THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
THE AMAZING 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 WESTMINSTER 
 
 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO. 
 l 896 
 
Fourth Edition 
 
 7 / 5- 4l 4> 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 

 TO MY FRIEND 
 
 FREDERICK JAMESON 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 I. ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS «... I 
 
 II. MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OP THE ELOPEMENT OF THE 
 COUNTESS OF CRESSETT WITH THE OLD BUCCANEER, 
 AND OF CHARLES DUMP THE POSTILLION CONDUCTING 
 THEM, AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY . . 1 5 
 
 III. CONTINUATION OF THE INTRODUCTORY MEANDERINGS OF 
 
 DAME GOSSIP, TOGETHER WITH HER SUDDEN EX- 
 TINCTION ........ 27 
 
 IV. MORNING AND FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME . • 35 
 V. A MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE . . -45 
 
 VI. THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER . . . . 59 
 
 VII. THE LADY'S LETTER . . . . . . .71 
 
 VIII. OF THE ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN AND 
 THEIR CONSORTING ! IN WHICH THE MALE READKK IS 
 REQUESTED TO BEAR IN MIND WHAT WILD CREATURE 
 HE WAS IN HIS YOUTH, WHILE THE FEMALE BHOl LD 
 MARVEL CREDULOUSLY ...... /8 
 
THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ix. concerning the black goddess fortune and the 
 worship op her, together with an introduction 
 of some of her votaries .... 
 
 x. small causes ....... 
 
 xl the prisoner of his word .... 
 
 xii. Henrietta's letter treating of the great event 
 xiii. an irruption of mistress gossip in breach of the 
 convention .... 
 
 xiv. a pendant of the foregoing . 
 xv. opening stage of the honeymoon . 
 xvi. in which the bride from foreign parts is given a 
 
 taste of old england 
 
 xvii. records a shadow contest close on the foregoing 
 
 xviii. down whitechapel way 
 
 xix. the girl madge ...... 
 
 xx. studies in fog, gout, an old seaman, a lovely 
 serpent, and the moral effects that may come 
 of a borrowed shirt ...... 
 
 xxi. in which we have further glimpses of the won- 
 drous mechanism of our younger man 
 xxii. a right-minded great lady . 
 xxiii. in dame gossip's vein 
 xxiv. a kidnapping and no great harm . 
 xxv. the philosopher man of action . 
 xxvi. after some fencing the dame passes our guard 
 
 PAGE 
 
 94 
 no 
 
 121 
 
 134 
 
 142 
 
 157 
 l6o 
 
 176 
 187 
 I96 
 209 
 
 219 
 
 AN 
 
 • 231 
 
 • 
 
 . 240 
 
 • 
 
 . 246 
 
 *v • 
 
 . 202 
 
 *>. . 
 
 . 270 
 
 UR GUARD 
 
 . 284 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XI 
 
 CHAP. 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 XXXIV. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 XL. 
 
 XIJ. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 XUII. 
 XLIV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER^ ENGINE-ROOM . . 294 
 
 BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER IN- 
 TRUSION IS AVERTED ...... 303 
 
 CARINTHIA IN WALES 322 
 
 REBECCA WYTHAN . 332 
 
 WE HAVE AGAIN TO DEAL WITH THE EXAMPLES OF OUR 
 
 YOUNGER MAN 345 
 
 IN WHICH WE SEE CARINTHIA PUT IN PRACTICE ONE 
 
 OF HER OLD FATHER'S LESSONS . . . -356 
 
 A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 366 
 
 A SURVEY OF THE RIDE OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 
 ESCORTING THE COUNTESS OF FLEETWOOD TO KENT- 
 ISH ESSLEMONT 376 
 
 IN WHICH CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED . 39 1 
 
 BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE .... 404 
 
 BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD . . . 412 
 
 A DIP INTO THE SPRING^ WATERS . . . .423 
 
 THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR . . 429 
 
 A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS .... 442 
 
 IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE 
 
 REFUGES FROM THEM 456 
 
 THE RETARDED COURTSHIP 468 
 
 ON THE JIOAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE . . . 477 
 
 BETWEEN THE EARL, THE COUNTESS AND HER 
 
 BROTHER, AND OF A SILVER CROSS . . . 493 
 
xii THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAP. * PAGB 
 
 XLV. CONTAINS A RECORD OF WHAT WAS FEARED, WHAT 
 
 WAS HOPED, AND WHAT HAPPENED . . 506 
 
 XLVI. A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE 
 
 FLASHES 520 
 
 XLVII. THE LAST .* WITH A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 535 
 
 
THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 
 
 Everybody has heard of the beautiful Countess of 
 Cressett, who was one of the lights of this country 
 at the time when crowned heads were running over 
 Europe, crying out for charity's sake to be amused 
 after their tiresome work of slaughter : and you know 
 what a dread they have of moping. She was famous 
 for her fun and high spirits besides her good looks, 
 which you may j udge of for yourself on a walk down 
 most of our great noblemen's collections of pictures in 
 England, where you will behold her as the goddess 
 Diana fitting an arrow to a bow ; and elsewhere an 
 Amazon holding a spear ; or a lady with dogs, in the 
 costume of the day ; and in one place she is a nymph, 
 if not Diana herself, gazing at her naked feet before 
 her attendants loosen her tunic for her to take the 
 bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, and you 
 see antlers of a stag behind a block of stone. She 
 was a wonderful swimmer, among other things, and one 
 early morning, »yhen she was a girl, she did really swim, 
 they say, across the Shannon and back to win a bet for 
 her brother Lord Levellier, the colonel of cavalry, who 
 
2 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 left an arm in Egypt, and changed his way of life to 
 become a wizard, as the common people about his neigh- 
 bourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather 
 and had cures for aches and pains without a doctor's 
 diploma. But we know now that lie was only a 
 mathematician and astronomer, all for inventing 
 military engines. The brother and sister were great 
 friends in their youth, when he had his right arm to 
 defend her reputation with ; and she would have done 
 anything on earth to please him. 
 
 There is a picture of her in an immense flat white 
 silk hat trimmed with pale blue, like a pavilion, the 
 broadest brim ever seen, and she simply sits on a chair; 
 and Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been ex- 
 tinguished under that hat, I am sure ; and only to look 
 at Countess Fanny's eye beneath the brim she has tipped 
 ever so slightly in her artfulness makes the absurd thing 
 graceful and suitable. Oh ! she was a cunning one. 
 But you must be on your guard against the scandal- 
 mongers and collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, 
 the critic of our Galleries of Art ; for she being in 
 almost all of them (the principal painters of the day 
 were on their knees for the favour of a sitting), they 
 have to speak of her pretty frequently, and they season 
 their dish, the coxcombs do, by hinting a knowledge of 
 her history. 
 
 ' Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful 
 but, we fear, naughty Countess of Cressett^ 
 
 You are to imagine that they know everything, and 
 they are so indulgent when they drop their blot on a 
 lady's character ! 
 
 They can boast of nothing more than having read 
 Nymney 1 s Letters and Correspondence ', published, for- 
 
ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 3 
 
 tunately for him, when he was no longer to be called 
 to account below for his malicious insinuations, pre- 
 tending to decency in initials and dashes. That man 
 was a hater of women and the clergy. He was one 
 of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, 
 which sets the wicked part of us on fire : I have known 
 it myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened 
 to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I 
 could not refute his wantonness. He has just the 
 same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are 
 to make a choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I 
 say : I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who 
 leads you up to the curtain and agitates it, and bids 
 you to retire on tiptoe. You cannot help being angry 
 with the man for both reasons. But he is the writer 
 society delights in, to show what it is composed of. A 
 man brazen enough to declare that he could hold us in 
 suspense about the adventures of a broomstick, with 
 the aid of a yashmak and an ankle, may know the 
 world ; you had better not know him — that is my 
 remark ; and do not trust him. 
 
 He tells the story of the Old Buccaneer in fear of 
 the public, for it was general property, but of course 
 he finishes with a Nymney touch : 6 So the Old Buc- 
 caneer is the doubloon she takes in exchange for a 
 handful of silver pieces. 1 There is no such handful 
 to exchange — not of the kind he sickeningly nudges 
 at you. I will prove to you it was not Countess 
 Fanny's naughtiness, though she was indeed very 
 blamable. ■ Women should walk in armour as if they 
 were born to it ; for these cold sneerers will never 
 waste their darts on cuirasses. An independent brave 
 young creature, exposing herself thoughtlessly in her 
 
4 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 reckless innocence, is the victim for them. They will 
 bring all society down on her with one of their 
 explosive sly words appearing so careless, the cowards. 
 I say without hesitation, her conduct with regard to 
 Kirby, the Old Buccaneer, as he was called, however 
 indefensible in itself, warrants her at heart an innocent 
 young woman, much to be pitied. Only to think of 
 her, I could sometimes drop into a chair for a good cry. 
 And of him too ! and their daughter Carinthia Jane 
 was the pair of them, as to that, and so was Chillon 
 John, the son. 
 
 Those critics quoting Nymney should look at the 
 portrait of her in the Long Saloon of Cressett Castle, 
 where she stands in blue and white, completely dressed, 
 near a table supporting a couple of holster pistols, 
 and then let them ask themselves whether they would 
 speak of her so if her little hand could move. 
 
 Well, and so the tale of her swim across the Shannon 
 river and back drove the young Earl of Cressett straight 
 over to Ireland to propose for her, he saying, that she 
 was the girl to suit his book ; not allowing her time to 
 think of how much he might be the man to suit hers. 
 The marriage was what is called a good one : both full 
 of frolic, and he wealthy and rather handsome, and she 
 quite lovely and spirited. 
 
 No wonder the whole town was very soon agog about 
 the couple, until at the end of a year people began to 
 talk of them separately, she going her way, and he his. 
 She could not always be on the top of a coach, which 
 was his throne of happiness. 
 
 Plenty of stories are current still of his fame as a 
 four-in-hand coachman. They say he once drove an 
 Emperor and a King, a Prince Chancellor and a pair 
 
ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 5 
 
 of Field Marshals, and some ladies of the day, from 
 the metropolis to Richmond Hill in fifty or sixty odd 
 minutes, having the ground cleared all the way by bell 
 and summons, and only a donkey-cart and man, and a 
 deaf old woman, to pay for; and went, as you can 
 imagine, at such a tearing gallop, that those Grand 
 Highnesses had to hold on for their lives and lost their 
 hats along the road ; and a publican at Kew exhibits 
 one above his bar to the present hour. And Countess 
 Fanny was up among them, they say. She was equal 
 to it. And some say, that was the occasion of her 
 meeting the Old Buccaneer. 
 
 She met him at Richmond in Surrey we know for 
 certain. It was on Richmond Hill, where the old King 
 met his Lass. They say Countess Fanny was parading 
 the hill to behold the splendid view, always admired 
 so much by foreigners, with their Achs and Hechs ! 
 and surrounded by her crowned courtiers in frogged 
 uniforms and moustachioed like sea-horses, a little 
 before dinner time, when Kirby passed her, and the 
 Emperor made a remark on him, for Kirby was a 
 magnificent figure of a man, and used to be compared 
 to a three-decker entering harbour after a victory. 
 He stood six ft et four, and was broad-shouldered and 
 deep-chested to match, and walked like a king who has 
 humbled his enemy. You have seen big dogs. And 
 so Countess Fanny looked round. Kirby was doing 
 the same. But he had turned right about, and ap- 
 peared transfixed and like a royal beast angry with his 
 wound. If ever there was love at first sight, and a 
 dreadful love, like a runaway mail-coach in a storm of 
 wind and lightning at black midnight by the banks of 
 a flooded river, which was formerly our compari- 
 
6 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 son for terrible situations, it was when those two 
 met. 
 
 And, what ! you exclaim, Buccaneer Kirby full sixty- 
 five, and Countess Fanny no more than three and 
 twenty, a young beauty of the world of fashion, 
 courted by the highest, and she in love with him ! 
 Go and gaze at one of our big ships coming out of 
 an engagement home with all her flags flying and her 
 crew manning the yards. That will give you an idea 
 ol a young woman's feelings for an old warrior never 
 beaten down an inch by anything he had to endure ; 
 matching him, I dare say, in her woman's heart, with 
 the Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the out- 
 side edge of battle. She did rarely admire a valiant 
 man. Old as Methuselah, he would have made her 
 kneel to him. She was all heart for a real hero. 
 
 The story goes, that Countess Fanny sent her hus- 
 band to Captain Kirby, at the emperor's request, to 
 inquire his name ; and on hearing it, she struck her 
 hands on her bosom, telling his Majesty he saw there 
 the bravest man in the king's dominions ; which the 
 emperor scarce crediting, and observing that the man 
 must be, then, a superhuman being to be so dis- 
 tinguished in a nation of the brave, Countess Fanny 
 related the well-known tale of Captain Kirby and the 
 shipful of mutineers ; and how when not a man of 
 them stood by him, and he in the service of the first 
 insurgent State of Spanish America, to save his ship 
 from being taken over to the enemy, he blew her up, 
 fifteen miles from land : and so he got to shore swim- 
 ming and floating alternately, and was called Old 
 Sky-High by English sailors, any number of whom 
 could always be had to sail under Buccaneer Kirby. He 
 
ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 7 
 
 fought on shore as well ; and once he came down from 
 the tops of the Andes with a black beard turned white, 
 and went into action with the title of Kirby's Ghost. 
 
 But his heart was on salt water ; he was never so 
 much at home as in a ship foundering or splitting into 
 the clouds. We are told that he never forgave the 
 Admiralty for striking him off the list of English 
 naval captains : which is no doubt why in his old age 
 he nursed a grudge against his country. 
 
 Ours, I am sure, was the loss ; and many have 
 thought so since. He was a mechanician, a master of 
 stratagems, and would say, that brains will beat Grim 
 Death if we have enough of them. He was a standing 
 example of the lessons of his own Maxims for Men, a 
 very curious book, that fetches a rare price now 
 wherever a copy is put up for auction. I shudder at 
 them as if they were muzzles of firearms pointed at 
 me; but they were not addressed to my sex ; and still 
 they give me an interest in the writer who would 
 declare, that c he had never Jailed in an undertaking 
 without stripping bare to expose to himself where he had 
 been zvanting in Intention and Determination.'' 
 
 There you may see a truly terrible man. 
 
 So the emperor being immensely taken with Kirby's 
 method of preserving discipline on board ship, because 
 (as we say to the madman, Your strait-waistcoat is my 
 easy-chair) monarchs have a great love of discipline, 
 he begged Countess Fanny's permission that he might 
 invite Captain Kirby to his table ; and Countess Fanny 
 (she had the name from the ballad : 
 
 * I am the star of Prince and Czar, 
 My light is shed on many, 
 But I wait here till my bold Buccaneer 
 Makes prize of Countess Fanny ; ' — 
 
8 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 for the popular imagination was extraordinarily roused 
 by the elopement, and there were songs and ballads 
 out of number), Countess Fanny despatched her hus- 
 band to Captain Kirby again, meaning no harm, though 
 the poor man is laughed at in the songs for going 
 twice upon his mission. 
 
 None of the mighty people repented of having the 
 Old Buccaneer — for that night, at all events. He sat 
 in the midst of them, you may believe, like the lord of 
 that table, with his great white beard and hair — not 
 a lock of it shed — and his bronze lion-face, and a 
 resolute but a merry eye that he had. He was no deep 
 drinker of wine, but when he did drink, and the wine 
 champagne, he drank to show his disdain of its powers ; 
 and the emperor wishing for a narrative of some of his 
 exploits, particularly the blowing up of his ship, Kirby 
 paid his Majesty the compliment of giving it him as 
 baldly as an official report to the Admiralty. So disen- 
 gaged and calm was he, with his bottles of champagne 
 in him, where another would have been sparkling and 
 laying on the colours, that he was then and there 
 offered Admiral's rank in the Imperial navy ; and the 
 Old Buccaneer, like a courtier of our best days, bows 
 to Countess Fanny, and asks her, if he is a free man to 
 go : and, No, says she, we cannot spare you ! And 
 there was a pretty wrangle between Countess Fanny 
 and the emperor, each pulling at the Old Buccaneer to 
 have possession of him. 
 
 He was rarely out of her sight after their first meet- 
 ing, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's 
 family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and 
 made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her 
 husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy 
 
ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 9 
 
 with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if 
 the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, 
 and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if 
 he found him on the grounds of Cressett : c like vermin,' 
 he said, and it was considered that he had the right, 
 and no jury would have convicted him. You know 
 what those days were. 
 
 He had his opportunity one moonlight night, not far 
 from the castle, and peppered Kirby with shot from a 
 fowling-piece at, some say, five paces'* distance, if not 
 point-blank. 
 
 But Kirby had a maxim, Steady shakes them, and he 
 acted on it to receive his enemy's fire • and the young 
 lord's hand shook, and the Old Buccaneer stood out of 
 the smoke not much injured, except in the coat-collar, 
 with a pistol cocked in his hand, and he said : — 
 
 ' Many would take that for a declaration of war, but 
 I know it 's only your lordship's diplomacy ' ; and then 
 he let loose to his mad fun, astounding Lord Cressett 
 and his gamekeeper, and vowed, as the young lord tried 
 to relate subsequently, as well as he could recollect the 
 words — here I have it in print : — ' that he was a man 
 pickled in saltpetre when an inant, like Achilles, and 
 proof against powder and shot not marked with cross 
 and key, and fetched up from the square magazine in the 
 central depot of the infernal factory, third turning to the 
 right off the grand arcade in Kingdom -come, where the 
 night-porter has to wear wet petticoats, like a Highland 
 chief, to make short work of the sparks flying about, 
 otherwise this world and many another would not have to 
 wait long for combustion.^ 
 
 Kirby had the wildest way of talking when he was 
 not issuing orders under fire, best understood by sailors. 
 
 r 
 
10 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 I give it you as it stands here printed. I do not pro- 
 fess to understand. 
 
 So Lord Cressett said : ' Diplomacy and infernal 
 factories be hanged ! Have your shot at me ; it's 
 only fair." 1 And Kirby discharged his pistol at the top 
 twigs of an old oak tree, and called the young lord a 
 Briton, and proposed to take him in hand and make a 
 man of him, as nigh worthy of his wife as any one not 
 an Alexander of Macedon could be. 
 
 So they became friendly, and the young lord con- 
 fessed it was his family that had urged him to the 
 attack ; and Kirby abode at the castle, and all three 
 were happy, in perfect honour, I am convinced : but 
 such was not the opinion of the Cressetts and Level- 
 liers. Down they trooped to Cressett Castle with a 
 rush and a roar, crying on the disgrace of an old des- 
 perado like Kirby living there ; Dukes, Marchionesses, 
 Cabinet Ministers, leaders of fashion, and fire-eating 
 colonels of the King's body-guard, one of whom Captain 
 John Peter Kirby laid on his heels at ten paces on an 
 April morning, when the duel was fought, as early as 
 the blessed heavens had given them light to see to do 
 it. Such days those were ! 
 
 There was talk of shutting up the infatuated lady. 
 If not incarcerated, she was rigidly watched. The earl 
 her husband fell altogether to drinking and coaching, 
 and other things. The ballad makes her say : — 
 
 ' My family my gaolers be, 
 
 My husband is a zany ; 
 Naught see I clear save my bold Buccaneer 
 
 To rescue Countess Fanny!' 
 
 and it goes on : — 
 
ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 11 
 
 ( little lass, at play on the grass, 
 
 Come earn a silver penny. 
 And you '11 be dear to my bold Buccaneer 
 
 For news of his Countess Fanny.' 
 
 In spite of her bravery, that poor woman suffered ! 
 
 We used to learn by heart the ballads and songs 
 upon famous events in those old days when poetry was 
 worshipped. 
 
 But Captain Kirby gave provocation enough to both 
 families when he went among the taverns and clubs, 
 and vowed before Providence over his big fist that they 
 should rue their interference, and he would carry off 
 the lady on a day he named ; he named the hour as 
 well, they say, and that was midnight of the month of 
 June. The Levelliers and Cressetts foamed at the 
 mouth in speaking of him, so enraged they were on 
 account of his age and his passion for a young woman. 
 As to blood, the Kirbys of Lincolnshire were quite 
 equal to the Cressetts of Warwick. The Old Buccaneer 
 seems to have had money too. But you can see what 
 her people had to complain of: his insolent contempt 
 of them was unexampled. And their tyranny had 
 roused my lady^ high spirit not a bit less, and she said 
 right out : ' When he comes, I am ready and will go 
 with him. 1 
 
 There was boldness for you on both sides ! All the 
 town was laughing and betting on the event of the 
 night in June : and the odds were in favour of Kirby ; 
 for though Lord Crcssett was quite the popular young 
 English nobleman, being a capital whip and free of his 
 coin, in those days men who had smelt powder were 
 often prized above titles, and the feeling, out of society, 
 was very strong for Kirby, even previous to the light on 
 
12 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the heath. And the age of the indomitable adventurer 
 must have contributed to his popularity. He was the 
 hero of every song. 
 
 ' " What 's age to me ! " cries Kirby ; 
 " Why, young and fresh let her be, 
 
 But it 's mighty better reasoned 
 
 For a man to be well seasoned, 
 And a man she has in me" cries Kirby.' 
 
 As to his exact age : — 
 
 ( "Write me down sixty-three," cries Kirby.' 
 
 I have always maintained that it was an understate- 
 ment. We must remember, it was not Kirby speaking, 
 but the song-writer. Kirby would not, in my opinion, 
 have numbered years he was proud of below their due 
 quantity. He was more, if he died at ninety-one ; and 
 Chillon Switzer John Kirby, born eleven months after 
 the elopement, was, we know, twenty-three years old 
 when the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed 
 him little besides a law-suit with the Austrian Govern- 
 ment, and the care of Carinthia Jane, the second child 
 of this extraordinary union: both children born in 
 wedlock, as you will hear. Sixty-three, or sixty-seven, 
 near upon seventy, when most men are reaping and 
 stacking their sins with groans and weak knees, Kirby 
 was a match for his juniors, which they discovered. 
 
 Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincoln- 
 shire squire of an ancient stock, was proud of his blood, 
 and claimed descent from a chief of the Danish rovers. 
 
 ' " What's rank to meV cries Kirby; 
 " A titled lass let her be, 
 
 But unless my plans miscarry, 
 
 I'll show her when we marry, 
 As brave a pedigree," cries Kirby.' 
 
ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS IS 
 
 That was the song-writer's answer to the charge that 
 the countess had stooped to a degrading alliance. 
 
 John Peter was fourth of a family of seven children, 
 all males, and hard at the bottle early in life : 'for 
 want of proper occupation? he says in his Memoirs, and 
 applauds his brother Stanson, the clergyman, for being 
 ahead of him in renouncing strong drinks, because he 
 found that he ; cursed better upon water? Water, how- 
 ever, helped Stanson Kirby to outlive his brothers and 
 inherit the Lincolnshire property, and at the period of 
 V e great scandal in London he was palsied and waited 
 on by his grandson and heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the 
 hero of an adventure celebrated in our Law courts and 
 on the English stage; for he took possession of his 
 coachman's wife, and was accused of compassing the 
 death of the husband. He was not hanged for it, so 
 we are bound to think him not guilty. 
 
 The stage-piece is called Saturday Night, and it had 
 an astonishing run, but is only remembered now for the 
 song of ' Saturday,' sung by the poor coachman and 
 labourers at the village ale-house before he starts to 
 capture his wife from the clutches of her seducer and 
 meets his fate. Never was there a more popular song : 
 you heard it everywhere. I recollect one verse : — 
 
 e Saturday money is slippery metal, 
 And Saturday ale it is tipsy stuff: 
 At home the old woman is boiling her kettle, 
 She thinks we don't know when we 've tippled enough. 
 We drink, and of never a man are we jealous, 
 And never a man against us will he speak: 
 For who can be hard on a set of poor fellows 
 Who only see Saturday once a week I ' 
 
 You chorus the last two lines. 
 
14 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of 
 Kirby Hall joined in singing before he went out to face 
 his end for the woman he loved. He believed in her 
 virtue to the very last. 
 
 1 The ravished wife of my bosom? he calls her all 
 through the latter half of the play. It is a real tragedy. 
 The songs of that day have lost their effect now, I sup- 
 pose. They will ever remain pathetic to me ; and to 
 hear the poor coachman William Martin invoking the 
 name of his dear stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, 
 so tearfully, while he joins the song of Saturday, was a 
 most moving thing. You saw nothing but handker- 
 chiefs out all over the theatre. What it is that has 
 gone from our drama, I cannot tell : I am never affected 
 now as I was then ; and people in a low station of life 
 could affect me then, without being flung at me, for 
 I dislike an entire dish of them, I own. We were 
 simpler in our habits and ways of thinking. Eliza- 
 beth Martin, according to report, was a woman to make 
 better men than Ralph Thorkill act evilly — as to 
 good looks, I mean. She was not entirely guiltless, I 
 am afraid ; though in the last scene, Mrs. Kempson, 
 who played the part (as, alas, she could do to the 
 very life !), so threw herself into the pathos of it that 
 there were few to hold out against her, and we felt 
 that Elizabeth had been misled. ScTmuch for morality 
 in those days ! 
 
 And now for the elopement. 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE 
 COUNTESS OF CRESSETT WITH THE OLD BUCCANEER, 
 AND OF CHARLES DUMP THE POSTILLION CONDUCTING 
 THEM, AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY 
 
 The twenty-first of June was the day appointed by 
 Captain Kirby to carry off Countess Fanny, and the 
 time midnight : and ten minutes to the stroke of 
 twelve, Countess Fanny, as if she scorned to conceal 
 that she was in a conspiracy with her grey-haired lover, 
 notwithstanding that she was watched and guarded, 
 left the Marchioness of Arpington's ball-room and was 
 escorted downstairs by her brother Lord Levellier, 
 sworn to baffle Kirby. Present with him in the street 
 and witness to the shutting of the carriage-door on 
 Countess Fanny, were brother officers of his, General 
 Abrane, Colonel Jack Potts, and Sir Upton Tomber. 
 
 The door fast shut, Countes.' Fanny kissed her hand 
 to them and drew up the window, seeming merry, and 
 as they had expected indignation and perhaps resist- 
 ance, for she could be a spitfire in a temper and had no 
 fear whatever of firearms, they were glad to have her 
 safe on such good terms ; and so General Abrane jumped 
 up on the box beside the coachman, Jack Potts jumped 
 up between the footmen, and Sir Upton Tomber and 
 the one-armed lord, as soon as the carriage was disen- 
 gaged from the ruck two deep, walked on each side of 
 it in the road all the way to Lord Cressett's town 
 
16 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 house. No one thought of asking where that silly 
 young man was — probably under some table. 
 
 Their numbers were swelled by quite a host going 
 along, for heavy bets were on the affair, dozens having 
 backed Kirby ; and it must have appeared serious to 
 them, with the lady in custody, and constables on the 
 look-out, and Kirby and his men nowhere in sight. 
 They expected an onslaught at some point of the pro- 
 cession, and it may be believed they wished it, if only 
 that they might see something for their money, A 
 beautiful bright moonlight night it happened to be. 
 Arm in arm among them were Lord Pitscrew and 
 Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, a great friend of Kirby's ; 
 for it was a device of the Old Buccaneer's that helped 
 the earl to win the great Welsh heiress who made him, 
 even before he took to hoarding and buying, one of 
 the wealthiest noblemen in England ; but she was 
 crazed by her marriage or the wild scenes leading to 
 it ; she never presented herself in society. She would 
 sit on the top of Estlemont towers — as they formerly 
 spelt it — all day and half the night in midwinter, 
 often, looking for the mountains down in her native 
 West country, covered with an old white flannel cloak, 
 and on her head a tall hat of her Welsh women-folk ; 
 and she died of it, leaving a son in her likeness, of 
 whom you will hear. Lord Fleetwood had lost none of 
 his faith in Kirby, and went on booking bets giving 
 him huge odds, thousands ! 
 
 He accepted fifty to one when the carriage came to 
 a stop at the steps of Lord Cressett's mansion ; but he 
 was anxious, and well he might be, seeing Countess 
 Fanny alight and pass up between two lines of gentle- 
 men all bowing low before her : not a sign of the Old 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 17 
 
 Buccaneer anywhere to right or left ! Heads were 
 on the look out, and vows offered up for his appear- 
 ance. 
 
 She was at the door and about to enter the house. 
 Then it was, that with a shout of the name of some 
 dreadful heathen god, Colonel Jack Potts roared out, 
 ' She 's half a foot short o 1 the mark ! ' 
 
 He was on the pavement, and it seems he measured 
 her as she slipped by him, and one thing and another 
 caused him to smell a cheat; and General Abrane, 
 standing beside her near the door, cried : ' Where art 
 flying now, Jack ? ' But Jack Potts grew more posi- 
 tive and bellowed, ' Peel her wig ! we Ye done ! ' 
 
 And she did not speak a word, but stood huddled-up 
 and hooded ; and Lord Levellier caught her by the 
 arm as she was trying a dash into the hall, and Sir 
 Upton Tomber plucked at her veil and raised it, and 
 whistled : ' Phew ! ' — which struck the rabble below 
 with awe of the cunning of the Old Buccaneer; and 
 there was no need for them to hear General Abrane 
 say : ' Right ! Jack, we Ve a dead one in hand,' or Jack 
 Potts reply : ' It 's ten thousand pounds clean winged 
 away from my pocket, like a string of wild geese I ' 
 
 The excitement of the varletry in the square, they 
 say, was fearful to hear. So the principal noblemen 
 and gentlemen concerned thought it prudent to hurry 
 the young woman into the house .and bar the door ; 
 and there she was very soon stripped of veil and blonde 
 false wig with long curls, the whole framing of her 
 artificial resemblance to Countess Fanny, and she proved 
 to be a good-looking foreign maid, a dark one, powdered, 
 trembling very much, but not so frightened upon hear- 
 ing that her penalty for the share she had taken in the 
 
 B 
 
18 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 horrid imposture practised upon them was to receive 
 and return a salute from each of the gentlemen in 
 rotation ; which the hussy did with proper submission ; 
 and Jack Potts remarked, that 'it was an honest buss, 
 but dear at ten thousand ! ' 
 
 When you have been the victim of a deceit, the ex- 
 planation of the simplicity of the trick turns all the 
 wonder upon yourself, you know, and the backers of 
 the Old Buccaneer and the wao;erers against him crowed 
 and groaned in chorus at the maid's narrative of how 
 the moment Countess Fanny had thrown up the window 
 of her carriage, she sprang out to a carriage on the off 
 side, containing Kirby, and how she, this little French 
 jade, sprang in to take her place. One snap of the 
 fingers and the transformation was accomplished. So 
 for another kiss all round they let her go free, and she 
 sat at the supper-table prepared for Countess Fanny 
 and the party by order of Lord Levellier, and amused 
 the gentlemen with stories of the ladies she had served, 
 English and foreign. And that is how men are taught 
 to think they know our sex and may despise it ! I could 
 preach them a lesson. Those men might as well not 
 believe in the steadfastness of the very stars because 
 one or two are reported lost out of the firmament, and 
 now and then we behold a whole shower of fragments 
 descending. The truth is, they have taken a stain from 
 the life they lead, and are troubled puddles, incapable 
 of clear reflection. To listen to the tattle of a chatting 
 little slut, and condemn the whole sex upon her testi- 
 mony, is a nice idea of justice. Many of the gentlemen 
 present became notorious as woman-scorners, whether 
 owing to Countess Fanny or other things. Lord Level- 
 lier was, and Lord Fleetwood, the wicked man ! And 
 
«<~ THE ELOPEMENT 19 
 
 certainly the hearing of naughty stories of us by the 
 light of a grievous and vexatious instance of our 
 misconduct must produce an impression. Countess 
 Fanny's desperate passion for a man of the age of Kirby 
 struck them as out of nature. They talked of it as if 
 they could have pardoned her a younger lover. 
 
 All that Lord Cressett said, on the announcement of 
 the flight of his wife, was : ' Ah ! Fan ! she never would 
 run in my ribbons.' 
 
 He positively declined to pursue. Lord Levellier 
 would not attempt to follow her up without him, as it 
 would have cost money, and he wanted all that he 
 could spare for his telescopes and experiments. Who, 
 then, was the gentleman who stopped the chariot, with 
 his three mounted attendants, on the road to the sea, 
 on the heath by the great Punch-Bowl ? 
 
 That has been the question for now longer than half 
 a century, in fact approaching seventy mortal years. 
 No one has ever been able to say for certain. 
 
 It occurred at six o'clock on the summer morning. 
 Countess Fanny must have known him, and not once 
 did she open her mouth to breathe his name. Yet she 
 had no objection to talk of the adventure, and how 
 Simon Fettle, Captain Kirby's old ship's steward in 
 South America, seeing horsemen stationed on the 
 ascent of the high road bordering the Bowl, which is 
 miles round and deep, made the postillion cease 
 jogging, and sang out to his master for orders, and 
 Kirby sang back to him to look to his priming, and 
 then the postillion was bidden proceed, and he did not 
 like it, but he had to deal with pistols behind, where 
 men feel weak, and he went bobbing on the saddle in 
 dejection, as if upon his very heart lie jogged ; and 
 
20 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 t 
 
 soon the fray commenced. There was very little 
 parleying between determined men. 
 
 Simon Fettle was a plain kindly creature without a 
 thought of malice, who kept his master's accounts. He 
 fired the first shot at the foremost man, as he related 
 in after days, 'to reduce the odds.'' Kirby said to 
 Countess Fanny, just to comfort her, never so much as 
 imagining she would be afraid, ' The worst will be a 
 bloody shirt for Simon to mangle, 1 for they had been 
 arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Con- 
 tinent, and Simon Fettle to do the washing. She 
 could not help laughing outright. But when the Old 
 Buccaneer was down striding in the battle, she took a 
 pistol and descended likewise ; and she used it, too, 
 and loaded again. 
 
 She had not to use it a second time. Kirby pulled 
 the gentleman off his horse, wounded in the thigh, and 
 while dragging him to Countess Fanny to crave her 
 pardon, a shot intended for Kirby hit the poor gentle- 
 man in the breast, and Kirby stretched him at his 
 length, and Simon and he disarmed the servant who 
 had fired. One was insensible, one flying, and those 
 two on the ground. All in broad daylight ; but so 
 lonely is that spot, nothing might have been heard of 
 it, if at the end of the week the postillion, who had 
 been bribed and threatened with terrible threats to 
 keep his tongue from wagging, had not begun to talk. 
 So the scene of the encounter was examined, and on 
 one spot, carefully earthed over, blood-marks were dis- 
 covered in the green sand. People in the huts on the 
 hill-top, a quarter of a mile distant, spoke of having 
 heard sounds of firing while they were at breakfast, 
 and a little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 21 
 
 dead body go by in an open coach that morning, all 
 bloody and mournful. He had to appear before the 
 magistrates, crying terribly, but did not know the 
 nature of an oath, and was dismissed. Time came 
 when the boy learned to swear, and he did, and that 
 he had seen a beautiful lady firing and killing men like 
 pigeons and partridges ; but that was after Charles 
 Dump, the postillion, had been telling the story. 
 
 Those who credited Charles Dump's veracity specu- 
 lated on dozens of great noblemen and gentlemen 
 known to be dying in love with Countess Fanny. And 
 this brings us to another family. 
 
 I do not say I know anything ; I do but lay before 
 you the evidence we have to fix suspicion upon a 
 notorious character, perfectly capable of trying to 
 thwart a man like Kirby, and with good reason to 
 try, if she had bewitched him to a consuming passion, 
 as we are told. 
 
 About eleven miles distant, as the crow flies and a 
 bold huntsman will ride in that heath country, from 
 the Punch-Bowl, right across the mounds and the 
 broad water, lies the estate of the Fakenhams, who 
 intermarried with the Coplestones of the iron mines, 
 and were the wealthiest of the old county families until 
 Curtis Fakenham entered upon his inheritance. Money 
 with him was like the farm-wife's dish of grain she 
 tosses in showers to her fowls. He was more than 
 what you call a lady-killer, he was a woman-eater. 
 His pride was in it as well as his taste, and when men 
 are like that, indeed they are devourers ! 
 
 Curtis was the elder brother of Commodore Baldwin 
 Fakenham, whose offspring, like his own, were so 
 strangely mixed up with Captain Kirov's children by 
 
22 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Countess Fanny, as you will hear. And these two 
 brothers were sons of Geoffrey Fakenham, celebrated 
 for his devotion to the French Countess Jules 
 d'Andreuze, or some such name, a courtly gentleman, 
 who turned Papist on his death-bed in France, in 
 Brittany somewhere, not to be separated from her in 
 the next world, as he solemnly left word ; wickedly, 
 many think. 
 
 To show the odd n ess of things and how opposite to 
 one another brothers may be, his elder, the uncle of 
 Curtis and Baldwin, was the renowned old Admiral 
 Fakenham, better knownalong our sea-coasts and ports 
 among sailors as ' Old Showery,' because of a remark he 
 once made to his flag-captain, when cannon-balls were 
 coming thick on them in a hard-fought action. ' Hot 
 work, sir,' his captain said. ' Showery,' replied the 
 admiral, as his cocked-hat was knocked off by the wind 
 of a cannon-ball. He lost both legs before the war was 
 over, and said merrily, ' Stumps for life!'' while they 
 were carrying him below to the cockpit. In my girl- 
 hood the boys were always bringing home anecdotes of 
 old Admiral Showery : not all of them true ones, per- 
 haps, but they fitted him. He was a rough seaman, 
 fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl, and utterly 
 despising his brother Geoffrey for the airs he gave him- 
 self, and crawling on his knees to a female Parleyvoo ; 
 and when Geoffrey died, the admiral drank to his rest 
 in the grave : ' There V to my brother Jeff] he said, and 
 flinging away the dregs of his glass : ' There V to the 
 Frog!" 1 and flinging away the glass to shivers : 'There' '<? 
 to the Turncoat!'' 
 
 He salted his language in a manner I cannot repeat ; 
 no epithet ever stood by itself. When I was young the 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 23 
 
 boys relished these dreadful words because they seemed 
 to smell of tar and battle-smoke, when every English 
 boy was for being a sailor and daring the Black Gentle- 
 man below. In all truth, the bad words came from 
 him ; though an excellent scholar has assured me they 
 should be taken for aspirates, and mean no harm ; and 
 so it may be, but heartily do I rejoice that aspirates 
 have been dropped by people of birth ; for you might 
 once hear titled ladies guilty of them in polite society, 
 I do assure you. 
 
 We have greatly improved in that respect. They say 
 the admiral's reputation as a British sailor of the old 
 school made him, or rather his name, a great favourite 
 at Coui t ; but to Court he could not be got to go, and 
 if the tale be true, their Majesties paid him a visit on 
 board his ship, in harbour one day, and sailors tell you 
 that Old Showery gave his liege lord and lady a common 
 dish of boiled beef with carrots and turnips, and a plain 
 dumpling, for their dinner, with ale and port wine, the 
 merit of which he swore to ; and he became so elate, 
 that after the cloth was removed, he danced them a 
 hornpipe on his pair of wooden legs, whistling his tune, 
 and holding his full tumbler of hot grog in his hand 
 all the while, without so much as the spilling of a 
 drop ! — so earnest was he in everything he did. They 
 say his limit was two bottles of port wine at a sitting, 
 with his glass of hot grog to follow, and not a soul 
 could induce him to go beyond that. In addition to 
 being a great seaman, he was a very religious man and 
 a stout churchman. 
 
 Well, now, the Curtis Fakenham of Captain Kirby's 
 day had a good deal of his uncle as well as his father in 
 him, the spirit of one and the outside of the other; 
 
24 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and, favoured or not, he had been distinguished among 
 Countess Fanny's adorers : she certainly chose to be 
 silent about the name of the assailant. And it has 
 been attested on oath that two days and a night subse- 
 quent to the date furnished by Charles Dump, Curtis 
 Fakenham was brought to his house, Hollis Grange, 
 lame of a leg, with a shot in his breast, that he carried 
 to the family vault ; and his head gamekeeper, John 
 Wiltshire, a resolute fellow, was missing from that hour. 
 Some said they had a quarrel, and Curtis was wounded 
 and John Wiltshire killed. Curtis was known to have 
 been extremely attached to the man. Yet when Wilt- 
 shire was inquired for, he let fall a word of ' having more 
 of Wiltshire than was agreeable to Hampshire'' — his 
 county. People asked what that meant. Yet, accord- 
 ing to the tale, it was the surviving servant, by whom 
 he, or whoever it may have been, was accidentally 
 shot. 
 
 We are in a perfect tangle. On the other hand, it 
 was never denied that Curtis and John Wiltshire were 
 in London together at the time of Countess Fanny's 
 flight : and Curtis Fakenham was one of the procession 
 of armed gentlemen conducting her in her carriage, as 
 they supposed ; and he was known to have started off, 
 on the discovery of the cheat, with horrible impreca- 
 tions against Frenchwomen. It became known, too, 
 that horses of his were standing saddled in his inn- 
 yard at midnight. And more, Charles Dump the pos- 
 tillion was taken secretly to set eyes on him as they 
 wheeled him in his garden-walk, and he vowed it was 
 the identical gentleman. But this coming by and by 
 to the ear of Curtis, he had Charles Dump fetched over 
 to confront him ; and then the man made oath that he 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 25 
 
 had never seen Mr. Curtis Fakenhani anywhere but 
 there, in his own house at Hollis ! One does not really 
 know what to think of it. 
 
 This postillion made a small fortune. He was every- 
 where in request. People were never tired of asking 
 him how he behaved while the fight was going on, and 
 he always answered that he sat as close to his horse 
 as he could, and did not dream of dismounting ; for, 
 he said, ' he was a figure on a horse, and naught when 
 off it.'' His repetition of the story, with some adorn- 
 ments, and that same remark, made him the popular 
 man of the county ; people said he might enter Parlia- 
 ment, and I think at one time it was possible. But a 
 great success is full of temptations. After being hired 
 at inns to fill them with his account of the battle, and 
 tipped by travellers from London to show the spot, 
 he set up for himself as innkeeper, and would have 
 flourished, only he had contracted habits on his rounds, 
 and he fell to contradicting himself, so that he came to 
 be called Lying Charley ; and the people of the country 
 said it was ' he who drained the Punch-Bowl, for though 
 he helped to put the capital into it, he toolt all the interest 
 out of itS 
 
 Yet we have the doctor of the village of Ipley, Dr. 
 Cawthorne, a noted botanist, assuring us of the absolute 
 credibility of Charles Dump, whom he attended in the 
 poor creature's last illness, when Charles Dump con- 
 fessed he had lived in mortal terror of Squire Curtis, 
 and had got the trick of lying, through fear of telling 
 the truth. Hence his ruin. 
 
 So he died delirious and contrite. Cawthorne, the 
 great Turf man, inherited a portrait of him from his 
 father the doctor. It was often the occasion of the 
 
26 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 story being told over again, and used to hang in the 
 patient's reception-room, next to an oil-painting of 
 the Punch-Bowl, an admired landscape picture by a 
 local artist, highly-toned and true to every particular 
 of the scene, with the bright yellow road winding up- 
 hill, and the banks of brilliant purple heath, and a white 
 thorn in bloom quite beautiful, and the green fir trees, 
 and the big Bowl black as a cauldron, — indeed a perfect 
 feast of harmonious contrasts in colours. 
 
 And now you know how it is that the names of 
 Captain Kirby and Curtis Fakenham are alive to the 
 present moment in the district. 
 
 We lived a happy domestic life in those old coaching 
 days, when county affairs and county people were the 
 topics of firesides, and the country enclosed us to make 
 us feel snug in our own importance. My opinion is, 
 that men and women grow to their dimensions only 
 where such is the case. We had our alarms from the 
 outside now and again, but we soon relapsed to dwell 
 upon our private business and our pleasant little hopes 
 and excitements ; the courtships and the crosses and 
 the scandals, the tea-parties and the dances, and how 
 the morning looked after the stormy night had passed, 
 and the coach coming down the hill with a box of 
 news and perhaps a curious passenger to drop at the 
 inn. I do believe we had a liking for the very high- 
 waymen, if they had any reputation for civility. What 
 I call human events, things concerning you and me, 
 instead of the deafening catastrophes now afflicting 
 and taking all conversation out of us, had their natural 
 interest then. We studied the face of each morning as 
 it came, and speculated upon the secret of the thing it 
 might have in store for us or our heroes and heroines ; 
 
MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 27 
 
 we thought of them more than of ourselves. Long 
 after the adventures of the Punch-Bowl, our county 
 was anxious about Countess Fanny and the Old Buc- 
 caneer, wondering where they were and whether they 
 were prospering, whether they were just as much in 
 love as ever, and which of them would bury the other, 
 and what the foreign people abroad thought of that 
 strange pair. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE INTRODUCTORY MEANDERINGS OF 
 DAME GOSSIP, TOGETHER WITH HER SUDDEN EXTINC- 
 TION 
 
 I have still time before me, according to the terms of 
 my agreement with the person to whom I have, I fear 
 foolishly, entrusted the letters and documents of a 
 story surpassing ancient as well as modern in the 
 wonderment it causes, that would make the Law courts 
 bless their hearts, j udges no less than the barristers, to 
 have it running through them day by day, with every 
 particular to wrangle over, and many to serve as a text 
 for the pulpit. So to proceed. 
 
 It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles 
 Dump is not represented, and I have no conception 
 of the reason why not, sitting on horseback, in the 
 portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I 
 have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had 
 offended Dr. Cawthorne, by once in an urgent case 
 calling in another doctor, who, he would have it, was 
 
28 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased 
 to visit ; but a gentleman who was an established 
 patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had frequent opportu- 
 nities of judging the portrait, in the course of a chronic 
 malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small 
 man looking diminished from a very much longer one 
 by shrinkage in thickish wrinkles from the shoulders 
 to the shanks. His hat is enormous and very gay. 
 He is rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his 
 collar behind the ears, and pointed at the neck, gives 
 you notions of his having dropped from some hook. 
 He stands with his forefinger extended, like a disused 
 semaphore-post, that seems tumbling and desponding 
 on the hill by the highroad, in his attitude while tell- 
 ing the tale ; if standing it may be called, where the 
 whole figure appears imploring for a seat. That was 
 his natural position, as one would suppose any artist 
 must have thought, and a horse beneath him. But it 
 has been suggested that the artist in question was no 
 painter of animals. Then why did he not get a painter 
 of animals to put in the horse ? It is vain to ask, 
 though it is notorious that artists combine without 
 bickering to do these things ; and one puts his name 
 on the animal, the other on the human being or land- 
 scape. 
 
 My informant adds, that the prominent feature, tell- 
 ing a melancholy tale of its own, is of sanguine colour, 
 and while plainly in the act of speaking, Charles Dump 
 might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He was 
 impressed by the dreaminess of the face ; and I must 
 say I regard him as an interesting character. During 
 my girlhood Napoleon Bonaparte alone would have 
 been his rival for filling an inn along our roads. I 
 
MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 29 
 
 have known our boys go to bed obediently and get up 
 at night to run three miles to The Wheatsheaf, 
 only to stand on the bench or traveller's-rest outside 
 the window and look in at Charles Dump reciting, 
 with just room enough in the crowd to point his 
 finger, as his way was. 
 
 He left a child, Mary Dump, who grew up to become 
 lady's maid to Li via Fakenham, daughter of Curtis, 
 the beauty of Hampshire, equalled by no one save 
 her cousin Henrietta Fakenham, the daughter of 
 Commodore Baldwin ; and they were two different 
 kinds of beauties, not to be compared, and different 
 were their fortunes; for this lady was likened to the 
 sun going down on a cloudy noon, and that lady to 
 the moon riding through a stormy night. Livia was 
 the young widow of Lord Duffield when she accepted 
 the Earl of Fleetwood, and was his third countess, and 
 again a widow at eight-and-twenty, and stepmother 
 to young Croesus, the Earl of Fleetwood of my story. 
 Mary Dump testifies to her kindness of heart to her 
 dependents. If we are to speak of goodness, I am 
 afraid there are other witnesses. 
 
 I resent being warned that my time is short and that 
 I have wasted much of it over ' the attractive Charles. 1 
 What I have done I have done with a purpose, and it 
 must be a story-teller devoid of the rudiments of his 
 art who can complain of my dwelling on Charles Dump, 
 for the world to have a pause and pin its faith to him, 
 which it would not do to a grander person — that is, as 
 a peg. Wonderful events, however true they are, must 
 be attached to something common and familiar, to make 
 them credible. Charles Dump, I say, is like a front- 
 page picture to a history of those old quiet yet exciting 
 
SO THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 days in England, and when once you have seized him 
 the whole period is alive to you, as it was to me in the 
 delicious dulness I loved, that made us thirsty to hear 
 of adventures and able to enjoy to the utmost every 
 thing occurring. The man is no more attractive to me 
 than a lump of clay. How could he be? But sup- 
 posing I took up the lump and told you that there 
 where I found it, that lump of clay had been rolled over 
 and flung off by the left wheel of the prophets Chariot 
 of Fire before it mounted aloft and disappeared in the 
 heavens above I — you would examine it and cherish it 
 and have the scene present with you, you may be sure : 
 and magnificent descriptions would not be one-half so 
 persuasive. And that is what we call, in my profession, 
 Art, if you please. 
 
 r So to continue : the Earl of Cressett fell from his 
 I coach-box in a fit, and died of it, a fortnight after the 
 flight of his wife; and the people said she might as 
 well have waited. Kirby and Countess Fanny were at 
 Lucerne or Lausanne, or some such place, in Switzerland 
 when the news reached them, and Kirby, without losing 
 an hour, laid hold of an English clergyman of the 
 Established Church and put him through the ceremony 
 of celebrating his lawful union with the beautiful young 
 creature he adored. And this he did, he said, for the 
 world to guard his Fan in a wider circle than his two 
 arms could compass, if not quite so well. 
 
 So the Old Buccaneer was ever after that her lawful 
 husband, and as his wedded wife, not wedded to a fool, 
 she was an example to her sex, like many another 
 woman who has begun badly with a light-headed mate. 
 It is hard enough for a man to be married to a fool, but 
 a man is only half-cancelled by that burden, it has been 
 
MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 31 
 
 said ; whereas a woman finds herself on -board a rudder- 
 less vessel, and often the desperate thing she does is to 
 avoid perishing ! Ten months, or eleven, some say, 
 following the proclamation of the marriage-tie, a son 
 was born to Countess Fanny, close by the castle of 
 Chillon on the lake, and he had the name of Chillon 
 Switzer John Kirby given to him to celebrate the fact. 
 Two years later the girl was born, and for the reason 
 of her first seeing the light in that Austrian province, 
 she was christened Carinthia Jane. She was her old 
 father's pet ; but Countess Fanny gloried in the boy. 
 She had fancied she would be a childless woman before 
 he gave sign of coming ; and they say she wrote a little 
 volume of Meditations in Prospect of Approaching 
 Motherhood, for the guidance of others in a similar 
 situation. 
 
 I have never been able to procure the book or 
 pamphlet, but I know she was the best of mothers, and 
 of wives too. And she, with her old husband, growing 
 like a rose out of a weather-beaten rock, proved she was 
 that, among those handsome foreign officers poorly 
 remarkable for their morals. Not once had the Old 
 Buccaneer to teach them a lesson. Think of it and you 
 will know that her feet did not stray — nor did her 
 pretty eyes. Her heart was too full for the cravings of 
 vanity. Innocent ladies who get their husbands into 
 scrapes are innocent, perhaps ; but knock you next 
 door in their bosoms, where the soul resides, and ask 
 for information of how innocence and uncleanness may 
 go together. Kirby purchased a mine in Carinthia, on 
 the borders of Styria, and worked it himself. His 
 native land displeased him, so that he would not have 
 been unwilling to see Chillon enter the Austrian ser- 
 
32 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 vice, which the young man was inclined for, subsequent 
 to his return to his parents from one of the English 
 public schools, notwithstanding his passionate love for 
 Old England. But Lord Levellier explained the mys- 
 tery in a letter to his half-forgiven sister, praising the 
 boy for his defence of his mother's name at the school, 
 where a big brutal fellow sneered at her, and Chillon 
 challenged him to sword or pistol ; and then he walked 
 down to the boy's home in Staffordshire to force him 
 to fight ; and the father of the boy made him offer an 
 apology. That was not much balm to Master Chillon's 
 wound. He returned to his mother quite heavy, unlike 
 a young man ; and the unhappy lady, though she knew 
 him to be bitterly sensitive on the point of honour, and 
 especially as to everything relating to her, saw herself 
 compelled to tell him the history of her life, to save 
 him, as she thought, from these chivalrous vindications 
 of her good name. She may have even painted herself 
 worse than she was, both to excuse her brother's miser- 
 liness to her son and the world's evil speaking of her. 
 Wisely or not, she chose this course devotedly to pro- 
 tect him from the perils she foresaw in connection with 
 the name of the once famous Countess Fanny in the 
 British Isles. And thus are we stricken by the days of 
 our youth. It is impossible to moralize conveniently 
 when one is being hurried by a person at one's elbow. 
 
 So the young man heard his mother out and kissed 
 her, and then he went secretly to Vienna and enlisted 
 and served for a year as a private in the regiment of 
 Hussars called, my papers tell me, Liechtenstein, and 
 what with his good conduct and the help of Kirby's 
 friends, he would have obtained a commission from the 
 emperor, when, at the right moment to keep a sprig of 
 
MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP S3 
 
 Kirov's growth for his country, Lord Levellier sent 
 word that he was down for a cornetcy in a British 
 regiment of dragoons. Chillon came home from a 
 garrison town, and there was a consultation about his 
 future career. Shall it be England ? Shall it be 
 Austria ? Countess Fanny's voice was for England, and 
 she carried the vote, knowing though she did that it 
 signified separation, and it might be alienation — where 
 her son would chance to hear things he could not refute. 
 She believed that her son by such a man as Kirby would 
 be of use to his country, and her voice, against herself, 
 was for England. 
 
 It broke her heart. If she failed to receive the 
 regular letter, she pined and was disconsolate. He has 
 heard more of me ! was in her mind. Her husband sat 
 looking at her with his old large grey glassy eyes. You 
 would have fancied him awaiting her death as the 
 signal for his own release. But she, poor mother, 
 behind her weeping lids beheld her son's filial love of 
 her wounded and bleeding. When there was anything 
 to be done for her, old Kirby was astir. When it was 
 nothing, either in physic or assistance, he was like a 
 great corner of rock. You may indeed imagine grief 
 in the very rock that sees its flower fading to the 
 withered shred. On the last night of her life this old 
 man of past ninety carried her in his arms up a flight 
 of stairs to her bed. 
 
 A week after her burial, Kirby was found a corpse in 
 the mountain forest. His having called the death of 
 his darling his lightning-stroke must have been the 
 origin of the report that he died of lightning. He 
 touched not a morsel of food from the hour of the 
 dropping of the sod on her coffin of ebony wood. An 
 
 c 
 
34 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 old crust of their mahogany bread, supposed at first to 
 be a specimen of quartz, was found in one of his coat 
 pockets. He kissed his girl Carinthia before going out 
 on his last journey from home, and spoke some wan- 
 dering words. The mine had not been worked for a 
 year. She thought she would find him at the mouth 
 of the shaft, where he would sometimes be sitting and 
 staring, already dead at heart with the death he saw 
 coming to the beloved woman. They had to let her 
 down with ropes, that she might satisfy herself he was 
 not below. She and her great dog and a faithful man- 
 servant discovered the body in the forest. Chillon 
 arrived from England to see the common grave of both 
 his parents. 
 
 And now good-bye to sorrow for a while. Keep 
 your tears for the living. And first I am going to 
 describe to you the young Earl of Fleetwood, son of the 
 strange Welsh lady, the richest nobleman of his time, 
 and how he pursued and shunned the lady who had 
 fascinated him, Henrietta, the daughter of Commodore 
 Baldwin Fakenham ; and how he met Carinthia Jane ; 
 and concerning that lovely Henrietta and Chillon Kirby- 
 Levellier; and of the young poet of ordinary parentage, 
 and the giant Captain Abrane, and Livia the widowed 
 Countess of Fleetwood, Henrietta's cousin, daughter of 
 Curtis Fakenham; and numbers of others; Lord Level- 
 lier, Lord Brailstone, Lord Simon Pitscrew, Chumley 
 Potts, young Ambrose Mallard; and the English 
 pugilist, such a man of honour though he drank ; 
 and the adventures of Madge, Carinthia Jane's maid. 
 Just a few touches. And then the marriage dividing 
 Great Britain into halves, taking sides. After that, I 
 trust you may go on, as I would carry you were we all 
 
FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 35 
 
 twenty years younger, had I but sooner been in 
 possession of these treasured papers. I promise you 
 excitement enough, if justice is done to them. But I 
 must and will describe the wedding. This young Earl 
 of Fleetwood, you should know, was a very powder- 
 magazine of ambition, and never would he break his 
 word : which is right, if we are properly careful ; and 
 so he — 
 
 She ceases. According to the terms of the treaty, 
 the venerable lady^ time has passed. An extinguisher 
 descends on her, giving her the likeness of one under 
 condemnation of the Most Holy Inquisition, in the 
 ranks of an auto dafe; and singularly resembling that 
 victim at the first sharp bite of the flames she will be 
 when she hears the version of her story. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MORNING AND FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 
 
 Brother and sister were about to leave the mountain- 
 land for England. They had not gone to bed over- 
 night, and from the windows of their deserted home, 
 a little before dawn, they saw the dwindled moon, a 
 late riser, break through droves of hunted cloud, 
 directly topping their ancient guardian height, the 
 triple peak and giant of the range, friendlier in his 
 name than in aspect for the two young people clinging 
 to the scene they were to quit. His name recalled old 
 
36 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 days : the apparition of his head among the heavens 
 drummed on their sense of banishment. 
 
 To the girl, this was a division of her life, and the 
 dawn held the sword. She felt herself midswing across 
 a gulf that was the grave of one half, without a light 
 of promise for the other. Her passionate excess of 
 attachment to her buried home robbed the future of 
 any colours it might have worn to bid a young heart 
 quicken. And England, though she was of British 
 blood, was a foreign place to her, not alluring: her 
 brother had twice come out of England reserved in 
 speech ; her mother's talk of England had been un- 
 happy ; her father had suffered ill-treatment there from 
 a brutal institution termed the Admiralty, and had 
 never regretted the not seeing England again. The 
 thought that she was bound thitherward enfolded her 
 like a frosty mist. But these bare walls, these loud 
 floors, chill rooms, dull windows, and the vault- 
 sounding of the ghostly house, everywhere the absence 
 of the faces in the house, told her she had no choice, 
 she must go. The appearance of her old friend the 
 towering mountain-height, up a blue night-sky, com- 
 pelled her swift mind to see herself far away, yearning 
 to him out of exile, an exile that had no local features ; 
 she would not imagine them to give a centre of warmth, 
 her wilful grief preferred the blank. It resembled death 
 in seeming some hollowness behind a shroud, which we 
 shudder at. 
 
 The room was lighted by a stable-lantern on a 
 kitchen-table. Their seat near the window was a 
 rickety garden-bench rejected in the headlong sale of 
 the furniture ; and when she rose, unable to continue 
 motionless while the hosts of illuminated cloud flew 
 
FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME SI 
 
 fast, she had to warn her brother to preserve his 
 balance. He tactily did so, aware of the necessity. 
 
 She walked up and down the long seven-windowed 
 saloon, haunted by her footfall, trying to think, chafing 
 at his quietness and acknowledging that he did well 
 to be quiet. They had finished their packing of boxes 
 and of wearing-apparel for the journey. There was 
 nothing to think of, nothing further to talk of, 
 nothing for her to do save to sit and look, and deaden 
 her throbs by counting them. She soon returned to 
 her seat beside her brother, with the marvel in her 
 breast that the house she desired so much to love 
 should be cold and repel her now it was a vacant shell. 
 Her memories could not hang within it anywhere. 
 She shut her eyes to be with the images of the dead, 
 conceiving the method as her brother's happy secret, 
 and imitated his posture, elbows propped on knees to 
 support the chin. His quietness breathed of a deeper 
 love than her own. 
 
 Meanwhile the high wind had sunk ; the moon, after 
 pushing her withered half to the zenith, was climb- 
 ing the dusky edge, revealed fitfully; threads and 
 wisps of thin vapour travelled along a falling gale, and 
 branched from the dome of the sky in migratory 
 broken lines, like wild birds shifting the order of flight, 
 north and east, where the dawn sat in a web, but as 
 yet had done no more than shoot up a glow along the 
 central heavens, in amid the waves of deepened cloud : 
 a mirror for night to see her dark self in her own hue. 
 A shiver between the silent couple pricked their wits, 
 and she said ; ' Chillon, shall we run out and call the 
 morning ? ' 
 
 It was an old game of theirs, encouraged by their 
 
S8 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 hearty father, to be out in the early hour on a 
 rise of ground near the house and ' call the morning. 1 
 Her brother was glad of the challenge, and upon 
 one of the yawns following a sleepless night, replied 
 with a return to boyishness: 'Yes, if you like. It's 
 the last time we shall do her the service here. 
 Let 's go.' 
 
 They sprang up together and the bench fell behind 
 them. Swinging the lantern he carried inconsiderately, 
 the ring of it was left on his finger, and the end of 
 candle rolled out of the crazy frame to the floor and 
 was extinguished. Chillon had no match-box. He 
 said to her : — 
 
 ' What do you think of the window ? — we 've done 
 it before, Carin. Better than groping down stairs and 
 passages blocked with lumber.' 
 
 'I'm ready,' she said, and caught at her skirts by 
 instinct to prove her readiness on the spot. 
 
 A drop of a dozen feet or so from the French 
 window to a flower-bed was not very difficult. Her 
 father had taught her how to jump, besides the how of 
 many other practical things. She leaped as lightly as 
 her brother, never touching earth with her hands ; and 
 rising from the proper contraction of the legs in 
 taking the descent, she quoted her father: ' Mean it 
 lichen you ''re doing it? 
 
 ' For no enemas shot is equal to a weak heart in 
 the act? Chillon pursued the quotation, laying his hand 
 on her shoulder for a sign of approval. She looked up 
 at him. 
 
 They passed down the garden and a sloping meadow 
 to a brook swollen by heavy rains ; over the brook on 
 a narrow plank, and up a steep and stony pathway, 
 
FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 89 
 
 almost a watercourse, between rocks, to another 
 meadow, level with the house, that led ascending 
 through a firwood ; and there the change to thicker 
 darkness told them light was abroad, though whether 
 of the clouded moon or of the first grey of the quiet 
 revolution was uncertain. Metallic light of a sub- 
 terranean realm, it might have been thought. 
 
 ' You remember everything of father,' Carinthia said. 
 
 ' We both do,' said Chillon. 
 
 She pressed her brother's arm. c We will. We will 
 never forget anything."' 
 
 Beyond the firwood light was visibly the dawn's. 
 Half-way down the ravines it resembled the light cast 
 off a torrent water. It lay on the grass like a sheet of 
 unreflecting steel, and was a face without a smile 
 above. Their childhood ran along the tracks to the 
 forest by the light, which was neither dim nor cold, but 
 grave ; presenting tree and shrub and dwarf growth 
 and grass austerely, not deepening or confusing them. 
 They wound their way by borders of crag, seeing in 
 a dell below the mouth of the idle mine begirt with 
 weedy and shrub-hung rock, a dripping semi-circle. 
 Farther up they came on the flat juniper and crossed 
 a wet ground-thicket of whortleberry : their feet were 
 in the moist moss among sprigs of heath ; and a 
 great fir tree stretched his length, a peeled multitude 
 of his dead fellows leaned and stood upright in the 
 midst of scattered fire-stained members, and through 
 their skeleton limbs the sheer precipice of slate-rock 
 of the bulk across the chasm, nursery of hawk and eagle, 
 wore a thin blue tinge, the sign of warmer light abroad. 
 
 6 This way, my brother ! ' cried Carinthia, shuddering 
 at a path he was about to follow. 
 
40 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Dawn in the mountain-land is a meeting of many 
 friends. The pinnacle, the forest-head, the latschcn- 
 tufted mound, rock-bastion and defiant cliff and giant 
 of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a 
 common recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, 
 unfeatured and bloomless. Another minute and they 
 had flung off their mail and changed to various, indented, 
 intricate, succinct in ridge, scar and channel ; and they 
 had all a look of watchfulness that made them one 
 company. The smell of rock-waters and roots of herb 
 and moss grew keen ; air became a wine that raised the 
 breast high to breathe it ; an uplifting coolness pervaded 
 the heights. What wonder that the mountain-bred girl 
 should let fly her voice. The natural carol woke an echo. 
 She did not repeat it. 
 
 6 And we will not forget our home, Chillon," she said, 
 touching him gently to comfort some saddened feeling. 
 
 The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the 
 lofty arch of dawn and melted from brown to purple- 
 black. The upper sky swam with violet ; and in a 
 moment each stray cloud-feather was edged with rose, 
 and then suffused. It seemed that the heights fronted 
 East to eye the interflooding of colours, and it was 
 imaginable that all turned to the giant whose forehead 
 first kindled to the sun : a greeting of god and king. 
 
 On the morning of a farewell we fluctuate sharply 
 between the very distant and the close and homely : 
 and even in memory the fluctuation occurs, the grander 
 scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and 
 that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination 
 to embrace the splendour and wonder. But the wrench 
 of an immediate division from what we love makes the 
 things within reach the dearest, we put out our hands 
 
FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 41 
 
 for them, as violently-parted lovers do, though the soul 
 in days to come would know a craving, and imagination 
 flap a leaden wing, if we had not looked beyond them. 
 
 ' Shall we go down ? , said Carinthia, for she knew 
 a little cascade near the house, showering on rock and 
 fern, and longed to have it round her. 
 
