The Amazing Marriage — Volume 5 (2024)

THE AMAZING MARRIAGE

By George Meredith

1895

BOOK 5.

XXXIX. THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOURXL. A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTSXLI. IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE REFUGES FROM THEMXLII. THE RETARDED COURTSHIPXLIII. ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCEXLIV. BETWEEN THE EARL; THE COUNTESS AND HER BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER CROSSXLV. CONTAINS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS FEARED, WHAT WAS HOPED, AND WHAT HAPPENEDXLVI. A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE FLASHESXLVII. THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR

Desiring loneliness or else Lord Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to granta deferred audience at home to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy abouthaving the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished complete andhabitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory orders that theplace should be both habitable and hospitable. They were right, theywere excused; grand entertainments of London had been projected, and hefell into the weariful business with them, thinking of Henrietta'sinsatiable appetite for the pleasures. He had taken the lease of thisburdensome Calesford, at an eight-miles' drive from the Northwest oftown, to gratify the devouring woman's taste which was, to have all theluxuries of the town in a framework of country scenery.

Gower Woodseer and he were dining together in the evening. Thecirc*mstance was just endurable, but Gower would play the secretary,and doggedly subjected him to hear a statement of the woeful plight ofCountess Livia's affairs. Gower, commissioned to examine them, remarked:'If we have all the figures!'

'If we could stop the bleeding!' Fleetwood replied. 'Come to the Operato-night; I promised. I promised Abrane for to-morrow. There's no endto it. This gambling mania's a flux. Not one of them except your oldenemy, Corby, keeps clear of it; and they're at him for subsidies, asthey are at me, and would be at you or any passenger on the suspected ofa purse. Corby shines among them.'

That was heavy judgement enough, Gower thought. No allusion to Esslemontensued. The earl ate sparely, and silently for the most part.

He was warmed a little at the Opera by hearing Henrietta's honestraptures over her Columelli in the Pirata. But Lord Brailstone satbehind her, and their exchange of ecstasies upon the tattered pathos of

E il mio tradito amor,

was not moderately offensive.

His countenance in Henrietta's presence had to be studied and interpretedby Livia. Why did it darken? The demurest of fuliginous intriguersargued that Brail stone was but doing the spiriting required of him,and would have to pay the penalty unrewarded, let him Italianize as muchas he pleased. Not many months longer, and there would be the bit of anoutburst, the whiff of scandal, perhaps a shot, and the rupture of animprovident alliance, followed by Henrietta's free hand to the moodyyoung earl, who would then have possession of the only woman he couldever love: and at no cost. Jealousy of a man like Brailstone, howeverinfatuated the man, was too foolish. He must perceive how matters weretending? The die-away acid eyeballs-at-the-ceiling of a pair of fanaticsper la musica might irritate a husband, but the lover should read andknow. Giddy as the beautiful creature deprived of her natural alimentseems in her excuseable hunger for it, she has learnt her lesson, she isnot a reeling libertine.

Brailstone peered through his eyelashes at the same shadow of a frownwhere no frown sat on his friend's brows. Displeasure was manifest, andwhy? Fleetwood had given him the dispossessing shrug of the man out ofthe run, and the hint of the tip for winning, with the aid of operaticarias; and though he was in Fleetwood's books ever since the prize-fight,neither Fleetwood nor the husband nor any skittishness of a timorous wifecould stop the pursuer bent to capture the fairest and most inflamingwoman of her day.

'I prefer your stage Columelli,' Fleetwood said.

'I come from exile!' said Henrietta; and her plea in excuse of ecstaticswrote her down as confessedly treasonable to the place quitted.

Ambrose Mallard entered the box, beholding only his goddess Livia.Their eyebrows and inaudible lips conversed eloquently. He retiredlike a trumped card on the appearance of M. de St. Ombre. The courtlyFrenchman won the ladies to join him in whipping the cream of the worldfor five minutes, and passed out before his flavour was exhausted.Brailstone took his lesson and departed, to spy at them from otherboxes and heave an inflated shirt-front. Young Cressett, the bottleof effervescence, dashed in, and for him Livia's face was motherly.He rattled a tale of the highway robbery of Sir Meeson Corby on one ofhis Yorkshire moors. The picture of the little baronet arose upon thenarration, and it amused. Chumley Potts came to 'confirm every item,'as he said. 'Plucked Corby clean. Pistol at his head. Quite old style.Time, ten P.M. Suspects Great Britain, King, Lords and Commons, andbuttons twenty times tighter. Brosey Mallard down on him for a fewfighting men. Perfect answer to Brosey.'

'Mr. Mallard did not mention the robbery,' Henrietta remarked.

'Feared to shock: Corby such a favoured swain,' Potts accounted for theomission.

'Brosey spilling last night?' Fleetwood asked.

'At the palazzo, we were,' said Potts. 'Luck pretty fair first off.
Brosey did his trick, and away and away and away went he! More old
Brosey wins, the wiser he gets. I stayed.' He swung to Gower: 'Don't
drink dry Sillery after two A.M. You read me?'

'Egyptian, but decipherable,' said Gower.

The rising of the curtain drew his habitual groan from Potts, and he fledto collogue with the goodly number of honest fellows in the house ofmusic who detested 'squallery.' Most of these afflicted pilgrims to theLondon conservatory were engaged upon the business of the Goddess richlyinspiring the Heliconian choir, but rendering the fountain-waters heady.Here they had to be, if they would enjoy the spectacle of London'sbiggest and choicest bouquet: and in them, too, there was an unattachedair during Potts' cooling discourse of turf and tables, except when hetossed them a morsel of tragedy, or the latest joke, not yet past thefull gallop on its course. Their sparkle was transient; woman had themfast. Compelled to think of them as not serious members of our group, heassisted at the crush-room exit, and the happy riddance of the beautifulcousins dedicated to the merry London midnights' further pastures.

Fleetwood's word was extracted, that he would visit the 'palazzo' withina couple of hours.

Potts exclaimed: 'Good. You promise. Hang me, if I don't think it 'sthe only certain thing a man can depend upon in this world.'

He left the earl and Gower Woodseer to their lunatic talk. He still hadhis ideas about the association of the pair. 'Hard-headed player of hisown game, that Woodseer, spite of his Mumbo-Jumbo-oracle kind of talk.'

Mallard's turn of luck downward to the deadly drop had come under Potts'first inspection of the table. Admiring his friend's audacity, deploringhis rashness, reproving his persistency, Potts allowed his verdict to goby results; for it was clear that Mallard and Fortune were in opposition.Something like real awe of the tremendous encounter kept him from aplunge or a bet. Mallard had got the vertigo, he reported the gambler'slaunch on dementedness to the earl. Gower's less experienced opticsperceived it. The plainly doomed duellist with the insensible BlackGoddess offered her all the advantages of the Immortals challenged byflesh. His effort to smile was a line cut awry in wood; his big eyeswere those of a cat for sociability; he looked cursed, and still hewore the smile. In this condition, the gambler runs to emptiness ofeverything he has, his money, his heart, his brains, like a coal-truckon the incline of the rails to a collier.

Mallard applied to the earl for a loan of fifty guineas. He had themand lost them, and he came, not begging, blustering for a second supply;quite in the wrong tone, Potts knew. Fleetwood said: 'Back it withpistols, Brosey'; and, as Potts related subsequently, 'Old Brosey had thelook of a staked horse.'

Fortune and he having now closed the struggle, perforce of his totaldisarmament, he regained the wits we forfeit when we engage her.He said to his friend Chummy: 'Abrane tomorrow? Ah, yes, punts a Thameswaterman. Start of—how many yards? Sunbury-Walton: good reach. Courseof two miles: Braney in good training. Straight business? I mayn't bethere. But you, Chummy, you mind, old Chums, all cases of the kind,safest back the professional. Unless—you understand!'

Fleetwood could not persuade Gower to join the party. The philosopher'spretext of much occupation masked a bashfully sentimental dislike of theflooding of quiet country places by the city's hordes. 'You're right,right,' said Fleetwood, in sympathy, resigned to the prospect ofdespising his associates without a handy helper. He named Esslemontonce, shot up a look at the sky, and glanced it Eastward.

Three coaches were bound for Sunbury from a common starting-point at nineof the morning. Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and Lord Simon Pitscrewwere the whips. Two hours in advance of them, the earl's famouspurveyors of picnic feasts bowled along to pitch the riverside tent andspread the tables. Our upper and lower London world reported the earl asout on another of his expeditions: and, say what we will, we must thinkkindly of a wealthy nobleman ever to the front to enliven the town'sdusty eyes and increase Old England's reputation for pre-eminence in theSports.

He is the husband of the Whitechapel Countess—got himself intothat mess; but whatever he does, he puts the stamp of style on it.He and the thing he sets his hand to, they're neat, they're finished,they're fitted to trot together, and they've a shining polish, natural,like a lily of the fields; or say Nature and Art, like the coat of athoroughbred led into the paddock by his groom, if you're of that mind.

Present at the start in Piccadilly, Gower took note of Lord Fleetwood'smilitary promptitude to do the work he had no taste for, and envied theself-compression which could assume so pleasant an air. He heard hereand there crisp comments on his lordship's coach and horses and personalsmartness; the word 'style,' which reflects handsomely on the connoisseurconferring it, and the question whether one of the ladies up there wasthe countess. His task of unearthing and disentangling the monetaryaffairs of 'one of the ladies' compelled the wish to belong to the partysoon to be towering out of the grasp of bricks, and delightfully gay,spirited, quick for fun. A fellow, he thought, may brood upon Nature,but the real children of Nature—or she loves them best—are those whohave the careless chatter, the ready laugh, bright welcome for a holiday.In catching the hour, we are surely the bloom of the hour? Why, yes, andno need to lose the rosy wisdom of the children when we wrap ourselves inthe patched old cloak of the man's.

On he went to his conclusions; but the Dame will have none of them,though here was a creature bent on masonry-work in his act of thinking,to build a traveller's-rest for thinkers behind him; while the volatilewere simply breaking their bubbles.

He was discontented all day, both with himself and the sentences hecoined. A small street-boy at his run along the pavement nowhither,distanced him altogether in the race for the great Secret; precipitatingthe thought, that the conscious are too heavily handicapped. Theunburdened unconscious win the goal. Ay, but they leave no legacy.So we must fret and stew, and look into ourselves, and seize the bruteand scourge him, just to make one serviceable step forward: that is,utter a single sentence worth the pondering for guidance.

Gower imagined the fun upon middle Thames: the vulcan face of CaptainAbrane; the cries of his backers, the smiles of the ladies, LordFleetwood's happy style in the teeth of tattlean Aurora's chariot foroverriding it. One might hope, might almost see, that he was coming tohis better senses on a certain subject. As for style overriding theworst of indignities, has not Scotia given her poet to the slackdependant of the gallows-tree, who so rantingly played his jig andwheeled it round in the shadow of that institution? Style was his,he hit on the right style to top the situation, and perpetually willhe slip his head out of the noose to dance the poet's verse.

In fact, style is the mantle of greatness; and say that the greatness isbeyond our reach, we may at least pray to have the mantle.

Strangest of fancies, most unphilosophically, Gower conceived a woman'slove as that which would bestow the gift upon a man so bare of it as he.Where was the woman? He embraced the idea of the sex, and found itresolving to a form of one. He stood humbly before the one, and shewaned into swarms of her sisters. So did she charge him with the lovingof her sex, not her. And could it be denied, if he wanted a woman's lovejust to give him a style? No, not that, but to make him feel proud ofhimself. That was the heart's way of telling him a secret in owning toa weakness. Within it the one he had thought of forthwith obtained herlodgement. He discovered this truth, in this roundabout way, and knew ita truth by the warm fireside glow the contemplation of her cast over him.

Dining alone, as he usually had to do, he was astonished to see the earlenter his room.

'Ah, you always make the right choice!' Fleetwood said, and requestedhim to come to the library when he had done eating.

Gower imagined an accident. A metallic ring was in the earl's voice.

One further mouthful finished dinner, for Gower was anxious concerningthe ladies. He joined the earl and asked.

'Safe. Oh yes. We managed to keep it from them,' said Fleetwood.
'Nothing particular, perhaps you'll think. Poor devil of a fellow!
Father and mother alive, too! He did it out of hearing, that 'a one
merit. Mallard: Ambrose Mallard. He has blown his brains out.'

Seated plunged in the armchair, with stretched legs and eyes at the blackfire-grate, Fleetwood told of the gathering under the tent, and Mallardseen, seen drinking champagne; Mallard no longer seen, not missed.

'He killed himself three fields off. He must have been careful to deadenthe sound. Small pocket-pistol hardly big enough to—but anythingserves. Couple of brats came running up to Chummy Potts:—"Gentleman'sbody bloody in a ditch." Chummy came to me, and we went. Clean dead;—in the mouth, pointed up; hole through the top of the skull. We'recrockery! crockery! I had to keep Chummy standing. I couldn't bringhim back to our party. We got help at a farm; the body lies there. Andthat's not the worst. We found a letter to me in his pocket pencilledhis last five minutes. I don't see what he could have done except to go.I can't tell you more. I had to keep my face, rowing and driving back."But where is Mr. Potts? Where can Mr. Mallard be?" Queer sensation, tohear the ladies ask! Give me your hand.'

The earl squeezed Gower's hand an instant; and it was an act unknown forhim to touch or bear a touch; it said a great deal.

Late at night he mounted to Gower's room. The funeral of the day'simpressions had not been skaken off. He kicked at it and sunk under itas his talk rambled. 'Add five thousand,' he commented, on the spread ofLivia's papers over the table. 'I've been having an hour with her. Twothousand more, she says. Better multiply by two and a half for a woman'sconfession. We have to trust to her for some of the debts of honour.See her in the morning. No one masters her but you. Mind, the first tobe clear of must be St. Ombre. I like the fellow; but these Frenchmen—they don't spare women. Ambrose,'—the earl's eyelids quivered.'Jealousy fired that shot. Quite groundless. She 's cool as a marbleVenus, as you said. Go straight from her house to Esslemont. I don'tplead a case. Make the best account you can of it. Say—you may saymy eyes are opened. I respect her. If you think that says little, saymore. It can't mean more. Whatever the Countess of Fleetwood may thinkdue to her, let her name it. Say my view of life, way of life,everything in me, has changed. I shall follow you. I don't expect tomarch over the ground. She has a heap to forgive. Her father owns orboasts, in that book of his Rose Mackrell lent me, he never forgave aninjury.'

Gower helped the quotation, rubbing his hands over it, for cover of hisglee at the words he had been hearing. 'Never forgave an injury withouta return blow for it. The blow forgives. Good for the enemy to get it.He called his hearty old Pagan custom "an action of the lungs" with him.And it's not in nature for injuries to digest in us. They poison theblood, if we try. But then, there's a manner of hitting back. It is notto go an inch beyond the exact measure, Captain Kirby warns us.'

Fleetwood sighed down to a low groan.

'Lord Feltre would have an answer for you. She's a wife; and a wifehitting back is not a pleasant—well, petticoats make the difference.If she's for amends, she shall exact them; and she may be hard tosatisfy, she shall have her full revenge. Call it by any other termyou like. I did her a wrong. I don't defend myself; it 's not yet inthe Law Courts. I beg to wipe it out, rectify it—choose your phrase—to the very fullest. I look for the alliance with her to . . .'

He sprang up and traversed the room: 'We're all guilty of mistakes atstarting: I speak of men. Women are protected; and if they're not,there's the convent for them, Feltre says. But a man has to live it onbefore the world; and this life, with these flies of fellows . . .I fell into it in some way. Absolutely like the first bird I shot as ayoungster, and stood over the battered head and bloody feathers,wondering! There was Ambrose Mallard—the same splintered bones—blood—come to his end; and for a woman; that woman the lady bearing the titleof half-mother to me. God help me! What are my sins? She feelsnothing, or about as much as the mortuary paragraph of the newspapers,for the dead man; and I have Ambrose Mallard's look at her and St. Ombretalking together, before he left the tent to cross the fields. Borrow,beg, or steal for money to play for her! and not a glimpse of the winningpost.

St. Ombre 's a cool player; that 's at the bottom of the story. He'scool because play doesn't bite him, as it did Ambrose. I should say theother passion has never bitten him. And he's alive and presentable;Ambrose under a sheet, with Chummy Potts to watch. Chummy cried like abrat in the street for his lost mammy. I left him crying and sobbing.They have their feelings, these "children of vapour," as you call them.But how did I fall into the line with a set I despised? She had myopinion of her gamblers, and retorted that young Cressett's turn forthe fling is my doing. I can't swear it's not. There's one of my sins.What's to wipe them out! She has a tender feeling for the boy; confessedshe wanted governing. Why; she's young, in a way. She has thatparticular vice of play. She might be managed. Here's a lesson for her!Don't you think she might? The right man,—the man she can respect,fancy incorruptible! He must let her see he has an eye for tricks.She's not responsible for—his mad passion was the cause, cause ofeverything he did. The kind of woman to send the shaft. You called her"Diana seated." You said, "She doesn't hunt, she sits and lets fly herarrow." Well, she showed feeling for young Cressett, and her hit at mewas an answer. It struck me on the mouth. But she's an eternal anxiety.A man she respects! A man to govern her!'

Fleetwood hurried his paces. 'I couldn't have allowed poor Ambrose.Besides, he had not a chance—never had in anything. It wants a head,wants the man who can say no to her. "The Reveller's Aurora," you calledher. She has her beauty, yes. She respects you. I should be relieved—a load off me! Tell her, all debts paid; fifty thousand invested, inher name and her husband's. Tell her, speak it, there's my consent—ifonly the man to govern her! She has it from me, but repeat it, as fromme. That sum and her portion would make a fair income for the two.Relieved? By heaven, what a relief! Go early. Coach to Esslemont ateleven. Do my work there. I haven't to repeat my directions. I shallpresent myself two days after. I wish Lady Fleetwood to do the part ofhostess at Calesford. Tell her I depute you to kiss my son for me. NowI leave you. Good-night. I shan't sleep. I remember your saying, "badvisions come under the eyelids." I shall keep mine open and read—readher father's book of the Maxims; I generally find two or three at a dipto stimulate. No wonder she venerates him. That sort of progenitor isyour "permanent aristocracy." Hard enemy. She must have some of hermother in her, too. Abuse me to her, admit the justice of reproaches,but say, reason, good feeling—I needn't grind at it. Say I respect her.Advise her to swallow the injury—not intended for insult. I don'tbelieve anything higher than respect can be offered to a woman. Nodefence of me to her, but I'll tell you, that when I undertook to keep myword with her, I plainly said—never mind; good-night. If we meet in themorning, let this business rest until it 's done. I must drive to helppoor Chums and see about the Inquest.'

Fleetwood nodded from the doorway. Gower was left with humming ears.

CHAPTER XL

RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS

They went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as the solitaries of asleepless night. They met next day like a couple emerging from siroccodeserts, indisposed for conversation or even short companionship, much ofthe night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would have preferred thesight of an enemy; and it was hardly concealed by them, for they inclinedto regard one another as the author of their infernal passage through thedrear night's wilderness.

Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective duties being clear,however abhorrent. But he had inflicted a monstrous disturbance on theman he meant in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not benefit.Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his projects, was playingjuggler's tricks with him, dramatizing upon hypotheses, which mounted instages and could pretend to be soberly conceivable, assuming that theearl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis. He transportedhimself to his first view of the Countess Livia, the fountain of similesborn of his prostrate adoration, close upon the invasion and capture ofhim by the combined liqueurs in the giddy Batlen lights; and joining theArabian magic in his breast at the time with the more magical reality nowproposed as a sequel to it, he entered the land where dreams confess theyare outstripped by revelations.

Yet it startled him to hear the earl say: 'You'll get audience at ten;I've arranged; make the most of the situation to her. I refuse to help.I foresee it 's the only way of solving this precious puzzle. You do meand every one of us a service past paying. Not a man of her set worth.. . . She—but you'll stop it; no one else can. Of course, you've hadyour breakfast. Off, and walk yourself into a talkative mood, as youtell me you do.'

'One of the things I do when I've nobody to hear,' said Gower,speculating whether the black sprite in this young nobleman was forsending him as a rod to scourge the lady: an ingenious device, that smeltof mediaeval Courts and tickled his humour.

'Will she listen?' he said gravely.

'She will listen; she has not to learn you admire. You admit she hashelped to trim and polish, and the rest. She declares you'reincorruptible. There's the ground open. I fling no single sovereignmore into that quicksand, and I want not one word further on the subject.I follow you to Esslemont. Pray, go.'

Fleetwood pushed into the hall. A footman was ordered to pack anddeposit Mr. Woodseer's portmanteau at the coach-office.

'The principal point is to make sure we have all the obligations,' Gowersaid.

