you expect Mr. Rose Mackrell tocontain it? The sacredest of oaths, my dear!'

That relentless force impelling an anecdotist to slaughter families forthe amusement of dinner-tables, was brought home to Henrietta by herprospect of being a victim; and Livia reminding her of the excessivelaughter at Rose Mackrell's anecdotes overnight, she bemoaned her havingconsented to go to those Gardens in mourning. 

'How could Janey possibly have heard of the project to go?

'You went to please Russett, he to please you, and that wild-cat toplease herself, ' said Livia. 'She haunts his door, I suppose, andfollows him, like a running footman. Every step she takes widens thebreach. He keeps his temper, yes, keeps his temper as he keeps his word, and one morning it breaks loose, and all that's done has to be undone. It will bemust. That extravaganza, as she is called, is fatal, dogs himwith burlesque--of all men!'

'Why not consent to meet her once, Chillon asks. '

'You are asking Russett to yield an inch on demand, and to a woman. '

'My husband would yield to a woman what he would refuse to all the men inEurope and America, ' said Henrietta; and she enjoyed her thrill ofallegiance to her chivalrous lord and courtier. 

'No very extraordinary specimen of a newly married man, who has won theBeauty of England and America for his wife-at some cost to some people, 'Livia rejoined. 

There came a moisture on the eyelashes of the emotional young woman, froma touch of compassion for the wealthy man who had wished to call herwife, and was condemned by her rejection of him to call another womanwife, to be wifeless in wedding her, despite his wealth. 

She thinks he loves her; it is pitiable, but she thinks it--after thetreatment she has had. She begs to see him once. '

'And subdue him with a fit of weeping, ' Livia was moved to say by sightof the tear she hated. 'It would harden Russett--on other eyes, too!Salt-water drops are like the forced agony scenes in a play: they bringdown the curtain, they don't win the critics. I heard her "my husband"and saw his face. '

'You didn't hear a whimper with it, ' Henrietta said. 'She's a mountaingirl, not your city madam on the boards. Chillon and I had her by eachhand, implored her to leave that impossible Whitechapel, and shetrembled, not a drop was shed by her. I can almost fancy privation andsqualor have no terrors for Janey. She sings to the people down there, nurses them. She might be occupying Esslemont--our dream of an Englishhome! She is the destruction of the idea of romantic in connection withthe name of marriage. I talk like a simpleton. Janey upsets us all. My lord was only--a little queer before he knew her: His Mr. Woodseer maybe encouraging her. You tell me the creature has a salary from him equalto your jointure. '

'Be civil to the man while it lasts, ' Livia said, attentive to adegradation of tone--in her cousin, formerly of supreme self-containment. 

The beautiful young woman was reminded of her holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that it was, and the meanness of thesatisfaction, darkened her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, on her husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for being reproved. Soshe plucked resolution to enjoy her holiday and forget the contrasts oflife-palaces running profusion, lodgings hammered by duns; the pinch ofpoverty distracting every simple look inside or out. There was no end toit; for her husband's chivalrous honour forced him to undertake thepayment of her father's heavy debts. He was right and admirable, itcould not be contested; but the prospect for them was a grinding gloom, an unrelieved drag, as of a coach at night on an interminable uphillflinty road. 

These were her sensations, and she found it diverting to be admired;admired by many while she knew herself to be absorbed in the possessionof her by one. It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. Shefelt she was really, had rapidly become, the young woman of the world, armed with a husband, to take the flatteries of men for the neededdiversion they brought. None moved her; none could come near to touchingthe happy insensibility of a wife who adored her husband, wrote to himdaily, thought of him by the minute. Her former worshippers werenumerous at Livia's receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and therest. Odd to reflect on--they were the insubstantial but coveted wealthof the woman fallen upon poverty, ignoble poverty! She could notdiscard her wealth. She wrote amusingly of them, and fully, vivaciousdescriptions, to Chillon; hardly so much writing to him as entering herheart's barred citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everythingthat befell about her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleetwood's kindness inproviding entertainments, her object was to mollify Chillon's anger insome degree. She was doing her utmost to gratify him, 'for the purposeof paving a way to plead Janey's case. ' She was almost persuadingherself she was enjoying the remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not, Livia's worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, 'who does as he wills withmy lord; directs his charities, his pleasures, his opinions, all becausehe is believed to have wonderful ideas and be wonderfully honest. 'Henrietta wrote: 'Situation unchanged. Janey still At that place'; andbefore the letter was posted, she and Livia had heard from Gower Woodseerof the reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood and her maid. Gower's father had walked up from Whitechapel, bearing news of it to theearl, she said. 

'And the earl is much disturbed?' was Livia's inquiry. 

'He has driven down with my father, ' Gower said carelessly, ambiguouslyin the sound. 

Troubled enough to desire the show of a corresponding trouble, Henriettaread at their faces. 

'May it not be--down there--a real danger?'

The drama, he could inform her, was only too naked down there fordisappearances to be common. 

'Will it be published that she is missing?'

'She has her maid with her, a stout-hearted girl. Both have courage. I don't think we need take measures just yet. '

'Not before it is public property?'

Henrietta could have bitten her tongue for laying her open to the censureimplied in his muteness. Janey perverted her. 

Women were an illegible manuscript, and ladies a closed book of thebinding, to this raw philosopher, or he would not so coldly have judgedthe young wife, anxious on her husband's account, that they might escapeanother scorching. He carried away his impression. 

Livia listened to a remark on his want of manners. 

'Russett puts it to the credit of his honesty, ' she said. 'Honesty iseverything with us at present. The man has made his honesty an excellentspeculation. He puts a piece on zero and the bank hands him a sackful. We may think we have won him to serve us, up comes his honesty. That'show we have Lady Arpington mixed in it--too long a tale. But be guidedby me; condescend a little. '

'My dear! my whole mind is upon that unhappy girl. It would breakChillon's heart. '

Livia pished. 'There are letters we read before we crack the seal. Sheis out of that ditch, and it suits Russett that she should be. He's notoften so patient. A woman foot to foot against his will--I see himthrowing high stakes. Tyrants are brutal; and really she provokes himenough. You needn't be alarmed about the treatment she 'll meet. Hewon't let her beat him, be sure. '

Neither Livia nor Gower wondered at the clearing of the mystery, beforeit went to swell the scandal. A young nobleman of ready power, quicktemper, few scruples, and a taxed forbearance, was not likely to standthwarted and goaded-and by a woman. Lord Fleetwood acted his part, inscrutable as the blank of a locked door. He could not conceal that hewas behind the door. 

CHAPTER XXV

THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION

Gower's bedroom window looked over the shrubs of the square, and as hisform of revolt from a city life was to be up and out with the sparrows inthe early flutter of morning, for a stretch of the legs where grass wasgreen and trees were not enclosed, he rarely saw a figure below when hestood dressing. Now there appeared a petticoated one stationary againstthe rails, with her face lifted. She fronted the house, and while hespeculated abstractedly, recognition rushed on him. He was down andacross the roadway at leaps. 

'It's Madge here!'

The girl panted for her voice. 

'Mr. Woodseer, I'm glad; I thought I should have to wait hours. She'ssafe. '

'Where?'

'Will you come, sir?'

'Step ahead. '

Madge set forth to north of the square. 

He judged of the well-favoured girl that she could steer her way throughcities: mouth and brows were a warning to challenger pirate craft of avessel carrying guns; and the red lips kept their firm line when theyyielded to the pressure for speech. 

'It's a distance. She's quite safe, no harm; she's a prisoner; she'swell fed; she's not ill treated. '

'You 're out?'

'That's as it happens. I'm lucky in seeing you early. He don't mean tohurt her; he won't be beaten. All she asks is ten minutes with him. Ifhe would!--he won't. She didn't mean to do him offence t' other night inthat place--you've heard. Kit Ines told me he was on duty there--going. She couldn't help speaking when she had eyes on her husband. She kissesthe ground of his footsoles, you may say, let him be ever so unkind. Sheand I were crossing to the corner of Roper Street a rainy night, on wayto Mile End, away down to one of your father's families, Mother Davis andher sick daughter and the little ones, and close under the public-houseGoat and Beard we were seized on and hustled into a covered carriage thatwas there, and they drove sharp. She 's not one to scream. We weren'tfrightened. We both made the same guess. They drove us to the house she's locked in, and me, too, up till three o'clock this morning. '

'You've seen nobody, Madge?'

'He 's fixed she 's to leave London, Mr. Woodseer. I've seen Kit Ines. And she 's to have one of the big houses to her use. I guessed Kit Ineswas his broom. He defends it because he has his money to make--and be adirty broom for a fortune! But any woman's sure of decent handling withKit Ines--not to speak of lady. He and a mate guard the house. An oldwoman cooks. '

'He guards the house, and he gave you a pass?'

'Not he. His pride's his obedience to his "paytron"--he calls hismaster, and won't hear that name abused. We are on the first floor; allthe lower doors are locked day and night. New Street, not muchneighbours; she wouldn't cry out of the window. She 's to be let free ifshe'll leave London. '

'You jumped it!'

'If I'd broke a leg, Mr. Kit Ines would have had to go to his drams. Itwasn't very high; and a flower-bed underneath. My mistress wanted to bethe one. She has to be careful. She taught me how to jump down not tohurt. She makes you feel you can do anything. I had a bother to get herto let me and be quiet herself. She's not one to put it upon others, you'll learn. When I was down I felt like a stick in the ground and sattill I had my feet, she at the window waiting; and I started for you. She kissed her hand. I was to come to you, and then your father, younowhere seen. I wasn't spoken to. I know empty London. '

'Kit Ines was left sleeping in the house?'