 They descended, Chillon saying that they would soon 
 have the mists rising, and must not delay to start on 
 their journey. 
 
 The armies of the young sunrise in mountain-lands 
 neighbouring the plains, vast shadows, were marching 
 over woods and meads, black against the edge of 
 golden ; and great heights were cut with them, and 
 bounding waters took the leap in a silvery radiance 
 to gloom ; the bright and dark-banded valleys were like 
 night and morning taking hands down the sweep of 
 their rivers. Immense was the range of vision scud- 
 ding the peaks and over the illimitable Eastward plains 
 ifefc to the very East and sources of the sun. 
 
 Carinthia said : 6 When I marry I shall come here to 
 live and die.' 
 
 Her brother glanced at her. He was fond of her, 
 and personally he liked her face ; but such a confident 
 anticipation of marriage on the part of a portionless 
 girl set him thinking of the character of her charms 
 and the attraction they would present to the world 
 of men. They were expressive enough ; at times he 
 had thought them marvellous in their clear cut of the 
 animating mind. No one could fancy her handsome ; 
 and just now her hair was in some disorder, a night 
 without sleep had an effect on her complexion. 
 
 ' It 's not usually the wife who decides where to live,' 
 said he. 
 
42 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Her ideas were anywhere but with the dream of a 
 husband. ' Could we stay on another day ? ' 
 
 ' My dear girl ! Another night on that crazy stool ! 
 Besides, Mariandl is bound to go to-day to her new 
 place, and who 's to cook for us ? Do you propose 
 fasting as well as watching ? , 
 
 'Could I cook ?' she asked him humbly. 
 
 6 No, you couldn't ; not for a starving regiment ! 
 Your accomplishments are of a different sort. No, 
 it's better to get over the pain at once, if we can't 
 escape it.' 
 
 6 That I think too,' said she, 6 and we should have 
 to buy provisions. Then, brother, instantly after break- 
 fast. Only, let us walk it. I know the whole way, 
 and it is not more than a two days' walk for you and 
 me. Consent. Driving would be like going gladly. I 
 could never bear to remember that I was driven away. 
 And walking will save money ; we are not rich, you 
 tell me, brother.' 
 
 'A few florins more or less!' he rejoined, rather 
 frowning. ' You have good Styrian boots, I see. But 
 I want to be over at the Baths there soon ; not later 
 than to-morrow.' 
 
 ' But, brother, if they know we are coming they will 
 wait for us. And we can be there to-morrow night or 
 the next morning ! ' 
 
 He considered it. He wanted exercise and loved 
 this mountain-land ; his inclinations melted into hers, 
 though he had reasons for hesitating. s Well, we '11 
 send on my portmanteau and your boxes in the cart ; 
 we '11 walk it. You 're a capital walker, you 're a 
 gallant comrade ; I wouldn't wish for a better.' He 
 wondered, as he spoke, whether any true-hearted gentle- 
 
FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 43 
 
 man besides himself would ever think the same of this 
 lonely girl. 
 
 Her eyes looked a delighted ' No-really ? ' for the 
 sweetest on earth to her was to be prized by her 
 brother. 
 
 She hastened forward. ' We will go down and have 
 our last meal at home, 1 she said in the dialect of the 
 country. ' We have five eggs. No meat for you, 
 dear, but enough bread and butter, some honey left, 
 and plenty of coffee. I should like to have left old 
 Mariandl more, but we are unable to do very much for 
 poor people now. Milk, I cannot say. She is just the 
 kind soul to be up and out to fetch us milk for an early 
 first breakfast; but she may have overslept herself.' 
 
 Chillon smiled. ' You were right, Janey, about not 
 going to bed last night; we might have missed the 
 morning.' 
 
 ' I hate sleep : I hate anything that robs me of my 
 will,' she replied. 
 
 6 You 'd be glad of your doses of sleep if you had to 
 work and study.' 
 
 6 To fall down by the wayside tired out — yes, brother, 
 a dead sleep is good. Then you are in the hands of 
 God. Father used to say, four hours for a man, six for 
 a woman.' 
 
 * And four and twenty for a lord,' added Chillon. 6 1 
 remember.' 
 
 'A lord of that Admiralty,' she appealed to his 
 closer recollection. ' But I mean, brother, dreaming 
 is what I detest so.' 
 
 ' Don't be detesting, my dear ; reserve your strength,' 
 said he. ' I suppose dreams are of some use, now and 
 then.' 
 
44 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' 1 shall never think them useful.' 
 
 ' When we can't get what we want, my good Carin. 
 
 4 Then we should not waste ourselves in dreams.' 
 
 * They promise falsely sometimes. That 's no reason 
 why we should reject the consolation when we can't get 
 what we want, my little sister.' 
 
 1 1 would not be denied.' 
 
 c There 's the impossible.' 
 
 ' Not for you, brother.' 
 
 Perhaps a half-minute after she had spoken, he said, 
 pursuing a dialogue within himself aloud rather than 
 revealing a secret : ' You don't know her position.' 
 
 Carinthia's heart stopped beating. Who was this 
 person suddenly conjured up? 
 
 She fancied she might not have heard correctly ; she 
 feared to ask : and yet she perceived a novel softness 
 in him that would have answered. Pain of an unknown 
 kind made her love of her brother conscious that if she 
 asked she would suffer greater pain. 
 
 The house was in sight, a long white building with 
 blinds down at some of the windows, and some wide 
 open, some showing unclean glass : the three aspects 
 and signs of a house's emptiness when they are seen 
 together. 
 
 Carinthia remarked on their having met nobody. It 
 had a serious meaning for them. Formerly they were 
 proud of outstripping the busy population of the mine, 
 coming down on them with wild wavings and shouts at 
 sunrise. They felt the death again, a whole field laid 
 low by one stroke, and wintriness in the season of glad 
 life. A wind had blown and all had vanished. 
 
 The second green of the year shot lively sparkles off 
 the meadows, from a fringe of coloured globelets to a 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 45 
 
 warm silver lake of dews. The firwood was already 
 breathing rich and sweet in the sun. The half-moon 
 fell rayless and paler than the fan of fleeces pushed up 
 Westward, high overhead, themselves dispersing on the 
 blue in downy feathers, like the mottled grey of an 
 eagle's breast : the smaller of them bluish, like traces 
 of the beaked wood-pigeon. c 
 
 She looked above, then below on the slim and 
 straight-grown flocks of naked purple crocuses in bud 
 and blow abounding over the meadow that rolled to 
 the level of the house, and two of these she gathered. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 
 
 Chillon was right in his forecast of the mists. An 
 over-moistened earth steaming to the sun obscured it 
 before the two had finished breakfast, which was a finish 
 to everything eatable in the ravaged dwelling, with the 
 exception of a sly store for the midday meal, that old 
 Mariandl had stuffed into Chillon's leather sack — the 
 fruit of secret begging on their behalf about the neigh- 
 bourhood. He found the sack heavy and bulky as he 
 slung it over his shoulders; but she bade him make 
 nothing of such a trifle till he had it inside him. ' And 
 you that love tea so, my pretty one, so that you 
 always laughed and sang after drinking a cup with your 
 mother,'' she said to Carinthia, c you will find one pinch 
 of it in your bag at the end of the left-foot slipper, to 
 remember your home by when you are out in the world.' 
 
46 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She crossed the strap of the bag on her mistress's 
 bosom, and was embraced by Carinthia and Chillon in 
 turns, Carinthia telling her to dry her eyes, for that she 
 would certainly come back and perhaps occupy the 
 house one day or other. The old soul moaned of eyes 
 that would not be awake to behold her ; she begged a 
 visit at her grave, though it was to be in a Catholic 
 burial-place and the priests had used her dear master 
 and mistress ill, not allowing them to lie in consecrated 
 ground; affection made her a champion of religious 
 tolerance and a little afraid of retribution. Carinthia 
 soothed her, kissed her, gave the promise, and the part- 
 ing was over. 
 
 She and Chillon had on the previous day accom- 
 plished a pilgrimage to the resting-place of their father 
 and mother among humble Protestants, iron-smelters, 
 in a valley out of the way of their present line of march 
 to the glacier of the great snow-mountain marking the 
 junction of three Alpine provinces of Austria. Josef, 
 the cart-driver with the boxes, who was to pass the 
 valley, vowed of his own accord to hang a fresh day's 
 wreath on the rails. He would not hear of money for 
 the purchase, and they humoured him. The family had 
 been beloved. There was an offer of a home for Carin- 
 thia in the castle of Count Lebern, a friend of her 
 parents, much taken with her, and she would have 
 accepted it had not Chillon overruled her choice, 
 determined that, as she was English, she must come to 
 England and live under the guardianship of her uncle, 
 Lord Levellier, of whose character he did not speak. 
 
 The girl's cheeks were drawn thin and her lips shut 
 as they departed ; she was tearless. A phantom ring 
 of mist accompanied her from her first footing outside 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 47 
 
 the house. She did not look back. The house came 
 swimming and plunging after her, like a spectral ship 
 on big seas, and her father and mother lived and died 
 in her breast; and now they were strong, consulting, 
 chatting, laughing, caressing ; now still and white, 
 caught by a vapour that dived away with them either 
 to right or left, but always with the same suddenness, 
 leaving her to question herself whether she existed, for 
 more of life seemed to be with their mystery than with 
 her speculations. The phantom ring of mist enclosing 
 for miles the invariable low-sweeping dark spruce-fir 
 kept her thoughts on them as close as the shroud. She 
 walked fast, but scarcely felt that she was moving. 
 Near midday the haunted circle widened ; rocks were 
 loosely folded in it, and heads of trees, whose round 
 intervolving roots grasped the yellow roadside soil ; the 
 mists shook like a curtain, and partly opened and dis- 
 played a tapestry-landscape, roughly worked, of woollen 
 crag and castle and suggested glen, threaded waters, 
 very prominent foreground, Autumn flowers on banks ; 
 a predominant atmospheric greyness. The sun threw 
 a shaft, liquid instead of burning, as we see his beams 
 beneath a wave ; and then the mists narrowed again, 
 boiled up the valleys and streams above the mountain, 
 curled and flew, and were Python coils pierced by 
 brighter arrows of the sun. A spot of blue signalled 
 his victory above. 
 
 To look at it was to fancy they had been walking 
 under water and had now risen to the surface. Carin- 
 thia's mind stepped out of the chamber of death. The 
 different air and scene breathed into her a timid 
 warmth toward the future, and between her naming 
 of the lesser mountains on their side of the pass, she 
 
48 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 asked questions relating to England, and especially the 
 ladies she was to see at the Baths beyond the glacier- 
 pass. She had heard of a party of his friends awaiting 
 him there, without much encouragement from him to 
 ask particulars of them, and she had hitherto abstained, 
 as she was rather shy of meeting her countrywomen. 
 The ladies, Chillon said, were cousins ; one was a young 
 widow, the Countess of Fleetwood, and the other was 
 Miss Fakenham, a younger lady. 
 
 Carinthia murmured in German : 'Poor soul V Which 
 one was she pitying ? The widow, she said, in the tone 
 implying, naturally. 
 
 Her brother assured her the widow was used to it, 
 for this was her second widowhood. 
 
 c She marries again ! ' exclaimed the girl. 
 
 ' You don't like that idea ? ' said he. 
 
 Carinthia betrayed a delicate shudder. 
 
 Her brother laughed to himself at her expressive 
 present tense. ' And marries again ! ' he said, ' There 
 will certainly be a third.' 
 
 4 Husband ? ' said she, as at the incredible. 
 
 1 Husband, let 's hope, 1 he answered. 
 
 She dropped from her contemplation of the lady, and 
 her look at her brother signified : It will not be you ! 
 
 Chillon was engaged in spying for a place where he 
 could spread out the contents of his bag. Sharp hunger 
 beset them both at the mention of eating. A bank of 
 sloping green shaded by a chestnut proposed the seat, 
 and here he relieved the bag of a bottle of wine, 
 slices of meat, bread, hard eggs, and lettuce, a chipped 
 cup to fling away after drinking the wine, and a 
 supply of small butter-cakes known to be favourites 
 with Carinthia. She reversed the order of the feast 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 49 
 
 by commencing upon one of the cakes, to do honour 
 to MarianoTs thoughtfulness. As at their breakfast, 
 they shared the last morsel. 
 
 * But we would have made it enough for our dear old 
 dog Pluto as well, if he had lived,' said Carinthia, sigh- 
 ing with her thankfulness and compassionate regrets, a 
 mixture often inspiring a tender babbling melancholy. 
 4 Dogs'* eyes have such a sick look of love. He might 
 have lived longer, though he was very old, only he could 
 not survive the loss of father. I know the finding of 
 the body broke his heart. He sprang forward, he 
 stopped and threw up his head. It was human lan- 
 guage to hear him, Chillon. He lay in the yard, trying 
 to lift his eyes when I came to him, they were so heavy ; 
 and he had not strength to move his poor old tail more 
 than once. He died with his head on my lap. He 
 seemed to beg me, and I took him, and he breathed 
 twice, and that was his end. Pluto ! old dog ! Well, 
 for you or for me, brother, we could not have a better 
 wish. As for me, death ! . . . When we know we are 
 to die ! Only let my darling live ! that is my prayer, 
 and that we two may not be separated till I am taken 
 to their grave. Father bought ground for four — his 
 wife and himself and his two children. It does not 
 oblige us to be buried there, but could we have any 
 other desire ? 1 
 
 She stretched her hand to her brother. He kissed it 
 spiritedly. 
 
 6 Look ahead, my dear girl. Help me to finish this 
 wine. There's nothing like good hard walking to give 
 common wine of the country a flavour — and out of 
 broken crockery.' 
 
 ' I think it so good,' Carinthia replied, after drinking 
 
 D 
 
50 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 from the cup. 'In England they do not grow wine. 
 Are the people there kind ? ' 
 
 'They're civilized people, of course.' 
 
 ' Kind — warm to you, Chillon ? ' 
 
 * Some of them, when you know them. " Warm," is 
 hardly the word. Winter's warm on skates. You 
 must do a great deal for yourself. They don't boil 
 over. By the way, don't expect much of your 
 uncle.' 
 
 ' Will he not love me ? ' 
 
 ' He gives you a lodging in his house, and food — 
 enough, we '11 hope. You won't see company or much 
 of him.' 
 
 ' I cannot exist without being loved. I do not care 
 for company. He must love me a little.' 
 
 1 He is one of the warm-hearted race — he 's mother's 
 brother ; but where his heart is, I 've not discovered. 
 Bear with him just for the present, my dear, till I 
 am able to support you.' 
 
 8 1 will,' she said. 
 
 The dreary vision of a home with an unloving uncle 
 was not brightened by the alternative of her brother's 
 having to support her. She spoke of money. * Have 
 we none, Chillon ? * 
 
 • We have no debts,*' he answered. ' We have a claim 
 on the Government here for indemnification for property 
 taken to build a fortress upon one of the passes into 
 Italy. Father bought the land, thinking there would 
 be a yield of ore thereabout ; and they have seized it, 
 rightly enough, but they dispute our claim for the 
 valuation we put on it. A small sum they would 
 consent to pay. It would be a very small sum, and 
 I'm my father's son, I will have justice.' 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 51 
 
 'Yes T Carinthia joined with him to show the same 
 stout nature. 
 
 1 We have nothing else except a bit to toss up for 
 
 luck; 
 
 1 And how can I help being a burden on my brother? 1 
 she inquired, in distress. 
 
 'Marry, and be a blessing to a husband,' he said 
 lightly. 
 
 They performed a sacrifice of the empty bottle and 
 cracked cup on the site of their meal, as if it had been 
 a ceremony demanded from travellers, and, leaving them 
 in fragments, proceeded on their journey refreshed. 
 
 Walking was now high enjoyment, notwithstanding 
 the force of the sun, for they were a hardy couple, 
 requiring no more than sufficient nourishment to com- 
 bat the elements with an exulting blood. Besides they 
 loved mountain air and scenery, and each step to the 
 ridge of the pass they climbed was an advance in 
 splendour. Peaks of ashen hue and pale dry red and 
 pale sulphur pushed up, straight, forked, twisted, naked, 
 striking their minds with an indeterminate ghostliness 
 of Indian, so strange they were in shape and colouring. 
 These sharp points were the first to greet them between 
 the blue and green. A depression of the pass to the 
 left gave sight of the points of black fir forest below, 
 round the girths of the barren shafts. Mountain blocks 
 appeared pushing up in front, and a mountain wall and 
 woods on it, and mountains in the distance, and cliffs 
 riven with falls of water that were silver skeins, down 
 lower to meadows, villages and spires, and lower finally 
 to the whole valley of the foaming river, field and river 
 seeming in imagination rolled out from the hand of the 
 heading mountain. 
 
52 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' But see this in winter, as I did with father, Chillon!' 
 said Carinthia. 
 
 She said it upon love's instinct to halo the scene with 
 something beyond present vision, and to sanctify it for 
 her brother, so that this walk of theirs together should 
 never be forgotten. 
 
 A smooth fold of cloud, moveless along one of the 
 upper pastures, and still dense enough to be luminous 
 in sunlight, was the last of the mist. 
 
 They watched it lying in the form of a fish, leviathan 
 diminished, as they descended their path ; and the head 
 was lost, the tail spread peacockwise, and evaporated 
 slowly in that likeness ; and soft to a breath of air as 
 gossamer down, the body became a ball, a cock, a little 
 lizard, nothingness. 
 
 The bluest bright day of the year was shining. 
 Chillon led the descent. With his trim and handsome 
 figure before her, Carinthia remembered the current 
 saying, that he should have been the girl and she the 
 boy. That was because he resembled their mother in 
 face. But the build of his limbs and shoulders was 
 not feminine. To her admiring eyes, he had a look 
 superior to simple strength and grace ; the look of a 
 great sky-bird about to mount, a fountain-like energy 
 of stature, delightful to her contemplation. And he 
 had the mouth women put faith in for decision and 
 fixedness. She did, most fully; and reflecting how 
 entirely she did so, the thought assailed her : some one 
 must be loving him ! 
 
 She allowed it to surprise her, not choosing to revert 
 to an uneasy sensation of the morning. 
 
 That some one, her process of reasoning informed her, 
 was necessarily an English young lady. She reserved 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 53 
 
 her questions till they should cease this hopping and 
 heeling down the zigzag of the slippery path-track. 
 When children they had been collectors of beetles and 
 butterflies, and the flying by of a * royal-mantle,' the 
 purple butterfly grandly fringed, could still remind 
 Carinthia of the event it was of old to spy and chase 
 one. Chillon himself was not above the sentiment of 
 their very early days; he stopped to ask if she had 
 seen that lustrous blue-wing, a rarer species, prized by 
 youngsters, shoot through the chestnut trees : and they 
 both paused for a moment, gazing into the fairyland 
 of infancy, she seeing with her brother's eyes, this 
 prince of the realm having escaped her. He owned 
 he might have been mistaken, as the brilliant fellow 
 flew swift and high between leaves, like an ordinary 
 fritillary. Not the less did they get their glimpse of 
 the wonders in the sunny eternity of a child's after- 
 noon. 
 
 6 An Auerhahn, Chillon ! ' she said, picturing the 
 maturer day when she had scaled perilous heights 
 with him at night to stalk the blackcock in the prime 
 of the morning. She wished they could have had 
 another such adventure to stamp the old home on 
 his heart freshly, to the exclusion of beautiful English 
 faces. 
 
 On the level of the valley, where they met the torrent- 
 river, walking side by side with him, she ventured an 
 inquiry : ( English girls are fair girls, are they not ? ' 
 
 ' There are some dark also,' he replied. 
 
 ' But the best-looking are fair ? ' 
 
 1 Perhaps they are, with us.' 
 
 'Mother was fair.' 
 
 ' She was, 1 
 
54 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 C I have only seen a few of them, once at Vienna, 
 and at Venice, and those Baths we are going to ; and at 
 Meran, I think/ 
 
 1 You considered them charming ? 1 
 
 1 Not all/ 
 
 It was touching that she should be such a stranger to 
 her countrywomen ! He drew a portrait-case from his 
 breast-pocket, pressing the spring, and handed it to her, 
 saying : ' There is one."* He spoke indifferently, but as 
 soon as she had seen the face inside it, with a look at 
 him and a deep breath, she understood that he was an 
 altered brother, and that they were three instead of two. 
 
 She handed it back to him, saying hushedly and 
 only: 'Yes/ 
 
 He did not ask an opinion upon the beauty she had 
 seen. His pace increased, and she hastened her steps 
 beside him. She had not much to learn when some 
 minutes later she said : ' Shall I see her, Chillon ? ' 
 
 6 She is one of the ladies we are to meet."* 
 
 ' What a pity I 1 Carinthia stepped faster, enlightened 
 as to his wish to get to the Baths without delay ; and 
 her heart softened in reflecting how readily he had 
 yielded to her silly preference for going on foot. 
 
 Her cry of regret was equivocal; it produced no 
 impression on him. They reached a village where her 
 leader deemed it advisable to drive for the remainder 
 of the distance up the valley to the barrier snow- 
 mountain. She assented instantly ; she had no longer 
 any active wishes of her own, save to make amends to 
 her brother, who was and would ever be her brother : 
 she could not be robbed of their relationship. 
 
 Something undefined in her feeling of possession she 
 had been robbed of, she knew it by her spiritlessness ; 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 55 
 
 and she would fain have attributed it to the idle motion 
 of the car, now and then stupidly jolting her on, after 
 the valiant exercise of her limbs. They were in a land 
 of waterfalls and busy mills, a narrowing vale where 
 the runs of grass grew short and wild, and the glacier- 
 river roared for the leap, more foam than water, and 
 the savagery, naturally exciting to her, breathed of its 
 lair among the rocks and ice-fields. 
 
 Her brother said : ' There he is. 1 Sne saw the white- 
 crowned king of the region, of whose near presence to 
 her old home she had been accustomed to think proudly, 
 and she looked at him without springing to him, and 
 continued imaging her English home and her loveless 
 uncle, merely admiring the scene, as if the fire of her 
 soul had been extinguished. — ' Marry, and be a blessing 
 to a husband.' Chi lion's words whispered of the means 
 of escape from the den of her uncle. 
 
 But who would marry me ! she thought. An unre- 
 proved sensation of melting pervaded her; she knew 
 her capacity for gratitude, and conjuring it up in her 
 heart, there came with it the noble knightly gentleman 
 who would really stoop to take a plain girl by the hand, 
 release her, and say : ' Be mine ! ' His vizor was down, 
 of course. She had no power of imagining the linea- 
 ments of that prodigy. Or was he a dream ? He came 
 and went. Her mother, not unkindly, sadly, had 
 counted her poor girl's chances of winning attention 
 and a husband. Her father had doted on her face; 
 but, as she argued, her father had been attracted by 
 her mother, a beautiful woman, and this was a circum- 
 stance that reflected the greater hopelessness on her 
 prospects. She bore a likeness to her father, little to 
 her mother, though he fancied the reverse and gave 
 
56 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 her the mother's lips and hair. Thinking of herself, 
 however, was destructive to the form of her mirror of 
 knightliness : he wavered, he fled for good, as the rosy 
 vapour born of our sensibility must do when we relapse 
 to coldness, and the more completely when we try to 
 command it. No, she thought, a plain girl should 
 think of work, to earn her independence. 
 
 ' Women are not permitted to follow armies, Chil- 
 lon ? ' she said. 
 
 He laughed out. ' What's in your head ? ' 
 
 The laugh abashed her; she murmured of women 
 being good nurses for wounded soldiers, if they were 
 good walkers to march with the army; and, as evi- 
 dently it sounded witless to him, she added, to seem 
 reasonable : ' You have not told me the Christian names 
 of those ladies.' 
 
 He made queer eyes over the puzzle to connect the 
 foregoing and the succeeding in her remarks, but 
 answered straightforwardly : c Livia is one, and Hen- 
 rietta.' 
 
 Her ear seized on the stress of his voice. ' Henri- 
 etta ! ' She chose that name for the name of the person 
 disturbing her; it fused best, she thought, with the 
 new element she had been compelled to take into her 
 system, to absorb it if she could. 
 
 'You're not scheming to have them serve as army 
 hospital nurses, my dear ? ' 
 
 'No, Chillon.' 
 
 ' You can't explain it, I suppose.' 
 
 ' A sister could go too, when you go to war, Chillon.' 
 
 A sister could go, if it were permitted by the au- 
 thorities, and be near her brother to nurse him in case 
 of wounds ; others would be unable to claim the privi- 
 
MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 57 
 
 lege. That was her meaning, involved with the hazy 
 project of earning an independence ; but she could not 
 explain it, and Chillon set her down for one of the 
 inexplicable sex, which the simple adventurous girl had 
 not previously seemed to be. 
 
 She was inwardly warned of having talked foolishly, 
 and she held her tongue. Her humble and modest 
 jealousy, scarce deserving the title, passed with a sigh 
 or two. It was her first taste of life in the world. 
 
 A fit of heavy-mindedness ensued, that heightened 
 the contrast her recent mood had bequeathed, between 
 herself, ignorant as she was, and those ladies. Their 
 names, Livia and Henrietta, soared above her and sang 
 the music of the splendid spheres. Henrietta was 
 closer to earth, for her features had been revealed ; 
 she was therefore the dearer, and the richer for him 
 who loved her, being one of us, though an over-earthly 
 one ; and Carinthia gave her to Chillon, reserving for 
 herself a handmaiden's place within the circle of their 
 happiness. 
 
 This done, she sat straight in the car. It was toiling 
 up the steep ascent of a glen to the mountain village, 
 the last of her native province. Her proposal to walk 
 was accepted, and the speeding of her blood, now that 
 she had mastered the new element in it, soon restored 
 her to her sisterly affinity with natural glories. The 
 sunset was on yonder side of the snows. Here there 
 was a feast of variously-tinted sunset shadows on snow, 
 meadows, rock, river, serrated cliff. The peaked cap of 
 the rushing rock-dotted sweeps of upward snow caught 
 a scarlet illumination : one flank of the white in heaven 
 was violetted wonderfully. 
 
 At nightfall, under a clear black sky, alive with 
 
58 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 wakeful fires round head and breast of the great Alp, 
 Chillon and Carinthia strolled out of the village, and 
 he told her some of his hopes. They referred to inven- 
 tions of destructive weapons, which were primarily to 
 place his country out of all danger from a world in 
 arms ; and also, it might be mentioned, to bring him 
 fortune. i For I must have money ! ' he said, sighing 
 it out like a deliberate oath. He and his uncle were 
 associated in the inventions. They had an improved 
 rocket that would force military chiefs to change their 
 tactics : they had a new powder, a rifle, a model musket 
 — the latter based on his own plans ; and a scheme for 
 fortress artillery likely to turn the preponderance in 
 favour of the defensive once again. 'And that will 
 be really doing good,' said Chillon, ' for where it 's 
 with the offensive, there 's everlasting bullying and 
 plundering.' 
 
 Carinthia warmly agreed with him, but begged him 
 be sure his uncle divided the profits equally. She dis- 
 cerned what his need of money signified. 
 
 Tenderness urged her to say : s Henrietta ! Chillon.' 
 
 4 Well ? ' he answered quickly. 
 
 'Will she wait? 1 
 
 ' Can she, you should ask.' 
 
 ' Is she brave ? , 
 
 ' Who can tell, till she has been tried ? "' 
 
 ' Is she quite free ? ' 
 
 ' She has not yet been captured.' 
 
 ' Brother, is there no one else ? . . .' 
 
 ' There's a nobleman anxious to bestow his titles on her.' 
 
 ' He is rich ? ' 
 
 'The first or second wealthiest in Great Britain, 
 they say.' 
 
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 59 
 
 ' Is he young ? ' 
 
 ' About the same age as mine.'' 
 
 * Is he a handsome young man ? , 
 
 6 Handsomer than your brother, my girl; 1 
 
 4 No, no, no ! ' said she. ' And what if he is, and 
 your Henrietta does not choose him ? Now let me 
 think what I long to think. I have her close to me.' 
 
 She rocked a roseate image on her heart and went to 
 bed with it by starlight. 
 
 By starlight they sprang to their feet and departed 
 the next morning, in the steps of a guide carrying, 
 Chillon said, ' a better lantern than we left behind 
 us at the smithy."' 
 
 8 Father ! ' exclaimed Carinthia on her swift inward 
 breath, for this one of the names he had used to give 
 to her old home revived him to her thoughts and 
 senses fervently. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 
 
 Three parts down a swift decline of shattered slate, 
 where travelling stones loosened from rows of scree 
 hurl away at a bound after one roll over, there sat a 
 youth dusty and torn, nursing a bruised leg, not in 
 the easiest of postures, on a sharp tooth of rock, that 
 might at any moment have broken from the slant- 
 ing slab at the end of which it formed a stump, and 
 added him a second time to the general crumble of the 
 mountain. He had done a portion of the descent in 
 
60 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 excellent imitation of the detached fragments, and 
 had parted company with his alpenstock and plaid ; 
 preserving his hat and his knapsack. He was alone, 
 disabled, and cheerful; in doubt of the arrival of 
 succour before he could trust his left leg to do him 
 further service unaided ; but it was morning still, 
 the sun was hot, the air was cool ; just the temper- 
 ing opposition to render existence pleasant as a 
 piece of vegetation, especially when there has been 
 a question of your ceasing to exist ; and the view was 
 of a sustaining sublimity of desolateness : crag and 
 snow overhead ; a gloomy vale below ; no life either 
 of bird or herd ; a voiceless region where there had 
 once been roars at the bowling of a hill from a moun- 
 tain to the deep, and the third flank of the mountain 
 spoke of it in the silence. 
 
 He would have enjoyed the scene unremittingly, like 
 the philosopher he pretended to be, in a disdain of civi- 
 lization and the ambitions of men, had not a contest 
 with earth been forced on him from time to time to 
 keep the heel of his right foot, dug in shallow shale, 
 fixed and supporting. As long as it held he was happy 
 and maintained the attitude of a guitar-player, thrum- 
 ming the calf of the useless leg to accompany tuneful 
 thoughts, but the inevitable lapse and slide of the foot 
 recurred, and the philosopher was exhibited as an infant 
 learning to crawl. The seat, moreover, not having been 
 fashioned for him or for any soft purpose, resisted his 
 pressure and became a thing of violence, that required 
 to be humiliatingly coaxed. His last resource to pro- 
 pitiate it was counselled by nature turned mathema- 
 tician : tenacious extension solved the problem ; he lay 
 back at his length, and with his hat over his eyes con- 
 
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 6l 
 
 sented to see nothing for the sake of comfort. Thus 
 he was perfectly rational, though when others beheld 
 him he appeared the insanest of mortals. 
 
 A girl's voice gave out the mountain carol ringingly 
 above. His heart and all his fancies were in motion at 
 the sound. He leaned on an elbow to listen ; the slide 
 threatened him, and he resumed his full stretch, deter- 
 mined to take her for a dream. He was of the class of 
 youths who, in apprehension that their bright season 
 may not be permanent, choose to fortify it by a sys- 
 tematic contempt of material realities unless they come 
 in the fairest of shapes, and as he was quite sincere in 
 this feeling and election of the right way to live, dis- 
 appointment and sullenness overcame him on hearing 
 men's shouts and steps ; despite his helpless condition 
 he refused to stir, for they had jarred on his dream. 
 Perhaps his temper, unknown to himself, had been a 
 little injured by his mishap, and he would not have 
 been sorry to charge them with want of common 
 humanity in passing him ; or he did not think his 
 plight so bad, else he would have bawled after them 
 had they gone by : for the youths of his description are 
 fools only upon system, however earnestly they indulge 
 the present self-punishing sentiment. The party did 
 not pass ; they stopped short, they consulted, and a 
 feminine tongue more urgent than the others, and very 
 musical, sweet to hear anywhere, put him in tune. She 
 said, ' Brother ! brother ! ' in German. Our philosopher 
 flung off his hat. 
 
 6 You see ! ' said the lady's brother. 
 
 6 Ask him, Anton,' she said to their guide. 
 
 ' And quick ! ' her brother added. 
 
 The guide scrambled along to him, and at a closer 
 
62 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 glance shouted : ' The Englishman ! ' wheeling his 
 finger to indicate what had happened to the Tomnoddy 
 islander. 
 
 His master called to know if there were broken 
 bones, as if he could stop for nothing else. 
 
 The cripple was raised. The gentleman and lady 
 made their way to him, and he tried his hardest to keep 
 from tottering on the slope in her presence. No injury 
 had been done to the leg ; there was only a stiffness, 
 and an idiotic doubling of the knee, as though at each 
 step his leg pronounced a dogged negative to the act 
 of walking. He said something equivalent to ' this 
 donkey leg,' to divert her charitable eyes from a coun- 
 tenance dancing with ugly twitches. She was the 
 Samaritan. A sufferer discerns his friend, though it 
 be not the one who physically assists him : he is in- 
 clined by nature to put material aid at a lower mark 
 than gentleness, and her brief words of encouragement, 
 the tone of their delivery yet more, were medical to his 
 blood, better help than her brother's iron arm, he really 
 believed. Her brother and the guide held him on each 
 side, and she led to pick out the safer footing for him ; 
 she looked round and pointed to some projection that 
 would form a step ; she drew attention to views here 
 and there, to win excuses for his resting ; she did not 
 omit to soften her brother's visible impatience as well, 
 and this was the art which affected her keenly sensible 
 debtor most. 
 
 ' I suppose I ought to have taken a guide,' he said. 
 
 ' There 's not a doubt of that,' said Chillon Kirby. 
 
 Carinthia halted, leaning on her staff : ' But I had 
 the same wish. They told us at the inn of an English- 
 man who left last night to sleep on the mountain, and 
 
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 63 
 
 would go alone ; and did I not say, brother, that must 
 be true love of the mountains ? ' 
 
 8 These freaks get us a bad name on the Continent," 
 her brother replied. He had no sympathy with non- 
 sense, and naturally not with a youth who smelt of 
 being a dreamy romancer and had caused the name of 
 Englishman to be shouted in his ear in derision. And 
 the fellow might delay his arrival at the Baths and 
 sight of the lady of his love for hours ! 
 
 They managed to get him hobbling and slipping to 
 the first green tufts of the base, where long black 
 tongues of slate-rubble pouring into the grass, like 
 shore-waves that have spent their burden, seem about 
 to draw back to bring the mountain down. Thence 
 to the level pasture was but a few skips performed 
 sliding. 
 
 6 Well, now/ said Chillon, * you can stand ? ' 
 
 ' Pretty well, I think. 1 He tried his foot on the 
 ground, and then stretched his length, saying that it 
 only wanted rest. Anton pressed a hand at his ankle 
 and made him wince, but the bones were sound, leg 
 and hip not worse than badly bruised. He was advised 
 by Ajiton to plant his foot in the first running water 
 he came to, and he was considerate enough to say to 
 Chillon :— 
 
 ' Now you can leave me ; and let me thank you. 
 Half an hour will set me right. My name is Wood- 
 seer, if ever we meet again.' 
 
 Chillon nodded a hurried good-bye, without a thought 
 of giving his name in return. But Carinthia had thrown 
 herself on the grass. Her brother asked her in dismay 
 if she was tired. She murmured to him: 'I should 
 like to hear more English. ' 
 
64 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 1 My dear girl, you '11 have enough of it in two or 
 three weeks. 1 
 
 1 Should we leave a good deed half done, Chillon ? ' 
 ' He shall have our guide. 1 
 
 I He may not be rich. 1 
 
 fc I '11 pay Anton to stick to him. 1 
 
 'Brother, he has an objection to guides. 1 
 
 Chillon cast hungry eyes on his watch : ' Five minutes, 
 then. 1 He addressed Mr. Woodseer, who was reposing, 
 indifferent to time, hard-by : * Your objection to guides 
 might have taught you a sharp lesson. It 's like declin- 
 ing to have a master in studying a science — trusting to 
 instinct for your knowledge of a bargain. One might 
 as well refuse an oar to row in a boat. 1 
 
 4 1 'd rather risk it, 1 the young man replied. ' These 
 guides kick the soul out of scenery. I came for that 
 and not for them. 1 
 
 " You might easily have been a disagreeable part of 
 the scene. 1 
 
 ' Why not here as well as elsewhere ? 1 
 
 * You don't care for your life ? ' 
 
 I I try not to care for it a fraction more than Destiny 
 does.' 
 
 ' Fatalism. I suppose you care for something ? ' 
 8 Besides I 've a slack purse, and shun guides and inns 
 when I can. I care for open air, colour, flowers, weeds, 
 birds, insects, mountains. There 's a world behind the 
 mask. I call this life; and the town^ a boiling pot, 
 intolerably stuffy. My one ambition is to be out of it. 
 I thank heaven I have not another on earth. Yes, I 
 care for my note-book, because it 's of no use to a human 
 being except me. I slept beside a spring last night, and 
 I never shall like a bedroom so well. I think I have 
 
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 65 
 
 discovered the great secret : I may be wrong, of course." 
 And if so, he had his philosophy, the admission was 
 meant to say. 
 
 Carinthia expected the revelation of a notable secret, 
 but none came ; or if it did it eluded her grasp : — he 
 was praising contemplation, he was praising tobacco. 
 He talked of the charm of poverty upon a settled income 
 of a very small sum of money, the fruit of a compact he 
 would execute with the town to agree to his perpetual 
 exclusion from it, and to retain his identity, and not be 
 the composite which every townsman was. He talked 
 of Buddha. He said: 'Here the brook's the brook, 
 the mountain 's the mountain : they are as they always 
 were.' 
 
 6 You 'd have men be the same,' Chillon remarked, as 
 to a nursling prattler, and he rejoined: 'They've lost 
 more than they Ve gained ; though, 1 he admitted, ' there 
 has been some gain, in a certain way."' 
 
 Fortunately for them, young men have not the habit 
 of reflecting upon the indigestion of ideas they receive 
 from members of their community, sometimes upon ex- 
 change. They compare a view of life with their own 
 view, to condemn it summarily ; and he was a curious 
 object to Chillon as the perfect opposite of himself. 
 
 'I would advise you, 1 Chillon said, 'to get a pair of 
 Styrian boots, if you intend to stay in the Alps. Those 
 boots of yours are London make."' 
 
 ' They 're my father's make, 1 said Mr. Woodseer. 
 
 Chillon drew out his watch. ' Come, Carinthia, we 
 must be off. 1 He proposed his guide, and, as Anton 
 was rejected, he pointed the route over the head of 
 the valley, stated the distance to an inn that way, 
 saluted and strode. 
 
66 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Mr. Woodscer, partly rising, presumed, in raising his 
 hat and thanking Carinthia, to touch her fingers. She 
 smiled on him, frankly extending her open hand, and 
 pointing the route again, counselling him to rest at the 
 inn, even saying : * You have not yet your strength to 
 come on with us ? ' 
 
 He thought he would stay some time longer : he had 
 a disposition to smoke. 
 
 She tripped away to her brother and was watched 
 through the whiffs of a pipe far up the valley, guiltless 
 of any consciousness of producing an impression. But 
 her mind was with the stranger sufficiently to cause her 
 to say to Chillon, at the close of a dispute between him 
 and Anton on the interesting subject of the growth of 
 the horns of chamois : ' Have we been quite kind to 
 that gentleman ? ' 
 
 Chillon looked over his shoulder. * He "s there still ; 
 he "s fond of solitude. And, Carin, my dear, don't give 
 your hand when you are meeting or parting with people: 
 it 's not done. 1 
 
 His uninstructed sister said : ' Did you not like 
 him? 1 
 
 She was answered with an 'Oh, 1 the tone of which 
 balanced lightly on the neutral line. 'Some of the 
 ideas he has are Lord Fleetwoods, I hear, and one can 
 understand them in a man of enormous wealth, who 
 doesn't know what to do with himself and is dead-sick 
 of flattery ; though it seems odd for an English noble- 
 man to be raving about Nature. Perhaps it 's because 
 none else of them does. 1 
 
 6 Lord Fleetwood loves our mountains, Chillon ? 1 
 
 ' But a fellow who probably has to make his way in 
 the world ! — and he despises ambition ! ? . . . Chillon 
 
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 67 
 
 dropped him. He was antipathetic to eccentrics, and 
 his soldierly and social training opposed the profession 
 of heterodox ideas : to have listened seriously to them 
 coming from the mouth of an unambitious bootmaker's 
 son involved him in the absurdity. He considered that 
 there was no harm in the lad, rather a commendable 
 sort of courage and some notion of manners ; allowing 
 for his ignorance of the convenable in putting out his 
 hand to take a young lady's, with the plea of thanking 
 her. He hoped she would be more on her guard. 
 
 Carinthia was sure she had the name of the nobleman 
 wishing to bestow his title upon the beautiful Henrietta. 
 Lord Fleetwood ! That slender thread given her of the 
 character of her brother's rival who loved the mountains 
 was woven in her mind with her passing experience of 
 the youth they had left behind them, until the two 
 became one, a highly transfigured one, and the mountain 
 scenery made him very threatening to her brother. A 
 silky-haired youth, brown-eyed, unconquerable in adver- 
 sity, immensely rich, fond of solitude, curled, decorated, 
 bejewelled by all the elves and gnomes of inmost soli- 
 tude, must have marvellous attractions, she feared. She 
 bought of him so much, that her humble spirit con- 
 ceived the stricken soul of the woman as of necessity 
 the pursuer; as shamelessly, though timidly, as she 
 herself pursued in imagination the enchanted secret 
 of the mountain-land. She hoped her brother would 
 not supplicate, for it struck her that the lover who 
 besieged the lady would forfeit her roaming and hunting 
 fancy. 
 
 6 1 wonder what that gentleman is doing now,"' she 
 said to Chillon. 
 
 He grimaced slightly, for her sake ; he would have 
 
68 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 liked to inform her, for the sake of educating her in 
 the customs of the world she was going to enter, 
 that the word ' gentleman ' conveys in English a special 
 signification. 
 
 Her expression of wonder whether they were to meet 
 him again gave Chillon the opportunity of saying : 
 6 It 's the unlikeliest thing possible — at all events in 
 England.' 
 
 4 But I think we shall,** said she. 
 
 t My dear, you meet people of your own class ; you 
 don't meet others.' 
 
 1 But we may meet anybody, Chillon ! ' 
 
 'In the street. I suppose you would not stop to 
 speak to him in the street. 1 
 
 ' It would be strange to see him in the street ! ' 
 Carinthia said. 
 
 ' Strange or not ! ' . . . Chillon thought he had said 
 sufficient. She was under his protectorship, otherwise 
 he would not have alluded to the observance of class 
 distinctions. He felt them personally in this case be- 
 cause of their seeming to stretch grotesquely by the 
 pretentious heterodoxy of the young fellow, whom, 
 nevertheless, thinking him over now that he was men- 
 tioned, he approved for his manliness in bluntly telling 
 his origin and status. 
 
 A chalet supplied them with fresh milk, and the inn 
 of a village on a perch with the midday meal. Their 
 appetites were princely and swept over the little inn 
 like a conflagration. Only after clearing it did they 
 remember the rearward pedestrian, whose probable 
 wants Chillon was urged by Carinthia to speak of to 
 their host. They pushed on, clambering up, scurrying 
 down, tramping gaily, till by degrees the chambers of 
 
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 69 
 
 Carinthia's imagination closed their doors and would 
 no longer intercommunicate. Her head refused to 
 interest her, and left all activity to her legs and her 
 eyes, and the latter became unobservant, except of 
 foot-tracks, animal-like. She felt that she was a fine 
 machine, and nothing else : and she was rapidly ap- 
 proaching those ladies ! 
 
 6 You will tell them how I walked with you, 1 she said. 
 
 6 Your friends over yonder ? ' said he. 
 
 4 So that they may not think me so ignorant, brother.'' 
 She stumbled on the helpless word in a hasty effort to 
 cloak her vanity. 
 
 He laughed. Her desire to meet the critical English 
 ladies with a towering reputation in one department of 
 human enterprise was comprehensible, considering the 
 natural apprehensiveness of the half-wild girl before 
 such a meeting. As it often happens with the silly 
 phrases of simple people, the wrong word, foolish 
 although it was, went to the heart of the hearer and 
 threw a more charitable light than ridicule on her. 
 So that they may know I can do something they cannot 
 do, was the interpretation. It showed her deep know- 
 ledge of her poorness in laying bare the fact. 
 
 Anxious to cheer her, he said : ' Come, come, you can 
 dance. You dance well, mother has told me, and she 
 was a judge. You ride, you swim, you have a voice — 
 for country songs, at all events. And you Ye a bit of 
 a botanist too. You Ye good at English and German ; 
 you had a French governess for a couple of years. By 
 the way, you understand the use of a walking-stick in 
 self-defence : you could handle a sword on occasion.'' 
 
 6 Father trained me, 1 said Carinthia. ' I can tire a 
 pistol, aiming.' 
 
70 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 * With a good aim, too. Father told me you could. 
 How fond he was of his girl ! Well, bear in mind that 
 father was proud of you, and hold up your head wherever 
 you are."' 
 
 6 I will, 1 she said. 
 
 He assured her he had a mind to have a bugle blown 
 at the entrance of the Baths for a challenge to the 
 bathers to match her in warlike accomplishments. 
 
 She bit her lips : she could not bear much rallying 
 on the subject just then. 
 
 ' Which is the hard one to please ? , she asked. 
 
 ' The one you will find the kinder of the two.' 
 
 < Henrietta ? ' 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 * Has she a father ? ' 
 
 ' A gallant old admiral: Admiral Baldwin Fakenham.' 
 
 ' I am glad of that ! 1 Carinthia sighed out heartily. 
 ' And he is with her ? And likes you, Chillon ? ' 
 
 ' On the whole, I think he does.' 
 
 ' A brave officer ! ' Such a father would be sure to 
 like him. 
 
 So the domestic prospect was hopeful. 
 
 At sunset they stood on the hills overlooking the 
 basin of the Baths, all enfolded in swathes of pink and 
 crimson up to the shining grey of a high heaven that 
 had the fresh brightness of the morning. 
 
 ' We are not tired in the slightest,' said Carinthia, 
 trifling with the vision of a cushioned rest below. ' I 
 could go on through the night quite comfortably.'' 
 
 ' Wait till you wake up in your little bed to-morrow," 
 Chillon replied stoutly, to drive a chill from his lover's 
 heart, that had seized it at the bare suggestion of their 
 going on. 
 
THE LADY'S LETTER 71 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LADY'S LETTER 
 
 Is not the lover a prophet ? He that fervently desires 
 may well be one; his hurried nature is alive with 
 warmth to break the possible blow : and if his fears were 
 not needed they were shadows ; and if fulfilled, was he 
 not convinced of his misfortune by a dark anticipation 
 that rarely erred? Descending the hills, he remem- 
 bered several omens : the sun had sunk when he looked 
 down on the villas and clustered houses, not an edge 
 of the orb had been seen ; the admiral's quarters in the 
 broad-faced hotel had worn an appearance resembling 
 the empty house of yesterday ; the encounter with the 
 fellow on the rocks had a bad whisper of impish 
 tripping. And what moved Carinthia to speak of 
 going on ? 
 
 A letter was handed to Chillon in the hall of the 
 admiral's hotel, where his baggage had already been 
 delivered. The manager was deploring the circum- 
 stance that his rooms were full to the roof, when 
 Chillon said : c Well, we must wash and eat ' ; and 
 Carinthia, from watching her brother's forehead during 
 his perusal of the letter, declared her readiness for 
 anything. He gave her the letter to read by herself 
 while preparing to sit at table, unwilling to ask her 
 for a further tax on her energies — but it was she who 
 had spoken of going on ! He thought of it as of a 
 debt she had contracted and might be supposed to think 
 payable to their misfortune. 
 
 She read off the first two sentences. 
 
72 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 4 We can have a carriage here, Chillon ; order a 
 carriage ; I shall get as much sleep in a carriage as in 
 a bed ; I shall enjoy driving at night/ she said imme- 
 diately, and strongly urged it and forced him to yield, 
 the manager observing that a carriage could be had. 
 
 In the privacy of her room, admiring the clear flow- 
 ing hand, she read the words, delicious in their strange- 
 ness to her, notwithstanding the heavy news, as though 
 they were sung out of a night-sky : — 
 
 * Most picturesque of Castles ! 
 
 May none these marks efface, 
 For they appeal from Tyranny . . .' 
 
 ' We start at noon to-day. Sailing orders have been 
 issued, and I could only have resisted them in my own 
 person by casting myself overboard. I go like the 
 boat behind the vessel. You were expected yesterday, 
 at latest this morning. I have seen boxes in the hall, 
 with a name on them not foreign to me. Why does 
 the master tarry? Sir, of your valiance you should 
 have held to your good vow, quoth the damozel, for 
 now you see me sore perplexed and that you did not 
 your devoir is my affliction. Where lingers chivalry, 
 she should have proceeded, if not with my knight ? I 
 feast on your regrets. I would not have you less than 
 miserable : and I fear the reason is, that I am not so 
 very, very sure you will be so at all or very hugely, 
 as I would command it of you for just time enough 
 to see that change over your eyebrows I know so 
 well. 
 
 ' If you had seen a certain Henrietta yesterday you 
 would have the picture of how you ought to look. The 
 admiral was heard welcoming a new arrival — you can 
 
THE LADY'S LETTER 73 
 
 hear him. She ran down the stairs quicker than any 
 cascade of this district, she would have made a bet with 
 Livia that it could be no one else — her hand was out — 
 before she was aware of the difference it was locked in 
 Lord F/s ! 
 
 ' Let the guilty absent suffer for causing such a be- 
 trayal of disappointment. I must be avenged ! But if 
 indeed you are unhappy and would like to chide the 
 innocent, I am full of compassion for the poor gentle- 
 man inheriting my legitimate feelings of wrath, and beg 
 merely that he will not pour them out on me with pen 
 and paper, but from his lips and eyes. 
 
 ' Time pressing, I chatter no more. The destination 
 is Livia's beloved Baden. We rest a night in the city 
 of Mozart, a night at Munich, a night at Stuttgart. 
 Baden will detain my cousin full a week. She has 
 Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson Corby in attendance — 
 her long shadow and her short : both devoted to Lord 
 F., to win her smile, and how he drives them ! The 
 captain has been paraded on the promenade, to the 
 stupefaction of the foreigner. Princes, counts, generals, 
 diplomats passed under him in awe. I am told that he 
 is called St. Christopher. 
 
 ' Why do we go thus hastily ? — my friend, this letter 
 has to be concealed. I know some one who sees in the 
 dark. 
 
 'Think no harm of Livia. She is bent upon my 
 worldly advantage, and that is plain even to the person 
 rejecting it. How much more so must it be to papa, 
 though he likes you, and when you are near him would 
 perhaps, in a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless 
 as the creature he calls madcap and would rather call 
 countess. No ! sooner with a Will-o'-the-wisp, my 
 
74 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 friend. Who could ever know where the man was 
 when he himself never knows where he is. He is the 
 wind that bloweth as it listeth — because it is without 
 an aim or always with a new one. And am I the one 
 to direct him ? I need direction. My lord and sove- 
 reign must fix my mind. I am volatile, earthly, not 
 to be trusted if I do not worship. He himself said to 
 me that — he reads our characters. 'Nothing but a 
 proved hero will satisfy Henrietta,"' his words ! And 
 the hero must be shining like a beacon-fire kept in a 
 blaze. Quite true; I own it. Is Chillon Kirby satisfied? 
 He ought to be. 
 
 'But oh ! — to be yoked is an insufferable thought, 
 unless we name all the conditions. But to be yoked to 
 a creature of impulses ! Really I could only describe 
 his erratic nature by commending you to the study of 
 a dragon-fly. It would map you an idea of what he has 
 been in the twenty-four hours since we had him here. 
 They tell me a vain sort of person is the cause. Can 
 she be the cause of his resolving to have a residence 
 here, to buy up half the valley — erecting a royal palace 
 — and marking out the site — raving aoout it in the 
 wildest language, poetical if it had been a little reason- 
 able: — and then, after a night, suddenly, unaccount- 
 ably, hating the place, and being under the necessity of 
 flying from it in hot haste, tearing us all away, as if 
 we were attached to a kite that will neither mount nor 
 fall, but rushes about headlong. Has he heard, or sus- 
 pected ? or seen certain boxes bearing a name ? Livia 
 has no suspicion, though she thinks me wonderfully 
 contented in so dull a place, where it has rained nine 
 days in a fortnight. I ask myself whether my manner 
 of greeting him betrayed my expectation of another. 
 
THE LADY'S LETTER 75 
 
 He has brains. It is the greatest of errors to suppose 
 him at all like the common run of rich young noble- 
 men. He seems to thirst for brilliant wits and original 
 sayings. His ambition is to lead all England in every- 
 thing ! I readily acknowledge that he has generous 
 ideas too ; but try to hold him, deny him his liberty, 
 and it would be seen how desperate and relentless he 
 would be to get loose. Of this I am convinced : he 
 would be either the most abject of lovers, or a woman 
 (if it turned out not to be love) would find him the 
 most unscrupulous of yokefellows. Yokefellow ! She 
 would not have her reason in consenting. A lamb and 
 a furious bull ! Papa and I have had a serious talk. 
 He shut his ears to my comparisons, but admits, that 
 as I am the principal person concerned, etc. Rich and 
 a nobleman is too tempting for an anxious father ; and 
 Livia's influence is paramount. She has not said a 
 syllable in depreciation of you. That is to her credit. 
 She also admits that I must yield freely if at all, and 
 she grants me the use of similes ; but her tactics are to 
 contest them one by one, and the admirable pretender 
 is not as shifty as the mariner's breeze, he is not like 
 the wandering spark in burnt paper, of which you 
 cannot say whether it is chasing or chased : it is I who 
 am the shifty Pole to the steadiest of magnets. She is 
 a princess in other things besides her superiority to 
 Physics. There will be wild scenes at Baden. 
 
 4 My Diary of to-day is all bestowed on you. What 
 have I to write in it except the pair of commas under 
 the last line of yesterday — " He has not come ! " Oh ! 
 to be caring for a he. 
 
 1 that I were with your sister now, on one side of 
 her idol, to correct her extravagant idolatry ! I long 
 
76 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 for her. I had a number of nice little phrases to pet 
 her with. 
 
 1 You have said (I have it written) that men who are 
 liked by men are the best friends for women. In which 
 case, the earl should be worthy of our friendship ; he is 
 liked. Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson, in spite of the 
 hard service he imposes on them with such comical 
 haughtiness, incline to speak well of him, and Methuen 
 Rivers — here for two days on his way to his embassy at 
 Vienna — assured us he is the rarest of gentlemen on the 
 point of honour of his word. They have stories of him, 
 to confirm Livia , s eulogies, showing him punctilious to 
 chivalry. No man alive is like him in that, they say. 
 He grieves me. All that you have to fear is my pity 
 for one so sensitive. So speed, sir ! It is not good for 
 us to be much alone, and I am alone when you are 
 absent. 
 
 ' I hear military music ! 
 
 'How grand that music makes the dullest world 
 appear in a minute. There is a magic in it to bring 
 you to me from the most dreadful of distances.— Chillon ! 
 it would kill me ! — Writing here and you perhaps 
 behind the hill, I can hardly bear it ; — I am torn away, 
 my hand will not any more. This music burst out to 
 mock me ! Adieu. 
 
 6 1 am yours. 
 
 4 Your Henrietta. 
 
 1 A kiss to the sister. It is owing to her.' 
 
 Carinthia kissed the letter on that last line. It 
 seemed to her to end in a celestial shower. 
 
 She was oppressed by wonder of the writer who could 
 run like the rill of the mountains in written speech ; and 
 
THE LADY'S LETTER 77 
 
 her recollection of the contents perpetually hurried to 
 the close, which was more in her way of writing, for 
 there the brief sentences had a throb beneath them. 
 
 She did not speak of the letter to her brother when 
 she returned it. A night in the carriage, against his 
 shoulder, was her happy prospect, in the thought that 
 she would be with her dearest all night, touching him 
 asleep, and in the sweet sense of being near to the 
 beloved of the fairest angel of her sex. They pursued 
 their journey soon after Anton was dismissed with warm 
 shakes of the hand and appointments for a possible year 
 in the future. 
 
 The blast of the postillion's horn on the dark highway 
 moved Chillon to say : * This is what they call posting, 
 my dear. 1 
 
 She replied : ' Tell me, brother : I do not under- 
 stand, " Let none these marks efface,'''' at the commence- 
 ment, after most " picturesque of Castles " : — that is 
 you.' 
 
 6 They are quoted from the verses of a lord who was 
 a poet, addressed to the castle on Lake Leman. She 
 will read them to you.'' 
 
 4 Will she?' 
 
 The mention of the lord set Carinthia thinking of 
 the lord whom that beautiful she pitied because she 
 was forced to wound him and he was very sensitive. 
 Wrapped in Henrietta, she slept through the joltings 
 of the carriage, the grinding of the wheels, the blowing 
 of the horn, the flashes of the late moonlight and the 
 kindling of dawn. 
 
78 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 OF THE ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN AND 
 THEIR CONSORTING I IN WHICH THE MALE READER IS 
 REQUESTED TO BEAR IN MIND WHAT WILD CREATURE 
 HE WAS IN HIS YOUTH, WHILE THE FEMALE SHOULD 
 MARVEL CREDULOUSLY. 
 
 The young man who fancied he had robed himself in 
 the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the 
 age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the 
 mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the 
 Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder 
 of superstition within him, which would lay him open 
 to smarts of evil fortune if he encouraged a senseless 
 gratitude for good ; seeing that we are simply to take 
 what happens to us. The little inn of the village on 
 the perch furnished him a night's lodging and a laugh 
 of satisfaction to hear of a young lady and gentleman, 
 and their guide, who had devoured everything eatable 
 half a day in advance of him, all save the bread and 
 butter, and a few scraps of meat, apologetically spread 
 for his repast by the maid of the inn . not enough for 
 a bantam cock, she said, promising eggs for breakfast. 
 He vowed with an honest heart, that it was more than 
 enough, and he was nourished by sympathy with the 
 appetites of his precursors and the maid's description 
 of their deeds. That name, Carinthia, went a good way 
 to fill him. 
 
 Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment. He 
 was compelled to acknowledge that he had expected to 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 79 
 
 meet Carinthia again at the Baths. Her absence dealt 
 a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in ; for 
 though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was 
 unfeigned, as was his calm overlooking of social dis- 
 tinctions, the self-indulgent dreamer became troubled 
 with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the 
 passions of the world of men was to risk the falling 
 lower than most. Women are a cause of dreams, but 
 they are dreaded enemies of his kind of dream, deadly 
 enemies of the immaterial dreamers ; and should one of 
 them be taken on board a vessel of the vapourish texture 
 young Woodseer sailed in above the clouds lightly while 
 he was in it alone, questions of past, future, and present, 
 the three weights upon humanity, bear it down, and she 
 must go, or the vessel sinks. And cast out of it, what 
 was he ? The asking exposed him to the steadiest wind 
 the civilized world is known to blow. From merely 
 thinking upon one of the daughters of earth, he was 
 made to feel his position in that world, though he 
 refused to understand it, and assisted by two days of 
 hard walking he reduced Carinthia to an abstract 
 enthusiasm, no very serious burden. His note-book 
 sustained it easily. He wrote her name in simple 
 fondness of the name ; a verse, and hints for more, 
 and some sentences, which he thought profound. They 
 were composed as he sat by the roadway, on the tops of 
 hills, and in a boat crossing a dark green lake deep 
 under wooded mountain walls : things of priceless 
 value. 
 
 It happened, that midway on the lake he perceived 
 his boatman about to prime a pistol to murder the 
 mild-eyed stillness, and he called to the man in his 
 best German to desist. During the altercation, there 
 
80 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 passed a countryman of his in another of the punts, 
 who said gravely : * I thank you for that. 1 It was 
 early morning, and they had the lake to themselves, 
 each deeming the other an intruder ; for the courtship 
 of solitude wanes when we are haunted by a second 
 person in pursuit of it; he is discolouring matter in 
 our pure crystal cup. Such is the worship of the 
 picturesque; and it would appear to say, that the spirit 
 of man finds itself yet in the society of barbarians. 
 The case admits of good pleading either way, even upon 
 the issue whether the exclusive or the vulgar be the 
 more barbarous. But in those days the solicitation of 
 the picturesque had been revived by a poet of some 
 impassioned rhetoric, and two devotees could hardly 
 meet, as the two meet here, and not be mutuallv 
 obscurants. 
 
 They stepped ashore in turn on the same small shoot 
 of land where a farm-house near a chapel in the shadow 
 of cliffs did occasional service for an inn. Each had 
 intended to pass a day and a night in this lonely dwell- 
 ing-place by the lake, but a rival was less to be tolerated 
 there than in love, and each awaited the other's depar- 
 ture, with an air that said : ' You are in my sunlight ' ; 
 and going deeper, more sternly : ' Sir, you are an offence 
 to Nature's pudency ! ' 
 
 Woodseer was the more placable of the two ; he had 
 taken possession of the bench outside, and he had his 
 note-book and much profundity to haul up with it while 
 fish were frying. His countryman had rushed inside 
 to avoid him, and remained there pacing the chamber 
 like a lion newly caged. Their boatmen were brotherly 
 in the anticipation of provision and payment. 
 
 After eating his fish, Woodseer decided abruptly, that 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 81 
 
 as he could not have the spot to himself, memorable 
 as it would have been to intermarry with Nature in so 
 sacred a well-depth of the mountains, he had better be 
 walking and climbing. Another boat paddling up the 
 lake had been spied : solitude was not merely shared 
 with a rival, but violated by numbers. In the first case, 
 we detest the man ; in the second, we fly from an out- 
 raged scene. He wrote a line or so in his book, hurriedly 
 paid his bill, and started, full of the matter he had 
 briefly committed to his pages. 
 
 At noon, sitting beside the beck that runs from the 
 lake, he was overtaken by the gentleman he had left 
 behind, and accosted in the informal English style, 
 with all the politeness possible to a nervously blunt 
 manner : ' This book is yours, — I have no doubt it is 
 yours ; I am glad to be able to restore it ; I should be 
 glad to be the owner — writer of the contents, I mean. 
 I have to beg your excuse ; I found it lying open ; I 
 looked at the page, I looked through the whole ; I am 
 quite at your mercy.' 
 
 Woodseer jumped at the sight of his note-book, felt 
 for the emptiness of his pocket, and replied : ' Thank 
 you, thank you. It 's of use to me, though to no one 
 else.'* 
 
 ' You pardon me ? "' 
 
 6 Certainly. I should have done it myself.' 
 
 'I cannot offer you my apologies as a stranger.' 
 Lord Fleetwood was the name given. 
 
 Woodseer's plebeian was exchanged for it, and he 
 stood up. 
 
 The young lord had fair, straight, thin features, with 
 large restless eyes that lighted quickly, and a mouth 
 that was winning in his present colloquial mood. 
 
82 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' You could have done the same ? I should find it 
 hard to forgive the man who pried into my secret 
 thoughts,' he remarked. 
 
 ' There they are. If one puts them to paper ! . . .' 
 Woodseer shrugged. 
 
 1 Yes, yes. They never last long enough with me. 
 So far I 'm safe. One page led to another. You can 
 meditate. I noticed some remarks on Religions. You 
 think deeply.' 
 
 Woodseer was of that opinion, but modesty urged 
 him to reply with a small flourish. ( Just a few heads 
 of ideas. When the wind puffs down a sooty chimney 
 the air is filled with little blacks that settle pretty 
 much like the notes in this book of mine. There they 
 wait for another puff, or my fingers to stamp them.' 
 
 ' I could tell you were the owner of that book, 1 said 
 Lord Fleetwood. He swept his forehead feverishly. 
 - What a power it is to relieve one's brain by writing ! 
 May I ask you, which one of the Universities ? . . .' 
 
 The burden of this question had a ring of irony to 
 one whom it taught to feel rather defiantly, that he 
 carried the blazon of a reeking tramp. ' My Univer- 
 sity, 1 Woodseer replied, ' was a merchant's office in 
 Bremen for some months. I learnt more Greek and 
 Latin in Bremen than business. I was invalided home, 
 and then tried a merchant's office in London. I put on 
 my hat one day, and walked into the country. My 
 College fellows were hawkers, tinkers, tramps and 
 ploughmen, choughs and crows. A volume of our Poets 
 and a History of Philosophy composed my library. I 
 had scarce any money, so I learnt how to idle inexpen- 
 sively — a good first lesson. We're at the bottom of the 
 world when we take to the road ; we see men as they 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 83 
 
 were in the beginning — not so eager for harness till 
 they get acquainted with hunger, as I did, and studied 
 in myself the old animal having his head pushed into 
 the collar to earn a feed of corn.' 
 
 Woodseer laughed, adding, that he had been of a 
 serious mind in those days of the alternation of smooth 
 indifference and sharp necessity, and he had plucked a 
 flower from them. 
 
 His nature prompted him to speak of himself with 
 simple candour, as he had done spontaneously to Chillon 
 Kirby, yet he was now anxious to let his companion 
 know at once the common stuff he was made of, together 
 with the great stuff he contained. He grew conscious 
 of an over-anxiety, and was uneasy, recollecting how he 
 had just spoken about his naturalness, dimly if at all 
 apprehending the cause of this disturbance within. 
 What is a lord to a philosopher ! But the world is 
 around us as a cloak, if not a coat ; in his ignorance he 
 supposed it specially due to a lord seeking acquaintance 
 with him, that he should expose his condition : doing 
 the which appeared to subject him to parade his intel- 
 lectual treasures and capacity for shaping sentences; 
 and the effect upon Lord Fleetwood was an incentive 
 to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to 
 escape from the discomposing society of a lord ; he fixed 
 his knapsack and began to saunter. 
 