'You know the principal point,' said the earl. 'Relieve me.'

He faced to the opening street door. Lord Feltre stood in the framing ofit—a welcome sight. The 'monastic man of fashion,' of Gower's phrasefor him, entered, crooning condolences, with a stretched waxen hand forhis friend, a partial nod for Nature's worshipper—inefficient at anyserious issue of our human affairs, as the earl would now discover.

Gower left the two young noblemen to their greetings. Happily for him,philosophy, in the present instance, after a round of profundities,turned her lantern upon the comic aspect of his errand. Considering theCountess Livia, and himself, and the tyrant, who benevolently andprovidentially, or sardonically, hurled them to their interview, thesituation was comic, certainly, in the sense of its being an illuminationof this life's odd developments. For thus had things come about, that ifit were possible even to think of the lady's condescending, he, thanks tothe fair one he would see before evening, was armed and proof against hisold infatuation or any renewal of it. And he had been taught to readthrough the beautiful twilighted woman, as if she were burnt paper heldat the fire consuming her. His hopes hung elsewhere. Nevertheless, anintellectual demon-imp very lively in his head urged him to speculate onsuch a contest between them, and weigh the engaging forces. Difficultieswere perceived, the scornful laughter on her side was plainly heard; buthis feeling of savage mastery, far from beaten down, swelled so as tobecome irritable for the trial; and when he was near her house he held areview of every personal disadvantage he could summon, incited by anarray of limping deficiencies that flattered their arrogant leader withideas of the power he had in spite of them.

In fact, his emancipation from sentiment inspired the genial mood totease. Women, having to encounter a male adept at the weapon for thepurpose, must be either voluble or supportingly proud to keep the skinfrom shrinking: which is a commencement of the retrogression; and thathas frequently been the beginning of a rout. Now the Countess Livia wasa lady of queenly pose and the servitorial conventional speech likely ata push to prove beggarly. When once on a common platform with a man ofa*gile tongue instigated by his intellectual demon to pursue inquiriesinto her moral resources, after a ruthless exposure of the wreckedmaterial, she would have to be, after the various fashions, defiant,if she was to hold her own against pressure; and seeing, as she must,the road of prudence point to conciliation, it was calculable that shewould take it. Hence a string of possible events, astounding to mankind,but equally calculable, should one care to give imagination headway.Gower looked signally Captain Abrane's 'fiddler' while he waited atLivia's house door. A studious intimacy with such a lady was rather likethe exposure of the silver moon to the astronomer's telescope.

The Dame will have nought of an interview and colloquy not foundmentioned in her collection of ballads, concerning a person quitesecondary in Dr. Glossop's voluminous papers. She as vehementlyprohibits a narration of Gower Woodseer's proposal some hours later,for the hand of the Countess of Fleetwood's transfixed maid Madge,because of the insignificance of the couple; and though it was a quaintidyll of an affection slowly formed, rationally based while seemingpreposterous, tending to bluntly funny utterances on both sides. Thegirl was a creature of the enthusiasms, and had lifted that passion ofher constitution into higher than the worship of sheer physical bravery.She had pitied Mr. Gower Woodseer for his apparently extreme, albeitreverential, devotion to her mistress. The plainly worded terms of hisasking a young woman of her position and her reputation to marry him cameon her like an intrusion of dazzling day upon the closed eyelids of thenight, requiring time, and her mistress's consent, and his father'sexpressed approval, before she could yield him an answer that mightappear a forgetfulness of her station, her ignorance, her damagedcharacter. Gower protested himself, with truth, a spotted pard, anignoramus, and an outcast of all established classes, as the worshipperof Nature cannot well avoid being.

'But what is it you like me for, Mr. Gower?' Madge longed to know, thatshe might see a way in the strange land where he had planted her after awhirl; and he replied: 'I 've thought of you till I can say I love youbecause you have naturally everything I shoot at.'

The vastness of the compliment drove her to think herself empty ofanything.

He named courage, and its offspring, honesty, and devotedness, constancy.
Her bosom rose at the word.

'Yes, constancy,' he repeated; and 'growing girls have to "turn corners,"as you told me once.'

'I did?' said she, reddening under a memory, and abashed by hisrecollection of a moment she knew to have been weak with her, or noisyof herself.

Madge went straightway to her mistress and related her great event, inthe tone of a confession of crime. Her mistress's approbation wastimidly suggested rather than besought.

It came on a flood. Carinthia's eyes filled; she exclaimed: 'Oh, thatgood man!—he chooses my Madge for wife. She said it, Rebecca said it.Mrs. Wythan saw and said Mr. Woodseer loved my Madge. I hear her sayingit. Then yes, and yes, from me for both your sakes, dear girl. He willhave the faithfullest, he will have the kindest—Oh! and I shall knowthere can be a happy marriage in England.'

She summoned Gower; she clasped his hand, to thank him for appreciatingher servant and sister, and for the happiness she had in hearing it; andshe gazed at him and the laden brows of her Madge alternately,encouraging him to repeat his recital of his pecuniary means, for thepoetry of the fact it verified, feasting on the sketch of a four-roomedcottage and an agricultural labourer's widow for cook and housemaid;Madge to listen to his compositions of the day in the evening; Madge topraise him, Madge to correct his vanity.

Love was out of the count, but Carinthia's leaping sympathy decorated thebaldness of the sketch and spied his features through the daubed mask hechose to wear as a member of the order of husbands, without taking it forhis fun. Dry material statements presented the reality she doated tothink of. Moreover, the marriage of these two renewed her belief in truemarriages, and their intention to unite was evidence of love.

'My journey to England was worth all troubles for the meeting Madge,' shesaid. 'I can look with pleasure to that day of my meeting her first—theday, it was then!'

She stopped. Madge felt the quivering upward of a whimper to a sob inher breast. She slipped away.

'It's a day that has come round to be repaired, Lady Fleetwood,' saidGower. 'If you will. Will you not? He has had a blow—the death of afriend, violent death. It has broken him. He wants a month or so inyour mountains. I have thought him hard to deal with; he is humane.His enormous wealth has been his tempter. Madge and I will owe him ourmeans of livelihood, enough for cottagers, until I carve my way. Hisfeelings are much more independent of his rank than those of mostnoblemen. He will repeat your kind words to Madge and me; I am sure ofit. He has had heavy burdens; he is young, hardly formed yet. He needsa helper; I mean, one allied to him. You forgive me? I left him with aCatholic lord for comforter, who regards my prescript of the study ofNature, when we're in grief, as about the same as an offer of a dish ofcold boiled greens. Silver and ivory images are more consoling. Neitherhe nor I can offer the right thing for Lord Fleetwood. It will be foundhere. And then your mountains. More than I, nearly as much as you,he has a poet's ardour for mountain land. He and Mr. Wythan would soonlearn to understand one another on that head, if not as to management ofmines.'

The pleading was crafty, and it was penetrative in the avoidance ofstress. Carinthia shook herself to feel moved. The endeavour chilledher to a notion that she was but half alive. She let the questionapproach her, whether Chillon could pardon Lord Fleetwood. She, with noidea of benignness, might speak pardon's word to him, on a late autumnevening years hence, perhaps, or to his friends to-morrow, if he wouldconsiderately keep distant. She was upheld by the thought of herbrother's more honourable likeness to their father, in the certainty ofhis refusal to speak pardon's empty word or touch an offending hand,without their father's warrant for the injury wiped out; and as she hadno wish for that to be done, she could anticipate his withholding of theword.

For her brother at wrestle with his fallen fortunes was now the beatingheart of Carinthia's mind. Her husband was a shadow there. He didobscure it, and he might annoy, he was unable to set it in motion. Hesat there somewhat like Youth's apprehension of Death:—the dark spotseen mistily at times through people's tears, or visioned as in an ambushbeyond the hills; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness;oftener overlooked, acknowledged for the undesired remote of life'sconditions, life's evil, fatal, ill-assorted yoke-fellow; and if it wasin his power to burst out of his corner and be terrible to her, she couldbring up a force unnamed and unmeasured, that being the blood of herfather in her veins. Having done her utmost to guard her babe, she saidher prayers; she stood for peace or the struggle.

'Does Lord Fleetwood speak of coming here?' she said.

'To-morrow.'

'I go to Croridge to-morrow.'

'Your ladyship returns?'

'Yes, I return Mr. Gower, you have fifty minutes before you dress fordinner.'

He thought only of the exceeding charity of the intimation; and he maybe excused for his not seeing the feminine full answer it was, in animplied, unmeditated contrast. He went gladly to find his new comrade,his flower among grass-blades, the wonderful creature astonishing him andsurcharging his world by setting her face at him, opening her breast tohim, breathing a young man's word of words from a woman's mouth. Hisflower among grass-blades for a head looking studiously down, she was hisfountain of wisdom as well, in the assurance she gave him of the wisdomof his choice.

But Madge had put up the 'prize-fighter's lass,' by way of dolly defence,to cover her amazed confusion when the proposal of this well-likedgentleman to a girl such as she sounded churchy. He knocked it overeasily; it left, however, a bee at his ear and an itch to transfer thebuzzer's attentions and tease his darling; for she had betrayed herselfas right good game. Nor is there happier promise of life-long domesticenlivenment for a prescient man of Letters than he has in thecontemplation of a pretty face showing the sensitiveness to the sting,which is not allowed to poison her temper, and is short of fetchingtears. The dear innocent girl gave this pleasing promise; moreover, shecould be twisted-to laugh at herself, just a little. Now, the youngwoman who can do that has already jumped the hedge into the highroad ofphilosophy, and may become a philosopher's mate in its by-ways, where theminute discoveries are the notable treasures.

They had their ramble, agreeable to both, despite the admonitory doseadministered to one of them. They might have been espied at a point ortwo from across the parkpalings; their laughter would have caught anoutside pedestrian's hearing. Whatever the case, Owain Wythan, ridingdown off Croridge, big with news of her brother for the countess, dinedat her table, and walking up the lane to the Esslemont Arms on a moonlessnight, to mount his horse, pitched against an active and, as it wasdeemed by Gower's observation of his eyes, a scientific fist. The designto black them finely was attributable to the dyeing accuracy of thestroke. A single blow had done it. Mr. Wythan's watch and purse wereuntouched; and a second look at the swollen blind peepers led Gower tosurmise that they were, in the calculation of the striker, his own.

He walked next day to the Royal Sovereign inn. There he came upon theearl driving his phaeton. Fleetwood jumped down, and Gower told of themysterious incident, as the chief thing he had to tell, not rendering itso mysterious in his narrative style. He had the art of indicatingdarkly.

'Ines, you mean?' Fleetwood cried, and he appeared as nauseated andperplexed as he felt. Why should Ines assault Mr. Wythan? It happenedthat the pugilist's patron had, within the last fifteen minutes, drivenpast a certain thirty-acre meadow, sight of which on his way to Carinthiahad stirred him. He had even then an idea of his old deeds dogging himto bind him, every one of them, the smallest.

'But you've nothing to go by,' he said. 'Why guess at this rascal morethan another?'

Gower quoted Mrs. Rundles and the ostler for witnesses to Kit's visityesterday to the Royal Sovereign, though Kit shunned the bar of theEsslemont Arms.

'I guess pretty clearly, because I suspect he was hanging about and sawme and Madge together.'

'Consolations for failures in town?—by the way, you are complimented,and I don't think you deserved it. However, there was just the chance tostop a run to perdition. But, Madge? Madge? I'd swear to the girl!'

'Not so hard as I,' said Gower, and spoke of the oath to come between thegirl and him.

Fleetwood's dive into the girl's eyes drew her before him. He checked aspirt of exclamations.

'You fancy the brute had a crack for revenge and mistook his man?'

'That's what I want her ladyship to know,' said Gower.

'How could you let her hear of it?'

'Nothing can be concealed from her.'

The earl was impressionable to the remark, in his disgust at theincident. It added a touch of a new kind of power to her image.

'She's aware of my coming?'

'To-day or to-morrow.'

They scaled the phaeton and drove.

'You undervalue Lord Feltre. You avoid your adversaries,' Fleetwood nowrebuked his hearer. 'It 's an easy way to have the pull of them in yourown mind. You might learn from him. He's willing for controversy.Nature-worship—or "aboriginal genuflexion," he calls it; Anglicanism,Methodism; he stands to engage them. It can't be doubted, that in daysof trouble he has a faith "stout as a rock, with an oracle in it," as hesays; and he's right," men who go into battle require a rock to back themor a staff to lean on." You have your "secret," you think; as far as Ican see, it's to keep you from going into any form of battle.'

The new influence at work on the young nobleman was evident, if only inthe language used.

Gower answered mildly: 'That can hardly be said of a man who's going tomarry.'

'Perhaps not. Lady Fleetwood is aware?'

'Lady Fleetwood does me the honour to approve my choice.'

'You mean, you're dead on to it with this girl?'

'For a year or more.'

'Fond of her?'

'All my heart.'

'In love!'

'Yes, in love. The proof of it is, I 've asked her now I can support heras a cottager leaning on the Three Per Cents.'

'Well, it helps you to a human kind of talk. It carries out yourtheories. I never disbelieved in your honesty. The wisdom's anothermatter. Did you ever tell any one, that there's not an act of a man'slife lies dead behind him, but it is blessing or cursing him every stephe takes?'

'By that,' rejoined Gower, 'I can say Lord Feltre proves there's wisdomin the truisms of devoutness.'

He thought the Catholic lord had gone a step or two to catch an eel.

Fleetwood was looking on the backward of his days, beholding a melancholysunset, with a grimace in it.

'Lord Feltre might show you the "leanness of Philosophy";—you wouldlearn from hearing him:—"an old gnawed bone for the dog that chooses tobe no better than a dog."'

'The vertiginous roast haunch is recommended,' Gower said.

'See a higher than your own head, good sir. But, hang the man! hemanages to hit on the thing he wants.' Fleetwood set his face at Gowerwith cutting heartiness. 'In love, you say, and Madge: and mean it to bethe holy business! Well, poor old Chummy always gave you credit forknowing how to play your game. She has given proof she 's a good girl.I don't see why it shouldn't end well. That attack on the Welshman's thebad lookout. Explained, if you like, but women's impressions won't getexplained away. We must down on our knees or they. Her ladyshipattentive at all to affairs of the house?'

'Every day with Queeney; at intervals with Leddings.'

'Excellent! You speak like a fellow recording the devout observances ofa great dame with her minor and superior, ecclesiastical comforters.Regular at church?'

'Her ladyship goes.'

'A woman without religion, Gower Woodseer, is a weed on the water, orshe's hard as nails. We shall see. Generally, Madge and the youngsterparade the park at this hour. I drive round to the stables. Go in andoffer your version of that rascally dog's trick. It seems the nearest wecan come at. He's a sot, and drunken dogs 'll do anything. I've had himon my hands, and I've got the stain of him.'

They trotted through Esslemont Park gates. 'I've got that place,Calesford, on my hands, too,' the earl said, suddenly moved to a likingfor his Kentish home.

He and Gower were struck by a common thought of the extraordinary burdenshis indulgence in impulses drew upon him. Present circ*mstances picturedto Gower the opposing weighed and matured good reason for his choosingMadge, and he complimented himself in his pity for the earl. ButFleetwood, as he reviewed a body of acquaintances perfectly free from thewretched run in harness, though they had their fits and their whims, waspushed to the conclusion that fatalism marked his particular coursethrough life. He could not hint at such an idea to the unsympatheticfellow, or rather, the burly antagonist to anything of the sort, besidehim. Lord Feltre would have understood and appreciated it instantly.Where is aid to be had if we have the Fates against us? Feltre knew thePower, he said; was an example of 'the efficacy of supplications'; he hadbeen 'fatally driven to find the Power,' and had found it—on the road toRome, of course: not a delectable road for an English nobleman, exceptthat the noise of another convert in pilgrimage on it would deal ourEnglish world a lively smack, the very stroke that heavy body wants.But the figure of a 'monastic man of fashion' was antipathetic to theearl, and he flouted an English Protestant mass merely because of hisbeing highly individual, and therefore revolutionary for the minority.

He cast his bitter cud aside. 'My man should have arrived. Lady
Fleetwood at home?'

Gower spoke of her having gone to Croridge in the morning.

'Has she taken the child?'

'She has, yes. For the air of the heights.'

'For greater security. Lady Arpington praises the thoughtful mother.
I rather expected to see the child.'

'They can't be much later,' Gower supposed.

'You don't feel your long separation from "the object"?'

Letting him have his cushion for pins, Gower said 'It needs all myphilosophy:

He was pricked and probed for the next five minutes; not bad rallying,the earl could be smart when he smarted. Then they descended the terraceto meet Lady Fleetwood driving her pony-trap. She gave a brief singlenod to the salute of her lord, quite in the town-lady's manner,surprisingly.

CHAPTER XLI

IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE REFUGES FROM THEM

The home of husband and wife was under one roof at last. Fleetwood went,like one deported, to his wing of the house, physically sensible, in theback turned to his wife's along the corridor, that our ordinarycomparison for the division of a wedded twain is correct. She wasArctic, and Antarctic he had to be, perforce of the distance she putbetween them. A removal of either of them from life—or from 'the act ofbreathing,' as Gower Woodseer's contempt of the talk about death wouldcall it—was an imaginable way of making it a wider division. AmbroseMallard was far enough from his fatal lady now—farther than the Polesasunder. Ambrose, if the clergy will allow him, has found his peace. .But the road and the means he chose were a madman's.

The blotting of our character, to close our troubles, is the final proofof our being 'sons of vapour,' according to Gower Woodseer's heartlessterm for poor Ambrose and the lot. They have their souls; and abovephilosophy, 'natural' or unnatural, they may find a shelter. They canshow in their desperation that they are made of blood, as philosophersrather fail of doing. An insignificant brainless creature like Feltrehad wits, by the aid of his religion, to help or be charitable to hisfellows, particularly the sinners, in the crisis of life, surpassing anyphilosopher's.

Information of her ladyship's having inspected the apartments, to see tothe minutest of his customary luxuries, cut at him all round. His valethad it from the footmen and maids; and their speaking of it meant aliking for their mistress; and that liking, added to her officialsolicitude on his behalf, touched a soft place in him and blew an icywind; he was frozen where he was warmed. Here was evidence of herintending the division to be a fixed gap. She had entered this room andlooked about her. He was here to feel her presence in her absence.

Some one or something had schooled her, too. Her large-eyed directnessof gaze was the same as at that inn and in Wales, but her easy sedatenesswas novel, her English, almost the tone of the English world: he gatheredit, at least, from the few remarks below stairs.

His desire to be with her was the desire to escape the phantasm of thewoman haunting to subjugate him when they were separate. He could killillusion by magnifying and clawing at her visible angles and audiblefalse notes; and he did it until his recollections joined to the sight ofher, when a clash of the thought of what she had been and the thought ofwhat she was had the effect of conjuring a bitter sweet image that was amore seductive illusion. Strange to think, this woman once loved the manwho was not half the value of the man she no longer loved. He took ashot at cynicism, but hit no mark. This woman protected her whole sex.

They sat at the dinner-table alone, thanks to a handsome wench'sattractions for a philosopher. Married, and parents of a lusty son,this was their first sitting at table together. The mouth that said'I guard my rooms' was not obtruded; she talked passingly of her brother,much of Lady Arpington and of old Mr. Woodseer; and, though she reserveda smile, there was no look of a lock on her face. She seemed pleased tobe treated very courteously; she returned the stately politeness inexactest measure; very simply, as well. Her face had now an air ofhomeliness, well suited to an English household interior. She couldchat. Any pauses occurring, he was the one guilty of them; she did notallow them to be barrier chasms, or 'strids' for the leap with effort;she crossed them like the mountain maid over a gorge's plank—kept hertones perfectly. Her Madge and Mr. Gower Woodseer made a conversibletopic. She was inquisitive for accounts of Spanish history and the landof Spain.

They passed into the drawing-room. She had heard of the fate of the poorchild in Wales, she said, without a comment.

'I see now, I ought to have backed your proposal,' he confessed, and wasnear on shivering. She kept silent, proudly or regretfully.

Open on her workbasket was a Spanish guide-book and a map attached to it.
She listened to descriptions of Cadiz, Malaga, Seville, Granada. Her
curiosity was chiefly for detailed accounts of Catalonia and the
Pyrenees.

'Hardly the place for you; there's a perpetual heaving of Carlism inthose mountains; your own are quieter for travellers,' he remarked; andfor a moment her lips moved to some likeness of a smile; a dimple in aflowing thought.

He remarked the come and go of it.

He regretted his inability to add to her knowledge of the Spanish
Pyrenees.

Books helped her at present, she said.