'Snoring, I dare say: He don't drink on duty. '

'He must be kept on duty. '

'Drink or that kind of duty, it's a poor choice. '

'You'll take him in charge, Madge. '

'I've got a mistress to look after. '

'You've warmed to her. '

'That's not new; Mr. Woodseer. I do trust you, and you his friend. Butyou are the minister's son, and any man not a great nobleman must havesome heart for her. You'll learn. He kills her so because she's fond ofhim--loves him, however he strikes. No, not like a dog, as men say ofus. She'd die for him this night, need were. Live with her, you won'tfind many men match her for brave; and she's good. My Sally calls her aBible saint. I could tell you stories of her goodness, short the timethough she's been down our way. And better there for her than at thatinn he left her at to pine and watch the Royal Sovereign come swing comesmirk in sailor blue and star to meet the rain--would make anybodydisrespect Royalty or else go mad! He's a great nobleman, he can't buywhat she's ready to give; and if he thinks he breaks her will now, it'sbecause she thinks she's obeying a higher than him, or no lord alive andKit Ines to back him 'd hold her. Women want a priest to speak to mencertain times. I wish I dared; we have to bite our tongues. He's masternow, but, as I believe God's above, if he plays her false, he's the oneto be brought to shame. I talk. '

'Talk on, Madge, ' said Gower, to whom the girl's short-syllabled run ofthe lips was a mountain rill compared with London park waters. 

'You won't let him hurry her off where she'll eat her heart for neverseeing him again? She prays to be near him, if she's not to see him. '

'She speaks in that way?'

'I get it by bits. I'm with her so, it's as good as if I was inside her. She can't obey when it goes the wrong way of her heart to him. '

'Love and wisdom won't pull together, and they part company for good atthe church door, ' said Gower. 'This matrimony's a bad business. '

Madge hummed a moan of assent. 'And my poor Sally 'll have to marry. I can't leave my mistress while she wants me, and Sally can't be alone. It seems we take a step and harm's done, though it's the right step wetake. '

'It seems to me you've engaged yourself to follow Sally's lead, Madge. '

'Girls' minds turn corners, Mr. Woodseer. '

He passed the remark. What it was that girls' minds occasionally orhabitually did, or whether they had minds to turn, or whether they tooktheir whims for minds, were untroubled questions with a young manstudying abstract and adoring surface nature too exclusively to be awareof the manifestation of her spirit in the flesh, as it is not revealed somuch by men. However, she had a voice and a face that led him to bethoughtful over her devotedness to her mistress, after nearly losing hercharacter for the prize-fighter, and he had to thank her for invigoratinghim. His disposition was to muse and fall slack, helpless to a friend. Here walked a creature exactly the contrary. He listened to the steps ofthe dissimilar pair on the detonating pavement, and eyed a church clockshining to the sun. 

She was sure of the direction: 'Out Camden way, where the murder was. '

They walked at a brisk pace, conversing or not. 

'Tired? You must be, ' he said. 

'Not when I'm hot to do a thing. '

'There's the word of the thoroughbred!'

'You don't tire, sir, ' said she. 'Sally and I see you stalking out forthe open country in the still of the morning. She thinks you look palefor want of food, and ought to have some one put a biscuit into yourpocket overnight. '

'Who'd have guessed I was under motherly observation!'

'You shouldn't go so long empty, if you listen to trainers. '

'Capital doctors, no doubt. But I get a fine appetite. '

'You may grind the edge too sharp. '

He was about to be astonished, and reflected that she had grounds for hersagacity. His next thought plunged him into contempt for Kit Ines, onaccount of the fellow's lapses to sottishness. But there would be nocontempt of Kit Ines in a tussle with him. Nor could one funk the tussleand play cur, if Kit's engaged young woman were looking on. We get toour courage or the show of it by queer screws. 

Contemplative over these matters, the philosopher transformed to man ofaction heard Madge say she read directions in London by churches, andpresently exclaiming disdainfully, and yet relieved, 'Spooner Villas, 'she turned down a row of small detached houses facing a brickfield, thathad just contributed to the erection of them, and threatened the big citywith further defacements. 

Madge pointed to the marks of her jump, deep in flower-bed earth under anopen window. 

Gower measured the height with sensational shanks. 

She smote at the door. Carinthia nodded from her window. Close uponthat, Kit Ines came bounding to the parlour window; he spied and stared. Gower was known to him as the earl's paymaster; so he went to the passageand flung the door open, blocking the way. 

'Any commands, your honour?'

'You bring the countess to my lord immediately, ' said Gower. 

Kit swallowed his mouthful of surprise in a second look at Madge and theploughed garden-bed beneath the chamber window. 

'Are the orders written, sir?'

'To me?--for me to deliver to you?--for you to do my lord's bidding?Where's your head?'

Kit's finger-nails travelled up to it. Madge pushed past him. She and her mistress, and Kit's mate, and the old woman receiving theword for a cup of tea, were soon in the passage. Kit's mate had a readyobedience for his pay, nothing else, --no counsel at all, not a suggestionto a head knocked to a pudding by Madge's jump and my lord's paymasterhere upon the scene. 

'My lady was to go down Wales way, sir. '

'That may be ordered after. '

'I 'm to take my lady to my lord?' and, 'Does it mean my lady wants afly?' Kit asked, and harked back on whether Madge had seen my lord. 

'At five in the morning?--don't sham donkey with me, ' said Gower. 

The business looked inclined to be leaky, but which the way for provinghimself other than a donkey puzzled Kit: so much so, that a shove madehim partly grateful. Madge's clever countermove had stunned hisjudgement. He was besides acting subordinate to his patron's paymaster;and by the luck of it, no voice of woman interposed. The countess andher maid stood by like a disinterested couple. Why be suspicious, if hewas to keep the countess, in sight? She was a nice lady, and hepreferred her good opinion. She was brave, and he did her homage. Itmight be, my lord had got himself round to the idea of thanking her forsaving his nob that night, and his way was to send and have her up, totell her he forgave her, after the style of lords. Gower pricked intohim by saying aside: 'Mad, I suppose, in case of a noise?' And he couldnot answer quite manfully, lost his eyes and coloured. Neighbours mighthave required an explanation of shrieks, he confessed. Men havesometimes to do nasty work for their patrons. 

They were afoot, walking at Carinthia's pace before half-past seven. She would not hear of any conveyance. She was cheerful, and, as it waspitiful to see, enjoyed her walk. Hearing of her brother's departure forthe Austrian capital, she sparkled. Her snatches of speech were shortflights out of the meditation possessing her. Gower noticed her easierEnglish, that came home to the perpetual student he was. She made use ofsome of his father's words, and had assimilated them mentally besidesappropriating them: the verbalizing of 'purpose, ' then peculiar to hisfather, for example. She said, in reply to a hint from him: 'If my lordwill allow me an interview, I purpose to be obedient. ' No one couldimagine of her that she spoke broken-spiritedly. Her obedience was to ahigher than a mortal lord: and Gower was touched to the quick through theuse of the word. 

Contrasting her with Countess Livia and her cousin, the earl might thinkher inferior on the one small, square compartment called by them theworld; but she carried the promise of growth, a character in expansion, and she had at least natural grace, a deerlike step. Although herpicturesqueness did not swarm on him with images illuminating night, subduing day, like the Countess Livia's, it was marked, it could towerand intermittently eclipse; and it was of the uplifting and healing kindby comparison, not a delicious balefulness. 

The bigger houses, larger shops, austere streets of private residences, were observed by the recent inhabitant of Whitechapel. 

'My lord lives in a square, ' she said. 

'We shall soon be there now, ' he encouraged her, doubtful though theissue appeared. 

'It is a summer morning for the Ortler, the Gross-Glockner, theVenediger, --all our Alps, Mr. Woodseer. '

'If we could fly!'

'We love them. '

'Why, then we beat a wing--yes. '

'For I have them when I want them to sight. It is the feet are sodesirous. I feel them so this morning, after prisonership. I could nothave been driven to my lord. '

'I know the feeling, ' said Gower; 'any movement of us not our ownimpulse, hurries the body and deadens the mind. And by the way, my dearlady, I spoke of the earl's commands to this man behind us walking withyour Madge. My father would accuse me of Jesuitry. Ines mentionedcommands, and I took advantage of it. '

'I feared, ' said Carinthia. 'I go for my chance. '

Gower had a thought of the smaller creature, greater by position, to whomshe was going for her chance. He alluded to his experience of the earl'skindness in relation to himself, from a belief in his 'honesty'; dottedoutlines of her husband's complex character, or unmixed and violentlyopposing elements. 

She remarked: 'I will try and learn. '

The name of the street of beautiful shops woke a happy smile on hermouth. 'Father talked of it; my mother, too. He has it written down inhis Book of Maxims. When I was a girl, I dreamed of one day walking upBond Street. '

They stepped from the pavement and crossed the roadway for a side-streetleading to the square. With the swift variation of her aspect at times, her tone changed. 

'We are near. My lord will not be troubled by me. He has only to meetme. There has been misunderstanding. I have vexed him; I could not helpit. I will go where he pleases after I have heard him give orders. Hethinks me a frightful woman. I am peaceful. '

Gower muttered her word 'misunderstanding. ' They were at the earl'shouse door. One tap at it, and the two applicants for admission wouldprobably be shot as far away from Lord Fleetwood as when they were on theStyrian heights last autumn. He delivered the tap, amused by the idea. It was like a summons to a genie of doubtful service. 