 The young lord was at his elbow. ' I can't part with 
 you. Will you allow me ? ' 
 
 Woodseer was puzzled and had to say : ' If you wish 
 it. 1 
 
 * I do wish it : an hour's walk with you. One does 
 not meet a man like you every day. I have to join a 
 circle of mine in Baden, but there 's no hurry ; I could 
 
84 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 be disengaged for a week. And I have things to ask 
 you, owing to my indiscretion — but you have excused 
 it/ 
 
 Woodseer turned for a farewell gaze at the great 
 Watzmann, and saluted him. 
 
 1 Splendid," said Lord Fleetwood ; * but don't clap 
 names on the mountains. — I saw written in your book : 
 'A text for Dada? You write : *A despotism would 
 procure a perfect solitude, but kill the ghost? That was 
 my thought at the place where we were at the lake. I 
 had it. Tell me — though I could not have written it, 
 and " ghost " is j ust the word, the exact word — tell me, 
 are you of Welsh blood ? " Dad " is good Welsh — 
 pronounce it hard."* 
 
 Woodseer answered : ' My mother was a Glamor- 
 ganshire woman. My father, I know, walked up from 
 Wales, mending boots on his road for a livelihood. 
 He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like 
 it. He is a Dissenting preacher. When I strike a 
 truism, I Ve a habit of scoring it to give him a peg or 
 tuning-fork for one of his discourses. He 's a man of 
 talent ; he taught himself, and he taught me more than 
 I learnt at school. He is a thinker in his way. He 
 loves Nature too. I rather envy him in some respects. 
 He and I are hunters of Wisdom on different tracks ; 
 and he, as he says, u waits for me. 11 He 's patient ! ' 
 
 1 Ah, and I wanted to ask you, 1 Lord Fleetwood ob- 
 served, bursting with it, ' I was puzzled by a name 
 you write here and there near the end, and permit 
 me to ask it : Carinthia ! It cannot be the country ? 
 You write after the name : " A beautiful Gorgon — 
 a haggard Venus" It seized me. I have had the face 
 before my eyes ever since. You must mean a woman. 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 85 
 
 I can't be deceived in allusions to a woman : they 
 have heart in them. You met her somewhere about 
 Carinthia, and gave her the name? You write — 
 may I refer to the book ? ' 
 
 He received the book and flew through the leaves : 
 4 Here — " A panting look " ; you write again : " A look 
 qf beaten flame : a look of one who has run and at last 
 beholds ! " But that is a living face : I see her ! Here 
 again : " From minute to minute she is the rock that 
 loses the sun at night and reddens in the morning.'''' 
 You could not create an idea of a woman to move 
 you like that. No one could, I am certain of it, 
 certain; if so, you Ye a wizard — I swear you are. 
 But that's a face high over beauty. Just to know 
 there is a woman like her, is an antidote. You com- 
 pare her to a rock. Who would imagine a compari- 
 son of a woman to a rock ! But rock is the very 
 picture of beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus. Tell me 
 you met her, you saw her. I want only to hear she 
 lives, she is in the world. Beautiful women compared 
 to roses may whirl away with their handsome dragoons ! 
 A pang from them is a thing to be ashamed of. And 
 there are men who trot about whining with it ! But 
 a Carinthia makes pain honourable. You have done 
 what I thought impossible — fused a woman's face and 
 grand scenery, to make them inseparable. She might 
 be wicked for me. I should see a bright rim round 
 hatred of her ! — the rock you describe. I could en- 
 dure horrors and not annihilate her 1 I should think 
 her sacred. 1 
 
 Woodseer turned about to have a look at the man 
 who was even quicker than he at realizing a person 
 from a hint of description, and almost insanely ex- 
 
86 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 travagant in the pitch of the things he uttered to a 
 stranger. For himself, he was open with everybody, 
 his philosophy not allowing that strangers existed on 
 earth. But the presence of a lord brought the conven- 
 tional world to his feelings, though at the same time 
 the title seemed to sanction the exceptional abrupt- 
 ness and wildness of this lord. As for suspecting him 
 to be mad, it would have been a common idea: no 
 stretching of speech or overstepping of social rules 
 could waken a suspicion so spiritless in Woodseer. 
 
 He said : ' I can tell you I met her and she lives. 
 I could as soon swim in that torrent or leap the moun- 
 tain as repeat what she spoke, or sketch a feature of 
 her. She goes into the blood, she is a new idea of 
 women. She has the face that would tempt a gypsy to 
 evil tellings. I could think of it as a history written 
 in a line : Carinthia, Saint and Martyr ! As for com- 
 parisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire.'' 
 
 4 1 have had that — I have thought that,' said Lord 
 Fleetwood. 6 Go on ; talk of her, pray ; without com- 
 parisons. I detest them. How did you meet her? 
 What made you part ? Where is she now ? I have no 
 wish to find her, but I want thoroughly to believe in 
 her/ 
 
 Another than Woodseer would have perceived the 
 young lord's malady. Here was one bitten by the 
 serpent of love, and athirst for an image of the sex to 
 serve for the cooling herb, as youth will be. Woodseer 
 put it down to a curious imaginative fellowship with 
 himself. He forgot the lord, and supposed he had 
 found his own likeness, less gifted in speech. After 
 talking of Carinthia more and more in the abstract, he 
 fell upon his discovery of the Great Secret of life, 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 87 
 
 against which his hearer struggled for a time, though 
 that was cooling to him, too ; but ultimately there was 
 no resistance, and so deep did they sink into the idea 
 of pure contemplation, that the idea of woman seemed 
 to have become a part of it. No stronger proof of their 
 aethereal conversational earnestness could be offered. 
 A locality was given to the Great Secret, and of course 
 it was the place where the most powerful recent 
 impression had been stamped on the mind of the 
 discoverer : the shadowy valley rolling from the slate- 
 rock. Woodseer was too artistic a dreamer to present 
 the passing vision of Carinthia with any associates there. 
 She passed : the solitude accepted her and lost her ; and 
 it was the richer for the one swift gleam : she brought 
 no trouble, she left no regrets ; she was the ghost of the 
 rocky obscurity. But now remembering her mountain 
 carol, he chanced to speak of her as a girl. 
 
 6 She is a girl ? ' cried Lord Fleetwood, frowning over 
 an utter revolution of sentiment at the thought of the 
 beautiful Gorgon being a girl ; for, rapid as he was to 
 imagine, he had raised a solid fabric upon his concep- 
 tion of Carinthia the woman, necessarily the woman — 
 logically. Who but the woman could look the Gorgon ! 
 He tried to explain it to be impossible for a girl to wear 
 the look : and his notion evidently was, that it had come 
 upon a beautiful face in some staring horror of a world 
 that had bitten the tender woman. She touched him 
 sympathetically through the pathos. 
 
 Woodseer flung out vociferously for the contrary. 
 Who but a girl could look the beautiful Gorgon ! What 
 other could seem an emanation of the mountain soli- 
 tude ? A woman would instantly breathe the world on 
 it to destroy it. Hers would be the dramatic and not 
 
88 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the poetic face. It would shriek of man, wake the 
 echoes with the tale of man, slaughter all quietude. 
 But a girl's face has no story of poisonous intrusion. 
 She indeed may be cast in the terrors[of Nature, and yet 
 be sweet with Nature, beautiful because she is purely 
 of Nature. Woodseer did his best to present his view 
 irresistibly. Perhaps he was not clear ; it was a piece 
 of skiamachy, difficult to render clear to the de- 
 feated. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood had nothing to say but ' Gorgon ! a 
 girl a Gorgon ! ' and it struck Woodseer as intensely 
 unreasonable, considering that he had seen the girl 
 whom, in his effort to portray her, he had likened to 
 a beautiful Gorgon. He recounted the scene of the 
 meeting with her, pictured it in effective colours, but 
 his companion gave no response, nor a nod. They 
 ceased to converse, and when the young lord's hired 
 carriage drew up on the road, Woodseer required per- 
 suasion to accompany him. They were both in their 
 different stations young tyrants of the world, ready to 
 fight the world and one another for not having their 
 immediate view of it such as they w r anted it. They 
 agreed, however, not to sleep in the city. Beds were to 
 be had near the top of a mountain on the other side of 
 the Salza, their driver informed them, and vowing them- 
 selves to that particular height, in a mutual disgust of 
 the city, they waxed friendlier, with a reserve. 
 
 Woodseer soon had experience that he was receiving 
 exceptional treatment from Lord Fleetwood, whose man- 
 servant was on the steps of the hotel in Salzburg on the 
 lookout for his master. 
 
 c Sir Meeson has been getting impatient, my lord/ 
 aid the man. 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 89 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby appeared; Lord Fleetwood cut 
 him short : ' You Ye in a hurry ; go at once, don't wait 
 for me ; I join you in Baden. — Do me the favour to eat 
 with me,' he turned to Woodseer. ' And here, Corby ! 
 tell the countess I have a friend to bear me company, 
 and there is to be an extra bedroom secured at her 
 hotel. That swinery of a place she insists on visiting 
 is usually crammed. With you there, 1 he turned to 
 Woodseer, { I might find it agreeable. — You can take 
 my man, Corby ; I shall not want the fellow. 1 
 
 4 Positively, my dear Fleetwood, you know, 1 Sir 
 Meeson expostulated, ' I am under orders ; I don't see 
 how — I really can't go on without you. 1 
 
 ' Please yourself. This gentleman is my friend, Mr. 
 Woodseer. 1 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, 
 at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail 
 coat and brass buttons a victory. His tightness made 
 his fatness elastic*; he looked wound up for a dance, 
 and could hardly hold on a leg ; but the presentation 
 of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, 
 carrying a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with 
 disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwoods friend — the 
 friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain ! — 
 fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted 
 interrogatives. Woodseer passed him, slouching a bow. 
 The circular stare of Sir Meeson seemed unable to con- 
 tract. He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and was then 
 reminded that he dealt with prickles. 
 
 ' Where have you been ? ? he said, blinking to refresh 
 his eyeballs. c I missed you, I ran round and round the 
 town after you. 1 
 
 8 1 have been to the lake.' 
 
90 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' Queer fish there ! ' Sir Meeson dropped a glance on 
 the capture. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer's arm. t Do you eat 
 with us?"* he asked the baronet, who had stayed his 
 eating for an hour and was famished ; so they strode to 
 the dining-room. 
 
 ' Do you wash, sir, before eating ? ' Sir Meeson said 
 to Woodseer, caressing his hands when they had seated 
 themselves at table. ' Appliances are to be found in 
 this hotel.'' 
 
 ' Soap ? ' said Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 * Soap — at least, in my chamber.' 
 
 6 Fetch it, please. 1 
 
 Sir Meeson, of course, could not hear that. He re- 
 quested the waiter to show the gentleman to a room. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood ordered the waiter to bring a hand- 
 basin and towel. * We 're off directly and must eat at 
 once,' he said. 
 
 4 Soap — soap ! my dear Fleetwood,' Sir Meeson 
 knuckled on the table, to impress it that his appetite 
 and his gorge demanded a thorough cleansing of those 
 fingers, if they were to sit at one board. 
 
 'Let the waiter fetch it. 1 
 
 ' The soap is in my portmanteau.' 
 
 i You spoke of it as a necessity for this gentleman and 
 me. Bring it.' 
 
 Woodseer had risen. Lord Fleetwood motioned him 
 down. He kept an eye dead as marble on Corby, who 
 muttered : 8 You can't mean that you ask me ? . . .' 
 But the alternative was forced on Sir Meeson by too 
 strong a power of the implacable eye ; there was thunder 
 in it, a continuity of gaze forcefuller than repetitions of 
 the word. He knew Lord Fleetwood. Men privileged 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN §1 
 
 to attend on him were dogs to the flinty young despot : 
 they were sure to be called upon to expiate the faintest 
 offence to him. He had hastily to consider, that he 
 was banished beyond appeal, with the whole torture of 
 banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or else 
 the mad behest must be obeyed. He protested, shrugged, 
 sat fast, and sprang up, remarking, that he went with all 
 the willingness imaginable. It could not have been the 
 first occasion. 
 
 He was affecting the excessively obsequious when he 
 came back bearing his metal soap-case. The perform- 
 ance was checked by another look solid as shot, and as 
 quick. Woodseer, who would have done for Sir Meeson 
 Corby or Lazarus what had been done for him, thought 
 little of the service, but so intense a peremptoriness in 
 the look of an eye made him uncomfortable in his own 
 sense of independence. The humblest citizen of a free 
 nation has that warning at some notable exhibition of 
 tyranny in a neighbouring State : it acts like a concussion 
 of the air. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood led an easy dialogue with him and 
 Sir Meeson, on their different themes immediately, which 
 was not less impressive to an observer. He listened to 
 Sir Meeson's entreaties that he should start at once for 
 Baden, and appeared to pity the poor gentleman, con- 
 demned by his office to hang about him in terror of his 
 liege lady's displeasure. Presently, near the close of the 
 meal, drawing a ring from his finger, he handed it to the 
 baronet, and said, ' Give her that. She knows I shall 
 follow that. 1 He added to himself : — I shall have ill- 
 luck till I have it back ! and he asked Woodseer whether 
 he put faith in the virtue of talismans. 
 
 ' I have never possessed one, 1 said Woodseer, with his 
 
92 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 natural frankness. ■ It would have gone long before 
 this for a night's lodging.' 
 
 Sir Meeson heard him, and instantly urged Lord 
 Fleetwood not to think of dismissing his man Francis. 
 1 1 beg it, Fleetwood ! I beg you to take the man. Her 
 ladyship will receive me badly, ring or no ring, if she 
 hears of your being left alone. I really can't present 
 myself. I shall not go, not go. I say no."* 
 
 * Stay, then,' said Fleetwood. 
 
 He turned to Woodseer with an air of deference, 
 and requested the privilege of glancing at his note- 
 book again, and scanned it closely at one of the 
 pages. * I believe it true, 1 he cried ; ' I had a half 
 recollection of it — I have had some such thought, but 
 never could put it in words. You have thought 
 deeply."' 
 
 ' That is only a surface thought, or common reflec- 
 tion, 1 said Woodseer. 
 
 Sir Meeson stared at them in turn. Judging by 
 their talk and the effect produced on the earl, he took 
 Woodseer for a sort of conjuror. 
 
 It was his duty to utter a warning. 
 
 He drew Fleetwood aside. A word was whispered, 
 and they broke asunder with a snap. Francis was 
 called. His master gave him his keys, and despatched 
 him into the town to purchase a knapsack or bag for 
 the outfit of a jolly beggar. The prospect delighted 
 Lord Fleetwood. He sang notes from the deep chest, 
 flaunting like an opera brigand, and contemplating his 
 wretched satellite's indecision with brimming amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 * Remember, we fight for our money. I carry mine/ 
 he said to Woodseer. 
 
ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 93 
 
 4 Wouldn't it be expedient, Fleetwood . . .' Sir Meeson 
 suggested a treasurer in the person of himself. 
 
 4 Not a florin, Corby ! I should find it all gambled 
 away at Baden.' 
 
 4 But I am not Abrane, I 'm not Abrane ! I never 
 play, I have no mania, none. It would be prudent, 
 Fleetwood.'' 
 
 6 The slightest bulging of a pocket would show on 
 you, Corby; and they would be at you, they would 
 fall on you and pluck you to have another fling. I 'd 
 rather my money should go to a knight of the road 
 than feed that dragon's jaw. A highwayman seems 
 an honest fellow compared with your honourable cor- 
 poration of fly-catchers. I could surrender to him 
 with some satisfaction after a trial of the better man. 
 I've tried these tables, and couldn't stir a pulse. Have 
 you ? ' 
 
 It had to be explained to Woodseer what was meant 
 by trying the tables. 4 Not I,' said he, in strong con- 
 tempt of the queer allurement. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood studied him half a minute, as if 
 measuring and discarding a suspicion of the young 
 philosopher's possible weakness under temptation. 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby accompanied the oddly assorted 
 couple through the town and a short way along the 
 road to the mountain, for the sake of quieting his con- 
 science upon the subject of his leaving them together. 
 He could not have sat down a second time at a table 
 with those hands. He said it : — he could not have done 
 the thing. So the best he could do was to let them go. 
 Like many of his class, he had a mind open to the effect 
 of striking contrasts, and the spectacle of the wealthiest 
 nobleman in Great Britain tramping the road, pack on 
 
94 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 back, with a young nobody for his comrade, a total 
 stranger, who might be a cut-throat, and was avowedly 
 next to a mendicant, charged him with quantities of 
 interj ectory matter, that he caught himself firing to the 
 foreign people on the highway. Hundreds of thousands 
 a year, and tramping it like a pedlar, with a beggar for 
 his friend ! He would have given something to have 
 an English ear near him as he watched them rounding 
 under the mountain they were about to climb. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONCERNING THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE AND THE 
 WORSHIP OF HER, TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 OF SOME OF HER VOTARIES 
 
 In those early days of Fortune's pregnant alternations 
 of colour between the Red and the Black, exhibited 
 publicly, as it were a petroleum spring of the ebony- 
 fiery lake below, Black-Forest Baden was the sprightliest 
 of the ante-chambers of Hades. Thither in the ripe- 
 ness of the year trooped the devotees of the sable 
 goddess to perform sacrifice ; and annually among them 
 the beautiful Li via, the Countess of Fleetwood ; for 
 nowhere else had she sensation of the perfect repose 
 which is rocked to a slumber by gales. 
 
 She was not of the creatures who are excited by an 
 atmosphere of excitement ; she took it as the nymph of 
 the stream her native wave, and swam on the flood with 
 expansive languor, happy to have the master passions 
 about her; one or two of which her dainty hand 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 95 
 
 caressed, fearless of a sting ; the lady petted them as 
 her swans. It surprised her to a gentle contempt of 
 men and women, that they should be ruffled either by 
 love or play. A withholding from the scene will natu- 
 rally arouse disturbing wishes ; but to be present lulls ; 
 for then we live, we are in our element. And who 
 could expect, what sane person can desire, perpetual 
 good luck? Fortune, the goddess, and young Love, 
 too, are divine in their mutability : and Fortune would 
 resemble a humdrum housewife, Love a droning husband, 
 if constancy were practised by them. Observe the 
 staggering and plunging of the blindfold wretch seek- 
 ing to be persuaded of their faithfulness. 
 
 She could make for herself a quiet centre in the heart 
 of the whirlwind, but the whirlwind was required. The 
 clustered lights at the corner of the vale under forest 
 hills, the burst of music, the blazing windows of the 
 saloons of the Furies, and the gamblers advancing and 
 retreating, with their totally opposite views of conse- 
 quences, and fashions of wearing or tearing the mask ; 
 and closer, the figures shifting up and down the pro- 
 menade, known and unknown faces, and the histories 
 half known, half woven, weaving fast, which flew their 
 threads to provoke speculation ; pleasantly embraced 
 and diverted the cool-blooded lady surrounded by her 
 courtiers, who could upon occasion supply the luminous 
 clue or anecdote. She had an intuitive liveliness to 
 detect interchanges of eyes, the shuttle of intrigue ; the 
 mild hypocrisy, the clever audacity, the suspicion con- 
 firmed, the complication threatening to become resonant 
 and terrible ; and the old crossing the young and the 
 young outwitting the old, wiles of fair traitors and 
 dark, knaves of all suits of the pack. A more intimate 
 
96 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 acquaintance with their lineaments inspired a regard 
 for them, such as poets may feign the throned higli 
 moon to entertain for objects causing her rays to flash. 
 
 The simple fools, performing in character, were a 
 neutral people, grotesques and arabesques wreathed about 
 the margins of the scene. Venus or Fortune smote 
 them to a relievo distinguishing one from another. 
 Here, however, as elsewhere, the core of interest was 
 with the serious population, the lovers and the players 
 in earnest, who stood round the furnace and pitched 
 themselves into it, not always under a miscalculation 
 of their chances of emerging transfigured instead of 
 serving for fuel. These, the tragical children of folly, 
 were astute : they played with lightning, and they knew 
 the conditions of the game ; victories were to be had. 
 
 The ulterior conditions of the game, the price paid 
 for a victory, they thought little of: for they were 
 feverish worshippers of the phantasmal deity called the 
 Present ; a god reigning over the Past, appreciable only 
 in the Future ; whose whiff of actual being is composed 
 of the embryo idea of the union of these two periods. 
 Still he is occasionally a benevolent god to the appe- 
 tites ; which have but to be continuous to establish him 
 in permanence ; and as nothing in us more readily sup- 
 poses perpetuity than the appetite rushing to destroy 
 itself, the rational nature of the most universal worship 
 . on earth is perceived at once. 
 
 Now the price paid for a victory is this : that having 
 been favoured in a single instance by the spouse of the 
 aforesaid eminent divinity — the Black Goddess of the 
 golden fringes — men believe in her forever after, behold 
 her everywhere, they belong to her. Their faith as to 
 sowing and reaping has gone ; and so has their capacity 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 97 
 
 to see the actual as it is ; she has the power to attach 
 them to her skirts the more by rewarding their impas- 
 sioned devotion with cuffs and scorns. They have ceased 
 to have a first notion upon anything without a second 
 haunting it, which directs them to propitiate Fortune. 
 
 But I am reminded by the convulsions of Dame 
 Gossip, that the wisdom of our ancestors makes it a 
 mere hammering of commonplace to insist on such 
 reflections. Many of them, indeed, took the union of 
 the Black Goddess and the Rosy Present for the com- 
 position of the very Arch-Fiend. Some had a shot at 
 the strange conjecture, figuring her as tired of men in 
 the end and challenging him below — equally tired of 
 his easy conquests of men since the glorious old times 
 of the duelling saints. By virtue of his one incorrigible 
 weakness, which we know him to have as long as we 
 have it ourselves : viz., the belief in her existence, she 
 is to get the better of him. 
 
 Upon this point the experience of Captain Abrane 
 has a value. Livia was a follower of the Red and Black 
 and the rounding ball in the person of the giant captain, 
 through whom she received her succession of sweetly 
 teasing thrills and shocks, as one of the adventurous 
 company they formed together. The place was known 
 to him as the fair Philistine to another muscular hero ; 
 he had been shorn there before, and sent forth tottering, 
 treating the friends he met as pillars to fall with him ; 
 and when the operation was done thoroughly, he pro- 
 nounced himself refreshed by it, like a more sensible 
 Samson, the cooler for his clipping. Then it was that 
 he relapsed undistractedly upon processes of his mind : 
 and he often said he thought Fortune would beat the 
 devil. 
 
98 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Her power is shown in the moving of her solicitors 
 to think, instantly after they have made their cast, that 
 the reverse of it was what they intended. It comes as 
 though she had withdrawn the bandage from her fore- 
 head and dropped a leaden glance on them, like a great 
 dame angry to have her signal misinterpreted. Well, 
 then, distinguished by the goddess in such a manner, we 
 have it proved to us how she wished to favour : for the 
 reverse wins, and we who are pinched blame not her 
 cruelty but our blind folly. This is true worship. 
 Henceforth the pain of her nip is mingled with the 
 dream of her kiss : between the positive and the 
 imagined of her we remain confused until the purse is 
 an empty body on a gallows, honour too, perhaps. 
 
 Captain Abrane was one of the Countess Livia's 
 numerous courtiers on the border of the promenade 
 under the lighted saloons. A colossus inactive, he had 
 little to say among the chattering circle ; for when 
 seated, cards were wanted to animate him : and he 
 looked entirely out of place and unfitted, like a great 
 vessel's figure-head in a shipwright's yard. 
 
 She murmured : 6 Not this evening ? ' 
 
 Abrane quoted promptly a line of nursery song : 
 • How shall he cut it without e'er a knife ? ' 
 
 'Have we run it down so low?' said she, with no 
 reproach in her tone. 
 
 The captain shrugged over his clean abyss, where 
 nothing was. 
 
 Yesterday their bank presented matronly propor- 
 tions. But an importuned goddess reduces the most 
 voluminous to bare stitches within a few winks of 
 an eye. 
 
 Li via turned to a French gentleman of her court, 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 99 
 
 M. de St. Ombre, and pursued a conversation. He 
 was a stately cavalier, of the Gallicized Frankish out- 
 lines, ready, but grave in his bearing, grave in his de- 
 livery, trimly moustached, with a Guise beard. 
 
 His profound internal question relating to this un- 
 English beauty of the British Isles : — had she no passion 
 in her nature ? was not convinced by her apparent 
 insensibility to Fortune's whips. 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby inserted a word of Bull French out 
 of place from time to time. 
 
 As it might be necessary to lean on the little man 
 for weapons of war, supposing Lord Fleetwood delayed 
 his arrival yet another day, Livia was indulgent. She 
 assisted him to think that he spoke the foreign tongue. 
 
 Mention of Lord Fleetwood set Sir Meeson harping 
 again on his alarms, in consideration of the vagabond 
 object the young lord had roamed away with. 
 
 ' You forget that Russett has gypsy in him : Welsh ! 
 it 's about the same,' said Livia. ' He can take excel- 
 lent care of himself and his purse."' 
 
 ' Countess, he is a good six days overdue.' 
 
 ' He will be in time for the ball at the Schloss.' 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby produced an aspect of the word 
 'if,' so perkily, that the dejected Captain Abrane 
 laughed outright and gave him double reason to fret 
 for Lord Fleetwood's arrival, by saying : 4 If he hangs 
 off much longer, I shall have to come on you for 
 another fifty.' 
 
 Our two pedestrians out of Salzburg were standing 
 up in the night of cloud and pines above the glittering 
 pool, having made their way along the path from the 
 hill anciently dedicated to the god Mercury ; and at 
 the moment when Sir Meeson put forth his frilled wrists 
 
100 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 to say : ' If you had seen his hands — the creature 
 Fleetwood trotted off alone with ! — you 'd be a bit 
 anxious too ' ; the young lord called his comrade to 
 gaze underneath them : ' There they are, hard at it, at 
 their play ! — it 's the word used for the filthiest gutter 
 scramble.'' 
 
 They had come to know something of one another's 
 humours ; which are taken by young men for their 
 characters ; and should the humours please, they are 
 friends, until further humours develop, trying these 
 nascent conservatives hard to suit them to their moods 
 as well as the accustomed. Lord Fleetwood had dis- 
 covered in his companion, besides the spirit of inde- 
 pendence and the powers of thought impressed on him 
 by Woodseer's precocious flashes, a broad playfulness, 
 that trenched on buffoonery ; it astonished, amused, 
 and relieved him, loosening the spell of reverence cast 
 over him by one who could so wonderfully illumine his 
 brain. Prone to admire and bend the knee where he 
 admired, he chafed at subjection, unless he had the 
 particular spell constantly renewed. A tone in him 
 once or twice of late, different from the comrade's, had 
 warned Woodseer to be guarded. 
 
 Susceptible, however, of the extreme contrast between 
 the gamblers below and Nature's lover beside him, 
 Fleetwood returned to his enthusiasm without thinking 
 it a bondage. 
 
 ' I shall never forget the walk we 've had. I have to 
 thank you for the noblest of pleasures. You Ve taught 
 me — well, a thousand things ; the things money can't 
 buy. What mornings they were ! And the dead-tired 
 nights ! Under the rock and up to see the snowy peak 
 pink in a gap of thick mist. You were right : it made 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 101 
 
 a crimsoning colour shine like a new idea. Up in those 
 mountains one walks with the divinities, you said. It 's 
 perfectly true. I shall remember I did. I have a 
 treasure for life ! Now I understand where you get 
 your ideas. The life we lead down there is hoggish. 
 You have chosen the right. You Ye right, over and 
 over again, when you say, the dirty sweaters are nearer 
 the angels for cleanliness than my Lord and Lady 
 Sybarite out of a bath, in chemical scents. A man 
 who thinks, loathes their High Society. I went through 
 Juvenal at college. But you — to be sure, you add ex- 
 ample — make me feel the contempt of it more. I am 
 everlastingly indebted to you,. Yes, I wont forget : 
 you preach against the despising of anything. 1 
 
 Now this was pleasant in Woodseer's ears, inasmuch 
 as it established the young nobleman as the pupil of 
 his philosophy for the conduct of life ; and to fortify 
 him, he replied : — 
 
 6 Set your mind on the beauty, and there 11 be no 
 room for comparisons. Most of them are unjust, pre- 
 cious few instructive. In this case, they spoil both 
 pictures : and that scene down there rather hooks me ; 
 though I prefer the Dachstein in the wane of the after- 
 glow. You called it Carinthia.' 
 
 8 1 did : the beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus — if she 
 is to be a girl!' Fleetwood rejoined. 'She looked 
 burnt out — a spectre. 1 
 
 ' One of the admirably damned, 1 said Woodseer, and 
 he murmured with enjoyment: 'Between the lights — 
 that 's the beauty and the tragedy of Purgatory ! ' 
 
 His comrade fell in with the pictured idea : ' You hit 
 it : — not what you called the ' sublimely milky, 1 and 
 not squalid as you 11 see the faces of the gambling 
 
 t 
 
102 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 women at the tables below. Oblige me — may I beg? 
 — don't clap names on the mountains we Ve seen. It 
 stamps guide-book on them, English tourist, horrors. 
 We'll moralize over the crowds at the tables down 
 there. On the whole, it 's a fairish game : you know 
 the odds against you, as you don't on the Turf or 
 the Bourse. Have your fling ; but don't get bitten. 
 There 's a virus. I 'm not open to it. Others are. 1 
 
 Hereupon Woodseer, wishing to have his individu- 
 ality recognised in the universality it consented to, 
 remarked on an exchequer that could not afford to 
 lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win. 
 
 These were, no doubt, good reasons for abstaining, 
 and they were grand morality. They were, at the 
 same time, customary phrases of the unfleshed in folly. 
 They struck Fleetwood with a curious reminder of the 
 puking inexperienced, whom he had seen subsequently 
 plunge suicidally. He had a sharp vision of the at- 
 tractive forces of the game ; and his elemental nature 
 exulted in siding with the stronger against a pretender 
 to the superhuman. For Woodseer had spoken a trifle 
 loftily, as quite above temptation. To see a fore- 
 warned philosopher lined to try the swim on those tides, 
 pulled along the current, and caught by the undertug 
 of the lasher, would be fun. 
 
 'We'll drop down on them, find our hotel, and 
 have a look at what they're doing, 1 he said, and 
 stepped. 
 
 Woodseer would gladly have remained. The starlit 
 black ridges about him and the dragon's mouth yawning 
 underneath were an opposition of spiritual and mun- 
 dane; innocent, noxious; exciting to the youthful 
 philosopher. He had to follow, and so rapidly in 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 103 
 
 the darkness that he stumbled and fell on an arm ; 
 a small matter. 
 
 Bed-chambers awaited them at the hotel, none of 
 the party : and Fleetwood's man-servant was absent : 
 * Gambling, the rascal ! ' he said. Woodseer heard the 
 first note of the place in that. 
 
 His leader was washed, neatly dressed, and knocking 
 at his door very soon, impatient to be off, and he flung 
 a promise of ' supper presently ' to one whose modest 
 purse had fallen into a debate with this lordly hostelry, 
 counting that a supper and a night there would do for 
 it. They hurried on to the line of promenaders, a river 
 of cross-currents by the side of seated groups ; and the 
 willowy swish of silken dresses, feminine perfumery, 
 cigar-smoke, chatter, laughter, told of pleasure reign- 
 ing. 
 
 Fleetwood scanned the groups. He had seen enough 
 in a moment and his face blackened. A darting waiter 
 was called to him. 
 
 He said to Woodseer, savagely, as it sounded : ' You 
 shall have something to joint your bones !' What 
 cause of wrath he had was past a guess : a wolf at his 
 vitals bit him, hardening his handsome features. 
 
 The waiter darted back, bearing a tray and tall 
 glasses filled each with piled parti-coloured liqueurs, on 
 the top of which an egg-yolk swam. Fleetwood gave 
 example. Swallowing your egg, the fiery-velvet triune 
 behind slips after it, in an easy milky way, like a 
 princess's train on a state-march, and you are completely 
 transformed, very agreeably ; you have become a merry 
 demon. ' Well, yes, it 's next to magic, 1 he replied to 
 Woodseer's astonished snigger after the draught, and 
 explained, that it was a famous Viennese four-of-the- 
 
104 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 morning panacea, the revellers 1 electrical restorer. 'Now 
 you can hold on for an hour or two, and then we'll sup. 
 At Rome ? ■ 
 
 1 Ay ! Druids to-morrow ! ' cried the philosopher 
 bewitched. 
 
 He found himself bowing to a most heavenly lady, 
 composed of day and night in her colouring, but more 
 of night, where the western edge has become a pale steel 
 blade. Men were around her, forming a semi-circle. 
 The world of men and women was mere timber and 
 leafage to this flower of her sex, glory of her kind. 
 How he behaved in her presence, he knew not ; he was 
 beyond self-criticism or conscious reflection; simply the 
 engine of the commixed three liqueurs, with parlous fine 
 thoughts, and a sense of steaming into the infinite. 
 
 To leave her was to have her as a moon in the 
 heavens and to think of her creatively. A swarm of 
 images rushed about her and away, took lustre and 
 shade. She was a miracle of greyness, her eyes trans- 
 lucently grey, a dark-haired queen of the twilights ; 
 and his heart sprang into his brain to picture the novel 
 beauty ; language became a flushed Bacchanal in a ring 
 of dancing similes. Lying beside a bank of silvery 
 cinquefoil against a clear evening sky, where the planet 
 Venus is a point of new and warmer light, one has the 
 vision of her. Or something of Persephone rising to 
 greet her mother, when our beam of day first melts 
 through her as she kneels to gather an early bud of the 
 year, would be near it. Or there is a lake in mid-forest, 
 that curls part in shadow under the foot of morning : 
 there we have her. 
 
 He strained to the earthly and the skyey likenesses of 
 his marvel of human beauty because they bestowed her 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 105 
 
 on him in passing. All the while, he was gazing on a 
 green gaming-table. 
 
 The gold glittered, and it heaped or it vanished. 
 Contemptuous of money, beyond the limited sum for 
 his needs, he gazed ; imagination was blunted in him to 
 the hot drama of the business. Moreover his mind was 
 engaged in insisting that the Evening Star is not to be 
 called Venus, because of certain stories ; and he was 
 vowed to defend his lady from any allusion to them. 
 This occupied him. By degrees, the visible asserted its 
 authority; his look on the coin fell to speculating. 
 Oddly, too, he was often right ; — the money, staked on 
 the other side, would have won. He considered it 
 rather a plain calculation than a guess. 
 
 Philosophy withdrew him from his temporary interest 
 in the tricks of a circling white marble ball. The 
 chuck-farthing of street urchins has quite as much 
 dignity. He compared the creatures dabbling over the 
 board to summer flics on butcher's meat, periodically 
 scared by a cloth. More in the abstract, they were 
 snatching at a snapdragon bowl. It struck him, that 
 the gamblers had thronged on an invitation to drink 
 the round of seed-time and harvest in a gulp. Again 
 they were desperate gleaners, hopping, skipping, bleed- 
 ing, amid a whizz of scythe-blades, for small wisps of 
 booty. Nor was it long before the presidency of an 
 ancient hoary Goat-Satan might be perceived, with 
 skew-eyes and pucker-mouth, nursing a hoof on a knee. 
 
 Our mediaeval Enemy sat symbolical in his deformi- 
 ties, as in old Italian and Dutch thick-line engravings 
 of him. He rolled a ball for souls, excited like kittens, 
 to catch it, and tumbling into the dozens of vacant pits. 
 So it seemed to Woodseer, whose perceptions were dis- 
 
106 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 coloured by hereditary antagonism. Had he preserved 
 his philosopher's eye, he would have known that the 
 Hoofed One is too wily to show himself, owing to his 
 ugliness. The Black Goddess and no other presides at 
 her own game. She (it is good for us to know it) is the 
 Power who challenges the individual, it is he who spreads 
 the net for the mass. She liquefies the brain of man ; 
 he petrifies or ossifies the heart. From her comes crazi- 
 ness, from him perversity : a more provocative and, on 
 the whole, more contagious disease. The gambler does 
 not seek to lead his fellows into perdition ; the snared 
 of the Demon have pleasure in the act. Hence our 
 naturally interested forecasts of the contest between 
 them : for if he is beaten, as all must be at the close of 
 an extended game with her, we have only to harden the 
 brain against her allurements and we enter a clearer 
 field. 
 
 Woodseer said to Fleetwood : ' That ball has a look 
 of a nymph running round and round till she changes 
 to one of the Fates.' 
 
 8 We 11 have a run with her,"' said Fleetwood, keener 
 for business than for metaphors at the moment. 
 
 He received gold for a bank-note. Captain Abrane 
 hurriedly begged a loan. Both of them threw. Neither 
 of them threw on the six numbers Woodseer would 
 have selected, and they lost. He stated that the num- 
 ber of 17 had won before. Abrane tried the transversal 
 enclosing this favoured number. ' Of course ! ' he cried, 
 with foul resignation and a hostile glare : the ball had 
 seated itself and was grinning at him from the lowest 
 of the stalls. 
 
 Fleetwood quitted the table-numbers to throw on 
 Pair; he won, won again, pushed his luck and lost, 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 107 
 
 dragging Abrane with him. The giant varied his tone 
 of acquiescence in Fortune's whims : ' Of course ! I 've 
 only to fling ! Luck hangs right enough till I put 
 down my stake.' 
 
 ' If the luck has gone three times, the chances . . . ' 
 Woodseer was rather inquiring than pronouncing : 
 Lord Fleetwood cut him short. 'The chances are 
 equally the contrary ! ' and discomposed his argumenta- 
 tive mind. 
 
 As argument in such a place was impossible, he had a 
 wild idea of example — 'just to see'; and though he 
 smiled, his brain was liquefying. Upon a calculation 
 of the chances, merely for the humour of it, he laid a 
 silver piece on the first six, which had been neglected. 
 They were now blest. He laid his winnings on the 
 number 17. Who would have expected it ? why, the 
 player, surely ! Woodseer comported himself like a 
 veteran : he had proved that you can calculate the 
 chances. Instead of turning in triumph to Lord Fleet- 
 wood, he laid gold pieces to hug the number 17, and 
 ten in the centre. And it is the truth, he hoped then 
 to lose and have done with it — after proving his case. 
 The ball whirled, kicked, tried for seat in two, in three 
 points, and entered 17. The usual temporary wonder- 
 ment flew round the table ; and this number was 
 courted in dread, avoided with apprehension. 
 
 Abrane let fly a mighty breath : ' Virgin, by Jove ! ' 
 
 Success was a small matter to Gower Woodseer. He 
 displayed his contempt of fortune by letting his heap of 
 bank-notes lie on Impair, and he won. Abrane bade 
 him say * Maximum ' in a furious whisper. He did so, 
 as one at home with the word ; and winning repeatedly, 
 observed to Fleetwood : ' Now I can understand what 
 
108 THE AMAZING iMARRIAGE 
 
 historians mean, in telling us of heroes rushing into the 
 fray and vainly seeking death. I always thought death 
 was to be had, if you were in earnest.' 
 
 Fleetwood scrutinized the cast of his features and the 
 touch of his fingers on the crispy paper. 
 
 1 Come to another of these " green fields," ' he re- 
 turned briefly. ' The game here is child's play.' 
 
 Urging Virgin Luck not to quit his initiatory table, 
 the captain reluctantly went at their heels. Shortly 
 before the tables were clad in mantles for the night, he 
 reported to Li via one of the great cases of Virgin Luck ; 
 described it, from the silver piece to the big heap of 
 notes, and drew on his envy of the fellow to sketch the 
 indomitable coolness shown in following or in quitting 
 a run. ' That fellow it is, Fleetwood's tag-rag ; holds 
 his head like a street-fiddler ; Woodier or some name. 
 But there 's nothing to be done if we don't cultivate 
 him. He must have pocketed a good three thousand 
 and more. They had a quarrel about calculations of 
 chances, and Fleet ran the V up his forehead at a piece 
 of impudence. Fellow says some high-flying stuff; 
 Fleet brightens like a Sunday chimney-sweep. If I 
 believed in Black Arts, upon my word ! ' 
 
 ' Russett is not usually managed with ease, 1 the 
 lady said. 
 
 Her placid observation was directed on the pair then 
 descending the steps. 
 
 'Be careful how you address this gentleman,' she 
 counselled Abrane. ' The name is not Woodier, I 
 know. It must be the right name or none. 1 
 
 Livia's fairest smile received them. She heard the 
 captain accosting the child of luck as Mr. Woodier, 
 and she made a rustle in rising to take Fleetwood's arm. 
 
THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 10& 
 
 c We haven't dined, we have to sup,' said he. 
 
 'You are released at the end of the lamps. You 
 redeem your ring, Russett, and I will restore it. I 
 have to tell you, Henrietta is here to-morrow.' 
 
 6 She might be in a better place.' 
 
 1 The place where she is to be seen is not generally 
 undervalued by men. It is not her fault that she is 
 absent. The admiral was persuaded to go and attend 
 those cavalry manoeuvres with the Grand Duke, to 
 whom he had been civil when in command of the 
 Mediterranean squadron. You know, the admiral be- 
 lieves he has military — I mean soldierly — genius ; and 
 the delusion may have given him wholesome exercise and 
 helped him to forget his gout. So far, Henrietta will 
 have been satisfied. She cannot have found much 
 amusement among dusty troopers or at that court at 
 Carlsruhe. Our French milliner there has helped in 
 retarding her — quite against her will. She has had to 
 choose a ball-dress for the raw mountain-girl they have 
 with them, and get her fitted, and it 's a task ! Why 
 take her to the ball ? But the admiral 's infatuated 
 with this girl, and won't hear of her exclusion — because, 
 he says, she understands a field of battle ; and the 
 Ducal party have taken to her. Ah, Russett, you 
 should not have flown ! No harm, only Henrietta does 
 require a trifle of management. She writes, that she is 
 sure of you for the night at the Schloss.' 
 
 ' Why, ma'am ? ' 
 
 6 You have given your word. " He never breaks his 
 lightest word," she says.' 
 
 6 It sounds like the beginning of respect.' 
 
 'The rarest thing men teach women to feel for 
 them ! ' 
 
TlO THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 1 A respectable love match — eh ? Good Lord ! — 
 You "11 be civil to my friend. You have struck him to 
 the dust. You have your one poetical admirer in him. 1 
 
 ' I am honoured, Russett.' 
 
 6 Cleared out, I suppose ? Abrane is a funnel for 
 pouring into that Bank. Have your fun as you like it ! 
 I shall get supplies to-morrow. By the way, you have 
 that boy Cressett here. What are you doing with 
 him?' 
 
 Li via spoke of watching over him and guarding him. 
 
 ' He was at the table beside me, bursting to have a 
 fling ; and my friend Mr. Woodseer said, it was " Adonis 
 come to spy the boar " : — the picture ! ' 
 
 Prompt as bugle to the breath, Li via proposed to bet 
 him fifty pounds that she would keep young Cressett 
 from gambling a single louis. The pretty saying did 
 not touch her. 
 
 Fleetwood moved and bowed. Sir Meeson Corby 
 simulated a petrifaction of his frame at seeing the 
 Countess of Fleetwood actually partly bent with her 
 gracious acknowledgment of the tramp's gawky homage. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SMALL CAUSES 
 
 A clock sounded one of the later morning hours of 
 the night as Gower Woodseer stood at his hotel door, 
 having left Fleetwood with a band of revellers. The 
 night was now clear. Stars were low over the ridge of 
 pines, dropped to a league of our strange world to 
 
SMALL CAUSES 111 
 
 record the doings. Beneath this roof lay the starry- 
 She. He was elected to lie beneath it also : and he 
 beheld his heavenly lady floating on the lull of soft 
 white cloud among her sister spheres. After the way 
 of imaginative young men, he had her features more 
 accurately now she was hidden, and he idealized her 
 more. He could escape for a time from his coil of 
 similes and paint for himself the irids of her large, long, 
 grey eyes darkly rimmed ; purest water-grey, lucid 
 within the ring, beneath an arch of lashes. He had 
 them fast ; but then he fell to contemplating their ex- 
 ceeding rareness ; and the mystery of the divinely grey 
 swung a kindled fancy to the flight with some queen- 
 witch of woods, of whom a youth may dream under 
 the spell of twilights, East or West, among forest 
 branches. 
 
 She had these marvellous eyes and the glamour for 
 men. She had not yet met a man with the poetical 
 twist in the brain to prize her elementally. All ad- 
 mitted the glamour ; none of her courtiers were able to 
 name it, even the poetical head giving it a name did not 
 think of the witch in her looks as a witch in her deeds, 
 a modern daughter of the mediaeval. To her giant 
 squire the eyes of the lady were queer : they were unlit 
 glass lamps to her French suppliant ; and to the others, 
 they were attractively uncommon ; the charm for them 
 being in her fine outlines, her stature, carriage of her 
 person, and unalterable composure; particularly her 
 latent daring. She had the effect on the general mind 
 of a lofty crag-castle with a history. There was a whiff 
 of gunpowder exciting the atmosphere in the anecdotal 
 part of the history known. 
 
 Wood seer sat for a certain time over his note-book. 
 
112 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 He closed it with a thrilling conceit of the right thing 
 written down ; such as entomologists feel when they 
 have pinned the rare insect. But what is butterfly or 
 beetle compared with the chiselled sentences carved out 
 of air to constitute us part owner of the breathing image 
 and spirit of an adored fair woman ? We repeat them, 
 and the act of repeating them makes her close on ours, 
 by virtue of the eagle thought in the stamped gold of 
 the lines. 
 
 Then, though she is not ever to be absolutely ours 
 (and it is an impoverishing desire that she should be), 
 we have beaten out the golden sentence — the essential 
 she and we in one. But is it so precious after all ? A 
 suspicious ring of an adjective drops us on a sickening 
 descent. 
 
 The author dashed at his book, examined, approved, 
 keenly enjoyed, and he murderously scratched the 
 adjective. She stood better without it, as a bright 
 planet star issuing from clouds, which are perhaps an 
 adornment to our hackneyed moon. This done, he 
 restored the book to his coat's breast-pocket, smiling 
 or sneering at the rolls of bank-notes there, disdaining 
 to count them. They stuffed an inner waistcoat pocket 
 and his trousers also. They at any rate warranted 
 that we can form a calculation of the chances, let 
 Lord Fleetwood rave as he may please. 
 
 Woodseer had caught a glimpse of the elbow-point 
 of his coat when flinging it back to the chair. There 
 was distinctly abrasion. Philosophers laugh at such 
 things. But they must be the very ancient pallium 
 philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to 
 merriment over the spectacle of nether garments gapped 
 at the spot where man is most vulnerable. He got 
 
SMALL CAUSES 113 
 
 loose from them and held them up to the candle, and 
 the rays were admitted, neither winking nor peeping. 
 Serviceable old clothes, no doubt. Time had not dealt 
 them the final kick before they scored a good record. 
 They dragged him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession 
 of some weakness, that he could not analyze for the 
 swirl of emotional thoughts in the way ; and they had 
 him to the ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a 
 mere squat toad through one of these petty material 
 strokes. Where then is Philosophy ? But who can be / 
 philosopher and the fervent admirer of a glorious lady ? 
 Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can presume to 
 think of her or stand within fifty miles of her orbit ? 
 
 A dreary two hours brought round daylight. Wood- 
 seer quitted his restless bed and entered the abjured 
 habiliments, chivalrous enough to keep from denounc- 
 ing them until he could cast the bad skin they now 
 were to his uneasy sensations. He remembered having 
 stumbled and fallen on the slope of the hill into this 
 vale, and probably then the mischief had occurred : 
 though a brush would have been sufficient, the slightest 
 collision. Only, it was odd that the accident should 
 have come to pass just previous to his introduction. 
 How long antecedent was it? He belaboured his 
 memory to reckon how long it was from the moment 
 of the fall to the first sight of that lady. 
 
 His window looked down on the hotel stable-yard. 
 A coach-house door was open. Odd or not — and it 
 certainly looked like fate — that he should be bowing 
 to his lady so shortly after the mishap expelling him, 
 he had to leave the place. A groom in the yard 
 was hailed, and cheerily informed him he could be 
 driven to Carlsruhe as soon as the coachman had 
 
 H 
 
114 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 finished his breakfast. At Carlsruhc a decent refit- 
 ting might be obtained, and he could return from exile 
 that very day, thanks to the praiseworthy early hours 
 of brave old Germany. 
 
 He had swallowed a cup of coffee with a roll of stale 
 bread, in the best of moods, and entered his carriage ; 
 he was calling the order to start when a shout surprised 
 his ear : < The fiddler bolts ! ' 
 
 Captaine Abrane's was the voice. About twenty 
 paces behind, Abrane, Fleetwood, and one whom they 
 called Chummy Potts, were wildly waving arms. Wood- 
 seer could hear the captain's lowered roar : ' Race you, 
 Chummy, couple of louis, catch him first ! ' The two 
 came pelting up to the carriage abreast. 
 
 They were belated revellers, and had been carelessly 
 strolling under the pinky cloudlets bed ward, after a pro- 
 longed carousal with the sons and daughters of hilarious 
 nations, until the apparition of Virgin Luck on the wing 
 shocked all prospect of a dead fight with the tables that 
 day. 
 
 8 Here, come, no, by Jove, you, Mr. Woodsir ! won't 
 do, not a bit ! can't let you go,' cried Abrane, as he 
 puffed. ' What ! cut and run and leave us, post 
 winnings — bankers — knock your luck on the head ! 
 What a fellow ! Can't let you. Countess never for- 
 give us. You promised — swore it — play for her. 
 Struck all aheap to hear of your play ! You 've got 
 the trick. Her purse for you in my pocket. Never a 
 fellow played like you. Cool as a cook over a gridiron ! 
 Comme un pliare! St. Ombre says — that Frenchman. 
 You astonished the Frenchman ! And now cut and 
 run ? Can't allow it. Honour of the country at 
 stake.'* 
 
SMALL CAUSES 115 
 
 ' Hands off ! ' Woodseer bellowed, feeling himself a 
 leaky vessel in dock, his infirmities in danger of exposure. 
 ' If you pull ! — what the deuce do you want ? Stop ! ' 
 
 6 Out you come,' said the giant, and laughed at the 
 fun to his friends, who were entirely harmonious when 
 not violently dissenting, as is the way with Night's 
 rollickers before their beds have reconciled them to the 
 day-beams. 
 
 Woodseer would have had to come and was coming ; 
 he happened to say : ' Don't knock my pipe out of my 
 mouth,' and touched a chord in the giant. 
 
 ' All right ; smoke your pipe, 1 was answered to his 
 remonstrance. 
 
 During the amnesty, Fleetwood inquired : ' Where 
 are you going ? ' 
 
 ' For a drive, to be sure. Don't you see ! ' 
 
 ' You 11 return?' 
 
 ' I intend to return.' 
 
 ' He 's beastly excited,' quoth Abrane. 
 
 Fleetwood silenced him, though indeed Woodseer 
 appeared suspiciously restive. 
 
 6 Step down and have a talk with me before you 
 start. You 're not to go yet."' 
 
 6 1 must. I 'm in a hurry.' 
 
 'What's the hurry?' 
 
 6 1 want to smoke and think.' 
 
 'Takes a carriage on the top of the morning to 
 smoke and think ! Hark at that ! ' Abrane sang out. 
 'Oh, come along quietly, you fellow, there's a good 
 fellow ! It concerns us all, every man Jack ; we 're all 
 bound up in your fortunes. Fellow with luck like 
 yours can't pretend to behave independently. Out of 
 reason ! ' 
 
116 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' Do you give me your word you return ? 1 said 
 Fleetwood. 
 
 Woodseer replied : ' Very well, I do ; there, I give 
 my word. Hang it ! now I know what they mean by 
 " anything for a quiet life.* Just a shake brings us 
 down on that cane-bottomed chair ! ' 
 
 1 You return to-day ? 1 
 
 1 To-day, yes, yes. 1 
 
 Fleetwood signified the captive's release; and Abrane 
 immediately suggested : — 
 
 'Pop old Chummy in beside the fellow to mount 
 guard.*' 
 
 Potts was hustled and precipitated into the carriage 
 by the pair, with whom he partook this last glimmer of 
 their night's humorous extravagances, for he was an 
 easy creature. The carriage drove off. 
 
 ' Keep him company ! ' they shouted. 
 
 1 Escort him back ! 1 said he, nodding. 
 
 He remarked to Woodseer : ' With your permission, 1 
 concerning the seat he took, and that c a draught of 
 morning air would do him good.' Then he laughed 
 politely, exchanged wavy distant farewells with his 
 comrades, touched a breast-pocket for his case of cigars, 
 pulled forth one, obtained ' the loan of a light, 1 blew 
 clouds and fell into the anticipated composure, quite 
 understanding the case and his office. 
 
 Both agreed as to the fine morning it was. Woodseer 
 briefly assented to his keeper's reiterated encomium on 
 the morning, justified on oath. A fine morning, indeed. 
 6 Damned if I think I ever saw so fine a morning ! ' 
 Potts cried. He had no other subject of conversation 
 with this hybrid : and being equally disposed for hot 
 discourse or for sleep, the deprivation of the one and 
 
SMALL CAUSES 117 
 
 the other forced him to seek amusement in his famous 
 reading of character ; which was profound among the 
 biped equine, jockeys, turfmen, sharpers, pugilists, 
 demireps. He fronted Woodseer with square shoulders 
 and wide knees, an elbow on one, a fist on the other, 
 engaged in what he termed the 6 prodding of his eel, 1 
 or * nicking of his man, 1 a method of getting straight 
 at the riddle of the fellow by the test of how long he 
 could endure a flat mute stare and return look for look 
 unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly 
 covers the insolence. But if by chance an equable, not 
 too narrowly focussed, counterstare is met, our imper- 
 tinent inquisitor may resemble the fisherman pulled into 
 deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man, 
 he was not attempting to fathom him : he had besides 
 other stuff in his head. Potts had naught, and the 
 poor particle he was wriggled under detection. 
 
 ' Tobacco before breakfast ! ' he said disgustedly, 
 tossing his cigar to the road. ' Your pipe holds on. 
 Bad thing, I can tell you, that smoking on an empty 
 stomach. No trainer 'd allow it, not for a whole fee or 
 double. Kills your wind. Let me ask you, my good 
 sir, are you going to turn ? We Ve sat a fairish stretch. 
 I begin to want my bath and a shave, linen and coffee. 
 Thirsty as a dog.' 
 
 He heard with stupefaction, that he could alight on 
 the spot, if he pleased, otherwise he would be driven 
 into Carlsruhe. And now they had a lingual encounter, 
 hot against cool; but the eyes of Chummy Potts having 
 been beaten, his arguments and reproaches were not 
 backed by the powerful looks which are an essential 
 part of such eloquence as he commanded. They fled 
 from his enemy's currishly, even while he was launching 
 
118 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 epithets. His pathetic position subjected him to beg 
 that Woodseer 'would direct the driver to turn, for he 
 had no knowledge of 'their German lingo.' And said 
 he : ' You \e nothing to laugh at, that I can see. I'm 
 at your mercy, you brute ; caught in a trap. I never 
 A alk ; — and the sun fit to fry a mackerel along that 
 road ! I apologize for abusing you ; I can't do more. 
 You 're an infernally clever player — there ! And, upon 
 my soul, I could drink ditchwater ! But if you 're 
 Q-oino 1 in for transactions at Carlsruhe, mark my words, 
 your luck 's gone. Laugh as much as you like.' 
 
 Woodseer happened to be smiling over the excellent 
 reason for not turning back which inflicted the woful- 
 ness. He was not without sympathy for a thirsty 
 wretch, and guessing, at the sight of an avenue of limes 
 to the left of the road, that a wayside inn was below, 
 he said : ' You can have coffee or beer in two minutes,' 
 and told the driver where to pull up. 
 
 The sight of a grey-jacketed, green-collared sports- 
 man, dog at heel, crossing the flat land to the hills of 
 the forest, pricked him enviously, and caused him to ask 
 what change had come upon him, that he should be 
 hurrying to a town for a change of clothes. Just as 
 Potts was about to jump out, a carriage, with a second 
 behind it, left the inn door. He rubbed a hand on his 
 unshaven chin, tried a glance at his shirt-front, and 
 remarking : 6 It won't be any one who knows me,' stood 
 to let the carriages pass. In the first were a young lady 
 and a gentleman : the lady brilliantly fair, an effect of 
 auburn hair and complexion, despite the signs of a storm 
 that had swept them and had not cleared from her eye- 
 lids. Apparently her maid, a damsel sitting straight 
 up, occupied the carriage following; and this fresh-faced 
 
SMALL CAUSES 119 
 
 young person twice quickly and bluntly bent her head 
 as she was driven by. Potts was unacquainted with 
 the maid. But he knew the lady well, or well enough 
 for her inattention to be the bigger puzzle. She gazed 
 at the Black Forest hills in the steadiest manner, with 
 eyes betraying more than they saw ; which solved part 
 of the puzzle, of course. Her reasons for declining to 
 see him were exposed by the presence of the gentleman 
 beside her. At the same time, in so highly bred a girl, 
 a defenceless exposure was unaccountable. Half a nod 
 and the shade of a smile would have been the proper 
 course ; and her going along on the road to the valley 
 seemed to say it might easily have been taken ; except 
 that there had evidently been a bit of a scene. 
 
 Potts ranked Henrietta's beauty far above her cousin 
 Livia's. He was therefore personally offended by her 
 disregard of him, and her bit of a scene with the fellow 
 carrying her off did him injury on behalf of his friend 
 Fleetwood. He dismissed Woodseer curtly. Thirsting 
 more to gossip than to drink, he took a moody draught 
 of beer at the inn, and by the aid of a conveyance, 
 ' hastily built of rotten planks to serve his needs, and 
 drawn by a horse of the old wars,' as he reported on his 
 arrival at Baden, reached that home of the maltreated 
 innocents twenty minutes before the countess and her 
 party were to start for lunch up the Lichtenthal. 
 Naturally, he was abused for letting his bird fly : 
 but as he was shaven, refreshed, and in clean linen, 
 he could pull his shirt-cuffs and take seat at his 
 breakfast-table with equanimity while Abrane de- 
 nounced him. 
 
 'I'll bet you the fellow's luck has gone," 1 said Potts. 
 1 He 's no new hand and you don't think him so either, 
 
120 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Fleet. I Ve looked into the fellow's eye and seen a 
 leery old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile stuff'. 
 However, perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering 
 Carlsruhe road for nothing.' 
 
 lie screwed a look at the earl, who sent Abrane 
 to carry a message and heard the story Potts had to 
 tell. 
 
 1 Henrietta Fakenham ! no mistake about her ; driv- 
 ing out from a pothouse ; man beside her, military 
 man ; might be a German. And, if you please, quite 
 unacquainted with your humble servant, though we 
 were as close as you to me. Something went wrong in 
 that pothouse. Red eyes. There had been a scene, 
 one could swear. Behind the lady another carriage, 
 and her maid. Never saw the girl before, and sets to 
 bowing and smirking at me, as if I was the fellow of all 
 others ! Comical. I made sure they were bound for 
 this place. They were on the Strasburg road. No 
 sign of them ? ' 
 
 ' You speak to me ? 1 said Fleetwood. 
 
 Potts muttered. He had put his foot into it. 
 
 'You have a bad habit of speaking to yourself,'' 
 Fleetwood remarked, and left him. He suffered from 
 the rustics he had to deal with among his class, and it 
 was not needed that he should thunder at them to make 
 his wrath felt. 
 
 Livia swam in, asking : ' What has come to Russett ? 
 He passed me in one of his black fits.' 
 
 The tale of the Carlsruhe road was repeated by Potts. 
 She reproved him. 4 How could you choose Russett for 
 such a report as that ! The admiral was on the road 
 behind. Henrietta — you 're sure it was she ? German 
 girls have much the same colouring. The gentleman 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 121 
 
 with her must have been one of the Court equerries. 
 They were driving to some chateau or battlefield the 
 admiral wanted to inspect. Good-looking man ? Mili- 
 tary man ? ' 
 
 'Oh! the man! pretty fair, I dare say,' Potts 
 rejoined. 'If it wasn't Henrietta Fakenham, I see 
 with the back of my head. German girl ! The maid 
 was a German girl.' 
 
 6 That may well be, 1 said Li via. 
 
 She conceived the news to be of sufficient importance 
 for her to countermand the drive up the Lichtenthal, 
 and take the Carlsruhe road instead; for Henrietta was 
 weak, and Chillon Kirby an arch-plotter, and pleader 
 too, one of the desperate lovers. He was outstaying 
 his leave of absence already, she believed ; he had to be 
 in England. If he feared to lose Henrietta, he would 
 not hesitate to carry her off. Livia knew him, and 
 knew the power of his pleading with a firmer woman 
 than Henrietta. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 
 
 Nothing to rouse alarm was discovered at Carlsruhe. 
 Livia's fair cousin was there with the red-haired gaunt 
 girl of the mountains; and it was frankly stated by 
 Henrietta, that she had accompanied the girl a certain 
 distance along the Strasburg road, for her to see the 
 last of her brother Chillon on his way to England. 
 Livia was not the woman to push inquiries. On that 
 
122 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 subject, she merely said, as soon as they were alone 
 together : ' You seem to have had the lion's share of 
 the parting.'' 
 
 ' Yes, we passed Mr. Chumley Potts, 1 was Henrietta's 
 immediate answer ; and her reference to him disarmed 
 Li via. 
 
 They smiled at his name transiently, but in agree- 
 ment : the tattler-spout of their set was a fatal person 
 to encounter, and each deemed the sudden apparition 
 of him in the very early morning along the Carlsruhe 
 road rather magical. 
 
 4 You place particular confidence in Russett's fidelity 
 to his word, Riette — as you have been hearing yourself 
 called. You should be serious by this time. Russett 
 won't bear much more. I counted on the night of the 
 Ball for the grand effect. You will extinguish every 
 woman there — and if he is absent ? ' 
 
 ' I shall excuse him.' 
 
 ' You are not in a position to be so charitable. You 
 ought to know your position, and yourself too, a little 
 better than you do. How could you endure poverty ? 
 Chillon Kirby stands in his uniform, and all 's told. He 
 can manoeuvre, we know. He got the admiral away to 
 take him to those reviews cleverly. But is he thinking 
 of your interests when he does it ? He requires twenty 
 years of active service to give you a roof to your head. 
 I hate such allusions. But look for a moment at your 
 character : you must have ordinary luxuries and plea- 
 sures, and if you were to find yourself grinding against 
 common necessities — imagine it ! Russett is quite 
 manageable. He is, trust me ! He is a gentleman ; 
 he has more ability than most young men : he can do 
 anything he sets his mind to do. He has his great 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 123 
 
 estates and fortune all in his own hands. We call him 
 eccentric. He is only young, with a lot of power. Add, 
 he's in love, and some one distracts him. Not love, do 
 you say ? — You look it. He worships. He has no 
 chance given him to show himself at his best. Perhaps 
 he is off again now. Will you bet me he is not ? ' 
 
 ' I should incline to make the bet, if I betted," said 
 Henrietta. 4 His pride is in his word, and supposing 
 he 's in love, it 's with his pride, which never quits him. 1 
 
 ' There 's firmness in a man who has pride of that 
 kind. You must let me take you back to Baden. I 
 hold to having you with me to-day. You must make 
 an appearance there. The admiral will bring us his 
 Miss Kirby to-morrow, if he is bound to remain here 
 to-night. There's no harm in his bachelor dinners. 
 I suspect his twinges of gout come of the prospect of 
 affairs when he lands in England. Remember our bill 
 with Madame Clemence. There won't be the ghost of 
 a bank-note for me if Russett quits the field ; we shall 
 all be stranded.' 
 
 Henrietta inquired : ' Does it depend on my going 
 with you to-day ? ' 
 
 * Consider, that he is now fancying a thousand things. 
 We won't talk of the road to Paris.' 
 
 A shot of colour swept over Henrietta. 
 
 6 1 will speak to papa : — if he can let me go. He 
 has taken to Miss Kirby.' 
 
 4 Does she taste well ? ' 
 
 Henrietta debated. ' It 's impossible to dislike her. 
 Oh ! she is wild ! She knows absolutely nothing of the 
 world. She can do everything we can't — or don't dare 
 to try. Men would like her. Papa's beginning to 
 dote. He says she would have made a first-rate soldier. 
 
124 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She fears blood as little as her morning cup of milk. 
 One of the orderlies fell rather badly from a frightened 
 horse close by our carriage. She was out in a moment 
 and had his head on her lap, calling to papa to keep 
 the carriage fast and block the way of the squadron, 
 for the man's leg was hurt. I really thought we were 
 lost. At these manoeuvres anything may happen, at 
 any instant. Papa will follow the horse-artillery. You 
 know his vanity to be a military quite as much as 
 a naval commander — like the Greeks and Romans, 
 he says. We took the bruised man into our carriage and 
 drove him to camp, Carinthia nursing him on the way."' 
 
 ' Carinthia ! She 's well fitted with her name. What 
 with her name and her hair and her build and her 
 singular style of attire, one wonders at her coming into 
 civilized parts. She 's utterly unlike Chillon.' 
 
 Henrietta reddened at the mention of one of her own 
 thoughts in the contrasting of the pair. 
 
 They had their points of likeness, she said. 
 
 It did not concern Li via to hear what these were. 
 Back to Baden, with means to procure the pleasant 
 shocks of the galvanic battery there, was her thought ; 
 for she had a fear of the eaiTs having again departed in 
 a huff at Henrietta's behaviour. 
 