Feeling acutely that hostility would have brought them closer than her
uninviting civility, he spoke of the assault on Mr. Wythan, and Gower
Woodseer's conjecture, and of his having long since discharged the rascal
Ines.

To which her unreproachful answer, 'You made use of those men, my lord,'sent a cry ringing through him, recalling Feltre's words, as to the gripmen progressively are held in by their deeds done.

'Oh, quite true, we change our views and ways of life,' he said, thinkingshe might set her considerations on other points of his character. Butthis reflection was a piece of humility not yet in his particularestimate of his character, and he spurned it: an act of pride that drovehis mind, for occupation, to contemplate hers; which speedily became anembrace of her character, until he was asking whether the woman he calledwife and dared not clasp was one of those rarest, who can be idealized byvirtue of their being known. For the young man embracing a characterloses grasp of his own, is plucked out of himself and passes into it,to see the creature he is with the other's eyes, and feel for the otheras a very self. Such is the privilege and the chastisem*nt of the young.

Gower Woodseer's engagement with the girl Madge was a happier subject forexpatiation and agreement. Her deeper tones threw a light on Gower, andwhere she saw goodness, he could at least behold the natural philosopherpractically philosophizing.

'The girl shall have a dowry from me,' he said; and the sum named waslarge. Her head bent acknowledgingly; money had small weight with hernow. His perception of it stripped him and lamed him.

He wished her ladyship good-night. She stood up and performed a semi-ceremonious obeisance, neatly adapted to their mutual position. She hada well-bred mother.

Probably she would sleep. No such expectation could soothe the friend,and some might be thinking misleader, of Ambrose Mallard, before he hadocular proof that the body lay underground. His promise was given tofollow it to the grave, a grave in consecrated earth. Ambrose died ofthe accidental shot of a pocket-pistol he customarily carried loaded.Two intimate associates of the dead man swore to that habit of his.They lied to get him undisputed Christian burial. Aha! The earl laughedoutright at Chummy Potts's nursery qualms. The old fellow had to do it,and he lied like a man for the sake of Ambrose Mallard's family. So muchis owing to our friend.

Can ecclesiastical casuists decide upon cases of conscience affecting menof the world?

A council sat upon the case the whole night long. A committee of theworldly held argumentation in a lower chamber.

These are nights that weaken us to below the level of women. A shuttleworked in Fleetwood's head. He defended the men of the world. LordFeltre oiled them, damned them, kindled them to a terrific expiatoryblaze, and extinguishingly salved and wafted aloft the released essenceof them. Maniacal for argument, Fleetwood rejected the forgiveness ofsins, if sins they be. Prove them sins, and the suffering is ofnecessity everlasting, his insomnia logic insisted. Whichever side hetook, his wife was against him; not in speech, but in her look. She wasa dumb figure among the wranglers, clouded up to the neck. Her look saidshe knew more of him than they knew.

He departed next day for London, after kissing his child; and he wouldhave done wisely to abstain from his exhibition of the paternal. Knowingit a step to conciliation, he checked his impulsive warmth, under theapprehension that the mother would take it for a piece of acting topropitiate—and his lips pecked the baby's cheek. Its mother held armsfor it immediately.

Not without reason did his heart denounce her as a mere mother, withlittle of a mind to see.

The recent series of feverishly sleepless nights disposed him tosnappish irritability or the thirst for tenderness. Gower had singularexperiences of him on the drive North-westward. He scarcely spoke; hesaid once: 'If you mean to marry, you'll be wanting to marry soon, ofcourse,' and his curt nod before the reply was formulated appeared tosignify, the sooner the better, and deliverance for both of us.Honest though he might, be sometimes deep and sometimes picturesque,the philosopher's day had come to an end. How can Philosophy ministerto raw wounds, when we are in a rageing gale of the vexations, batteredto right and left! Religion has a nourishing breast: Philosophy isbreastless. Religion condones offences: Philosophy has no forgiveness,is an untenanted confessional: 'wide air to a cry in anguish,' Feltresays.

All the way to London Fleetwood endured his companion, letting him talkwhen he would.

He spent the greater part of the night discussing human affairs andspiritual with Lord Feltre, whose dialectical exhortations andinsinuations were of the feeblest, but to an isolated young man, yearningfor the tenderness of a woman thinking but of her grievances, theointment brought comfort.

It soothed him during his march to and away from Ambrose Mallard's grave;where it seemed to him curious and even pitiable that Chumley Pottsshould be so inconsolably shaken. Well, and if the priests have thesecret of strengthening the backbone for a bend of the knee in calamity,why not go to the priests, Chummy? Potts's hearing was not addressed;nor was the chief person in the meditation affected by a question thatmerely jumped out of his perturbed interior.

Business at Calesford kept Fleetwood hanging about London several daysfurther; and his hatred of a place he wasted time and money to decorategrew immeasurable. It distorted the features of the beautiful woman forwhose pleasure the grand entertainments to be held there had, somewhereor other—when felon spectres were abroad over earth—been conceived.

He could then return to Esslemont. Gower was told kindly, withintentional coldness, that he could take a seat in the phaeton if heliked; and he liked, and took it. Anything to get to that girl of his!

Whatever the earl's inferiors did, their inferior station was notsuffered to discolour it for his judgement. But an increasing antagonismto Woodseer's philosophy—which the fellow carried through with perpetualscorings of satisfaction—caused him to set a hard eye on the damselunder the grisly spotting shadow of the sottish bruiser, of whom, afteronce touching the beast, he could not rub his hands clean; and he choseto consider the winning of the prize-fighter's lass the final triumph orflag on the apex of the now despised philosophy. Vain to ask how he hadcome to be mixed up with the lot, or why the stolidly conceited,pretentious fellow had seat here, as by right, beside him! We sow and wereap; 'plant for sugar and taste the cane,' some one says—this Woodseer,probably; he can, when it suits him, tickle the ears of the worldlings.And there is worthier stuff to remember; stuff to nourish: Feltre's'wisdom of our fathers,' rightly named Religion.

More in the country, when he traversed sweep and rise of open land,Carinthia's image began to shine, and she threw some of her light onMadge, who made Woodseer appear tolerable, sagacious, absurdly enviable,as when we have the fit to wish we were some four-foot. The fellow'sphilosophy wore a look of practical craft.

He was going to the girl he liked, and she was, one could swear, anhonest girl; and she was a comely girl, a girl to stick to a man. Herthrowing over a sot was creditable. Her mistress loved her. That saidmuch for any mortal creature. Man or woman loved by Carinthia could notbe cowardly, could not be vile, must have high qualities. Next toReligion, she stood for a test of us. Had she any strong sense ofReligion, in addition to the formal trooping to one of their pallidProtestant churches? Lord Feltre might prove useful to her. For merelythe comprehension of the signification of Religion steadies us. It haddone that for him, the earl owned.

He broke a prolonged silence by remarking to Gower 'You haven't much tosay to-day'; and the answer was 'Very little. When I'm walking, I'mpicking up; and when I'm driving, I'm putting together.'

Gower was rallied on the pursuit of the personal object in both cases.He pointed at sheep, shepherd, farmer, over the hedge, all similarlyoccupied; and admitted shamelessly, that he had not a thought forcompany, scarce a word to fling. 'Ideas in gestation are the dullestmatter you can have.'

'There I quite agree with you,' said Fleetwood. Abrane, Chummy Potts,Brailstone, little Corby, were brighter comrades. And these were hisIxionides! Hitherto his carving of a way in the world had beensufficiently ill-considered. Was it preferable to be a loutishphilosopher? Since the death of Ambrose Mallard, he felt Woodseer'stitle for that crew grind harshly; and he tried to provoke a repetitionof it, that he might burst out in wrathful defence of his friends—to benamed friends when they were vilified: defence of poor Ambrose at least,the sinner who, or one as bad, might have reached to pardon through thepriesthood.

Gower offered him no chance..

Entering Esslemont air, Fleetwood tossed his black mood to the winds.She breathed it. She was a mountain girl, and found it hard to forgiveour lowlands. She would learn tolerance, taking her flights at seasons.The yacht, if she is anything of a sailor, may give her a taste ofEngland's pleasures. She will have a special allowance for distributionamong old Mr. Woodseer's people. As to the rest of the Countess ofFleetwood's wishes, her family ranks with her husband's in claims of anykind on him. There would be—she would require and had a right todemand—say, a warm half-hour of explanations: he knew the tone for them,and so little did he revolve it apprehensively, that his mind sprangbeyond, to the hearing from her mouth of her not intending further to'guard her rooms.' How quietly the words were spoken! There was a charmin the retrospect of her mouth and manner. One of the rare women whonever pout or attitudinize, she could fling her glove gracefully—one might add, capturingly under every aspect, she was a handsomebelligerent. The words he had to combat pleased his memory. Some goodfriend, Lady Arpington probably, had instructed her in the art ofdressing to match her colour.

Concerning himself, he made no stipulation, but he reflected on LordFeltre's likely estimate of her as a bit of a heathen. And it might beto her advantage, were she and Feltre to have some conversations.Whatever the faith, a faith should exist, for without the sentiment ofreligion, a woman, he says, is where she was when she left the gates ofEden. A man is not much farther. Feltre might have saved AmbroseMallard. He is, however, right in saying, that the woman with thesentiment of religion in her bosom is a box of holy incensedistinguishing her from all other women. Empty of it, she is devil'sbait. At best, she is a creature who cannot overlook an injury, or mustbe exacting God knows what humiliations before she signs the treaty.

Informed at the house that her ladyship had been staying up on Croridgefor the last two days, Fleetwood sent his hardest shot of the eyes atGower. Let her be absent: it was equal to the first move of war, andabsolved him from contemplated proposals to make amends. But theenforced solitary companionship with this ruminator of a fellow set himasking whether the godless dog he had picked up by the wayside was notincarnate another of the sins he had to expiate. Day after day, almosthourly, some new stroke fell on him. Why? Was he selected forpersecution because he was wealthy? The Fates were driving him in onedirection, no doubt of that.

This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessation of Englishstorm-weather bequeathed him gloom. Ashamed of the mood, he wasnevertheless directed by its final shadows to see the ruminatingtramp in Gower, and in Madge the prize-fighter's jilt: and round aboutEsslemont a world eyeing an Earl of Fleetwood, who painted himself theman he was, or was held to be, by getting together such a collection,from the daughter of the Old Buccaneer to the ghastly corpse of AmbroseMallard. Why, clearly, wealth was the sole origin and agent of themischief. With somewhat less of it, he might have walked in his placeamong the nation's elect, the 'herd of the gilt horns,' untroubled byambitions and ideas.

Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and Madge walking over thegrounds near the western plantation, and he regretted the disappearanceof them, with the fellow talking hard into the girl's ear. Those twocould think he had been of some use. The man pretending to philosophicaldepth was at any rate honest; one could swear to the honesty of the girl,though she had been a reckless hussy. Their humble little hopes andmeans to come to union approached, after a fashion, hymning at his ears.Those two were pleasanter to look on than amorous lords and great ladies,who are interesting only when they are wicked.

Four days of desolate wanderings over the estate were occupied chiefly inhis decreeing the fall of timber that obstructed views, and was the moreimperatively doomed for his bailiff's intercession. 'Sound wood' thetrees might be: they had to assist in defraying the expense of separateestablishments. A messenger to Queeney from Croridge then announced theCountess's return 'for a couple of hours.' Queeney said it was the daywhen her ladyship examined the weekly bills of the household. That wasin the early morning. The post brought my lord a letter from CountessLivia, a most infrequent writer. She had his word to pay her debts;what next was she for asking? He shrugged, opened the letter, and staredat the half dozen lines. The signification of them rapped on hisconsciousness of another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent.

All possible anticipation seemed here outdone: insomuch that he heldpalpable evidence of the Fates at work to harass and drive him. She wasmarried to the young Earl of Cressett!'

Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs. They were the politelyflowing feminine of a statement of the fact, which might have been in oneline. They flourished wantonly: they were deadly blunt. And of all men,this youngster, who struck at him through her lips with the reproach,that he had sped the good-looking little beast upon his road to ruin:—perhaps to Ambrose Mallard's end!

CHAPTER XLII

THE RETARDED COURTSHIP

Carinthia reached Esslemont near noon. She came on foot, and had comeunaccompanied, stick in hand, her dress looped for the roads. Madgebustled her shorter steps up the park beside her; Fleetwood met her onthe terrace.

'No one can be spared at Croridge,' she said. 'I go back before dark.'
Apology was not thought of; she seemed wound to the pitch.

He bowed; he led into the morning-room. 'The boy is at Croridge?'

'With me. He has his nurse. Madge was at home here more than there.'

'Why do you go back?'

'I am of use to my brother.'

'Forgive me—in what way?'

'He has enemies about him. They are the workmen of Lord Levellier.
They attacked Lekkatts the other night, and my uncle fired at them out
of a window and wounded a man. They have sworn they will be revenged.
Mr. Wythan is with my brother to protect him.'

'Two men, very well; they don't want, if there's danger, a woman's aid inprotecting him?'

She smiled, and her smile was like the hint of the steel blade an inchout of sheath.

'My brother does not count me a weak woman.'

'Oh no! No one would think that,' Fleetwood said hurriedly and heartily.
'Least of all men, I, Carinthia. But you might be rash.'

'My brother knows me cautious.'

'Chillon?'

'It is my brother's name.'

'You used to call him by his name.

'I love his name.'

'Ah, well! I may be pardoned for wishing to hear what part you playthere.'

'I go the rounds with my brother.'

'Armed?'

'We carry arms.'

'Queer sight to see in England. But there are rascals in this country,too.'

She was guilty of saying, though not pointedly: 'We do not hiredefenders.'

'In civilized lands . . .' he began and stopped 'You have Mr. Wythan?'

'Yes, we are three.'

'You call him, I think, Owain?'

'I do.'

'In your brother's hearing?'

'Yes, my lord; it would be in your hearing if you were near.'

'No harm, no doubt.'

'There is none.'

'But you will not call your brother Chillon to me.'

'You dislike the name.'

'I learn to like everything you do and say; and every person you like.'

'It is by Mr. Wythan's dead wife's request that I call him by his name.
He is our friend. He is a man to trust.'

'The situation . . .' Fleetwood hung swaying between the worldly viewof it and the white light of this woman's nature flashed on his emotioninto his mind. 'You shall be trusted for judging. If he is your friend,he is my friend. I have missed the sight of our boy. You heard I was atEsslemont?'

'I heard from Madge!'

'It is positive you must return to Croridge?'

'I must be with my brother, yes.'

'Your ladyship will permit me to conduct you.'

Her head assented. There was nothing to complain of, but he had notgained a step.

The rule is, that when we have yielded initiative to a woman, we areunable to recover it without uncivil bluster. So, therefore, womendealing with gentlemen are allowed unreasonable advantages. He had nevergranted it in colloquy or act to any woman but this one. Consequently,he was to see, that if the gentleman in him was not put aside, the ladywould continue moving on lines of the independence he had likewiseyielded, or rather flung, to her. Unless, as a result, he besieged andwooed his wife, his wife would hold on a course inclining constantlyfarther from the union he desired. Yet how could he begin to woo her ifhe saw no spark of womanly tenderness? He asked himself, because thebeginning of the wooing might be checked by the call on him for words ofrepentance only just possible to conceive. Imagine them uttered, and shehas the initiative for life.

She would not have it, certainly, with a downright brute. But he was notthat. In an extremity of bitterness, he fished up a drowned old thought,of all his torments being due to the impulsive half-brute he was. Andbetween the good and the bad in him, the sole point of strength was apride likely, as the smooth simplicity of her indifference showed him,soon to be going down prostrate beneath her feet. Wholly a brute—well?He had to say, that playing the perfect brute with any other woman hewould have his mastery. The summoning of an idea of personal power tomatch this woman in a contest was an effort exhausting the idea.

They passed out of Esslemont gates together at that hour of the lateafternoon when South-westerly breezes, after a summer gale, drive theirhuge white flocks over blue fields fresh as morning, on the march to pilethe crown of the sphere, and end a troubled day with grandeur. Up thelane by the park they had open land to the heights of Croridge.

'Splendid clouds,' Fleetwood remarked.

She looked up, thinking of the happy long day's walk with her brother tothe Styrian Baths. Pleasure in the sight made her face shine superbly.'A flying Switzerland, Mr. Woodseer says,' she replied. 'England isbeautiful on days like these.—For walking, I think the English climatevery good.'

He dropped a murmur: 'It should suit so good a walker,' and burned tocompliment—her spirited easy stepping, and scorned himself for thesycophancy it would be before they were on the common ground of arestored understanding. But an approval of any of her acts threatenedhim with enthusiasm for the whole of them, her person included; and a damin his breast had to keep back the flood.

'You quote Woodseer to me, Carinthia. I wish you knew Lord Feltre.He can tell you of every cathedral, convent, and monastery in Europe andSyria. Nature is well enough; she is, as he says, a savage. Men'sworks, acting under divine direction to escape from that tangle, arebetter worthy of study, perhaps. If one has done wrong, for example.'

'I could listen to him,' she said.

'You would not need—except, yes, one thing. Your father's book speaksof not forgiving an injury.'

'My father does. He thinks it weakness to forgive an injury. Women do,and are disgraced, they are thought slavish. My brother is much strongerthan I am. He is my father alive in that.'

'It is anti-Christian, some would think.'

'Let offending people go. He would not punish them. They may go wherethey will be forgiven. For them our religion is a happy retreat; we areglad they have it. My father and my brother say that injury forbids usto be friends again. My father was injured by the English Admiralty: henever forgave it; but he would have fought one of their ships and offeredhis blood any day, if his country called to battle.'

'You have the same feeling, you mean.'

'I am a woman. I follow my brother, whatever he decides. It is not tosay he is the enemy of persons offending him; only that they have put thedivision.'

'They repent?'

'If they do, they do well for themselves.'

'You would see them in sackcloth and ashes?'

'I would pray to be spared seeing them.'

'You can entirely forget—well, other moments, other feelings?'

'They may heighten the injury.'

'Carinthia, I should wish to speak plainly, if I could, and tell you….'

'You speak quite plainly, my lord.'

'You and I cannot be strangers or enemies.'

'We cannot be, I would not be. To be friends, we should be separate.'

'You say you are a woman; you have a heart, then?'—for, if not, whathave you? was added in the tone.

'My heart is my brother's,' she said.

'All your heart?'

'My heart is my brother's until one of us drops.'

'There is not another on earth beside your brother Chillon?'

'There is my child.'

The dwarf square tower of Croridge village church fronted them againstthe sky, seen of both.

'You remember it,' he said; and she answered: 'I was married there.'

'You have not forgotten that injury, Carinthia?'

'I am a mother.'

'By all the saints! you hit hard. Justly. Not you. Our deeds are thehard hitters. We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke uponstroke! Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to theground—no recovery of it, none! That must be what your father meant.I can't regret you are a mother. We have a son, a bond. How can Idescribe the man I was!' he muttered,—'possessed! sort of werewolf!You are my wife?'

'I was married to you, my lord.'

'It's a tie of a kind.'

'It binds me.'

'Obey, you said.'

'Obey it. I do.'

'You consider it holy?'

'My father and my mother spoke to me of the marriage-tie. I read theservice before I stood at the altar. It is holy. It is dreadful.I will be true to it.'

'To your husband?'

'To his name, to his honour.'

'To the vow to live with him?'

'My husband broke that for me.'

'Carinthia, if he bids you, begs you to renew it? God knows what you maysave me from!'

'Pray to God. Do not beg of me, my lord. I have my brother and mylittle son. No more of husband for me! God has given me a friend, too,—a man of humble heart, my brother's friend, my dear Rebecca's husband.He can take them from me: no one but God. See the splendid sky we have.'

With those words she barred the gates on him; at the same time shebestowed the frank look of an amiable face brilliant in the lively redof her exercise, in its bent-bow curve along the forehead, out of theline of beauty, touching, as her voice was, to make an undertone ofanguish swell an ecstasy. So he felt it, for his mood was now thelover's. A torture smote him, to find himself transported by thatvoice at his ear to the scene of the young bride in thirty-acre meadow.

'I propose to call on Captain Kirby-Levellier tomorrow, Carinthia,' hesaid. 'The name of his house?'

'My brother is not now any more in the English army,' she replied. 'Hehas hired a furnished house named Stoneridge.'

'He will receive me, I presume?'

'My brother is a courteous gentleman, my lord.'

'Here is the church, and here we have to part for today. Do we?'

'Good-bye to you, my lord,' she said.

He took her hand and dropped the dead thing.

'Your idea is, to return to Esslemont some day or other?'

'For the present,' was her strange answer.

She bowed, she stepped on. On she sped, leaving him at the stammeredbeginning of his appeal to her.