My lord was out riding in the park. 

Only the footman appeared at that early hour, and his countenance wasblank whitewash as he stood rigid against the wall for the lady to pass. Madge followed into the morning room; Ines remained in the hall, where hecould have the opening speech with his patron, and where he soon hadcommunication with the butler. 

This official entered presently to Gower, presenting a loaded forehead. A note addressed to Mrs. Kirby-Levellier at the Countess Livia's househard by was handed to him for instant despatch. He signified adeferential wish to speak. 

'You can speak in the presence of the Countess of Fleetwood, Mr. Waytes, 'Gower said. 

Waytes checked a bend of his shoulders. He had not a word, and he turnedto send the note. He was compelled to think that he saw a well-grownyoung woman in the Whitechapel Countess. 

Gower's note reached Henrietta on her descent to the breakfast-table. She was, alone, and thrown into a torture of perplexity: for she wantedadvice as to the advice to be given to Janey, and Livia was an utterlyunprofitable person to consult in the case. She thought of LadyArpington, not many doors distant. Drinking one hasty cup of tea, shesent for her bonnet, and hastened away to the great lady, whom she foundrising from breakfast with the marquis. 

Lady Arpington read Gower's note. She unburdened herself: 'Oh! So it 'sno longer a bachelor's household!'

Henrietta heaved the biggest of sighs. 'I fear the poor dear may havemade matters worse. '

To which Lady Arpington said: 'Worse or better, my child!' and shrugged;for the present situation strained to snapping. 

She proposed to go forthwith, and give what support she could to theCountess of Fleetwood. 

They descended the steps of the house to the garden and the Green Park'sgravel walk up to Piccadilly. There they had view of Lord Fleetwood onhorseback leisurely turning out of the main way's tide. They saw himalight at the mews. As they entered the square, he was met some doorsfrom the south corner by his good or evil genius, whose influence withhim came next after the marriage in the amazement it caused, and wasperhaps to be explained by it; for the wealthiest of young noblemenbestowing his name on an unknown girl, would be the one to make an absurdadventurer his intimate. Lord Fleetwood bent a listening head while Mr. Gower Woodseer, apparently a good genius for the moment, spoke at hisear. 

How do we understand laughter at such a communication as he must behearing from the man? Signs of a sharp laugh indicated either his cruellevity or that his presumptuous favourite trifled--and the man's talkcould be droll, Lady Arpington knew: it had, she recollected angrily, diverted her, and softened her to tolerate the intruder into regions fromwhich her class and her periods excluded the lowly born, except at thedinner-tables of stale politics and tattered scandal. Nevertheless, LordFleetwood mounted the steps to his house door, still listening. His'Asmodeus, ' on the tongue of the world, might be doing the part of Mentorreally. The house door stood open. 

Fleetwood said something to Gower; he swung round, beheld the ladies andadvanced to them, saluting. 'My dear Lady Arpington! quite so, youarrive opportunely. When the enemy occupies the citadel, it's proper tosurrender. Say, I beg, she can have the house, if she prefers it. Iwill fall back on Esslemont. Arrangements for her convenience will bemade. I thank you, by anticipation. '

His bow included Henrietta loosely. Lady Arpington had exclaimed:'Enemy, Fleetwood?' and Gower, in his ignorance of the smoothness ofaristocratic manners, expected a remonstrance; but Fleetwood was allowedto go on, with his air of steely geniality and a decision, that hisfriend imagined he could have broken down like an old partition boardunder the kick of a sarcasm sharpening an appeal. 

'Lord Fleetwood was on the point of going in, ' he assured the great lady. 

'Lord Fleetwood may regret his change of mind, ' said she. 'The Countessof Fleetwood will have my advice to keep her footing in this house. '

She and Henrietta sat alone with Carinthia for an hour. Coming forth, Lady Arpington ejaculated to herself: 'Villany somewhere!--You will dowell, Henrietta, to take up your quarters with her a day or two. She canhold her position a month. Longer is past possibility. '

A shudder of the repulsion from men crept over the younger lady. But shewas a warrior's daughter, and observed: 'My husband, her brother, will beback before the month ends. '

'No need for hostilities to lighten our darkness, ' Lady Arpingtonrejoined. 'You know her? trust her?'

'One cannot doubt her face. She is my husband's sister. Yes, I do trusther. I nail my flag to her cause. '

The flag was crimson, as it appeared on her cheeks; and that intimated afurther tale, though not of so dramatic an import as the cognizant shortsurvey of Carinthia had been. 

These young women, with the new complications obtruded by them, irritateda benevolent great governing lady, who had married off her daughters andembraced her grandchildren, comfortably finishing that chapter; andbeheld now the apparition of the sex's ancient tripping foe, whencircumstances in themselves were quite enough to contend against on theirbehalf. It seemed to say, that nature's most burdened weaker must alwaysbe beaten. Despite Henrietta's advocacy and Carinthia's clear face, itraised a spectral form of a suspicion, the more effective by reason ofthe much required justification it fetched from the shades to pleadapologies for Lord Fleetwood's erratic, if not mad, and in any case ugly, conduct. What otherwise could be his excuse? Such was his need of one, that the wife he crushed had to be proposed for sacrifice, in the mind ofa lady tending strongly to side with her and condemn her husband. 

Lady Arpington had counselled Carinthia to stay where she was, the Fateshaving brought her there. Henrietta was too generous to hesitate in herchoice between her husband's sister and the earl. She removed fromLivia's house to Lord Fleetwood's. My lord was at Esslemont two days;then established his quarters at Scrope's hotel, five minutes' walk fromthe wedded lady to whom the right to bear his title was granted, aninterview with him refused. Such a squaring for the battle of spouseshad never--or not in mighty London--been seen since that old fight began. 

CHAPTER XXVI

AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD

Dame Gossip at this present pass bursts to give us a review of the socialworld siding for the earl or for his countess; and her parrot cry of'John Rose Mackrell!' with her head's loose shake over the smack of herlap, to convey the contemporaneous tipsy relish of the rich good thingshe said on the subject of the contest, indicates the kind of interventionit would be. 

To save the story from having its vein tied, we may accept the reminder, that he was the countess's voluble advocate at a period when her friendswere shy to speak of her. After relating the Vauxhall Gardens episode inburlesque Homeric during the freshness of the scandal, Rose Mackrell'senthusiasm for the heroine of his humour set in. He tracked her to herparentage, which was new breath blown into the sunken tradition of someOld Buccaneer and his Countess Fanny: and, a turn of great good luckhelping him to a copy of the book of the MAXIMS FOR MEN, he would quotecertain of the racier ones, passages of Captain John Peter Kirby'spersonal adveres in various lands and waters illustrating the text, toprove that the old warrior acted by the rule of his recommendations. They had the repulsive attraction proper to rusty lumber swords andtruncehons that have tasted brains. They wove no mild sort of halo forthe head of a shillelagh-flourishing Whitechapel Countess descended fromthe writer and doer. 

People were willing to believe in her jump of thirty feet or more off asuburban house-top to escape durance, and her midnight storming of herlord's town house, and ousting of him to go find his quarters at Scrope'shotel. He, too, had his band of pugilists, as it was known; and he mighthave heightened a rageing scandal. The nobleman forbore. A woman's blowgracefully taken adds a score of inches to our stature, floor us as itmay: we win the world's after-thoughts. Rose Mackrell sketched theearl;--always alert, smart, quick to meet a combination and protect adignity never obtruded, and in spite of himself the laugh of the town. His humour flickered wildly round the ridiculous position of a prominentyoung nobleman, whose bearing and character were foreign to a position ofridicule. 

Nevertheless, the earl's figure continuing to be classic sculpture, itallied him with the aristocracy of martyrs, that burn and do not wince. He propitiated none, and as he could not but suffer shrewdly, he gainedesteem enough to shine through the woman's pitiless drenching of him. During his term at Scrope's hotel, the carousals there were quite old-century and matter of discourse. He had proved his return to sound sensein the dismissal of 'the fiddler, ' notoriously the woman's lieutenant, ormore; and nightly the revelry closed at the great gaming tables of St. James's Street, while Whitechapel held the coroneted square, well on herway to the Law courts, as Abrane and Potts reported; and positively so, 'clear case. ' That was the coming development and finale of theMarriage. London waited for it. 

A rich man's easy smile over losses at play, merely taught his emuloustroop to feel themselves poor devils in the pocket. But Fleetwood'scontempt of Sleep was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of aninferior vigour, hard for young men to admit by the example. He neverwent to bed. Issuing from Fortune's hall-doors in the bright, lively, summer morning, he mounted horse and was away to the hills. Or he tookthe arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, and walked with himfrom the green tables and the establishment's renowned dry still Silleryto a Papist chapel. As it was not known that he had given his word toabjure his religion, the pious gamblers did no worse than spread an alarmand quiet it, by the citation of his character for having a try ateverything. 

Henrietta despatched at this period the following letter to Chillon:

'I am with Livia to-morrow. Janey starts for Wales to-morrow morning, avoluntary exile. She pleaded to go back to that place where you had toleave her, promising she would not come Westward; but was persuaded. Lady Arpington approves. The situation was getting too terriblystrained. We met and passed my lord in the park. 