 The admiral consented that his daughter should go, 
 as soon as he heard that Miss Kirby was to stay. He 
 had when a young man met her famous father ; he 
 vowed she was the Old Buccaneer young again in petti- 
 coats and had made prize of an English man-of-war by 
 storm ; all the profit, however, being his. This he 
 proved with a courteous clasp of the girl and a show of 
 the salute on her cheek, which he presumed to take 
 at the night's farewell. 'She's my tonic,' he pro- 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 125 
 
 claimed heartily. She seemed to Livia somewhat un- 
 strung and toneless. The separation from her brother 
 in the morning might account for it. And a man of 
 the admiral's age could be excused if he exalted the 
 girl. Senility, like infancy, is fond of plain outlines for 
 the laying on of its paints. The girl had rugged brows, 
 a short nose, red hair ; no young man would look at 
 her twice. She was utterly unlike Chillon ! Kissing 
 her hand to Henrietta from the steps of the hotel, the 
 girl's face improved. 
 
 Livia's little squire, Sir Meeson Corby, ejaculated as 
 they were driving down the main street, ' Fleetwood's 
 tramp ! There he goes. Now see, Miss Fakenham, 
 the kind of object Lord Fleetwood picks up and calls 
 friend! — calls that object friend! . . . But, what? 
 He has been to a tailor and a barber ! ' 
 
 8 Stop the coachman. Run, tell Mr. Woodseer I wish 
 him to join us,' Livia said, and Sir Meeson had to 
 thank his tramp for a second indignity. He protested, 
 he simulated remonstrance, — he had to go, really feeling 
 a sickness. 
 
 The singular-looking person, whose necessities or 
 sense of the decencies had, unknown to himself and to 
 the others, put them all in motion that day, swung 
 round listening to the challenge to arms, as the puffy 
 little man's delivery of the countess's message sounded. 
 He was respectably clad, he thought, in the relief of his 
 escape from the suit of clothes discarded, and he silently 
 followed Sir Meeson's trot to the carriage. 'Should 
 have mistaken you for a German to-day, sir,' the latter 
 said, and trotted on. 
 
 'A stout one,' Woodseer replied, with his happy 
 indifference to his exterior. 
 
126 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 His dark lady's eyes were kindly overlooking, like the 
 heavens. Her fair cousin, to whom he bowed, awakened 
 him to a perception of the spectacle causing the slight, 
 quick arrest of her look, in an astonishment not unlike 
 the hiccup in speech, while her act of courtesy pro- 
 ceeded. At once he was conscious of the price he paid 
 for respectability, and saw the Teuton skin on the slim 
 Cambrian, baggy at shoulders, baggy at seat, pinched 
 at the knees, short at the heels, showing outrageously 
 every spot where he ought to have been bigger or 
 smaller. How accept or how reject the invitation to 
 drive in such company to Baden ! 
 
 ' You Ye decided enough, sir, in your play, they tell 
 me,' the vindictive little baronet commented on his 
 hesitation, and Woodseer sprang to the proffered vacant 
 place. But he had to speak of his fly waiting for him 
 at the steps of a certain hotel. 
 
 4 Best hotel in the town ! i Sir Meeson exclaimed 
 pointedly to Henrietta, reading her constraint with 
 this comical object before her. It was the admiral's 
 hotel they stopped at. 
 
 ' Be so good as to step down and tell the admiral he 
 is to bring Madame Clemence in his carriage to-morrow ; 
 and on your way, you will dismiss Mr. Woodseer's fly, 1 
 Livia mildly addressed her squire. He stared: again 
 he had to go, muttering : 6 That nondescript's footman ! ' 
 and his mischance in being checked and crossed and 
 humiliated perpetually by a dirty-fisted vagabond im- 
 postor astounded him. He sent the flyman to the 
 carriage for orders. 
 
 Admiral Fakenham and Carinthia descended. Sir 
 Meeson heard her cry out : ' It is you ! ' and up stood 
 the pretentious lout in the German sack, affecting the 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 127 
 
 graces of a born gentleman fresh from Paris, — bowing, 
 smirking, excusing himself for something ; and he 
 jumped down to the young lady, he talked intimately 
 with her, with a joker's air; he roused the admiral to 
 an exchange of jokes, and the countess and Miss Faken- 
 ham more than smiled ; evidently at his remarks, un- 
 observant of the preposterous figure he cut. Sir Meeson 
 Corby had intimations of the disintegration of his 
 country if a patent tramp burlesquing in those clothes 
 could be permitted to amuse English ladies of high 
 station, quite at home with them. Among the signs 
 of England's downfall, this was decidedly one. What 
 to think of the admiral's favourite when, having his 
 arm paternally on her shoulder, she gave the tramp her 
 hand at parting, and then blushed ! All that the ladies 
 had to say about it was, that a spread of colour rather 
 went to change the character of her face. 
 
 Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened 
 under the recollection of Chillon's words to her as they 
 mounted the rise of the narrow vale, after leaving the 
 lame gentleman to his tobacco on the grass below the 
 rocks. Her brother might have counselled her wisely 
 and was to be obeyed. Only, the great pleasure in see- 
 ing the gentleman again inspired gratitude : he brought 
 the scene to her ; and it was alive, it chatted and it 
 beckoned ; it neighboured her home ; she had passed it 
 on her walk away from her home ; the gentleman was 
 her link to the mountain paths ; he was just outside an 
 association with her father and mother. At least, her 
 thinking of them led to him, he to them. Now she had 
 lost Chillon, no one was near to do so much. Besides, 
 Chillon loved Henrietta ; he was her own. His heart 
 was hers and his mind his country's. This gentleman 
 
128 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 loved the mountains ; the sight of him breathed moun- 
 tain air. To see him next day was her anticipation : for 
 it would be at the skirts of hilly forest land, where pine- 
 trees arc a noble family, different from the dusty firs of 
 the weariful plains, which had tired her eyes of late. 
 
 Baden was her first peep at the edges of the world 
 since she had grown to be a young woman. She had 
 but a faint idea of the significance of gambling. The 
 brilliant lights, the band music, the sitting groups and 
 company of promenaders were novelties ; the Ball of the 
 ensuing night at the Schloss would be a wonder, she 
 acknowledged in response to Henrietta, who was trying 
 to understand her ; and she admired her ball-dress, she 
 said, looking unintelligently when she heard that she 
 would be guilty of slaying numbers of gentlemen before 
 the night was over. Madame Clemence thought her 
 chances in that respect as good as any other young 
 lady's, if only she could be got to feel interested. But 
 at a word of the pine forest, and saying she intended 
 to climb the hills early with the light in the morning, a 
 pointed eagerness flushed Carinthia, the cold engraving 
 became a picture of colour. 
 
 She was out with the earliest light. Yesterday's part- 
 ing between Chillon and Henrietta had taught her to 
 know some little about love ; and if her voice had been 
 heeded by Chillon's beloved, it would not have been a 
 parting. Her only success was to bring a flood of tears 
 from Henrietta. The tears at least assured her that 
 her brother's beautiful girl had no love for the other 
 one, — the young nobleman of the great wealth, who was 
 to be at the Ball, and had ( gone flying, 1 Admiral Faken- 
 ham shrugged to say ; for Lord Fleetwood was nowhere 
 seen. 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 129 
 
 The much talk of him on the promenade overnight 
 fetched his name to her thoughts ; he scarcely touched 
 a mind that her father filled when she was once again 
 breathing early morning air among the stems of climb- 
 ing pines, broken alleys of the low-sweeping spruce 
 branches and the bare, straight shafts carrying their 
 heads high in the march upward. Her old father was 
 arch-priest of such forest land, always recoverable to her 
 there. The suggestion of mountains was enough to 
 make her mind play, and her old father and she were 
 aware of one another without conversing in speech. 
 He pointed at things to observe ; he shared her satisfied 
 hunger for the solitudes of the dumb and growing and 
 wild' sweet-smelling. He would not let a sorrowful 
 thought backward or an apprehensive idea forward dis- 
 turb the scene. A half-uprooted pine-tree stem propped 
 mid-fall by standing comrades, and the downy drop to 
 ground and muted scurry up the bark of long-brush 
 squirrels, cocktail on the wary watch, were noticed by 
 him as well as by her ; even the rotting timber drift, 
 bark and cones on the yellow pine needles, and the tor- 
 tuous dwarf chestnut pushing level out, with a strain of 
 the head up, from a crevice of mossed rock, among ivy 
 and ferns ; he saw what his girl saw. Power of heart 
 was her conjuring magician. 
 
 She climbed to the rock-slabs above. This was too 
 easily done. The poor bit of effort excited her frame 
 to desire a spice of danger, her walk was towering in 
 the physical contempt of a mountain girl for petty 
 lowland obstructions. And it was just then, by the 
 chance of things — by the direction of events, as Dame 
 Gossip believes it to be — while colour, expression, and 
 her proud stature marked her from her sex, that a 
 
 i 
 
130 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 gentleman, who was no other than Lord Fleetwood, 
 passed Carinthia, coming out of the deeper pine forest. 
 
 Some distance on, round a bend of the path, she 
 was tempted to adventure by a projected forked head 
 of a sturdy, blunted and twisted little rock-fostered 
 forest tree pushing horizontally for growth about thirty 
 feet above the lower ground. She looked on it, and 
 took a step down to the stem soon after. Fleetwood 
 had turned and followed, merely for the final curious 
 peep at an unexpected vision ; he had noticed the 
 singular shoot of thick timber from the rock, and the 
 form of the goose-neck it rose to, the sprout of 
 branches off the bill in the shape of a crest. And now 
 a shameful spasm of terror seized him at sight of a 
 girl doing what he would have dreaded to attempt. 
 She footed coolly, well-balanced, upright. She seated 
 herself. 
 
 And there let her be. She was a German girl, 
 apparently. She had an air of breeding, something 
 more than breeding. German families of the nobles 
 give out, here and there, as the Great War showed 
 examples of, intrepid young women, who have the 
 sharp lines of character to render them independent 
 of the graces. But, if a young woman out alone in the 
 woods was hardly to be counted among the well-born, 
 she held rank above them. Her face and bearing might 
 really be taken to symbolize the forest life. She was 
 as individual a representative as the Tragic and Comic 
 masks, and should be got to stand between them for 
 sign of the naturally straight-growing untrained, a 
 noble daughter of the woods. 
 
 Not comparable to Henrietta in feminine beauty, she 
 was on an upper plateau, where questions as to beauty 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 131 
 
 are answered by other than the shallow aspect of a girl. 
 But would Henrietta eclipse her if they were side by 
 side ? Fleetwood recalled the strange girl's face. There 
 was in it a savage poignancy in serenity unexampled 
 among women — or modern women. One might imagine 
 an apotheosis of a militant young princess of Goths or 
 Vandals, the glow of blessedness awakening her martial 
 ardours through the languor of the grave : — Woodseer 
 would comprehend and hit on the exact image to por- 
 tray her in a moment, Fleetwood thought, and longed 
 for that fellow. 
 
 He walked hurriedly back to the stunted rock tree. 
 The damsel had vanished. He glanced below. She had 
 not fallen. He longed to tell Woodseer he had seen a 
 sort of Carinthia — a sister, cousin, one of the family. 
 A single glimpse of her had raised him out of his grov- 
 elling perturbations, cooled and strengthened him, more 
 than diverting the course of the poison Henrietta in- 
 fused, and to which it disgraced him to be so subject. 
 He took love unmanfully; the passion struck at his 
 weakness ; in wrath at the humiliation, if only to re- 
 venge himself for that, he could be fiendish ; he knew 
 it, and loathed the desired fair creature who caused and 
 exposed to him these cracks in his nature, whence there 
 came a brimstone stench of the infernal pits. And he 
 was made for better. Of this he was right well assured. 
 Superior to station and to wealth, to all mundane 
 advantages, he was the puppet of a florid puppet girl ; 
 and he had slept at the small inn of a village hard by, 
 because it was intolerable to him to see the face that 
 had been tearful over her lover's departure, and hear 
 her praises of the man she trusted to keep his word, 
 however grievously she wounded him. 
 
132 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 He was the prisoner of his word ; — rather like the 
 donkeys known as married men : rather more honour- 
 able than most of them. He had to be present at the 
 ball at the Schloss and behold his loathed Henrietta, 
 suffer torture of chains to the rack, by reason of his 
 having promised the bitter coquette he would be there. 
 So hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was 
 relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in 
 loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally 
 conj uring up the antidote face of the wood-sprite before 
 he was to undergo it. But, as he was not by nature a 
 dreamer, only dreamed of the luxury of being one, he 
 soon looked back with loathing on a notion of relief 
 to come from the state of ruminating animal, and 
 jumped up and shook off another of men's delusions — 
 that they can, if they have the heart to suffer pain, 
 deaden it with any semi-poetical devices, similar to 
 those which Rufus Abrane's e fiddler fellow , practised 
 and was able to carry out because he had no blood. 
 The spite of a present entire opposition to Woodseer's 
 professed views made him exult in the thought, that 
 the mouther of sentences was likely to be at work 
 stultifying them and himself in the halls there below 
 during the day. An imp of mischief offered consola- 
 tory sport in those halls of the Black Goddess ; already 
 he regarded his recent subservience to the conceited 
 and tripped peripatetic philosopher as among the igno- 
 minies he had cast away on his road to a general 
 contempt ; which is the position of a supreme elevation 
 for particularly sensitive young men. 
 
 Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the wood-sprite 
 was a flitted vapour ; he longed to be below there, 
 observing Abrane and Potts and the philosopher con- 
 
THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 133 
 
 founded, and the legible placidity of Countess Li via. 
 Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, 
 impatient of the solitudes, till night, when, according 
 to his guess, the ladies were at their robing. 
 
 Half the fiin was over : but the tale of it, narrated 
 in turn by Abrane and his Chummy Potts on the pro- 
 menade, was a very good half. The fiddler had played 
 for the countess and handed her back her empty purse, 
 with a bow and a pretty speech. Nothing had been 
 seen of him since. He had lost all his own money 
 besides. 'As of course he would, 1 said Potts. 'A 
 fellow calculating the chances catches at a knife in the 
 air."' 
 
 ' Every franc-piece he had ! ' cried Abrane. ' And 
 how could the jackass expect to keep his luck ! Flings 
 off his old suit and comes back here with a rig of 
 German bags — you never saw such a figure ! — Shore- 
 ditch Jew's holiday ! — why, of course, the luck wouldn't 
 stand that.*' 
 
 They confessed ruefully to having backed him a 
 certain distance, notwithstanding. 'He took it so 
 coolly, just as if paying for goods across a counter.' 
 
 6 And he had something to bear, Braney, when you 
 fell on him,' said Potts, and murmured aside : 6 He can 
 be smartish. Hears me call Braney Rufus, and says he, 
 like a fellow — chin on his fiddle — " Captain Mountain, 
 Rufus Mus'. Not bad, for a counter." 
 
 Fleetwood glanced round : he could have wrung 
 Woodseer's hand. He saw young Cressett instead, and 
 hailed him : ' Here you are, my gallant ! You shall 
 flash your maiden sword to-night. When I was under 
 your age by a long count, I dealt sanctimoniousness a 
 flick o' the cheek, and you shall, and let 'em know 
 
134 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 you're a man. Come and have your first boar-hunt 
 along with me. Petticoats be hanged.' 
 
 The boy showed some recollection of the lectures of 
 his queen, but he had not the vocables for resistance to 
 an imperative senior at work upon sneaking inclinations. 
 6 Promised Lady F. ! — do you hear him ? ' Fleetwood 
 called to the couple behind ; and as gamblers must 
 needs be parasites, manly were the things they spoke to 
 invigorate the youthful plunger and second the whim of 
 their paymaster. 
 
 At half-past eleven, the prisoner of his word entered 
 under the Schloss portico, having vowed to himself on 
 the way, that he would satisfy the formulas to gain 
 release by a deferential bow to the great personages, 
 and straightway slip out into the heavenly starlight, 
 thence down among the jolly Parisian and Viennese 
 Bacchanals. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Henrietta's letter treating of the great event 
 
 By the first light of an autumn morning, Henrietta sat 
 at her travelling-desk, to shoot a spark into the breast 
 of her lover with the story of the great event of the 
 night. For there had been one, one of our biggest, 
 beyond all tongues and trumpets and possible anticipa- 
 tions. Wonder at it hammered on incredulity as she 
 wrote it for fact, and in writing had vision of her lover's 
 eyes over the page. 
 
HENRIETTA'S LETTER 135 
 
 ' Monsieur Du Lac ! 
 
 6 Grey Dawn. You are greeted. This, if you have 
 been tardy on the journey home, will follow close on 
 the heels of the prowest, I believe truest, of knights, 
 and bear perhaps to his quick mind some help to the 
 solution he dropped a hint of seeking. 
 
 6 The Ball in every way a success. Grand Duke and 
 Duchess perfect in courtesy, not a sign of the German 
 morgue. Li via splendid. Compared to Day and 
 Night. But the Night eclipses the Day. A summer 
 sea of dancing. Who, think you, eclipsed those two ? 
 
 6 I tell you the very truth when I say your Carinthia 
 did. If you had seen her, — the " poor dear girl " you 
 sigh to speak of, — with the doleful outlook on her 
 fortunes : " portionless, unattractive ! " Chillon, she 
 was magical ! You cannot ever have seen her irradi- 
 ated with happiness. Her pleasure in the happiness of 
 all around her was part of the charm. One should be 
 a poet to describe her. It would task an artist to 
 paint the rose-crystal she became when threading her 
 way through the groups to be presented. This is not 
 meant to say that she looked beautiful. It was the 
 something above beauty — more unique and impressive 
 — like the Alpine snow-cloak towering up from the 
 flowery slopes you know so well and I a little. 
 
 4 You choose to think, is it Riette who noticed my 
 simple sister so closely before . . . ? for I suppose 
 you to be reading this letter a second time and reflect- 
 ing as you read. In the first place, acquaintance with 
 her has revealed that she is not the simple person — 
 only in her manner. Under the beams of subsequent 
 events, it is true I see her more picturesquely. But 
 I noticed also just a suspicion of the " grenadier " stride 
 
136 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 when she was on the march to make her curtsey. 
 But Li via had no cause for chills and quivers. She 
 was not the very strange bird requiring explanatory 
 excuses ; she dances excellently, and after the first 
 dance, I noticed she minced her steps in the walk with 
 her partner. She catches the tone readily. If not the 
 image of her mother, she has inherited her mother's 
 bent for the graces ; she needs but a small amount of 
 practice. 
 
 ' Take my assurance of that ; and you know who has 
 critical eyes. Your anxiety may rest ; she is equal to 
 any station. 
 
 8 As expected by me, my Lord Tyrant appeared, 
 though late, near midnight. I saw him bowing to the 
 Ducal party. Papa had led your " simple sister " there. 
 Next I saw the Tyrant and Carinthia conversing. 
 Soon they were dancing together, talking interestedly, 
 like cheerful comrades. Whatever his faults, he has 
 the merit of being a man of his word. He said he 
 would come, he did not wish to come, and he came. 
 
 6 His word binds him — I hope not fatally ; irre- 
 vocably, it certainly does. There is charm of character 
 in that. His autocrat airs can be forgiven to a man 
 who so profoundly respects his word. 
 
 * It occurred during their third dance. Your Riette 
 was not in the quadrille. O but she was a snubbed 
 young woman last night ! I refrain — the examples 
 are too minute for quotation. 
 
 'A little later and he had vanished. Carinthia 
 Kirby may already be written Countess of Fleetwood ! 
 His hand was offered and hers demanded in plain 
 terms. Her brother would not be so astounded if 
 he had seen the brilliant creature she was — is, I could 
 
HENRIETTA'S LETTER 137 
 
 say ; for when she left me here, to go to her bed, she 
 still wore the " afterglow." ' She tripped over to me in 
 the ball-room to tell me. I might doubt, she had no 
 doubt whatever. I fancied he had subjected her to 
 some degree of trifling. He was in a mood. His 
 moods are known to me. But no, he was precise ; 
 her report of him strikes the ear as credible, in spite 
 of the marvel it insists on our swallowing. 
 
 4 " Lord Fleetwood has asked me to marry him. 1, 
 Neither assurance nor bashfulness; newspaper print; 
 and an undoubting air of contentment. 
 
 4 Imagine me hearing it. 
 
 4 "To be his wife?" 
 
 4 " He said wife." 
 
 4 " And you replied ? " 
 
 4 " I said I would." 
 
 4 "Tell me all?" 
 
 4 44 He said we were plighted." 
 
 'Now, "wife" is one of the words he abhors; and 
 he loathes the hearing of a girl as " engaged." How- 
 ever, " plighted " carried a likeness. 
 
 ' 1 pressed her : " My dear Carinthia, you thought 
 him in earnest ? " 
 
 '"He was." 
 
 6 " How do you judge ? " 
 
 4 " By his look when he spoke." 
 
 4 " Not by his words ? " 
 
 c " I repeat them to you." 
 
 4 She has repeated them to me here in my bedroom. 
 There is no variation. She remembers every syllable. 
 He went so far as to urge her to say whether she would 
 as willingly utter consent if they were in a church 
 and a clergyman at the altar-rails. 
 
138 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 * That was like hi in. 
 
 I She made answer : " Wherever it may be, I am 
 bound, if I say yes.*" 
 
 ' She then adds : " He told me he joined hands with 
 me. 
 
 4 " Did he repeat the word ' wife ' ? " 
 1 " He said it twice." 
 
 I I transcribe verbatim scrupulously. There cannot 
 be an error, Chillon. It seems to show, that he has 
 embraced the serious meaning of the word — or seriously 
 embraced the meaning, reads better. I have seen his 
 lips form " wife. 1 ' 
 
 ' But why wonder so staringly ? They both love 
 the mountains. Both are wildish. She was looking 
 superb. And he had seen her do a daring thing on the 
 rocks on the heights in the early morning, when she 
 was out by herself, unaware of a spectator, he not 
 knowing who she was ; — the Fates had arranged it so. 
 That was why he took to her so rapidly. So he told 
 her. She likes being admired. The preparation for the 
 meeting does really seem " under direction." She 
 likes him too, I do think. Between her repetitions 
 of his compliments, she praised his tone of voice, his 
 features. She is ready to have the fullest faith in the 
 sincerity of his offer ; speaks without any impatience 
 for the fulfilment. If it should happen, what a 
 change in the fortunes of a girl ! — of more than one, 
 possibly. 
 
 ' Now I must rest — " eyelids fall.'" It will be with a 
 heart galloping. No rest for me till this letter flies. 
 Good morning is my good night to you, in a world 
 that has turned over.' 
 
 Henrietta resumes : — 
 
HENRIETTA'S LETTER 139 
 
 'Livia will not hear of it, calls up all her pretty 
 languor to put it aside. It is the same to day as last 
 night. "Why mention Russett's nonsense to me?" 
 Carinthia is as quietly circumstantial as at first. She 
 and the Tyrant talked of her native home. Very 
 desirous to see it ! means to build a mansion there ! 
 "He said it must be the most romantic place on 
 earth." 
 
 6 I suppose I slept. I woke with, my last line to you 
 on my lips, and the great news thundering. He named 
 Esslemont and his favourite — always uninhabited — 
 Cader Argau. She speaks them correctly. She has an 
 unfailing memory. The point is, that it is a 
 memory. 
 
 ' Do not forget also — Livia is affected by her dis- 
 taste — that he is a gentleman. He plays with his 
 nobility. With his reputation of gentleman, he has 
 never been known to play. You will understand the 
 slightly hypocritical air — it is not of sufficient import- 
 ance for it to be alluded to in papa's presence — I put 
 on with her. 
 
 6 Yes, I danced nearly all the dances. One, a prince- 
 ling in scarlet uniform, appearing fresh from under 
 earth, Prussian : a weighty young Graf in green, 
 between sage and bottle, who seemed to have run off a 
 tree in the forest, and was trimmed with silver like 
 dew-drops : one in your Austrian white, dragon de 
 Bohenie, if I caught his French rightly. Others as 
 well, a list. They have the accomplishment. They are 
 drilled in it young, as girls are, and so few Englishmen 
 — even English officers. How it may be for campaign- 
 ing, you can pronounce ; but for dancing, the pantalon 
 collant is the perfect uniform. Your critical Henrietta 
 
140 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 had not to complain of her partners, in the absence of 
 the one. 
 
 ' 1 shall be haunted by visions of Chillon's amaze- 
 ment until I hear or we meet. I serve for Carinthia's 
 mouthpiece, she cannot write it, she says. It would be 
 related in two copybook lines, if at all. 
 
 'The amazement over London ! The jewel hand of 
 the kingdom gone in a flash, to " a raw mountain girl," 
 as will be said. I can hear Lady Endor, Lady Eldritch, 
 Lady Cowry. The reasonable woman should be Lady 
 Arpington. I have heard her speak of your mother, 
 seen by her when she was in frocks. 
 
 'Enter the " plighted. " Poor Li via ! to be made a 
 dowager of by any but a damsel of the family. She 
 may well ridicule "that nonsense of Russett's last 
 night w ! Carinthia kisses, embraces, her brother. I 
 am to say : " What Henrietta tells you is true, Chillon." 
 She is contented though she has not seen him again 
 and has not the look of expecting to see him. She still 
 wears the kind of afterglow. 
 
 ' Chillon^ Viennese waltz was played by the band : — 
 played a second time, special request, conveyed to the 
 leader by Prince Ferdinand. True, most true, she 
 longs to be home across the water. But be it admitted, 
 that to any one loving colour, music, chivalry, the 
 Island of Drab is an exile. Imagine, then, the strange 
 magnetism drawing her there ! Could warmer proof be 
 given ? 
 
 ' Adieu. Livia's " arch-plotter " will weigh the letter 
 he reads to the smallest fraction of a fraction before 
 he moves a step. 
 
 ' I could leave it and come to it again and add and 
 
 o l 
 
 add. I foresee in Livia's mind a dread of the aforesaid 
 
HENRIETTA'S LETTER 141 
 
 " arch,'' 1 and an interdict. So the letter must be closed, 
 sealed and into the box, with the hand I still call mine, 
 though I should doubt my right if it were contested 
 fervently. I am singing the waltz. 
 ' Adieu, 
 
 * Ever and beyond it, 
 ( Your obedient Queen, 
 
 i Henrietta. 
 
 ( P.8. — My Lord Tyrant has departed — as on other 
 occasions. The prisoner of his word is sure to take his 
 airing before he presents himself to redeem it. His 
 valet is left to pay bills, fortunately for Livia. She 
 entrusted her purse yesterday to a man picked up on 
 the road by my lord, that he might play for her. 
 Captain Abrane assured her he had a star, and Mr. 
 Potts thought him a ruse compere, an adept of those 
 dreadful gambling-tables. Why will she continue to 
 play ! The purse was returned to her, without so 
 much as a piece of silver in it; the man has flown. 
 Sir M. Corby says, he is a man whose hands betray 
 him — or did to Sir M. ; expects to see him one day on 
 the wrong side of the criminal bar. He struck me as 
 not being worse than absurd. He was, in any case, an 
 unfit companion, and our C. would help to rescue the 
 Eccentric from such complicating associates. I see 
 worlds of good she may do. Happily, he is no slave 
 of the vice of gambling ; so she would not suffer that 
 anxiety. I wish it could be subjoined, that he has 
 no malicious pleasure in misleading others. Livia is in- 
 consolable over her pet, young Lord Cressett, whom he 
 yesterday induced to " try his luck " — with the result. 
 We leave, if bills are paid, in two days. Captain 
 
142 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Abrane and Mr. Potts left this afternoon; just enough 
 to carry them home. Papa and your blissful sister out 
 driving. Riette within her four walls and signing 
 herself, ' The Prisoner of Ciiillon.' 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP IN BREACH OF 
 THE CONVENTION 
 
 ' It is a dark land, 1 Carinthia said, on seeing our Island's 
 lowered clouds in swift motion, without a break of their 
 folds, above the sheer white cliffs. 
 
 — She said it, we know. That poor child Carinthia 
 Jane, when first she beheld Old England's shores, toss- 
 ing in the packet-boat on a wild Channel sea, did say 
 it and think it, for it is in the family that she did ; 
 and no wonder that she should, the day being showery 
 from the bed of the sun, after a frosty three days, at 
 the close of autumn. We used to have an eye of 
 our own for English weather before printed Meteoro- 
 logical Observations and Forecasts undertook to sup- 
 plant the shepherd and the poacher, and the pilot with 
 his worn brown leather telescope tucked beneath his arm. 
 All three would have told you, that the end of a three 
 days' frost in the late season of the year and the early, 
 is likely to draw the warm winds from the Atlantic over 
 Cornish Land's End and Lizard. 
 
 Quite by the chance of things, Carinthia Jane looked 
 on the land of her father and mother for the first time 
 under those conditions. There can be no harm in 
 quoting her remark. Only — I have to say it — experi- 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 143 
 
 ence causes apprehension, that we are again to be 
 delayed by descriptions, and an exposition of feelings ; 
 taken for granted, of course, in a serious narrative ; 
 which it really seems these moderns think designed for 
 a frequent arrest of the actors in the story and a search- 
 ing of the internal state of this one or that one of 
 them : who is laid out stark naked and probed and 
 expounded, like as in the celebrated picture by a great 
 painter : and we, thirsting for events as we are, are to 
 stop to enjoy a lecture on Anatomy. And all the while 
 the windows of the lecture-room are rattling, if not the 
 whole fabric shaking, with exterior occurrences or im- 
 patience for them to come to pass. Every explanation 
 is sure to be Offered by the course events may take ; so 
 do, in mercy, I say, let us bide for them. 
 
 She thought our Island all the darker because Henri- 
 etta had induced her to talk on the boat of her moun- 
 tain home and her last morning there for the walk 
 away with Chillon John. Soon it was to appear super- 
 naturally bright, a very magician's cave for brilliancy. 
 
 Now, this had happened — and comment on it to 
 yourselves, remembering always, that Chillon John was 
 a lover, and a lover has his excuses, though they will 
 not obviate the penalties he may incur ; and dreadful 
 they were. After reading Henrietta's letter to him, he 
 rode out of his Canterbury quarters across the country 
 to the borders of Sussex, where his uncle Lord Levellier 
 lived, on the ridge of ironstone, near the wild land of a 
 forest, Croridge the name of the place. Now, Chillon 
 John knew his uncle was miserly, and dreaded the pros- 
 pect of having to support a niece in the wretched estab- 
 lishment at Lekkatts, or, as it was popularly called, 
 Leancats ; you can understand why. But he managed 
 
144 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 to assure himself he must in duty consult with the 
 senior and chief member of his family on a subject of 
 such importance as the proposal of marriage to his 
 lordship's niece. 
 
 The consultation was short : * You will leave it to 
 me," his uncle said : and we hear of business affairs be- 
 tween them, involving payment of moneys due to the 
 young man ; and how, whenever he touched on them, 
 his uncle immediately fell back on the honour of the 
 family and Carinthia Jane's reputation, her good name 
 to be vindicated, and especially that there must be no 
 delays, together with as close a reckoning as he could 
 make of the value of Lord Fleetwood's estates in Kent 
 and in Staffordshire and South Wales, and his house 
 property in London. 
 
 ' He will have means to support her, 1 said the old 
 lord, shrugging as if at his own incapacity for that 
 burden. 
 
 The two then went to the workshops beside a large 
 pond, where there was an island bordered with birch 
 trees and workmen's cottages near the main building ; 
 and that was an arsenal containing every kind of sword 
 and lance and musket, rifle and fowling-piece and 
 pistol, and more gunpowder than was, I believe, allowed 
 by law. For they were engaged in inventing a new 
 powder for howitzer shells, of tremendous explosive 
 power. 
 
 Nothing further did either of them say concerning 
 the marriage. Nor did Carinthia Jane hear any men- 
 tion of Lord Fleetwood from her brother on the landing- 
 place at Dover. She was taken to Admiral Baldwin 
 Fakenham's house in Hampshire ; and there she 
 remained, the delight of his life, during two months, 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 145 
 
 patiently expecting and rebuking the unmaidenliness of 
 her expectations, as honest young women in her position 
 used to do. So did they sometimes wait for years; 
 they have waited until they withered into their graves, 
 like the vapours of a brief winter's " day ; a moving 
 picture of a sex restrained by modesty in those purer 
 times from the taking of one step forward unless in- 
 quired for. 
 
 Two months she waited in our ' dark land.' January 
 arrived, and her brother. Henrietta communicated the 
 news : — 
 
 'My Janey, you are asked by Lord Fleetwood 
 whether it is your wish that he should marry you.' 
 
 Now, usually a well-born young woman's answer, if a 
 willing one, is an example of weak translation. Here 
 it was the heart's native tongue, without any round- 
 about, simple but direct. 
 
 6 Oh, I will, I am ready, tell him. 1 
 
 Remember, she was not speaking publicly. 
 
 Henrietta knew the man enough to be glad he did 
 not hear. She herself would have felt a little shock on 
 his behalf ; only, that answer suited the scheme of the 
 pair of lovers. 
 
 How far those two were innocent in not delivering 
 the whole of Lord Fleetwood's message to Carinthia 
 Jane through Lord Levellier, we are unable to learn. 
 We may suspect the miserly nobleman of curtailing it 
 for his purposes ; and such is my idea. But the answer 
 would have been the same, I am sure. 
 
 In consequence and straight away, Chillon John 
 betakes him to Admiral Baldwin and informs him of 
 Lord Fleetwood's proposal on the night at Baden, and 
 renewal of it through the mouth of Lord Levellier, not 
 
146 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 communicating, however (he may really not have known), 
 the story of how it had been wrung from the earl by a 
 surprise movement on the part of the one-armed old 
 lord, who burst out on him in the street from the 
 ambush of a Club-window, where he had been stationed 
 every day for a fortnight, indefatigably to watch for 
 the passing of the earl, as there seemed no other way 
 to find him. They say, indeed, there was a scene, 
 judging by the result, and it would have been an 
 excellent scene for the stage ; though the two noble- 
 men were to all appearance politely exchanging their 
 remarks. But the audience hearing what passes, 
 appreciates the courteous restraint of an attitude so 
 contrasting with their tempers. Behind the ostenta- 
 tion of civility, their words were daggers. 
 
 For it chanced, that the young earl, after a period of 
 refuge at his Welsh castle, supposing, as he well might, 
 that his latest mad freak of the proposal of his hand and 
 title to the strange girl in a quadrille at a foreign castle 
 had been forgotten by her, and the risks of annoyance 
 on the subject had quite blown over, returned to town, 
 happy in having done the penance for his impulsiveness, 
 and got clean again — that is to say, struck off his fetters 
 and escaped from importunities — the very morning of 
 the day when Lord Levellier sprang upon him ! It shows 
 the old campaigner's shrewdness in guessing where his 
 prey would come, and not putting him on his guard by 
 a call at his house. Out of the window he looked for 
 all the hours of light during an entire fortnight. ' In 
 the service of my sisters child,' he said. ' To save him 
 from the cost of maintaining her, 1 say his enemies. At 
 any rate he did it. 
 
 He was likely to have done the worse which I suspect. 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 147 
 
 Now, the imparting of the wonderful news to Admiral 
 Baldwin Fakenham was, we read, the whiff of a tropical 
 squall to lay him on his beam ends. He could not but 
 doubt ; and his talk was like the sails of a big ship rat- 
 tling to the first puff of wind. He had to believe ; and 
 then, we read, he was for hours like a vessel rolling in 
 the trough of the sea. Of course he was a disappointed 
 father. Naturally his glance at the loss to Henrietta 
 of the greatest prize of the matrimonial market of all 
 Europe and America was vexing and saddening. Then 
 he woke up to think of the fortunes of his 6 other girl/ 
 as he named her, and cried : ' Crinny catches him ! ' 
 
 He cried it in glee and rubbed his hands. 
 
 So thereupon, standing before him, Chillon John, from 
 whom he had the news, bent to him slightly, as his ele- 
 gant manner was, and lengthened the admiral's chaps 
 with another proposal ; easy, deliberate, precise, quite 
 the respectful bandit, if you please, determined on 
 having his daughter by all means, only much preferring 
 the legal, formal, and friendly. Upon that, in the 
 moment of indecision, Henrietta enters, followed by 
 Admiral Baldwin's heroine, his Crinny, whom he em- 
 braced and kissed, congratulated and kissed again. 
 One sees the contrivance to soften him. 
 
 So it was done, down in that Hampshire household on 
 the heights near the downs, whence you might behold, 
 off a terra firma resembling a roll of billows, England's 
 big battle-ships in line fronting the island ; when they 
 were a spectacle of beauty as well as power : which now 
 they are no more, but will have to be, if they are both 
 to float and to fight. For I have had quoted to me by a 
 great admirer of the Old Buccaneer, one of the dark 
 sayings in his Maxims for Men, where Captain John 
 
148 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Peter Kirby commends his fellow-men to dissatisfaction 
 with themselves if they have not put an end to their 
 enemy handsomely. And he advises the copying of 
 Nature in this ; whose elements have always, he says, a 
 pretty, besides a thorough, style of doing it, when they 
 get the better of us ; and the one by reason of the other. 
 He instances the horse, the yacht, and chiefly the sword, 
 for proof, that the handsomest is the most effective. 
 And he prints large : * ugly is only half way to a 
 thing.' To an invention, I suppose he intends to say. 
 But looking on our huge foundering sea-monsters and 
 the disappearance of the unwieldy in Nature, and the 
 countenances of criminals, who are, he bids us observe, 
 always in the long run beaten, I seem to see a meaning 
 our country might meditate on. 
 
 So, as I said, it was done; for Admiral Baldwin 
 could refuse his Crinny nothing ; as little as he would 
 deny anything to himself, the heartiest of kindly hosts, 
 fathers, friends. Carinthia Jane's grand good fortune 
 covered that pit, the question of money, somehow, and 
 was, we may conceive, a champagne wine in their reason- 
 ing faculties. The admiral was in debt, Henrietta had 
 no heritage, Chillon John was the heir of a miserly uncle 
 owing him sums and evading every application for them, 
 yet they behaved as people who had the cup of golden 
 wishes. Perhaps it was because Henrietta and her lover 
 were so handsome a match as to make it seem to them 
 and others they must marry ; and as to character, her 
 father could trust her to the man of her choice more 
 readily than to the wealthy young nobleman ; of whose 
 discreetness he had not the highest opinion. He recon- 
 ciled this view with his warm feeling for the Countess 
 of Fleetwood to be, by saying : * Crinny will tame him ! ' 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 149 
 
 His faith was in her dauntless bold spirit, not thinking 
 of the animal she was to tame. 
 
 Countess Livia, after receiving Henrietta's letter of 
 information, descended on them and thought them each 
 and all a crazed set. Love, as a motive of action for a 
 woman, she considered the female's lunacy and suicide. 
 Men are born subject to it, happily, and thus the bal- 
 ance between the lordly half of creation and the frail 
 is rectified. We women dress, and smile, sigh, if you 
 like, to excite the malady. But if we are the fools to 
 share it, we lose our chance ; instead of the queens, we 
 are the slaves, and instead of a life of pleasure, we pass 
 from fever to fever at a tyrant's caprice : he does 
 rightly in despising us. Ay, and many a worthy 
 woman thinks the same. Educated in dependency as 
 they are, they come to the idea of love to snatch at it 
 for their weapon of the man's weakness. For which 
 my lord calls them heartless, and poets are angry with 
 them, rightly or wrongly. 
 
 It must, I fear, be admitted for a truth, that sorrow 
 is the portion of young women who give the full 
 measure of love to the engagement, marrying for love. 
 At least, Countess Livia could declare subsequently she 
 had foretold it and warned her cousin. Not another 
 reflection do you hear from me, if I must pay forfeit 
 of my privilege to hurry you on past descriptions of 
 places and anatomy of character and impertinent talk 
 about philosophy — in a story. When we are startled 
 and offended by the insinuated tracing of principal 
 incidents to a thread-bare spot in the nether garments 
 of a man of no significance, I lose patience. 
 
 Henrietta's case was a secondary affair. What with 
 her passion — it was nothing less — and her lover's 
 
150 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 cunning arts, and her father's consent given, and in 
 truth the look of the two together, the dissuasion of 
 them from union was as likely to keep them apart 
 as an exhortation addressed to magnet and needle. 
 Countess Livia attacked Carinthia Jane and the ad- 
 miral backing her. But the admiral, having given 
 his consent to his daughter's marriage, in consequence 
 of the earl's pledged word to ' his other girl, had 
 become a zealot for this marriage : and there was 
 only not a grand altercation on the subject because 
 Livia shunned annoyances. Alone with Carinthia Jane, 
 as she reported to Henrietta, she spoke to a block, 
 that shook a head and wore a thin smile and nursed 
 its own idea of the better knowledge of Edward 
 Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, gained in the run of a 
 silly quadrille at a ball. 
 
 What is a young man's word to his partner in a 
 quadrille ! 
 
 Livia put the question, she put it twice rather 
 sternly, and the girl came out with : ' Oh, he meant 
 it!' 
 
 The nature, the pride, the shifty and furious moods 
 of Lord Fleetwood were painted frightful to her. 
 
 She had conceived her own image of him. 
 
 Whether to set her down as an enamoured idiot or 
 a creature not a whit less artful than her brother, was 
 Countess Livia's debate. Her inclination was to mis- 
 doubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer : she might 
 be simple, at her age ; and she certainly was ignorant ; 
 but she clung to her prize. Still the promise was 
 extracted from her, that she would not worry the earl 
 to fulfil the word she supposed him to mean in its full 
 meaning. 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 151 
 
 The promise was unreluctantly yielded. No, she 
 would not write. Admiral Fakenham, too, engaged 
 to leave the matter to a man of honour. 
 
 Meanwhile, Chillon John had taken a journey to 
 Lekkatts ; following which, his uncle went to London. 
 Lord Fleetwood heard that Miss Kirby kept him bound. 
 He was again the fated prisoner of his word. 
 
 And following that, not so very long, there was the 
 announcement of the marriage of Chillon John Kirby- 
 Levellier, Lieutenant in the King's Own Hussars, and 
 Henrietta, daughter of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham. 
 A county newspaper paragraph was quoted for its 
 eulogy of the Beauty of Hampshire — not too strong, 
 those acquainted with her thought. Interest at Court 
 obtained an advancement for the bridegroom : he was 
 gazetted Captain during his honeymoon, and his pros- 
 pects under his uncle's name were considered fair, 
 though certain people said at the time, it was likely 
 to be all he would get while old Lord Levellier of 
 Leancats remained in the flesh. 
 
 Now, as it is good for those to tell who intend pre- 
 serving their taste for romance and hate anatomical 
 lectures, we never can come to the exact motives of 
 any extraordinary piece of conduct on the part of man 
 or woman. Girls are to read, and the study of a boy 
 starts from the monkey. But no literary surgeon or 
 chemist shall explain positively the cause of the be- 
 haviour of men and women in their relations together ; 
 and speaking to rescue my story, I say we must with 
 due submission accept the facts. We are not a bit the 
 worse for wondering at them. So it happened that 
 Lord Fleetwood's reply to Lord Levellier's hammer — 
 hammer by post and messenger at his door, one may 
 
152 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 call it, on the subject of the celebration of the mar- 
 riage of the young Croesus and Carinthia Jane, in which 
 there was demand for the fixing of a date forthwith, 
 was despatched on the day when London had tidings 
 of Henrietta Fakenhain's wedding. 
 
 The letter, lost for many years, turned up in the 
 hands of a Kentish auctioneer, selling it on behalf of 
 a farm-serving man, who had it from Lord Level lier's 
 cook and housemaid, among the things she brought 
 him as her wifely portion after her master's death, 
 and this she had not found saleable in her husband's 
 village at her price, but she had got the habit of 
 sticking to the scraps, being proud of hearing it said 
 that she had skinned Leancats to some profit : and her 
 expectation proved correct after her own demise, for 
 her husband putting it up at the auction, our relative 
 on the mother's side, Dr. Glossop, interested in the 
 documents and particulars of the story as he was, had 
 it knocked down to him, in contest with an agent of 
 a London gentleman, going as high as two pounds ten 
 shillings, for the sum of two pounds and fifteen shillings. 
 Count the amount that makes for each word of a letter 
 a marvel of brevity, considering the purport ! But Dr. 
 Glossop was right in saying he had it cheap. The 
 value of that letter may now be multiplied by ten : nor 
 for that sum would he part with it. 
 
 Thus it ran, I need not refer to it in Bundle No. 3 : 
 ' My Lord : I drive to your church-door on the 
 fourteenth of the month at ten a.m., to keep my 
 appointment with Miss C. J. Kirby, if I do not 
 blunder the initials. 
 
 ' Your lordship's obedient servant, 
 
 6 Fleetwood."' 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 153 
 
 That letter will ever be a treasured family possession 
 with us. 
 
 That letter was dated from Lord Fleetwood's Kentish 
 mansion, Esslemont, the tenth of the month. He must 
 have quitted London for Esslemont, for change of scene, 
 for air, the moment after the news of Henrietta's mar- 
 riage. Carinthia Jane received the summons without 
 transmission of the letter from her uncle on the 
 morning of the twelfth. It was a peremptory sum- 
 mons. 
 
 Unfortunately, Admiral Fakenham, a real knight 
 and chevalier of those past times, would not let her 
 mount the downs to have her farewell view of the big 
 ships unaccompanied by him ; and partly and largely 
 in pure chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of 
 England's grandeur, as shown in her great vessels of 
 war, thrilled him, too, and restored his youthful 
 enthusiasm for his noble profession or made it effer- 
 vesce. However it was, he rode beside her and rejoiced 
 to hear the young girl's talk of her father as a captain 
 of one of England's thunderers, and of the cruelty of 
 that Admiralty to him : at which Admiral Baldwii? 
 laughed, but had not the heart to disagree with her, 
 for he could belabour the Admiralty in season, cause 
 or no cause. Altogether he much enjoyed the ride, 
 notwithstanding intimations of the approach of ' his 
 visitor,' as he called his attacks of gout. 
 
 Riding home, however, the couple passed through a 
 heavy rainfall, and the next day, when he was to drive 
 with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the fiercest he had 
 ever known, chained him fast to his bed. Such are 
 the petty accidents affecting circumstances. They are 
 the instruments of Destiny. 
 
154 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 There he lay, protesting that the ceremony could 
 not possibly be for the fourteenth, because Countess 
 Livia had, he now remembered, written of her engage- 
 ment to meet Russett on the night of that day at a 
 ball at Mrs. Cowper Quillett's place, Canleys, lying 
 south of the Surrey hills : a house famed for its gather- 
 ings of beautiful women ; whither Lord Fleetwood 
 would be sure to engage to go, the admiral now said ; 
 and it racked him like gout in his mind, and perhaps 
 troubled his conscience about handing the girl to such 
 a young man. But he was lying on his back, the 
 posture for memory to play the fiend with us, as we 
 read in the Book of Maxims of the Old Buccaneer. 
 Admiral Baldwin wished heartily to be present at his 
 Crinny's wedding 'to see her launched,' if wedding 
 it was to be, and he vowed the date of the fourteenth, 
 in Lord Levellier's announcement of it, must be an 
 error and might be a month in advance, and ought to 
 be. But it was sheer talking and raving for a solace 
 to his disappointment or his anxiety. He had to let 
 Carinthia Jane depart under the charge of his house- 
 keeper, Mrs. Carthew, a staid excellent lady, poorly 
 gifted with observation. 
 
 Her report of the performance of the ceremony at 
 Croridge village church, a half mile from Lekkatts, was 
 highly reassuring to the anxious old admiral still lying 
 on his back with memory and gout at their fiend's play, 
 and livid forecasts hovering. He had recollected that 
 there had been no allusion in Lord Levellier's message 
 to settlements or any lawyer's preliminaries, and he 
 raged at himself for having to own it would have been 
 the first of questions on behalf of his daughter. 
 
 * All passed off correctly,"' Mrs. Carthew said. ' The 
 
AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 155 
 
 responses of the bride and bridegroom were particularly 
 articulate.' 
 
 She was reserved upon the question of the hospitality 
 of Lekkatts. The place had entertained her during 
 her necessitated residence there, and ^honour forbade 
 her to smile concordantly at the rosy admiral's men- 
 tion of Leancats. She took occasion however, to 
 praise the Earl of Fleetwood's ' eminently provident 
 considerateness for his bride, inasmuch as he had 
 packed a hamper in his vehicle,' which was a four- 
 in-hand, driven by himself. 
 
 Admiral Baldwin inquired : ' Bride inside ? ' 
 
 He was informed : ' The Countess of Fleetwood sat 
 on the box on the left of my lord.' 
 
 She had made no moan about the absence of brides- 
 maids. 
 
 6 She appeared too profoundly happy to meditate an 
 instant upon deficiencies.' 
 
 6 How did the bridegroom behave ?' 
 
 ' Lord Fleetwood was very methodical. He is not, 
 or was not, voluntarily a talker.' 
 
 'Blue coat, brass buttons, hot-house flower? old 
 style or new ? ' 
 
 'His lordship wore a rather low beaver and a 
 buttoned white overcoat, not out of harmony with the 
 bride's plain travelling-dress.' 
 
 6 Ah ! he's a good whip, men say. Keeps first-rate 
 stables, hacks, and bloods. Esslemont hard by will be 
 the place for their honeymoon, I guess. And he's a 
 lucky dog, if he knows his luck.' 
 
 So said Admiral Baldwin. He was proceeding to 
 say more, for he had a prodigious opinion of the 
 young countess and the benefit of her marriage to the 
 
156 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 British race. As it concerned a healthy constitution 
 and motherhood, Mrs. Carthew coughed and retired. 
 Nor do I reprove either of them. The speculation and 
 the decorum are equally commendable. Masculine 
 ideas are one thing ; but let feminine ever be feminine, 
 or our civilization perishes. 
 
 At Croridge village church, then, — one of the 
 smallest churches in the kingdom, — the ceremony was 
 performed and duly witnessed, names written in the 
 vestry book, the clergyman's fee, the clerk, and the 
 pew-woman, paid by the bridegroom. And thus we 
 see how a pair of lovers, blind with the one object 
 of lovers in view ; and a miserly uncle, all on edge to 
 save himself the expense of supporting his niece ; and 
 an idolatrous old admiral, on his back with gout ; con- 
 duced in turn and together to the marriage gradually 
 exciting the world's wonder, till it eclipsed the story 
 of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny, which it 
 caused to be discussed afresh. 
 
 Mrs. Carthew remembered Carinthia Jane's last 
 maiden remark and her first bridal utterance. On the 
 way, walking to the church of Croridge from Lekkatts, 
 the girl said : ' Going on my feet, I feel I continue the 
 mountain walk with my brother when we left our 
 home.' And after leaving the church, about to mount 
 the coach, she turned to Mrs. Carthew, saying, as she 
 embraced her : ' A happy bride's kiss should bring 
 some good fortune.' And looking down from her 
 place on the top of the coach : ' Adieu, dear Mrs. 
 Carthew. A day of glory it is to-day.' 
 
 She must actually have had it in her sight as a day 
 of glory : and it was a day of the clouds off our rainy 
 quarter, similar in every way to the day of her step- 
 
A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING 157 
 
 ping on English soil and saying : ' It is a dark land. 1 
 For the heart is truly declared to be our colourist. A 
 day having the gale in its breast, sweeping the whole 
 country and bending the trees for the twigs to hiss like 
 spray of the billows around our island, was a day of 
 golden splendour to the young bride of the Earl of 
 Fleetwood, though he scarcely addressed one syllable 
 to her, and they sat side by side all but dumb, he like 
 a coachman driving an unknown lady fare, on a morn- 
 ing after a night when his wife's tongue may have 
 soured him for the sex. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING 
 
 Mention has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy 
 Dame, in her vagrant fowl's treatment of a story she 
 cannot incubate, will not relinquish, and may ultimately 
 addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a dis- 
 engaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to 
 his coach and four at the cross of the roads to Lekkatts 
 and the lowland, abruptly, and as one pursuing a 
 deferential line of conduct he had prescribed to himself, 
 asked his bride, what seat she would prefer. 
 
 He shouted : ' Ines ! ' 
 
 A person inside the coach appeared to be effectually 
 roused. 
 
 The glass of the window dropped. The head of a 
 man emerged. It was the head of one of the barge- 
 faced men of the British Isles, broad, and battered 
 flattish, with sentinel eyes. 
 
158 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 In an instant the heavy-headed but not ill-looking 
 fellow was nimble and jumped from the coach. 
 
 'Napping, my lord,'' he said. 
 
 Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were 
 light ; they flipped a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the 
 ground. Perhaps they were allowed to go with their 
 instinct for the dance, that his master should have a 
 sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and 
 stood to take orders ; clad in a flat blue cap, a brown 
 overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the temporary bustle of 
 his legs had revealed. 
 
 Fleetwood heard the young lady say : ' I would 
 choose, if you please, to sit beside you.' 
 
 He gave a nod of enforced assent, glancing at the 
 vacated box. 
 
 The man inquired : ' A knee and a back for the lady 
 to mount up, my lord ? ' 
 
 6 In ! ' was the smart command to him ; and he popped 
 in with the agility of his popping out. 
 
 Then Carinthia made reverence to the grey lean figure 
 of her uncle and kissed Mrs. Carthew. She needed no 
 help to mount the coach. Fleetwood's arm was rigidly 
 extended, and he did not visibly wince when this foreign 
 girl sprang to the first hand-grip on the coach and said ■ 
 • No, my husband, I can do it, 1 unaided, was implied. 
 
 Her stride from the axle of the wheel to the step 
 higher would have been a graceful spectacle on Alpine 
 crags. 
 
 Fleetwood swallowed that, too, though it conjured up 
 a mocking recollection of the Baden woods, and an 
 astonished wild donkey preparing himself for his 
 harness. A sour relish of the irony in his present 
 position sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as 
 
A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING 159 
 
 the finest form of loathing : on the principle that if 
 we find ourselves consigned to the nether halls, we do 
 well to dance drunkenly. He had cried for Romance — 
 here it was ! 
 
 He raised his hat to Mrs. Carthew and to Lord 
 Levellier. Previous to the ceremony, the two noblemen 
 had interchanged the short speech of mannered duel- 
 lists punctiliously courteous in the opening act. Their 
 civility was maintained at the termination of the deadly 
 work. The old lord's bosom thanked the young one for 
 not requiring entertainment and a repast; the young 
 lord's thanked the old one for a strict military demeanour 
 at an execution and the abstaining from any nonsensical 
 talk over the affair. 
 
 A couple of liveried grooms at the horses 1 heads ran 
 and sprang to the hinder seats as soon as their master 
 had taken the reins. He sounded the whip caressingly : 
 off those pretty trotters went. 
 
 Mrs. Carthew watched them, waving to the bride. 
 She was on the present occasion less than usually an 
 acute or a reflective observer, owing to her admiration 
 of lordly state and masculine commandership ; and 
 her thought was : ' She has indeed made a brilliant 
 marriage ! ' 
 
 The lady thought it, notwithstanding an eccentricity 
 in the wedding ceremony, such as could not but be 
 noticeable. But very wealthy noblemen were commonly, 
 perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved 
 themselves egregious, which the world expected them 
 to be. 
 
 Lord Levellier sounded loud eulogies of the illustri- 
 ous driver's team. His meditation, as he subsequently 
 stated to Chillon, was upon his vanquished antagonist's 
 
160 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 dexterity, in so conducting matters, that he had to be 
 taken at once, with naught of the customary preface 
 and apology for taking to himself the young lady, of 
 which a handsome settlement is the memorial. 
 
 We have to suppose, that the curious occupant of the 
 coach inside aroused no curiosity in the pair of absorbed 
 observers. 
 
 Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain 
 followed the coach until it sank and the backs of the 
 two liveried grooms closed the chapter of the wedding ; 
 introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven 
 miles distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts. It was 
 out of sight that the coach turned to the left, North- 
 westward. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 
 
 A famous maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, 
 treating of precaution, as ' The brave maris clean con- 
 science? with sound counsel to the adventurous, has 
 it:— 
 
 ' Then you sail away into the tornado, happy as a sealed 
 bottle of ripe wine.'' 
 
 It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of 
 hurricanes are found to have cheerful hearts in them 
 when they know they have done their best. But, 
 touching the picture of happiness, conceive the boun- 
 teous Bacchic spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, 
 and you find comparison neighbour closely between the 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 161 
 
 sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is being driven by 
 her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage 
 morn. 
 
 Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut 
 mouth, in a strange land, travelling cloud-like, rushing 
 like the shower-cloud to the vale, this Carinthia, sud- 
 denly wedded, passionately grateful for humbleness 
 exalted, virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, 
 resembled the inanimate and most inspiring ; was mind- 
 less and inexpressive, past memory, beyond the hopes, 
 a thing of the thrilled blood and skylark air, since she 
 laid her hand in this young man's. His not speaking 
 to her was accepted. Her blood rather than recollection 
 revived their exchanges during the dance at Baden, for 
 assurance that their likings were one, their aims raptur- 
 ously one ; that he was she, she he, the two hearts 
 making one soul. 
 
 Could she give as much as he ? It was hardly asked. 
 If we feel we can give our breath of life, the strength of 
 the feeling fully answers. It bubbles perpetually from 
 the depth like a well-spring in tumult. Two hearts 
 that make one soul do not separately count their gifts. 
 
 For the rest, her hunger to admire disposed her to an 
 absorbing sentience of his acts ; the trifles, gestures, 
 manner of this and that; which were seized as they 
 flew, and swiftly assimilated to stamp his personality. 
 Driving was the piece of skill she could not do. Her 
 husband's mastery of the reins endowed him with the 
 beauty of those harmonious trotters he guided and kept 
 to their pace ; and the humming rush of the pace, the 
 smooth torrent of the brown heath-knolls and reddish 
 pits and hedge-lines and grass-flats and copses pouring 
 the counter- way of her advance, belonged to his wizardry. 
 
 L 
 
162 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 The bearing of her onward was her abandonment to him. 
 Delicious as mountain air, the wind sang ; it had a song 
 of many voices. Quite as much as on the mountains, 
 there was the keen, the blissful, nerve-knotting catch of 
 the presence of danger in the steep descents, taken as if 
 swallowed, without swerve or check. She was in her 
 husband's hands. At times, at the pitch of a rapid 
 shelving, that was like a fall, her heart went down ; 
 and at the next throb exalted before it rose, not reason- 
 ing why ; — her confidence was in him ; she was his 
 comrade whatever chanced. Up over the mountain- 
 peaks she had known edged moments, little heeded in 
 their passage, when life is poised as a crystal pitcher 
 on the head, in peril of a step. Then she had been 
 dependent on herself. Now she had the joy of trusting 
 to her husband. 
 
 His hard leftward eye had view of her askant, if he 
 cared to see how she bore the trial ; and so relentlessly 
 did he take the slopes, that the man inside pushed out 
 an inquiring pate, the two grooms tightened arms across 
 their chests. Her face was calmly set, wakeful, but un- 
 wrinkled : the creature did not count among timid girls 
 — or among civilized. She had got what she wanted 
 from her madman — mad in his impulses, mad in his 
 reading of honour. She was the sister of Henrietta's 
 husband. Henrietta bore the name she had quitted. 
 Could madness go beyond the marrying of the creature ? 
 He chafed at her containment, at her courage, her 
 silence, her withholding the brazen or the fawnish 
 look-up, either of which he would have hated. 
 
 He, however, was dragged to look down. Neither 
 Gorgon nor Venus, nor a mingling of them, she had 
 the chasm of the face, recalling the face of his bondage, 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 163 
 
 seen first that night at Baden. It recalled and it was not 
 the face ; it was the skull of the face, or the flesh of the 
 spirit. Occasionally she looked, for a twinkle or two, 
 the creature or vision she had been, as if to mock by 
 reminding him. She was the abhorred delusion, who 
 captured him by his nerves, ensnared his word — the 
 doing of a foul witch. How had it leapt from his 
 mouth ? She must have worked for it. The word spoken 
 — she must have known it — he was bound, or the detested 
 Henrietta would have said : Not even true to his word ! 
 To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his name, 
 for a slip of his tongue, despite the warning sent her 
 through her uncle, had that face much as a leaden 
 winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant 
 in colour. She belonged to the order of the variable 
 animals — a woman indeed ! — womanish enough in that. 
 There are men who love women — the idea of woman. 
 Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He loved free- 
 dom, loathed the subjection of a partnership; could 
 undergo it only in adoration of an ineffable splendour. 
 He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep to 
 her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that 
 subdued him. Seen by light of day, this bitter object 
 beside him was a witch without her spells ; that is, the 
 skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among horrors and 
 ironies. Let her have the credit of doing her work 
 thoroughly before the exposure. She had done it. She 
 might have helped — such was the stipulation of his mad 
 freak in consenting to the bondage — yes, she mights 
 have helped to soften the sting of his wound. She was\ 
 beside him bearing his name, for the perpetual pouring 
 of an acid on the wound that vile Henrietta — poisoned 
 honey of a girl ! — had dealt. 
 
164 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 He glanced down at his possession : — heaven and 
 the yawning pit were the contrast ! Poisoned honey 
 is after all honey while you eat it. Here there was 
 nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness. And who was 
 she ? She was the sister of Henrietta's husband. He 
 was expected to embrace the sister of Henrietta's hus- 
 band. Those two were on their bridal tour. 
 
 This creature was also the daughter of an ancient 
 impostor and desperado called the Old Buccaneer; a 
 distinguished member of the family of the Lincolnshire 
 Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly ac- 
 quitted, men said, on a trial for murder. An eminent 
 alliance ! Society considered the Earl of Fleetwood 
 wildish, though he could manage his affairs. He and 
 his lawyers had them under strict control. How of 
 himself? The prize of the English marriage market 
 had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride the 
 daughter of the Old Buccaneer. He was to mix his 
 blood with the blood of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying 
 pallid under the hesitating acquittal of a divided jury. 
 
 How had he come to this pass, which swung him 
 round to think almost regretfully of the scorned multi- 
 tude of fair besiegers in the market, some of whom had 
 their unpoetic charms ? 
 
 He was renowned and unrivalled as the man of stain- 
 less honour : the one living man of his word. He had 
 never broken it — never would. There was his distinc- 
 tion among the herd. In that, a man is princely above 
 princes. The nobility of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleet- 
 wood, surpasses the nobility of common nobles. But, 
 by all that is holy, he pays for his distinction. 
 
 The creature beside him is a franked issue of her old 
 pirate of a father in one respect — nothing frightens her. 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 165 
 
 There she sits ; not a screw of her brows or her lips ; 
 and the coach rocked, they were sharp on a spill midway 
 of the last descent. It rocks again. She thinks it scarce 
 worth while to look up to reassure him. She is looking 
 over the country. 
 
 ' Have you been used to driving ? ' he said. 
 
 She replied : ' No, it is new to me on a coach/ 
 
 Carinthia felt at once how wild the wish or half 
 expectation that he would resume the glowing com- 
 munion of the night which had plighted them. 
 
 She did not this time say 'my husband,"' still it flicked 
 a whip at his ears. 
 
 She had made it more offensive, by so richly toning 
 the official title just won from him as to ring it on the 
 nerves ; one had to block it or be invaded. An antici- 
 pation that it would certainly recur haunted every 
 opening of her mouth. 
 
 Now that it did not, he felt the gap, relieved, and yet 
 pricked to imagine a mimicry of her tones, for the odd 
 foreignness of the word and the sound. She had a voice 
 of her own beside her courage. At the altar, her re- 
 sponses had their music. No wonder: the day was 
 hers. * My husband ' was a manner of saying ' my 
 fish.' 
 
 He spoke very civilly. 'Oblige me by telling me 
 what name you are accustomed to answer to.' 
 
 She seemed unaware of an Arctic husband, and replied : 
 4 My father called me Carin — short for Carinthia. My 
 mother called me Janey ; my second name is Jane. 
 My brother Chillon says both. Henrietta calls me 
 Janey.' 
 
 The creature was dead flesh to goads. But the name 
 of her sister-in-law on her lips returned the stroke 
 
166 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 neatly. She spared him one whip, to cut him with 
 another. 
 
 'You have not informed me which of these names 
 you prefer .' 
 
 * Oh, my husband, it is as you shall please.' 
 
 Fleetwood smartened the trot of his team, and there 
 was a to-do with the rakish leaders. 
 
 Fairies of a malignant humour in former days used 
 to punish the unhappiest of the naughty men who were 
 not favourites, by suddenly planting a hump on their 
 backs. Off the bedevilled wretches pranced, and they 
 kicked, they snorted, whinnied, rolled, galloped, outfly- 
 ing the wind, but not the dismal rider. Marriage is our 
 incubus now. No explanation is offered of why we are 
 afflicted ; we have simply offended, or some one absent 
 has offended, and we are handy. The spiteful hag of 
 power ties a wife to us ; perhaps for the reason, that 
 we behaved in the spirit of a better time by being 
 chivalrously honourable. Wives are just as inexplicable 
 curses, just as ineradicable and astonishing as humps 
 imposed on shapely backs. 
 
 Fleetwood lashed his horses until Carinthia's low 
 cry of entreaty rose to surprise. That stung him. 
 
 c Leave the coachman to his devices : we have an 
 appointment and must keep it,"' he said. 
 
 6 They go so willingly. 1 
 
 ' Good beasts, in their way. 1 
 
 ' I do not like the whip. 1 
 
 'I have the same objection. 1 
 
 They were on the level of the vale, going along a 
 road between farms and mansions, meadows and garden- 
 plots and park -palings. A strong warm wind drove 
 the pack of clouds over the tree-tops and charged at 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 167 
 
 the branches. English scenery, animating air ; a rouse 
 to the blood and the mind. Carinthia did not ask for 
 hues. She had come to love of the dark land with 
 the warm lifting wind, the big trees and the hedges, 
 and the stately houses, and people requiring to be 
 studied, who mean well and are warm somewhere below, 
 as chimney-pots are, though they are so stiff. 
 