Their parting by the graveyard of the church that had united them waswhat the world would class as curious. To him it was a further and awell-marked stroke of the fatality pursuing him. He sauntered by thegraveyard wall until her figure slipped out of sight. It went like apuffed candle, and still it haunted the corner where last seen. Hervanishing seemed to say, that less of her belonged to him than thephantom his eyes retained behind them somewhere.

There was in his pocket a memento of Ambrose Mallard, that the family hadgiven him at his request. He felt the lump. It had an answer for allperplexities. It had been charged and emptied since it was in hispossession; and it could be charged again. The thing was a volume asbig as the world to study. For the touch of a finger, one could haveits entirely satisfying contents, and fly and be a raven of that nightwherein poor Ambrose wanders lost, but cured of human wounds.

He leaned on the churchyard wall, having the graves to the front of eyesbent inward. They were Protestant graves, not so impressive to him asthe wreathed and gilt of those under dedication to Feltre's Madonna.But whatever they were, they had ceased to nurse an injury or feel thepain for having inflicted it. Their wrinkles had gone from them, whetherof anger or suffering. Ambrose Mallard lay as peaceful in consecratedground: and Chumley Potts would be unlikely to think that the helping tolay Ambrose in his quiet last home would cost him a roasting untilpriestly intercession availed. So Chummy continues a Protestant; dullconsciences can! But this is incomprehensible, that she, nursing herinjury, should be perfectly civil. She is a woman without emotion. Sheis a woman full of emotion, one man knows. She ties him to her, to makehim feel the lash of his remorse. He feels it because of her casting himfrom her—and so civilly. If this were a Catholic church, one might goin and give the stained soul free way to get a cleansing. As it is, hereare the graves; the dead everywhere have their sanctity, even theheathen.

Fleetwood read the name of the family of Meek on several boards atthe head of the graves. Jonathan Meek died at the age of ninety-five.A female Meek had eighty-nine years in this life. Ezra Meek gave upthe ghost prematurely, with a couplet, at eighty-one. A healthy spot,Croridge, or there were virtues in the Meek family, he reflected, and hada shudder that he did not trace to its cause, beyond an acknowledgementof a desire for the warm smell of incense.

CHAPTER XLIII

ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE

His customary wrestle with the night drove Lord Fleetwood in thestillness of the hour after matins from his hated empty Esslemont upagain to the village of the long-lived people, enjoying the moistearthiness of the air off the ironstone. He rode fasting, a goodpreparatory state for the simple pleasures, which are virtually the GreatNourisher's teats to her young. The earl was relieved of his dejectionby a sudden filling of his nostrils. Fat Esslemont underneath had nosuch air. Except on the mornings of his walk over the Salzkammergut andBlack Forest regions, he had never consciously drawn that deep breath ofthe satisfied rapture, charging the whole breast with thankfulness.Huntsmen would know it, if the chase were not urgent to pull them atthe tail of the running beast. Once or twice on board his yacht hemight have known something like it, but the salt sea-breeze could notbe disconnected from his companion Lord Feltre, and a thought of Feltreswung vapour of incense all about him. Breathing this air of the youngsun's kiss of earth, his invigoration repelled the seductions of theburnt Oriental gums.

Besides, as he had told his friend, it was the sincerity of the Catholicreligion, not the seductiveness, that won him to a form of homage—thebend of the head of a foreign observer at a midnight mass. Asceticism,though it may not justify error, is a truth in itself, it is the essenceextracted of the scourge, flesh vanquished; and it stands apart fromcontroversy. Those monks of the forested mountain heights, rambling fortheir herbs, know the blessedness to be found in mere breathing:a neighbour readiness to yield the breath inspires it the more. For whenwe do not dread our end, the sense of a free existence comes back to us:we have the prized gift to infancy under the piloting of manhood. Butbefore we taste that happiness we must perform our penance; 'No livinghappiness can be for the unclean,' as the holy father preached to hisflock of the monastery dispersing at matins.

Ay, but penance? penance? Is there not such a thing as the doing ofpenance out of the Church, in the manly fashion? So to regain the rightto be numbered among the captains of the world's fighting men,incontestably the best of comrades, whether or no they led away on acataract leap at the gates of life. Boldly to say we did a wrong willclear our sky for a few shattering peals.

The penitential act means, youth put behind us, and a steady courseahead. But, for the keeping of a steady course, men made of blood in thewalks of the world must be steadied. Say it plainly-mated. There is thehumiliating point of our human condition. We must have beside us andclose beside us the woman we have learned to respect; supposing ourselveslucky enough to have found her; 'that required other scale of the humanbalance,' as Woodseer calls her now he has got her, wiser than LordFeltre in reference to men and women. We get no balance without her.That is apparently the positive law; and by reason of men's wretchedenslavement, it is the dance to dissolution when we have not honourableunion with women. Feltre's view of women sees the devilish or theangelical; and to most men women are knaves or ninnies. Hence do webehold rascals or imbeciles in the offspring of most men.

He embraced the respected woman's character, with the usual effect:—to see with her sight; and she beheld a speckled creature of theintermittent whims and moods and spites; the universal Patron, whoseambition to be leader of his world made him handle foul brutes—corruptand cause their damnation, they retort, with curses, in their pangs.She was expected to pardon the husband, who had not abstained from hisrevenge on her for keeping him to the pledge of his word. And what arevenge!—he had flung the world at her. She is consequently to be theyoung bride she was on the memorable morning of the drive off theseheights of Croridge down to thirty-acre meadow! It must be a saint toforgive such offences; and she is not one, she is deliciously not one,neither a Genevieve nor a Griselda. He handed her the rod to chastisehim. Her exchange of Christian names with the Welshman would not do it;she was too transparently sisterly, provincially simple; she was, infact, respected. Any whipping from her was child's play to him, on whom,if he was to be made to suffer, the vision of the intense felicity ofausterest asceticism brought the sensation as bracingly as the Borealmorning animates men of high blood in ice regions. She could but gentlysting, even if vindictive.

Along the heights, outside the village, some way below a turn of the roadto Lekkatts, a gentleman waved hand. The earl saluted with his whip, andwaited for him.

'Nothing wrong, Mr. Wythan?'

'Nothing to fear, my lord.'

'I get a trifle uneasy.'

'The countess will not leave her brother.'

A glow of his countess's friendliness for this open-faced, prompt-speaking, good fellow of the faintly inky eyelids, and possibly sheepishinclinations, melted Fleetwood. Our downright repentance of misconducttoward a woman binds us at least to the tolerant recognition of what poorscraps of consolement she may have picked up between then and now—whenwe can stretch fist in flame to defy it on the oath of her being a womanof honour.

The earl alighted and said: 'Her brother, I suspect, is the key of theposition.'

'He's worth it—she loves her brother,' said Mr. Wythan, betraying afeature of his quick race, with whom the reflection upon a statement isits lightning in advance.

Gratified by the instant apprehension of his meaning, Fleetwoodinterpreted the Welshman's. 'I have to see the brother worthy of herlove. Can you tell me the hour likely to be convenient?'. . . . .

Mr. Wythan thought an appointment unnecessary which conveyed thesufficient assurance of audience granted.

'You know her brother well, Mr. Wythan?'

'Know him as if I had known him for years. They both come to the mind asfaith comes—no saying how; one swears by them.'

Fleetwood eyed the Welsh gentleman, with an idea that he might readily dothe same by him.

Mr. Wythan's quarters were at the small village inn, whither he was onhis way to breakfast. The earl slipped an arm through the bridle reinsand walked beside him, listening to an account of the situation atLekkatts. It was that extraordinary complication of moves and checkswhich presents in the main a knot, for the powers above to cut. Amiserly old lord withholds arrears of wages; his workmen strike at acritical moment; his nephew, moved by common humanity, draws uponcrippled resources to supply their extremer needs, though they areruining his interests. They made one night a demonstration of theterrorizing sort round Lekkatts, to give him a chorus; and the old lordfired at them out of window and wounded a man. For that they vowedvengeance. All the new gunpowder milled in Surrey was, for some purposeof his own, stored by Lord Levellier on the alder island of the pond nearhis workshops, a quarter of a mile below the house. They refused,whatever their object, to let a pound of it be moved, at a time when atlast the Government had undertaken to submit it to experiments. Andthere they stood on ground too strong for 'the Captain,' as they calledhim, to force, because of the quantity stored at Lekkatts being largelybeyond the amount under cover of Lord Levellier's licence. The old lordwas very ill, and he declined to see a doctor, but obstinately kept fromdying. His nephew had to guard him and at the same time support an enemyhaving just cause of complaint. This, however, his narrow means wouldnot much longer permit him to do. The alternative was then offered himof either siding arbitrarily against the men and his conscience or oftaking a course 'imprudent on the part of a presumptive heir,' Mr. Wythansaid hurriedly at the little inn's doorsteps.

'You make one of his lordship's guard?' said Fleetwood.

'The countess, her brother, and I, yes'

'Danger at all?'

'Not so much to fear while the countess is with us.'

'Fear is not a word for Carinthia.'

Her name on the earl's lips drew a keen shot of the eye from Mr. Wythan,and he read the signification of the spoken name. 'You know what everyCambrian living thinks of her, my lord.'

'She shall not have one friend the less for me.'

Fleetwood's hand was out for a good-bye, and the hand was grasped by onewho looked happy in doing it. He understood and trusted the man afterthat, warmed in thinking how politic his impulses could be.

His intention of riding up to Croridge at noon to request his interviewwith Mr. Kirby-Levellier was then stated.

'The key of the position, as you said,' Mr. Wythan remarked, notproffering an opinion of it more than was expressed by a hearty, rosycountenance, that had to win its way with the earl before excuse wasfound for the venturesome repetition of his phrase.

Cantering back to that home of the loves of Gower Woodseer and MadgeWinch, the thought of his first act of penance done, without his feelingthe poorer for it, reconciled Fleetwood to the aspect of the hollowplace.

He could not stay beneath the roof. His task of breakfasting done, hewas off before the morning's delivery of letters, riding round thecountry under Croridge, soon up there again. And Henrietta might be athome, he was reminded by hearing band-music as he followed the directionsto the house named Stoneridge. The band consisted of eight windinstruments; they played astonishingly well for itinerant musicians.By curious chance, they were playing a selection from the Pirata;presently he heard the notes to 'il mio tradito amor.' They had hit uponHenrietta's favourite piece!

At the close of it he dismounted, flung the reins to his groom, and,addressing a compliment to the leader, was deferentially saluted with a'my lord.' Henrietta stood at the window, a servant held the door openfor him to enter; he went in, and the beautiful young woman welcomed him:'Oh, my dear lord, you have given me such true delight! How verygenerous of you!' He protested ignorance. She had seen him speak to theconductor and receive the patron's homage; and who but he knew her adoredof operas, or would have had the benevolent impulse to think of solacingher exile from music in the manner so sure of her taste! She was at herloveliest: her features were one sweet bloom, as of the sunny flowergarden; and, touched to the heart by the music and the kindness, shelooked the look that kisses; innocently, he felt, feeling himself on thesame good ground while he could own he admired the honey creature, muchas an amateur may admire one of the pictures belonging to the nation.

'And you have come . . .?' she said. 'We are to believe in happyendings?'

He shrugged, as the modest man should, who says:

'If it depends on me'; but the words were firmly spoken and could becredited.

'Janey is with her brother down at Lekkatts. Things are at a deadlock.A spice of danger, enough to relieve the dulness; and where there isdanger Janey's at home.' Henrietta mimicked her Janey. 'Parades withher brother at night; old military cap on her head; firearms primed;sings her Austrian mountain songs or the Light Cavalry call, till itrings all day in my ears—she has a thrilling contralto. You are not tothink her wild, my lord. She's for adventure or domesticity, "whicheverthe Fates decree." She really is coming to the perfect tone.'

'Speak of her,' said the earl. 'She can't yet overlook . . . ?'

'It's in the family. She will overlook anything her brother excuses.'

'I'm here to see him.'

'I heard it from Mr. Wythan.'

'"Owain," I believe?'

Henrietta sketched apologies, with a sidled head, soft pout, wavy hand.'He belongs to the order of primitive people. His wife—the samepattern, one supposes—pledged them to their Christian names. The manis a simpleton, but a gentleman; and Janey holds his dying wife's wishsacred. We are all indebted to him.'

'Whatever she thinks right!' said Fleetwood.

The fair young woman's warm nature flew out to him on a sparkle ofgrateful tenderness in return for his magnanimity, oblivious of theinflamer it was: and her heart thanked him more warmly, without theperilous show of emotion, when she found herself secure.

She was beautiful, she was tempting, and probably the weakest of playersin the ancient game of two; and clearly she was not disposed to theoutlaw game; was only a creature of ardour. That he could see, seeingthe misinterpretation a fellow like Brailstone would put upon a temporaryflush of the feminine, and the advantage he would take of it, perhaps notunsuccessfully—the dog! He committed the absurdity of casting a mentalimprecation at the cunning tricksters of emotional women, and yelled athimself in the worn old surplice of the converted rake. But letting hismind run this way, the tradito amor of the band outside the lady's windowwas instantly traced to Lord Brailstone; so convictingly, that he nowbecame a very counsel for an injured husband in denunciation of theseductive compliment.

Henrietta prepared to conduct him to Lekkatts; her bonnet was brought.She drew forth a letter from a silken work-bag, and raised it,—Livia'shandwriting. 'I 've written my opinion,' he said.

'Not too severe, pray.'

'Posted.'

'Livia wanted a protector.'

'And chose—what on earth are you saying!'

Livia and her boyish lord were abandoned on the spot, though Henriettacould have affirmed stoutly that there was much to be pleaded, if afemale advocate dared it, and a man would but hear.

His fingers were at the leaves of a Spanish dictionary.

'Oh yes, and here we have a book of Travels in Spain,' she said.
'Everything Spanish for Janey now. You are aware?—no?'

He was unaware and desired to be told.

'Janey's latest idea; only she would have conceived the notion. Yousolve our puzzle, my lord.'

She renewed the thanks she persisted in offering for the military musicnow just ceasing: vexatiously, considering that it was bad policy for himto be unmasking Brailstone to her. At the same time, the blindness whichrendered her unconscious of Brailstone's hand in sending members of amilitary band to play selections from the favourite opera they hadjointly drunk of to ecstasy, was creditable; touching, when one thoughtof the pursuer's many devices, not omitting some treason on the part ofher present friend.

'Tell me—I solve?' he said . . . .

Henrietta spied the donkey-basket bearing the two little ones.

'Yes, I hope so—on our way down,' she made answer. 'I want you to seethe pair of love-birds in a nest.'

The boy and girl were seen lying side by side, both fast asleep; fair-haired girl, dark-haired boy, faced to one another.

'Temper?' said Fleetwood, when he had taken observation of them.

'Very imperious—Mr. Boy!' she replied, straightening her back under apretty frown, to convey the humour of the infant tyrant.

The father's mind ran swiftly on a comparison of the destinies of the twochildren, from his estimate of their parents; many of Gower Woodseer'sdicta converging to reawaken thoughts upon Nature's laws, which aknowledge of his own nature blackened. He had to persuade himself thatthis child of his was issue of a loving union; he had to do it violently,conjuring a vivid picture of the mother in bud, and his recognition ofher young charm; the pain of keeping to his resolve to quit her, lest sheshould subjugate him and despoil him of his wrath; the fatalism in hiscoming and going; the romantic freak it had been,—a situation then soclearly wrought, now blurred past comprehension. But there must havebeen love, or some love on his part. Otherwise he was bound to pray forthe mother to predominate in the child, all but excluding its father.

Carinthia's image, as a result, ascended sovereignty, and he hung to it.

For if we are human creatures with consciences, nothing is more certainthan that we make our taskmasters of those to whom we have done a wrong,the philosopher says. Between Lord Feltre and Gower Woodseer, influencedpretty equally by each of them, this young nobleman was wakening to theclaims of others—Youth's infant conscience. Fleetwood now conceived theverbal supplication for his wife's forgiveness involved in the act ofpenance; and verbal meant abject; with him, going so far, it would meannaked, precise, no slurring. That he knew, and a tremor went over him.Women, then, are really the half of the world in power as much as intheir number, if men pretend to a step above the savage. Or, well, hiswife was a power.

He had forgotten the puzzle spoken of by Henrietta, when she used theword again and expressed her happiness in the prospect before them—caused by his presence, of course.

'You are aware, my dear lord, Janey worships her brother. He wasdefeated, by some dastardly contrivance, in a wager to do wonderfulfeats—for money! money! money! a large stake. How we come off ourhigh horses! I hadn't an idea of money before I was married. I thinkof little else. My husband has notions of honour; he engaged himselfto pay a legacy of debts; his uncle would not pay debts long due to him.He was reduced to the shift of wagering on his great strength and skill.He could have done it. His enemy managed—enemy there was! He had tosell out of the army in consequence. I shall never have Janey's faceof suffering away from my sight. He is a soldier above all things. Itseems hard on me, but I cannot blame him for snatching at an opportunityto win military distinction. He is in treaty for the post of aide to theColonel—the General of the English contingent bound for Spain, for thecause of the Queen. My husband will undertake to be at the orders of hischief as soon as he can leave this place. Janey goes with him, accordingto present arrangements.'

Passing through a turnstile, that led from the road across a meadow-slopeto the, broken land below, Henrietta had view of the earl's hard whiteface, and she hastened to say: 'You have altered that, my lord. She isdevoted to her brother; and her brother running dangers . . . anddanger in itself is an attraction to her. But her husband will have thefirst claim. She has her good sense. She will never insist on going, ifyou oppose. She will be ready to fill her station. It will be-her prideand her pleasure.'

Henrietta continued in the vein of these assurances; and Carinthia'scharacter was shooting lightnings through him, withering that of thewoman who referred to his wife's good sense and her station; andcertainly would not have betrayed herself by such drawlings if she hadbeen very positive that Carinthia's disposition toward wealth and luxuryresembled hers. She knew the reverse; or so his contemptuously generouseffort to frame an apology for the stuff he was hearing considered it.His wife was lost to him. That fact smote on his breast the moment heheard of her desire to go with her brother.

Wildest of enterprises! But a criminal saw himself guilty of a largepart in the disaster the two heroical souls were striving desperately torepair. If her Chillon went, Carinthia would go—sure as flame is drawnto air. The exceeding splendour in the character of a young woman,injured as she had been, soft to love, as he knew her, and giving herhusband no other rival than a beloved brother, no ground of complaintsave her devotion to her brother, pervaded him, without illuminating orlifting; rather with an indication of a foul contrast, that prostratedhim.

Half of our funny heathen lives we are bent double to gather things wehave tossed away! was one of the numbers of apposite sayings that hummedabout him, for a chorus of the world's old wisdom in derision, when hedescended the heathy path and had sight of Carinthia beside her Chillon.Would it be the same thing if he had it in hand again? Did he wish it tobe the same? Was not he another man? By the leap of his heart to thewoman standing down there, he was a better man.

But recent spiritual exercises brought him to see superstitiously how bythat sign she was lost to him; for everlastingly in this life the betterpays for the worse; thus is the better a proved thing.

Both Chillon and Carinthia, it is probable, might have been stirred todeeper than compassion, had the proud young nobleman taken them intohis breast to the scouring of it; exposing the grounds of his formerbrutality, his gradual enlightenment, his ultimate acknowledgement ofthe pricelessness of the woman he had won to lose her. An imploring offorgiveness would not have been necessary with those two, however greattheir—or the woman's—astonishment at the revelation of an abysmal malehumanity. A complete exposure of past meanness is the deed of presentcourage certain of its reward without as well as within; for then we showour fellows that the slough is cast. But life is a continuous fight;and members of the social world display its degree of civilization byfighting in armour; most of them are born in it; and their armour is moresensitive than their skins. It was Fleetwood's instinct of his inabilityto fling it off utterly which warned him of his loss of the wife, whoseenthusiasm to wait on her brother in danger might have subsided into thechannel of duty, even tenderness, had he been able resolutely to striphimself bare. This was the further impossible to him, because of abelief he now imposed upon himself, to cover the cowardly shrinking fromso extreme a penitential act, that such confessions are due from men tothe priest only, and that he could confess wholly and absolutely to thepriest—to heaven, therefore, under seal, and in safety, but with perfectrepentance.

So, compelled to keep his inner self unknown, he fronted Chillon;courteously, in the somewhat lofty seeming of a guarded manner, herequested audience for a few minutes; observing the princely figure ofthe once hated man, and understanding Henrietta's sheer womanly choice ofhim; Carinthia's idolatry, too, as soon as he had spoken. The man was inhis voice.

Chillon said: 'It concerns my sister, I have to think. In that case, herwish is to be present. Your lordship will shorten the number of minutesfor the interview by permitting it.'