'He was walking his horse-elegant cavalier that he is: would not look onhis wife. A woman pulled by her collar should be passive; if she pullsher way, she is treated as a dog. I see nothing else in the intention ofpoor Janey's last offence to him. There is an opposite counsel, and hecan be eloquent, and he will be heard on her side. How could she managethe most wayward when she has not an idea of ordinary men! But, myhusband, they have our tie between them; it may move him. It subduesher--and nothing else would have done that. If she had been in England ayear before the marriage, she would, I think, have understood better howto guide her steps and her tongue for his good pleasure. She learnsdaily, very quickly: observes, assimilates; she reads and has hercomments--would have shot far ahead of your Riette, with my advantages. 

'Your uncle--but he will bear any charge on his conscience as long as hecan get the burden off his shoulders. Do not fret, my own! Reperuse theabove--you will see we have grounds for hope. 

'He should have looked down on her! No tears from her eyes, but her eyeswere tears. She does not rank among beautiful women. She has hermoments for outshining them--the loveliest of spectres! She caught at myheart. I cannot forget her face looking up for him to look down. Agreat painter would have reproduced it, a great poet have rendered theimpression. Nothing short of the greatest. That is odd to say of one sosimple as she. But when accidents call up her reserves, you see mountainheights where mists were--she is actually glorified. Her friend--I dobelieve a friend--the Mr. Woodseer you are to remember meeting somewhere--a sprained ankle--has a dozen similes ready for what she is when painor happiness vivify her. Or, it may be, tender charity. She says, thatif she feels for suffering people, it is because she is the child ofChillon's mother. In like manner Chillon is the son of Janey's father. 

'Mr. Woodseer came every other evening. Our only enlivenment. Liviafollowed her policy, in refusing to call. We lived luxuriously; nomoney, not enough for a box at the opera, though we yearned--you canimagine. Chapters of philosophy read out and expounded instead. Janeylikes them. He sets lessons to her queer maid--reading, writing, pronunciation of English. An inferior language to Welsh, for poeticalpurposes, we are informed. So Janey--determining to apply herself toWelsh, and a chameleon Riette dreading that she will be taking a contraryview of the honest souls--as she feels them to be--when again underLivia's shadow. 

'The message from Janey to Scrope's hotel was despatched half-an-hourafter we had driven in from the park; fruit of a brown meditation. Iwrote it--third person--a single sentence. Arrangements are made for herto travel comfortably. It is funny--the shops for her purchases ofclothes, necessaries, etc. , are specified; she may order to any extent. Not a shilling of money for her poor purse. What can be the secret ofthat? He does nothing without an object. To me, uniformly civil, noirony, few compliments. Livia writes, that I am commended for keepingJaney company. What can be the secret of a man scrupulously just withone hand, and at the same time cruel with the other? Mr. Woodseer says, his wealth:--"More money than is required for their needs, men go intoharness to Plutus, "--if that is clever. 

'I have written my husband--as Janey ceases to call her own; and it waspretty and touching to hear her "my husband. "--Oh! a dull letter. Buthe is my husband though he keeps absent--to be longed for--he is myhusband still, my husband always. Chillon is Henrietta's husband, theworld cries out, and when she is flattered she does the like, for then itis not too presumptuous that she should name Henrietta Chillon's wife. In my ears, husband has the sweeter sound. It brings an angel fromoverhead. Will it bring him one-half hour sooner? My love! My dear!If it did, I should be lisping "husband, husband, husband" from cock-crowto owl's cry. Livia thinks the word foolish, if not detestable. She andI have our different opinions. She is for luxury. I choose poverty andmy husband. Poverty has its beauty, if my husband is the sun of it. Elle radote. She would not have written so dull a letter to her husbandif she had been at the opera last night, or listened to a distant street-band. No more--the next line would be bleeding. He should have herblood too, if that were her husband's--it would never be; but if it werefor his good in the smallest way. Chillon's wish is to give his bloodfor them he loves. Never did woman try more to write worthily to herabsent lord and fall so miserably into the state of dripping babe frombath on nurse's knee. Cover me, my lord; and love, my cause for--no, myexcuse, my refuge from myself. We are one? Oh! we are one!--and wehave been separated eight and twenty days. 

 'HENRIETTA KIRBY-LEVELLIER. '

That was a letter for the husband and lover to receive in a foreign landand be warmed. 

The tidings of Carinthia washed him clean of the grimy district wherehis waxen sister had developed her stubborn insensibility;--resemblingcraziness, every perversion of the refinement demanded by youngEnglishmen of their ladies; and it pacified him with the belief that shewas now at rest, the disturbed history of their father and mother at restas well; his conscience in relation to the marriage likewise at rest. Chillon had a wife. Her writing of the welcome to poverty stirred hisknowledge of his wife's nature. Carinthia might bear it and harden toflint; Henrietta was a butterfly for the golden rays. His thoughts, allhis energies, were bent on the making of money to supply her need for thepleasure she flew in--a butterfly's grub without it. Accurately so didthe husband and lover read his wife--adoring her the more. 

Her letter's embracing close was costly to them. It hurried him to thecompromise of a debateable business, and he fell into the AustrianGovernment's terms for the payment of the inheritance from his father;calculating that--his sister's share deducted-money would be in hand topay pressing debts and enable Henrietta to live unworried by cares untilhe should have squeezed debts, long due and increasing, out of themiserly old lord, his uncle. A prospect of supplies for twelve months, counting the hack and carriage Henrietta had always been used to, seemedabout as far as it was required to look by the husband hastening homewardto his wife's call. Her letter was a call in the night. Besides, therewere his yet untried Inventions. The new gunpowder testing at Croridgepromised to provide Henrietta with many of the luxuries she could havehad, and had abandoned for his sake. The new blasting powder and adestructive shell might build her the palace she deserved. His unclewas, no doubt, his partner. If, however, the profits were divided, sufficient wealth was assured. But his uncle remained a dubious image. The husband and lover could enfold no positive prospect to suit hiswife's tastes beyond the twelve months. 

We have Dame Gossip upon us. 

--One minute let mention be of the excitement over Protestant Englandwhen that rumour disseminated, telling of her wealthiest nobleman's visitto a monastery, up in the peaks and snows; and of his dwelling among themonks, and assisting in all their services day and night, hymning andchanting, uttering not one word for one whole week: his Papisticalfriend, Lord Feltre, with him, of course, after Jesuit arts had alluredhim to that place of torrents and lightnings and canticles and demonechoes, all as though expressly contrived for the horrifying of sinnersinto penitence and confession and the monkish cowl up to life's end, notto speak of the abjuration of worldly possessions and donation of theminto the keeping of the shaven brothers; when either they would havesettled a band of them here in our very midst, or they would haveimpoverished--is not too strong a word--the country by taking the money'sworth of the mines, estates, mansions, freehold streets and squares ofour metropolis out of it without scruple; rejoicing so to bleed theProtestant faith. Underrate it now--then it was a truly justifiableanxiety: insomuch that you heard people of station, eminent titledpersons, asking, like the commonest low Radicals, whether it was prudentlegislation to permit of the inheritance of such vast wealth by a youngman, little more than a boy, and noted for freaks. And some declared itcould not be allowed for foreign monks to have a claim to inherit Englishproperty. There was a general consent, that if the Earl of Fleetwoodwent to the extreme of making over his property to those monks, he shouldbe pronounced insane and incapable. Ultimately the world was a littlepacified by hearing that a portion of it was entailed, Esslemont and theWelsh mines. 

So it might be; but what if he had no child! The marriage amazingeverybody scarcely promised fruit, it was thought. Countess Livia, muchbesought for her opinion, scouted the possibility. And Carinthia Janewas proclaimed by John Rose Mackrell (to his dying day the poor gentlemantried vainly to get the second syllable of his name accentuated) a youngwoman who would outlive twice over the husband she had. He said of hisname, it was destined to pass him down a dead fish in the nose ofposterity, and would affect his best jokes; which something has done, orthe present generation has lost the sense of genuine humour. 

Thanks to him, the talk of the Whitechapel Countess again sprang up, merrily as ever; and after her having become, as he said, 'a desiccatedcelebrity, ' she outdid cabinet ministers and naughty wives for a livingmorsel in the world's mouth. She was denounced by the patriotic party asthe cause of the earl's dalliance with Rome. 

The earl, you are to know, was then coasting along the Mediterranean, onboard his beautiful schooner yacht, with his Lord Feltre, bound to makean inspection of Syrian monasteries, and forget, if he could, the face ofall faces, another's possession by the law. 

Those two lords, shut up together in a yacht, were advised by theirsituation to be bosom friends, and they quarrelled violently, and werereconciled, and they quarrelled again; they were explosive chemicals;until the touch of dry land relieved them of what they really fancied thespell of the Fiend. For their argumentative topic during confinement wasWoman, when it was not Theology; and even off a yacht, those are subjectsto kindle the utmost hatred of dissension, if men are not perfectlyconcordant. They agreed upon land to banish any talk of Women orTheology, where it would have been comparatively innocent; so they bothdesiring to be doing the thing they had sworn they would not do, thethoughts of both were fastened on one or the other interdicted subject. They hardly spoke; they perceived in their longing minds, that theimagined spell of, the Fiend was indeed the bile of the sea, secretedthickly for want of exercise, and they both regretted the days and nightsof their angry controversies; unfit pilgrims of the Holy Land, theyowned. 