 English people dislike endearments, she had found. 
 It might be that her husband disliked any show of 
 fondness. He would have to be studied very much. 
 He was not like others, as Henrietta had warned her. 
 From thinking of him fervidly, she was already past 
 the marvel of the thought that she called him husband. 
 At the same time, a curious intimation, gathered she 
 knew not whence, of the word ' husband ' on a young 
 wife's lips as being a foreign sound in England, advised 
 her to withhold it. His behaviour was instructing her. 
 
 4 Are you weather-wise ? — able to tell when the clouds 
 will hold off or pelt,'' he said, to be very civil to a 
 neighbour. 
 
 She collected her understanding, apparently ; treating 
 a conversational run of the tongue as a question to be 
 pondered ; and the horses paid for it. Ordinarily he 
 was gentle with his beasts. He lashed at her in his 
 heart for perverting the humanest of men. 
 
 6 Father was, 1 she replied. 
 
 ' Oh ! I have heard of him."' 
 
 Her face lightened. 'Father had a great name in 
 England.' 
 
 ' The Old Buccaneer, I think.' 
 
 ' I do not know. He was a seaman of the navy, like 
 Admiral Fakenham is. Weather at sea, weather on 
 the mountains, he could foretell it always. He wrote a 
 
168 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 book ; I have a copy you will read. It is a book of 
 Maxims. He often speaks of the weather. English 
 weather and women, he says. But not my mother. 
 My mother he stood aside by herself — pas capricieuse ; 
 (hi tout ! Because she would be out in the weather and 
 brave the weather. She rode, she swam, best of any 
 woman. If she could have known you, what pleasure 
 for me ! Mother learnt to read mountain weather 
 from father. I did it too. But sometimes on the high 
 fields"' upper snows it is very surprising. Father has 
 been caught. Here the cloud is down near the earth 
 and the strong wind keeps the rain from falling. How 
 long the wind will blow I cannot guess. But you love 
 the mountains. We spoke . . . And mountains' ad- 
 ventures we both love. I will talk French if you like, 
 for, I think, German you do not speak. I may speak 
 English better than French; but I am afraid of my 
 English with you. 
 
 1 Dear me ! 1 quoth Fleetwood, and he murmured 
 politely and cursorily, attentive to his coachman busi- 
 ness. She had a voice that clove the noise of the 
 wheels, and she had a desire to talk— that was evident. 
 Talk of her father set her prattling. It became clear 
 also to his not dishonest, his impressionable mind, that 
 her baby English might be natural. Or she was mildly 
 playing on it, to give herself an air. 
 
 He had no remembrance of such baby English at 
 Baden. There, however, she was in a state of enthu- 
 siasm — the sort of illuminated transparency they show 
 at the end of fireworks. Mention of her old scapegrace 
 of a father lit her up again. The girl there and the 
 girl here were no doubt the same. It could not be said 
 that she had duped him ; he had done it for himself — 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 169 
 
 acted on by a particular agency. This creature had 
 not the capacity to dupe. He had armed a blunt- 
 witted young woman with his idiocy, and she had dealt 
 the stroke ; different in scarce a degree by nature from 
 other young women of prey. 
 
 But her look at times, and now and then her voice, 
 gave sign that she counted on befooling him as well, 
 to reconcile him to his bondage. The calculation was 
 excessive. No woman had done it yet. Idiocy plunged 
 him the step which reawakened understanding ; and to 
 keep his whole mind alert on guard against any sort 
 of satisfaction with his bargain, he frankly referred 
 to the cause. Not female arts, but nature's impulses, 
 it was his passion for the wondrous in the look of a 
 woman's face, the new morning of the idea of women 
 in the look, and the peep into imaginary novel char- 
 acter, did the trick of enslaving him. Call it idiocy. 
 Such it was. Once acknowledged, it is not likely to 
 recur. An implacable reason sits in its place, with a 
 keen blade for efforts to carry the imposture further 
 afield or make it agreeable. Yet, after giving his word 
 to Lord Levellier, he had prodded himself to think the 
 burden of this wild young woman might be absurdly 
 tolerable and a laugh at the world. 
 
 A solicitude for the animal was marked by his 
 inquiry : ' You are not hungry yet ? ' 
 
 4 Oh no, not yet,' said she, oddly enlivened. 
 
 They had a hamper and were independent of stop- 
 pages for provision, he informed her. What more 
 delightful ? cried her look, seeing the first mid-day's 
 rest and meal with Chillon on the walk over the 
 mountain from their empty home. 
 
 She could get up enthusiasm for a stocked hamper ! 
 
170 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 And when told of some business that drew him to a 
 meadow they were nearing, she said she would be glad 
 to help, if she could. * I learn quickly, I know.' 
 
 His head acquiesced. The daughter of the Old 
 Buccaneer might learn the business quickly, perhaps ; 
 a singularly cutting smile was on his tight lips, in 
 memory of a desire he had as a boy to join hands with 
 an Amazonian damsel and be out over the world for 
 adventures, comrade and bride as one. Here the creature 
 sat. Life is the burlesque of young dreams ; or they 
 precipitate us on the roar and grin of a recognized 
 beast world. 
 
 The devil possessing him gnawed so furiously that a 
 partial mitigation of the pain was afforded by sight of 
 waving hats on a hill-rise of the road. He flourished 
 his whip. The hats continued at wind-mill work. It 
 signified brisk news to him, and prospect of glee to 
 propitiate any number of devils. 
 
 ' You will want a maid to attend on you, 1 he said. 
 
 She replied : ' I am not used to attendance on me. 
 Henrietta's maid would help. I did not want her. I 
 had no maid at home. I can do for myself. Father 
 and mother liked me to be very independent.' 
 
 He supposed he would have to hear her spelling her 
 words out next. 
 
 The hill-top was gained ; twenty paces of pretty 
 trotting brought up the coach beside an inn porch, in 
 the style of the finish dear to whips, and even imperative 
 upon them, if they love their art. Two gentlemen 
 stood in the road, and a young woman at the inn 
 door ; a dark-haired girl of an anxious countenance. 
 Her puckers vanished at some signal from inside the 
 coach. 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 171 
 
 ' All right, Madge ; nothing to fear,' Fleetwood called 
 to her, and she curtseyed. 
 
 He alighted, saying to her, before he spoke to his 
 friends : ' I Ve brought hirn safe ; had him under my 
 eye the last four and twenty hours. Hell do the 
 trick to-day. You don't bet ? ' 
 
 6 Oh ! my lord, no.' 
 
 ' Help the lady down. Out with you, Ines ! 1 
 
 The light-legged, barge-faced man touched ground 
 capering. He was greeted ' Kit ' by the pair of gentle- 
 men, who shook hands with him, after he had faintly 
 simulated the challenge to a jig with Madge. She 
 flounced from him, holding her arms up to the lady. 
 Landlord, landlady, and hostler besought the lady to 
 stay for the fixing of a ladder. Carinthia stepped, 
 leaped, and entered the inn, Fleetwood remarking : 
 ' We are very independent, Chummy Potts.'' 
 
 4 Cordy bally, by Jove ! ' Potts cried. But the moment 
 after this disengaged ejaculation, he was taken with a 
 bewilderment. ' At the Opera ? ' he questioned of his 
 perplexity. 
 
 'No, sir, not at the Opera, 1 Fleetwood rejoined. 
 ' The lady's last public appearance was at the altar.' 
 
 6 Sort of a suspicion of having seen her somewhere. 
 Left her husband behind, has she ? ' 
 
 ' You see : she has gone in. 1 
 
 The scoring of a proposition of Euclid on the fore- 
 head of Potts amused him and the other gentleman, 
 who was hailed 6 Mallard ! ' and cared nothing for pro- 
 blems involving the female of man when such work was 
 to the fore as the pugilistic encounter of the Earl of 
 Fleetwood's chosen Kit Ines, with Lord Brailstone's 
 unbeaten and well-backed Ben Todds. 
 
172 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Ines had done pretty things from the age of seven- 
 teen to his twenty third year. Remarkably clever 
 things they were, to be called great in the annals of 
 the Ring. The point, however, was, that the pockets 
 of his backers had seriously felt his latest fight. He 
 received a dog's licking at the hands of Lummy Phelps, 
 his inferior in skill, fighting two to one of the odds ; 
 and all because of his fatal addiction to the breaking 
 of his trainer's imposed fast in liquids on the night 
 before the battle. Right through his training, up to 
 that hour, the rascal was devout ; the majority's money 
 rattled all on the snug safe side. And how did he get 
 at the bottle ? His trainers never could say. But 
 what made him turn himself into a headlong ass, when 
 he had only to wait a night to sit among friends and 
 worshippers drinking off his tumbler upon tumbler 
 with the honours ? It was past his wits to explain. 
 Endurance of his privation had snapped in him ; or 
 else, which is more likely, this Genius of the Ring 
 was tempted by his genius on the summit of his per- 
 fected powers to believe the battle his own, and cele- 
 brate it, as became a victor despising the drubbed 
 antagonist. 
 
 In any case, he drank, and a minor man gave him 
 the dog's licking. 'Went into it puffy, came out of 
 it bunged,'' the chronicle resounding over England ran. 
 Old England read of an ( eyeless carcase 1 heroically 
 stepping up to time for three rounds of mashing punish- 
 ment. If he had won the day after all, the country 
 would have been electrified. It sympathized on the 
 side of his backers too much to do more than nod a 
 short approval of his fortitude. To sink with flag 
 flying is next to sinking the enemy. There was talk 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 173 
 
 of a girl present at the fight, and of how she received 
 the eyeless, almost faceless, carcase of her sweetheart 
 Kit, and carried him away in a little donkey-cart, com- 
 fortably cushioned to meet disaster. This petty in- 
 cident drew the attention of the Earl of Fleetwood, 
 then beginning to be known as the diamond of un- 
 counted facets, patron of the pick of all departments 
 of manly activity in England. 
 
 The devotion of the girl Madge to her sweetheart 
 was really a fine story. Fleetwood touched on it to 
 Mr. Mallard, speaking of it like the gentleman he 
 could be, while Chumley Potts wagged impatient acqui- 
 escence in a romantic episode of the Ring, that kept 
 the talk from the hotter theme. 
 
 8 Money 's Bank of England to-day, you think ? ' he 
 interposed, and had his answer after Mallard had said : 
 ' The girl "s rather good looking, too."' 
 
 'You may double your bets, Chummy. I had the 
 fellow to his tea at my dinner-table yesterday evening ; 
 locked him in his bedroom, and had him up and out 
 for a morning spin at six. His trainer, Flipper, 's on 
 the field, drove from Esslemont at nine, confident as 
 trumps. 1 
 
 6 Deuce of a good-looking girl, 1 Potts could now afford 
 to say ; and he sang out : * Feel fit, lucky dog ? ' 
 
 * Concert pitch ! ' was the declaration of Kit Ines. 
 
 6 How about Lord Brailstone's man ? , 
 
 ' Female partner in a quadrille, sir.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' Potts doted on his limbs with a butcher's 
 eye for prize joints. 
 
 'Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset,' Mallard 
 observed. 
 
 Fleetwood offered him to take his bets. 
 
174 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 1 You 're heavy on it with Brailstone ? ' said Mallard. 
 
 * Three thousand.' 
 
 ' I \1 back you for your luck blindfold.' 
 
 A ruffle of sourness shot over the features of the earl, 
 and was noticed by both eager betters, who exchanged 
 a glance. 
 
 Potts inspected his watch, and said half aloud : * Liver, 
 ten to one ! That never meant bad luck — except bad 
 to act on. We slept here last night, you know. It's 
 a mile and a quarter from the Royal Sovereign to the 
 field of glory. Pretty well time to start. Brailstone 
 has a drive of a couple of miles. Coaches from London 
 down by this time. Abrane 's dead on Ben Todds, any 
 odds. Poor old Braney ! "Steady man, Todds." Backs 
 him because he 's a " respectable citizen," — don't drink. 
 A prize-fighter total abstainer has no spurts. Old 
 Braney 's branded for the losing side. You might bet 
 against Braney blindfold, Mallard. How long shall 
 you take to polish him off, Kit Ines ? ' 
 
 The opponent of Ben Todds calculated. 
 
 * Well, sir, steady Benny ought to be satisfied with 
 his dose in, say, about forty minutes. Maybe he won't 
 own to it before an hour and ten. He 's got a proud 
 English stomach.' 
 
 ' Shall we be late ? ' Potts asked. 
 
 'Jump in,' Fleetwood said to his man. We may 
 be five minutes after time, Chummy. I had a longer 
 drive, and had to get married on the way, and — ah, 
 here they are ! ' 
 
 6 Lady coming ? ' 
 
 ' I fancy she sticks to the coach ; I don't know her 
 tastes. Madge must see her hero through it, that's 
 positive.' 
 
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 175 
 
 Potts deferred his astonishment at the things he 
 was hearing and seeing, which were only Fleetwood's 
 riddles. The fight and the bets rang every other 
 matter out of his head. He beheld the lady, who 
 had come down from the coach like a columbine, 
 mount it like Bean-stalk Jack. Madge was not half 
 so clever, and required a hand at her elbow. 
 
 After giving hurried directions to Rundles, the land- 
 lord of the Royal Sovereign, Fleetwood took the reins, 
 and all three gentlemen touched hat's to the curtseying 
 figure of Mrs. Rundles. 
 
 4 You have heard, I dare say — it 's an English scene, 1 
 he spoke, partly turning his face, to Carinthia; ' particu- 
 larly select to-day. Their Majesties might look on, as 
 the Caesars did in Rome. Pity we can't persuade them. 
 They ought to set the fashion. Here we have the 
 English people at their grandest, in prime condition, 
 if they were not drunk over-night; and dogged, per- 
 fectly awake, magnanimous, all for fair play ; fine fellows, 
 upon my word. A little blood, of course."' 
 
 But the daughter of the Old Buccaneer would have 
 inherited a tenderness for the sight of blood. She 
 should make a natural Lady Patroness of England's 
 National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose ; 
 wander over England with a tail of shouting riff-raff; 
 have exhibitions, join in them, display our accomplish- 
 ments ; issue challenges to fence, shoot, walk, run, box, 
 in time : the creature has muscle. It 's one way of 
 crowning a freak ; we follow the direction, since the 
 deed done can't be undone ; and a precious poetical 
 life, too ! You may get as royally intoxicated on 
 swipes as on choice wine ; win a name for yourself 
 as the husband of such a wife ; a name in sporting 
 
176 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 journals and shilling biographies: quite a revival of 
 the Peerage they have begun to rail at ! 
 
 ' I would not wish to leave you,"* said Carinthia. 
 
 ' You have chosen/ said Fleetwood. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 IX WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A 
 TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 Cheers at an open gate of a field saluted the familiar 
 scarlet of the Earl of Fleetwoods coach in Kentish land. 
 They were chorister cheers, the spontaneous ringing out 
 of English country hearts in homage to the nobleman 
 who brightened the heaviness of life on English land 
 with a spectacle of the noble art distinguishing their 
 fathers. He drove along over muffling turf; plough- 
 boys and blue butcher-boys, and smocked old men, with 
 an approach to a hundred-weight on their heels, at the 
 trot to right and left ; all hoping for an occasional sight 
 of the jewel called Kitty, that he carried inside. Kitty 
 was there. 
 
 Kitty's eyes are shut. Think of that : cradled inno- 
 cence and angels 1 dreams and the whole of the hymn just 
 before ding-dong-bang on noses and jaws ! That means 
 confidence ? Looks like it. But Kitty 's not asleep : 
 you try him. He 's only quiet because he has got to 
 undergo great exertion. Last fight he was knocked out 
 of time, because he went into it honest drunk, they tell. 
 And the earl took him up, to give him a chance of re- 
 covering his good name, and that 's Christian. But the 
 
A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 177 
 
 earl, he knows a man as well as a horse. He 's one to 
 follow. ' Go to a fayte down at Esslemont, you won't 
 forget your day. See there, he's brought a lady on the 
 top o' the coach. That seems for to signify he don't 
 expect it 's going to be much of a bloody business. But 
 there 's no accounting. Anyhow, Broadfield '11 have a 
 name in the papers for Sunday reading. In comes 
 t "other lord's coach. They Ve timed it together close, 
 they have. 1 
 
 They were pronounced to be both the right sort of 
 noblemen for the country. Lord Brailstone's blue 
 coach rattled through an eastern gate to the corner of 
 the thirty-acre meadow, where Lord Fleetwood had 
 drawn up, a toss from the ring. The meeting of the 
 blue and scarlet coaches drew forth Old England's 
 thunders ; and when the costly treasures contained in 
 them popped out heads, the moment was delirious. 
 Kit Ines came after his head on a bound. Ben Todds 
 was ostentatiously deliberate : his party said he was 
 no dancing-master. He stepped out, grave as a barge 
 emerging from a lock, though alive to the hurrahs of 
 supporters and punctilious in returning the formal por- 
 tion of his rival's too roguish nod. Their look was 
 sharp into the eyes, just an instant. 
 
 Brailstone and Fleetwood jumped to the grass and 
 met, talking and laughing, precise upon points of busi- 
 ness, otherwise cordial: plenipotentiaries of great powers, 
 whom they have set in motion and bind to the cere- 
 monial opening steps, according to the rules of civilized 
 warfare. They had a short colloquy with newspaper 
 reporters ; — an absolutely fair, square, upright fight of 
 Britons was to be chronicled. Captain Abrane, a tower 
 in the crowd, registered bets whtnever he could. Cur- 
 
 M 
 
178 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 rides, gigs, carts, pony-traps, boys on ponies, a swarm 
 on legs, flowed to the central point and huddled there. 
 
 Was either champion born in Kent? An audacious 
 boy proclaimed Kit Ines a man of Kent. Why, of 
 course he was ! and that was why the Earl of Fleet- 
 wood backed our cocky Kitty, and means to land him on 
 the top of his profession. Ben Todds was shuffled aside, 
 as one of their Londoners, destitute of county savour. 
 
 All very well, but have a spy at Benny Todds. Who 
 looks the square man ? And hear what that big 
 gentleman of the other lord's party says. A gentleman 
 of his height and weight has a right to his opinion. 
 He 's dead against Kit Ines : it 's fists, not feet, he says, 
 ll do it to-day ; stamina, he says. Benny has got the 
 stamina. 
 
 Todds" possession of the stamina, and the grand 
 voice of Captain Abrane, and the Father Christmas, 
 roast-beef-of-Old England, face of the umpire declared 
 to be on the side of Lord Brailstone's colour blue, dark- 
 ened the star of Kit Ines till a characteristic piece of 
 behaviour was espied. He dashed his cap into the 
 ring and followed it, with the lightest of vaults across 
 the ropes. There he was, the first in the ring : and 
 that stands for promise of first blow, first blood, first 
 flat knock-down, and last to cry for quarter. His pair 
 of seconds were soon after him. Fleetwood mounted 
 his box. 
 
 4 Is it to fight ? ' said Carinthia. 
 
 ' To see which is the master. 1 
 
 'They fight to see?' 
 
 e Generally until one or the other can't see. You are 
 not obliged to see it; you can be driven away if you wish.' 
 
 6 1 will be here, if you are here. 1 
 
A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 179 
 
 c You choose it.' 
 
 Fleetwood leaned over to Chumley Potts on the turf. 
 ' Abrane's ruining himself.' 
 
 Potts frankly hoped that his friend might be doing 
 so. 'Todds is jolly well backed. He.'s in prime con- 
 dition. He 's the favourite of the knowing ones. 1 
 
 ' You wouldn't have the odds, if he weren't. 1 
 
 6 No ; but the odds are like ten per cent : they con- 
 jure the gale, and be hanged,' said Potts ; he swore at 
 his betting mania, which destroyed the pleasure of the 
 show he loved. 
 
 All in the ring were shaking hands. Shots of a desire 
 to question and comment sped through Carinthia's veins 
 and hurt her. She had gathered that she spoke foolishly 
 to her husband's ear, so she kept her mouth shut, though 
 the unanswered of her inquisitive ignorance in the strange 
 land pricked painfully at her bosom. She heard the 
 girl behind her say : ' Our colours ! ' when the colour 
 scarlet enwound with Lord Brailstone's blue was tied 
 to the stake : and her husband nodded ; he smiled ; he 
 liked to hear the girl. 
 
 Potts climbed up, crying : ' Toilets complete ! Now 
 for paws out, and then at it, my hearties ! ' 
 
 Choic< of corners under the leaden low cloud counted 
 for little. A signal was given ; a man outside the ring 
 eyed a watch, raised a hand ; the two umpires were on 
 foot in their places ; the pair of opposing seconds hur- 
 ried out cheery or bolt-business words to their men ; and 
 the champions advanced to the scratch. Todds first, 
 by the courtesy of Ines, whose decorous control of his 
 legs at a weighty moment was rightly read by his party. 
 
 Their hands grasped firmly : thereupon becoming fists 
 of a hostile couple in position. And simply to learn 
 
180 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 which of us two is the better man ! Or in other words, 
 with four simple fists to compass a patent fact and stand 
 it on the historic pedestal, with a little red writing under- 
 neath : — you never can patent a fact without it. But 
 mark the differences of this kind of contention from all 
 other — especially the Parliamentary : this is positive, 
 it has a beginning and an end ; and it is good-humoured 
 from beginning to end ; trial of skill, trial of stamina ; 
 Nature and Art ; Old English ; which made us what we 
 are ; and no rancours, no vows of vengeance ; the beaten 
 man of the two bowing to the bit of history he has 
 helped to make. 
 
 Kittites had need to be confident in the skill of their 
 lither lad. His facer looked granite. Fronting that 
 mass, Kit you might — not to lash about for comparisons 
 — call a bundle of bamboo. Ay, but well knitted, 
 springy, alive every inch of him ; crafty, too, as you will 
 soon bear witness. He knows he has got his task, and 
 he 's the man to do it. 
 
 There was wary sparring, and mirrors watched them. 
 
 ' Bigger fellow : but have no fear, 1 the earl said over 
 his shoulder to Madge. 
 
 She said in return : ' Oh, I don't know, I 'm praying. 1 
 
 Kit was now on his toes, all himself, like one who 
 has found the key. He feinted. Quick as lightning, 
 he landed a bolt on Ben's jib, just at the toll-bar of 
 the bridge, between the eyes, and was off, out of reach, 
 elastic ; Ben's counter fell short by a couple of inches. 
 Cheers for first blow. 
 
 The earl clucked to Madge. Her gaze at the ring was 
 a sullen intensity. 
 
 Will you believe it ? — Ben received a second spank- 
 ing cracker on the spectacles-seat : neat indeed ; and, 
 
A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 181 
 
 poor payment for the compliment, he managed to dig 
 a drive at the ribs. As much of that game as may suit 
 you, sturdy Ben ! But hear the shout, and behold : 
 First blood to Kit Ines ! That tell-tale nose of old 
 Ben's has mounted the Earl of Fleetwood's colours, and 
 all his party are looking Brailstone-blue. 
 
 ' So far ! 1 said Fleetwood. His grooms took an indi- 
 cation : the hamper was unfastened ; sandwiches were 
 handed. Carinthia held one ; she tried to nibble, in 
 obedience to her husband's example. Madge refused a 
 bite of food. 
 
 Hearing Carinthia say to her : * I hope he will not be 
 beaten, I hope, I hope,' she made answer : ' You are 
 very good, Miss ' ; and the young lady flushed. 
 
 Gentlemen below were talking up to the earl. A 
 Kentish squire of an estate neighbouring Esslemont 
 introduced a Welsh squire he had driven to see the fun, 
 by the name of Mr. Owain Wythan, a neighbour of 
 the earl's down in Wales. Refreshments were offered. 
 Carinthia submissively sipped the sparkling wine, which 
 stings the lips when we are indisposed to it. The voice 
 of the girl Madge rang on the tightened chords of her 
 breast. Madge had said she was praying : and to pray 
 was all that could be done by two women. Her hus- 
 band could laugh loudly with Mr. Potts and the other 
 gentlemen and the strangers. He was quite sure the 
 man he supported would win ; he might have means of 
 knowing. Carinthia clung to his bare words, for the 
 sake of the girl. 
 
 A roaring peal went up from the circle of combat. 
 Kit had it this time. Attacking Ben's peepers, he 
 was bent on defending his own, and he caught a body- 
 blow that sent him hopping back to his pair of seconds, 
 
182 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 five clear hops to the rear, like a smashed surge-wave 
 off the rock. He was respectful for the remainder of 
 the round. But hammering at the system he had 
 formed, in the very next round he dropped from a 
 tremendous repetition of the blow, and lay flat as a 
 turbot. The bets against him had simultaneously a 
 see-saw rise. 
 
 1 Bellows, he appears to have none,' was the comment 
 of Chum ley Potts. 
 
 ' Now for training, Chummy ! ' said Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 ' Chummy ! ' signifying a crow over Potts, rang out 
 of the hollows of Captain Abrane on Lord Brailstone's 
 coach. 
 
 Carinthia put a hand behind her to Madge. It was 
 grasped, in gratitude for sympathy or in feminine polite- 
 ness. The girl murmured : ' I Ve seen worse. 1 She 
 was not speaking to ears. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood sat watch in hand. i Up,' he said ; 
 and, as if hearing him, Kit rose from the ministering 
 second's knee. He walked stiffly, squared after the 
 fashion of a man taught caution. Ben made play. 
 They rounded the ring, giving and taking. Ben 
 rushed, and had an emollient ; spouted again and was 
 corked ; again, and received a neat red-waxen stopper. 
 He would not be denied at Kit's door, found him at 
 home and hugged him. Kit got himself to grass, after 
 a spell of heavy .fibbing, Ben's game. 
 
 It did him no great harm ; it might be taken for an 
 enlivener ; he was dead on his favourite spot the ensuing 
 round, played postman on it. So cleverly, easily, dan- 
 cingly, did he perform the double knock and the retreat, 
 that Chumley Potts was moved to forget his wagers and 
 exclaim : ' Racket-ball, by Jove ! ' 
 
A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 183 
 
 i If he doesn't let the fellow fib the wind out of him," 
 Mallard addressed his own crab eyeballs. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood heard and said coolly : ' Tight- 
 strung. I kept him fasting since he earned his break- 
 fast. You don't wind an empty rascal fit for action. 
 A sword through the lungs won't kill when there's no 
 air in them.' 
 
 That was printed in the Few Words before the En- 
 counter^ in the Book of Maxims for Men. Carinthia, 
 hearing everything her husband uttered, burned to 
 remind him of the similarity between his opinions and 
 her father's. 
 
 She was learning, that for some reason, allusions to 
 her father were not acceptable. She squeezed the 
 hand of Madge, and felt a pressure, like a scream, 
 telling her the girl's heart was with the fight beneath 
 them. She thought it natural for her. She wished 
 she could continue looking as intently. She looked 
 because her husband looked. The dark hills and 
 clouds curtaining the run of the stretch of fields re- 
 lieved her sight. 
 
 The clouds went their way ; the hills were solid, but 
 like a blue smoke ; the scene here made them very 
 distant and strange. Those two men were still hitting, 
 not hating one another ; only to gratify a number of 
 unintelligible people and win a success. But the earth 
 and sky seemed to say, What is the glory? They 
 were insensible to it, as they are not — they are never 
 insensible to noble grounds of strife. They bless the 
 spot, they light lamps on it ; they put it into books of 
 history, make it holy, if the cause was a noble one or a 
 good one. 
 
 Or supposing both those men loved the girl, who loved 
 
184 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 one of them ! Then would Carinthia be less reluctantly 
 interested in their blows. 
 
 Her infant logic stumbled on tor a reason while she 
 repressed the torture the scene was becoming, as though 
 a reason could be found by her submissive observation 
 of it. And she was right in believing that a reason 
 for the scene must or should exist. Only, like other 
 bewildered instinctive believers, she could not summon 
 the great universe or a life's experience to unfold it. 
 Her one consolation was in squeezing the hand of the 
 girl from time to time. 
 
 Not stealthily done, it was not objected to by the 
 husband whose eye was on all. But the persistence in 
 doing it sank her from the benignity of her station to 
 the giiTs level : it was conduct much too raw, and 
 grated on the deed of the man who had given her his 
 name. 
 
 Madge pleased him better. She had the right to be 
 excited, and she was very little demonstrative. She 
 had — well, in justice, the couple of them had, only she 
 had it more — the tone of the women who can be screwed 
 to witness a spill of blood, peculiarly catching to hear ; 
 — a tone of every string in them snapped except the 
 silver string. Catching to hear ? It is worth a stretch- 
 ing of them on the rack to hear that low buzz-hum of 
 their inner breast ... By heaven ! we have them at 
 their best when they sing that note. 
 
 His watch was near an hour of the contest, and 
 Brailstone's man had scored first knock-down blow, a 
 particularly clean floorer. Thinking of that, he was 
 cheered by hearing Chummy Potts, whose opinions he 
 despised, cry out to Abrane : — 
 
 c Yeast to him ! ' For the face of Todds was visibly 
 
A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 185 
 
 swelling to the ripest of plums from Kit's deliveries. 
 Down he went. He had the sturdy legs which are no 
 legs to a clean blow. Odds were offered against him. 
 
 ' Oh ! pretty play with your right, Kit ! ' exclaimed 
 Mallard, as Kit fetched his man an ugly stroke on the 
 round of the waist behind, and the crowd sent up the 
 name of the great organs affected : a sickener of a 
 stroke, if dealt soundly. It meant more than it 
 showed. Kit was now for taking liberties. Light as 
 ever on his pins, he now and then varied his atten- 
 tions to the yeasty part, delivering a wakener in unex- 
 pected quarters : masterly as the skilled cook's carving 
 of a joint with hungry guests for admirers. 
 
 ' Eh, Madge ? ' the earl said. 
 
 She kept her sight fixed, replying : ' Yes, I think . . .' 
 Carinthia joined with her: 'I must believe it that he 
 will : but will the other man, poor man, submit ? I 
 entreat him to put away his pride. It is his — oh, 
 poor man ! ' 
 
 Ben was having it hot and fast on a torso physiognomy. 
 
 The voices of these alien women thrilled the fray 
 and were a Bardic harp to Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 He dropped a pleasant word on the heads in the 
 curricle. 
 
 Mr. Owain Wythan looked up. ' Worthy of Theo- 
 critus. It's the Boxing Twin and the Bembrycian 
 giant. The style of each. To the letter ! ' 
 
 ' Kit is assiduously fastening Ben's blinkers,' Potts 
 remarked. 
 
 He explained to the incomprehensible lady he fancied 
 he had somewhere seen, that the battle might be known 
 as near the finish by the behaviour on board Lord 
 Brailstone's coach. 
 
186 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 'It's like Foreign Affairs and the Stock Exchange,' 
 lie said to the more intelligent males. 6 If I want to 
 know exactly how the country stands, I turn to the 
 Money Article in the papers. That's a barometrical 
 certainty. No use inquiring abroad. Look at old 
 Rufus Abrane. I see the state of the fight on the old 
 fellow's mug. He hasn't a bet left in him ! ' 
 
 * Captain Mountain — Rufus Mus ! ' cried Lord Fleet- 
 wood, and laughed at the penetrative portrait Wood- 
 seer's epigram sketched ; he had a desire for the 
 presence of the singular vagabond. 
 
 The Rufus Mus in the Captain Mountain exposed 
 his view of the encounter, by growing stiller, appar- 
 ently growing smaller, without a squeak, like the 
 entrapped; and profoundly contemplative, after the 
 style of the absolutely detached, who foresee the fatal 
 crash, and are calculating, far ahead of events, the 
 means for meeting their personal losses. 
 
 The close of the battle was on the visage of Rufus 
 Abrane fifteen minutes before that Elgin marble under 
 red paint in the ring sat on the knee of a succouring 
 seconder, mopped, rubbed, dram-primed, puppy-peeping, 
 inconsolably comforted, preparatory to the resumption 
 of the great-coat he had so hopefully cast from his 
 shoulders. Not downcast, by any means. Like an old 
 Roman, the man of the sheer hulk with purple eye- 
 mounds found his legs to do the manful thing, show 
 that there was no bad blood, stand equal to all forms. 
 Ben Todds, if ever man in Old England, looked the 
 picture you might label 4 Bellyful,' it was remarked. 
 Kit Ines had an appearance of springy readiness to lead 
 off again. So they faced on the opening step of their 
 march into English History. 
 
A SHADOW CONTEST 187 
 
 Vanquisher and vanquished shook hands, engaged 
 in a parting rally of good-humoured banter ; the beaten 
 man said his handsome word ; the best man capped it 
 with a compliment to him. They drink of different 
 cups to-day. Both will drink of one cup in the day to 
 come. But the day went too clearly to crown the light 
 and the tight and the right man of the two, for moral- 
 izing to wag its tail at the end. Oldsters and youngsters 
 agreed to that. Science had done it : happy the 
 backers of Science ! Not one of them alluded to the 
 philosophical 'hundred years hence.'* For when England, 
 thanks to a spirited pair of our young noblemen, has 
 exhibited one of her characteristic performances con- 
 summately, Philosophy is bidden fly ; she is a foreign 
 bird. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 RECORDS A SHADOW CONTEST CLOSE ON THE FOREGOING 
 
 Kit Ines cocked an eye at Madge, in the midst of 
 the congratulations and the paeans pumping his arms. 
 As he had been little mauled, he could present a face 
 to her, expecting a wreath of smiles for the victor. 
 
 What are we to think of the contrarious young 
 woman who, when he lay beaten, drove him off the 
 field and was all tenderness and devotion ? She bobbed 
 her head, hardly more than a trifle pleased, one might 
 say. Just like females. They're riddles, not worth spell- 
 ing. Then, drunk 111 get to-night, my pretty dear! the 
 man muttered, soured by her inopportune staidness, as 
 an opponent's bruisings could never have rendered him. 
 
188 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She smiled a lively beam in answer to the earl ; ' Oh 
 yes, I'm glad. It's your doing, my lord.' Him it was 
 that she thanked, and for the moment prized most. 
 The female riddle is hard to read, because it is com- 
 pounded of sensations, and they rouse and appeal to 
 the similar cockatrices in us, which either hiss back or 
 coil upon themselves. She admired Kit Ines for his 
 valour : she hated that ruinous and besotting drink. 
 It flung skeletons of a married couple on the wall of 
 the future. Nevertheless her love had been all maternal 
 to him when he lay chastised and disgraced on account 
 of his vice. Pity had done it. Pity not being stirred, 
 her admiration of the hero declared victorious, whose 
 fortunes in uncertainty had stopped the beating of her 
 heart, was eclipsed by gratitude toward his preserver, 
 and a sentiment eclipsed becomes temporarily coldish, 
 against our wish and our efforts, in a way to astonish ; 
 making her think that she cannot hold two sentiments 
 at a time ; when it is but the fact that she is unable 
 to keep the two equally warm. 
 
 Carinthia said to her : ' He is brave.' 
 
 4 Oh yes, he 's brave,' Madge assented. 
 
 Lord Brailstone, flourishing his whip, cried out : ' At 
 Canleys to-night ? ' 
 
 The earl nodded : ' I shall be there. 1 
 
 ' You, too, Chummy ? ' came from Abrane. 
 
 'To see you dance, 1 Potts rejoined, and mumbled: 
 6 But will he dance ! Old Braney's down on his luck ; 
 he's a specimen of a fellow emptier and not lighter. 
 And won't be till supper-time. But, I say, Fleet, how 
 the deuce ? — funny sort of proceeding ! — You haven't 
 introduced me.' 
 
 1 The lady bears my name, Mr. Chumley Potts.' 
 
A SHADOW CONTEST 189 
 
 With a bow to the lady's profile and a mention of a 
 glimpse at Baden, Potts ejaculated : ' It happened this 
 morning ? ' 
 
 ' You allude to the marriage. It happened this 
 morning.'' 
 
 ' How do I get to Canleys ? ' 
 
 'I drive you. Another team from the Esslemont 
 stables is waiting at the Royal.'' 
 
 ' You stay at Canleys ? ' 
 
 'No; 
 
 * No ? Oh ! Funny, upon my word. Though I 
 don't know why not — except that people . . .* 
 
 ' Count your winnings, Chummy."' 
 
 Fleetwood remarked to his bride : ' Our friend has 
 the habit of soliloquizing in company. I forgot to tell 
 you of an appointment of mine at a place called Can- 
 leys, about twenty miles or more from here. I gave 
 my word, so I keep it. The landlady at the inn, Mrs. 
 Rundles, motherly kind of woman ; she will be atten- 
 tive. They don't cook badly, for an English inn, I 
 have heard. Madge here will act as your lady's-maid 
 for the time. You will find her serviceable ; she 's a 
 bruiser's lass and something above it. — Ines informed 
 me, Madge, you were going to friends of yours at the 
 Wells. You will stay at the Royal and wait on this 
 lady, who bears my name. You understand ? — A girl 
 I can trust for courage, if the article is in request,' he 
 resumed to his bride ; and talked generally of the inn 
 and the management of it, and its favoured position 
 outside the village and contiguous to the river, upon 
 which it subsisted. 
 
 Carinthia had heard. She was more than ever the 
 stunned young woman she had been since her mount- 
 
190 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ing of the coach, between the village church and 
 Lekkatts. 
 
 She said not a word. Why should she? — her object 
 was won. Give her that, and a woman's tongue will 
 consent to rest. The dreaded weapon rests also when 
 she is kept spinning by the whip. She gives out a 
 pleasant hum, too. Her complexion must be pronounced 
 dull in repose. A bride on her travels with an aspect 
 of wet chalk, rather helps to scare mankind from 
 marriage : which may be good or bad ; but she reflects 
 a sicklier hue on the captured Chessman calling her his 
 own. Let her shine in privacy. 
 
 Fleetwood drew up at the Royal Sovereign, whereof 
 the reigning monarch, in blue uniform on the sign- 
 board, curtseyed to his equally windy subjects ; and 
 a small congregation of the aged, and some cripples 
 and infants, greeted the patron of Old England's man- 
 fullest display, cheering at news of the fight, brought 
 them by many little runners. 
 
 c Your box has been conveyed to your room,' he said 
 to his bride. 
 
 She bowed. This time she descended the coach by 
 the aid of the ladder. 
 
 Ines, victorious in battle, had scant notice from his 
 love. 'Yes, I'm glad, 1 and she passed him to follow 
 her newly constituted mistress. His pride was dashed, 
 all the foam of the first draw on the top of him blown 
 off, as he figuratively explained the cause of his gloom 
 to the earl. ' I drink and I gets a licking — that girl 
 nurses and cossets me. I don't drink and I whops my 
 man — she shows me her back. Ain't it encouragement, 
 my lord ?' 
 
 6 You ought to know them by this time, you dolt,' 
 
A SHADOW CONTEST 191 
 
 returned his patron, and complimented him on his 
 bearing in the fight. ' You shall have your two 
 hundred, and something will be added. Hold handy 
 here till I mount. I start in ten minutes. 1 
 
 Whether to speak a polite adieu to the bride, whose 
 absurd position she had brought on her own head, was 
 debated for half a minute. He considered that the 
 wet chalk-quarry of a beauty had at all events the 
 merit of not being a creature to make scenes. He 
 went up to the sitting-room. If she was not there, he 
 would leave his excuses. 
 
 She was there, and seated ; neither crying, nor 
 smiling, nor pointedly serious in any way, not conven- 
 tionally at her ease either. And so clearly was he 
 impressed by her transparency in simplicity of expres- 
 sion, that he took without a spurn at it the picture of 
 a woman half drained of her blood, veiling the wound. 
 And a young woman, a stranger to suffering : perhaps 
 — as the creatures do — looking for the usual flummery 
 tenderness, what they call happiness ; wondering at the 
 absence of it and the shifty ghost of a husband she has 
 got by floundering into the bog known as Marriage. 
 She would have it, and here she was ! 
 
 He entered the situation and was possessed by the 
 shivering delicacy of it. Surface emotions were not 
 seen on her. She might be a creature with a soul. 
 Here and there the thing has been found in women. 
 It is priceless when found, and she could not be acting. 
 One might swear the creature had no power to act. 
 
 She spoke without offence, the simplest of words, 
 affected no solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore no 
 reproaches : spoke to him as if so it happened — he had 
 necessarily a journey to perform. One could see all 
 
192 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the while big drops falling from the wound within. 
 One could hear it in her voice. Imagine a crack of 
 the string at the bow's deep stress. Or imagine the 
 bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest sounding. 
 And yet the voice did not waver. She had now the 
 richness of tone carrying on a music through silence. 
 
 Well, then, at least, he had not been the utterly 
 duped fool he thought himself since the consent was 
 pledged to wed her. 
 
 More, she had beauty — of its kind. Or splendour or 
 grandeur, was the term for it. But it bore no name. 
 None of her qualities — if they were qualities — had a 
 name. She stood with a dignity that the word did not 
 express. She endured meekly, when there was no 
 meekness. Pain breathed out of her, and not a sign of 
 pain was visible. She had, under his present observa- 
 tion of her, beauty, with the lines of her face breaking 
 in revolt from beauty — or requiring a superterrestrial 
 illumination to show the harmony. He, as he now 
 saw, had erred grossly in supposing her insensitive, and 
 therefore slow of a woman's understanding. She drew 
 the breath of pain through the lips : red lips and well 
 cut. Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring or 
 beseeching or repelling ; they did but look, much like 
 the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her 
 reddish hair — chestnut, if you will — let fall a skein 
 over one of the rugged brows, and softened the rugged- 
 ness by making it wilder, as if a great bird were wing- 
 ing across a shoulder of the mountain ridges. Con- 
 ceived of the mountains, built in their image, the face 
 partook alternately of mountain terror or splendour; 
 wholly, he remembered, of ■ the splendour when her 
 blood ran warm. No longer the chalk-quarry face, 
 
A SHADOW CONTEST 193 
 
 — its paleness now was that of night Alps beneath a 
 moon chasing the shadows. 
 
 She might be casting her spells again. 
 
 ' You remember I told you, 1 he said, ' I have given 
 my word — I don't break it — to be at a Ball. Your 
 uncle was urgent to have the ceremony over. These 
 clashes occur. The people here — I have spoken of that: 
 people of good repute for attention to guests. I am 
 uncertain of the time ... we have all to learn to wait. 
 So then, good-bye till we meet.'' 
 
 He was experiencing a novel nip of torment, of just 
 the degree which takes a partial appeasement from the 
 inflicting of it, and calls up a loathed compassion. She 
 might have been in his arms for a step, though she 
 would not have been the better loved. 
 
 He was allowed his escape, bearing with him enough 
 of husband to execrate another enslaving pledge of his 
 word, that begat a frenzy to wreak some caresses on the 
 creature's intolerably haunting image. Of course, he could 
 not return to her. How would she receive him ? There 
 was no salt in the thought of it; she was too submissive. 
 
 However, there would be fun with Chummy Potts on 
 the drive to Canleys; fun with Rufus Abrane at 
 Mrs. Cowper Quillett's ; and with the Countess Livia, 
 smothered, struggling, fighting for life with the title of 
 Dowager. A desire for unbridled fun had hold of him : 
 any amount of it, to excess in any direction. And 
 through this cloud, as a dry tongue after much wine 
 craves water, glimpses of his tramp's walk with a fellow- 
 tramp on a different road, enjoying strangely healthy 
 vagabond sensations and vast ideas, brought the vagrant 
 philosopher refreshfully to his mind : chiefly for the 
 reason that while in Woodseer's company he had hardly 
 
194 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 suffered a stroke of pain from the thought of Henrietta. 
 She was now a married woman, he was a married man — 
 by the register. Stronger proof of the maddest of 
 worlds could not be furnished. 
 
 Sane in so mad a world, a man is your flabby citizen 
 among outlaws, good for plucking. Fun, at any cost, 
 is the one object worth a shot in such a world. And 
 the fun is not to stop. If it does, we are likely to be 
 got hold of, and lugged away to the altar — the termi- 
 nus. That foul disaster has happened, through our 
 having temporarily yielded to a fit of the dumps and 
 treated a mad world's lunatic issue with some serious- 
 ness. But fun shall be had with the aid of His High- 
 ness below. The madder the world, the madder the 
 fun. And the mixing in it of another element, which 
 it has to beguile us — romance — is not at all bad 
 cookery. Poetic romance is delusion — a tale of a 
 Corsair ; a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a theatri- 
 cal wardrobe. Comic romance is about us everywhere, 
 alive for the tapping. 
 
 A daughter of the Old Buccaneer should participate 
 in it by right of birth : she would expect it in order 
 to feel herself perfectly at home. Then, be sure, she 
 finds an English tongue and prattles away as merrily 
 as she does when her old scapegrace of a father is the 
 theme. Son-in-law to him ! But the path of wisdom 
 runs in the line of facts, and to have wild fun and 
 romance on this pantomime path, instead of kicking to 
 break away from it, we follow things conceived by the 
 genius of the situation, for the delectation of the fair 
 Countess of Fleetwood and the earl, her delighted hus- 
 band, quite in the spirit of the Old Buccaneer, father 
 of the bride. 
 
A SHADOW CONTEST 195 
 
 Carinthia sat beside the fire, seeing nothing in the 
 room or on the road. Up in her bedchamber, the girl 
 Madge was at her window. She saw Lord Fleetwood 
 standing alone, laughing, it seemed, at some thought ; 
 he threw up his head. Was it a newly married man 
 leaving his bride and laughing ? The bride was a dear 
 lady, fit for better than to be driven to look on at a 
 prize-fight — a terrible scene to a lady. She was left 
 solitary : and this her wedding day ? The earl had said 
 it, he had said she bore his name, spoke of coming from 
 the altar, and the lady had blushed to hear herself 
 called Miss. The pressure of her hand was warm with 
 Madge : her situation roused the fervid latent sister- 
 hood in the breast of women. 
 
 Before he mounted the coach, Lord Fleetwood talked 
 to Kit Lies. The girl ran downstairs to bid her lover 
 good-bye and show him she really rejoiced in his victory. 
 Kit came to her saying : ' Given my word of honour I 
 won't make a beast of myself to-night. Got to watch 
 over you and your lady.' 
 
 Lord Fleetwood started his fresh team, casting no 
 glance at the windows of the room where his bride was. 
 He and the gentlemen on the coach were laughing. 
 
 His leaving of his young bride to herself this day 
 was classed among the murky flashes which distin- 
 guished the deeds of noblemen. But his laughter on 
 leaving her stamped it a cruelty; of the kind that 
 plain mortals, who can be monsters, commit. Madge 
 conceived a pretext for going into the presence of her 
 mistress, whose attitude was the same as when she first 
 sat in the chair. The lady smiled and said : ' He is 
 not hurt much ? ' She thought for them about her. 
 
 The giiTs heart of sympathy thumped, and her hero 
 
196 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 became a very minute object. He had spoken previ- 
 ously of the making or not making a beast of himself, 
 without inflicting a picture of the beast. His words 
 took shape now, and in consequence a little self-pity 
 began to move. It stirred to swell the great wave of 
 pity for the lady, that was in her bosom. • Oh, he ! ' 
 she said, and extinguished the thought of him ; and at 
 once her under-lip was shivering, her eyes filled and 
 poured. 
 
 Carinthia rose anxiously. The girl dropped at her 
 feet. ' You have been so good to me to-day, my lady ! 
 so good to me to-day ! I can't help it — I don't often 
 — just for this moment ; I 've been excited. Oh, he's 
 well, he will do ; he's nothing. You say " poor child ! " 
 But I 'm not ; it 's only excitement. I do long to serve 
 you the best I can. 1 
 
 She stood up in obedience and had the arms of her 
 young mistress pressing her. Tears also were streaming 
 from Carinthia's eyes. Heartily she thanked the girl 
 for the excuse to cry. 
 
 They were two women. On the road to Canleys, the 
 coach conveying men spouted with the lusty anecdote, 
 relieved of the interdict of a tyrannical sex. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 
 
 Contention begets contention in a land of the pirate 
 races. Gigs were at high rival speed along the road 
 from the battle-field to London. They were the elec- 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 197 
 
 trical wires of the time for an expectant population 
 bursting to have report of so thundering an event as 
 the encounter of two champion light weights, nursed 
 and backed by a pair of gallant young noblemen, pick 
 of the whole row of coronets above. - London panted 
 gaping and the gigs flew with the meat to fill it. 
 
 Chumley Potts offered Ambrose Mallard fair odds 
 that the neat little trap of the chief sporting journal, 
 which had a reputation to maintain, would be over one 
 or other of the bridges crossing the Thames first. 
 Mallard had been struck by the neat little trap of an 
 impudent new and lower-priced journal, which had a 
 reputation to gain. He took the proffered odds, on the 
 cry as of a cracker splitting. Enormous difficulties in 
 regard to the testimony and the verifications were 
 discussed ; they were overcome. Potts was ready for 
 any amount of trouble ; Mallard the same. There was 
 clearly a race. There would consequently be a record. 
 Visits to the offices of those papers, perhaps half a day 
 at the south end of London or on Westminster bridge, 
 examining witnesses, corner shopmen, watermen, and 
 the like, would or should satisfactorily establish the 
 disputed point. 
 
 Fleetwood had his fun ; insomuch that he laughed 
 himself into a sentiment of humaneness toward the 
 couple of donkeys and forgot his contempt of them. 
 Their gamblings and their bets increased his number 
 of dependents ; and imbeciles were preferable to dolts 
 or the dry gilt figures of the circle he had to move in. 
 Matter for some astonishment had been furnished to 
 the latter this day ; and would cause an icy Signor 
 stare and rather an angry Signora flutter. A character- 
 istic of that upper circle, as he knew it, is, that the good 
 
198 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 are dull, the vicious very bad. They had nothing to 
 please him but manners. Elsewhere this land is a land 
 of no manners. Take it and make the most of it, then, 
 for its quality of brute honesty : which is found to 
 flourish best in the British prize-ring. 
 
 His irony landed him there. It struck the country 
 a ringing blow. But it struck an almost effacing one 
 at the life of the young nobleman of boundless wealth, 
 whose highest renown was the being a patron of prize- 
 fighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Buc- 
 caneer as well ! perchance as a result. That philosopher 
 tramp named her 'beautiful Gorgon.'' She has no 
 beauty ; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look of 
 timid softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A 
 barbaric damsel beginning to nibble at civilization, is 
 nearer the mark ; and ought she to be discouraged ? 
 
 Fleetwood's wrath with his position warned him 
 against the dupery of any such alcove thoughts. For 
 his wrath revenged him, and he feared the being 
 stripped of it, lest a certain fund of his own softness, 
 that he knew of, though few did, should pull him to 
 the creature's feet. She belonged to him indeed ; so 
 he might put her to the trial of whether she had a 
 heart and personal charm, without the ceremony of 
 wooing — which, in his case, tempted to the feeling 
 desperately earnest and becoming enslaved. He specu- 
 lated upon her eyelids and lips, and her voice, when 
 melting, as women do in their different ways; here 
 and there with an execrable — perhaps pardonable — 
 art ; one or two divinely. The vision drew him to a 
 headlong plunge and swim of the amorous mind, 
 occupying a minute, filling an era. He corrected the 
 feebleness, and at the same time threw a practical 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 199 
 
 coachman's glance on peculiarities of the road, requir- 
 ing some knowledge of it if traversed backward at a 
 whipping pace on a moonless night. 
 
 He did not phrase it, that a talk with the fellow 
 Woodseer of his mountains and his forests, and nature, 
 philosophy, poetry, would have been particularly healthy 
 for him, almost as good as the good counsel he needed 
 and solicited none to give him. It swept among his 
 ruminations while he pricked Potts and Mallard to 
 supply his craving for satanical fare. 
 
 Gower Woodseer, the mention of whom is a dejection 
 to the venerable source of our story, was then in the 
 act of emerging from the Eastward into the Southward 
 of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set 
 forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk 
 of two days out of Dover. He descended London's 
 borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny for re- 
 freshment, following a term of prudent starvation, at 
 the end of the walk. It is not a district seductive to 
 the wayfarer's appetite ; as, for example, one may find 
 the Jew's fry of fish in oil, inspiriting the Shoreditch 
 region, to be. Nourishment is afforded, according, to 
 the laws of England's genius in the arts of refection, 
 at uninviting shops, to the necessitated stomach. A 
 penn'orth of crumb of bread, assisted on its laborious 
 passage by a penn'orth of the rinsings of beer, left 
 the natural philosopher a ha'penny for dessert at the 
 stall of an applewoman, where he withstood an inclina- 
 tion toward the juicy fruit and chose nuts. They 
 extend a meal, as a grimace broadens the countenance, 
 illusorily ; but they help to cheat an emptiness in time, 
 where it is nearly as offensive to our sensations as 
 within us ; and that prolonged occupation of the jaws 
 
200 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 goes a length to persuade us we are filling. All the 
 better if the substance is indigestible. Tramps of the 
 philosophical order, who are the practically sagacious, 
 prefer tough grain for the teeth. Woodseer's munch- 
 ing of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the 
 picture of his father's dinner, seen one day and little 
 envied : a small slice of cold boiled mutton-flesh in a 
 crescent of white fat, with a lump of dry bread beside 
 the plate. 
 
 Thus he returned to the only home he had, not dis- 
 heartened, and bearing scenes that outvied London's 
 print-shops for polychrome splendour, an exultation to 
 recall. His condition, moreover, threw his father's life 
 and work into colour : the lean Whitechapel house of 
 the minister among the poor; the joy in the saving 
 of souls, if he could persuade himself that such good 
 labour advanced : and at the fall of light, the pastime 
 task of bootmaking — a desirable occupation for a 
 thinker. Thought flies best when the hands are easily 
 busy. Cobblers have excursive minds. Their occa- 
 sional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is 
 often happily timed to settle an internal argument. 
 Seek in a village for information concerning the vil- 
 lage or the state of mankind, you will be less disap- 
 pointed at the cobbler's than elsewhere, it has been said. 
 
 As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of 
 pleasure, Mr. Woodseer was at the wonted corner of his 
 back room, on the stool between two tallow candle- 
 flames, leather-scented strongly, when the wanderer 
 stood before him, in the image of a ball that has done 
 with circling about a stable point. 
 
 ' Back ? ' the minister sang out at once, and his 
 wrinkles gleamed. 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 201 
 
 Their hands grasped. 
 ■ Hungry, sir, rather.' 
 
 * To be sure, you are. One can read it on your 
 boots. Mrs. Jones will spread you a table. How 
 many miles to-day ? Show the soles. « They tell a tale 
 of wear. 1 
 
 They had worn to resemble the half-dozen thin- 
 edged layers of still upper cloud round the peep of 
 coming sky. 
 
 'About forty odd to-day, sir. They've done their 
 hundreds of miles and have now come to dock. I '11 ask 
 Mrs. Jones to bring me a plate here.' 
 
 Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His 
 father's front door was unfastened by day ; she had 
 not set eyes on him yet, and Mr. Woodseer murmured : 
 
 6 Now she 's got the boy. There 's clasping and kiss- 
 ing. He 's all wild Wales to her.' 
 
 The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with 
 Gower beside her, and a sniffle of her happiness audible. 
 She would not, although invited to stay and burning to 
 hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son 
 had to talk together after a separation, long to love's 
 counting. She was a Welshwoman of the pure blood, 
 therefore delicately mannered by nature. 
 
 * Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow 
 of your story, and I too will blow the cloud,' said Mr. 
 Woodseer, when the plate was pushed aside and the pipe 
 appeared. 
 
 So Gower's recital of his wanderings began, more 
 puffs than speech at the commencement. He was alter- 
 nately picturesque and sententious until he reached 
 Baden ; there he became involved, from thinking of a 
 revelation of beauty in woman. 
 
202 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Mr. Woodseer rapped the leather on his block. 
 
 ' A place where they have started public gambling, I 
 am told.' 
 
 ' We must look into all the corners of the world to 
 know it, sir, and the world has to be riddled or it 
 riddles us. 1 
 
 4 Ah. Did you ever tell a lie, Gower Woodseer ? ' 
 
 < 1 played. 1 * 
 
 ' You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept 
 your straight tongue ! The Lord can always enter a 
 heart of truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But you 
 played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving ; and 
 that was a backsliding ; and there will have to be a 
 climbing up. And what that means, your hold on truth 
 will learn. Touch sin and you accommodate yourself 
 to its vileness. Ay, you love nature. Nature is not 
 anchorage for vessels like men. If you loved the Book 
 you would float in harbour. You played. I do trust 
 you lost. 1 
 
 ' You have your wish, sir. 1 
 
 4 To have won their money, Gower ! Rather starve. 1 
 
 ' I did. 1 
 
 4 Your reason for playing, poor lad ? 1 
 
 4 The reason eludes reason. 1 
 
 ' Not in you. 1 
 
 ' Sight of the tables ; an itch to try them — one's self 
 as well ; a notion that the losers were playing wrong. 
 In fine, a bit of a whirl of a medley of atoms ; I can't 
 explain it further. 
 
 ' Ah. The tippler's fumes in his head ! Spotty 
 business, Gower Woodseer. " Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion " is worldly wisdom in addition to heavenly. 1 
 
 After listening to an extended homily, with a general 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 203 
 
 assent and tobacco's phlegm, Gower replied to his 
 father's ' You starved manfully ? , nodding : ' From 
 Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times 
 helped me along, milk and bread.'' 
 
 ' Wholesome for body and for soul.'' » 
 
 1 Entering Nancy I subscribed to the dictum of our 
 first fathers, which dogs would deliver, if they could 
 speak : that there is no driver like stomach : and I 
 went head on to the College, saw the Principal : plea 
 of urgency. No engagement possible, to teach either 
 French or English. But he was inquisitive touching 
 the urgency. That was my chance. The French are 
 humane when they are not suspicious of you. They 
 are generous, if you put a light to their minds. As I 
 was dealing with a scholarly one, I made use of such 
 ornamental literary skill as I possessed, to prove 
 urgency. He supplied me with bread, fruit, and 
 wine. In the end he procured me pupils. I lodged 
 over a baker's shop. I had good walks, and learnt 
 something of forestry there — a taking study. When I 
 had saved enough to tramp it home, I said my adieux 
 to that good friend and tramped away, entering London 
 with about the same amount in small coin as when I 
 entered Nancy. A manner of exactly hitting the 
 mark, that some would not find so satisfactory as it is 
 to me. 1 
 
 The minister sighed. 'There comes in the "philo- 
 sophy," I suppose. When will you understand, that 
 this "philosophy" is only the passive of a religious 
 faith ? It seems to suit you gentlemen of the road 
 while you are young. Work among the Whitechapel 
 poor. It would be a way for discovering the shallows 
 of your " philosophy " earlier.' 
 
204 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Gowcr asked him : * Going badly here, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Murders, robberies, misusage of women, and mis- 
 conduct of women ! — Drink, in short : about the same 
 amount. Drink is their death's river, rolling them on 
 helpless as corpses, on to — may they find mercy ! I and 
 a few stand — it 's in the tide we stand here, to stop 
 them, pluck them out, make life a bit sweet to them 
 before the poor bodies go beneath. But come ! all 's not 
 dark, we have our gleams. I speak distressed by one of 
 our girls : a good girl, I believe ; and the wilfullest 
 that ever had command of her legs. A well-favoured 
 girl ! You "11 laugh, she has given her heart to a 
 prize-fighter. Well, you can say, she might have 
 chosen worse. He drinks, she hates it ; she loves the 
 man and hates his vice. He swears amendment, is 
 hiccupping at night ; fights a match on the morrow, 
 and gets beaten out of formation. No matter : when- 
 ever, wherever, that man goes to his fight, that girl 
 follows to nurse him after it. He 's her hero. Women 
 will have one, and it's their lottery. You read of such 
 things ; here we have it alive and walking. I am led 
 to think they're an honest couple. They come of 
 established families. Her mother was out of Caer- 
 marthen; died under my ministration, saintly, forgiving 
 the drunkard. You may remember the greengrocer, 
 Tobias Winch ? He passed away in shrieks for one 
 drop. I had to pitch my voice to the top notes to get 
 hearing for the hymn. He was a reverent man, with 
 the craving by fits. That should have been a lesson to 
 Madge.' 
 
 6 A little girl at the greengrocer's hard by ? She sold 
 me apples ; rather pretty,' said Gower. 
 
 6 A fine grown girl now — Madge Winch ; a comely 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 205 
 
 wench she is. It breaks her sister Sarah's heart. They 
 both manage the little shop ; they make it prosper in a 
 small way ; enough, and what need they more ? Then 
 Christopher Ines has on one of his matches. Madge 
 drives her cart out, if it 's near town. ■ She 's off down 
 into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah tells me. A great 
 nobleman patronizes Christopher ; a Lord Fleetwood, a 
 lord of wealth. And he must be thoughtful for these 
 people: he sent Sarah word that Christopher should 
 not touch drink. You may remember a butcher Ines 
 in the street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad, 
 always at " best man " with every boy he met : went to 
 sea — ran away. He returned a pugilist. The girl will 
 be nursing him now. I have spoken to her of him ; and 
 I trust to her; but I mourn her attachment to the 
 man who drinks.' 
 
 6 The lord's name ? ' said Gower. 
 
 'Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it 
 pleases him to spend his money ! ' 
 
 4 He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. 
 He promises to be a patron of Literature as well. His 
 mother was a South Wales woman.' 
 
 6 Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of 
 the Triads ? ' Mr. Woodseer said at once. 
 
 * No man more likely.' 
 
 ' If you see him, suggest it.' 
 
 ' Very little chance of my meeting him again. But 
 those Triads ! They 're in our blood. They spring to 
 tie knots in the head. They push me to condense my 
 thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive 
 times : but they — or the trick of the mind engendered 
 by them — trip my steps along the lines of composition. 
 I produce pellets instead of flowing sheets. It '11 come 
 
206 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 right. At present I'm so bent to pick and perfect, 
 polish my phrase, that I lose my survey. As a conse- 
 quence, my vocabulary falters.'' 
 
 'Ah,' Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. 'This 
 Literature is to be your profession for the means of 
 living ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing else. And I 'm so low down in the market 
 way of it, that I could not count on twenty pounds per 
 annum. Fifty would give me standing, an independent 
 
 fifty-' 
 
 1 To whom are you crying, Gower ? ' 
 
 6 Not to gamble, you may be sure.' 
 
 ' You have a home.' 
 
 4 Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. 
 I've too much of you in me for a comfortable pen- 
 sioner.' 
 
 * Or is it not, that you have been living the 
 gentleman out there, with just a holiday title to 
 it?' 
 
 Gower was hit by his father's thrust. ' I shall feel 
 myself a pieman's chuckpenny as long as I'm unpro- 
 ductive, now I've come back and have to own to a 
 home,' he said. 
 
 Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather bright- 
 ened him until he considered that the enlivenment was 
 due to a purchase by money, of which he was incapable, 
 and he rejected it, like an honourable man. Simultane- 
 ously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a 
 prized sentence or two among his recent confections. It 
 was rejected for the best of reasons and the most dis- 
 comforting : because it racked our English ; signify- 
 ing, that he had not yet learnt the right use of his 
 weapons. 
 
DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 207 
 
 He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for 
 several days, hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit's 
 victory, and hearing of Sarah Winch's anxiety on 
 account of her sister Madge ; unaffected by sounds of 
 joy or grief, in his effort to produce a' supple English, 
 with Baden's Madonna for sole illumination of his 
 darkness. To her, to the illimitable gold-mist of per- 
 spective and the innumerable images the thought of her 
 painted for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him 
 from contemplation of himself in a very disturbing 
 stagnant pool of the wastes ; wherein often will strenuous 
 youth, grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll in- 
 scribed Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied 
 into that pool, and have seen the face. His glorions 
 lady would not let it haunt him. 
 
 The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him 
 clean out of a neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the 
 young man with thirst for air, solitudes, and colour. 
 Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here, in the 
 idea of her, more fixedly than where she had been 
 visible; as it were, by right of her being celestially 
 removed from the dismal place. He was at the same 
 time not insensible to his father's contented ministra- 
 tions among these homes of squalor ; they pricked the 
 curiosity, which was in the youthful philosopher a form 
 of admiration. For his father, like all Welshmen, 
 loved the mountains. Yet here he lived, exhorting, 
 ministering, aiding, supported up to high good cheer 
 by some, it seemed, superhuman backbone of upright- 
 ness ; — his religious faith ? Well, if so, the thing 
 might be studied. But things of the frozen senses, 
 lean and hueless things, were as repellent to Gower's 
 imagination as his father's dishes to an epicure. What 
 
208 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 he envied was, the worthy old man's heart of feeling for 
 others : his feeling at present for the girl Sarah Winch 
 and her sister Madge, who had not been heard of since 
 she started for the fight. Mr. Woodseer had written 
 to her relatives at the Wells, receiving no consolatory 
 answer. 
 
 He was relieved at last ; and still a little perplexed. 
 Madge had returned, he informed Gower. She was 
 well, she was well in health ; he had her assurances that 
 she was not excited about herself. 
 
 8 She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to 
 lodge with her. She has brought the Countess of 
 Fleetwood to lodge with her.' 
 
 Gower heard those words from his father; and his 
 father repeated them. To the prostrate worshipper of 
 the Countess of Fleetwood, they were a blow on the 
 head ; madness had set in here, was his first recovering 
 thought, or else a miracle had come to pass. Or was it 
 a sham Countess of Fleetwood imposing upon the girl ? 
 His father was to go and see the great lady, at the 
 greengrocer's shop ; at her request, according to Madge. 
 Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a dark- 
 ness that deepened and made shipwreck of philosophy. 
 Was it the very Countess of Fleetwood penitent for her 
 dalliance with the gambling passion, in feminine need 
 of pastor's aid, having had report from Madge of this 
 good shepherd ? His father expressed a certain surprise; 
 his countenance was mild. He considered it a merely 
 strange occurrence. 
 
 Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better 
 armed than a philosopher. Gower would not own that, 
 but he acknowledged the evidences, and owned to envy ; 
 especially when he accompanied his father to the green- 
 
THE GIRL MADGE 209 
 
 grocer's shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly 
 said : — 
 
 'Here is the place.' The small stuffed shop ap- 
 peared to grow portentously cavernous and waveringly 
 illumined. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE GIRL MADGE 
 
 Customers were at the counter of the shop, and these 
 rational figures, together with the piles of cabbages, the 
 sacks of potatoes, the pale small oranges here and there, 
 the dominant smell of red herrings, denied the lurking 
 of an angelical presence behind them. 
 
 Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter. Sarah 
 led the Mr. Wood seers into a corner knocked off the 
 shop and called a room. Below the top bars of a 
 wizened grate was a chilly fire. London's light came 
 piecemeal through a smut-streaked window. If the 
 wonderful was to occur, this was the place to heighten it. 
 
 'My son may be an intruder,' Mr. Woodseer said. 
 ' He is acquainted with a Lord Fleetwood . . .' 
 
 ' Madge will know, sir,"* replied Sarah, and she sent 
 up a shrill cry for Madge from the foot of the stairs. 
 
 The girl ran down swiftly. She entered listening to 
 Sarah, looking at Gower; to whom, after a bob and 
 pained smile where reverence was owing, she said, ' Can 
 you tell me, sir, please, where we can find Lord Fleet- 
 wood now ? ' 
 
 Gower was unable to tell. Madge turned to Mr. 
 Woodseer, saying soon after : ' Oh, she won't mind ; 
 
210 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 she '11 be glad, if he knows Lord Fleetwood. I '11 fetch 
 her. 1 
 
 The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, 
 although his common sense lectured the wildest of hearts 
 for expecting such a possibility as the presence of his 
 lofty lady here. 
 
 And, of course, common sense proved to be right : the 
 lady was quite another. But she struck on a sleeping 
 day of his travels. Her face was not one to be for- 
 gotten, and to judge by her tremble of a smile, she 
 remembered him instantly. 
 
 They were soon conversing, each helping to paint the 
 scene of the place where they had met. 
 
 t Lord Fleetwood has married me,' she said. 
 
 Gower bent his head ; all stood silent. 
 
 'May I?' said Madge to her. 'It is Lord Fleet- 
 wood's wedded wife, sir. He drove her from her uncle's, 
 on her wedding day, the day of a prize-fight, where I 
 was ; he told me to wait on his lady at an inn there, as 
 I Ve done and will. He drove away that evening, and 
 he hasn't ' — the girl's black eyebrows w r orked : * I Ve 
 not seen him since. He 's a great nobleman, yes. He 
 left his lady at the inn, expenses paid. He left her 
 with no money. She stayed on till her heart was break- 
 ing. She has come to London to find him. She had 
 to walk part of the way. She has only a change of 
 linen we brought in a parcel. She 's a stranger to Eng- 
 land : she knows nobody in London. She had no place 
 to come to but this poor hole of ours she 's so good as 
 let welcome her. We can't do better, and it 's no use 
 to be ashamed. She's not a lady to scorn poor 
 people.' 
 
 The girl's voice hummed through Gower. 
 
THE GIRL MADGE 211 
 
 He said : * Lord Fleetwood may not be in London,' 
 and chafed at himself for such a quaver. 
 
 6 It 's his house we want, sir, he has not been at his 
 house in Kent. We want his London house. 1 
 
 ' My dear lady,' said Mr. Woodseer ; ■* it might be as 
 well to communicate the state of things to your family 
 without delay. My son will call at any address you 
 name ; or if it is a country address, I can write the 
 items, with my assurances of your safety under my 
 charge, in my house, which I beg you to make your 
 home. My housekeeper is known to Sarah and Madge 
 for an excellent Christian woman. 1 
 
 Carinthia replied : ' You are kind to me, sir. I am 
 grateful. I have an uncle ; I would not disturb my 
 uncle ; he is inventing guns and he wishes peace. It is 
 my husband I have come to find. He did not leave me 
 in anger.' 
 
 She coloured. With a dimple of tenderness at one 
 cheek, looking from Sarah to Madge, she said : ' I 
 would not leave my friends ; they are sisters to 
 me.' 
 
 Sarah, at these words, caught up her apron. Madge 
 did no more than breathe deep and fast. 
 
 An unoccupied, cold parlour in Mr. Woodseer's house 
 that would be heated for a guest, urged him to repeat 
 his invitation, but he took the check from Gower, who 
 suggested the doubt of Mary Jones being so good an 
 attendant upon Lady Fleetwood as Madge. 'And 
 Madge has to help in the shop at times.' 
 
 Madge nodded, looked into the eyes of her mistress, 
 which sanctioned her saying : e She will like it best here, 
 she is my lady and I understand her best. My lady 
 gives no trouble : she is hardy, she 's not like other 
 
212 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ladies. I and Sarah sleep together in the room next. 
 I can hear anything she wants. She takes us as if she 
 was used to it.' 
 
 Sarah had to go to serve a customer. Madge made 
 pretence of pricking her ears and followed into the 
 shop. 
 
 ' Your first visit to London is in ugly weather, Lady 
 Fleetwood, 1 said Gower. 
 
 1 It is my first, 1 she answered. 
 
 How the marriage came about, how the separation, 
 could not be asked and was not related. 
 
 i Our district is not all London, my dear lady, 1 said 
 Mr. Woodseer. ' Good hearts are here, as elsewhere, 
 and as many, if one looks behind the dirt. I have 
 found it since I laboured amongst them, now twenty 
 years. Unwashed human nature, though it is natural 
 to us to wash, is the most human, we find.'' 
 
 Gower questioned the naturalness of human nature's 
 desire to wash ; and they wrangled good-humouredly, 
 Carinthia's eyes dwelling on them each in turn ; until 
 Mr. Woodseer, pursuing the theme started by him to 
 interest her, spoke of consolations derived from his 
 labours here, in exchange for the loss of his moun- 
 tains. Her face lightened. 
 
 6 You love the mountains ? 1 
 
 ' I am a son of the mountains.' 
 
 ' Ah, I love them ! Father called me a daughter of 
 the mountains. I was born in the mountains. I was 
 leaving my mountains on the day, I think it yesterday, 
 when I met this gentleman who is your son. 1 
 
 ( A glorious day it was ! ' Gower exclaimed. 
 
 ' It was a day of great glory for me, 1 said Carinthia. 
 ' Your foot did not pain you for long ? ' 
 
THE GIRL MADGE 213 
 
 'The length of two pipes. You were with your 
 brother.'' 
 
 ' With my brother. My brother has married a most^ 
 beautiful lady. He is now travelling his happy time — 
 my Chillon!' 
 
 There came a radiance on her under- eyelids. There 
 was no weeping. 
 
 Struck by the contrast between the two simultaneous 
 honeymoons, and a vision of the high-spirited mountain 
 girl, seen in this place a young bride seeking her hus- 
 band, Gower Woodseer could have performed that 
 unphilosophical part. He had to shake himself. She 
 seemed really a soaring bird brought down by the 
 fowler. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood's manner of abandoning her was the 
 mystery. 
 
 Gower stood waiting for her initiative, when the 
 minister interposed : ' There are books, books of our 
 titled people — the Peers, books of the Peerage. They 
 would supply the address. My son will discover where 
 to examine them. He will find the address. Most of 
 the great noblemen have a London house.' 
 
 'My husband has a house in London,' Carinthia said. 
 
 ' I know him, to some degree,' said Gower. 
 
 She remarked : ' I have heard that you do.' 
 
 Her lips were shut, as to any hint at his treatment 
 of her. 
 
 Gower went into the shop to speak with Madge. 
 The girl was talking in the business tone to custom- 
 ers ; she finished her commission hurriedly and joined 
 him on the pavement by the doorstep. Her voice was 
 like the change for the swing of a door from street to 
 temple. 
 
214 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 4 YouVe seen how brave she is, sir. She has things 
 to bear. Never cries, never frets. Her marriage day 
 — leastways ... I can't, no girl can tell. A great 
 nobleman, yes. She waited, believing in him ; she 
 does. She hasn't spoken to me of what she's had to 
 bear. I don't know ; I guess ; I 'm sure I 'm right — 
 and him a man ! Girls learn to know men, call them 
 gentlemen or sweeps. She thinks she has only to 
 meet him to persuade him she's fit to be loved by 
 him. She thinks of love. Would he — our tongues 
 are tied except among ourselves to a sister. Leaves 
 her by herself, with only me, after — it knocks me 
 dumb ! Many a man commits a murder wouldn't do 
 that. She could force him to — no, it isn't a house 
 she wants, she wants him. He's her husband, Mr. 
 Woodseer. You will do what you can to help ; I 
 judge by your father. I and Sarah '11 slave for her 
 to be as comfortable as we can make her ; we can't 
 give her what she's used to. I shall count the 
 hours.' 
 
 6 You sold me apples when your head was just above 
 the counter,' said Gower. 
 
 ' Did I ? — you won't lose time, sir ? ' she rejoined. 
 ' Her box is down at the beastly inn in Kent. Kind 
 people, I dare say ; their bill was paid any extent, 
 they said. She walked to his big house Esslemont for 
 news of him. And I 'm not a snivelling wench either ; 
 but she speaks of him a way to make a girl drink her 
 tears, if they ain't to be let fall.' 
 
 6 But you had a victory down there,' Gower hinted 
 congratulations. 
 
 1 Ah,' said she. 
 
 ' Christopher Ines is all right now ? ' 
 
THE GIRL MADGE 215 
 
 e IVe as good as lost my good name for Kit Ines, 
 Mr. Woodseer.' 
 
 ' Not with my dad, Madge.' 
 
 ' The minister reads us at the heart. Shall we hear 
 the street of his house in London before night?' 
 
 ' 1 may be late.' 
 
 6 1 '11 be up, any hour, for a rap at the shutters. I 
 want to take her to the house early next morning. She 
 won't mind the distance. She lies in bed, her eyes 
 shut or open, never sleeping, hears any mouse. It 
 shouldn't go on, if we can do a thing to help.' 
 
 'I'm off,' said Gower, unwontedly vexed at his 
 empty pocket, that could not offer the means for con- 
 veyance to a couple of young women. 
 
 The dark-browed girl sent her straight eyes at him. 
 They pushed him to hasten. On second thoughts, he 
 stopped and hailed her ; he was moved to confirm an 
 impression of this girl's features. 
 
 His mind was directed to the business burning be- 
 hind them, honestly enough, as soon as he had them in 
 sight again. 
 
 6 1 ought to have the address of some of her people, 
 in case,' he said. 
 
 ' She won't go to her uncle, I 'm sure of that,' said 
 Madge. ' He 's a lord and can't be worried. It 's her 
 husband to find first.' 
 
 ' If he 's to be found ! — he 's a lord, too. Has she no 
 other relatives or friends ? ' 
 
 4 She loves her brother. He 's an officer. He 's away 
 on honeymoon. There 's an admiral down Hampshire 
 way, a place I 've been near and seen. I 'd not have 
 you go to any of them, sir, without trying all we can 
 do to find Lord Fleetwood. It 's Admiral Fakenham 
 
216 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 she speaks of j she "s fond of him. She 'a not minded to 
 bother any of her friends about herself/ 
 
 ' I shall see you to-night, 1 said Gower, and set his 
 face Westward, remembering that his father had named 
 Caermarthen as her mother's birthplace. 
 
 Just in that tone of hers do Welshwomen talk of 
 their country ; of its history, when at home, of its 
 mountains, when exiled : and in a language like hers, 
 bare of superlatives to signify an ardour conveyed by 
 the fire of the breath. Her quick devotion to a lady 
 exciting enthusiasm through admiring pity for the grace 
 of a much-tried quiet sweetness, was explained ; apart 
 from other reasons, feminine or hidden, which might 
 exist. Only a Welsh girl would be so quick and all in 
 it, with a voice intimating a heated cauldron under 
 her mouth. None but a Welsh-blooded girl, risking 
 her good name to follow and nurse the man she con- 
 sidered a hero, would carry her head to look virgin 
 eyes as she did. One could swear to them, Gower 
 thought. Contact with her spirited him out of his 
 mooniness. 
 
 He had the Cymric and Celtic respect of character, 
 which puts aside the person's environments to face 
 the soul. He was also an impressionable fellow among 
 his fellows, a philosopher only at his leisure, in his 
 courted solitudes. Getting away some strides from this 
 girl of the drilling voice, — the shudder-voice, he phrased 
 it, — the lady for whom she pleaded came clearer into 
 his view and gradually absorbed him ; though it was 
 an emulation with the girl Madge, of which he was a 
 trifle conscious, that drove him to do his work of 
 service in the directest manner. He then fancied the 
 girl had caught something of the tone of her lady : the 
 
THE GIRL MADGE 217 
 
 savage intensity or sincerity ; and he brooded on 
 Carinthia's position, the mixture of the astounding 
 and the woful in her misadventure. One could almost 
 laugh at our human fate, to think of a drop off the 
 radiant mountain heights upon a Whitechapel green- 
 grocer's shop, gathering the title of countess midway. 
 
 But nothing of the ludicrous touched her ; no, and 
 if we bring reason to scan our laugh at pure humanity, 
 it is we who are in the place of the ridiculous, for 
 doing what reason disavows. Had he not named her, 
 Carinthia, Saint and Martyr, from a first perusal of 
 her face ? And Lord Fleetwood had read and repeated 
 it. Lord Fleetwood had become the instrument to 
 martyrize her ? That might be ; there was a hoard of 
 bad stuff in his composition besides the precious : and 
 this was a nobleman owning enormous wealth, who 
 could vitiate himself by disposing of a multitude of 
 men and women to serve his will, a shifty will. Wealth 
 creates the magician, and may breed the fiend within 
 him. In the hands of a young man, wealth is an in- 
 vitation to devilry. Gower's idea of the story of 
 Carinthia inclined to charge Lord Fleetwood with very 
 possible false dealing. He then quashed the charge, 
 and decided to wait for information. 
 
 At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London's 
 West, into which he stepped like an easy member, the 
 hall-porter did not examine his clothing from German 
 hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood's town 
 address. He could tell Madge at night by the door of 
 the shuttered shop, that Lord Fleetwood had gone 
 down to Wales. 
 
 'It means her having to wait,' she said. 'The 
 minister has been to the coach-office, to order up her 
 
218 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 box from that inn. He did it in his name ; they can't 
 refuse ; no money 's owing. She must have a change. 
 Sally has fifteen pounds locked up in case of need.' 
 
 Sally's capacity and economy fetched the penniless 
 philosopher a slap. 
 
 6 You've taken to this lady,' he said. 
 
 * She held my hand while Kit Ines was at his work ; 
 and I was new to her, and a prize-fighter's lass, they 
 call me : — upon the top of that nobleman's coach, 
 where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight; 
 and she his wedded lady that morning. A queer 
 groom. He may keep Kit Ines from drink, he's one of 
 you men, and rides over anything in his way. I can't 
 speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from 
 what I know. Those Bundles at that inn don't hear 
 anything it suits him to do. All the people down in 
 those parts are slaves to him. And I thought he was 
 a real St. George before, — yes, ready I was to kiss the 
 ground his feet crossed. If you could, it 's Chinning- 
 fold near where Admiral Fakenham lives, down Hamp- 
 shire way. Her friends ought to hear what *s happened 
 to her. They '11 find her in a queer place. She might go 
 to the minister's. I believe she's happier with us girls.' 
 
 Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold 
 early as the light next day. He liked the girl the 
 better, in an amicable fashion, now that his nerves had 
 got free of the transient spell of her kettle tone — the 
 hardly varied one note of a heart boiling with sisterly 
 devotion to a misused stranger of her sex ; — and, after 
 the way of his race, imagination sprang up in him, at 
 the heels of the quieted senses, releasing him from the 
 personal and physical to grasp the general situation 
 and place the protagonist foremost. 
 
STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 219 
 
 He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. 
 Some wrong had been done, or some violation of the 
 right, to guess from the girl Madge's molten words in 
 avoidance of the very words. It implied — though it 
 might be but one of Love's shrewder discords — such 
 suspected traitorous dealing of a man with their sister 
 woman as makes the world of women all woman toward 
 her. They can be that, and their being so illuminates 
 their hidden sentiments in relation to the mastering 
 male, whom they uphold. 
 
 But our uninformed philosopher was merely picking 
 up scraps of sheddings outside the dark wood of the 
 mystery they were to him, and playing imagination 
 upon them. This primary element of his nature soon 
 enthroned his chosen lady above their tangled obscuri- 
 ties. Beneath her tranquil beams, with the rapture of 
 the knowledge that her name on earth was Livia, he 
 threaded East London's thoroughfares, on a morning 
 when day and night were made one by fog, to journey 
 down to Chinningfold, by coach, in the service of the 
 younger Countess of Fleetwood, whose right to the 
 title he did not doubt, though it directed surprise 
 movements at his understanding from time to time. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN OLD SEAMAN, A LOVELY SERPENT, 
 AND THE MORAL EFFCTS THAT MAY COME OF A 
 BORROWED SHIRT 
 
 Money of his father's enabled Gower to take the 
 coach ; and studies in fog, from the specked brown to 
 
220 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the woolly white and the dripping torn, were proposed 
 to the traveller, whose preference of Nature's face did 
 not arrest his observation of her domino and petticoats; 
 across which blank sheets he curiously read backward, 
 that he journeyed by the aid of his father's hard-earned, 
 ungrudged piece of gold. Without it, he would have 
 been useless in this case of need. The philosopher 
 could starve with equanimity, and be the stronger. 
 But one had, it seemed here clearly, to put on harness 
 and trudge along a line, if the unhappy were to have 
 one's help. Gradual experiences of his business among 
 his fellows were teaching an exercised mind to learn in 
 regions where minds unexercised were doctorial giants 
 beside it. 
 
 The study of gout was offered at Chinningfold. 
 Admiral Fakenham's butler refused at first to take a 
 name to his master. Gower persisted, stating the 
 business of his mission ; and in spite of the very sus- 
 picious glib good English spoken by a man wearing 
 such a hat and suit, the butler was induced to consult 
 Mrs. Carthew. 
 
 She sprang up alarmed. After having seen the 
 young lady happily married and off with her lordly 
 young husband, the arrival of a messenger from the 
 bride gave a stir the wrong way to her flowing recol- 
 lections ; the scenes and incidents she had smothered 
 under her love of the comfortable stood forth appal- 
 lingly. The messenger, the butler said, was no gentle- 
 man. She inspected Gower and heard him speak. 
 An anomaly had come to the house ; for he had the 
 language of a gentleman, the appearance of a non- 
 descript ; he looked indifferent, he spoke sympathetic- 
 ally ; and he was frank as soon as the butler was out 
 
STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 221 
 
 of hearing. In return for the compliment, she invited 
 him to her sitting-room. The story of t the young 
 countess, whom she had seen driven away by her 
 husband from the church in a coach and four, as being 
 now destitute, praying to see her friends, in the White- 
 chapel of London — the noted haunt of thieves and 
 outcasts, bankrupts and the abandoned ; set her asking 
 for the first time, who was the man with dreadful 
 countenance inside the coach ? A previously disre- 
 garded horror of a man. She went trembling to the 
 admiral, though his health was delicate, his temper 
 excitable. It was, she considered, an occasion for 
 braving the doctor's interdict. 
 
 Gower was presently summoned to the chamber 
 where Admiral Fakenham reclined on cushions in an 
 edifice of an arm-chair. He told a plain tale. Its 
 effect was to straighten the admiral's back, and enlarge 
 in grey glass a pair of sea-blue eyes. And, 'What's 
 that? Whitechapel?' the admiral exclaimed, — at high 
 pitch, far above his understanding. The particulars 
 were repeated, whereupon the sick-room shook with, 
 6 Greengrocer ? 1 He stunned himself with another of 
 the monstrous points in his pet girl's honeymoon : 
 'A prize-fight?' 
 
 To refresh a saving incredulity, he took a closer 
 view of the messenger. Gower's habiliments were 
 those of the 'queer fish,' the admiral saw. But the 
 meeting at Carlsruhe was recalled to him, and there 
 was a worthy effort to remember it. ' Prize-fight ! — 
 Greengrocer ! — Whitechapel ! ' he rang the changes 
 rather more moderately; till, swelling and purpling, 
 he cried : ' Where's the husband ? ' 
 
 That was the emissary's question likewise. 
 
222 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 1 If I could have found him, sir, I should not have 
 troubled you.' 
 
 'Disappeared? Plays the man of his word, then 
 plays the madman ! Prize-fight the first day of her 
 honeymoon ? Good Lord ! Leaves her at the inn ? ' 
 
 ' She was left.' 
 
 ' When was she left ? ' 
 
 4 As soon as the fight was over — as far as I under- 
 stand. ' 
 
 The admiral showered briny masculine comments on 
 that bridegroom. 
 
 ' Her brother's travelling somewhere in the Pyrenees 
 — married my daughter. She has an uncle, a hermit. 1 
 He became pale. ' I must do it. The rascal insults 
 us all. Flings her off the day he married her ! It ^ a 
 slap in the face to all of us. You are acquainted with 
 the lady, sir. Would you call her a red-haired girl ? ' 
 
 'Red-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with 
 threads of fire. 1 
 
 ' She has the eyes for a man to swear by. I feel the 
 loss of her, I can tell you. She was wine and no 
 penalty to me. Is she much broken under it ? — if I 'm 
 to credit ... I suppose I must. It floors me. 1 
 
 Admiral Baldwin's frosty stare returned on him. 
 Gower caught an image of it, as comparable, without 
 much straining, to an Arctic region smitten by the 
 beams. 
 
 ' Nothing breaks her courage, 1 he said. 
 
 1 To be sure, my poor dear ! Who could have 
 guessed when she left my house she was on her way to 
 a prize-fight and a greengrocer's in Whitechapel. But 
 the dog 's not mad, though his bite 'a bad ; he 's an 
 eccentric mongrel. He wants the whip ; ought to have 
 
STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 223 
 
 had it regularly from his first breeching. He shall 
 whistle for her when he repents ; and he will, mark me. 
 This gout here will be having a snap at the vitals if I 
 don't start to-night. Oblige me, half a minute.' 
 
 The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to give 
 support, stood, and dropped into the chair, signifying 
 a fit of giddiness in the word ' Head.' 
 
 Before the stupor had passed, Mrs. Carthew entered, 
 anxious lest the admittance of a messenger of evil to 
 her invalid should have been an error of judgment. 
 The butler had argued it with her. She belonged to 
 the list of persons appointed to cut life's thread when 
 it strains, their general kindness being so liable to 
 misdirection. 
 
 Gower left the room and went into the garden. He 
 had never seen a death ; and the admiral's peculiar 
 pallor intimated events proper to days of cold mist and 
 a dripping stillness. How we go, was the question 
 among his problems : — if we are to go ! his youthful 
 frame insistingly added. 
 
 The fog down a wet laurel-walk contracted his mind 
 with the chilling of his blood, and he felt that he would 
 have to see the thing if he was to believe in it. Of 
 course he believed, but life throbbed rebelliously, and 
 a picture of a desk near a lively fire-grate, books 
 and pen and paper, and a piece of writing to be 
 approved of by the Hesper of ladies, held ground with 
 a pathetic heroism against the inevitable. He got his 
 wits to the front by walking faster ; and then thought 
 of the young countess and the friend she might be 
 about to lose. She could number her friends on her 
 fingers. Admiral Fakenham's exclamations of the name 
 of the place where she now was, conveyed an inky idea 
 
224 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of the fall she had undergone. Counting her absent 
 brother, with himself, his father, and the two White- 
 chapel girls, it certainly was an unexampled fall, to 
 say of her, that they and those two girls had become 
 by the twist of circumstances the most serviceable of 
 her friends. 
 
 >Her husband was the unriddled riddle we have in the 
 wealthy young lord, — burning to possess, and making 
 tatters of all he grasped, the moment it was his own. 
 Glints of the devilish had shot from him at the gaming- 
 tables, — fine haunts for the study of our lower man. 
 He could be magnificent in generosity ; he had little 
 humaneness. He coveted beauty in women hungrily, 
 and seemed to be born hostile to them ; or so Gower 
 judged by the light of the later evidence on uncon- 
 sidered antecedent observations of him.f Why marry 
 her to cast her off instantly ? The crude philosopher 
 asked it as helplessly as the admiral. And, further, 
 what did the girl Madge mean by the drop of her voice 
 to a hum of enforced endurance under injury, like the 
 furnace behind an iron door ? Older men might have 
 understood, as he was aware ; he might have guessed, 
 only he had the habit of scattering meditation upon the 
 game of hawk and fowl. 
 
 Dame Gossip boils. Her one idea of animation is to 
 have her dramatis persona? in violent motion, always 
 the biggest foremost ; and, indeed, that is the way to 
 make them credible, for the wind they raise and the 
 succession of collisions. The fault of the method is, 
 that they do not instruct ; so the breath is out of them 
 before they are put aside ; for the uninstructive are the 
 humanly deficient: they remain with us like the tolerated 
 old aristocracy, which may not govern, and is but socially 
 
STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 225 
 
 seductive. The deuteragonist or secondary person can 
 at times tell us more of them than circumstances at 
 furious heat will help them to reveal ; and the Dame 
 will have him only as an index-post. Hence her end- 
 less ejaculations over the mystery of Life, the inscruta- 
 bility of character, — in a plain world, in the midst of 
 such readable people ! To preserve Romance (we ex- 
 change a sky for a ceiling if we let it go), we must be 
 inside the heads of our people as well as the hearts, 
 more than shaking the kaleidoscope of hurried spectacles, 
 in days of a growing activity of the head. 
 
 Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn 
 on to fortune and the sight of his Hesper by Admiral 
 Fakenham's order that the visitor was to stay at his 
 house until he should be able to quit his bed, and jour- 
 ney with him to London, doctor or no doctor. The 
 doctor would not hear of it. The admiral threatened 
 it every night for the morning, every morning for the 
 night; and Gower had to submit to postponements 
 balefully affecting his linen. Remonstrance was not to 
 be thought of; for at a mere show of reluctance the 
 courtly admiral flushed, frowned, and beat the bed 
 where he lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was 
 passing through the various complexions, and had 
 approached the Nubian on its way to negro. His 
 natural candour checked the downward course. He 
 mentioned to Mrs. Carthew, with incidental gravity, 
 on a morning at breakfast, that this article of his attire 
 'was beginning to resemble London snow.' She was 
 amused ; she promised him a change more resembling 
 country snow. 
 
 ' It will save me from buttoning so high up, 1 he said, 
 as he thanked her. 
 
 v 
 
226 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She then remembered the daily increase of stiffness 
 in his figure : and a reflection upon his patient waiting, 
 and simpleness, and lexicographer speech to expose his 
 minor needs, touched her unused sense of humour on 
 the side where it is tender in women, from being 
 motherly. 
 
 In consequence, she spoke of him with a pleading 
 warmth to the Countess Livia, who had come down 
 to see the admiral 'concerning an absurd but annoying 
 rumour running over London. 1 Gower was out for a 
 walk. He knew of the affair, Mrs. Carthew said, for 
 an introduction to her excuses of his clothing. 
 
 ' But I know the man, 1 said Livia. * Lord Fleetwood 
 picked him up somewhere, and brought him to us. 
 Clever. Why, is he here ? 1 
 
 ' He is here, sent to the admiral, as I understand, 
 my lady. 1 
 
 ' Sent by whom ? 1 
 
 Having but a weak vocabulary to defend a delicate 
 position, Mrs. Carthew stuttered into evasions, after 
 the way of ill-armed persons ; and naming herself a 
 stranger to the circumstances, she feebly suggested 
 that the admiral ought not to be disturbed before the 
 doctor's next visit ; Mr. Wood seer had been allowed 
 to sit by his bed yesterday only for ten minutes, to 
 divert him with his talk. She protected in this 
 wretched manner the poor gentleman she sacrificed 
 and emitted such a smell of secrecy, that Livia wrote 
 three words on her card, for it to be taken to Admiral 
 Baldwin at once. Mrs. Carthew supplicated faintly; 
 she was unheeded. 
 
 The Countess of Fleetwood mounted the stairs — to 
 descend them with the knowledge of her being the 
 
STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 227 
 
 Dowager Countess of Fleetwood ! Henrietta had spoken 
 of the Countess of Fleetwood's hatred of the title of 
 Dowager. But when Lady Fleetwood had the fact from 
 the admiral, would she forbear to excite him ? If she 
 repudiated it, she would provoke him to fire ' one of 
 his broadsides,' as they said in the family, to assert 
 it ; and that might exhaust him ; and there was peril 
 in that. And who was guilty ? Mrs. Carthew con- 
 fessed her guilt, asking how it could have been avoided. 
 She made appeal to Gower on his return, transfixing 
 him. 
 
 Not only is he no philosopher who has an idol, he 
 has to learn that he cannot think rationally ; his due 
 sense of weight and measure is lost, the choice of his 
 thoughts as well. He was in the house with his 
 devoutly, simply worshipped, pearl of women, and his 
 whole mind fell to work without ado upon the extrava- 
 gant height of the admiral's shirt-collar cutting his ears. 
 The very beating of his heart was perplexed to know 
 whether it was for rapture or annoyance. As a result 
 he was but histrionically master of himself when the 
 Countess Livia or the nimbus of the lady appeared in 
 the room. 
 
 She received his bow ; she directed Mrs. Carthew to 
 have the doctor summoned immediately. The remorse- 
 ful woman flew. 
 
 ' Admiral Fakenham is very ill, Mr. Woodseer, he 
 has had distracting news. Oh, no, the messenger is not 
 blamed. You are Lord Fleetwood's friend and will not 
 allow him to be prejudged. He will be in town shortly. 
 I know him well, you know him ; and could you hear 
 him accused of cruelty — and to a woman ? He is the 
 soul of chivalry. So, in his way, is the admiral. If he 
 
228 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 were only more patient ! Let us wait for Lord Fleet- 
 wooers version. I am certain it will satisfy me. The 
 admiral wishes you to step up to him. Be very quiet; 
 you will be ; consent to everything. I was unaware of 
 his condition : the things I heard were incredible. I 
 hope the doctor will not delay. Now go. Beg to 
 retire soon. 1 
 
 Livia spoke under her breath ; she had fears. 
 
 Admiral Baldwin lay in his bed, submitting to a 
 nurse- woman — sign of extreme exhaustion. He plucked 
 strength from the sight of Gower and bundled the 
 woman out of the room, muttering: 'Kill myself? 
 Not half so quick as they 'd do it. I can't rest for that 
 Whitechapel of yours. Please fetch pen and paper: 
 it 's a letter.' 
 
 The letter began, ' Dear Lady Arpington."* 
 
 The dictation of it came in starts. At one moment 
 it seemed as if life's ending shook the curtains on our 
 stage and were about to lift. An old friend in the 
 reader of the letter would need no excuse for its 
 jerky brevity. It said that his pet girl, Miss Kirby, 
 was married to the Earl of Fleetwood in the first 
 week of last month, and was now to be found at a 
 shop No. 45 Longways, Whitechapel ; that the writer 
 was ill, unable to stir; that he would be in London 
 within eight-and-forty hours at furthest. He begged 
 Lady Arpington to send down to the place and have 
 the young countess fetched to her, and keep her until 
 he came. 
 
 Admiral Baldwin sat up to sign the letter. 
 
 ' Yes, and write " miracles happen when the devil's 
 abroad * — done it ! ' he said, sinking back. ' Now seal, 
 you 11 find wax — the ring at my watch-chain.' 
 
STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 229 
 
 He sighed, as it were the sound of his very last ; he 
 lay like a sleeper twitched by a dream. There had 
 been a scene with Livia. The dictating of the letter 
 took his remainder of strength out of him. 
 
 Gower called in the nurse, and went downstairs. 
 He wanted the address of Lady Arpington's town 
 house. 
 
 'You have a letter for her? 1 said Livia, and held her 
 hand for it in a way not to be withstood. 
 
 ' There 's no superscription,' he remarked. 
 
 ' 1 will see to that, Mr. Wood seer.' 
 
 ' 1 fancy I am bound, Lady Fleetwood.' 
 
 'By no means.' She touched his arm. 'You are 
 Lord Fleetwood's friend.' 
 
 A slight convulsion of the frame struck the admiral's 
 shirt-collar at his ears ; it virtually prostrated him 
 under foot of a lady so benign in overlooking the 
 spectacle he presented. Still, he considered ; he had 
 wits alive enough just to perceive a duty. 
 
 ' The letter was entrusted to me, Lady Fleetwood.' 
 
 ' You are afraid to entrust it to the post ? ' 
 
 ' I was thinking of delivering it myself in town.' 
 
 ' You will entrust it to me.' 
 
 ' Anything on earth of my own.' 
 
 ' The treasure would be valued. This you confide 
 to my care.' 
 
 ' It is important.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Indeed it is.' 
 
 'Say that it is, then. It is quite safe with me. It 
 may be important that it should not be delivered. Are 
 you not Lord Fleetwood's friend ? Lady Arpington is 
 not so very, very prominent in the list with you and me. 
 
230 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Besides, I don't think she has come to town yet. She 
 generally sees out the end of the hunting season. Leave 
 the Letter to me: it shall go. You, with your keen 
 observation missing nothing, have seen that my uncle 
 has not his whole judgment at present. There are two 
 sides to a case. Lord Fleetwood's friend will know 
 that it would be unfair to offer him up to his enemies 
 while he is absent. Things going favourably here, I 
 drive back to town to-morrow, and I hope you will 
 accept a seat in my carriage.' 
 
 He delivered his courtliest ; he was riding on 
 cloud. 
 
 They talked of Baden. His honourable surrender of 
 her defeated purse was a subject for gentle humour with 
 her, venturesome compliment with him. He spoke 
 well ; and though his hands were clean of Sir Meeson 
 Corby's reproach of them, the caricature of presentable 
 men blushed absurdly and seemed uneasy in his mons- 
 trous collar. The touching of him again would not be 
 required to set him pacing to her steps. His hang of 
 the head testified to the unerring stamp of a likeness 
 Captain Abrane could affix with a stroke : he looked 
 the fiddler over his bow, playing wonderfully to conceal 
 the crack of a string. The merit of being one of her 
 army of admirers was accorded to him. The letter to 
 Lady Arpington was retained. 
 
 Gower deferred the further mention of the letter 
 until a visit to the admiral's chamber should furnish 
 an excuse ; and he had to wait for it. Admiral 
 Baldwin's condition was becoming ominous. He sent 
 messages downstairs by the doctor, forbidding his 
 guest's departure until they two could make the journey 
 together next day. The tortured and blissful young 
 
GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 231 
 
 man, stripped of his borrowed philosopher's cloak, I 
 hung conscience-ridden in this delicious bower, which 
 was perceptibly an antechamber of the vaults, offering 
 him the study he thirsted for, shrank from, and mixed 
 with his cup of amorous worship. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WONDROUS 
 MECHANISM OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 
 
 The report of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham as having 
 died in the arms of a stranger visiting the house, 
 hit nearer the mark than usual. He yielded his last 
 breath as Gower Woodseer was lowering him to his 
 pillow, shortly after a husky whisper of the letter to 
 Lady Arpington ; and that was one of Gower's crucial 
 trials. It condemned him, for the pacifying of a 
 dying man, to the murmur and shuffle, which was a 
 lie ; and the lie burnt him, contributed to the brand 
 on his race. He and his father upheld a solitary bare 
 staff, where the Cambrian flag had flown, before their 
 people had been trampled in mire, to do as the 
 worms. His loathing of any shadow of the lie was 
 a protest on behalf of Welsh blood against an English 
 charge, besides the passion for spiritual cleanliness : 
 without which was no comprehension, therefore no 
 enjoyment, of Nature possible to him. For Nature is 
 the truth. 
 
 He begged the countess to let him have the letter ; 
 he held to the petition, with supplications ; he spoke 
 
232 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of his pledged word, his honour ; and her countenance 
 did not deny to such an object as she beheld the right 
 to a sense of honour. ' We all have the sentiment, 
 1 hope, Mr. Woodseer,'* she said, stupefying the wor- 
 shipper, who did not see it manifested. There was 
 a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of common 
 grounds between them, accompanying the dead words. 
 Mistress of the letter, and the letter safe under lock, 
 the admiral dead, she had not to bestow a touch of 
 her hand on his coat-sleeve in declining to return 
 it. A face languidly and benevolently querulous was 
 bent on him, when he, so clever a man, resumed his 
 very silly petition. 
 
 She was moon out of cloud at a change of the 
 theme. Gower journeyed to London without the letter, 
 intoxicated, and conscious of poison ; enamoured of it, 
 and straining for health. He had to reflect at the 
 journey's end, that he had picked up nothing on the 
 road, neither a thing observed nor a thing imagined ; 
 he was a troubled pool instead of a flowing river. 
 
 The best help to health for him was a day in his 
 father's house. We are perpetually at our comparisons 
 of ourselves with others ; and they are mostly profitless ; 
 but the man carrying his religious light, to light the 
 darkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, 
 as though the heart of him ran a mountain water 
 through the grimy region, plucked at Gower with an 
 envy to resemble him in practice. His philosophy, too, 
 reproached him for being outshone. Apart from his 
 philosophy, he stood confessed a bankrupt ; and it had 
 dwindled to near extinction. Adoration of a woman 
 takes the breath out of philosophy. And if one had 
 only to say sheer donkey, he consenting to be driven by 
 
GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 233 
 
 her ! One has to say worse in this case ; for the words 
 are, liar and traitor. 
 
 Carinthia's attitude toward his father conduced to 
 his emulous respect for the old man, below whom, and 
 indeed below the roadway of ordinary principles hedged 
 with dull texts, he had strangely fallen. The sight of 
 her lashed him. She made it her business or it was her 
 pleasure to go the rounds beside Mr. Woodseer visiting 
 his poor people. She spoke of the scenes she witnessed, 
 and threw no stress on the wretchedness, having only 
 the wish to assist in ministering. Probably the great 
 wretchedness bubbling over the place blunted her feel- 
 ing of loss at the word of Admiral Baldwin's end ; her 
 bosom sprang up : ' He was next to father,' was all she 
 said ; and she soon reverted to this and that house of 
 the lodgings of poverty. She had descended on the 
 world. There was of course a world outside White- 
 chapel, but Whitechapel was hot about her ; the nests 
 of misery, the sharp note of want in the air, tricks of 
 an urchin who had amused her. 
 
 As to the place itself, she had no judgement to pro- 
 nounce, except that : ' They have no mornings here ; ' 
 and the childish remark set her quivering on her 
 heights, like one seen through a tear, in Gower's 
 memory. Scarce anything of her hungry impatience to 
 meet her husband was visible: she had come to London 
 to meet him ; she hoped to meet him soon : before her 
 brother's return, she could have added. She mentioned 
 the goodness of Sarah Winch in not allowing that she 
 was a burden to support. Money and its uses had 
 impressed her; the quantity possessed by some, the 
 utter need of it for the first of human purposes by 
 others. Her speech was not of so halting or foreign 
 
234 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 an English. She grew rapidly wherever she was 
 planted. 
 
 Speculation on the conduct of her husband, empty 
 as it might be, was necessitated in Gower. He pur- 
 sued it, and listened to his father similarly at work : 
 4 A young lady fit for any station, the kindest of souls, 
 a born charitable human creature, void of pride, near 
 in all she does and thinks to the Shaping Hand, why 
 should her husband forsake her on the day of their 
 nuptials! She is most gracious; the simplicity of an 
 infant. Can you imagine the doing of an injury by a 
 man to a woman like her p 1 
 
 Then it was that Gower screwed himself to say : — 
 
 ' Yes, I can imagine it, I 'm doing it myself. I shall 
 be doing it till I Ve written a letter and paid a visit.' 
 
 He took a meditative stride or two in the room, 
 thinking without revulsion of the Countess Livia under 
 a similitude of the bell of the plant henbane, and that 
 his father had immunity from temptation because of 
 the insensibility to beauty. Out of which he passed 
 to the writing of the letter to Lord Fleetwood, in- 
 forming his lordship that he intended immediately to 
 deliver a message to the Marchioness of Arpington 
 from Admiral Baldwin Fakenham, in relation to the 
 Countess of Fleetwood. A duty was easily done by 
 Gower when he had surmounted the task of conceiving 
 his resolution to do it; and this task, involving an 
 offence to the Lady Livia and intrusion of his name 
 on a nobleman's recollection, ranked next in severity 
 to the chopping off of his fingers by a man suspecting 
 them of the bite of rabies. 
 
 An interview with Lady Arpington was granted him 
 the following day. 
 
GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 235 
 
 She was a florid, aquiline, loud-voiced lady, evidently 
 having no seat for her wonderments, after his account 
 of the origin of his acquaintance with the admiral had 
 quieted her suspicions. The world had only to stand 
 beside her, and it would hear what she had heard. 
 She rushed to the conclusion that Lord Fleetwood 
 had married a person of no family. 
 
 ' Really, really, that young man's freaks appear 
 designed for the express purpose of heightening our 
 amazement !' she exclaimed. 'He won't easily get 
 beyond a wife in the east of London, at a shop ; but 
 there's no knowing. Any wish of Admiral Baldwin 
 Fakenham's I hold sacred. At least I can see for 
 myself. You can't tell me more of the facts ? If 
 Lord Fleetwood 's in town, I will call him here at once. 
 I will drive down to this address you give me. She 
 is a civil person ? ' 
 
 ' Her breeding is perfect,"* said Gower. 
 
 'Perfect breeding, you say?' Lady Arpington was 
 reduced to a murmur. She considered the speaker: 
 his outlandish garb, his unprotesting self-possession. 
 He spoke good English by habit, her ear told her. 
 She was of an eminence to judge of a man impartially, 
 even to the sufferance of an opinion from him, on a 
 subject that lesser ladies would have denied to his 
 clothing. Outwardly simple, naturally frank, though 
 a tangle of the complexities inwardly, he was a touch- 
 stone for true aristocracy, as the humblest who bear 
 the main elements of it must be. Certain humorous 
 turns in his conversation won him an amicable smile 
 when he bowed to leave : they were the needed finish 
 of a favourable impression. 
 
 One day later the earl arrived in town, read Gower 
 
236 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Woodseers brief words, and received the consequently 
 expected summons, couched in a great lady's plain 
 imperative. She was connected with his family on the 
 paternal side. 
 
 He went obediently ; not unwillingly, let the deputed 
 historian of the Marriage, turning over documents, here 
 say. He went to Lady Arpington disposed for marital 
 humaneness and jog-trot harmony, by condescension ; 
 equivalent to a submitting to the drone of an incessant 
 psalm at the drum of the ear. He was, in fact, rather 
 more than inclined that way. When very young, at the 
 age of thirteen, a mood of religious fervour had spirit- 
 ualized the dulness of Protestant pew and pulpit for him. 
 Another fit of it, in the Roman Catholic direction, had 
 proposed, during his latest dilemma, to relieve him of 
 the burden of his pledged word. He had plunged for 
 a short space into the rapturous contemplation of a 
 monastic life — ' the clean soul for the macerated flesh,' 
 as that fellow Woodseer said once : and such as his 
 friend, the Roman Catholic Lord Feltre, moodily talked 
 of getting in his intervals. He had gone down to a 
 young and novel trial establishment of English peni- 
 tents in the forest of a Midland county, and had 
 watched and envied, and seen the escape from a lifelong 
 bondage to the ' beautiful Gorgon,' under cover of a 
 white flannel frock. The world pulled hard, and he 
 gave his body into chains of a woman, to redeem his 
 word. 
 
 But there was a plea on behalf of this woman. The 
 life she offered might have psalmic iteration ; the dead 
 monotony of it in prospect did, nevertheless, exorcise a 
 devil. Carinthia promised, it might seem, to chase and 
 keep the black beast out of him permanently, as she 
 
GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 237 
 
 could, he now conceived: for since the day of the 
 marriage with her, the devil inhabiting him had at 
 least been easier, 6 up in a corner.' 
 
 He held an individual memory of his bride, rose- 
 veiled, secret to them both, that made, them one, by 
 subduing him. For it was a charm ; an actual femi- 
 nine, an unanticipated personal, charm ; past reach of 
 tongue to name, wordless in thought. There, among 
 the folds of the incense vapours of our heart's holy of 
 holies, it hung; and it was rare, it was distinctive of 
 her, and alluring, if one consented to melt to it, and 
 accepted for compensation the exorcising of a devil. 
 
 Oh, but no mere devil by title ! — a very devil. It 
 was alert and frisky, flushing, filling the thin cold idea 
 of Henrietta at a thought ; and in the thought it made 
 Carinthia's intimate charm appear as no better than a 
 thing to enrich a beggar, while he knew that kings 
 could never command the charm. Not love, only the 
 bathing in Henrietta's incomparable beauty and the 
 desire to be, desire to have been, the casket of it, 
 broke the world to tempest and lightnings at a view 
 of Henrietta the married woman — married to the 
 brother of the woman calling him husband : — ' It is 
 my husband.' The young tyrant of wealth could have 
 avowed that he did not love Henrietta ; but not the 
 less was he in the swing of a whirlwind at the hint of 
 her lovinsc the man she had married. Did she? It 
 might be tried. 
 
 She ? That Henrietta is one of the creatures who 
 love pleasure, love flattery, love their beauty : they 
 cannot love a man. Or the love is a ship that will 
 not sail a sea. 
 
 Now, if the fact were declared and attested, if her 
 
238 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 shallowness were seen proved, one might get free of 
 the devil she plants in the breast. Absolutely to 
 despise her would be release, and it would allow 
 of his tasting Carinthia's charm, reluctantly acknow- 
 ledged; not ' money of the country ' beside that golden 
 Henrietta's. 
 
 Yet who can say ? — women are such deceptions. 
 Often their fairest, apparently sweetest, when brought 
 to the keenest of the tests, are graceless ; or worse, 
 artificially consonant ; in either instance barren of the 
 poetic. Thousands of the confidently expectant among 
 men have been unbewitched ; a lamentable process ; 
 and the grimly reticent and the loudly discursive are 
 equally eloquent of the pretty general disillusion. 
 How they loathe and tear the mask of the sham 
 attraction that snatched them to the hag yoke, and 
 fell away to show its grisly horrors within the round 
 of the month, if not the second enumeration of twelve 
 by the clock ! Fleetwood had heard certain candid 
 seniors talk, delivering their minds in superior appre- 
 ciation of unpretentious boor wenches, nature's pro- 
 ducts, not esteemed by him. Well, of a truth, she — 
 * Red Hair and Rugged Brows," as the fellow Woodseer 
 had called her, in alternation with ' Mountain Face to 
 Sun ' — she at the unveiling was gentle, surpassingly ; 
 graceful in the furnace of the trial. She wore through 
 the critic ordeal his burning sensitiveness to grace and 
 delicacy cast about a woman, and was rather better 
 than not withered by it. 
 
 On the borders between maidenly and wifely, she, 
 a thing of flesh like other daughters of earth, had 
 impressed her sceptical lord, inclining to contempt of 
 her and detestation of his bargain, as a flitting hue, 
 
GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 239 
 
 ethereal, a transfiguration of earthliness in the core of 
 the earthly furnace. And how? — but that it must 
 have been the naked shining forth of her character, 
 startled to show itself: — ' It is my husband ' : — it must 
 have been love. 
 
 The love that they versify, and strum on guitars, 
 and go crazy over, and end by roaring at as the delu- 
 sion ; this common bloom of the ripeness of a season ; 
 this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to 
 vanquish him in his mastery, snare him in her sur- 
 render. It must have been the veritable passion : a 
 flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the yew-wood 
 of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the 
 breasts of very favourite maidens. Love had eyes, 
 love had a voice that night, — love was the explicable 
 magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, 
 she had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. 
 Henrietta, illumined with such a love, would outdo 
 all legends, all dreams of the tale of love. Would 
 she ? For credulous men she would be golden coin of 
 the currency. She would not have a particular wild 
 flavour : charm as of the running doe that has taken 
 a dart and rolls an eye to burst the hunter's heart 
 with pity. 
 
 Fleetwood went his way to Lady Arpington almost 
 complacently, having fought and laid his wilder self. 
 He might be likened to the doctor's patient entering 
 the chemist's shop, with a prescription for a drug of 
 healing virtue, upon which the palate is as little con- 
 sulted as a robustious lollypop boy in the household of 
 ceremonial parents, who have rung for the troop of 
 their orderly domestics to sit in a row and hearken the 
 intonation of good words. 
 
210 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 
 
 The bow, the welcome, and the introductory remarks 
 passed rapidly as the pull at two sides of a curtain 
 opening on a scene that stiffens courtliness to hard 
 attention. 
 
 After the names of Admiral Baldwin and ' the Mr. 
 Woodseer,'' the name of Whitechapel was mentioned by 
 Lady Arpington. It might have been the name of any 
 other place. 
 
 ' Ah, so far, then, I have to instruct you,' she said, 
 observing the young earl. ' I drove down there yester- 
 day. I saw the lady calling herself Countess of Fleet- 
 wood. By right ? She was a Miss Kirby.' 
 
 1 She has the right, 1 Fleetwood said, standing well up 
 out of a discharge of musketry. 
 
 4 Marriage not contested. You knew of her being in 
 that place ? — I can't describe it.' 
 
 6 Your ladyship will pardon me ? ' 
 
 London's frontier of barbarism was named for him 
 again, and in a tone to penetrate. 
 
 He refrained from putting the question of how she 
 had come there. 
 
 As iron as he looked, he said : ' She stays there by 
 choice.' 
 
 The great lady tapped her foot on the floor. 
 
 t You are not acquainted with the district."* 
 
 ' One of my men comes out of it.' 
 
 'The coming out of it ! . . . However, I under- 
 stand her story, that she travelled from a village inn. 
 
A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 241 
 
 where she had been left — without resources. She 
 waited weeks ; I forget how many. She has a de- 
 scription of maid in attendance on her. She came 
 to London to find her husband. You were at the 
 mines, we heard. Her one desire is 1 to meet her 
 husband. But, goodness ! Fleetwood, why do you 
 frown ? You acknowledge the marriage, she has the 
 name of the church ; she was married out of that old 
 Lord Levellier's house. You drove her — I won't re- 
 peat the flighty business. You left her, and she did 
 her best to follow you. Will the young men of our 
 time not learn that life is no longer a game when they 
 have a woman for partner in the match ! You don't 
 complain of her flavour of a foreign manner ? She 
 can't be so very . . . Admiral Baldwin's daughter has 
 married her brother ; and he is a military officer. She 
 has germs of breeding, wants only a little rub of the 
 world to smooth her. Speak to the point : — do you 
 meet her here ? Do you refuse ? ' 
 ' At present ? I do.' 
 ' Something has to be done.'* 
 ' She was bound to stay where I left her.' 
 
 * You are bound to provide for her becomingly.'' 
 
 * Provision shall be made, of course.'' 
 
 6 The story will . . . unless — and quickly, too/ 
 
 ' I know, I know ! ' 
 
 Fleetwood had the clang of all the bells of London 
 chiming Whitechapel at him in his head, and he 
 betrayed the irritated tyrant ready to decree fire and 
 sword, for the defence or solace of his tender sensi- 
 bilities. 
 
 The black flash flew. 
 
 'It's a thing to mend, as well as one can,' Lady 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Arpiogtoo said. ' I am not inquisitive: you had your 
 reasons or chose to act without any. Get her away 
 from that place. She won't come to me unless it's to 
 meet her husband. Ah, well, temper does not solve-, 
 your problem ; husband you are, if you married her. 
 Well leave the husband undiscussed: with this reserve, 
 that it seems to me men are now beginning to play the 
 misunderstood. ' 
 
 ' I hope they know themselves better, 1 said Fleet- 
 wood ; and he begged for the name and number of the 
 house in the Whitechapel street, where she who was 
 discernibly his enemy, and the deadliest of enemies, 
 had now her dwelling. 
 
 Her immediate rush to that place, the fixing of her- 
 self there for an assault on him, was a move worthy the 
 daughter of the rascal Old Buccaneer ; it compelled 
 to urgent measures. He, as he felt horribly in pencil- 
 ling her address, acted under compulsion; and a woman 
 prodded the goad. Her mask of ingenuousness was 
 flung away for a look of craft, which could be power; 
 and with her changed aspect his tolerance changed to 
 hatred. 
 
 1 A shop," Lady Arpington explained for his better 
 direction : ' potatoes, vegetable stuff. Honest people, 
 I am to believe. She is indifferent to her food, she 
 says. She works, helping one of their ministers — one 
 of their denominations : heaven knows what they call 
 themselves ! Anything to escape from the Church ! 
 She's likely to become a Methodist. With Lord 
 Feltre proselytizing for his Papist creed, Lord Pit- 
 screw a declared Mohammedan, we shall have a pretty 
 English aristocracy in time. Well, she may claim to 
 belong to it now. She would not be persuaded againsl 
 
A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 243 
 
 visitations to pestiferous hovels. What else is there 
 to do in such a place? She goes about catch- 
 ing diseases to avoid bilious melancholy in the dark 
 back room of a small greengrocer's shop in Whitechapel. 
 There you have the word for the Countess of Fleetwood's 
 present address.'' 
 
 It drenched him with ridicule. 
 
 1 1 am indebted to your ladyship for the information,'' 
 he said, and maintained his rigidity. 
 
 The great lady stiffened. 
 
 6 1 am obliged to ask you whether you intend to act 
 on it at once. The admiral has gone ; I am in some 
 sort deputed as a guardian to her, and I warn you — 
 very well, very well. In your own interests, it will be. 
 If she is left there another two or three days, the name 
 of the place will stick to her." 1 
 
 ' She has baptized herself with it already, I imagine, 1 
 said Fleetwood. ' She will have Esslemont to live in." 1 
 
 ' There will be more than one to speak as to that. 
 You should know her.^ 
 
 ' I do not know her.'' 
 
 * You married her."' 
 
 'The circumstances are admitted.' 
 
 ( If I may hazard a guess, she is unlikely to come to 
 terms without a previous interview. She is bent on 
 meeting you.' 
 
 'I am to be subjected to further annoyance, or she 
 will take the name of the place she at present inhabits, 
 and bombard me with it. Those are the terms."' 
 
 ' She has a brother living, I remind you. 1 
 
 ' State the deduction, if you please, my lady. 1 
 
 ' She is not of a totally inferior family. 1 
 
 ' She had a father famous over England as the Old 
 
844 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Buccaneer, and is a diligent reader of his book of 
 Maxims for Men." 
 
 ' Dear me ! Then Kirby — Captain Kirby ! I re- 
 member. That's her origin, is it? 1 the great lady 
 cried, illumined. * My mother used to talk of the 
 Cressett scandal. Old Lady Arpington, too. At any 
 rate, it ended in their union — the formalities were pro- 
 perly respected, as soon as they could be.' 
 
 1 1 am unaware.'* 
 
 ' I detest such a tone of speaking. Speaking as you 
 do now — married to the daughter? You are not 
 yourself, Lord Fleetwood.' 
 
 'Quite, ma'am, let me assure you. Otherwise the 
 Kirby-Cressetts would be dictating to me from the 
 muzzle of one of the old rapscallion's Maxims. They 
 will learn that I am myself.' 
 
 8 You don't improve as you proceed. I tell you this, 
 you '11 not have me for a friend. You have your troops 
 of satellites ; but take it as equal to a prophecy, you 
 won't have London with you ; and you '11 hear of Lord 
 Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess till your ears 
 ache.' 
 
 The preluding box on them reddened him. 
 
 * She will have the offer of Esslemont.' 
 
 1 Undertake to persuade her in person.' 
 
 ' I have spoken on that head.' 
 
 'Well, I may be mistaken, — I fancied it before I 
 knew of the pair she springs from : you won't get her 
 consent to anything without your consenting to meet 
 her. Surely it's the manlier way. It might be settled for 
 to-morrow, here, in this room. She prays to meet you.' 
 
 With an indicated gesture of ' Save me from it,' 
 Fleetwood bowed. 
 
A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 245 
 
 He left no friend thinking over the riddle of his con- 
 duct. She was a loud-voiced lady, given to strike out 
 phrases. The e Whitechapel Countess' of the wealthiest 
 nobleman of his day was heard by her on London's 
 wagging tongue. She considered also that he ought at 
 least have propitiated her ; he was in the position 
 requiring of him to do something of the kind, and he 
 had shown instead the dogged pride which calls for a 
 whip. Fool as he must have been to go and commit 
 himself to marriage with a girl of whom he knew 
 nothing or little, the assumption of pride belonged to 
 the order of impudent disguises intolerable to behold 
 and not, in a modern manner, castigate. 
 
 Notwithstanding a dislike of the Dowager Countess 
 of Fleetwood, Lady Arpington paid Li via an afternoon 
 visit ; and added thereby to the stock of her knowledge 
 and the grounds of her disapprobation. 
 
 Down in Whitechapel, it was known to the Winch 
 girls and the Woodseers that Captain Kirby and his 
 wife had spent the bitterest of hours in vainly striving 
 to break their immovable sister's will to remain there. 
 
 At the tea-time of simple people, who make it a 
 meal, Gower's appetite for the home-made bread of 
 Mary Jones was checked by the bearer of a short note 
 from Lord Fleetwood. The half-dozen lines were 
 cordial, breathing of their walk in the Austrian high- 
 lands, and naming a renowned city hotel for dinner 
 that day, the hour seven, the reply yes or no by mes- 
 senger. 
 
 'But we are man to man, so there's no "No" 
 between us two,' the note said, reviving a scene of rosy 
 crag and pine forest, where there had been philosophi- 
 cal fun over the appropriate sexes of those our most 
 
246 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 important fighting — ultimately, we will hope, to be 
 united — syllables, and the when for men, the when for 
 women, to select the one of them as their weapon. 
 
 Under the circumstances, Gower thought such a piece 
 of writing to him magnanimous. 
 
 4 It may be the solution, 1 his father remarked. 
 
 Both had the desire ; and Gower's reply was the yes, 
 our brave male word, supposed to be not so compro- 
 mising to men in the employment of it as a form of 
 acquiescence rather than insistent pressure. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 IN DAME GOSSIP^S VEIN 
 
 Right soon the London pot began to bubble. There 
 was a marriage. 
 
 There are marriages Jry the thousand every day of the 
 year that is not consecrated to prayer for the forgiveness 
 of our sins, the Old Buccaneer, writing it with simple 
 intent, says, by way of preface to a series of Maxims 
 for men who contemplate acceptance of the yoke. 
 
 This was a marriage high as the firmament over 
 common occurrences, black as Erebus to confound ; it 
 involved the wreck of expectations, disastrous eclipse 
 of a sovereign luminary in the splendour of his rise, 
 Phaethon's descent to the Shades through a smoking 
 and a crackling world. Asserted here, verified there, 
 the rumour gathered volume, and from a serpent of 
 vapour resolved to sturdy concrete before it was tan- 
 gible. Contradiction retired into corners, only to be 
 
IN DAM£ GOSSIP'S VEIN 247 
 
 swept out of them. For this marriage, abominable to 
 hear of, was of so wonderful a sort, that the story 
 filled the mind, and the discrediting of the story 
 threatened the great world's cranium with a vacuity 
 yet more monstrously abominable. 
 
 For he, the planet Croesus of his time, recently, 
 scarce later than last night, a glorious object of the 
 mid-heavens above the market, has been enveloped, 
 caught, gobbled up by one of the nameless little 
 witches riding after dusk the way of the wind on broom- 
 sticks — by one of them! She caught him like a fly in 
 the hand off a pane of glass, gobbled him with the 
 customary facility of a pecking pullet. 
 
 But was the planet Crcesus of his time a young man 
 to be so caught, so gobbled ? 
 
 There is the mystery of it. On his coming of age, 
 that young man gave sign of his having a city head. 
 He put his guardians deliberately aside, had his lawyers 
 and bailiffs and stewards thoroughly under control : 
 managed a particularly difficult step-mother ; escaped 
 the snares of her lovely cousin ; and drove his team of 
 sycophants exactly the road he chose to go and no 
 other. He had a will. 
 
 The world accounted him wildish ? 
 
 Always from his own offset, to his own ends. Never 
 for another's dictation or beguilement. Never for a 
 woman. He was born with a suspicion of the sex. 
 Poetry decorated women, he said, to lime and drag 
 men in the foulest ruts of prose. 
 
 We are to believe he has been effectively captured ? 
 
 It is positively a marriage ; he admits it. 
 
 Where celebrated ? 
 
 There we are at hood man-blind for the moment. 
 
248 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Three counties claim the church ; two ends of 
 London. 
 
 She is not a person of society, lineage ? 
 
 Nor of beauty. She is a witch ; ordinarily petti- 
 coated and not squeaking like a shrew-mouse in her 
 flights, but not a whit less a moon-shade witch. The 
 kind is famous. Fairy tales and terrible romances tell 
 of her ; she is just as much at home in life, and springs 
 usually from the mire to enthral our knightliest. Is it 
 a popular hero ? She has him, sooner or later. A 
 planet Croesus ? He falls to her. 
 
 That is, if his people fail to attach him in legal 
 bonds to a damsel of a corresponding birth on the day 
 when he is breeched. 
 
 Small is her need to be young — especially if it is the 
 man who is very young. She is the created among 
 women armed with the deadly instinct for the motive 
 force in men, and shameless to attract it. Self-respect- 
 ing: women treat men as their tamed housemates. She 
 blows the horn of the wild old forest, irresistible to the 
 animal. O the droop of the eyelids, the curve of a 
 lip, the rustle of silks, the much heart, the neat ankle ; 
 and the sparkling agreement, the reserve — the motherly 
 feminine petition that she may retain her own small 
 petted babe of an opinion, legitimate or not, by per- 
 mission of superior authority ! — proof at once of her 
 intelligence and her appreciativeness. Her infinitesimal 
 spells are seen ; yet, despite experience, the magnetism 
 in their repulsive display is barely apprehended by 
 sedate observers until the astounding capture is pro- 
 claimed. It is visible enough then : — and O men ! 
 O morals ! If she can but trick the smallest bit in 
 stooping, she has the pick of men. 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 249 
 
 Our present sample shows her to be young : she is 
 young and a foreigner. Mr. Chumley Potts vouches 
 for it. Speaks foreign English. He thinks her more 
 ninny than knave : she is the tool of a wily plotter, 
 picked up off the highway road by Lord Fleetwood as 
 soon as he had her in his eye. Sir Meeson Corby 
 wrings his frilled hands to depict the horror of the 
 hands of that tramp the young lord had her from. 
 They afflict him malariously still. The man, he says, 
 the man as well was an infatuation, because he talks 
 like a Dictionary Cheap Jack, and may have had an 
 education and dropped into vagrancy, owing to indis- 
 cretions. Lord Fleetwood ran about in Germany 
 repeating his remarks. But the man is really an 
 accomplished violinist, we hear. She dances the tam- 
 bourine business. A sister of the man, perhaps, if we 
 must be charitable. They are, some say, a couple of 
 Hungarian gypsies Lord F. found at a show and 
 brought over to England, and soon had it on his con- 
 science that he ought to marry her, like the Quixote of 
 honour that he is; which is equal to saying crazy, as 
 there is no doubt his mother was. 
 
 The marriage is no longer disputable ; poor Lady 
 Fleetwood, whatever her faults as a stepmother, does 
 no longer deny the celebration of a marriage ; though 
 she might reasonably discredit any such story if he, on 
 the evening of the date of the wedding day, was at a 
 ball, seen by her at the supper-table ; and the next day 
 he sat among the Peers and voted against the Govern- 
 ment, and then went down to his estates in Wales, 
 being an excellent holder of the reins, whether on the 
 coach box or over the cash box. 
 
 More and more wonderful, we hear that he drove his 
 
250 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 bride straight from the church to the field of a prize- 
 fight, arranged for her special delectation. She dotes 
 on seeing blood-shed and drinking champagne. Young 
 Mr. Mallard is our authority ; and he says, she enjoyed 
 it, and cheered the victor for being her husband's man. 
 And after the shocking exhibition, good-bye ; the 
 Countess of Fleetwood was left sole occupant of a 
 wayside inn, and may have learnt in her solitude that 
 she would have been wise to feign disgust ; for men to 
 the smallest degree cultivated are unable to pardon a 
 want of delicacy in the woman who has chosen them, 
 as they are taught to think by their having chosen her. 
 
 So talked, so twittered, piped and croaked the 
 London world over the early rumours of the marriage, 
 this Amazing Marriage; which it got to be called, 
 from the number of items flocking to swell the wonder. 
 
 Ravens ravening by night, poised peregrines by day, 
 provision-merchants for the dispensing of dainty scraps 
 to tickle the ears, to arm the tongues, to explode repu- 
 tations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, 
 and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and 
 scourged both innocence and naughtiness ; innocence, 
 on the whole, the least, when their withering suspicion 
 of it had hunted the unhappy thing to the bank of 
 Ophelia's ditch. Mallard and Chumley Potts, Captain 
 Abrane, Sir Meeson Corby, Lord Brailstone, were 
 plucked at and rattled, put to the blush, by a pursuit 
 of inquiries conducted with beaks. High-nosed dames 
 will surpass eminent judges in their temerity on the 
 border-liue where Ahem sounds the warning note to 
 curtained decency. The courtly M. de St. Ombre had 
 to stand confused. He, however, gave another version 
 of Captain Abrane's 'fiddler,'' and precipitated the 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 251 
 
 great ladies into the reflection, that French gentlemen, 
 since the execrable French Revolution, have lost their 
 proper sense of the distinctions of Class. Homme 
 (Tes-prit, applied to a roving adventurer, a scarce other 
 than vagabond, was either an undiscriminating epithet 
 or else a further example of the French deficiency in 
 humour. 
 
 Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry 
 has it from Sir Meeson Corby, who had it from the 
 poor dowager, that Lord Fleetwood has installed the 
 man in his house and sits him at the opposite end of 
 his table ; fished him up from Whitchapel, where the 
 countess is left serving oranges at a small fruit-shop. 
 With her own eyes, Lady Arpington saw her there ; 
 and she can't be got to leave the place unless her hus- 
 band drives his coach down to fetch her. That he 
 declines to do ; so she remains the Whitechapel Coun- 
 tess, all on her hind heels against the offer of a shilling 
 of her husband's money, if she 's not to bring him to his 
 knees ; and goes about at night with a low Methodist 
 singing hymns along those dreadful streets, while Lord 
 Fleetwood gives gorgeous entertainments. One signal 
 from the man he has hired, and he stops drinking ; he 
 will stop speaking as soon as the man's mouth is open. 
 He is under a complete fascination, attributable, some 
 say, to passes of the hands, which the man won't wash 
 lest he should weaken their influence. 
 
 For it cannot be simply his violin playing. They 
 say he was a pupil of a master of the dark art in 
 Germany, and can practise on us to make us think 
 his commonest utterances extraordinarily acute and 
 precious. Lord Fleetwood runs round quoting him 
 to everybody, quite ridiculously. But the man's 
 
252 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 influence is sufficient to induce his patron to drive 
 down and fetch the Whitechapel Countess home in 
 state, as she insists — if the man wishes it. Depend 
 upon it lie is the key of the mystery. 
 
 Totally the contrary, Lady Arpington declares ! — 
 the man is a learned man, formerly a Professor of 
 English Literature in a German University, and no 
 connection of the Whitechapel countess whatever, a 
 chance acquaintance at the most. He operates on 
 Lord Fleetwood with doses of German philosophy ; 
 otherwise, a harmless creature ; and has consented to 
 wash and dress. It is my lord who has had the chief 
 influence. And the Countess Li via now backs him in 
 maintaining that there is nowhere a more honest young 
 man to be found. She may have her reasons. 
 
 As for the Whitechapel Countess . . . the whole 
 story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny was 
 retold, and it formed a terrific halo, presage of rains 
 and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl had 
 incomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two had 
 a son and a daughter born abroad : — in wedlock, we 
 trust. The girl may be as wild a one as the mother. 
 She has a will as determined as her husband's. She is 
 offered Esslemont, the eaiTs Kentish mansion, for a 
 residence, and she will none of it until she has him 
 down in the east of London on his knees to entreat her. 
 The injury was deep on one side or the other. It may 
 be almost surely prophesied that the two will never 
 come too-ether. Will either of them deal the stroke for 
 freedom ? And which is the likelier ? 
 
 Meanwhile Lord Fleetwood and his Whitechapel 
 Countess composed the laugh of London. Straightway 
 Invention, the violent propagator, sprang from his 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 253 
 
 shades at a call of the great world's appetite for more, 
 and, rushing upon stationary Fact, supplied the required. 
 Marvel upon marvel was recounted. The mixed origin 
 of the singular issue could not be examined, where all 
 was increasingly funny. 
 
 Always the shout for more produced it. She and 
 her band of Whitechapel boys were about in ambush to 
 waylay the earl wherever he went. She stood knocking 
 at his door through a whole night. He dared not lug 
 her before a magistrate for fear of exposure. Once, 
 riding in the park with a troop of friends he had a 
 young woman pointed out to him, and her finger was 
 levelled, and she cried: 'There is the English noble- 
 man who marries a girl and leaves her to go selling 
 cabbages ! ' 
 
 He left town for the Island, and beheld his yacht 
 sailing the Solent : — my lady the countess was on 
 board ! A pair of Tyrolese minstrels in the square 
 kindled his enthusiasm at one of his dinners ; he sent 
 them a sovereign ; their humble, hearty thanks were 
 returned to him in the name of Die Grafin von 
 Fleetwood. 
 
 The Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry sifted their 
 best. They let pass incredible stories : among others, 
 that she had sent cards to the nobility and gentry of 
 the West End of London, offering to deliver sacks of 
 potatoes by newly established donkey-cart at the doors 
 of their residences, at so much per sack, bills quarterly ; 
 with the postscript, Vive Taristocratie ! Their inform- 
 ant had seen a card, and the stamp of the Fleetwood 
 dragon-crest was on it. 
 
 He has enemies, was variously said of the persecuted 
 nobleman. But it was nothing worse than the parasite 
 
254 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 that he had. This was the parasite's gentle treason. 
 He found it an easy road to humour ; it pricked the 
 slug fancy in him to stir and curl; gave him occasion 
 to bundle and bustle his patron kindly. Abrane, Potts, 
 Mallard, and Sir Meeson Corby were personages during 
 the town's excitement, besought for having something 
 to say. Petrels of the sea of tattle, they were buoyed 
 by the hubbub they created, and felt the tipsy happi- 
 ness of being certain to rouse the laugh wherever they 
 alighted. Sir Meeson Corby, important to himself in 
 an eminent degree, enjoyed the novel sense of his im- 
 portance with his fellows. They crowded round the 
 bore who had scattered them. 
 
 He traced the miserable catastrophe in the earl's 
 fortunes to the cunning of the rascal now sponging on 
 Fleetwood and trying to dress like a gentleman : a con- 
 victed tramp, elevated by the caprice of the young 
 nobleman he was plotting to ruin. Sir Meeson quoted 
 Captain Abrane's latest effort to hit the dirty object's 
 name, by calling him ' Fleetwood's Mr. Woodlouse.' 
 And was the rascal a sorcerer ? Sir Meeson spoke of 
 him in the hearing of the Countess Livia, and she, 
 previously echoing his disgust, corrected him sharply, 
 and said : ' I begin to be of Russett's opinion, that his 
 fault is his honesty.' The rascal had won or partly 
 won the empress of her sex ! This Lady Livia, 
 haughtiest and most fastidious of our younger great 
 dames, had become the indulgent critic of the tramp's 
 borrowed plumes ! Nay, she would not listen to a 
 depreciatory word on him from her cousin Henrietta 
 Kirby-Levellier. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, of all places for an encounter 
 between the Earl of Fleetwood and the countess, those 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 255 
 
 vulgar Gardens across the water, long since abandoned 
 by the Fashion, were the most suitable. Thither one 
 fair June night, for the sake of showing the dowager 
 countess and her beautiful cousin, the French nobleman, 
 Sir Meeson Corby, and others, what were the pleasures 
 of the London lower orders, my lord had the whim to 
 conduct them, — merely a parade of observation once 
 round; — the ladies veiled, the gentlemen with sticks, 
 and two servants following, one of whom, dressed in 
 quiet black, like the peacefulest of parsons, was my 
 lord's pugilist, Christopher Ines. 
 
 Now, here we come to history: though you will 
 remember what History is. 
 
 The party walked round the Gardens unmolested : 
 nor have we grounds for supposing they assumed airs 
 of state in the style of a previous generation. Only, as 
 it happened, a gentleman of the party was a wag ; no 
 less than the famous, well-seasoned John Rose Mackrell, 
 bent on amusing Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, to hear her lovely 
 laughter ; and his wit and his anecdotes, both inex- 
 haustible, proved that, as he said, * a dried fish is no 
 stale fish, and a smoky flavour to an old chimney story 
 will often render it more piquant to the taste than one 
 jumping fresh off the incident. 1 His exact meaning in 
 ' smokv flavour ' we are not to know ; but whether that 
 M. de St. Ombre should witness the effect of English 
 humour upon them, or that the ladies could permit 
 themselves to laugh, their voices accompanied the 
 gentlemen in silvery volleys. There had been * Mack- 
 reir at Fleetwood's dinner-table; which was then a 
 way of saying that dry throats made no count of the 
 quantity of champagne imbibed, owing to the fits Rose 
 Mackrell caused. However, there was loud laughter as 
 
256 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 they strolled, and it was noticed ; and Fleetwood crying 
 out, ' Mackrell ! Mackrell ! ' in delighted repudiation of 
 the wag's last sally, the cry of ' Hooray, Mackrell ! , was 
 caught up by the crowd. They were not the primary 
 offenders, for loud laughter in an isolated party is bad 
 breeding ; but they had not the plea of a copious 
 dinner. 
 
 So this affair began ; inoffensively at the start, for 
 my lord was good-humoured about it. 
 
 Kit Ines, of the mercurial legs, must now give 
 impromptu display of his dancing. He seized a 
 partner, in the manner of a Roman the Sabine, sure 
 of pleasing his patron ; and the maid, passing from 
 surprise to merriment, entered the quadrille perforce, 
 all giggles, not without emulation, for she likewise 
 had the passion for the dance. Whereby it befell 
 that the pair footed in a way to gather observant 
 spectators ; and if it had not been that the man from 
 whom the maid was willy-nilly snatched, conceived 
 resentment, things might have passed comfortably ; for 
 Kit's quips and cuts and high capers, and the Sunday 
 gravity of the barge face while the legs were at their 
 impish trickery, double motion to the music, won the 
 crowd to cheer. They conjectured him to be a British 
 sailor. But the destituted man said, sailor or no sailor, 
 — bos"en be hanged ! he should pay for his whistle. 
 
 Honourably at the close of the quadrille, Kit brought 
 her back ; none the worse for it, he boldly affirmed, 
 and he thanked the man for the short loan of her. 
 The man had an itch to strike. Choosing rather to be 
 struck first, he vented nasty remarks. My lord spoke 
 to Kit and moved on. At the moment of the step, 
 Rose Mackrell uttered something, a waggery of some 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 257 
 
 sort, heard to be forgotten, but of such instantaneous 
 effect, that the prompt and immoderate laugh succeed- 
 ing it might reasonably be taken for a fling of scorn at 
 himself, by an injured man. They were a party; he 
 therefore proceeded to make one, appealing to English 
 sentiment and right feeling. The blameless and re- 
 pentant maid plucked at his coat to keep him from 
 dogging the heels of the gentlemen. Fun was promised ; 
 consequently the crowd waxed. 
 
 4 My lord, 1 had been let fall by Kit Ines. Conjoined 
 to ' Mackrell,' it rang finely, and a trumpeting of 
 ' Lord Mackrell ' resounded. Lord Mackrell was asked 
 for ' more capers and not so much sauce.*' Various fish 
 took part in his title of nobility. The wag Mackrell 
 continuing to be discreetly silent, and Kit Ines acting 
 as a pacific rearguard, the crowd fell in love with their 
 display of English humour, disposed to the surly satis- 
 faction of a big street dog that has been appeased by a 
 smaller one's total cessation of growls. 
 
 All might have gone well but for the sudden appear- 
 ance of two figures of young women on the scene. 
 They fronted the advance of the procession. They 
 wanted to have a word with Lord Mackrell. Not a bit 
 of it — he won't listen, turns away ; and one of the pair 
 slips round him. It 's regular imploring : ' my lord ! 
 my lord ! ' 
 
 O you naughty Surrey melodram villain of a Lord 
 Mackrell ! Listen to the young woman, you Mackrell, 
 or you'll get Billingsgate ! Here's Mr. Jig-and-Reel 
 behind here, says she 's done him ! By Gosh ! What 's 
 up now ? 
 
 One of the young ladies of the party ahead had 
 rushed up to the young woman dodging to stand in 
 
 R 
 
258 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Lord MackrelFs way. The crowd pressed to see. Kit 
 Ines and his mate shouldered them off. They per- 
 formed an envelopment of the gentlemen and ladies, 
 including the two young women. Kit left his mate 
 and ran to the young woman hitherto the quieter of 
 the two. He rattled at her. But she had a tongue of 
 her own and she rattled it at him. What did she say ? 
 
 Merely to hear, for no other reason, a peace-loving 
 crowd of clerks and tradesmen, workmen and their 
 girls, young aspirants to the professions, night-larks of 
 different classes, both sexes, there in that place for 
 simple entertainment, animated simply by the spirit of 
 English humour, contracted, so closing upon the Mac- 
 krell party as to seem threatening to the most orderly 
 and apprehensive member of it, who was the baronet, 
 Sir Meeson Corbv. 
 
 He was a man for the constables in town emer- 
 gencies, and he shouted. ' Cock Robin crowing ' pro- 
 voked a jolly round of barking chaff. The noise in a 
 dense ring drew Fleetwood's temper. He gave the 
 word to Kit Ines, and immediately two men dropped ; 
 a dozen staggered unhit. The fists worked right and 
 left ; such a clearing of ground was never seen for 
 sickle or scythe. And it was taken respectfully; for 
 Science proclaimed her venerable self in the style and 
 the perfect sufficiency of the strokes. A bruiser de- 
 livered them. No shame to back away before a bruiser. 
 There was rather an admiring envy of the party claim- 
 ing the nimble champion on their side, until the very 
 moderate lot of the Mackrells went stepping forward 
 along the strewn path with sticks pointed. 
 
 If they had walked it like gentlemen, they would 
 have been allowed to get through. An aggressive 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 259 
 
 minority, and with Cock Robin squealing for constables 
 in the midst, is that insolent upstart thing which howls 
 to have a lesson. The sticks were fallen on ; bump 
 came the mass. Kit Ines had to fight his way back to 
 his mate, and the couple scoured a clearish ring, but 
 the gentlemen were at short thrusts, affable in tone, to 
 cheer the spirits of the ladies : — ' All right, my friend, 
 you're a trifle mistaken, it's my stick, not yours.' 
 Therewith the wrestle for the stick. 
 
 The one stick not pointed was wrenched from the 
 grasp of Sir Meeson Corby ; and by a woman, the 
 young woman who had accosted my lord ; not a com- 
 mon young woman either, as she appeared when be- 
 seeching him. Her stature rose to battle heights : she 
 made play with Sir Meeson Corby's ebony stick, using 
 it in one hand as a dwarf quarterstaff to flail the 
 sconces, then to dash the point at faces ; and she being 
 a woman, a girl, perhaps a lady, her cool warrior 
 method of cleaving way, without so much as tighten- 
 ing her lips, was found notable ; and to this degree 
 (vouched for by Rose Mackrell, who heard it), that a 
 fellow, rubbing his head, cried : ' Damn it all, she 's 
 clever, though!' She took her station beside Lord 
 Fleetwood. 
 
 He had been as cool as she, or almost. Now he was 
 maddened; she defended him, she warded and thrust 
 for him, only for him, to save him a touch ; unasked, 
 undesired, detested for the box on his ears of to-mor- 
 row's public mockery, as she would be, overwhelming 
 him with ridicule. Have you seen the kick and tug at 
 the straps of the mettled pony in stables that betrays 
 the mishandling of him by his groom ? Something so 
 did Fleetwood plunge and dart to be free of her, and 
 
260 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 his desperate soul cried out on her sticking to him like 
 a plaster ! 
 
 Welcome were the constables. His guineas winked 
 at their chief, as fair women convey their meanings, 
 with no motion of eyelids ; and the officers of the law 
 knew the voice habituated to command, and answered 
 two words of his : * Right, my lord, 1 smelling my lord 
 in the unerring manner of those days. My lord's party 
 were escorted to the gates, not a little jeered ; though 
 they by no means had the worst of the tussle. But 
 the puffing indignation of Sir Meeson Corby over his 
 battered hat and torn frill and buttons plucked from 
 his coat, and his threat of the magistrates, excited the 
 crowd to derisive yells. 
 
 My lord spoke something to his man, handing his 
 purse. 
 
 The ladies were spared the hearing of bad language. 
 They, according to the joint testimony of M. de St. 
 Ombre and Mr. Rose Mackrell, comported themselves 
 throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race. 
 Both gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown 
 Britomart who had done such gallant service with Sir 
 Meeson's ebony wand. He was beginning to fuss 
 vociferously about the loss of the stick — a family stick, 
 gold-headed, the family crest on it, priceless to the 
 family — when Mrs. Kirby-Levellier handed it to him 
 inside the coach. 
 
 ' But where is she ? ' M. de St. Ombre said, and 
 took the hint of Livia's touch on his arm in the 
 dark. s 
 
 At the silence following the question, Mr. Rose 
 Mackrell murmured, ' Ah ! ' 
 
 He and the French gentleman understood that there 
 
IN DAME GOSSIP'S VEIN 261 
 
 had been a manifestation of the notorious Whitechapel 
 Countess. 
 
 They were two; and a slower-witted third was travel- 
 ling to his ideas on the subject. Three men, witnesses 
 of a remarkable incident in connection with a boiling 
 topic of current scandal, — glaringly illustrative of it, 
 moreover, — were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if 
 they had been sworn to secrecy. Fleetwood knew it, 
 and he scorned to solicit them ; an exaction of their 
 idle vows would be merely the humiliation of him- 
 self. So he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as 
 the ultra-convivial give the last wink of reason to 
 the wine-cup. Persecuted as he was, nothing re- 
 mained for him but the nether-sublime of a statuesque 
 desperation. 
 
 That was his feeling ; and his way of cloaking it; 
 under light sallies at Sir Meeson and easy chat with 
 Henrietta made it visible to her, from its being the con- 
 trary of what the world might expect a proud young 
 nobleman to exhibit. She pitied him: she had done him 
 some wrong. She read into him, too, as none else could. 
 Seeing the solitary tortures behind the pleasant social 
 mask, she was drawn to partake of them ; and the mask 
 seemed pathetic. She longed to speak a word in sym- 
 pathy or relieve her bosom of tears. Carinthia had 
 sunk herself, was unpardonable, hardly mentionable. 
 Any of the tales told of her might be credited after 
 this ! The incorrigible cause of humiliation for every- 
 body connected with her pictured, at a word of her 
 name, the crowd pressing and the London world acting 
 audience. Livia spoke the name when they had reached 
 their house and were alone. Henrietta responded with 
 the imperceptible shrug which is more eloquent than 
 
262 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 a cry to tell of the most monstrous of loads. My lord, 
 it was thought by the ladies, had directed his man to 
 convey her safely to her chosen home, whence she might 
 be expected very soon to be issuing and striking the 
 gong of London again. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A KIDNAPPING AND NO GItEAT HARM 
 
 Ladies who have the pride of delicate breeding are 
 not more than rather violently hurled back on the 
 fortress it is, when one or other of the gross mishaps 
 of circumstance may subject them to a shock : and this 
 happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sus- 
 tained by the within and the without to keep a smooth 
 countenance, however severe their affliction. Men of 
 heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake 
 them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the mon- 
 strous grotesque of the scene at the Gardens, Livia 
 and Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any 
 signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only, 
 the fair cousins were unable to perceive a comic ele- 
 ment in the scene : and if the world was for laughing, 
 as their instant apprehension foresaw it, the world was 
 an ignoble beast. They did not discuss Carinthia's 
 latest craziness at night, hardly alluded to it while 
 they were in the interjectory state. 
 
 Henrietta was Livia^ guest, her husband having 
 hurried away to Vienna : ( To get money ! money ! ' her 
 angry bluntness explained his absence, and dealt its 
 
A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 263 
 
 blow at the sudden astounding poverty into which they 
 had fallen. She was compelled to practise an exces- 
 sive, an incredible economy : — ' think of the smallest 
 trifles ! ' so that her Chillon travelled unaccompanied, 
 they were separated. Her iterations upon money were 
 the vile constraint of an awakened interest and wonder- 
 ment at its powers. She, the romantic Riette, banner 
 of chivalry, reader of poetry, struck a line between poor 
 and rich in her talk of people, and classed herself with 
 the fallen and pinched ; she harped on her slender 
 means, on the enforced calculations preceding purchases, 
 on the living in lodgings ; and that miserly Lord 
 Levellier's indebtedness to Chillon — large sums ! and 
 Chillon's praiseworthy resolve to pay the creditors of 
 her father's estate ; and of how he travelled like a 
 common man, in consequence of the money he had 
 given Janey — weakly, for her obstinacy was past en- 
 durance ; but her brother would not leave her penniless, 
 and penniless she had been for weeks, because of her 
 stubborn resistance to the earl — quite unreasonably, 
 whether right or wrong — in the foul retreat she had 
 chosen ; apparently with a notion that the horror of 
 it was her vantage ground against him : and though 
 a single sign of submission would place the richest 
 purse in England at her disposal. 6 She refuses Essle- 
 mont ! She insists on his meeting her ! No child 
 could be so witless. Let him be the one chiefly or 
 entirely to blame, she might show a little tact — 
 for her brother's sake ! She loves her brother ? No : 
 deaf to him, to me, to every consideration except her 
 blind will. 1 
 
 Here was the skeleton of the love match, earlier than 
 Livia had expected. 
 
264 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 It refreshed a phlegmatic lady's disposition for 
 prophecy. Lovers abruptly tossed between wind and 
 wave may still be lovers, she knew : but they are, or 
 the weaker of the two is, hard upon any third person 
 who tugs at them for subsistence or existence. The 
 condition, if they are much beaten about, prepares true 
 lovers, through their mutual tenderness, to be bitterly 
 misanthropical. 
 
 Livia supposed the novel economic pinches to be the 
 cause of Henrietta's unwonted harsh judgment of her 
 sister-in-law's misconduct, or the crude expression of 
 it. She could not guess that Carinthia's unhappi- 
 ness in marriage was a spectre over the married 
 happiness of the pair fretted by the conscience which 
 told them they had come together by doing much 
 to bring it to pass. Henrietta could see herself less 
 the culprit when she blamed Carinthia in another's 
 hearing. 
 
 After some repose, the cousins treated their horrible 
 misadventure as a piece of history. Livia was cool; 
 she had not a husband involved in it, as Henrietta 
 had ; and London's hoarse laugh surely coming on 
 them, spared her the dread Henrietta suffered, that 
 Chillon would hear ; the most sensitive of men on any 
 matter touching his family. 
 
 4 And now a sister added to the list ! Will there be 
 names, Livia?' 
 
 4 The newspapers ! ' Livia's shoulders rose. 
 
 ' We ought to have sworn the gentlemen to silence.' 
 
 'M. de St. Ombre is a tomb until he writes his 
 Memoirs. I hold Sir Meeson under lock. But a 
 spiced incident, — a notorious couple, — an anecdotal 
 witness to the scene, — could you expect Mr. Rose 
 
A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 265 
 
 Mackrell to contain it ? The sacredest of oaths, my 
 dear ! ' 
 
 That relentless force impelling an anecdotist to 
 slaughter families for the amusement of dinner-tables, 
 was brought home to Henrietta by her prospect of 
 being a victim ; and Livia reminding her of the 
 excessive laughter at Rose MackrelPs anecdotes over- 
 night, she bemoaned her having consented to go to 
 those Gardens in mourning. 
 
 4 How could Janey possibly have heard of the project 
 to go ? ' 
 
 1 You went to please Russett, he to please you, and 
 that wild-cat to please herself,"' said Livia. ' She 
 haunts his door, I suppose, and follows him, like a 
 running footman. Every step she takes widens the 
 breach. He keeps his temper, yes, keeps his temper as 
 he keeps his word, and one morning it breaks loose, and 
 all that 's done has to be undone. It will be — must. 
 That extravaganza, as she is called, is fatal, dogs him 
 with burlesque : — of all men ! ' 
 
 ' Why not consent to meet her once, Chillon 
 asks. 1 
 
 6 You are asking Russett to yield an inch on demand, 
 and to a woman.'' 
 
 6 My husband would yield to a woman what he would 
 refuse to all the men in Europe and America, 1 said 
 Henrietta; and she enjoyed her thrill of allegiance to 
 her chivalrous lord and courtier. 
 
 6 No very extraordinary specimen of a newly married 
 man, who has won the Beauty of England and America 
 for his wife — at some cost to some people, 1 Livia 
 rejoined. 
 
 There came a moisture on the eyelashes of the 
 
266 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 emotional young woman, from a touch of compassion 
 for the wealthy man who had wished to call her wife, and 
 was condemned by her rejection of him to call another 
 woman wife, to be wifeless in wedding her, despite his 
 wealth. 
 
 'She thinks he loves her; it is pitiable, but she 
 thinks it — after the treatment she has had. She begs 
 to see him once.'* 
 
 ' And subdue him with a fit of weeping,'' Livia was 
 moved to say by sight of the tear she hated. 'It 
 would harden Russett — on other eyes, too ! Salt- 
 water drops are like the forced agony scenes in a 
 play : they bring down the curtain, they don't win 
 the critics. I heard her " my husband " and saw his 
 face.' 
 
 'You didn't hear a whimper with it,' Henrietta 
 said. 'She's a mountain girl, not your city madam 
 on the boards. Chillon and I had her by each hand, 
 implored her to leave that impossible Whitechapel, 
 and she trembled, not a drop was shed by her. I can 
 almost fancy privation and squalor have no terrors 
 for Janey. She sings to the people down there, nurses 
 them. She might be occupying Esslemont — our dream 
 of an English home ! She is the destruction of the 
 idea of romantic in connection with the name of 
 marriage. I talk like a simpleton. Janey upsets us 
 all. My lord was only a little queer before he knew 
 her. His Mr. Woodseer may be encouraging her. 
 You tell me the creature has a salary from him equal 
 to your jointure.' 
 
 'Be civil to the man while it lasts,' Livia said, 
 attentive to a degradation of tone in her cousin, 
 formerly of supreme self-containment. 
 
A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 267 
 
 The beautiful young woman was reminded of her 
 holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that 
 it was, and the meanness of the satisfaction, darkened 
 her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, 
 on her husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for 
 being reproved. So she plucked resolution to enjoy 
 her holiday and forget the contrasts of life — palaces 
 running profusion, lodgings hammered by duns; the 
 pinch of poverty distracting every simple look inside 
 or out. There was no end to it, for her husband's 
 chivalrous honour forced him to undertake the pay- 
 ment of her father's heavy debts. He was right and 
 admirable, it could not be contested ; but the prospect 
 for them was a grinding gloom, an unrelieved drag, 
 as of a coach at night on an interminable uphill flinty 
 road. 
 
 These were her sensations, and she found it divert- 
 ing to be admired ; admired by many while she knew 
 herself to be absorbed in the possession of her by one. 
 It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. 
 She felt she was really, had rapidly become, the 
 young woman of the world, armed with a husband, 
 to take the flatteries of men for the needed diversion 
 they brought. None moved her; none could come near 
 to touching the happy insensibility of a wife who 
 adored her husband, wrote to him daily, thought of 
 him by the minute. Her former worshippers were 
 numerous at Livia's receptions ; Lord Fleetwood, Lord 
 Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to reflect on — they were 
 the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman 
 fallen upon poverty, ignoble poverty ! She could not 
 discard her wealth. She wrote amusingly of them, 
 and fully, vivacious descriptions, to Chillon ; hardly so 
 
268 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 much writing to him as entering her heart's barred 
 citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everything 
 that befell about her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleet- 
 wood's kindness in providing entertainments, her ob- 
 ject was to mollify Chillon's anger in some degree. 
 She was doing her utmost to gratify him, ' for the 
 purpose of paving a way to plead Janey's case."' She 
 was almost persuading herself she was enjoying the 
 remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not, 
 Livia's worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, ' who does as he wills 
 with my lord ; directs his charities, his pleasures, his 
 opinions, all because he is believed to have wonderful 
 ideas and be wonderfully honest.' 
 
 Henrietta wrote : ' Situation unchanged. Janev still 
 at that place ' ; and before the letter was posted, she 
 and Livia had heard from Gower Woodseer of the 
 reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood 
 and her maid. Gower's father had walked up from 
 Whitechapel, bearing news of it to the earl, she 
 said. 
 
 ' And the earl is much disturbed ? ' was Livia's 
 inquiry. 
 
 ' He has driven down with my father,' Gower said 
 carelessly, ambiguously in the sound. 
 
 Troubled enough to desire the show of a corre- 
 sponding trouble, Henrietta read at their faces. 
 
 6 May it not be — down there — a real danger?' 
 
 The drama, he could inform her, was only too naked 
 down there for disappearances to be common. 
 
 4 Will it be published that she is missing ?' 
 
 'She has her maid with her, a stout-hearted girl. 
 Both have courage. I don't think we need take 
 measures just yet.' 
 
A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 269 
 
 1 Not before it is public property ? ' 
 
 Henrietta could have bitten her tongue for laying 
 her open to the censure implied in his muteness. 
 Janey perverted her. 
 
 Women were an illegible manuscript, and ladies a 
 closed book of the binding, to this raw philosopher, or 
 he would not so coldly have judged the young wife, 
 anxious on her husband's account, that they might 
 escape another scorching. He carried away his im- 
 pression. 
 
 Livia listened to a remark on his want of manners. 
 
 6 Russett puts it to the credit of his honesty,'* she 
 said. ' Honesty is everything with us at present. The 
 man has made his honesty an excellent speculation. 
 He puts a piece on zero and the bank hands him a 
 sackful. We may think we have won him to serve 
 us, up comes his honesty. That's how we have Lady 
 Arpington mixed in it — too long a tale. But be guided 
 by me ; condescend a little. 1 
 
 6 My dear ! my whole mind is upon that unhappy girl. 
 It would break Chillon's heart.' 
 
 Livia pished. ' There are letters we read before we 
 crack the seal. She is out of that ditch, and it suits 
 Russett that she should be. He 's not often so patient. 
 A woman foot to foot against his will — I see him 
 throwing high stakes. Tyrants are brutal ; and really 
 she provokes him enough. You needn't be alarmed 
 about the treatment she'll meet. He won't let her 
 beat him, be sure.' 
 
 Neither Livia nor Gower wondered at the clearing 
 of the mystery, before it went to swell the scandal. 
 A young nobleman of ready power, quick temper, few 
 scruples, and a taxed forbearance, was not likely to 
 
270 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 stand thwarted and goaded — and by a woman. Lord 
 Fleetwood acted his part, inscrutable as the blank of 
 a locked door. He could not conceal that he was 
 behind the door. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 
 
 Gower's bedroom window looked over the shrubs of 
 the square, and as his form of revolt from a city life 
 was to be up and out with the sparrows in the early 
 flutter of morning, for a stretch of the legs where 
 grass was green and trees were not enclosed, he rarely 
 saw a figure below when he stood dressing. Now there 
 appeared a petticoated one stationary against the rails, 
 with her face lifted. She fronted the house, and while 
 he speculated abstractedly, recognition rushed on him. 
 He was down and across the roadway at leaps. 
 
 6 It *s Madge here ! ' 
 
 The girl panted for her voice. 
 
 Mr. Woodseer, I 'm glad ; I thought I should have 
 to wait hours. She 's safe.' 
 
 ' Where? 1 
 
 1 Will you come, sir ? * 
 
 4 Step ahead. 1 
 
 Madge set forth to north of the square. 
 
 He judged of the well-favoured girl that she could 
 steer her way through cities : mouth and brows were a 
 warning to challenger pirate craft of a vessel carrying 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 271 
 
 guns ; and the red lips kept their firm line when they 
 yielded to the pressure for speech. 
 
 ' It 's a distance. She 's quite safe, no harm ; she 's 
 a prisoner; she's well fed; she's not ill-treated.*' 
 
 ' You're out?' 
 
 'That's as it happens. I'm lucky in seeing you 
 early. He don't mean to hurt her; he won't be beaten. 
 All she asks is ten minutes with him. If he would ! — 
 he won't. She didn't mean to do him offence t'other 
 night in that place — you 've heard. Kit Ines told me 
 he was on duty there — going. She couldn't help speak- 
 ing when she had eyes on her husband. She kisses the 
 ground of his footsoles, you may say, let him be ever 
 so unkind. She and I were crossing to the corner of 
 Roper Street a rainy night, on way to Mile End, away 
 down, to one of your father's families, Mother Davis 
 and her sick daughter and the little ones, and close 
 under the public-house Goat and Beard we were seized 
 on and hustled into a covered carriage that was there, 
 and they drove sharp. She 's not one to scream. We 
 weren't frightened. We both made the same guess. 
 They drove us to the house she 's locked in, and me, 
 too, up till three o'clock this morning.' 
 
 6 You 've seen nobody, Madge ? ' 
 
 'He's fixed she's to leave London, Mr. Woodseer. 
 I 've seen Kit Ines. And she 's to have one of the big 
 houses to her use. I guessed Kit Ines was his broom. 
 He defends it because he has his money to make — 
 and be a dirty broom for a fortune ! But any woman's 
 sure of decent handling with Kit Ines — not to speak of 
 lady. He and a mate guard the house. An old woman 
 cooks.' 
 
 4 He guards the house and he gave you a pass ?' 
 
272 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' Not he. His pride's his obedience to his " paytron 11 
 — he calls his master, and won't hear that name abused. 
 We are on the first floor ; all the lower doors are locked 
 day and night. New street, not much neighbours ; she 
 wouldn't cry out of the window. She's to be let free 
 if she 'll leave London. 
 
 1 You jumped it ! ' 
 
 'If I 'd broke a leg, Mr. Kit Ines would have had to 
 go to his drams. It wasn't very high ; and a flower-bed 
 underneath. My mistress wanted to be the one. She 
 has to be careful. She taught me how to jump down 
 not to hurt. She makes you feel you can do anything. 
 I had a bother to get her to let me and be quiet 
 herself. She's not one to put it upon others, you'll 
 learn. When I was down I felt like a stick in the 
 ground and sat till I had my feet, she at the window 
 waiting ; and I started for you. She kissed her 
 hand. I was to come to you, and then your father, 
 you nowhere seen. I wasn't spoken to. I know empty 
 London. 1 
 
 ' Kit Ines was left sleeping in the house ?' 
 
 'Snoring, I dare say. He don't drink on 
 duty.' 
 
 6 He must be kept on duty.' 
 
 ' Drink or that kind of duty, it 's a poor choice.' 
 
 ' You '11 take him in charge, Madge.' 
 
 ' I 've got a mistress to look after.' 
 
 ' You 've warmed to her.' 
 
 'That's not new, Mr. Woodseer. I do trust you, 
 and you his friend. But you are the minister's son, 
 and any man not a great nobleman must have some 
 heart for her. You '11 learn. He kills her so because 
 she 's fond of him — loves him, however he strikes. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 273 
 
 No, not like a dog, as men say of us. She 'd die for 
 him this night, need were. Live with her, you won't 
 find many men match her for brave ; and she 's good. 
 My Sally calls her a Bible saint. I could tell you 
 stories of her goodness, short the time though she's 
 been down our way. And better there for her than at 
 that inn he left her at to pine and watch the Royal 
 Sovereign come swing come smirk in sailor blue and 
 star to meet the rain — would make anybody disrespect 
 Royalty or else go mad ! He's a great nobleman, he 
 can't buy what she 's ready to give ; and if he thinks 
 he breaks her will now, it's because she thinks she's 
 obeying a higher than him, or no lord alive and Kit 
 Ines to back him 'd hold her. Women want a priest 
 to speak to men certain times. I wish I dared ; we 
 have to bite our tongues. He's master now, but, as 
 I believe God 's above, if he plays her false, he 's the 
 one to be brought to shame. I talk.' 
 
 'Talk on, Madge,' said Gower, to whom the girl's 
 short-syllabled run of the lips was a mountain rill com- 
 pared with London park waters. 
 
 6 You won't let him hurry her off where she '11 eat her 
 heart for never seeing him again ? She prays to be near 
 him, if she's not to see him.' 
 
 4 She speaks in that way ? ' 
 
 4 1 get it by bits. I 'm with her so, it 's as good as if 
 I was inside her. She can't obey when it goes the wrong 
 way of her heart to him.' 
 
 4 Love and wisdom won't pull together, and they part 
 company for good at the church door,' said Gower. 
 4 This matrimony 's a bad business.' 
 
 Madge hummed a moan of assent. 4 And my poor 
 Sally '11 have to marry. I can't leave my mistress while 
 
 s 
 
274 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 she wants me, and Sally can't be alone. It seems we 
 take a step and harm 's done, though it's the right step 
 we take.'' 
 
 ' It seems to me you Ve engaged yourself to follow 
 Sally's lead, Madge.' 
 
 ' Girls' minds turn corners, Mr. Woodseer.' 
 
 He passed the remark. What it was that girls' 
 minds occasionally or habitually did, or whether they 
 had minds to turn, or whether they took their whims 
 for minds, were untroubled questions with a young 
 
 an studying abstract and adoring surface nature too 
 xclusively to be aware of the manifestation of her 
 spirit in the flesh, as it is not revealed so much by men. 
 
 owever, she had a voice and a face that led him to be 
 thoughtful over her devotedness to her mistress, after 
 nearly losing her character for the prize-fighter, and he 
 had to thank her for invigorating him. His dis- 
 position was to muse and fall slack, helpless to a 
 friend. Here walked a creature exactly the contrary. 
 He listened to the steps of the dissimilar pair on the 
 detonating pavement, and eyed a church clock shining 
 to the sun. 
 
 She was sure of the direction : ' Out Camden way, 
 where the murder was.' 
 
 They walked at a brisk pace, conversing or not. 
 
 ' Tired ? You must be,' he said. 
 
 6 Not when I 'm hot to do a thing.' 
 
 ' There's the word of the thoroughbred V 
 
 ' You don't tire, sir,' said she. * Sally and I see you 
 stalking out for the open country in the still of the 
 morning. She thinks you look pale for want of food, 
 and ought to have some one put a biscuit into your 
 pocket overnight.' 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 275 
 
 ' Who 'd have guessed I was under motherly obser- 
 vation ! ' 
 
 6 You shouldn't go so long empty, if you listen to 
 trainers.'' 
 
 'Capital doctors, no doubt. But I get a fine 
 appetite. 1 
 
 6 You may grind the edge too sharp. 1 
 
 He was about to be astonished, and reflected that 
 she had grounds for her sagacity. His next thought 
 plunged him into contempt for Kit Ines, on account of 
 the fellow's lapses to sottishness. But there would be 
 no contempt of Kit Ines in a tussle with him. Nor 
 could one funk the tussle and play cur, if Kit's engaged 
 young woman were looking on. We get to our courage 
 or the show of it by queer screws. 
 
 Contemplative over these matters, the philosopher 
 transformed to man of action heard Madge say she 
 read directions in London by churches, and presently 
 exclaiming disdainfully, and yet relieved, ' Spooner 
 Villas,' she turned down a row of small detached 
 houses facing a brickfield, that had just contributed to 
 the erection of them, and threatened the big city with 
 further defacements. 
 
 Madge pointed to the marks of her jump, deep in 
 flower-bed earth under an open window. 
 
 Gower measured the height with sensational shanks. 
 
 She smote at the door. Carinthia nodded from her 
 window. Close upon that, Kit Ines came bounding to 
 the parlour window ; he spied and stared. Gower 
 was known to him as the earl's paymaster; so he 
 went to the passage and flung the door open, blocking 
 the way. 
 
 ' Any commands, your honour ? ' 
 
276 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' You bring the countess to my lord immediately/ 
 said Gower. 
 
 Kit swallowed his mouthful of surprise in a second 
 look at Madge and the ploughed garden-bed beneath 
 the chamber window. 
 
 ' Are the orders written, sir ?' 
 
 1 To me ? — for me to deliver to you ? — for you to 
 do my lord's bidding ? Where 's your head ? ' 
 
 Kit's finger-nails travelled up to it. Madge pushed 
 past him. 
 
 She and her mistress, and Kit's mate, and the old 
 woman receiving the word tor a cup of tea, were soon 
 in the passage. Kit's mate had a ready obedience for 
 his pay, nothing else, — no counsel at all, not a sugges- 
 tion to a head knocked to a pudding by Madge's jump 
 and my lord's paymaster here upon the scene. 
 
 4 My lady was to go down Wales way, sir."' 
 
 4 That may be ordered after.' 
 
 ' I 'm to take my lady to my lord ? ' and, ' Does it 
 mean my lady wants a fly?'' Kit asked, and harked 
 back on whether Madge had seen my lord. 
 
 ' At five in the morning ? — don't sham donkey with 
 me,' said Gower. 
 
 The business looked inclined to be leaky, but which 
 the way for proving himself other than a donkey 
 puzzled Kit : so much so, that a shove made him partly 
 grateful. Madge's clever countermove had stunned his 
 judgement. He was besides acting subordinate to his 
 patron's paymaster ; and by the luck of it, no voice of 
 woman interposed. The countess and her maid stood 
 by like a disinterested couple. Why be suspicious, if 
 he was to keep the countess in sight ? She was a nice 
 lady, and he preferred her good opinion. She was 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 277 
 
 brave, and he did her homage. It might be, my lord 
 had got himself round to the idea of thanking her for 
 saving his nob that night, and his way was to send and 
 have her up, to tell her he forgave her, after the style 
 of lords. Gower pricked into him by saying aside : 
 6 Mad, I suppose, in case of a noise ? ' And he could 
 not answer quite manfully, lost his eyes and coloured. 
 Neighbours might have required an explanation of 
 shrieks, he confessed. Men have sometimes to do nasty 
 work for their patrons. 
 
 They were afoot, walking at Carinthia's pace before 
 half-past seven. She would not hear of any convey- 
 ance. She was cheerful, and, as it was pitiful to see, 
 enjoyed her walk. Hearing of her brother's departure 
 for the Austrian capital, she sparkled. Her snatches 
 of speech were short flights out of the meditation pos- 
 sessing her. Gower noticed her easier English, that 
 came home to the perpetual student he was. She 
 made use of some of his father's words, and had 
 assimilated them mentally besides appropriating them : 
 the verbalizing of 'purpose,' then peculiar to his 
 father, for example. She said, in reply to a hint from 
 him : f If my lord will allow me an interview, I purpose 
 to be obedient.' No one could imagine of her that she 
 spoke broken-spiritedly. Her obedience was to a 
 higher than a mortal lord : and Gower was touched to 
 the quick through the use of the word. 
 
 Contrasting her with Countess Livia and her 
 cousin, the earl might think her inferior on the one 
 small, square compartment called by them the world ; 
 but she carried the promise of growth, a character in 
 expansion, and she had at least natural grace, a deer- 
 like step. Although her picturesqueness did not swarm 
 
278 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 on him with images illuminating night, subduing day, 
 like the Countess Livia's, it was marked, it could tower 
 and intermittently eclipse ; and it was of the uplifting 
 and healing kind by comparison, not a delicious bale- 
 fulness. 
 
 The bigger houses, larger shops, austere streets of 
 private residences, were observed by the recent inhabi- 
 tant of Whitechapel. 
 
 'My lord lives in a square, 1 she said. 
 
 ' We shall soon be there now,' he encouraged her, 
 doubtful though the issue appeared. 
 
 ' It is a summer morning for the Ortler, the Gross- 
 Glockner, the Venediger, — all our Alps, Mr. Wood- 
 seer. , 
 
 ' If we could fly ! ' 
 
 6 We love them.' 
 
 ' Why, then we beat a wing — yes. 1 
 
 'For I have them when I want them to sight. It 
 is the feet are so desirous. I feel them so this morning, 
 after prisonership. I could not have been driven to 
 my lord. 1 
 
 'I know the feeling,' said Gower; 'any movement 
 of us not our own impulse, hurries the body and 
 deadens the mind. And by the way, my dear lady, I 
 spoke of the earl's commands to this man behind us 
 walking with your Madge. My father would accuse 
 me of Jesuitry. Ines mentioned commands, and I took 
 advantage of it.' 
 
 ' I feared,'' said Carinthia. ' I go for my chance.' 
 
 Gower had a thought of the smaller creature, greater 
 by position, to whom she was going for her chance. 
 He alluded to his experience of the earl's kindness in 
 relation to himself, from a belief in his e honesty ' ; 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 279 
 
 dotted outlines of her husband's complex character, or 
 unmixed and violently opposing elements. 
 
 She remarked : ' I will try and learn."' 
 
 The name of the street of beautiful shops woke a 
 happy smile on her mouth. i Father talked of it ; my 
 mother, too. He has it written down in his Book of 
 Maxims. When I was a girl, I dreamed of one day 
 walking up Bond Street.' 
 
 They stepped from the pavement and crossed the 
 roadway for a side-street leading to the square. With 
 the swift variation of her aspect at times, her tone 
 changed. 
 
 * We are near. My lord will not be troubled by me. 
 He has only to meet me. There has been misunder- 
 standing. I have vexed him ; I could not help it. I 
 will go where he pleases after I have heard him give 
 orders. He thinks me a frightful woman. I am 
 peaceful."' 
 
 Gower muttered her word ' misunderstanding.'* They 
 were at the earl's house door. One tap at it, and the 
 two applicants for admission would probably be shot 
 as far away from Lord Fleetwood as when they were 
 on the Styrian heights last autumn. He delivered the 
 tap, amused by the idea. It was like a summons to 
 a genie of doubtful service. 
 
 My lord was out riding in the park. 
 
 Only the footman appeared at that early hour, and 
 his countenance was blank whitewash as he stood 
 rigid against the wall for the lady to pass. Madge 
 followed into the morning room ; Ines remained in the 
 hall, where he could have the opening speech with his 
 patron, and where he soon had communication with 
 the butler. 
 
280 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 This official entered presently to Gower, presenting 
 a loaded forehead. A note addressed to Mrs. Kirby- 
 Levellier at the Countess Livia's house hard by was 
 handed to him for instant despatch. He signified a 
 deferential wish to speak. 
 
 ' You>can speak in the presence of the Countess of 
 Fleetwood, Mr. Waytes,' Gower said. 
 
 Waytes checked a bend of his shoulders. He had 
 not a word, and he turned to send the note. He was 
 compelled to think that he saw a well-grown young 
 woman in the Whitechapel Countess. 
 
 Gower's note reached Henrietta on her descent to 
 the breakfast- table. She was alone, and thrown into a 
 torture of perplexity : for she wanted advice as to the 
 advice to be given to Janey, and Li via was an utterly 
 unprofitable person to consult in the case. She thought 
 of Lady Arpington, not many doors distant. Drinking 
 one hasty cup of tea, she sent for her bonnet, and 
 hastened away to the great lady, whom she found 
 rising from breakfast with the marquis. 
 
 Lady Arpington read Gower's note. She unbur- 
 dened herself : ' Oh ! So it 's no longer a bachelor's 
 household ! ' 
 
 Henrietta heaved the biggest of sighs. ' I fear the 
 poor dear may have made matters worse.' 
 
 To which Lady Arpington said : i Worse or better, 
 my child ! ' and shrugged ; for the present situation 
 strained to snapping. 
 
 She proposed to go forthwith, and give what support 
 she could to the Countess of Fleetwood. 
 
 They descended the steps of the house to the garden 
 and the Green Park's gravel walk up to Piccadilly. 
 There they had view of Lord Fleetwood on horseback 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 281 
 
 leisurely turning out of the main way's tide. They saw 
 him alight at the mews. As they entered the square, 
 he was met some doors from the south corner by his 
 good or evil genius, whose influence with him came 
 next after the marriage in the amazement it caused, and 
 was perhaps to be explained by it ; for the wealthiest 
 of young noblemen bestowing his name on an unknown 
 girl, would be the one to make an absurd adventurer 
 his intimate. Lord Fleetwood bent a listening head 
 while Mr. Gower Woodseer, apparently a good genius 
 for the moment, spoke at his ear. 
 
 How do we understand laughter at such a communi- 
 cation as he must be hearing from the man ? Signs of 
 a sharp laugh indicated either his cruel levity or that 
 his presumptuous favourite trifled — and the man's talk 
 could be droll, Lady Arpington knew : it had, she 
 recollected angrily, diverted her, and softened her to 
 tolerate the intruder into regions from which her class 
 and her period excluded the lowly born, except at 
 the dinner-tables of stale politics and tattered scandal. 
 Nevertheless, Lord Fleetwood mounted to his house 
 door, still listening. His ' Asmodeus,' on the tongue 
 of the world, might be doing the part of Mentor really. 
 The house door stood open. 
 
 Fleetwood said something to Gower; he swung round, 
 beheld the ladies and advanced to them, saluting. ' My 
 dear Lady Arpington ! quite so, you arrive opportunely. 
 When the enemy occupies the citadel, it 's proper to 
 surrender. Say, I beg, she can have the house, if she 
 prefers it. I will fall back on Esslemont. Arrange- 
 ments for her convenience will be made. I thank you, 
 by anticipation.' 
 
 His bow included Henrietta loosely. Lady Arping- 
 
282 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ton had exclaimed : 'Enemy, Fleetwood P" 1 and Gower, 
 in his ignorance of the smoothness of aristocratic 
 manners, expected a remonstrance ; but Fleetwood was 
 allowed to go on, with his air of steely geniality and 
 a decision, that his friend imagined he could have 
 broken down like an old partition board under the 
 kick of a sarcasm sharpening an appeal. 
 
 ' Lord Fleetwood was on the point of going in,' he 
 assured the great lady. 
 
 ' Lord Fleetwood may regret his change of mind, 1 
 said she. ' The Countess of Fleetwood will have my 
 advice to keep her footing in this house.' 
 
 She and Henrietta sat alone with Carinthia for an 
 hour. Coming forth, Lady Arpington ejaculated to 
 herself: 'Villainy somewhere! — You will do well, 
 Henrietta, to take up your quarters with her a day 
 or two. She can hold her position a month. Longer 
 is past possibility.' 
 
 A shudder of the repulsion from men crept over the 
 younger lady. But she was a warrior's daughter, and 
 observed : ' My husband, her brother, will be back 
 before the month ends.' 
 
 'No need for hostilities to lighten our darkness,'* 
 Lady Arpington rejoined. ' You know her ? trust 
 her?' 
 
 ' One cannot doubt her face. She is my husband's 
 sister. Yes, I do trust her. I nail my flag to her 
 cause/ 
 
 The flag was crimson, as it appeared on her cheeks ; 
 and that intimated a further tale, though not of so 
 dramatic an import as the cognizant short survey of 
 Carinthia had been. 
 
 These young women, with the new complications 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER MAN OF ACTION 283 
 
 obtruded by them, irritated a benevolent great govern- 
 ing lady, who had married off her daughters and 
 embraced her grandchildren, comfortably finishing that 
 chapter; and beheld now the apparition of the sex's 
 ancient tripping foe, when circumstances in themselves 
 were quite enough to contend against on their behalf. 
 It seemed to say, that nature's most burdened weaker 
 must always be beaten. Despite Henrietta's advocacy 
 and Carinthia's clear face, it raised a spectral form of 
 a suspicion, the more effective by reason of the much 
 required justification it fetched from the shades to plead 
 apologies for Lord Fleetwood's erratic, if not mad, and 
 in any case ugly, conduct. What otherwise could be 
 his excuse ? Such was his need of one, that the wife 
 he crushed had to be proposed for sacrifice, in the 
 mind of a lady tending strongly to side with her and 
 condemn her husband. 
 
 Lady Arpington had counselled Carinthia to stay 
 where she was, the Fates having brought her there. 
 Henrietta was too generous to hesitate in her choice 
 between her husband's sister and the earl. She re- 
 moved from Livia's house to Lord Fleetwood's. My 
 lord was at Esslemont two days ; then established his 
 quarters at Scrope's hotel, five minutes' walk from the 
 wedded lady to whom the right to bear his title was 
 granted, an interview with him refused. Such a squaring 
 for the battle of spouses had never — or not in mighty 
 London — been seen since that old fight began. 
 
284 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD 
 
 Dame Gossip at this present pass bursts to give us 
 a review of the social world siding for the earl or 
 for his countess ; and her parrot cry of ' John Rose 
 Mackrell ! , with her head's loose shake over the 
 smack of her lap, to convey the contemporaneous 
 tipsy relish of the rich good things he said on the 
 subject of the contest, indicates the kind of interven- 
 tion it would be. 
 
 To save the story from having its vein tied, we may 
 accept the reminder, that he was the countess's voluble 
 advocate at a period when her friends were shy to 
 speak of her. After relating the Vauxhall Gardens 
 episode in burlesque Homeric during the freshness of 
 the scandal, Rose MackrelFs enthusiasm for the heroine 
 of his humour set in. He tracked her to her parentage, 
 which was new breath blown into the sunken tradition 
 of some Old Buccaneer and his Countess Fanny : and, 
 a turn of great good luck helping him to a copy of 
 the book of the Maxims for Men, he would quote 
 certain of the racier ones, passages of Captain John 
 Peter Kirby's personal adventures in various lands and 
 waters illustrating the text, to prove that the old 
 warrior acted by the rule of his recommendations. 
 They had the repulsive attraction proper to rusty 
 lumber swords and truncheons that have tasted brains. 
 They wove no mild sort of halo for the head of a 
 shillelagh-flourishing Whitechapel Countess descended 
 from the writer and doer. 
 
THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD 285 
 
 People were willing to believe in her jump of thirty 
 feet or more off a suburban house-top to escape durance, 
 and her midnight storming of her lord's town house, 
 and ousting of him to go find his quarters at Scrope's 
 hotel. He, too, had his band of pugilists, as it was 
 known ; and he might have heightened a raging scandal. 
 The nobleman forbore. A woman's blow gracefully 
 taken adds a score of inches to our stature, floor us 
 as it may : we win the world's after-thoughts. Rose 
 Mackrell sketched the earl ; — always alert, smart, quick 
 to meet a combination and protect a dignity never 
 obtruded, and in spite of himself the laugh of the 
 town. His humour flickered wildly round the ridicu- 
 lous position of a prominent young nobleman, whose 
 bearing and character were foreign to a position of 
 ridicule. 
 
 Nevertheless, the earl's figure continuing to be classic 
 sculpture, it allied him with the aristocracy of martyrs, 
 that burn and do not wince. He propitiated none, 
 and as he could not but suffer shrewdly, he gained 
 steem enough to shine through the woman's pitiless 
 drenching of him. During his term at Scrope's hotel, 
 the carousals there were quite old-century and matter 
 of discourse. He had proved his return to sound sense 
 in the dismissal of ' the fiddler,' notoriously the woman's 
 lieutenant, or more ; and nightly the revelry closed at 
 the great gaming-tables of St. James's Street, while 
 Whitechapel held the coroneted square, well on her 
 way to the Law courts, as Abrane and Potts reported ; 
 and positively so, ' clear case.' That was the coming 
 development and finale of the Marriage. London 
 waited for it. 
 
 A rich man's easy smile over losses at play, merely 
 
286 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 taught his emulous troop to feel themselves poor devils 
 in the pocket. But Fleetwood's contempt of Sleep 
 was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of an 
 inferior vigour, hard for young men to admit by the 
 example. He never went to bed. Issuing from Fortune's 
 hall-doors in the bright, lively, summer morning, he 
 mounted horse and was away to the hills. Or he took 
 the arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, 
 and walked with him from the green tables and the 
 establishment's renowned dry still Sillery to mass at 
 a Papist chapel. As it was not known that he had 
 given his word to abjure his religion, the pious gamblers 
 did no worse than spread an alarm and quiet it, by 
 the citation of his character for having a try at every- 
 thing. 
 
 Henrietta despatched at this period the following 
 letter to Chillon : — 
 
 * I am with Livia to-morrow. Janey starts for Wales 
 to-morrow morning, a voluntary exile. She pleaded to 
 go back to that place where you had to leave her, pro- 
 mising she would not come Westward ; but was per- 
 suaded. Lady Arpington approves. The situation 
 was getting too terribly strained. We met and passed 
 my lord in the park. 
 
 ' He was walking his horse — elegant cavalier that he 
 is : would not look on his wife. A woman pulled by 
 her collar should be passive ; if she pulls her way, she 
 is treated as a dog. I see nothing else in the intention 
 of poor Janey's last offence to him. There is an 
 opposite counsel, and he can be eloquent, and he will 
 be heard on her side. How could she manage the most 
 wayward when she has not an idea of ordinary men ? 
 
THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD 287 
 
 But, my husband, they have our tie between them ; it 
 may move him. It subdues her — and nothing else 
 would have done that. If she had been in England 
 a year before the marriage, she would, I think, have 
 understood better how to guide her, steps and her 
 tongue for his good pleasure. She learns daily, very 
 quickly : observes, assimilates ; she reads and has her 
 comments — would have shot far ahead of your Riette, 
 with my advantages. 
 
 ' Your uncle — but he will bear any charge on his 
 conscience as long as he can get the burden off his 
 shoulders. Do not fret, my own ! Reperuse the above 
 — you will see we have grounds for hope. 
 
 ' He should have looked down on her ! No tears 
 from her eyes, but her eyes were tears. She does not 
 rank among beautiful women. She has her moments 
 for outshining them — the loveliest of spectres ! She 
 caught at my heart. I cannot forget her face looking 
 up for him to look down. A great painter would have 
 reproduced it, a great poet have rendered the impres- 
 sion. Nothing short of the greatest. That is odd to 
 say of one so simple as she. But when accidents call 
 up her reserves, you see mountain heights where mists 
 were — she is actually glorified. Her friend — I do be- 
 lieve a friend — the Mr. Woodseer you are to remember 
 meeting somewhere — a sprained ankle — has a dozen 
 similes ready for what she is when pain or happiness 
 vivify her. Or, it may be, tender charity. She says, 
 that if she feels for suffering people, it is because she is 
 the child of Chillon's mother. In like manner Chillon 
 is the son of Janey's father. 
 
 * Mr. Woodseer came every other evening. Our only 
 enlivenment. Livia followed her policy, in refusing to 
 
288 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 call. We lived luxuriously ; no money, not enough for 
 a box at the opera, though we yearned — you can imagine. 
 Chapters of philosophy read out and expounded instead. 
 Janey likes them. He sets lessons to her queer maid — 
 reading, writing, pronunciation of English. An inferior 
 language to Welsh, for poetical purposes, we are in- 
 formed. So Janey determining to apply herself to 
 Welsh, and a chameleon Riette dreading that she will 
 be taking a contrary view of the honest souls — as she 
 feels them to be — when again under Livia^s shadow. 
 
 6 The message from Janey to Scrope's hotel was 
 despatched half-an-hour after we had driven in from 
 the park ; fruit of a brown meditation. I wrote it — 
 third person — a single sentence. Arrangements are 
 made for her to travel comfortably. It is funny — the 
 shops for her purchases of clothes, necessaries, etc., 
 are specified ; she may order to any extent. Not a 
 shilling of money for her poor purse. What can be 
 the secret of that? He does nothing without an 
 object. To me, uniformly civil, no irony, few compli- 
 ments. Livia writes, that I am commended for keep- 
 ing Janey company. What can be the secret of a 
 man scrupulously just with one hand, and at the same 
 time cruel with the other? Mr. Woodseer says, his 
 wealth : — ' More money than is required for their 
 needs, men go into harness to Plutus,' — if that is 
 clever. 
 
 C I have written my husband — as Janey ceases to 
 call her own ; and it was pretty and touching to hear 
 her " my husband." — Oh ! a dull letter. But he is my 
 husband though he keeps absent — to be longed for — 
 he is my husband still, my husband always. Chillon 
 is Henrietta's husband, the world cries out, and when 
 
THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD 289 
 
 she is flattered she does the like, for then it is not 
 too presumptuous that she should name Henrietta 
 Chillon's wife. In my ears, husband has the sweeter 
 sound. It brings an angel from overhead. Will it 
 bring him one-half hour sooner ? My love ! My dear ! 
 If it did, I should be lisping i husband, husband, hus- 
 band ' from cock-crow to owFs cry. Li via thinks the 
 world foolish, if not detestable. She and I have our 
 different opinions. She is for luxury. I choose poverty 
 and my husband. Poverty has its beauty, if my hus- 
 band is the sun of it. Elle radote. She would not 
 have written so dull a letter to her husband if she 
 had been at the opera last night, or listened to a dis- 
 tant street-band. No more — the next line would be 
 bleeding. He should have her blood too, if that were 
 her husband's — it would never be ; but if it were for 
 his good in the smallest way. Chillon's wish is to 
 give his blood for them he loves. Never did woman 
 try more to write worthily to her absent lord and fall 
 so miserably into the state of dripping babe from bath 
 on nurse's knee. Cover me, my lord and love, my 
 cause for — no, my excuse, my refuge from myself. 
 We are one ? Oh ! we are one ! — and we have been 
 separated eight and twenty days. 
 
 * Henrietta Kirby-Levellier."' 
 
 That was a letter for the husband and lover to 
 receive in a foreign land and be warmed. 
 
 The tidings of Carinthia washed him clean of the 
 grimy district where his waxen sister had developed 
 her stubborn insensibility ; — resembling craziness, every 
 perversion of the refinement demanded by young 
 Englishmen of their ladies ; and it pacified him with 
 
 T 
 
290 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the belief that she was now at rest, the disturbed 
 history of their father and mother at rest as well ; his 
 conscience in relation to the marriage likewise at rest. 
 Chillon had a wife. Her writing of the welcome to 
 poverty stirred his knowledge of his wife's nature. 
 Carinthia might bear it and harden to flint ; Henrietta 
 was a butterfly for the golden rays. His thoughts, all 
 his energies, were bent on the making of money to 
 supply her need for the pleasure she flew in — a 
 butterfly's grub without it. Accurately so did the 
 husband and lover read his wife, adoring her the 
 more. 
 
 Her letter's embracing close was costly to them. It 
 hurried him to the compromise of a debatable business, 
 and he fell into the Austrian Government's terms for 
 the payment of the inheritance from his father ; calcu- 
 lating that — his sister's share deducted — money would 
 be in hand to pay pressing debts and enable Henrietta 
 to live unworried by cares until he should have squeezed 
 debts, long due and increasing, out of the miserly old 
 lord, his uncle. A prospect of supplies for twelve 
 months, counting the hack and carriage Henrietta had 
 always been used to, seemed about as far as it was 
 required to look by the husband hastening homeward 
 to his wife's call. Her letter was a call in the night. 
 Besides, there were his yet untried Inventions. The 
 new gunpowder testing at Croridge promised to provide 
 Henrietta with many of the luxuries she could have 
 had, and had abandoned for his sake. The new blasting 
 powder and a destructive shell might build her the 
 palace she deserved. His uncle was, no doubt, his 
 partner. If, however, the profits were divided, sufficient 
 wealth was assured. But his uncle remained a dubious 
 
THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD 291 
 
 image. The husband and lover could enfold no positive 
 prospect to suit his wife's tastes beyond the twelve 
 months. 
 
 We have Dame Gossip upon us. 
 
 — One minute let mention be of the excitement over 
 Protestant England when that rumour disseminated, 
 telling of her wealthiest nobleman's visit to a monastery, 
 up in the peaks and snows ; and of his dwelling among 
 the monks, and assisting in all their services day and 
 night, hymning and chanting, uttering not one word for 
 one whole week : his Papistical friend, Lord Feltre, with 
 him, of course, after Jesuit arts had allured him to that 
 place of torrents and lightnings and canticles and demon 
 echoes, all as though expressly contrived for the horrify- 
 ing of sinners into penitence and confession and the 
 monkish cowl up to life's end, not to speak of the abju- 
 ration of worldly possessions and donation of them into 
 the keeping of the shaven brothers ; when either they 
 would have settled a band of them here in our very 
 midst, or they would have impoverished — is not too 
 strong a word — the country by taking the money's 
 worth of the mines, estates, mansions, freehold streets 
 and squares of our metropolis out of it without scruple; 
 rejoicing so to bleed the Protestant faith. Underrate it 
 now — then it was a truly justifiable anxiety : in- 
 somuch that you heard people of station, eminent 
 titled persons, asking, like the commonest low Radicals, 
 whether it was prudent legislation to permit of the 
 inheritance of such vast wealth by a young man, little 
 more than a boy, and noted for freaks. And some 
 declared it could not be allowed for foreign monks 
 to have a claim to inherit English property. There 
 was a general consent, that if the Earl of Fleetwood 
 
292 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 went to the extreme of making over his property to 
 those monks, he should be pronounced insane and 
 incapable. Ultimately the world was a little pacified 
 by hearing that a portion of it was entailed, Esslemont 
 and the Welsh mines. 
 
 So it might be ; but what if he had no child ! The 
 marriage amazing everybody scarcely promised fruit, it 
 was thought. Countess Livia, much besought for her 
 opinion, scouted the possibility. And Carinthia Jane 
 was proclaimed by John Rose Mackrell (to his dying 
 day the poor gentleman tried vainly to get the second 
 syllable of his name accentuated) a young woman who 
 would outlive twice over the husband she had. He 
 said of his name, it was destined to pass him down a 
 dead fish in the nose of posterity, and would affect his 
 best jokes ; which something has done, or the present 
 generation has lost the sense of genuine humour. 
 
 Thanks to him, the talk of the Whitechapel Countess 
 again sprang up, merrily as ever ; and after her having 
 become, as he said, ' a desiccated celebrity,' she outdid 
 cabinet ministers and naughty wives for a living 
 morsel in the world's mouth. She was denounced by 
 the patriotic party as the cause of the earl's dalliance 
 with Rome. 
 
 The earl, you are to know, was then coasting along 
 the Mediterranean, on board his beautiful schooner 
 yacht, with his Lord Feltre, bound to make an inspec- 
 tion of Syrian monasteries, and forget, if he could, the 
 face of all faces, another's possession by the law. 
 
 Those two lords, shut up together in a yacht, were 
 advised by their situation to be bosom friends, and 
 they quarrelled violently, and were reconciled, and 
 they quarrelled again ; they were explosive chemicals ; 
 
THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD 293 
 
 until the touch of dry land relieved them of what they 
 really fancied the spell of the Fiend. For their argu- 
 mentative topic during confinement was Woman, when 
 it was not Theology ; and even off a yacht, those are 
 subjects to kindle the utmost hatred of dissension, if 
 men are not perfectly concordant. They agreed upon 
 land to banish any talk of Women or Theology, where 
 it would have been comparatively innocent ; so they 
 both desiring to be doing the thing they had sworn 
 they would not do, the thoughts of both were fastened 
 on one or the other interdicted subject. They hardly 
 spoke ; they perceived in their longing minds, that the 
 imagined spell of the Fiend was indeed the bile of the 
 sea, secreted thickly for want of exercise, and they 
 both regretted the days and nights of their angry 
 controversies ; unfit pilgrims of the Holy Land, they 
 owned. 
 
 To such effect, Lord Fleetwood wrote to Gower 
 Woodseer, as though there had been no breach between 
 them, from Jerusalem, expressing the wish to hear his 
 cool wood-notes of the philosophy of Life, fresh drawn 
 from Nature's breast ; and urgent for an answer, to be 
 addressed to his hotel at Southampton, that he might 
 be greeted on his return home first by his 'friend 
 Gower.' 
 