Fleetwood encountered Carinthia's eyes. They did not entreat or defy.They seconded her brother, and were a civil shining naught on herhusband. He bowed his head, constrained, feeling heavily the two to one.

She replied to the look: 'My brother and I have a single mind. We savetime by speaking three together, my lord.'

He was led into the long room of the workshop, where various patterns ofmuskets, rifles, pistols, and swords were stars, crosses, wedges, overthe walls, and a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied themiddle place, on a block.

Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war were commonon those days among a people beginning to sit with habitual snugness atthe festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers.Fleetwood had not been on the side of the banqueting citizens, though hiscountry's journals and her feasted popular wits made a powerful currentto whelm opposition. But the appearance of the woman, his wife, here,her head surrounded by destructive engines in the form of trophy, and theknowledge that this woman bearing his name designed to be out at theheels of a foreign army or tag-rag of uniformed rascals, inspired him toreprobate men's bad old game as heartily as good sense does in theabstract, and as derisively as it is the way with comfortable islandersbefore the midnight trumpet-notes of panic have tumbled them to theirlegs. He took his chair; sickened.

He was the next moment taking Carinthia's impression of Chillon,compelled to it by an admiration that men and women have alike for shapesof strength in the mould of grace, over whose firm build a flicker ofa*gility seems to run. For the young soldier's figure was visibly in itsrepose prompt to action as the mind's movement. This was her brother;her enthusiasm for her brother was explained to him. No sooner did hehave the conception of it than it plucked at him painfully; and, feelinghimself physically eclipsed by the object of Carinthia's enthusiasm, hispride of the rival counselled him to preserve the mask on what was goingon within, lest it should be seen that he was also morally beaten at theoutset. A trained observation told him, moreover, that her Chillon'scorrectly handsome features, despite their conventional urbanity, couldknit to smite, and held less of the reserves of mercy behind them thanCarinthia's glorious barbaric ruggedness. Her eyes, each time she lookedat her brother, had, without doating, the light as of the rise of happytears to the underlids as they had on a certain day at the altar, when'my lord' was 'my husband,'—more shyly then. He would have said, asbeautifully, but for envy of the frank, pellucid worship in that lookon her proved hero. It was the jewel of all the earth to win back tohimself; and it subjected him, through his desire for it, to ameasurement with her idol, in character, quality, strength, hardness.He heard the couple pronouncing sentence of his loss by anticipation.

Why had she primed her brother to propose the council of three?Addressing them separately, he could have been his better or truer self.The sensation of the check imposed on him was instructive as to her craftand the direction of her wishes. She preferred the braving of hazardsand horrors beside her brother, in scorn of the advantages he couldoffer; and he yearned to her for despising by comparison the bribe heproposed in the hope that he might win her to him. She was with religionto let him know the meanness of wealth.

Thus, at the edge of the debate, or contest, the young lord's essentialnobility disarmed him; and the revealing of it, which would have appealedto Carinthia and Chillon both, was forbidden by its constituent pride,which helped him to live and stood obstructing explanatory speech.

CHAPTER XLIV

BETWEEN THE EARL, THE COUNTESS AND HER BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER CROSS

Carinthia was pleased by hearing Lord Fleetwood say to her: 'Your Madgeand my Gower are waiting to have the day named for them.'

She said: 'I respect him so much for his choice of Madge. They shall notwait, if I am to decide.'

'Old Mr. Woodseer has undertaken to join them.'

'It is in Whitechapel they will be married.'

The blow that struck was not intended, and Fleetwood passed it, under herbrother's judicial eye. Any small chance word may carry a sting for theneophyte in penitence.

'My lawyers will send down the settlement on her, to be read to themto-day or to-morrow. With the interest on that and the sum he tells mehe has in the Funds, they keep the wolf from the door—a cottage door.They have their cottage. There's an old song of love in a cottage.His liking for it makes him seem wiser than his clever sayings. He'llwork in that cottage.'

'They have a good friend to them in you, my lord. It will not be povertyfor their simple wants. I hear of the little cottage in Surrey wherethey are to lodge at first, before they take one of their own.'

'We will visit them.'

'When I am in England I shall visit them often.'

He submitted.

'The man up here wounded is recovering?'

'Yes, my lord. I am learning to nurse the wounded, with the surgeon todirect me.'

'Matters are sobering down?—The workmen?'

'They listen to reason so willingly when we speak personally, we find.'

The earl addressed Chillon. 'Your project of a Spanish expeditionreminds me of favourable reports of your chief.'

'Thoroughly able and up to the work,' Chillon answered.

'Queer people to meddle with.'

'We 're on the right side on the dispute.'

'It counts, Napoleon says. A Spanish civil war promises bloody doings.'

'Any war does that.'

'In the Peninsula it's war to the knife, a merciless business.'

'Good schooling for the profession.'

Fleetwood glanced: she was collected and attentive. 'I hear from Mrs.
Levellier that Carinthia would like to be your companion.'

'My sister has the making of a serviceable hospital nurse.'

'You hear the chatter of London!'

'I have heard it.'

'You encourage her, Mr. Levellier?'

'She will be useful—better there than here, my lord.'

'I claim a part in the consultation.'

'There 's no consultation; she determines to go.'

'We can advise her of all the risks.'

'She has weighed them, every one.'

'In the event of accidents, the responsibility for having persuaded herwould rest on you.'

'My brother has not persuaded me,' Carinthia's belltones intervened.'I proposed it. The persuasion was mine. It is my happiness to be nearhim, helping, if I can.'

'Lady Fleetwood, I am entitled to think that your brother yielded to arequest urged in ignorance of the nature of the risks a woman runs.'

'My brother does not yield to a request without examining it all round,my lord, and I do not. I know the risks. An evil that we should notendure,—life may go. There can be no fear for me.'

She spoke plain truth. The soul of this woman came out in its radianceto subdue him, as her visage sometimes did; and her voice enlarged herwords. She was a warrior woman, Life her sword, Death her target, neverto be put to shame, unconquerable. No such symbolical image smote him,but he had an impression, the prose of it. As in the scene of theminers' cottares, her lord could have knelt to her: and for anunprotesting longer space now. He choked a sigh, shrugged, and said,in the world's patient manner with mad people: 'You have set your mind onit; you see it rose-coloured. You would not fear, no, but your friendswould have good reason to fear. It's a menagerie in revolt over there.It is not really the place for you. Abandon the thought, I beg.'

'I shall, if my brother does not go,' said Carinthia.

Laughter of spite at a remark either silly or slyly defiant was checkedin Fleetwood by the horror of the feeling that she had gone, was ankle-deep in bloody mire, captive, prey of a rabble soldiery, meditating theshot or stab of the blessed end out of woman's half of our human muddle.

He said to Chillon: 'Pardon me, war is a detestable game. Women in thethick of it add a touch to the brutal hideousness of the whole thing.'

Chillon said: 'We are all of that opinion. Men have to play the game;women serving in hospital make it humaner.'

'Their hospitals are not safe.'

'Well! Safety!'

For safety is nowhere to be had. But the earl pleaded: 'At least in ourcountry.'

'In our country women are safe?'

'They are, we may say, protected.'

'Laws and constables are poor protection for them.'

'The women we name ladies are pretty safe, as a rule.'

'My sister, then, was the exception.'

After a burning half minute the earl said: 'I have to hear it from you,
Mr. Levellier. You see me here.'

That was handsomely spoken. But Lord Fleetwood had been judged and putaside. His opening of an old case to hint at repentance for brutalityannoyed the man who had let him go scathless for a sister's sake.

'The grounds of your coming, my lord, are not seen; my time is short.'

'I must, I repeat, be consulted with regard to Lady Fleetwood'smovements.'

'My sister does not acknowledge your claim.'

'The Countess of Fleetwood's acts involve her husband.'

'One has to listen at times to what old sailors call Caribbee!' Chillonexclaimed impatiently, half aloud. 'My sister received your title; shehas to support it. She did not receive the treatment of a wife:—or lady, or woman, or domestic animal. The bond is broken, as far asit bears on her subjection. She holds to the rite, thinks it sacred.You can be at rest as to her behaviour. In other respects, your lordshipdoes not exist for her.'

'The father of her child must exist for her.'

'You raise that curtain, my lord!'

In the presence of three it would not bear a shaking.

Carinthia said, in pity of his torture:—

'I have my freedom, and am thankful for it, to follow my brother, toshare his dangers with him. That is more to me than luxury and themarried state. I take only my freedom.'

'Our boy? You take the boy?'

'My child is with my sister Henrietta!

'Where?'

'We none know yet.'

'You still mistrust me?'

Her eyes were on a man that she had put from her peaceably; and shereplied, with sweetness in his ears, with shocks to a sinking heart,'My lord, you may learn to be a gentle father to the child. I pray youmay. My brother and I will go. If it is death for us, I pray my childmay have his father, and God directing his father.'

Her speech had the clang of the final.

'Yes, I hope—if it be the worst happening, I pray, too,' said he, anddrooped and brightened desperately: 'But you, too, Carinthia, you couldaid by staying, by being with the boy and me. Carinthia!' he clasped hername, the vapour left to him of her: 'I have learnt learnt what I am,what you are; I have to climb a height to win back the wife I threw away.She was unknown to me; I to myself nearly as much. I sent a warning ofthe kind of husband for you—a poor kind; I just knew myself well enoughfor that. You claimed my word—the blessing of my life, if I had knownit! We were married; I played—I see the beast I played. Money ispower, they say. I see the means it is to damn the soul, unless we—unless a man does what I do now.'

Fleetwood stopped. He had never spoken such words—arterial words, asthey were, though the commonest, and with moist brows, dry lips, he couldhave resumed, have said more, have taken this woman, this dream of theformer bride, the present stranger, into his chamber of the brave aimsand sentenced deeds. Her brother in the room was the barrier; and shesat mute, large-eyed, expressionless. He had plunged low in the man'shearing; the air of his lungs was thick, hard to breathe, for shame of adegradation so extreme.

Chillon imagined him to be sighing. He had to listen further. 'Soul'had been an uttered word. When the dishonouring and mishandling brute ofa young nobleman stuttered a compliment to Carinthia on her 'faith inGod's assistance and the efficacy of prayer,' he jumped to his legs, notto be shouting 'Hound!' at him. He said, under control: 'God's nameshall be left to the Church. My sister need not be further troubled.She has shown she is not persuaded by me. Matters arranged herequickly,—we start. If I am asked whether I think she does wisely torun the risks in an insurrectionary country rather than remain at homeexposed to the honours and amusem*nts your lordship offers, I think so;she is acting in her best interests. She has the choice of being abroadwith me or staying here unguarded by me. She has had her experience.She chooses rightly. Paint the risks she runs, you lay the colours onthose she escapes.' She thanks the treatment she has undergone for herfreedom to choose. I am responsible for nothing but the not having stoodagainst her most wretched marriage. It might have been foreseen. Outthere in the war she is protected. Here she is with—I spare yourlordship the name.'

Fleetwood would have heard harsher had he not been Carinthia's husband.He withheld his reply. The language moved him to proud hostility: butthe speaker was Carinthia's brother.

He said to her: 'You won't forget Gower and Madge?'

She gave him a smile in saying: 'It shall be settled for a day after nextweek.'

The forms of courtesy were exchanged.

At the closing of the door on him, Chillon said: 'He did send a message:I gathered it—without the words—from our Uncle Griphard. I thought himin honour bound to you—and it suited me that I should.'

'I was a blindfold girl, dearest; no warning would have given me sight,'said Carinthia. 'That was my treachery to the love of my brother. . Idream of father and mother reproaching me.'

The misery of her time in England had darkened her mind's picture of theearly hour with Chillon on the heights above the forsaken old home; andthe enthusiasm of her renewed devotion to her brother giving it again,as no light of a lost Eden, as the brilliant step she was taking with himfrom their morning Eastern Alps to smoky-crimson Pyrenees and SpanishSierras; she could imagine the cavernous interval her punishment forhaving abandoned a sister's duties in the quest of personal happiness.

But simultaneously, the growing force of her mind's intelligence, whereinwas no enthusiasm to misdirect by overcolouring, enabled her to gathermore than a suspicion of comparative feebleness in the man stripped ofhis terrors. She penetrated the discrowned tyrant's nature somedistance, deep enough to be quit of her foregoing alarms. These,combined with his assured high style, had woven him the magical coat,threadbare to quiet scrutiny. She matched him beside her brother. Thedwarfed object was then observed; and it was not for a woman to measureherself beside him. She came, however, of a powerful blood, and he waspressing her back on her resources: without the measurement or a thoughtof it, she did that which is the most ordinary and the least noticed ofour daily acts in civilized intercourse, she subjected him to the trialof the elements composing him, by collision with what she felt of herown; and it was because she felt them strongly, aware of her feelingthem, but unaware of any conflict, that the wrestle occurred. She flunghim, pitied him, and passed on along her path elsewhere. This can bedone when love is gone. It is done more or less at any meeting of menand men; and men and women who love not are perpetually doing it,unconsciously or sensibly. Even in their love, a time for the trialarrives among certain of them; and the leadership is assumed, andsubmission ensues, tacitly; nothing of the contention being spoken,perhaps, nothing definitely known.

In Carinthia's case, her revived enthusiasm for her brother drove to thepenetration of the husband pleading to thwart its course. His offer waswealth: that is, luxury, amusem*nt, ease. The sub-audible 'himself' intothe bargain was disregarded, not counting with one who was an upward rushof fire at the thought that she was called to share her brother'sdangers.

Chillon cordially believed the earl to be the pestilent half madman,junction with whom is a constant trepidation for the wife, when it isnot a screaming plight. He said so, and Carinthia let him retain hisopinion. She would have said it herself to support her scheme, though'mad' applied to a man moving in the world with other men was notunderstood by her.

With Henrietta for the earl's advocate, she was patient as the deaf rock-wall enthusiam can be against entreaties to change its direction or bidit disperse: The 'private band of picked musicians' at the disposal ofthe Countess of Fleetwood, and Opera singers (Henrietta mentionedresonant names) hired for wonderful nights at Esslemont and Calesford oron board the earl's beautiful schooner yacht, were no temptation. Nordid Henrietta's allusions to his broken appearance move his wife, exceptin her saying regretfully: 'He changes.'

On the hall table at Esslemont, a letter from his bankers informed theearl of a considerable sum of money paid in to his account in the name ofLord Brailstone. Chumley Potts, hanging at him like a dog without amaster since the death of his friend Ambrose, had journeyed down:'Anxious about you,' he said. Anxious about or attracted by thepossessor of Ambrose Mallard's 'clean sweeper,' the silver-mounted smallpistol; sight of which he begged to have; and to lengthened his jaw onhearing it was loaded. A loaded pistol, this dark little one to theright of the earl's blotting-pad and pens, had the look of a fearful linkwith his fallen chaps and fishy hue. Potts maundered moralities upon'life,' holding the thing in his hand, weighing it, eyeing the muzzle.He 'couldn't help thinking of what is going to happen to us after itall': and 'Brosey knows now!' was followed by a twitch of one cheek andthe ejacul*tion 'Forever !' Fleetwood alive and Ambrose dead wereplucking the startled worldling to a peep over the verge into our abyss;and the young lord's evident doing of the same commanded Chumley Potts'imitation of him under the cloud Ambrose had become for both of them.

He was recommended to see Lord Feltre, if he had a desire to beinstructed on the subject of the mitigation of our pains in the regionsbelow. Potts affirmed that he meant to die a Protestant Christian.Thereupon, carrying a leaden burden of unlaughed laughable stuff in hisbreast, and Chummy's concluding remark to speed him: 'Damn it, no, we'llstick to our religion!' Fleetwood strode off to his library, and withthe names of the Ixionides of his acquaintance ringing round his head,proceeded to strike one of them off the number privileged at the momentto intrude on him. Others would follow; this one must be the first togo. He wrote the famous letter to Lord Brailstone, which debarred thewily pursuer from any pretext to be running down into Mrs. Levellier'sneighbourhood, and also precluded the chance of his meeting the fair ladyat Calesford. With the brevity equivalent to the flick of a glove on thecheek, Lord Brailstone was given to understand by Lord Fleetwood thatrelations were at an end between them. No explanation was added; asingle sentence executed the work, and in the third person. He did notonce reflect on the outcry in the ear of London coming from the receiverof such a letter upon payment of a debt.

The letter posted and flying, Lord Fleetwood was kinder to Chumley Potts;he had a friendly word for Gower Woodseer; though both were heathens,after their diverse fashions, neither of them likely ever to set out uponthe grand old road of Rome: Lord Feltre's 'Appian Way of the Saints andComforters.'

Chummy was pardoned when they separated at night for his reiteratedallusions to the temptation of poor Ambrose Mallard's conclusive littleweapon lying on the library table within reach of a man's arm-chair: inits case, and the case locked, yes, but easily opened, 'provoking everydamnable sort of mortal curiosity!' The soundest men among us have theirfits of the blues, Fleetwood was told. 'Not wholesome!' Chummy shook hishead resolutely, and made himself comprehensibly mysterious. He meantwell. He begged his old friend to promise he would unload and keep itunloaded. 'For I know the infernal worry you have—deuced deal worsethan a night's bad luck!' said he; and Fleetwood smiled sourly at theworld's total ignorance of causes. His wretchedness was due now to thefact that the aforetime huntress refused to be captured. He took asilver cross from a table-drawer and laid it on the pistol-case. 'There,Chummy,' he said; that was all; not sermonizing or proselytizing. He waspartly comprehended by Chumley Potts, fully a week later. Theunsuspecting fellow, soon to be despatched in the suite of Brailstone,bore away an unwontedly affectionate dismissal to his bed, and spoke somerather squeamish words himself, as he recollected with disgust when heran about over London repeating his executioner's.

The Cross on the pistol-case may have conduced to Lord Fleetwood'sthought, that his days among unrepentant ephemeral Protestant sinnersmust have their immediate termination. These old friends were theplague-infected clothes he flung off his body. But the Cross where itlay, forbidding a movement of the hand to that box, was authoritative todecree his passage through a present torture, by the agency of the handhe held back from the solution of his perplexity, at the cost which hisbelief in the Eternal would pay. Henrietta had mentioned her husband'sdefeat, by some dastardly contrivance. He had to communicate, for thedisburdening of his soul, not only that he was guilty, but the meanestof criminals, in being no more than half guilty. His training told himof the contempt women entertain toward the midway or cripple sinner, whenthey have no special desire to think him innocent. How write, or evenhow phrase his having merely breathed in his ruffian's hearing the wishthat he might hear of her husband's defeat! And with what object?Here, too, a woman might, years hence, if not forgive, bend her headresignedly over the man's vile nature, supposing strong passion hismotive. But the name for the actual motive? It would not bear writing,or any phrasing round it. An unsceptred despot bidden take a fairwoman's eyes into his breast, saw and shrank. And now the eyes wereCarinthia's: he saw a savage bridegroom, and a black ladder-climber,and the sweetest of pardoning brides, and the devil in him stillinsatiate for revenge upon her who held him to his word.

He wrote, read, tore the page, trimmed the lamp, and wrote again. Heremembered Gower Woodseer's having warned him he would finish his careera monk. Not, like Feltre, an oily convert, but under the hood, yes, andextracting a chartreuse from his ramble through woods richer far than thephilosopher's milk of Mother Nature's bosom. There flamed the burningsignal of release from his torments; there his absolving refuge, insteadof his writing fruitless, intricate, impossible stuff to a woman. Theletter was renounced and shredded: the dedicated ascetic contemplated ahooded shape, washed of every earthly fleck. It proved how men may bypower of grip squeeze raptures out of pain.

CHAPTER XLV

CONTAINS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS FEARED, WHAT WAS HOPED, AND WHAT HAPPENED

The Dame is at her thumps for attention to be called to 'the strangenessof it,' that a poor, small, sparse village, hardly above a hamlet, on themost unproductive of Kentish heights, part of old forest land, should atthis period become 'the cynosure of a city beautifully named by the poetGreat Augusta, and truly indeed the world's metropolis.'

Put aside her artful pother to rouse excitement at stages of a narrative,London's general eye upon little Croridge was but another instance ofthe extraordinary and not so wonderful. Lady Arpington, equal to aParliament in herself, spoke of the place and the countess courted byher repentant lord. Brailstone and Chumley Potts were town criers ofthe executioner letter each had received from the earl; Potts with hischatter of a suicide's pistol kept loaded in a case under a two-inch-longsilver Cross, and with sundry dramatic taps on the forehead, Jottingsover the breast, and awful grimace of devoutness. There was no mistakinghim. The young nobleman of the millions was watched; the town spyglasshad him in its orbit. Tales of the ancestral Fleetwoods ran besiderumours of a Papist priest at the bedside of the Foredoomed to Error'sdying mother. His wealth was counted, multiplied by the ready naughts ofthose who know little and dread much. Sir Meeson Corby referred to anargument Lord Fleetwood had held on an occasion hotly against the logicalconsistency of the Protestant faith; and to his alarm lest some day 'allthat immense amount of money should slip away from us to favour themachinations of Roman Catholicism!' The Countess of Cressett, Livia,anticipated her no surprise at anything Lord Fleetwood might do: she knewhim.