To such effect, Lord Fleetwood wrote to Gower Woodseer, as though therehad been no breach between them, from Jerusalem, expressing the wish tohear his cool wood-notes of the philosophy of Life, fresh drawn fromNature's breast; and urgent for an answer, to be addressed to his hotelat Southampton, that he might be greeted on his return home first by his'friend Gower. '

He wrote in the month of January. His arrival at Southampton was on thethirteenth day of March; and there he opened a letter some weeks old, thebearer of news which ought by rights to make husbands proudly happy. 

CHAPTER XXVII

WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM

Fleetwood had dropped his friend Lord Feltre at Ancona; his good fortunewas to be alone when the clang of bells rang through his head in thereading of Gower's lines. Other letters were opened: from the CountessLivia, from Lady Arpington, from Captain Kirby-Levellier. There was onefrom his lawyers, informing him of their receipt of a communication datedSouth Wales, December 11th, and signed Owain Wythan; to the effect, thatthe birth of a son to the Earl of Fleetwood was registered on the day ofthe date, with a copy of the document forwarded. 

Livia scornfully stated the tattling world's 'latest. ' The captain wasas brief, in ordinary words, whose quick run to the stop could be takenfor a challenge of the eye. It stamped the adversary's frown onFleetwood reading. Lady Arpington was more politic; she wrote of'a healthy boy, ' and 'the healthy mother giving him breast, ' this being'the way for the rearing of strong men. ' She condescended to theparticulars, that she might touch him. 

The earl had not been so reared: his mother was not the healthy mother. One of his multitudinous, shifty, but ineradicable ambitions was toexhibit an excellingly vigorous, tireless constitution. He rememberedthe needed refreshment of the sea-breezes aboard his yacht during theweek following the sleep-discarded nights at Scrope's and the greentables. For a week he hung to the smell of brine, in rapturous amitywith Feltre, until they yellowed, differed, wrangled, hated. 

A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings out of Wales. Gower, good fellow, had gone down to see the young mother three weeks after thebirth of her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She hadproduced the boy in the world's early manner, lightly, without any of thetragic modern hovering over death to give the life. Gower compared it toa 'flush of the vernal orchard after a day's drink of sunlight. ' Thatwas well: that was how it should be. One loathes the idea of torturedwomen. 

The good fellow was perhaps absurdly poetical. Still we must have poetryto hallow this and other forms of energy: or say, if you like, the rightview of them impels to poetry. Otherwise we are in the breeding yards, among the litters and the farrows. It is a question of looking down orlooking up. If we are poor creatures--as we are if we do but feast andgamble and beget--we shall run for a time with the dogs and come to thefinish of swine. Better say, life is holy! Why, then have we to thankher who teaches it. 

He gazed at the string of visions of the woman naming him husband, makinghim a father: the imagined Carinthia--beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus;the Carinthia of the precipice tree-shoot; Carinthia of the ducaldancing-hall; and she at the altar rails; she on the coach box; shealternately softest of brides, doughtiest of Amazons. A mate for thecaress, an electrical heroine, fronted him. 

Yes, and she was Lord Fleetwood's wife, cracking sconces, --a demoiselleMoll Flanders, --the world's Whitechapel Countess out for an airing, infernally earnest about it, madly ludicrous; the schemer to catch hisword, the petticoated Shylock to bind him to the letter of it; nowpersecuting, haunting him, now immoveable for obstinacy; malignant tostay down in those vile slums and direct tons of sooty waters on his headfrom its mains in the sight of London, causing the least histrionic ofmen to behave as an actor. He beheld her a skull with a lamp behind theeyeholes. 

But this woman was the woman who made him a father; she was the mother ofthe heir of the House; and the boy she clasped and suckled as her boy washis boy. They met inseparably in that new life. 

Truly, there could not be a woman of flesh so near to a likeness with thebeatific image of Feltre's worshipped Madonna!

The thought sparkled and darkened in Fleetwood's mind, as a star passinginto cloud. For an uproarious world claimed the woman, jeered at allallied with her; at her husband most, of course:--the punctilious noodle!the golden jackass, tethered and goaded! He had choice among the pick ofwomen: the daughter of the Old Buccaneer was preferred by the wiseacreCoelebs. She tricked him cunningly and struck a tremendous return blowin producing her male infant. 

By the way, was she actually born in wedlock? Lord Levellier'sassurances regarding her origin were, by the calculation, a miser'sshuffles to clinch his bargain. Assuming the representative of holymotherhood to be a woman of illegitimate birth, the history of the Houseto which the spotted woman gave an heir would suffer a jolt when touchingon her. And altogether the history fumed rank vapours. Imagine her boyin his father's name a young collegian! No commonly sensitive lad couldbear the gibes of the fellows raking at antecedents: Fleetwood would bethe name to start roars. Smarting for his name, the earl chafed at theboy's mother. Her production of a man-child was the further and grosseroffence. 

The world sat on him. His confession to some degree of weakness, even tofolly, stung his pride of individuality so that he had to soothe the painby tearing himself from a thought of his folly's partner, shuttinghimself up and away from her. Then there was a cessation of annoyance, flatteringly agreeable: which can come to us only of our having done theright thing, young men will think. He felt at once warmly with theworld, enjoyed the world's kind shelter, and in return for its eulogy ofhis unprecedented attachment to the pledge of his word, admitted anunderstanding of its laughter at the burlesque edition of a noble lady inthe person of the Whitechapel Countess. The world sat on him heavily. 

He recurred to Gower Woodseer's letter. 

The pictures and images in it were not the principal matter, --theimpression had been deep. A plain transcription of the young mother'sacts and words did more to portray her: the reader could supplyreflections. 

Would her boy's father be very pleased to see him? she had asked. 

And she spoke of a fear that the father would try to take her boy fromher. 

'Never that--you have my word!' Fleetwood said; and he noddedconsentingly over her next remark

'Not while I live, till he must go to school!'

The stubborn wife would be the last of women to sit and weep as a rifledmother. 

A child of the Countess Carinthia (he phrased it) would not be deficientin will, nor would the youngster lack bravery. 

For his part, comparison rushing at him and searching him, he owned thathe leaned on pride. To think that he did, became a theme for pride. Themother had the primitive virtues, the father the developed: he was thericher mine. And besides, he was he, the unriddled, complex, individualhe; she was the plain barbarian survival, good for giving her offspringbone, muscle, stout heart. 

Shape the hypothesis of a fairer woman the mother of the heir to theearldom. 

Henrietta was analyzed in a glimpse. Courage, animal healthfulness, she, too, might--her husband not obstructing--transmit; and good looks, eyesof the sapphire AEgean. And therewith such pliability as the Mother ofLove requires of her servants. 

Could that woman resist seductions?

Fleetwood's wrath with her for refusing him and inducing him in spite topledge his word elsewhere, haphazard, pricked a curiosity to know whetherthe woman could be--and easily! easily! he wagered--led to make herconduct warrant for his contempt of her. Led, --that is, misled, youmight say, if you were pleading for a doll. But it was necessary to baitthe pleasures for the woman, in order to have full view of the preciousfine fate one has escaped. Also to get well rid of a sort of hectic inthe blood, which the woman's beauty has cast on that reflecting tide: afever-sign, where the fever has become quite emotionless and is merelydesirous for the stain of it to be washed out. As this is not the desireto possess or even to taste, contempt will do it. When we know that theweaver of the fascinations is purchasable, we toss her to the marketwhere men buy; and we walk released from vile subjection to one of thefemale heap: subjection no longer, doubtless, and yet a stain of the pastflush, often colouring our reveries, creating active phantasms of apassion absolutely extinct, if it ever was the veritable passion. 

The plot--formless plot--to get release by the sacrifice or at least acrucial temptation of the woman, that should wash his blood clean of herimage, had a shade of the devilish, he acknowledged; and the apologyoffered no improvement of its aspect. She might come out of the trialtriumphant. And benefit for himself, even a small privilege, even thepressure of her hand, he not only shrank from the thought of winning, -heloathed the thought. He was too delicate over the idea of the marriedwoman whom he fancied he loved in her maidenhood. Others might press herhand, lead her the dance: he simply wanted his release. She had set himon fire; he conceived a method for trampling the remaining sparks anderasing stain and scars; that was all. Henrietta rejected her wealthysuitor: she might some day hence be seen crawling abjectly to wealth, glad of a drink from the cup it holds, intoxicated with the draught. An injured pride could animate his wealth to crave solace of such aspectacle. 

Devilish, if you like. He had expiated the wickedness in Cistercianseclusion. His wife now drove him to sin again. 

She had given him a son. That fluted of home and honourable life. She had her charm, known to him alone. 

But how, supposing she did not rub him to bristle with fresh irritations, how go to his wife while Henrietta held her throne? Consideration wasdue to her until she stumbled. Enough if she wavered. Almost enough isshe stood firm as a statue in the winds, and proved that the first pageof her was a false introduction. The surprising apparition of abeautiful woman with character; a lightly-thrilled, pleasure-loving womandevoted to her husband or protected by her rightful self-esteem, wouldloosen him creditably. It had to be witnessed, for faith in it. Hereverenced our legendary good women, and he bowed to noble deeds; and heascribed the former to poetical creativeness, the latter operated as ascourging to his flesh to yield its demoniacal inmates. Nothing of thekind was doing at present. 

Or stay: a studious re-perusal of Gower Woodseer's letter enriched alittle incident. Fleetwood gave his wife her name of Carinthia when hehad read deliberately and caught the scene. 