So thereupon, with the whirr of a covey on wing before the fowler, ourcrested three of immemorial antiquity and a presumptive immortality, theLadies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting across thedormant chief city Old England's fell word of the scarlet shimmer abovethe nether pit-flames, Rome. An ancient horror in the blood of thepopulation, conceiving the word to signify, beak, fang, and claw, thefiendish ancient enemy of the roasting day of yore, heard and echoed.Sleepless at the work of the sapper, in preparation for the tiger's leap,Rome is keen to spy the foothold of English stability, and her clasp of apillar of the structure sends tremors to our foundations.

The coupling of Rome and England's wealthiest nobleman struck a match toterrorize the Fire Insurance of Smithfield. That meteoric, intractable,perhaps wicked, but popular, reputedly clever; manifestly evil-starred,enormously wealthy, young Earl of Fleetwood, wedded to an adventuress,and a target for the scandals emanating from the woman, was daily,without omission of a day, seen walking Piccadilly pavement in companyonce more with the pervert, the Jesuit agent, that crafty Catesby of aLord Feltre, arm in arm the pair of them, and uninterruptedly conversing,utterly unlike Englishmen. Mr. Rose Mackrell passed them, and his breezysalutation of the earl was unobserved in my lord's vacant glass optics,as he sketched the scene. London had report of the sinister tempter andthe imperilled young probationer undisguisedly entering the RomanCatholic chapel of a fashionable district-chapel erected on pervert'slegacies, down a small street at the corner of a grandee square, bytolerance or connivance of our constabulary,—entering it linked; andlinked they issued, their heads bent; for the operation of the tonsure,you would say. Two English noblemen! But is there no legislation tostop the disease? Our female government asks it vixenly of our impotentmale; which pretends, beneath an air of sympathy, that we should abstainfrom any compulsory action upon the law to interfere, though thesituation is confessedly grave; and the aspect men assume iscorrespondingly, to the last degree provokingly, grave-half alivethat they are, or void of patriotism, or Babylonian at heart!

Lord Fleetwood's yet undocked old associates vowed he 'smelt strong' ofthe fumes of the whirled silver censer-balls. His disfavour had caused astoppage of supplies, causing vociferous abomination of their successfulrivals, the Romish priests. Captain Abrane sniffed, loud as a horse,condemnatory as a cat, in speaking of him. He said: 'By George, it comesto this; we shall have to turn Catholics for a loan!' Watchdogs of thethree repeated the gigantic gambler's melancholy roar. And, see whatgap, cried the ratiocination of alarm, see the landslip it is in ourbody, national and religious, when exalted personages go that way toRome!

As you and the world have reflected in your sager moods, an ordinarypebble may roll where it likes, for individualism of the multitudinouslyobscure little affects us. Not so the costly jewel, which is acongregation of ourselves, in our envies and longings and genuflexionsthick about its lustres. The lapses of precious things must needs carryus, both by weight and example, and it will ceaselessly be, that we arepossessed by the treasure we possess, we hang on it. A still, smallvoice of England's mind under panic sent up these truisms containingadmonitions to the governing Ladies. They, the most conservative ofearthly bodies, clamoured in return, like cloud-scud witches that havecaught fire at their skirts from the torches of marsh-fire radicals.They cited for his arrest the titled millionaire who made a slide forthe idiots of the kingdom; they stigmatized our liberty as a sophistry,unless we have in it the sustaining element of justice; and where is thejustice that punishes his country for any fatal course a mad youngCroesus may take! They shackled the hands of testators, who endangeredthe salvation of coroneted boys by having sanction to bequeath vastwealth in bulk. They said, in truth, that it was the liberty to beun-Christian. Finally, they screeched a petitioning of Parliament todevote a night to a sitting, and empower the Lord Chancellor to lay anembargo on the personal as well as the real estate of wealthy perverts;in common prudence depriving Rome of the coveted means to turn ourreligious weapons against us.

The three guardian ladies and their strings of followers headed overthe fevered and benighted town, as the records of the period attest,windpiping these and similar Solan notes from the undigested cropful ofalarms Lord Fleetwood's expected conduct crammed into them. They and allthe world traced his present madness to the act foregoing: that marriage!They reviewed it to deplore it, every known incident and the numbersimagined; yet merely to deplore: frightful comparisons of then with nowrendered the historical shock to the marriage market matter for a sicksmile. Evil genius of some sort beside him the wealthy young noblemanis sure to have. He has got rid of one to take up with a viler. First,a slu*ttish trollop of German origin is foisted on him for life; next, heis misled to abjure the faith of his fathers for Rome. But patently,desperation in the husband of such a wife weakened his resistance to theRoman Catholic pervert's insinuations. There we punctuate the full stopto our inquiries; we have the secret.

And upon that, suddenly comes a cyclonic gust; and gossip twirls, whines,and falls to the twanging of an entirely new set of notes, that furnish atolerably agreeable tune, on the whole. O hear! The Marchioness ofArpington proclaims not merely acquaintanceship with Lord Fleetwood'scountess, she professes esteem for the young person. She has been heardto say, that if the Principality of Wales were not a royal title,a dignity of the kind would be conferred by the people of those mountainson the Countess of Fleetwood: such unbounded enthusiasm there was for hercharacter when she sojourned down there. As it is, they do speak of herin their Welsh by some title. Their bards are offered prizes tocelebrate her deeds. You remember the regiment of mounted Welshgentlemen escorting her to her Kentish seat, with their band of thethree-stringed harps! She is well-born, educated, handsome, a perfectlyhonest woman, and a sound Protestant. Quite the reverse of LordFleetwood's seeking to escape her, it is she who flies; she cannotforgive him his cruelties and infidelities: and that is the reason why hethreatens to commit the act of despair. Only she can save him! She hasflown for refuge to her uncle, Lord Levellier's house at a place namedCroridge—not in the gazetteer—hard of access and a home of poachers,where shooting goes on hourly; but most picturesque and romantic, as sheherself is! Lady Arpington found her there, nursing one of the wounded,and her uncle on his death-bed; obdurate all round against her husband,but pensive when supplicated to consider her country endangered by Rome.She is a fervent patriot. The tales of her Whitechapel origin, andheading mobs wielding bludgeons, are absolutely false, traceable toscandalizing anecdotists like Mr. Rose Mackrell. She is the beautifulexample of an injured wife doing honour to her sex in the punishment of afaithless husband, yet so little cherishing her natural right to deal himretribution, that we dare hope she will listen to her patriotic duty inconsenting to the reconcilement, which is Lord Fleetwood's alternative:his wife or Rome! They say she has an incommunicable charm, accountingfor the price he puts on her now she holds aloof and he misses it. Lether but rescue him from England's most vigilant of her deadly enemies,she will be entitled to the nation's lasting gratitude. She has heropportunity for winning the Anglican English, as formerly she won theDissenter Welsh. She may yet be the means of leading back the latter toour fold.

A notation of the cries in air at a time of surgent public excitement canhardly yield us music; and the wording of them, by the aid of compoundsand transplants, metaphors and similes only just within range of thearrows of Phoebus' bow (i.e. the farthest flight known), would, while itmight imitate the latent poetry, expose venturesome writers to the wrathof a people commendably believing their language a perfected instrumentwhen they prefer the request for a plateful, and commissioning theirliterary police to brain audacious experimenters who enlarge or wing itbeyond the downright aim at that mark. The gossip of the time musttherefore appear commonplace, in resemblance to the panting venue a terreof the toad, instead of the fiery steed's; although we have documentaryevidence that our country's heart was moved;—in no common degree,Dr. Glossop's lucid English has it, at the head of a broadsheet balladdiscovered by him, wherein the connubially inclined young earl and thenation in turn beseech the countess to resume her place at Esslemont,and so save both from a terrific dragon's jaw, scarlet as the infernalflames; described as fascinating—

'The classes with the crests,
And the lining to their vests,
Till down they jump, and empty leave
A headless trunk that rests.'

These ballads, burlesque to present reading, mainly intended forburlesque by the wits who dogged without much enlivening an anxiousperiod of our history, when corner-stones were falling the way theyoung lord of the millions threatened to go, did, there is little doubt,according to another part of their design (Rose Mackrell boasts itindirectly in his Memoirs), interpret public opinion, that is, theEnglish humour of it—the half laugh in their passing and not simulatedshudder.

Carinthia had a study of the humours of English character in the personof the wounded man she nursed on little Croridge, imagining it the mostunobserved of English homes, and herself as unimportant an object.Daniel Charner took his wound, as he took his medicine and his possetfrom her hand, kindly, and seemed to have a charitable understanding ofLord Levellier now that the old nobleman had driven a pellet of lead intohim and laid him flat. It pleased him to assure her that his mates weremen of their word, and had promised to pay the old lord with a 'rouse'for it, nothing worse. Her father used to speak of the 'clean hearts ofthe English' as to the husbanding of revenge; that is, the 'no spot ofbad blood' to vitiate them. Captain John Peter seconded all good-humoured fighters 'for the long account': they will surely win; and itwas one of his maxims: 'My foe can spoil my face; he beats me if hespoils my temper.'

Recalling the scene of her bridal day—the two strong Englishmen at theshake of hands, that had spoiled one another's faces, she was enlightenedwith a comprehension of her father's love for the people; seeing thespiritual of the gross ugly picture, as not every man can do, and but awarrior Joan among women. Chillon shall teach the Spanish people Englishheartiness, she thought. Lord Fleetwood's remarks on the expeditionwould have sufficed to stamp it righteous with her; that was her logic ofthe low valuation of him. She fancied herself absolutely released at hisdeparture. Neither her sister Riette nor her friend Owain, administeringsentiment and common sense to her by turns, could conceive how thepassion for the recovery of her brother's military name fed the hopethat she might aid in it, how the hope fed the passion. She had besidesher hunger to be at the work she could do; her Chillon's glory formorning sky above it.

Such was the mind Lady Arpington brought the world's wisdom to bear upon;deeming it in the end female only in its wildness and obstinacy.Carinthia's answers were few, barely varied. Her repetition of 'mybrother' irritated the great lady, whose argument was directed to makeher see that these duties toward her brother were primarily owing to herhusband, the man she would reclaim and could guide. And the Countess ofFleetwood's position, her duty to society, her dispensing of splendidhospitality, the strengthening of her husband to do his duty to thenation, the saving of him from a fatal step-from Rome; these wereconsiderations for a reasonable woman to weigh before she threw up allto be off on the maddest of adventures. 'Inconceivable, my dear child!'Lady Arpington proceeded until she heard herself as droning.

Carinthia's unmoved aspect of courteous attention appeared to invoke theprolongation of the sermon it criticized. It had an air of reversingtheir positions while she listened to the charge of folly, andincidentally replied.

Her reason for not fearing Roman Catholic encroachments was, she said,her having known good Catholics in the country she came from. Forherself, she should die professing the faith of her father and mother.Behind her correct demeanour a rustic intelligence was exhibited. Sheappreciated her duty to her marriage oath: 'My husband's honour is quitesafe with me.' Neither England nor religion, nor woman's proper devotionto a husband's temporal and spiritual welfare, had claims rivalling herdevotion to her brother. She could not explain a devotion thatinstigated her to an insensate course. It seemed a kind of enthusiasm;and it was coldly spoken; in the tone referring to 'her husband'shonour.' Her brother's enterprise had her approval because 'her mother'sprayer was for him to serve in the English army.' By running over totake a side in a Spanish squabble? she was asked and answered: 'He willlearn war; my Chillon will show his value; he will come back a triedsoldier.'

She counted on his coming back? She did.

'I cannot take a step forward without counting on success. We know thechances we are to meet. My father has written of death. We do not fearit, so it is nothing to us. We shall go together; we shall not have toweep for one another.'

The strange young woman's avoidance of any popular sniffle of thepathetic had a recognized merit.

'Tell me,' Lady Arpington said abruptly; 'this maid of yours, who is tomarry the secretary, or whatever he was—you are satisfied with her?'

'She is my dear servant Madge.' A cloud opened as Carinthia spoke thename. 'She will be a true wife to him. They will always be my friends!'

Nothing against the earl in that direction, apparently; unless hiscountess was blest with the density of frigidity.

Society's emissary sketched its perils for unprotected beautiful woman;an outline of the London quadrille Henrietta danced in; and she glancedat Carinthia and asked: 'Have you thought of it?'

Carinthia's eyes were on the great lady's. Their meaning was, 'You hitmy chief thought.' They were read as her farthest thought. For the hintof Henrietta's weakness deadened her feelings with a reminder of warm andcontinued solicitations rebutted; the beautiful creature's tortures atthe idea of her exile from England. An outwearied hopelessness expresseda passive sentiment very like indifference in the clear wide gaze. Shereplied: 'I have. My proposal to her was Cadiz, with both our youngones. She will not.'

And there is an end to that part of the question! Lady Arpingtoninterpreted it, by the gaze more than the words, under subjection of theyoung woman's character. Nevertheless, she bore away Carinthia's consentto a final meeting with the earl at her house in London, as soon asthings were settled at Croridge. Chillon, whom she saw, was just ashard, unforgiving, careless of his country's dearest interests; brotherand sister were one heart of their one blood. She mentioned the generalimpression in town, that the countess and only she could save the earlfrom Rome. A flash of polite laughter was Chillon's response. But afterher inspection of the elegant athlete, she did fancy it possible for ayoung wife, even for Henrietta, to bear his name proudly in his absence—if that was worth a moment's consideration beside the serious issuesinvolved in her appeal to the countess; especially when the suggestionregarding young wives left unprotected, delicately conveyed to thehusband, had failed of its purpose. The handsome husband's browsfluttered an interrogation, as if her clear-obscure should be furtherlighted; and it could not be done. He weighed the wife by the measureof the sister, perhaps; or his military head had no room for either.His callousness to the danger of his country's disintegration, from theincessant, becoming overt, attacks of a foreign priesthood might—an indignant great lady's precipitation to prophecy said would—bringchastisem*nt on him. She said it, and she liked Henrietta, vowing todefeat her forecast as well as she could in a land seeming forsaken bystable principles; its nobles breaking up its national church, going overto Rome, embracing the faith of the impostor Mahomet.

Gossip fed to the starvation bone of Lady Arpington's report, until onelate afternoon, memorable for the breeding heat in the van of elementalartillery, newsboys waved damp sheets of fresh print through the streets,and society's guardians were brought to confess, in shame and gladness,that they had been growing sceptical of the active assistance ofProvidence. At first the 'Terrible explosion of gunpowder at Croridge'alarmed them lest the timely Power should have done too much. A daylater the general agitation was pacified; Lady Arpington circulated theword 'safe,' and the world knew the disaster had not engulphed LadyFleetwood's valuable life. She had the news by word of mouth from thelovely Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, sister-in-law to the countess. We areconvinced we have proof of Providence intervening when some terrificevent of the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and no morethan the thing desired. Pitiful though it may seem for a miserly oldlord to be blown up in his bed, it is necessarily a subject ofcongratulation if the life, or poor remnant of a life, sacrificed wasan impediment to our righteous wishes. But this is a theme for the Dame,who would full surely have committed another breach of the treaty, hadthere not been allusion to her sisterhood's view of the government ofhuman affairs.

On the day preceding the catastrophe, Chillon's men returned to work.He and Carinthia and Mr. Wythan lunched with Henrietta at Stoneridge.Walking down to Lekkatts, they were astounded to see the figure of thespectral old lord on the plank to the powder store, clad in his longblack cloak, erect. He was crossing, he told them, to count his barrels;a dream had disturbed him. Chillon fell to rapid talk upon variouspoints of business, and dispersed Lord Levellier's memory relating to hiserrand. Leaning on Carinthia's arm, he went back to the house, where hewas put to bed in peace of mind. His resuscitated physical vigourblocked all speculation for the young people assembled at Stoneridge thatnight. They hardly spoke; they strangled thoughts forming as larvae ofwishes. Henrietta would be away to Lady Arpington's next day, Mr. Wythanto Wales. The two voyagers were sadder by sympathy than the two whomthey were leaving to the clock's round of desert sameness. About ten atnight Chillon and Mr. Wythan escorted Carinthia, for the night's watchbeside her uncle, down to Lekkatts. It was midway that the knocks onair, as of a muffled mallet at a door and at farther doors of caverns,smote their ears and shook the ground.

After an instant of the silence following a shock, Carinthia touched herbrother's arm; and Chillon said:

'Not my powder!'

They ran till they had Lekkatts in sight. A half moon showed the house;it stood. Fifty paces below, a column of opal smoke had begun to wreatheand stretch a languid flag. The 'rouse' promised to Lord Levellier byDaniel Charner's humorous mates had hit beyond its aim. Intended to givehim a start—or 'One-er in return,' it surpassed his angry shot at thebody of them in effect.

Carinthia entered his room and saw that he was lying stretched restfully.She whispered of this to Chillon, and began upon her watch, reading herSpanish phrasebook; and she could have wept, if she had been a woman fortears. Her duty to stay in England with Chillon's fair wife crossed thebeckoning pages like a black smoke. Her passion to go and share herbrother's dangers left the question of its righteousness at each fall ofthe big breath.

Her uncle's grey head on his pillow was like a flintstone in chalk underher look by light of dawn; the chin had dropped.

CHAPTER XLVI

A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE FLASHES

Thus a round and a good old English practical repartee, worthy a placein England's book of her historical popular jests; conceived ingeniously,no bit murderously, even humanely, if Englishmen are to be allowedindulgence of a jolly hit back for an injury—more a feint than a realstroke—gave the miserly veteran his final quake and cut Chillon's knot.

Lord Levellier dead of the joke detracted from the funny idea there hadbeen in the anticipation of his hearing the libertine explosion of hisgrand new powder, and coming out cloaked to see what walls remainedupright. Its cleverness, however, was magnified by the shades into whichit had despatched him. The man who started the 'rouse for old Griphard'was named: nor did he shuffle his honours off. Chillon accused him, andhe regretfully grinned; he would have owned to it eloquently, excited bythe extreme ingenuity, but humour at the criminal bar is an abject thing,that has to borrow from metaphysics for the expository words. He lackedthem entirely, and as he could not, fronting his master, supply thedefect with oaths, he drew up and let out on the dead old lord, whowanted a few pounds of blasting powder, like anything else in everybody'sway. Chillon expected the lowest of his countrymen to show some degreeof chivalry upon occasions like the present. He was too young toperceive how it is, that a block of our speech in the needed directiondrives it storming in another, not the one closely expressing us.Carinthia liked the man; she was grieved to hear of his having got thesack summarily, when he might have had a further month of service or amonth's pay. Had not the workmen's forbearance been much tried? Andthey had not stolen, they had bought the powder, only intending tostartle.

She touched her brother's native sense of fairness and vexed him with hiscowardly devil of impatience, which kicked at a simply stupid common man,and behaved to a lordly offender, smelling rascal, civilly. Just as herfather would have—treated the matter, she said: 'Are we sorry for whathas happened, Chillon?' The man had gone, the injustice was done; themaster was left to reflect on the part played by his inheritance of thehalf share of ninety thousand pounds in his proper respect for LordLevellier's memory. Harsh to an inferior is a horrible charge. But theposition of debtor to a titled cur brings a worse for endurance. Knowinga part of Lord Fleetwood's message to Lord Levellier suppressed, thebride's brother, her chief guardian, had treated the omission as of noimportance, and had all the while understood that he ought to give herhis full guess at the reading of it: or so his racked mind understood itnow. His old father had said: A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar; and,Lies are usurers' coin we pay for ten thousand per cent. His harshnessin the past hour to a workman who had suffered with him and had notintended serious mischief was Chillon's unsounded motive for theresolution to be out of debt to the man he loathed. There is aMuse that smiles aloft surveying our acts from the well-springs.

Carinthia heard her brother's fuller version of the earl's communicationto her uncle before the wild day of her marriage. 'Not particularlyfitted for the married state,' Chillon phrased it, saying: 'He seems tohave known himself, he was honest so far.' She was advised to think itover, that the man was her husband.

She had her brother's heart in her breast, she could not misread him.She thought it over, and felt a slight drag of compassion for thereluctant bridegroom. That was a stretch long leagues distant from lovewith her; the sort of feeling one has for strange animals hurt and shehad in her childish blindness done him a hurt, and he had bitten her.He was a weak young nobleman; he had wealth for a likeness of strength;he had no glory about his head. Why had he not chosen a woman to sitbeside him who would have fancied his coronet a glory and his luxury akindness? But the poor young nobleman did not choose! The sadly comicof his keeping to the pledge of his word—his real wife—the tyrant ofthe tyrant—clothed him; the vision of him at the altar, and on thecoach, and at the Royal Sovereign Inn, and into the dimness where aplacidly smiling recollection met a curtain and lost the smile.

Suppose that her duty condemned her to stay in England on guard overChillon's treasure! The perpetual struggle with a weak young noblemanof aimless tempers and rightabout changes, pretending to the part ofhusband, would, she foresaw, raise another figure of duty, enchaining aweak young woman. The world supported his pretension; and her passion toserve as Chillon's comrade sank at a damping because it was flame.Chillon had done that; Lady Arpington, to some extent; Henrietta more.A little incident, pointing in no direction, had left a shadow of acloud, consequent upon Lady Arpington's mention of Henrietta'sunprotectedness. Stepping up the hill to meet her sister, on the morningof Henrietta's departure for London under the convoy of Mr. Wythan,Carinthia's long sight spied Kit Ines, or a man like him, in the meadowbetween Lekkatts and Croridge. He stood before Henrietta, and vanishedlight-legged at a gesture. Henrietta was descending to take her leave ofher busied husband; her cheeks were flushed; she would not speak of thefellow, except to reply, 'oh, a beggar,' and kept asking whether sheought not to stay at Stoneridge. And if she did she would lose the lastof the Opera in London! How could she help to investigate the cause ofan explosion so considerate to them? She sang snatches of melodies,clung to her husband, protested her inability to leave him, and went,appearing torn away. As well bid healthy children lie abed on a brightsummer morning, as think of holding this fair young woman bound to thecircle of safety when she has her view of pleasure sparkling like theshore-sea mermaid's mirror.

Suspicions were not of the brood Carinthia's bosom harboured. Suspicionof Chillon's wife Carinthia could not feel. An uncaptained vessel in thewinds on high seas was imagined without a picturing of it. Theapparition of Ives, if it was he, would not fit with any conjecture.She sent a warning to Madge, and at the same time named the girl'swedding day for her; pained in doing it. She had given the dear girlher word that she would be present at this of all marriages. But a dayor two days or more would have to be spent away from Chillon; and herhunger for every hour beside her brother confessed to the war going onwithin her, as to which was her holier duty, the one on the line of herinclinations, or that one pointing to luxury-choice between a battle-horse and a cushioned-chair; between companionship with her gloriousbrother facing death, and submission to a weak young nobleman claiminghis husband's rights over her. She had submitted, had forgotten his icystrangeness, had thought him love; and hers was a breast for love, it wasowned by the sobbing rise of her breast at the thought. And she mightsubmit again—in honour? scorning the husband? Chillon scorned him. YetChillon left the decision to her, specified his excuses. And Henriettaand Owain, Lady Arpington, Gower Woodseer, all the world—Carinthiashuddered at the world's blank eye on what it directs for theacquiescence of the woman. That shred of herself she would become,she felt herself becoming it when the view of her career beside herbrother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart was the onlysoul among her friends whose voice was her own against the world's.

But there came a turn where she and Rebecca separated. Rebecca'sinsurgent wishes taking shape of prophecy, robbed her of her friendOwain, to present her an impossible object, that her mind could notcompass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and let her keep the fancy ofOwain as her good ghost of a sun in the mist of a frosty morning; sweeterto her than an image of love, though it were the very love, the love ofmaidens' dreams, bursting the bud of romance, issuing its flower.Delusive love drove away with a credulous maiden, under an Englishheaven, on a coach and four, from a windy hill-top, to a crash below,and a stunned recovery in the street of small shops, mud, rain, gloom,language like musket-fire and the wailing wounded.

No regrets, her father had said; they unman the heart we want forto-morrow. She kept her look forward at the dead wall Chillon had thrownup. He did not reject her company; his prospect of it had clouded; andthere were allusions to Henrietta's loneliness. 'His Carin could do herservice by staying, if she decided that way.' Her enthusiasm dropped tothe level of life's common ground. With her sustainment gone, she beheldherself a titled doll, and had sternly to shut her eyes on the behindscenes, bar any shadowy approaches of womanly softness; thinking herfather's daughter dishonoured in the submissive wife of the weakyoung nobleman Chillon despised as below the title of man.

Madge and Gower came to Stoneridge on their road to London three daysbefore their union. Madge had no fear of Ines, but said: 'I never letMr. Gower out of my sight.' Perforce of studying him with the thirstywonder consequent upon his proposal to her, she had got fast hold of theskirts of his character; she 'knew he was happy because he was alwaysmaking her laugh at herself.' Her manner of saying, 'She hoped to givehim a comfortable home, so that he might never be sorry for what he haddone,' was toned as in a church, beautiful to her mistress. Speaking ofmy lord's great kindness, her eyes yearned for a second and fell humbly.She said of Kit Ives, 'He's found a new "paytron," Sarah says Mr.Woodseer tells her, my lady. It's another nobleman, Lord Brailstone,has come into money lately and hired him for his pugilist when it's nothorseracing.' Gower spoke of thanks to Lord Fleetwood for theindependence allowing him to take a wife and settle to work in his littleSurrey home. He, too, showed he could have said more and was advised notto push at a shut gate. My lord would attend their wedding as well asmy lady, Carinthia heard from Madge; counting it a pity that wealthynoblemen had no professions to hinder the doing of unprofitable things.

Her sensibility was warmer on the wedding-day of these two dear ones.He graced the scene, she admitted, when reassured by his perfect reservetoward her personally. He was the born nobleman in his friendliness withthe bridal pair and respectfulness to Mr. Woodseer. High social breedingis an exquisite performance on the instrument we are, and his behaviourto her left her mind at liberty for appreciation of it. Condescensionwas not seen, his voice had no false note. During the ceremony hiseyelids blinked rapidly. At the close, he congratulated the unitedcouple, praising them each for the wisdom of their choice. He said tohis countess:

'This is one of the hopeful marriages; chiefly of your making.'

She replied: 'My prayers will be for them always.'

'They are fortunate who have your prayers,' he said, and turned to SarahWinch. She was to let him know when she also had found her 'greatphilosopher.' Sarah was like a fish on a bank, taking gasps at themarvel of it all; she blushed the pale pink of her complexion, andmurmured of 'happiness.' Gower had gone headlong into happiness, wherephilosophers are smirkers and mouthers of ordinary stuff. His brightestremark was to put the question to his father: 'The three good things ofthe Isle of Britain?' and treble the name of Madge Woodseer for a richertriad than the Glamorgan man could summon. Pardonably foolish; butmindful of a past condition of indiscipline, Nature's philosopher saidto the old minister: 'Your example saved me for this day at a turn ofmy road, sir.' Nature's poor wild scholar paid that tribute to theregimental sectarian. Enough for proud philosophy to have done the thingdemonstrably right, Gower's look at his Madge and the world said. That'European rose of the coal-black order,' as one of his numerous picturesof her painted the girl, was a torch in a cavern for dusky redness at hercheeks. Her responses beneath the book Mr. Woodseer held open hadflashed a distant scene through Lord Fleetwood. Quaint to notice washer reverence for the husband she set on a towering monument, and herfriendly, wifely; whispered jogs at the unpractical creature'sforgetfulness of his wraps, his books; his writing-desk—on thistremendous occasion, his pipe. Again the earl could have sworn, thatdespite her antecedents, she brought her husband honest dower, as surelyas she gave the lucky Pagan a whole heart; and had a remarkably fine bustto house the organ, too; and a clarionet of a voice, curiously like her,mistress's. And not a bad fellow, but a heathen dog, a worshipper ofNature, walked off with the girl, whose voice had the ring ofCarinthia's. The Powers do not explain their dispensations.

These two now one by united good-will for the junction Lord Fleetwoodhimself drove through Loudon to the hills, where another carriage awaitedthem by his orders, in the town of London's race-course. As soon as theywere seated he nodded to them curtly from his box, and drove back,leaving them puzzled. But his countess had not so very coldly seenhim start his horses to convey the modest bridal pair. His impulses tokindness could be politic. Before quitting Whitechapel, she went withSarah to look at the old shop of the fruits and vegetables. They foundit shut, untenanted; Mr. Woodseer told them that the earl was owner of itby recent purchase, and would not lease it. He had to say why; for thecountess was dull to the notion of a sentimental desecration in theoccupying of her bedchamber by poor tradespeople. She was littleflattered. The great nobleman of her imagination when she lay theredwindled to a whimsy infant, despot of his nursery, capricious withhis toys; likely to damage himself, if left to himself.

How it might occur, she heard hourly from her hostess, Lady Arpington;from Henrietta as well, in different terms. He seemed to her no longerthe stationed nobleman, but one of other idle men, and the saddest ofyoung men. His weakness cast a net on her. Worse than that drag ofcompassion, she foresaw the chance of his having experience of her ownweakness, if she was to be one among idle women: she might drop to thelove of him again. Chillon's damping of her enthusiasm sank her to amere breathing body, miserably an animal body, no comrade for a valiantbrother; this young man's feeble consort, perhaps: and a creaturethirsting for pleasure, disposed to sigh in the prospect of caresses.Enthusiasm gone, her spirited imagination of active work on the field ofdanger beside her brother flapped a broken wing.

She fell too low in her esteem to charge it upon Henrietta that she stoodhesitating, leaning on the hated side of the debate; though she couldalmost have blamed Chillon for refusing her his positive counsel, andnot ordering his wife to follow him. Once Lady Arpington, reasoning withher on behalf of the husband who sought reconciliation, sneered at herbrother's project, condemned it the more for his resolve to carry itout now that he had means. The front of a shower sprang to Carinthia'seyelids. Now that her brother had means, he from whom she might bedivided was alert to keep his engagement and study war on the field,as his father had done in foreign service, offering England a trainedsoldier, should his country subsequently need him. The contrast of herheroic brother and a luxurious idle lord scattering blood of bird orstag, and despising the soldier's profession, had a singular bittereffect, consequent on her scorn of words to defend the man her heartidolized. This last of young women for weeping wept in the lady'spresence.

The feminine trick was pardoned to her because her unaccustomed betrayalof that form of enervation was desired. It was read as woman's act ofself-pity over her perplexity: which is a melting act with the woman whenthere is no man to be dissolved by it. So far Lady Arpington judgedrightly; Carinthia's tears, shed at the thought of her brother under theworld's false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist herhusband's advocates. Unusual as they were, almost unknown, theywere thunder-drops and shook her.

All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses laid onundercurrents. There is no bridling her unless the tale be here told ofhow Lord Brailstone in his frenzy of the disconcerted rival boasted overtown the counterstroke he had dealt Lord Fleetwood, by sending Mrs.Levellier a statement of the latter nobleman's base plot to thwart herhusband's wager, with his foul agent, the repentant and well-paid ruffianin person, to verify every written word. The town's conception of thenecessity for the reunion of the earl and countess was too intense to letexciting scandal prosper. Moreover, the town's bright anticipation ofits concluding festivity on the domain of Calesford argued such tattledown to a baffled adorer's malice. The Countess of Cressett, having hercousin, the beautiful Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, in her house, has denied LordBrailstone admission at her door, we can affirm. He has written to hervehemently, has called a second time, has vowed publicly that Mrs.Levellier shall have her warning against Lord Fleetwood. The madness ofjealousy was exhibited. Lady Arpington pronounced him in his conductunworthy the name of gentleman. And how foolish the scandal hecirculates! Lord Fleetwood's one aim is to persuade his offended wifeto take her place beside him. He expresses regret everywhere, that thedeath of her uncle Lord Levellier withholds her presence from Calesfordduring her term of mourning; and that he has given his word for the feteon a particular day, before London runs quite dry. His pledge of hisword is notoriously inviolate. The Countess of Cressett—an extraordinaryinstance of a thrice married woman corrected in her addiction to play byher alliance with a rakish juvenile—declares she performs the part ofhostess at the request of the Countess of Fleetwood. Perfectlyconvincing. The more so (if you have the gossips' keen scent of adeduction) since Lord Fleetwood and young Lord Cressett and the JesuitLord Feltre have been seen confabulating with very sacerdotalcountenances indeed. Three English noblemen! not counting eighty yearsfor the whole three! And dear Lady Cressett fears she may be called onto rescue her boy-husband from a worse enemy than the green tables, ifLady Fleetwood should unhappily prove unyielding, as it shames the gentlesex to imagine she will be. In fact, we know through Mrs. Levellier, themeeting of reconciliation between the earl and the countess comes off atLady Arpington's, by her express arrangement, to-morrow: 'none too soon,'the expectant world of London declared it.

The meeting came to pass three days before the great day at Calesford.Carinthia and her lord were alone together. This had been his burningwish at Croridge, where he could have poured his heart to her and mighthave moved the wife's. But she had formed her estimate of him there: shehad, in the comparison or clash of forces with him, grown to contemplatethe young man of wealth and rank, who had once been impatient of anallusion to her father, and sought now to part her from her brother—stop her breathing of fresh air. Sensationally, too, her ardour for theexercise of her inherited gifts attributed it to him that her father'sdaughter had lived the mean existence in England, pursuing a husband,hounded by a mother's terrors. The influences environing her andpressing her to submission sharpened her perusal of the small objectlargely endowed by circ*mstances to demand it. She stood calmlydiscoursing, with a tempered smile: no longer a novice in the socialmanner. An equal whom he had injured waited for his remarks, gave readyreplies; and he, bowing to the visible equality, chafed at a sense ofinferiority following his acknowledgement of it. He was alone with her,and next to dumb; she froze a full heart. As for his heart, it could notspeak at all, it was a swinging lump. The rational view of the situationwas exposed to her; and she listened to that favourably, or at leastattentively; but with an edge to her civil smile when he hinted ofentertainments, voyages, travels, an excursion to her native mountainland. Her brother would then be facing death. The rational view, sheadmitted, was one to be considered. Yes, they were married; they had ason; they were bound to sink misunderstandings, in the interests of theirlittle son. He ventured to say that the child was a link uniting them;and she looked at him. He blinked rapidly, as she had seen him do oflate, but kept his eyes on her through the nervous flutter of the lids;his pride making a determined stand for physical mastery, though her lookwas but a look. Had there been reproach in it, he would have found thevoice to speak out. Her look was a cold sky above a hungering man. Shefroze his heart from the marble of her own.

And because she was for adventuring with her brother at bloody work ofcivil war in the pay of a foreign government!—he found a short refugein that mute sneer, and was hurled from it by an apparition of the Welshscene of the bitten infant, and Carinthia volunteering to do the bloodywork which would have saved it; which he had contested, ridiculed. Rightthen, her insanity now conjured the wretched figure of him opposing themartyr her splendid humaneness had offered her to be, and dominated hisreason, subjected him to admire—on to worship of the woman, whatever shemight do. Just such a feeling for a woman he had dreamed of in hisyounger time, doubting that he would ever meet the fleshly woman toimpose it. His heart broke the frost she breathed. Yet, if he gave wayto the run of speech, he knew himself unmanned, and the fatal habit ofsuperiority stopped his tongue after he had uttered the name he loved tospeak, as nearest to the embrace of her.

'Carinthia—so I think, as I said, we both see the common sense of theposition. I regret over and over again—we'll discuss all that when wemeet after this Calesford affair. I shall have things to say. You willoverlook, I am sure—well, men are men!—or try to. Perhaps I'm notworse than—we'll say, some. You will, I know,—I have learnt it,—be ofgreat service, help to me; double my value, I believe; more than doubleit. You will receive me—here? Or at Croridge or Esslemont; and alonetogether, as now, I beg.'

That was what he said. Having said it, his escape from high tragicsin the comfortable worldly tone rejoiced him; to some extent also thecourteous audience she gave him. And her hand was not refused. Judgingby her aspect, the plain common-sense ground of their situation wasaccepted for the best opening step to their union; though she must havehad her feelings beneath it, and God knew that he had! Her hand wasfriendly. He could have thanked her for yielding her hand without astage scene; she had fine breeding by nature. The gracefullest oftrained ladies could not have passed through such an interview soperfectly in the right key; and this was the woman he had seen at thewrestle with hideous death to save a muddy street-child! She touchedthe gentleman in him. Hard as it was while he held the hand of the wife,his little son's mother, who might be called his bride, and drew him bythe contact of their blood to a memory, seeming impossible, some otherworld's attested reality,—she the angel, he the demon of it,—unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a fact beyond his mind, he let herhand fall scarce pressed. Did she expect more than the common sense ofit to be said? The 'more' was due to her, and should partly be said attheir next meeting for the no further separating; or else he would vowin his heart to spread it out over a whole life's course of wakefuldevotion, with here and there a hint of his younger black nature. Betterthat except for a desire seizing him to make sacrifice of the demon hehad been, offer him up hideously naked to her mercy. But it was a thingto be done by hints, by fits, by small doses. She could only graduallybe brought to the comprehension of how the man or demon foundindemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching her, to torment,perhaps betray; and solace for the hurt to his pride in spreading a snarefor the beautiful Henrietta. A confession! It could be to none but thepriest.

Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the confessionstraightway. In spite of horror, the task of helping to wash a blacksoul white would have been her compensation for loss of companionshipwith her soldier brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabidwound and come to a love of the rescued sufferer.

It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose Mackrell's applicationsto get back his volume of her father's Book of Maxims.

'There is mine,' she said.

For the sake of winning her quick gleam at any word of the bridal couple,he conjured a picture of her Madge and his Gower, saying: 'That marriage—as you will learn—proves him honest from head to foot; as she is inher way, too.'

'Oh, she is,' was the answer.

'We shall be driving down to them very soon, Carinthia.'

'It will delight them to see either of us, my lord.'

'My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford,' he gestured, as infetters.

She spared him the my lording as she said adieu, sensitive as she was,and to his perception now.

Lady Arpington had a satisfactory two minutes with him before he leftthe house. London town, on the great day at Calesford, interchangedcommunications, to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleetwoodwould reign over the next entertainment.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE LAST: WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME

It is of seemingly good augury for the cause of a suppliant man, howeverlittle for the man himself, when she who has much to pardon can depicthim in a manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse theminiature man-child sobbing off to sleep after a frenzy; an example of agenus framed for excuses, and he more than others. Chillon was amused upto inquisitive surprise by Carinthia's novel idea of her formerly dreadedriddle of a husband. As she sketched the very rational alliance proposedto her, and his kick at the fetters of Calesford, a shadowy dash for animage of the solicitous tyrant was added perforce to complete the scene;following which, her head moved sharply, the subject was flung over hershoulder.

She was developing; she might hold her ground with the husband, if thealliance should be resumed; and she would be a companion for Henriettain England: she was now independent, as to money, and she could break anintolerable yoke without suffering privation. He kept his wrath under,determined not to use his influence either way, sure though he was of herold father's voting for her to quit the man and enter the field wherequalities would be serviceable. The man probably feared a scandal morethan the loss of his wife in her going. He had never been thrashed—thesole apology Chillon discovered for him, in a flushed review of theunavenged list of injuries Carinthia had sustained. His wise old fatherinsisted on the value of an early thrashing to trim and shape the growthof most young men. There was no proof of Lord Fleetwood's having schemedto thwart his wager, so he put that accusation by: thinking for aninstant, that if the man desired to have his wife with him, and she leftthe country with her brother, his own act would recoil; or if she stayedto hear of a villany, Carinthia's show of scorn could lash. Henriettapraised my lord's kindness. He had been one of the adorers—as what manwould not be!—and upon her at least (he could hardly love her husband)he had not wreaked his disappointment. A young man of huge wealth,having nothing to do but fatten his whims, is the monster a rich countrybreeds under the blessing of peace. His wife, if a match for him, hasher work traced out:—mean work for the child of their father, Chillonthought. She might be doing braver, more suitable to the blood in herveins. But women have to be considered as women, not as possibleheroines; and supposing she held her own with this husband of hers, whichmeant, judging by the view of their unfolded characters at present, acertain command of the freakish beast; she, whatever her task, would notbe the one set trotting. He came to his opinion through the estimate hehad recently formed of Lord Fleetwood, and a study of his changed sister.

Her brows gloomed at a recurrence to that subject. Their business of theexpedition absorbed her, each detail, all the remarks he quoted of hischief, hopeful or weariful; for difficulties with the Spanish Government,and with the English too, started up at every turn; and the rank and fileof the contingent were mostly a rough lot, where they were rather betterthan soaked weeds. A small body of trained soldiers had sprung to thecall to arms; here and there an officer could wheel a regiment.

Carinthia breasted discouragement. 'English learn from blows, Chillon.'

'He might have added, they lose half their number by having to learn fromblows, Carin.'

'He said, "Let me lead Britons!"'