Mrs. Wythan down in Wales related it to Gower. Carinthia and Madge, trudging over the treeless hills, came on a birchen clump round a deephollow or gullypit; precipitous, the earl knew, he had peeped over theedge in his infant days. There at the bottom, in a foot or so of water, they espied a lamb; and they rescued the poor beastie by going down toit, one or both. It must have been the mountain-footed one. A man wouldhesitate, spying below. Fleetwood wondered how she had managed to climbup, and carrying the lamb! Down pitches Madge Winch to help--they did itbetween them. We who stand aloof admire stupidly. To defend himselffrom admiring, he condemned the two women for the risk they ran to save aprobably broken-legged little beast: and he escaped the melting mood byforcing a sneer at the sort of stuff out of which popular ballads arewoven. Carinthia was accused of letting her adventurous impulses andsentimental female compassion swamp thought of a mother's duties. Ifboth those women had broken their legs the child might have cried itselfinto fits for the mother, there she would have remained. 

Gower wrote in a language transparent of the act, addressed to a readerwhose memory was to be impregnated. His reader would have flown awayfrom the simple occurrence on arabesques and modulated tones; and thenenvisaging them critically, would have tossed his poor little story tothe winds, as a small thing magnified: with an object, being the nextthought about it. He knew his Fleetwood so far. 

His letter concluded: 'I am in a small Surrey village over a baker'sshop, rent eight shillings per week, a dame's infant school opposite mywindow, miles of firwood, heath, and bracken openings, for the winged orthe nested fancies. Love Nature, she makes you a lord of her boundless, off any ten square feet of common earth. I go through my illusions andcome always back on that good truth. It says, beware of the world'spassion for flavours and spices. Much tasted, they turn and bite thebiter. My exemplars are the lately breeched youngsters with two pence intheir pockets for the gingerbread-nut booth on a fair day. I learn morefrom one of them than you can from the whole cavalcade of your attendantIxionides. '

Mounting the box of his coach for the drive to London, Fleetwood had thenew name for the parasitic and sham vital troop at his ears. 

'My Ixionides!' he repeated, and did not scorn them so much as herejoiced to be enlightened by the title. He craved the presence of themagician who dropped illumination with a single word; wholesomer to thinkof than the whole body of those Ixionides--not bad fellows, here andthere, he reflected, tolerantly, half laughing at some of their clownishfun. Gower Woodseer and he had not quarrelled? No, they had merelyparted at one of the crossways. The plebeian could teach that son ofthe, genuflexions, Lord Feltre, a lesson in manners. Woodseer was thebetter comrade and director of routes. Into the forest, up on theheights; and free, not locked; and not parroting day and night, but quickfor all that the world has learnt and can tell, though two-thirds of itbe composed of Ixionides: that way lies wisdom, and his index was cutthat way. 

Arrived in town, he ran over the headings of his letters, in no degreeanxious for a communication from Wales. There was none. Why none?

She might as well have scrawled her announcement of an event pleasing toher, and, by the calculation, important to him, if not particularlyinteresting. The mother's wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been testedin a furnace. He smarted at the blank of any, of even two or threeformal words. She sulked? 'I am not a fallen lamb!' he said. Evidentlyone had to be a shivering beast in trouble, to excite her to move a hand. 

Through so slight a fissure as this piece of discontent cracked in him, the crowd of his grievances with the woman rushed pell-mell, delugingyoung shoots of sweeter feelings. She sulked! If that woman could notget the command, he was to know her incapable of submission. Afterbesmutting the name she had filched from him, she let him understand thatthere was no intention to repent. Possibly she meant war. In which casea man must fly, or stand assailed by the most intolerable of vulgarfarces;--to be compared to a pelting of one on the stage. 

The time came for him to knock at doors and face his public. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS AVERTED

Livia welcomed him, with commiserating inquiry behind her languideyelids. 'You have all the latest?' it said. 

He struck on the burning matter. 

'You wish to know the part you have to play, ma'am. ' 'Tell me, Russett. '

'You will contradict nothing. '

Her eyebrows asked, 'It means?'

'You have authority from me to admit the facts. '

'They are facts?' she remarked. 

'Women love teasing round certain facts, apparently; like the Law courtsover their pet cases. '

'But, Russett, will you listen?'

'Has the luck been civil of late?'

'I think of something else at present. No, it has not. '

'Abrane?'

'Pray, attend to me. No, not Abrane. '

'I believe you've all been cleared out in my absence. St. Ombre?'

Her complexion varied. 'Mr. Ambrose Mallard has once or twice . . . But let me beg you--the town is rageing with it. My dear Russett, a boldfront now; there 's the chance of your release in view. '

'A rascal in view! Name the sum. '

'I must reckon. My head is--can you intend to submit?'

'So it's Brosey Mallard now. You choose your deputy queerly. He's asbad as Abrane, with steam to it. Chummy Potts would have done better. '

'He wins one night; loses every pound-note he has the next; and comesvaunting--the "dry still Sillery" of the establishment, --a perpetualchorus to his losses!'

'His consolation to you for yours. That is the gentleman. Chummydoesn't change. Say, why not St. Ombre? He's cool. '

'There are reasons. '

'Let them rest. And I have my reasons. Do the same for them. '

'Yours concern the honour of the family. '

'Deeply: respect them. '

'Your relatives have to be thought of, though they are few and not toopleasant. '

'If I had thought much of them, what would our relations be? They objectto dicing, and I to leading strings. '

She turned to a brighter subject, of no visible connection with thepreceding. 

'Henrietta comes in May. '

'The month of her colours. '

'Her money troubles are terrible. '

'Both of you appear unlucky in your partners, --if winning was the object. She shall have all the distractions we can offer. '

'Your visit to the Chartreuse alarmed her. '

'She has rejoiced her husband. '

'A girl. She feared the Jesuit in your friend. '

'Feltre and she are about equally affected by music. They shall meet. '

'Russett, this once: I do entreat you to take counsel with your goodsense, and remember that you stand where you are by going against myadvice. It is a perfect storm over London. The world has not to beinformed of your generosity; but a chivalry that invites the mosthorrible of sneers at a man! And what can I say? I have said it wasimpossible. '

'Add the postscript: you find it was perfectly possible. '

'I have to learn more than I care to hear. '

'Your knowledge is not in request: you will speak in my name. '

'Will you consult your lawyers, Russett, before you commit yourself?'

'I am on my way to Lady Arpington. '

'You cannot be thinking how serious it is. '

'I rather value the opinion of a hard-headed woman of the world. '

'Why not listen to me?'

'You have your points, ma'am. '

'She's a torch. '

'She serves my purpose. '

Livia shrugged sadly. 'I suppose it serves your purpose to beunintelligible to me. '

He rendered himself intelligible immediately by saying, 'Before I go--a thousand?'

'Oh, my dear Russett!' she sighed. 

'State the amount. '

She seemed to be casting unwieldly figures and he helped her with, 'Mr. Isaacs?'

'Not less than three, I fear. '

'Has he been pressing?'

'You are always good to us, Russett. '

'You are always considerate for the honour of the family, ma'am. Orderfor the money with you here to-morrow. And I thank you for your advice. Do me the favour to follow mine. 

'Commands should be the word. '

'Phrase it as you please. '

'You know I hate responsibility. '

'The chorus in classical dramas had generally that sentiment, but thesinging was the sweeter for it. '

'Whom do you not win when you condescend to the mood, you dear boy?'

He restrained a bitter reply, touching the kind of persons he had won: agirl from the mountains, a philosophical tramp of the roads, troops ofthe bought. 

Livia spelt at the problem he was. She put away the task of reading it. He departed to see Lady Arpington, and thereby rivet his chains. 

As Livia had said, she was a torch. Lady Endor, Lady Eldritch, LadyCowry, kindled at her. Again there were flights of the burning brandsover London. The very odd marriage; the no-marriage; the two-ends-of-the-town marriage; and the maiden marriage a fruitful marriage; themonstrous marriage of the countess productive in banishment, and theunreadable earl accepting paternity; this Amazing Marriage was again theriddle in the cracker for tattlers and gapers. It rattled upon theworld's native wantonness, the world's acquired decorum: society'sirrepressible original and its powerfully resisting second nature. Allthe rogues of the fine sphere ran about with it, male and female; andthere was the narrative that suggestively skipped, and that which trodthe minuet measure, dropping a curtsey to ravenous curiosity; the apologysurrendering its defensible cause in supplications to benevolence; andthe benevolence damnatory in a too eloquent urgency; followed by thedevout objection to a breath of the subject, so blackening it as to callforth the profanely circumstantial exposition. Smirks, blushes, deadsilences, and in the lower regions roars, hung round it. 

But the lady, though absent, did not figure poorly at all. GrantingWhitechapel and the shillelagh affair, certain whispers of her goodlooks, contested only to be the more violently asserted; and therewithRose Mackrell's tale of her being a 'young woman of birth, ' having a'romantic story to tell of herself and her parentage, ' made her latestperformance the champagne event of it hitherto. Men sparkled when theyhad it on their lips. 

How, then, London asked, would the Earl of Fleetwood move his pieces inreply to his countess's particularly clever indication of the checkthreatening mate?

His move had no relation to the game, it was thought at first. The worldcould not suppose that he moved a simple pawn on his marriage board. Hepurchased a shop in Piccadilly for the sale of fruit and flowers. 