'When the canteen's fifty leagues to the rear, yes!'

'Yes, it is a wine country,' she sighed. 'But would the Spaniards havesent for us if their experience told them they could not trust us?'

Chillon brightened rigorously: 'Yes, yes; there's just a something aboutour men at their best, hard to find elsewhere. We're right in thinkingthat. And our chief 's the right man.'

'He is Owain's friend and countryman,' said Carinthia, and pleased, herbrother for talking like a girl, in the midst of methodical calculationsof the cost of this and that, to purchase the supplies he would need.She had an organizing head. On her way down from London she had drawn oninstructions from a London physician of old Peninsula experience topencil a list of the medical and surgical stores required by acampaigning army; she had gained information of the London shops wherethey were to be procured; she had learned to read medical prescriptionsfor the composition of drugs. She was at her Spanish still, not behindhim in the ordinary dialogue, and able to correct him on points ofSpanish history relating to fortresses, especially the Basque.A French bookseller had supplied her with the Vicomte d'Eschargue'srecently published volume of a Travels in Catalonia. Chillon sawparagraphs marked, pages dog-eared, for reference. At the same time,the question of Henrietta touched her anxiously. Lady Arpington'shints had sunk into them both.

'I have thought of St. Jean de Luz, Chillon, if Riette would consent tosettle there. French people are friendly. You expect most of your workin and round the Spanish Pyrenees.'

'Riette alone there?' said he, and drew her by her love of him into hisaltered mind; for he did not object to his wife's loneliness at Cadizwhen their plan was new.

London had taught her that a young woman in the giddy heyday of herbeauty has to be guarded; her belonging to us is the proud burdeninvolving sacrifices. But at St. Jean de Luz, if Riette would consentto reside there, Lord Fleetwood's absence and the neighbourhood of thewar were reckoned on to preserve his yokefellow from any fit of theabominated softness which she had felt in one premonitory tremor duringtheir late interview, and deemed it vile compared with the life of actionand service beside, almost beside, her brother, sharing his dangers atleast. She would have had Chillon speak peremptorily to his wiferegarding the residence on the Spanish borders, adding, in a despair:'And me with her to protect her!'

'Unfair to Riette, if she can't decide voluntarily,' he said.

All he refrained from was, the persuading her to stay in England and livereconciled with the gaoler of the dungeon, as her feelings pictured it.

Chillon and Carinthia journeyed to London for purchases and a visit tolawyer, banker, and tradesmen, on their way to meet his chief and OwainWythan at Southampton. They lunched with Livia. The morrow was thegreat Calesford day; Henrietta carolled of it. Lady Arpington had beenafllictingly demure on the theme of her presence at Calesford within herterm of mourning. 'But I don't mourn, and I'm not related to thedefunct, and I can't be denied the pleasure invented for my personalgratification,' Henrietta's happy flippancy pouted at the prudishobjections. Moreover, the adored Columelli was to be her slave of song.The termination of the London season had been postponed a whole week forCalesford: the utmost possible strain; and her presence was understood torepresent the Countess of Fleetwood, temporarily in decorous retirement.Chillon was assured by her that the earl had expressed himself satisfiedwith his wife's reasonableness. 'The rest will follow.' Pleading on theearl's behalf was a vain effort, but she had her grounds for paintingLord Fleetwood's present mood to his countess in warm colours. 'Nothingshort of devotion, Chillon!' London's extreme anxiety to see them united,and the cause of it, the immense good Janey could do to her country,should certainly be considered by her, Henrietta said. She spokefeverishly. A mention of St. Jean de Luz for a residence inflicted,it appeared, a more violent toothache than she had suffered from theproposal of quarters in Cadiz. And now her husband had money? . . .she suggested his reinstatement in the English army. Chillon hushedthat: his chief had his word. Besides, he wanted schooling in war.Why had he married! His love for her was the answer; and her beautyargued for the love. But possessing her, he was bound to win her a name.So his reasoning ran to an accord with his military instincts andambition. Nevertheless, the mournful strange fact she recalled, thatthey had never waltzed together since they were made one, troubled hiscountenance in the mirror of hers. Instead of the waltz, grief, lowworries, dulness, an eclipse of her, had been the beautiful creature'sportion.

It established mighty claims to a young husband's indulgence. Shehummed a few bars of his favourite old Viennese waltz, with 'Chillon!'invitingly and reproachfully. His loathing of Lord Fleetwood had towithstand an envious jump at the legs in his vison of her partner onthe morrow. He said: 'You'll think of some one absent.'

'You really do wish me to go, my darling? It is Chillon's wish?' Shebegged for the words; she had them, and then her feverishness abated to asimple sparkling composure.

Carinthia had observed her. She was heart-sick under pressure ofthoughts the heavier for being formless. They signified in the sum herdoom to see her brother leave England for the war, and herself crumble topieces from the imagined figure of herself beside him on or near thefield. They could not be phrased, for they accused the beloved brotherof a weakness in the excessive sense of obligation to the beautiful womanwho had wedded him. Driving down to Southampton by the night-coach, hertenderness toward Henrietta held other thoughts unshaped, except one,that moved in its twilight, murmuring of how the love of pleasure keepsus blind children. And how the innocents are pushed by it to snap atwicked bait, which the wealthy angle with, pointed a charitable index onsome of our social story. The Countess Livia, not an innocent likeHenrietta had escaped the poisoned tongues by contracting a thirdmarriage—'in time!' Lady Arpington said; and the knotty question waspresented to a young mind: Why are the innocents tempted to their ruin,and the darker natures allowed an escape? Any street-boy could have toldher of the virtue in quick wits. But her unexercised reflectiveness wason the highroad of accepted doctrines, with their chorus of the moans ofgossips for supernatural intervention to give us justice. She had notlearnt that those innocents, pushed by an excessive love of pleasure,are for the term lower in the scale than their wary darker cousins,and must come to the diviner light of intelligence through suffering.

However, the result of her meditations was to show her she was directedto be Henrietta's guardian. After that, she had no thoughts; travellingbeside Chillon, she was sheer sore feeling, as of a body aching for itsheart plucked out. The bitterness of the separation to come between themprophesied a tragedy. She touched his hand. It was warm now.

During six days of travels from port to port along the Southern andWestern coasts, she joined in the inspection of the English contingentabout to be shipped. They and their chief and her brother were plain tosight, like sample print of a book's first page, blank sheets for therest of the volume. If she might have been one among them, she wouldhave dared the reckless forecast. Her sensations were those of a birdthat has flown into a room, and beats wings against the ceiling and thewindow-panes. A close, hard sky, a transparent prison wall, narrowed herpowers, mocked her soul. She spoke little; what she said impressedChillon's chief, Owain Wythan was glad to tell her. The good friend hadgone counter to the tide of her breast by showing satisfaction with theprospect that she would take her rightful place in the world. Herconcentrated mind regarded the good friend as a phantom of a man, theworld's echo. His dead Rebecca would have understood her passion to beher brother's comrade, her abasem*nt in the staying at home to guard hisbutterfly. Owain had never favoured her project; he could not nowperceive the special dangers Chillon would be exposed to in herseparation from him. She had no means of explaining what she feltintensely, that dangers, death, were nothing to either of them,if they shared the fate together.

Her rejected petition to her husband for an allowance of money, on theday in Wales, became the vivid memory which brings out motives in itsglow. Her husband hated her brother; and why? But the answer waslighted fierily down another avenue. A true husband, a lord of wealth,would have rejoiced to help the brother of his wife. He was the causeof Chillon's ruin and this adventure to restore his fortunes. Could sheendure a close alliance with the man while her brother's life wasimperilled? Carinthia rebuked her drowsy head for not having seen hisreason for refusing at the time. 'How long I am before I see anythingthat does not stare in my face!' She was a married woman, whose order ofmind rendered her singularly subject to the holiness of the tie; and shewas a weak woman, she feared. Already, at intervals, now that action ona foreign field of the thunders and lightnings was denied, imaginationrevealed her dissolving to the union with her husband, and cried hercomment on herself as the world's basest of women for submitting to itwhile Chillon's life ran risks; until finally she said: 'Not before Ihave my brother home safe!' an exclamation equal to a vow.

That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she talked ofthe scarlet business as one she participated in as a distant spectator.Chillon's chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops; within tendays the whole expedition would be afloat. She was to post to London forfurther purchases, he following to take leave of his wife and babe.Curiously, but hardly remarked on during the bustle of work, Livia hadbeen the one to send her short account of the great day at Calesford;Henrietta, the born correspondent, pencilling a couple of lines; she waswell, dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip of her foot andfall over a low wire fence. Her message of love thrice underlined therepeated word.

Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have expected to meetmidway on the London road. Her name was called from a carriage as shedrove up to the door of the Winchester hostlery, and in the lady, overwhose right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk concealed a bandage,the voice was her sister Riette's. With her were two babes and theirnursemaids.

'Chillon is down there—you have left him there?' Henrietta greeted her,saw the reply, and stepped out of her carriage. 'You shall kiss thechildren afterwards; come into one of the rooms, Janey.'

Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the voice of tearshardening to the world's business, 'Chillon must not enter London. Yousee the figure I am. My character's in as bad case up there—thanks tothose men! My husband has lost his "golden Riette." When you seebeneath the bandage! He will have the right to put me away. His "beautyof beauties"! I'm fit only to dress as a page-boy and run at his heels.My hero! my poor dear! He thinking I cared for nothing but amusem*nt,flattery. Was ever a punishment so cruel to the noblest of generoushusbands! Because I know he will overlook it, make light of it, neverreproach his Riette. And the rose he married comes to him a shrivelledleaf of a potpourri heap. You haven't seen me yet. I was their"beautiful woman." I feel for my husband most.'

She took breath. Carinthia pressed her lips on the cheek sensible to ahiss, and Henrietta pursued, in words liker to sobs: 'Anywhere, Cadiz,St. Jean de Luz, hospital work either, anywhere my husband likes,anything! I want to work, or I'll sit and rock the children. I'm awakeat last. Janey, we're lambs to vultures with those men. I don't pretendI was the perfect fool. I thought myself so safe. I let one of themsqueeze my hand one day, he swears. You know what a passion is; you haveit for mountains and battles, I for music. I do remember, one morningbefore sunrise, driving back to town out of Windsor,—a dance, theofficers of the Guards,—and my lord's trumpeter at the back of the coachblowing notes to melt a stone, I found a man's hand had mine. I rememberLord Fleetwood looking over his shoulder and smiling hard and lashing hishorses. But listen—yes, at Calesford it happened. He—oh, hear thename, then; Chillon must never hear it;—Lord Brailstone was denied theright to step on Lord Fleetwood's grounds. The Opera company hadfinished selections from my Pirata. I went out for cool air; little SirMeeson beside me. I had a folded gauze veil over my head, tied at thechin in a bow. Some one ran up to me—Lord Brailstone. He poured forththeir poetry. They suppose it the wine for their "beautiful woman."I dare say I laughed or told him to go, and he began a tirade againstLord Fleetwood. There's no mighty difference between one beast of preyand another. Let me get away from them all! Though now! they would notlift an eyelid. This is my husband's treasure returning to him. We haveto be burnt to come to our senses. Janey—oh! you do well!—it wasfiendish; old ballads, melodrama plays, I see they were built on men'sdeeds. Janey, I could not believe it, I have to believe, it is forceddown my throat;—that man, your husband, because he could not forgive mychoosing Chillon, schemed for Chillon's ruin. I could not believe ituntil I saw in the glass this disfigured wretch he has made of me. Liviaserves him, she hates him for the tyrant he is; she has opened my eyes.And not for himself, no, for his revenge on me, for my name to be as myface is. He tossed me to his dogs; fair game for them! You do well,Janey; he is capable of any villany. And has been calling at Livia'sdoor twice a day, inquiring anxiously; begs the first appointmentpossible. He has no shame; he is accustomed to buy men and women; hethinks his money will buy my pardon, give my face a new skin, perhaps.A woman swears to you, Janey, by all she holds holy on earth, it is notthe loss of her beauty—there will be a wrinkled patch on the cheek forlife, the surgeon says; I am to bear a brown spot, like a bruised peachthey sell at the fruit-shops cheap. Chillon's Riette! I think of that,the miserable wife I am for him without the beauty he loved so! I thinkof myself as guilty, a really guilty woman, when I compare my loss withmy husband's.'

'Your accident, dearest Riette—how it happened?' Carinthia said,enfolding her.

'Because, Janey, what have I ever been to Chillon but the good-lookingthing he was proud of? It's gone. Oh, the accident. Brailstone hadpushed little Corby away; he held my hand, kept imploring, he wanted theusual two minutes, and all to warn me against—I've told you; and he sawLord Fleetwood coming. I got my hand free, and stepped back, my headspinning; and I fell. That I recollect, and a sight of flames, like theend of the world. I fell on one of the oil-lamps bordering the grass; myveil lighted; I had fainted; those two men saw nothing but one another;and little Sir Meeson was no help; young Lord Cressett dashed out theflames. They brought me to my senses for a second swoon. Livia says Iwoke moaning to be taken away from that hated Calesford. It was, oh!never to see that husband of yours again. Forgive him, if you can.Not I. I carry the mark of him to my grave. I have called myself "Skin-deep" ever since, day and night—the name I deserve.'

'We will return to Chillon together, my own,' said Carinthia. 'It maynot be so bad.' And in the hope that her lovely sister exaggerated adefacement leaving not much worse than a small scar, her heart threw offits load of the recent perplexities, daylight broke through her darkwood. Henrietta brought her liberty. How far guilty her husband mightbe, she was absolved from considering; sufficiently guilty to releaseher. Upon that conclusion, pity for the awakened Riette shed purer tear-drops through the gratitude she could not restrain, could hardly conceal,on her sister's behalf and her own. Henrietta's prompt despatch toCroridge to fetch the babes, her journey down out of a sick-room to stopChillon's visit to London, proved her an awakened woman, well paid forthe stain on her face, though the stain were lasting. Never had sheloved Henrietta, never shown her so much love, as on the road to thedeepening colours of the West. Her sisterly warmth surprised the woefulspotted beauty with a reflection that this martial Janey was after all awoman of feeling, one whom her husband, if he came to know it and thedepth of it, the rich sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have lost.

And he did, the Dame interposes for the final word, he mourned his lossof Carinthia Jane in sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding that he had theworld's affectionate condolences about him to comfort him, by reason ofhis ungovernable countess's misbehaviour once more, according to thereport, in running away with a young officer to take part in a foreigninsurrection; and when he was most the idol of his countrymen andcountrywomen, which it was once his immoderate aim to be, he mourned herday and night, knowing her spotless, however wild a follower of herfather's MAXIMS FOR MEN. He believed—some have said his belief was notin error—that the woman to aid and make him man and be the star in humanform to him, was miraculously revealed on the day of his walk through theforeign pine forest, and his proposal to her at the ducal ball was aninspiration of his Good Genius, continuing to his marriage morn, and thenrunning downwards, like an overstrained reel, under the leadership of hisBad. From turning to turning of that descent, he saw himself advised toretrieve the fatal steps, at each point attempting it just too late;until too late by an hour, he reached the seaport where his wife hadembarked; and her brother, Chillon John, cruelly, it was the commonopinion, refused him audience. No syllable of the place whither she fledabroad was vouchsafed to him; and his confessions of sins and repentanceof them were breathed to empty air. The wealthiest nobleman of allEngland stood on the pier, watching the regiments of that doomedexpedition mount ship, ready with the bribe of the greater part of hispossessions for a single word to tell him of his wife's destination.Lord Feltre, his companion, has done us the service to make his emotionsknown. He describes them, true, as the Papist who sees every incidentcontribute to precipitate sinners into the bosom of his Church. Butthis, we have warrant for saying, did not occur before the earl hadvisited and strolled in the woods with his former secretary, Mr. GowerWoodseer, of whom so much has been told, and he little better than aninfidel, declaring his aim to be at contentedness in life. LordFleetwood might envy for a while, he could not be satisfied with Nature.

Within six months of Carinthia Jane's disappearance, people had begun totalk of strange doings at Calesford; and some would have it, that it wasthe rehearsal of a play, in which friars were prominent characters, forthere the frocked gentry were seen flitting across the ground. Thenthe world learnt too surely that the dreaded evil had happened, itswealthiest nobleman had gone over to the Church of Rome! carrying all hispersonal and unentailed estate to squander it on images and a dogma.Calesford was attacked by the mob;—one of the notorious riots in ourhistory was a result of the Amazing Marriage, and roused the talk of itagain over Great Britain. When Carinthia Jane, after two years ofadventures and perils rarely encountered by women, returned to theseshores, she was, they say, most anxious for news of her husband; andthen, indeed, it has been conjectured, they might have been united towalk henceforward as one for life, but for the sad fact that the Earl ofFleetwood had two months and some days previously abjured his rank, hisremaining property, and his title, to become, there is one report, theBrother Russett of the mountain monastery he visited in simple curiosityonce with his betraying friend, Lord Feltre. Or some say, and so it maytruly be, it was an amateur monastery established by him down among hisWelsh mountains, in which he served as a simple brother, without anyauthority over the priests or what not he paid to act as his superiors.Monk of some sort he would be. He was never the man to stop at anythinghalf way.

Mr. Rose Mackrell, in his Memoirs, was the first who revealed to theworld, that the Mademoiselle de Levellier of the French Count fightingwith the Carlists—falsely claimed by him as a Frenchwoman—was, in verytruth, Carinthia Jane, the Countess of Fleetwood, to whom Carlists andLegitimises alike were indebted for tender care of them on the field andin hospital; and who rode from one camp through the other up to the tentof the Pretender to the throne of Spain, bearing her petition for herbrother's release; which was granted, in acknowledgement of her 'renownedhumanity to both conflicting armies,' as the words translated by Dr.Glossop run. Certain it is she brought her wounded brother safe home toEngland, and prisoners in that war usually had short shrift. For threeyears longer she was the Countess of Fleetwood, 'widow of a livingsuicide,' Mr. Rose Mackrell describes the state of the Marriage at thatperiod. No whisper of divorce did she tolerate.

Six months after it was proved that Brother Russett had perished of hisausterities, or his heart, we learn she said to the beseeching applicantfor her hand, Mr. Owain Wythan, with the gift of it, in compassion:'Rebecca could foretell events.' Carinthia Jane had ever been ashamedof second marriages, and the union with her friend Rebecca's faithfulsimpleton gave it, one supposes, a natural air, for he as little as shehad previously known the wedded state. She married him, Henrietta haswritten, because of his wooing her with dog's eyes instead of words.The once famous beauty carried a wrinkled spot on her cheek to her grave;a saving disfigurement, and the mark of changes in the story told youenough to make us think it a providential intervention for such ends aswere in view.

So much I can say: the facts related, with some regretted omissions,by which my story has so skeleton a look, are those that led to thelamentable conclusion. But the melancholy, the pathos of it, the heartof all England stirred by it, have been—and the panting excitement itwas to every listener—sacrificed in the vain effort to render events asconsequent to your understanding as a piece of logic, through an exposureof character! Character must ever be a mystery, only to be explained insome degree by conduct; and that is very dependent upon accident: andunless we have a perpetual whipping of the tender part of the reader'smind, interest in invisible persons must needs flag. For it is an infantwe address, and the storyteller whose art excites an infant to seriousattention succeeds best; with English people assuredly, I rejoice tothink, though I have to pray their patience here while that philosophyand exposure of character block the course along a road inviting totraffic of the most animated kind.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar
Advised not to push at a shut gate
As faith comes—no saying how; one swears by them
Bent double to gather things we have tossed away
Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war
Everlastingly in this life the better pays for the worse
Fatal habit of superiority stopped his tongue
Festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers
Flung him, pitied him, and passed on
Foe can spoil my face; he beats me if he spoils my temper
He had wealth for a likeness of strength
Himself in the worn old surplice of the converted rake
Ideas in gestation are the dullest matter you can have
Injury forbids us to be friends again
Lies are usurers' coin we pay for ten thousand per cent
Love of pleasure keeps us blind children
Never forgave an injury without a return blow for it
Pebble may roll where it likes—not so the costly jewel
Reflection upon a statement is its lightning in advance
Religion condones offences: Philosophy has no forgiveness
Sensitiveness to the sting, which is not allowed to poison
Strengthening the backbone for a bend of the knee in calamity
Style is the mantle of greatness
That sort of progenitor is your "permanent aristocracy"
There's not an act of a man's life lies dead behind him
Those who have the careless chatter, the ready laugh
Those who know little and dread much
To most men women are knaves or ninnies
Wakening to the claims of others—Youth's infant conscience
We make our taskmasters of those to whom we have done a wrong
We shall go together; we shall not have to weep for one another
Wooing her with dog's eyes instead of words

[The End]