Lady Arpington was entreated to deal at the shop, Countess Livia had herorders; his friends, his parasites and satellites, were to deal there. Intensely earnest as usual, he besought great ladies to let him have theoverflow of their hothouses; and they classing it as another of themystifications of a purse crazy for repleteness, inquired: 'But is it youwe are to deal with?' And he quite seriously said: 'With me, yes, atpresent. ' Something was behind the curtain, of course. His gravity hadthe effect of the ultra-comical in concealing it. 

The shop was opened. We have the assurance of Rose Mackrell, that heentered and examined the piles and pans of fruit, and the bouquetscunningly arranged by a hand smelling French. The shop was roomy, splendid windows lighted the yellow, the golden, the green and parti-coloured stores. Four doors off, a chemist's motley in bellied glassescrashed on the sight. Passengers along the pavement had presented tothem such a contrast as might be shown if we could imagine the Letheanferry-boatload brought sharp against Pomona's lapful. In addition to theplucked flowers and fruits of the shop, Rose Mackrell more attentivelyexamined the samples doing service at the counters. They were three, under supervision of a watchful-eyed fourth. Dame Gossip is for quotinghis wit. But the conclusion he reached, after quitting the shop andpacing his dozen steps, is important; for it sent a wind over the town toset the springs of tattle going as wildly as when the herald's trumpetblew the announcement for the world to hear out of Wales. 

He had observed, that the young woman supervising was deficient in theease of an established superior; her brows were troubled; she was, therefore, a lieutenant elevated from a lower grade; and, to histhinking, conducted the business during the temporary retirement of themistress of the shop. 

And the mistress of the shop?

The question hardly needs be put. 

Rose Mackrell or his humour answered it in unfaltering terms. 

London heard, with the variety of feelings which are indistinguishableunder a flooding amazement, that the beautiful new fruit and flower shophad been purchased and stocked by the fabulously wealthy young Earl ofFleetwood, to give his Whitechapel Countess a taste for business, anoccupation, and an honourable means of livelihood. 

There was, Dame Gossip thumps to say, a general belief in this report. Crowds were on the pavement, peering through the shop-windows. Carriagesdriving by stopped to look. My lord himself had been visible, displayinghis array of provisions to friends. Nor was credulity damped appreciablywhen over the shop, in gold letters, appeared the name of Sarah Winch. It might be the countess's maiden name, if she really was a marriedcountess. 

But, in truth, the better informed of the town, having begun to think itsCroesus capable of any eccentricity, chose to believe. They were at thepitch of excitement which demands and will swallow a succession of wilderextravagances. To accelerate the delirium of the fun, nothing was toomuch, because any absurdity was anticipated. And the earl's readiness tobe complimented on the shop's particular merits, his gratified air at anallusion to it, whirled the fun faster. He seemed entirely unconsciousthat each step he now took wakened peals. 

For such is the fate of a man who has come to be dogged by the humouristfor the provision he furnishes; and, as it happens, he is the morelaughable if not in himself a laughable object. The earl's handsomefigure, fine style, and contrasting sobriety heightened the burlesque ofhis call to admiration of a shop where Whitechapel would sit in state-according to the fiction so closely under the lee of fact that they werenot strictly divisible. Moreover, Sarah Winch, whom Chumley Potts drewinto conversation, said, he vowed, she came up West from Whitechapel. She said it a little nervously, but without blushing. Always on the sideof the joke, he could ask: 'Who can doubt?' Indeed, scepticism poisonedthe sport. 

The Old Buccaneer has written: Friends may laugh; I am not roused. Myenemy's laugh is a bugle blown in the night. 

Our enemy's laugh at us rouses to wariness, he would say. He can barelymean, that a condition of drowsihead is other than providently warned bylaughter of friends. An old warrior's tough fibre would, perhaps, beinsensible to that small crackle. In civil life, however, the friend'slaugh at us is the loudest of the danger signals to stop our course: andthe very wealthy nobleman, who is known for not a fool, is kept fromhearing it. Unless he does hear it, he can have no suspicion of itsbeing about him: he cannot imagine such 'lese-majeste' in the subservientcourtiers too prudent to betray a sign. So Fleetwood was unwarned; andhis child-like unconsciousness of the boiling sentiments around, seasoned, pricked, and maddened his parasites under compression toinvent, for a faint relief. He had his title for them, they their talesof him. 

Dame Gossip would recount the tales. She is of the order of personsinclining to suspect the tittle of truth in prodigies of scandal. She isrustling and bustling to us of 'Carinthia Jane's run up to London to seeSarah Winch's grand new shop, ' an eclipse of all existing grand Londonwestern shops; and of Rose Mackrell's account of her dance of prouddelight in the shop, ending with a 'lovely cheese' just as my lordenters; and then a scene, wild beyond any conceivable 'for pathos andhumour'--her pet pair of the dissimilar twins, both banging at us fortear-drops by different roads, through a common aperture:--and the earlhas the Whitechapel baby boy plumped into his arms; and the countessfetches him a splendid bob-dip and rises out of a second cheese to twirland fandango it; and, all serious on a sudden, request, whimperinglybeseech, his thanks to her for the crowing successor she has presentedhim with: my lord ultimately, but carefully, depositing the infant on abasket of the last oranges of the season, fresh from the Azores, bydelivery off my lord's own schooner-yacht in Southampton water; andescaping, leaving his gold-headed stick behind him--a trophy for thecountess? a weapon, it may be. 

Quick she tucks up her skirts, she is after him. Dame Gossip speaksamusingly enough of the chase, and many eye-witnesses to the earl'sflight at top speed down the right side of the way along by the GreenPark; and of a Prince of the Blood, a portly Royal Duke on foot, bumpedby one or the other of them, she cannot precisely say which, but 'thinksit to have been Carinthia Jane, ' because the exalted personage, his shockof surprise abating, turned and watched the chase, in much merriment. And it was called, we are informed, 'The Piccadilly Hare and Hound' fromthat day. 

Some tradition of an extenuated nobleman pursued by a light-footed ladyamid great excitement, there is; the Dame attaches importance also toverses of one of the ballads beginning to gain currency at the time(issuing ostensibly from London's poetic centre, the Seven Dials, whichhad, we are to conjecture, got the story by discolouring filtrationthrough footmen retailing in public-houses the stock of anecdotes theygathered when stationed behind Rose Mackrell's chair, or CaptainAbrane's, or Chumley 'Potts's), and would have the whole of it quoted:--

 "'Tho' fair I be a powdered peruke, And once was a gaping silly, Your Whitechapel Countess will prove, Lord Duke, She's a regular tiger-lily. She'll fight you with cold steel or she'll run you off your legs Down the length of Piccadilly!"

That will satisfy; and perhaps indicate the hand. 

'Popular sympathy, of course, was all on the side of the Fair, as ever inthose days when women had not forfeited it by stepping from theirsanctuary seclusion. '

The Dame shall expose her confusions. She really would seem to fancythat the ballad verifies the main lines of the story, which is animpossible one. Carinthia had not the means to travel: she wasmoneyless. Every bill of her establishment was paid without stint by Mr. Howell Edwards, the earl's manager of mines; but she had not even themeans for a journey to the Gowerland rocks she longed to see. She hadnone since she forced her brother to take the half of her share of theirinheritance, L1400, and sent him the remainder. 

Accepted by Chillon John as a loan, says Dame Gossip, and no soonerreceived than consumed by the pressing necessities of a husband with theRose Beauty of England to support in the comforts and luxuries he deemedbefitting. 

Still the Dame leans to her opinion that 'Carinthia Jane' may have beenseen about London: for 'where we have much smoke there must be fire. 'And the countess never denying an imputation not brought against her inher hearing, the ballad was unchallenged and London's wags had it theirown way. Among the reasons why they so persistently hunted the earl, his air of a smart correctness shadowed by this new absurdity invitedthem, as when a spot of mud on the trimmest of countenances arrestsobservation: Humour plucked at him the more for the good faith of hishandsome look under the prolific little disfigurement. Besides, awealthy despot, with no conception of any hum around him, will have thewags in his track as surely as the flexibles in front: they avenge hisexactions. 

Fleetwood was honestly unaware of ridicule in the condition of inventivemania at his heels. Scheming, and hesitating to do, one-half of his mindwas absorbed with the problem of how now to treat the mother of his boy. Her behaviour in becoming a mother was acknowledged to be good: theproduction of a boy was good--considerate, he almost thought. He grewso far reconciled to her as to have intimations of a softness coming on;a wish to hear her speak of the trifling kindness done to. The sister ofMadge in reward of kindness done to her; wishes for looks he remembered, secret to him, more his own than any possessions. Dozens of men hadwealth, some had beautiful wives; none could claim as his own that faceof the look of sharp steel melting into the bridal flower, when shesprang from her bed to defend herself and recognized the intruder at herwindow; stood smitten:--'It is my, husband. ' Moonlight gave thevariation of her features. 

And that did not appease the resentment tearing him from her, sojustifiable then, as he forced himself to think, now hideous. Glimpsesof the pictures his deeds painted of him since his first meeting withthis woman had to be shunned. He threw them off; they were set down tothe mystery men are. The degrading, utterly different, back view of themteaches that Life is an irony. If the teaching is not accepted, and weare to take the blame, can we bear to live? Therefore, either way theirony of Life is proved. Young men straining at thought, in the grip oftheir sensations, reach this logical conclusion. They will not begin byexamining the ground they stand on, and questioning whether they haveconsciences at peace with the steps to rearward. 

Having established Life as the coldly malignant element, which induces towhat it chastises, a loathing of womanhood, the deputed Mother of Life, ensues, by natural sequence. And if there be one among women whodisturbs the serenity we choose to think our due, she wears for us thesinister aspect of a confidential messenger between Nemesis and theParcae. Fleetwood was thus compelled to regard Carinthia as bothoriginally and successively the cause of his internal as well as hisexterior discomfort; otherwise those glimpses would have burnt intoperpetual stigmas. He had also to get his mind away from her. Theypleaded against him volubly with the rising of her image into it. 

His manager at the mines had sent word of ominous discontent down there. His presence might be required. Obviously, then, the threatened placewas unfitting for the Countess of Fleetwood. He despatched a kind oforder through Mr. Howell Edwards, that she should remove to Esslemont toescape annoyances. Esslemont was the preferable residence. She couldthere entertain her friends, could spend a pleasanter time there. 

He waited for the reply; Edwards deferred it. 

Were they to be in a struggle with her obstinate will once more?

Henrietta was preparing to leave London for her dismal, narrow, and, after an absence, desired love-nest. The earl called to say farewell, cool as a loyal wife could wish him to be, admiring perforce. Marriageand maternity withdrew nothing--added to the fair young woman's bloom. 

She had gone to her room to pack and dress. Livia received him. In themidst of the casual commonplaces her memory was enlightened. 

'Oh, ' said she, and idly drew a letter out of a blottingpad, 'we haveheard from Wales. ' She handed it to him. 

Before he knew the thing he did, he was reading:

'There is no rest foamy brother, and I cannot help; I am kept so poor Ihave not the smallest of sums. I do not wish to leave Wales--the peoplebegin to love me; and can one be mistaken? I know if I am loved orhated. But if my lord will give me an allowance of money of somehundreds, I will do his bidding; I will leave England or I will go toEsslemont; I could say--to Mr. Woodseer, in that part of London. Hewould not permit. He thinks me blacked by it, like a sweepboy comingfrom a chimney; and that I have done injury to his title. No, Riette, tobe a true sister, I must bargain with my lord before I submit. He hasnot cared to come and see his little son. His boy has not offended him. There may be some of me in this dear. I know whose features will soonshow to defend the mother's good name. He is early my champion. He isnot christened yet, and I hear it accuse me, and I am not to blame, --Istill wait my lord's answer. '

'Don't be bothered to read the whole, ' Livia had said, with her hand out, when his eyes were halfway down the page. 

Fleetwood turned it, to read the signature: 'Janey. '

She seemed servile enough to some of her friends. 'Carinthia' would havehad--a pleasanter sound. He folded the letter. 

'Why give me this? Take it, '--said he. 

She laid it on the open pad. 

Henrietta entered and had it restored to her, Livia remarking: 'I foundit in the blotter after all. '

She left them together, having to dress for the drive to the coach officewith Henrietta. 

'Poor amusement for you this time. ' Fleetwood bowed, gently smiling. 

'Oh!' cried Henrietta, 'balls, routs, dinners, music--as much music as Icould desire, even I! What more could be asked? I am eternallygrateful. '

'The world says, you are more beautiful than ever. '

'Happiness does it, then, --happiness owing to you, Lord Fleetwood. '

'Columelli pleases you?'

'His voice is heavenly! He carries me away from earth. '

'He is a gentleman, too-rare with those fellows. '

'A pretty manner. He will speak his compliments in his English. '

'You are seasoned to endure them in all languages. Pity another of yourwounded: Brailstone has been hard hit at the tables. 

'I cannot pity gamblers. --May I venture?--half a word?'

'Tomes! But just a little compassion for the devoted. He wouldn't playso madly--if, well, say a tenth dilution of the rapt hearing Columelligets. '

'Signor Columelli sings divinely. '

'You don't dislike Brailstone?'

'He is one of the agreeable. '

'He must put his feelings into Italian song!'

'To put them aside will do. '

'We are not to have our feelings?'

'Yes, on the proviso that ours are respected. But, one instant, LordFleetwood, pray. She is--I have to speak of her as my sister. I am sureshe regrets . . . She writes very nicely. '

'You have a letter from her?'

Henrietta sighed that it would not bear exposure to him: 'Yes. '

'Nicely worded?'

'Well, yes, it is. '

He paused, not expecting that the letter would be shown, but silencefired shots, and he had stopped the petition. 'We are to have you for aweek's yachting. You prescribe your company. Only be merciful. Exclusion will mean death to some. Columelli will be touring inSwitzerland. You shall have him in the house when my new bit of groundNorthwest of London is open: very handy, ten miles out. We'll have theOpera troupe there, and you shall command the Opera. '

Her beauty sweetened to thank him. 

If, as Livia said, his passion for her was unchanged, the generositymanifested in the considerate screen it wore over any physical betrayalof it, deserved the lustre of her eyes. It dwelt a moment, vivid withthe heart close behind and remorseful for misreading of old his finecharacter. Here was a young man who could be the very kindest of friendsto the woman rejecting him to wed another. Her smile wavered. How shalla loving wife express warmth of sentiment elsewhere, without the one beamtoo much, that plunges her on a tideway? His claim of nothing called foreverything short of the proscribed. She gave him her beauty in fullestflower. 

It had the appearance of a temptation; and he was not tempted, though headmired; his thought being, Husband of the thing!

But he admired. That condition awakened his unsatisfied past days todesire positive proof of her worthlessness. The past days writhed inhim. The present were loveless, entirely cold. He had not even thewish to press her hand. The market held beautiful women of a likedescription. He wished simply to see her proved the thing he read herto be: and not proved as such by himself. He was unable to summon orimagine emotion enough for him to simulate the forms by which fair womenare wooed to their perdition. For all he cared, any man on earth mighttry, succeed or fail, as long as he had visual assurance that shecoveted, a slave to the pleasures commanded by the wealth once disdainedby her. Till that time, he could not feel himself perfectly free. 

Dame Gossip prefers to ejaculate. Young men are mysteries! and bowl usonward. No one ever did comprehend the Earl of Fleetwood, she says: hewas bad, he was good; he was whimsical and stedfast; a splendid figure, amark for ridicule; romantic and a close arithmetician; often a devil, sometimes the humanest of creatures. 

In fine, he was a millionaire nobleman, owning to a considerable infusionof Welsh blood in the composition of him. Now, to the Cymry and to thepure Kelt, the past is at their elbows continually. The past of theirlives has lost neither face nor voice behind the shroud; nor are thepassions of the flesh, nor is the animate soul, wanting to it. Otherraces forfeit infancy, forfeit youth and manhood with their progressionto the wisdom age may bestow. These have each stage always alive, quickat a word, a scent, a sound, to conjure up scenes, in spirit and inflame. Historically, they still march with Cadwallader, with Llewellyn, with Glendower; sing with Aneurin, Taliesin, old Llywarch: individually, they are in the heart of the injury done them thirty years back orthrilling to the glorious deed which strikes an empty buckler for most ofthe sons of Time. An old sea rises in them, rolling no phantom billowsto break to spray against existing rocks of the shore. That is why, andeven if they have a dose of the Teuton in them, they have often to feelthemselves exiles when still in amicable community among thepreponderating Saxon English. 

Add to the single differentiation enormous wealth--we convulse theexcellent Dame by terming it a chained hurricane, to launch in foulblasts or beneficent showers, according to the moods during youth--andthe composite Lord Fleetwood comes nearer into our focus. Dame Gossip, with her jigging to be at the butterwoman's trot, when she is notviolently interrupting, would suffer just punishment were we to digressupon the morality of a young man's legal possession of enormous wealth aswell. 

Wholly Cambrian Fleetwood was not. But he had to the full the Cambrian'sreverential esteem for high qualities. His good-bye with Henrietta, andestimate of her, left a dusky mental, void requiring an orb of some sortfor contemplation; and an idea of the totally contrary Carinthia, thewoman he had avowedly wedded, usurped her place. Qualities wereadmitted. She was thrust away because she had offended: still morebecause he had offended. She bore the blame for forcing him to anexamination of his conduct at this point and that, where an ancestralsavage in his lineaments cocked a strange eye. Yet at the moment of theact of the deed he had known himself the veritable Fleetwood. He had nowto vindicate himself by extinguishing her under the load of herunwomanliness: she was like sun-dried linen matched beside oriental silk:she was rough, crisp, unyielding. That was now the capital charge. Henrietta could never be guilty of the unfeminine. Which did he prefer?

It is of all questions the one causing young men to screw wry faces whenthey are asked; they do so love the feminine, the ultra-feminine, whomthey hate for her inclination to the frail. His depths were sounded, andhe answered independently of his will, that he must be up to the heroicalpitch to decide. Carinthia stood near him then. The confession was astep, and fraught with consequences. Her unacknowledged influenceexpedited him to Sarah Winch's shop, for sight of one of earth's honestsouls; from whom he had the latest of the two others down in Wales, andof an infant there. 

He dined the host of his Ixionides, leaving them early for a drive atnight Eastward, and a chat with old Mr. Woodseer over his punching andsewing of his bootleather. Another honest soul. Mr. Woodseer thankfullyconsented to mount his coach-box next day, and astonish Gower with a dropon his head from the skies about the time of the mid-day meal. 

There we have our peep into Dame Gossip's young man mysterious. 

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Always the shout for more produced it ("News")Anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusementCall of the great world's appetite for more (Invented news)Enemy's laugh is a bugle blown in the nightHe wants the whip; ought to have had it regularlyMagnificent in generosity; he had little humanenessShe was thrust away because because he had offendedWomen treat men as their tamed housemates

[The End]

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