 He wrote in the month of January. His arrival at 
 Southampton was on the thirteenth day of March ; and 
 there he opened a letter some weeks old, the bearer of 
 news which ought by rights to make husbands proudly 
 happy. 
 
294 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 WE DESCEND INTO A STEAMER^ ENGINE-ROOM 
 
 Fleetwood had dropped his friend Lord Feltre at 
 Ancona ; his good fortune was to be alone when the 
 clang of bells rang through his head in the reading of 
 Gower's lines. Other letters were opened : from the 
 Countess Livia, from Lady Arpington, from Captain 
 Kirby-Levellier. There was one from his lawyers, in- 
 forming him of their receipt of a communication dated 
 South Wales, December 11th, and signed Owain 
 Wythan ; to the effect, that the birth of a son to the 
 Earl of Fleetwood was registered on the day of the 
 date, with a copy of the document forwarded. 
 
 Livia scornfully stated the tattling world's ' latest.' 
 The captain was as brief, in ordinary words, whose 
 quick run to the stop could be taken for a challenge of 
 the eye. It stamped the adversary's frown on Fleet- 
 wood reading. Lady Arpington was more politic ; she 
 wrote of 'a healthy boy,' and 'the healthy mother 
 giving him breast,' this being ' the way for the rearing 
 of strong men.' She condescended to the particulars, 
 that she might touch him. 
 
 The earl had not been so reared : his mother was 
 not the healthy mother. One of his multitudinous, 
 shifty, but ineradicable ambitions was to exhibit an 
 excellingly vigorous, tireless constitution. He remem- 
 bered the needed refreshment of the sea-breezes aboard 
 his yacht during the week following the sleep-discarded 
 nights at Scrope's and the green tables. For a week 
 he hung to- the smell of brine, in rapturous amity 
 
INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM 295 
 
 with Feltre, until they yellowed, differed, wrangled, 
 hated. 
 
 A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings 
 out of Wales. Gower, good fellow, had gone down to 
 see the young mother three weeks after the birth of 
 her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She 
 had produced the boy in the world's early manner, 
 lightly, without any of the tragic modern hovering 
 over death to give the life. Gower compared it to a 
 1 flush of the vernal orchard after a day's drink of sun- 
 light.' That was well : that was how it should be. 
 One loathes the idea of tortured women. 
 
 The good fellow was perhaps absurdly poetical. Still 
 we must have poetry to hallow this and other forms of 
 energy : or say, if you like, the right view of them 
 impels to poetry. Otherwise we are in the breeding 
 yards, among the litters and the farrows. It is a 
 question of looking down or looking up. If we are 
 poor creatures — as we are if we do but feast and gamble 
 and beget — we shall run for a time with the dogs and 
 come to the finish of swine. Better say, life is holy ! 
 Why, then have we to thank her who teaches it. 
 
 He gazed at the string of visions of the woman 
 naming him husband, making him a father : the imag- 
 ined Carinthia — beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus ; the 
 Carinthia of the precipice tree-shoot ; Carinthia of the 
 ducal dancing-hall ; and she at the altar-rails ; she 
 on the coach box ; she alternately softest of brides, 
 doughtiest of Amazons. A mate for the caress, an 
 electrical heroine, fronted him. 
 
 Yes, and she was Lord Fleetwood's wife, cracking 
 sconces, — a demoiselle Moll Flanders, — the world's 
 Whitechapel Countess out for an airing, infernally 
 
296 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 earnest about it, madly ludicrous ; the schemer to catch 
 his word, the petticoated Shylock to bind him to the 
 letter of it ; now persecuting, haunting him, now im- 
 movable for obstinacy ; malignant to stay down in 
 those vile slums and direct tons of sooty waters on his 
 head from its mains in the sight of London, causing 
 the least histrionic of men to behave as an actor. He 
 beheld her a skull with a lamp behind the eyeholes. 
 
 But this woman was the woman who made him a 
 father ; she was the mother of the heir of the House ; 
 and the boy she clasped and suckled as her boy was his 
 boy. They met inseparably in that new life. 
 
 Truly, there could not be a woman of flesh so near 
 to a likeness with the beatific image of Feltre's wor- 
 shipped Madonna ! 
 
 The thought sparkled and darkened in Fleetwood's 
 mind, as a star passing into cloud. For an uproarious 
 world claimed the woman, jeered at all allied with her; 
 at her husband most, of course : — the punctilious noodle ! 
 the golden jackass, tethered and goaded ! He had 
 choice among the pick of women : the daughter of the 
 Old Buccaneer was preferred by the wiseacre Ccelebs. 
 She tricked him cunningly and struck a tremendous 
 return blow in producing her male infant. 
 
 By the way, was she actually born in wedlock ? Lord 
 Levellier's assurances regarding her origin were, by the 
 calculation, a miser's shuffles to clinch his bargain. 
 Assuming the representative of holy motherhood to be 
 a woman of illegitimate birth, the history of the House 
 to which the spotted woman gave an heir would suffer a 
 jolt when touching on her. And altogether the history 
 fumed rank vapours. Imagine her boy in his father's 
 name a young collegian ! No commonly sensitive lad 
 
INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM 297 
 
 could bear the gibes of the fellows raking at antece- 
 dents: Fleetwood would be the name to start roars. 
 Smarting for his name, the earl chafed at the boy's 
 mother. Her production of a man-child was the 
 further and grosser offence. 
 
 The world sat on him. His confession to some 
 degree of weakness, even to folly, stung his pride of 
 individuality so that he had to soothe the pain by 
 tearing himself from a thought of his folly's partner, 
 shutting himself up and away from her. Then there 
 was a cessation of annoyance, flatteringly agreeable : 
 which can come to us only of our having done the right 
 thing, young men will think. He felt at once warmly 
 with the world, enjoyed the world's kind shelter, and 
 in return for its eulogy of his unprecedented attach- 
 ment to the pledge of his word, admitted an under- 
 standing of its laughter at the burlesque edition of a 
 noble lady in the person of the Whitechapel Countess. 
 The world sat on him heavily. 
 
 He recurred to Gower Woodseer's letter. 
 
 The pictures and images in it were not the prin- 
 cipal matter, — the impression had been deep. A plain 
 transcription of the young mother's acts and words did 
 more to portray her : the reader could supply reflections. 
 
 Would her boy's father be very pleased to see him ? 
 she had asked. 
 
 And she spoke of a fear that the father would try 
 to take her boy from her. 
 
 8 Never that — you have my word ! ' Fleetwood said ; 
 and he nodded consentingly over her next remark : 
 ' Not while I live, till he must go to school ! ' 
 
 The stubborn wife would be the last of women to 
 sit and weep as a rifled mother. 
 
298 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 A child of the Countess Carinthia (he phrased it) 
 would not be deficient in will, nor would the youngster 
 lack bravery. 
 
 For his part, comparison rushing at him and search- 
 ing him, he owned that he leaned on pride. To think 
 that he did, became a theme for pride. The mother 
 had the primitive virtues, the father the developed : 
 he was the richer mine. And besides, he was he, the 
 unriddled, complex, individual he ; she was the plain 
 barbarian survival, good for giving her offspring bone, 
 muscle, stout heart. 
 
 Shape the hypothesis of a fairer woman the mother 
 of the heir to the earldom. 
 
 Henrietta was analyzed in a glimpse. Courage, 
 animal healthfulness, she, too, might — her husband 
 not obstructing — transmit ; and good looks, eyes of 
 the sapphire iEgean. And therewith such pliability 
 as the Mother of Love requires of her servants. 
 
 Could that woman resist seductions ? 
 
 Fleetwood's wrath with her for refusing him and 
 inducing him in spite to pledge his word elsewhere, 
 haphazard, pricked a curiosity to know whether the 
 woman could be — and easily ! easily ! he wagered — led 
 to make her conduct warrant for his contempt of her. 
 Led, — that is, misled, you might say, if you were 
 pleading for a doll. But it was necessary to bait the 
 pleasures for the woman, in order to have full view of 
 the precious fine fate one has escaped. Also to get 
 well rid of a sort of hectic in the blood, which the 
 woman's beauty has cast on that reflecting tide : a 
 fever-sign, where the fever has become quite emotion- 
 less and is merely desirous for the stain of it to be 
 washed out. As this is not the desire to possess or 
 
INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM 299 
 
 even to taste, contempt will do it. When we know 
 that the weaver of the fascinations is purchasable, we 
 toss her to the market where men buy ; and we walk 
 released from vile subjection to one of the female 
 heap : — subjection no longer, doubtless, and yet a stain 
 of the past flush, often colouring our reveries, creating 
 active phantasms of a passion absolutely extinct, if it 
 ever was the veritable passion. 
 
 The plot — formless plot — to get release by the sacri- 
 fice or at least a crucial temptation of the woman, that 
 should wash his blood clean of her image, had a shade 
 of the devilish, he acknowledged ; and the apology 
 offered no improvement of its aspect. She might come 
 out of the trial triumphant. And benefit for himself, 
 even a small privilege, even the pressure of her hand, 
 he not only shrank from the thought of winning, — he 
 loathed the thought. He was too delicate over the 
 idea of the married woman whom he fancied he loved 
 in her maidenhood. Others might press her hand, lead 
 her the dance : he simply wanted his release. She had 
 set him on fire ; he conceived a method for trampling 
 the remaining sparks and erasing stain and scars ; that 
 was all. Henrietta rejected her wealthy suitor: she 
 might some day hence be seen crawling abjectly to 
 wealth, glad of a drink from the cup it holds, intoxi- 
 cated with the draught. An injured pride could 
 animate his wealth to crave solace of such a spectacle. 
 
 Devilish, if you like. He had expiated the wicked- 
 ness in Cistercian seclusion. His wife now drove him 
 to sin again. 
 
 She had given him a son. That fluted of home and 
 honourable life. She had her charm, known to him 
 alone. 
 
800 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 But how, supposing she did not rub him to bristle 
 with fresh irritations, how go to his wife while Henri- 
 etta held her throne ? Consideration was due to her until 
 she stumbled. Enough if she wavered. Almost enough 
 if she stood firm as a statue in the winds, and proved 
 that the first page of her was a false introduction. 
 The surprising apparition of a beautiful woman with 
 character; a lightly-thrilled, pleasure-loving woman 
 devoted to her husband or protected by her rightful 
 self-esteem, would loosen him creditably. It had to be 
 witnessed, for faith in it. He reverenced our legendary 
 good women, and he bowed to noble deeds ; and he 
 ascribed the former to poetical creativeness, the latter 
 operated as a scourging of his flesh to yield its de- 
 moniacal inmates. Nothing of the kind was doing at 
 present. 
 
 Or stay : a studious re-perusal of Gower Woodseer's 
 letter enriched a little incident. Fleetwood gave his 
 wife her name of Carinthia when he had read 
 deliberately and caught the scene. 
 
 Mrs. Wythan down in Wales related it to Gower. 
 Carinthia and Madge, trudging over the treeless hills, 
 came on a birchen clump round a deep hollow or gully- 
 pit ; precipitous, the earl knew, he had peeped over the 
 edge in his infant days. There at the bottom, in a 
 foot or so of water, they espied a lamb , and they 
 rescued the poor beastie by going down to it, one or 
 both. It must have been the mountain -footed one. A 
 man would hesitate, spying below. Fleetwood won- 
 dered how she had managed to climb up, and carrying 
 the lamb ! Down pitches Madge Winch to help — 
 they did it between them. We who stand aloof admire 
 stupidly. To defend himself from admiring, he con- 
 
INTO A STEAMER'S ENGINE-ROOM 301 
 
 demned the two women for the risk they ran to save a 
 probably broken-legged little beast : and he escaped 
 the melting mood by forcing a sneer at the sort of stuff 
 out of which popular ballads are woven. Carinthia was 
 accused of letting her adventurous impulses and senti- 
 mental female compassion swamp thought of a mother's 
 duties. If both those women had broken their legs the 
 child might have cried itself into fits for the mother, 
 there she would have remained. 
 
 Gower wrote in a language transparent of the act, 
 addressed to a reader whose memory was to be impreg- 
 nated. His reader would have flown away from the 
 simple occurrence on arabesques and modulated tones ; 
 and then envisaging them critically, would have tossed 
 his poor little story to the winds, as a small thing 
 magnified : with an object, being the next thought 
 about it. He knew his Fleetwood so far. 
 
 His letter concluded : ' I am in a small Surrey village 
 over a baker's shop, rent eight shillings per week, a 
 dame's infant school opposite my window, miles of 
 fir wood, heath, and bracken openings, for the winged or 
 the nested fancies. Love Nature, she makes you a lord 
 of her boundless, off any ten square feet of common 
 earth. I go through my illusions and come always 
 back on that good truth. It says, beware of the 
 world's passion for flavours and spices. Much tasted, 
 they turn and bite the biter. My exemplars are 
 the lately breeched youngsters with two pence in 
 their pockets for the gingerbread -nut booth on a 
 fair day. I learn more from one of them than you 
 can from the whole cavalcade of your attendant 
 Ixionides.' 
 
 Mounting the box of his coach for the drive to 
 
302 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 London, Fleetwood had the new name for the parasitic 
 and sham vital troop at his ears. 
 
 ' My Ixionides ! ' he repeated, and did not scorn 
 them so much as he rejoiced to be enlightened by the 
 title. He craved the presence of the magician who 
 dropped illumination with a single word ; wholesomer 
 to think of than the whole body of those Ixionides : — 
 not bad fellows, here and there, he reflected, tolerantly, 
 half laughing at some of their clownish fun. Gower 
 Woodseer and he had not quarrelled ? No, they had 
 merely parted at one of the crossways. The plebeian 
 could teach that son of the genuflexions, Lord Feltre, a 
 lesson in manners. Woodseer was the better comrade 
 and director of routes. Into the forest, up on the 
 heights ; and free, not locked ; and not parroting day 
 and night, but quick for all that the world has learnt 
 and can tell, though two-thirds of it be composed of 
 Ixionides : that way lies wisdom, and his index was cut 
 that way. 
 
 Arrived in town, he ran over the headings of his 
 letters, in no degree anxious for a communication from 
 Wales. There was none. Why none ? 
 
 She might as well have scrawled her announcement 
 of an event pleasing to her, and, by the calculation, 
 important to him, if not particularly interesting. The 
 mother's wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been tested 
 in a furnace. He smarted at the blank of any, of even 
 two or three formal words. She sulked ? ' I am not a 
 fallen lamb ! ' he said. Evidently one had to be a 
 shivering beast in trouble, to excite her to move a 
 hand. 
 
 Through so slight a fissure as this piece of discontent 
 cracked in him, the crowd of his grievances with the 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 303 
 
 woman rushed pell-mell, deluging young shoots of 
 sweeter feelings. She sulked ! If that woman could 
 not get the command, he was to know her incapable of 
 submission. After besmutting the name she had filched 
 from him, she let him understand that there was no 
 intention to repent. Possibly she meant war. In which 
 case a man must fly, or stand assailed by the most in- 
 tolerable of vulgar farces ; — to be compared to a pelting 
 of one on the stage. 
 
 The time came for him to knock at doors and face 
 his public. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER 
 INTRUSION IS AVERTED 
 
 Livia welcomed him, with commiserating inquiry 
 behind her languid eyelids. 'You have all the latest?' 
 it said. 
 
 He struck on the burning matter. 
 
 ( You wish to know the part you have to play, 
 ma'am.' 
 
 ' Tell me, Russett' 
 
 6 You will contradict nothing.' 
 
 Her eyebrows asked, ' It means ? ' 
 
 8 You have authority from me to admit the facts.' 
 
 'They are facts?' she remarked. 
 
 4 Women love teasing round certain facts, apparently ; 
 like the Law courts over their pet cases.' 
 
 * But, Russett, will you listen ?' 
 
304 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' Has the luck been civil of late P 1 
 
 ' 1 think of something else at present. No, it has not. 1 
 
 ' Abrane P 1 
 
 I Pray, attend to me. No, not Abrane." 
 
 I I believe you Ve all been cleared out in my absence. 
 St. Ombre P 1 
 
 Her complexion varied. ' Mr. Ambrose Mallard has 
 once or twice . . . But let me beg you — the town is 
 raging with it. My dear llussett, a bold front now ; 
 there 's the chance of your release in view.' 
 
 1 A rascal in view ! Name the sum." 
 
 ' I must reckon. My head is — can you intend to 
 submit ?' 
 
 'So it's Brosey Mallard now. You choose your 
 deputy queerly. He 's as bad as Abrane, with steam 
 to it. Chummy Potts would have done better.' 
 
 ' He wins one night ; loses every pound-note he has 
 the next ; and comes vaunting the " dry still Sillery " 
 of the establishment, — a perpetual chorus to his 
 losses !' 
 
 'His consolation to you for yours. That is the 
 gentleman. Chummy doesn't change. Say, why not 
 St. Ombre? He's cool.' 
 
 8 There are reasons.' 
 
 ' Let them rest. And I have my reasons. Do the 
 same for them.' 
 
 ' Yours concerns the honour of the family.' 
 
 ' Deeply : respect them.' 
 
 1 Your relatives have to be thought of, though they 
 are few and not too pleasant.' 
 
 'If I had thought much of them, what would our 
 relations be ? They object to dicing, and I to leading- 
 strings.' 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 305 
 
 She turned to a brighter subject, of no visible con- 
 nection with the preceding. 
 
 ' Henrietta comes in May."* 
 
 i The month of her colours.'* 
 
 4 Her money troubles are terrible.'' 
 
 ' Both of you appear unlucky in your partners, — if 
 winning was the object. She shall have all the distrac- 
 tions we can offer. 1 
 
 ' Your visit to the Chartreuse alarmed her. 1 
 
 4 She has rejoiced her husband. 1 
 
 ' A girl. She feared the Jesuit in your friend.' 
 
 ' Feltre and she are about equally affected by music. 
 They shall meet.' 
 
 ' Russett, this once : I do entreat you to take counsel 
 with your good sense, and remember that you stand 
 where you are by going against my advice. It is a 
 perfect storm over London. The world has not to be 
 informed of your generosity ; but a chivalry that invites 
 the most horrible of sneers at a man ! And what can 
 I say ? I have said it was impossible. 1 
 
 'Add the postscript: you find it was perfectly 
 possible. 1 
 
 ' I have to learn more than I care to hear. 1 
 
 ' Your knowledge is not in request : you will speak 
 in my name. 1 
 
 ' Will you consult your lawyers, Russett, before you 
 commit yourself? 1 
 
 ' I am on my way to Lady Arpington. 1 
 
 * You cannot be thinking how serious it is.' 
 
 ' I rather value the opinion of a hard-headed woman 
 of the world. 1 
 
 * Why not listen to me ? ' 
 
 1 You have your points, ma'am.' 
 
 u 
 
306 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 'She's a torch.' 
 
 ' She serves my purpose.' 
 
 Livia shrugged sadly. ' I suppose it serves your 
 purpose to be unintelligible to me. 1 
 
 He rendered himself intelligible immediately by say- 
 ing, 'Before I go — a thousand ?' 
 
 ' Oh, my dear Russett ! ' she sighed. 
 
 ' State the amount. 1 
 
 She seemed to be casting unwieldy figures and he 
 helped her with, ' Mr. Isaacs ? ' 
 
 ' Not less than three, I fear. 1 
 
 4 Has he been pressing ? 1 
 
 ' You are always good to us, Russett.' 
 
 8 You are always considerate for the honour of the 
 family, ma'am. Order for the money with you here 
 to-morrow. And I thank you for your advice. Do me 
 the favour to follow mine.' 
 
 'Commands should be the word.' 
 
 ' Phrase it as you please.' 
 
 'You know I hate responsibility.' 
 
 ' The chorus in classical dramas had generally that 
 sentiment, but the singing was the sweeter for it.' 
 
 ' Whom do you not win when you condescend to the 
 mood, you dear boy.' 
 
 He restrained a bitter reply, touching the kind of 
 persons he had won : a girl from the mountains, a 
 philosophical tramp of the roads, troops of the bought. 
 
 Livia spelt at the problem he was. She put away 
 the task of reading it. He departed to see Lady 
 Arpington, and thereby rivet his chains. 
 
 As Livia had said, she was a torch. Lady Endor, 
 Lady Eldritch, Lady Cowry, kindled at her. Again 
 there were flights of the burning brands over London. 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 307 
 
 The very odd marriage ; the no-marriage ; the two- 
 ends-of-the-town marriage ; and the maiden marriage 
 a fruitful marriage ; the monstrous marriage of the 
 countess productive in banishment, and the unread- 
 able earl accepting paternity ; this Amazing Marriage 
 was again the riddle in the cracker for tattlers and 
 gapers. It rattled upon the world's native wantonness, 
 the world's acquired decorum : society's irrepressible 
 original and its powerfully resisting second nature. 
 All the rogues of the fine sphere ran about with it, 
 male and female ; and there was the narrative that 
 suggestively skipped, and that which trod the minuet 
 measure, dropping a curtsy to ravenous curiosity ; the 
 apology surrendering its defensible cause in supplica- 
 tions to benevolence ; and the benevolence damnatory 
 in a too eloquent urgency ; followed by the devout 
 objection to a breath of the subject, so blackening it 
 as to call forth the profanely circumstantial exposi- 
 tion. Smirks, blushes, dead silences, and in the lower 
 regions roars, hung round it. 
 
 But the lady, though absent, did not figure poorly 
 at all. Granting Whitechapel and the shillelagh affair, 
 certain whispers of her good looks, contested only to 
 be the more violently asserted ; and therewith Rose 
 Mackrell's tale of her being a ' young woman of birth,' 
 having a 'romantic story to tell of herself and her 
 parentage,' made her latest performance the cham- 
 pagne event of it hitherto. Men sparkled when they 
 had it on their lips. 
 
 How, then, London asked, would the Earl of Fleet- 
 wood move his pieces in reply to his countess's par- 
 ticularly clever indication of the check threatening 
 mate ? 
 
308 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 His move had no relation to the game, it was 
 thought at first. The world could not suppose that 
 he moved a simple pawn on his marriage board. He 
 purchased a shop in Piccadilly for the sale of fruit and 
 flowers. 
 
 Lady Arpington was entreated to deal at the shop, 
 Countess Livia had her orders ; his friends, his para- 
 sites and satellites, were to deal there. Intensely 
 earnest as usual, he besought great ladies to let him 
 have the overflow of their hot-houses ; and they class- 
 ing it as another of the mystifications of a purse 
 crazy for repleteness, inquired : ' But is it you we are 
 to deal with? 1 And he quite seriously said: 'With 
 me, yes, at present.' Something was behind the cur- 
 tain, of course. His gravity had the effect of the 
 ultra-comical in concealing it. 
 
 The shop was opened. We have the assurance of 
 Rose Mackrell, that he entered and examined the piles 
 and pans of fruits, and the bouquets cunningly arranged 
 by a hand smelling French. The shop was roomy, 
 splendid windows lighted the yellow, the golden, the 
 green and parti-coloured stores. Four doors off, a 
 chemist's motley in bellied glasses crashed on the sight. 
 Passengers along the pavement had presented to them 
 such a contrast as might be shown if we could imagine 
 the Lethean ferry-boatload brought sharp against 
 Pomona's lapful. In addition to the plucked flowers 
 and fruits of the shop, Rose Mackrell more attentively 
 examined the samples doing service at the counters. 
 They were three, under supervision of a watchful-eyed 
 fourth. Dame Gossip is for quoting his wit. But the 
 conclusion he reached, after quitting the shop and 
 pacing his dozen steps, is important; for it sent a wind 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 309 
 
 over the town to set the springs of tattle going as 
 wildly as when the herald's trumpet blew the announce- 
 ment for the world to hear out of Wales. 
 
 He had observed, that the young woman supervising 
 was deficient in the ease of an established superior; 
 her brows were troubled ; she was, therefore, a lieu- 
 tenant elevated from a lower grade ; and, to his 
 thinking, conducted the business during the temporary 
 retirement of the mistress of the shop. 
 
 And the mistress of the shop ? 
 
 The question hardly needs be put. 
 
 Rose Mackrell or his humour answered it in unfalter- 
 ing terms. 
 
 London heard, with the variety of feelings which are 
 indistinguishable under a flooding amazement, that the 
 beautiful new fruit and flower shop had been pur- 
 chased and stocked by the fabulously wealthy young 
 Earl of Fleetwood, to give his Whitechapel Countess 
 a taste for business, an occupation, and an honourable 
 means of livelihood. 
 
 There was, Dame Gossip thumps to say, a general 
 belief in this report. Crowds were on the pavement, 
 peering through the shop-windows. Carriages driving 
 by stopped to look. My lord himself had been visible, 
 displaying his array of provisions to friends. Nor was 
 credulity damped appreciably when over the shop, in 
 gold letters, appeared the name of Sarah Winch. It 
 might be the countess's maiden name, if she really was 
 a married countess. 
 
 But, in truth, the better informed of the town, having 
 begun to think its Crcesus capable of any eccentricity, 
 chose to believe. They were at the pitch of excitement 
 which demands and will swallow a succession of wilder 
 
310 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 extravagances. To accelerate the delirium of the fun, 
 nothing was too much, because any absurdity was 
 anticipated. And the earl's readiness to be compli- 
 mented on the shop's particular merits, his gratified 
 air at an allusion to it, whirled the fun faster. He 
 seemed entirely unconscious that each step he now took 
 wakened peals. 
 
 For such is the fate of a man who has come to be 
 dogged by the humorist for the provision he furnishes; 
 and, as it happens, he is the more laughable if not in 
 himself a laughable object. The earl's handsome figure, 
 fine style, and contrasting sobriety heightened the bur- 
 lesque of his call to admiration of a shop where White- 
 chapel would sit in state — according to the fiction so 
 closely under the lee of fact that they were not strictly 
 divisible. Moreover, Sarah Winch, whom Chumley 
 Potts drew into conversation, said, he vowed, she came 
 up West from Whitechapel. She said it a little ner- 
 vously, but without blushing. Always on the side of 
 the joke, he could ask: 'Who can doubt ?' Indeed, 
 scepticism poisoned the sport. 
 
 The Old Bucaneer has written : Friends may laugh ; 
 I am not roused. My enemy's laugh is a bugle blown 
 in the night. 
 
 Our enemy's laugh at us rouses to wariness, he would 
 say. He can barely mean, that a condition of drowsi- 
 head is other than providently warned by laughter of 
 friends. An old warrior's tough fibre would, perhaps, 
 be insensible to that small crackle. In civil life, how- 
 ever, the friend's laugh at us is the loudest of the 
 danger signals to stop our course : and the very wealthy 
 nobleman, who is known for not a fool, is kept from 
 hearing it. Unless he does hear it, he can have no 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 311 
 
 suspicion of its being about him : he cannot imagine 
 such Use-majeste in the subservient courtiers too prudent 
 to betray a sign. So Fleetwood was unwarned ; and 
 his child-like unconsciousness of the boiling sentiments 
 around, seasoned, pricked, and maddened his parasites 
 under compression to invent, for a faint relief. He 
 had his title for them, they their tales of him. 
 
 Dame Gossip would recount the tales. She is of the 
 order of persons inclining to suspect the tittle of truth 
 in prodigies of scandal. She is rustling and bustling 
 to us of ' Carinthia Jane's run up to London to see 
 Sarah Winch's grand new shop,"' an eclipse of all 
 existing grand London western shops ; and of Rose 
 MackrelFs account of her dance of proud delight in 
 the shop, ending with a ' lovely cheese 1 just as my 
 lord enters ; and then a scene, wild beyond any con- 
 ceivable 'for pathos and humour ' — her pet pair of 
 the dissimilar twins, both banging at us for tear-drops 
 by different roads, through a common aperture : — and 
 the earl has the Whitechapel baby boy plumped into 
 his arms ; and the countess fetches him a splendid 
 bob-dip and rises out of a second cheese to twirl and 
 fandango it; and, all serious on a sudden, request, 
 whimperingly beseech, his thanks to her for the crow- 
 ing successor she has presented him with : my lord 
 ultimately, but carefully, depositing the infant on a 
 basket of the last oranges of the season, fresh from 
 the Azores, by delivery off my lord's own schooner- 
 yacht in Southampton water ; and escaping, leaving 
 his gold-headed stick behind him, a trophy for the 
 countess ? a weapon, it may be. 
 
 Quick she tucks up her skirts, she is after him. Dame 
 Gossip speaks amusingly enough of the chase, and many 
 
312 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 eye-witnesses to the earl's flight at top speed down the 
 right side of the way along by the Green Park ; and 
 of a Prince of the Blood, a portly Royal Duke on foot, 
 bumped by one or the other of them, she cannot pre- 
 cisely say which, but ' thinks it to have been Carinthia 
 Jane, 1 because the exalted personage, his shock of sur- 
 prise abating, turned and watched the chase, in much 
 merriment. And it was called, we are informed, 'The 
 Piccadilly Hare and Hound ' from that day. 
 
 Some tradition of an extenuated nobleman pursued 
 by a light-footed lady amid great excitement, there is ; 
 the Dame attaches importance also to verses of one 
 of the ballads beginning to gain currency at the time 
 (issuing ostensibly from London's poetic centre, the 
 Seven Dials, which had, we are to conjecture, got the 
 story by discolouring nitration through footmen re- 
 tailing in public-houses the stock of anecdotes they 
 gathered when stationed behind Rose MackrelFs chair, 
 or Captain Abrane's, or Chumley Potts's), and would 
 have the whole of it quoted : — 
 
 'Tho' fair I be as a powdered peruke, 
 
 And once was a gaping silly, 
 Your YVhitechapel Countess will prove, Lord Duke, 
 
 She 's a regular tiger-lily. 
 She '11 fight you with cold steel or she '11 run you off your legs 
 
 Down the length of Piccadilly ! ' 
 
 That will satisfy ; and perhaps indicate the hand. 
 
 'Popular sympathy, of course, was all on the side 
 of the Fair, as ever in those days when women had 
 not forfeited it by stepping from their sanctuary 
 seclusion.' 
 
 The Dame shall expose her confusions. She really 
 would seem to fancy that the ballad verifies the main 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 313 
 
 lines of the story, which is an impossible one. Carin- 
 thia had not the means to travel : she was moneyless. 
 Every bill of her establishment was paid without stint 
 by Mr. Howell Edwards, the earl's manager of mines ; 
 but she had not even the means for a journey to the 
 Gowerland rocks she longed to see. She had none 
 since she forced her brother to take the half of her 
 share of their inheritance, i?1400, and sent him the 
 remainder. 
 
 Accepted by Chillon John as a loan, says Dame 
 Gossip, and no sooner received than consumed by the 
 pressing necessities of a husband with the Rose Beauty 
 of England to support in the comforts and luxuries he 
 deemed befitting. 
 
 Still the Dame leans to her opinion that ' Carinthia 
 Jane ' may have been seen about London : for ' where 
 we have much smoke there must be fire.' And the 
 countess never denying an imputation not brought 
 against her in her hearing, the ballad was unchal- 
 lenged and London's wags had it their own way. 
 Among the reasons why they so persistently hunted 
 the earl, his air of a smart correctness shadowed by 
 this new absurdity invited them, as when a spot of 
 mud on the trimmest of countenances arrests observa- 
 tion. Humour plucked at him the more for the good 
 faith of his handsome look under the prolific little dis- 
 figurement. Besides, a wealthy despot, with no con- 
 ception of any hum around him, will have the wags 
 in his track as surely as the flexibles in front : they 
 avenge his exactions. 
 
 Fleetwood was honestly unaware of ridicule in the 
 condition of inventive mania at his heels. Scheming, 
 and hesitating to do, one-half of his mind was absorbed 
 
314 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 with the problem of how now to treat the mother 
 of his boy. Her behaviour in becoming a mother 
 was acknowledged to be good : the production of a 
 boy was good — considerate, he almost thought. He 
 grew so far reconciled to her as to have intimations 
 of a softness coming on ; a wish to hear her speak of 
 The trifling kindness done to the sister of Madge in 
 reward of kindness done to her ; wishes for looks he 
 remembered, secret to him, more his own than any 
 possessions. Dozens of men had wealth, some had 
 beautiful wives ; none could claim as his own that 
 face of the look of sharp steel melting into the bridal 
 flower, when she sprang from her bed to defend her- 
 self and recognized the intruder at her window, stood 
 smitten : — ' It is my husband. "* Moonlight gave the 
 variation of her features. 
 
 And that did not appease the resentment tearing 
 him from her, so justifiable then, as he forced himself 
 to think, now hideous. Glimpses of the pictures his 
 deeds painted of him since his first meeting with this 
 woman had to be shunned. He threw them off; they 
 were set down to the mystery men are. The degrad- 
 ing, utterly different, back view of them teaches that 
 Life is an irony. If the teaching is not accepted, and 
 we are to take the blame, can we bear to live ? There- 
 fore, either way the irony of Life is proved. Young 
 men straining at thought, in the grip of their sensa- 
 tions, reach this logical conclusion. They will not 
 begin by examining the ground they stand on, and 
 questioning whether thsy have consciences at peace 
 with the steps to rearward. 
 
 Having established Life as the coldly malignant 
 element, which induces to what it chastises, a loathing 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED S15 
 
 of womanhood, the deputed Mother of Life, ensues, 
 by natural sequence. And if there be one among 
 women who disturbs the serenity we choose to think 
 our due, she wears for us the sinister aspect of a con- 
 fidential messenger between Nemesis and the Parcse. 
 Fleetwood was thus compelled to regard Carinthia. 
 as both originally and successively the cause of <£gs 
 internal as well as his exterior discomfort ; other- 
 wise those glimpses would have burnt into perpetual 
 stigmas. He had also to get his mind away from her. 
 They pleaded against him volubly with the rising of 
 her image into it. 
 
 His manager at the mines had sent word of 
 ominous discontent down there. His presence might 
 be required. Obviously, then, the threatened place 
 was unfitting for the Countess of Fleetwood. He 
 despatched a kind of order through Mr. Howell 
 Edwards, that she should remove to Esslemont to 
 escape annoyances. Esslemont was the preferable 
 residence. She could there entertain her friends, could 
 spend a pleasanter time there. 
 
 He waited for the reply ; Edwards deferred it. 
 
 Were they to be in a struggle with her obstinate 
 will once more ? 
 
 Henrietta was preparing to leave London for her 
 dismal, narrow, and, after an absence, desired love- 
 nest. The earl called to say farewell, cool as a loyal 
 wife could wish him to be, admiring perforce. Mar- 
 riage and maternity withdrew nothing — added to the 
 fair young woman's bloom. 
 
 She had gone to her room to pack and dress. Livia 
 received him. In the midst of the casual commonplaces 
 her memory was enlightened. 
 
316 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 1 Oh,' said she, and idly drew a letter out of a 
 blotting-pad, ' we have heard from Wales. 1 She handed 
 it to him. 
 
 Before he knew the thing he did, he was reading : — 
 
 ' There is no rest for my brother, and I cannot help ; 
 I am kept so poor I have not the smallest of sums. I 
 do not wish to leave Wales — the people begin to love 
 me ; and can one be mistaken ? I know if I am loved 
 or hated. But if my lord will give me an allowance of 
 money of some hundreds, I will do his bidding; I will 
 leave England or I will go to Esslemont ; I could say — 
 to Mr. Woodseer, in that part of London. He would 
 not permit. He thinks me blacked by it, like a sweep- 
 boy coming from a chimney ; and that I have done 
 injury to his title. No, Riette, to be a true sister, I 
 must bargain with my lord before I submit. He has 
 not cared to come and see his little son. His boy has 
 not offended him. There may be some of me in this 
 dear. I know whose features will soon show to defend 
 the mother's good name. He is early my champion. 
 He is not christened yet, and I hear it accuse me, and 
 I am not to blame,— I still wait my lord's answer.' 
 
 6 Don't be bothered to read the whole,' Livia had 
 said, with her hand out, when his eyes were halfway 
 down the page. 
 
 Fleetwood turned it, to read the signature : ' Janey. 1 
 
 She seemed servile enough to some of her friends. 
 ' Carinthia ' would have had a pleasanter sound. He 
 folded the letter. 
 
 ' Why give me this ? Take it,' said he. 
 
 She laid it on the open pad. 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 317 
 
 Henrietta entered and had it restored to her, Livia 
 remarking : ' I found it in the blotter after all/ 
 
 She left them together, having to dress for the drive 
 to the coach office with Henrietta. 
 
 c Poor amusement for you this time."' Fleetwood 
 bowed, gently smiling. 
 
 4 Oh ! ' cried Henrietta, ' balls, routs, dinners, music 
 — as much music as I could desire, even I ! What 
 more could be asked ? I am eternally grateful.' 
 
 4 The world says, you are more beautiful than ever.'' 
 
 * Happiness does it, then, — happiness owing to you, 
 Lord Fleetwood.' 
 
 1 Columelli pleases you ? ' 
 
 6 His voice is heavenly ! He carries me away from 
 earth.' 
 
 * He is a gentleman, too — rare with those fellows.' 
 
 * A pretty manner. He will speak his compliments 
 in his English.' 
 
 8 You are seasoned to endure them in all languages. 
 Pity another of your wounded: — Brailstone has been 
 hard hit at the tables.' 
 
 'I cannot pity gamblers. — May I venture? — half a 
 word ? ' 
 
 6 Tomes ! But just a little compassion for the devoted. 
 He wouldn't play so madly — if, well, say a tenth dilution 
 of the rapt hearing Columelli gets.' 
 
 ' Signor Columelli sings divinely.' 
 
 ' You don't dislike Brailstone ? ' 
 
 ' He is one of the agreeable.' 
 
 6 He must put his feelings into Italian song ! ' 
 
 6 To put them aside will do.' 
 
 ' We are not to have our feelings ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, on the proviso that ours are respected. But, 
 
318 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 one instant, Lord Fleetwood, pray. She is — I have to 
 speak of her as my sister. I am sure she regrets . . . 
 She writes very nicely.' 
 
 1 You have a letter from her."* 
 
 Henrietta sighed that it would not bear exposure to 
 him : ' Yes. 1 
 
 4 Nicely worded ? ' 
 
 ' Well, yes, it is. 1 
 
 He paused, not expecting that the letter would be 
 shown, but silence fired shots, and he had stopped the 
 petition. ' We are to have you for a week's yachting. 
 You prescribe your company. Only be merciful. Exclu- 
 sion will mean death to some. Columelli will be tour- 
 ing in Switzerland. You shall have him in the house 
 when my new bit of ground Northwest of London is 
 open : very handy, ten miles out. We 11 have the 
 Opera troupe there, and you shall command the 
 Opera. 1 
 
 Her beauty sweetened to thank him. 
 
 If, as Livia said, his passion for her was unchanged, 
 the generosity manifested in the considerate screen 
 it wore over any physical betrayal of it, deserved the 
 lustre of her eyes. It dwelt a moment, vivid with 
 the heart close behind and remorseful for misreading 
 of old his fine character. Here was a young man 
 who could be the very kindest of friends to the 
 woman rejecting him to wed another. Her smile 
 wavered. How shall a loving wife express warmth 
 of sentiment elsewhere, without the one beam too 
 much, that plunges her on a tideway? His claim 
 of nothing called for everything short of the proscribed. 
 She gave him her beauty in fullest flower. 
 
 It had the appearance of a temptation ; and he was 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 319 
 
 not tempted, though he admired; his thought being, 
 Husband of the thing ! 
 
 But he admired. That condition awakened his un- 
 satisfied past days to desire positive proof of her 
 worthlessness. The past days writhed in him. The 
 present were loveless, entirely cold. He had not even 
 the wish to press her hand. The market held beautiful 
 women of a like description. He wished simply to 
 see her proved the thing he read her to be : and not 
 proved as such by himself. He was unable to summon 
 or imagine emotion enough for him to simulate the 
 forms by which fair women are wooed to their perdition. 
 For all he cared, any man on earth might try, succeed 
 or fail, as long as he had visual assurance that she 
 coveted, a slave to the pleasures commanded by the 
 wealth once disdained by her. Till that time, he could 
 not feel himself perfectly free. 
 
 Dame Gossip prefers to ejaculate, Youn^ men are 
 mysteries ! and bowl us onward. No one ever did com- 
 prehend the Earl of Fleetwood, she says : he was bad, 
 he was good; he was whimsical and steadfast; a splendid 
 figure, a mark for ridicule ; romantic and a close arith- 
 metician ; often a devil, sometimes the humanest of 
 creatures. 
 
 In fine, he was a millionaire nobleman, owning to 
 a considerable infusion of Welsh blood in the com- 
 position of him. Now, to the Cymry and to the pure 
 Kelt, the past is at their elbows continually. The 
 past of their lives has lost neither face nor voice 
 behind the shroud ; nor are the passions of the flesh, 
 nor is the animate soul, wanting to it. Other races 
 forfeit infancy, forfeit youth and manhood with their 
 progression to the wisdom age may bestow. These 
 
320 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 have each stage always alive, quick at a word, a scent, 
 a sound, to conjure up scenes, in spirit and in flame. 
 Historically, they still march with Cadwallader, with 
 Llewellyn, with Glendower ; sing with Aneurin, 
 Taliesin, old Llywarch : individually, they are in 
 the heart of the injury done them thirty years back, 
 or thrilling to the glorious deed which strikes an 
 empty buckler for most of the sons of Time. An 
 old sea rises in them, rolling no phantom billows to 
 break to spray against existing rocks of the shore. 
 That is why, and even if they have a dose of the 
 Teuton in them, they have often to feel themselves 
 exiles when still in amicable community among the 
 preponderating Saxon English. 
 
 Add to the single differentiation enormous wealth 
 — we convulse the excellent Dame by terming it a 
 chained hurricane, to launch in foul blasts or benefi- 
 cent showers, according to the moods during youth — 
 and the composite Lord Fleetwood comes nearer into 
 our focus. Dame Gossip, with her jigging to be at 
 the butterwoman's trot, when she is not violently inter- 
 rupting, would suffer just punishment were we to digress 
 upon the morality of a young man's legal possession 
 of enormous wealth as well. 
 
 Wholly Cambrian Fleetwood was not. But he had 
 to the full the Cambrian's reverential esteem for high 
 qualities. His good-bye with Henrietta, and estimate 
 of her, left a dusky mental void requiring an orb of 
 some sort for contemplation ; and an idea of the totally 
 contrary Carinthia, the woman he had avowedly wedded, 
 usurped her place. Qualities were admitted. She was 
 thrust away because she had offended : still more be- 
 cause he had offended. She bore the blame for forcing 
 
A FURTHER INTRUSION AVERTED 321 
 
 him to an examination of his conduct at this point 
 and that, where an ancestral savage in his lineaments 
 cocked a strange eye. Yet at the moment of the act 
 of the deed he had known himself the veritable Fleet- 
 wood. He had now to vindicate himself by extinguish- 
 ing; her under the load of her unwomanliness : she was 
 like sun-dried linen matched beside oriental silk : she 
 was rough, crisp, unyielding. That was now the 
 capital charge. Henrietta could never be guilty of 
 the unfeminine. Which did he prefer ? 
 
 It is of all questions the one causing young men to [ 
 screw wry faces when they are asked ; they do so love 
 the feminine, the ultra-feminine, whom they hate for her 
 inclination to the frail. His depths were sounded, and 
 he answered independently of his will, that he must be 
 up to the heroical pitch to decide. Carinthia stood near 
 him then. The confession was a step, and fraught with 
 consequences. Her unacknowledged influence expedited 
 him to Sarah Winch's shop, for sight of one of earth's 
 honest souls ; from whom he had the latest of the two 
 others down in Wales, and of an infant there. 
 
 He dined the host of his Ixionides, leaving them 
 early for a drive at night Eastward, and a chat with 
 old Mr. Woodseer over his punching and sewing of 
 his boot-leather. Another honest soul. Mr. Woodseer 
 thankfully consented to mount his coach-box next day, 
 and astonish Gower with a drop on his head from the 
 skies about the time of the mid-day meal. 
 
 There we have our peep into Dame Gossip's young 
 man mysterious. 
 
322 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 CARINTHIA IN WALES 
 
 An August of gales and rains drove Atlantic air over 
 the Welsh highlands. Carinthia's old father had im- 
 pressed on her the rapture of 'smelling salt 1 when by 
 chance he stood and threw up his nostrils to sniff largely 
 over a bed of bracken, that reminded him of his element, 
 and her fancy would be at strain to catch his once proud 
 riding of the seas. She felt herself an elder daughter of 
 the beloved old father, as she breathed it in full volume 
 from the billowy West one morning early after sunrise 
 and walked sisterly with the far-seen inexperienced little 
 maid, whom she saw trotting beside him through the 
 mountain forest, listening, storing his words, picturing 
 the magnetic, veined great gloom of an un tasted world. 
 
 This elder daughter had undergone a shipwreck ; but 
 clear proof that she had not been worsted was in the 
 unclouded liveliness of the younger one gazing forward. 
 Imaginative creatures who are courageous will never be 
 lopped of the hopeful portion of their days by personal 
 misfortune. Carinthia could animate both ; it would 
 have been a hurt done to a living human soul had she 
 suffered the younger self to run overcast. Only, the 
 gazing forward had become interdicted to her experi- 
 enced self. Nor could she vision a future having any 
 horizon for her child. She saw it in bleak squares, and 
 snuggled him between dangers weathered and dangers 
 apprehended. 
 
 The conviction that her husband hated her had sunk 
 into her nature. Hating the mother, he would not love 
 
CARINTHIA IN WALES 323 
 
 her boy. They were burdens, and the heir of his House, 
 child of a hated mother, was under perpetual menace 
 from an unscrupulous tyrannical man. The dread and 
 antagonism were first aroused by the birth of her child. 
 She had not known while bearing him "her present acute 
 sensation of the hunted flying and at bay. Previously, 
 she could say : I did wrong here ; I did wrong there. 
 Distrust had brought the state of war, which allows not 
 of the wasting of our powers in confessions. 
 
 Her husband fed her and he clothed her ; the limita- 
 tion of his bounty was sharply outlined. Sure of her 
 rectitude, a stranger to the world, she was not very 
 sensible of dishonour done to her name. It happened at 
 times that her father inquired of her how things were 
 going with his little Carin ; and then revolt sprang up 
 and answered on his behalf rather fiercely. She was, 
 however, prepared for any treaty including forgiveness, 
 if she could be at peace in regard to her boy, and have 
 an income of some help to her brother. Chillon was 
 harassed on all sides ; she stood incapable of aiding ; so 
 foolishly feeble in the shadow of her immense longing to 
 strive for him, that she could think her husband had 
 purposely lamed her with an infant. Her love of her 
 brother, now the one man she loved, laid her insuffi- 
 ciency on the rack and tortured imbecile cries from it. 
 
 On the contrary, her strange husband had blest her 
 with an infant. Everything was pardonable to him if 
 he left her boy untouched in the mother's charge. 
 Much alone as she was, she raised the dead to pet and 
 cherish her boy. Chillon had seen him and praised 
 him. Mrs. Owain Wythan, her neighbour over a hill, 
 praised him above all babes on earth, poor childless 
 woman ! 
 
324 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She was about to cross the hill and breakfast with 
 Mi*s. Wythan. The time for the weaning of the babe 
 approached, and had as prospect beyond it her dull fear 
 that her husband would say the mother's work was done, 
 and seize the pretext to separate them : and she could 
 not claim a longer term to be giving milk, because her 
 father had said : ' Not a quarter of a month more than 
 nine for the milk of the mother ' — or else the child 
 would draw an unsustaining nourishment from the 
 strongest breast. She could have argued her excep- 
 tional robustness against another than he. But the 
 dead father wanting to build a great race of men and 
 women ruled. 
 
 Carinthia knelt at the cradle of a princeling gone from 
 the rich repast to his alternative kingdom. 
 
 ' You will bring him over when he wakes, 1 she said to 
 Madge. 'Mrs. Wythan would like to see him every 
 day. Martha can walk now. 1 
 
 'She can walk and hold a child in her two arms, my 
 lady," said Madge. ' She expects miners popping up 
 out of the bare ground when she sees no goblins. 1 
 
 ' They ! — they know him, they would not hurt him, 
 they know my son,'' her mistress answered. 
 
 The population of the mines in revolt had no alarms 
 for her. The works were empty down below. Men sat 
 by the wayside brooding or strolled in groups, now and 
 then loudly exercising their tongues ; or they stood in 
 circle to sing hymns : melancholy chants of a melancholy 
 time for all. 
 
 How would her father have acted by these men ? 
 He would have been among them. Dissensions in his 
 mine were vapours of a day. Lords behaved differently. 
 Carinthia fancied the people must regard their master 
 
CARINTHIA IN WALES 325 
 
 as a foreign wizard, whose power they felt, without the 
 chance of making their cry to him heard. She, too, 
 dealt with a lord. It was now his wish for her to leave 
 the place where she had found some shreds of a home in 
 the thought of being useful. She was gathering the 
 people's language ; many of their songs she could sing, 
 and please them by singing to them. They were not 
 suspicious of her; at least, their women had open doors 
 for her ; the men, if shy, were civil. She had only to 
 go below, she was greeted in the quick tones of their 
 speech all along the street of the slate-roofs. 
 
 But none loved the castle, and she as little, saving the 
 one room in it where her boy lay. The grey of Welsh 
 history knew a real castle beside the roaring brook 
 frequently a torrent. This was an eighteenth century 
 castellated habitation on the verge of a small wood 
 midway up the height, and it required a survey of 
 numberless happy recollections to illumine its walls or 
 drape its chambers. The permanently lighted hearth 
 of a dear home, as in that forsaken unfavoured old 
 white house of the wooded Austrian crags, it had not. 
 Rather it seemed a place waiting for an ill deed to be 
 done in it and stop all lighting of hearths thereafter. 
 
 Out on the turf of the shaven hills, her springy step 
 dispersed any misty fancies. Her short-winged hive set 
 to work in her head as usual, building scaffoldings of 
 great things to be done by Chillon, present evils 
 escaped. The rolling big bare hills with the riding 
 clouds excited her as she mounted, and she was a figure 
 of gladness on the ridge bending over to hospitable 
 Plas Llwyn, where the Wythans lived, entertaining rich 
 and poor alike. They had led the neighbourhood to 
 call on the discarded Countess of Fleetwood. 
 
326 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 A warm strain of arms about her neck was Carinthia's 
 welcome from Mrs. Wythan lying along the couch in 
 her boudoir ; an established invalid, who yearned sanely 
 to life, and caught a spark of it from the guest eyed 
 tenderly by her as they conversed. 
 
 ' Our boy ? — our Chillon Kirby till he has his baptism 
 names ; he is well ? I am to see him ? * 
 
 'He follows me. He sleeps almost through the 
 night now."' 
 
 'Ah, my dear, 1 Mrs. Wythan sighed, imagining: 
 * It would disappoint me if he did not wake me.' 
 
 ' I wake at his old time and watch him." 
 
 Carinthia put on the baby's face in the soft mould 
 of slumber. 
 
 ' I see him ! ' Mrs. Wythan cried. ' He is part mine. 
 He has taught Owain to love babies.'' 
 
 A tray of breakfast was placed before the countess. 
 ' Mr. Wythan is down among his men ? , she said. 
 
 'Every morning, as long as this agitation lasts. I 
 need not say, good appetite to you after your walk. 
 You have no fear of the men, I know. Owain's men 
 are undisturbed ; he has them in hand. Absentee 
 masters can't expect continued harmony. Dear, he 
 tells me Mr. Edwards awaits the earl.' 
 
 Drinking her tea, Carinthia's eyelids shut ; she set 
 down her cup, ' If he must come,*' she said. ' He 
 wishes me to leave. I am to go again where I have no 
 friends, and no language to learn, and can be of no use. 
 It is not for me that I dread his coming. He speaks 
 to command. The men ask to be heard. He will 
 have submission first. They do not trust him. His 
 coming is a danger. For me, I should wish him to 
 come. May I say ? . . .' 
 
CAR1NTHIA IN WALES 327 
 
 4 Your Rebecca bids you say, my darling. 1 
 
 ' It is, I am with the men because I am so like them. 
 I beg to be heard. He commands obedience. He is 
 a great nobleman, but I am the daughter of a greater 
 man, and I have to say, that if those poor miners do 
 harm, I will not stand by and see an anger against 
 injustice punished. I wish his coming, for him to 
 agree upon the Christian names of the boy. I feel his 
 coming will do me injury in making me offend him 
 worse. I would avoid that. Oh, dear soul ! I may 
 say it to you : — he cannot hurt me any more. I am 
 spared loving him when I forgive him ; and I do. The • 
 loving is the pain. That is gone by.'* 
 
 Mrs. Wythan fondled and kissed Carinthia's hand. 
 
 6 Let me say in my turn ; I may help you, dear. 
 You know I have my husband's love, as he mine. Am 
 I, have I ever been a wife to him ? Here I lie, a dead 
 weight, to be carried up and down, all of a wife that 
 Owain has had for years. I lie and pray to be taken, 
 that my good man, my proved good man, may be free 
 to choose a healthy young woman and be rewarded 
 before his end by learning what a true marriage is. 
 The big simpleton will otherwise be going to his grave, 
 thinking he was married ! I see him stepping about 
 softly in my room, so contented if he does not disturb 
 me, and he crushes me with a desire to laugh at him 
 while I worship. I tricked him into marrying the 
 prostrate invalid I am, and he can't discover the trick, 
 he will think it 's a wife he has, instead of a doctor's 
 doll. Oh ! you have a strange husband, it has been a 
 strange marriage for you, but you have your invincible 
 health, you have not to lie and feel the horror of being 
 a deception to a guileless man, whose love blindfolds 
 
328 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 him. The hitter ache to me is, that I can give nothing. 
 You abound in power to give. 1 
 
 Carinthia lifted her open hands for sign of their 
 emptiness. 
 
 ' My brother would not want, if I could give. He 
 may have to sell out of the army, he thinks, fears ; and 
 I must look on. Our mother used to say she had done 
 something for her country in giving a son like Chillon 
 to the British army. Poor mother ! Our bright open- 
 ing days all seem to end in rain. We should turn to 
 Mr. Wythan for a guide. 1 
 
 ' He calls you Morgan le Fay christianized. 1 
 
 ' What I am ! 1 Carinthia raised and let fall her 
 head. 6 An example makes dwarfs of us. When Mr. 
 Wythan does penance for temper by descending into 
 his mine and working among his men for a day with 
 the pick, seated, as he showed me down below, that is 
 an example. If I did like that, I should have no fire- 
 damp in the breast, and not such a task to forgive, that 
 when I succeed I kill my feelings.' 
 
 The entry of Madge and Martha, the nurse-girl, with 
 the overflowing armful of baby, changed their converse 
 into melodious exclamations. 
 
 k Kit Ines has arrived, my lady, 1 Madge said. ' I 
 saw him on the road, and stopped a minute. 1 
 
 Mrs. Wythan studied Carinthia. Her sharp invalid's 
 ears had caught the name. She beckoned. ' The man 
 who — the fighting man ? ' 
 
 'It will be my child this time, 1 said Carinthia; 'I 
 have no fear for myself. 1 She was trembling, though 
 her features were hard for the war her lord had 
 declared, as it seemed. ' Did he tell you his business 
 here ? ' she asked of Madge. 
 
CARINTHIA IN WALES 329 
 
 ' He says, to protect you, my lady, since you won't 
 leave. 1 
 
 ' He stays at the castle ? ' 
 
 ' He is to stay there, he says, as long as the Welsh 
 are out."' 
 
 'The "Welsh" are misunderstood by Lord Fleet- 
 wood,' Mrs. Wythan said to Carinthia. 'He should 
 live among them. They will not hurt their lady. 
 Protecting may be his attention ; but we will have 
 our baby safe here. Not?' she appealed. 'And baby's 
 mother. How otherwise ? ' 
 
 ' You read my wishes, 1 Carinthia rejoined. ' The man 
 I do not think a bad man. He has a master. While 
 I am bound to my child I must be restful, and with 
 the man at the castle Martha's goblins would jump 
 about me day and night. My boy makes a coward of 
 his mother.' 
 
 ' We merely take a precaution, and I have the plea- 
 sure of it,' said her hostess. ' Give orders to your 
 maid: not less than a fortnight. It will rejoice my 
 husband so much.' 
 
 As with the warmly hospitable, few were the words. 
 Madge was promised by her mistress plenty of oppor- 
 tunities daily for seeing Kit Ines, and her mouth 
 screwed to one of women's dimples at a corner. She 
 went off in a cart to fetch boxes, thinking : We are 
 a hunted lot ! So she was not mildly disposed for the 
 company of Mr. Kit on her return to the castle. 
 
 England's champion light-weight thought it hard 
 that his coming down to protect the castle against 
 the gibbering heathen Welsh should cause a clearing 
 out, and solitariness for his portion. 
 
 'What's the good of innocence if you're always 
 
330 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 going to suspect a man ! ' he put it, like a true son 
 of the pirates turned traders. ' I 've got a paytron, 
 and a man in my profession must have a paytron, or 
 where is he ? Where 's his monev for a trial of skill ? 
 Say he saves and borrows and finds the lump to clap 
 it down, and he's knocked out o' time. There he is, 
 bankrupt and a devil of a licking into the bargain. 
 That "s the cream of our profession, if a man has got 
 no paytron. No prize-ring can live without one. The 
 odds are too hard on us. My lady ought to take into 
 account I behaved respectful when I was obliged to 
 do my lord's orders and remove her from our haunts, 
 which wasn't to his taste. Here I 'm like a cannon for 
 defending the house, needs be, and all inside flies off 
 scarified."' 
 
 6 It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no 
 better than a tool of a man, 1 said Madge. 
 
 'And don't you go to be sneering at honest tools,' 
 Ines retorted. ' When will women learn a bit of the 
 world before they're made hags of by old Father 
 Wear-and-Tear ! A young woman in her prime, you 
 Madge ! be such a fool as not see I serve tool to stock 
 our shop.' 
 
 ' Your paytron bid you steal off with my lady's child, 
 Kit Ines, you 'd do it to stock your shop.' 
 
 Ines puffed. ' If you ain't a girl to wallop the wind ! 
 Fancy me at that game ! Is that why my lady — but I 
 can't be suspected that far ? You make me break out 
 at my pores. My paytron 's a gentleman : he wouldn't 
 ask and I couldn't act such a part. Dear Lord ! it 'd 
 have to be stealing off, for my lady can use a stick ; 
 and put it to the choice between my lady and her child 
 and any paytron living, paytron be damned, I'd say, 
 
CARINTHIA IN WALES 331 
 
 rather 'n go against my notions of honour. Have you 
 forgot all our old talk about the prize-ring, the nursery 
 of honour in Old England ? ' 
 
 'That was before you sold yourself to a paytron, 
 Kit Lies.' 
 
 6 Ah ! Women wants mast-heading off and on, for 
 'em to have a bit of a look-out over life as it is. They 
 go stewing over books of adventure and drop into 
 frights about awful man. Take me, now ; you had a 
 no small admiration for my manly valour once, and 
 you trusted yourself to me, and did you ever repent it ? 
 — owning you're not the young woman to tempt to 
 t'other way.' 
 
 'You wouldn't have found me talking to you here 
 if I had.' 
 
 ' And here I 'm left to defend an empty castle, 
 am I ? ' 
 
 'Don't drink or you'll have your paytron on you. 
 He 's good use there.' 
 
 ' I ask it, can I see my lady ? ' 
 
 'Drunk nor sober you won't. Serve a paytron, be 
 a leper, you'll find, with all honest folk.' 
 
 Ines shook out an execrating leg at the foul word. 
 ' Leper, you say ? You say that ? You say leper 
 to me ? ' 
 
 ' Strut your tallest, Kit Ines. It 's the money rattles 
 in your pocket says it.' 
 
 ' It 's my reputation for decent treatment of a woman 
 lets you say it, Madge Winch.'' 
 
 'Stick to that as long as your paytron consents. 
 It 's the one thing you 've got left.' 
 
 'Benefit, you hussy, and mind you don't pull too 
 stiff.' 
 
332 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 i Be the woman and have the last word ! ' 
 
 His tongue was checked. He swallowed the exceed- 
 ing sourness of a retort undelivered, together with the 
 feeling that she beat him in the wrangle by dint of her 
 being an unreasonable wench. 
 
 Madge huffed away to fill her boxes. 
 
 He stood by the cart, hands deep down his pockets, 
 when she descended. She could have laughed at the 
 spectacle of a champion prize-fighter out of employ, 
 hulking idle, because he was dog to a patron ; but her 
 contempt of him declined passing in small change. 
 
 1 So you Ve off. What am I to tell my lord when he 
 comes ? ' Kit growled. ' His yacht 's fetching for a 
 Welsh seaport. 1 
 
 She counted it a piece of information gained, and 
 jumped to her seat, bidding the driver start. To have 
 pretty well lost her character for a hero changed into 
 a patron's dog, was a thought that outweighed the show 
 of incivility. Some little distance away, she reproached 
 herself for not having been so civil as to inquire what 
 day my lord was expected, by his appointment. The 
 girl reflected on the strangeness of a body of dis- 
 contented miners bringing my lord and my lady close, 
 perhaps to meet. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 REBECCA WYTHAN 
 
 The earl was looked for at the chief office of the mines, 
 and each day an expectation of him closed in disappoint- 
 
REBECCA WYTHAN 833 
 
 ment, leaving it to be surmised that there were more 
 serious reasons for his continued absence during a crisis 
 than any discussed ; whether indeed, as when a time- 
 piece neglects to strike the hour which is, by the reckon- 
 ing of natural impatience, past, the capital charge of 
 6 crazy works ' must not be brought against a nobleman 
 hitherto precise upon business, of a just disposition, 
 fairly humane. For though he was an absentee sucking 
 the earth through a tube, in Ottoman ease, he had never 
 omitted the duty of personally attending on the spot 
 to grave cases under dispute. The son of the hard- 
 headed father came out at a crisis ; and not too high- 
 handedly : he could hear an opposite argument to the 
 end. Therefore, since he refused to comply without 
 hearing, he was wanted on the spot imperatively now. 
 
 Irony perusing History offers the beaten and indolent 
 a sugary acid in the indication of the spites and the 
 pranks, the whims and the tastes, at the springs of 
 main events. It is, taken by itself, destructive nourish- 
 ment. But those who labour in the field to shovel the 
 clods of earth to History, would be wiser of their 
 fellows for a minor dose of it. Mr. Howell Edwards 
 consulting with Mr. Owain Wythan on the necessity, 
 that the earl should instantly keep his promise to 
 appear among the men and stop the fermentation, as in 
 our younger days a lordly owner still might do by small 
 concessions and the physical influence — the nerve- 
 charm — could suppose him to be holding aloof for his 
 pleasure or his pride ; perhaps because of illness or 
 inability to conceive the actual situation at a distance. 
 He mentioned the presence of the countess, and Mr. 
 Wythan mentioned it, neither of them thinking a 
 rational man would so play the lunatic as to let men 
 
334 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 starve, and wreck precious mines, for the sake of avoid- 
 ing her. 
 
 Sullen days went by. On these days of the slate- 
 cloud or the leaden- winged, Carinthia walked over the 
 hills to her staring or down-eyed silent people, admitted 
 without a welcome at some doors, rejected at some. 
 Her baskets from the castle were for the most part 
 received as graciously. She continued to direct them 
 for delivery where they were needed, and understood 
 why a charity that supplied the place of justice was 
 not thanked. She and her people here were one regard- 
 ing the master, as she had said. They could not hurt 
 her sensitiveness, she felt too warmly with them. And 
 here it was not the squalid, flat, bricked east-corner of 
 London at the close of her daily pilgrimage. Up 
 from the solitary street of the slate-roofs, she mounted 
 a big hill and had the life of high breathing. A per- 
 petual escape out of the smoky, grimy city mazes was 
 trumpeted to her in the winds up there : a recollected 
 contrast lightened the sky less broad spaces overhead 
 almost to sunniness. Having air of the hills and acti- 
 vity for her limbs, she made sunshine for herself. Regrets 
 were at no time her nestlings. 
 
 Look backward only to correct an error of conduct 
 for tlie next attempt, says one of her father's Maxims ; 
 as sharply bracing for women as for men. She did not 
 look back to moan. Now that her hunger for the safety 
 of her infant was momentarily quieted, she could see 
 Kit Ines hanging about the lower ground, near the ale- 
 house, and smile at Madge's comparison of him to a 
 drummed-out soldier, who would like to be taken for a 
 holiday pensioner. 
 
 He saluted ; under the suspicion of his patron's lady 
 
REBECCA WYTHAN 335 
 
 his legs were hampered, he dared not approach her; 
 though his innocence of a deed not proposed to him 
 yet — and all to stock that girl Madge's shop, if done ! — 
 knocked at his ribs with fury to vindicate himself before 
 the lady and her maid. A gentleman * met them and 
 conducted them across the hills. 
 
 And two Taffy gentlemen would hardly be sufficient 
 for the purpose, supposing an ill-used Englishman in- 
 clined to block their way ! — What, and play footpad, Kit 
 Ines? No, it's just a game in the head. But a true 
 man hates to feel himself suspected. His refuge is the 
 beer of the country. 
 
 Next day there were the two gentlemen to conduct 
 the lady and her maid ; and Taffy the first walks beside 
 the countess ; and that girl Madge trudges along with 
 no other than my lord's Mr. Woodseer, chattering like 
 a watering-can on a garden-bed : deuce a glance at Kit 
 Ines. How can she keep it up and the gentleman no 
 more than nodding? How does he enjoy playing 
 second fiddle with the maid while Mr. tall brown-face 
 Taffy violins it to her ladyship a stone's throw in front ? 
 — Ines had less curiosity to know the object of Mr. 
 Woodseer's appearance on the scene. Idle, unhand- 
 somely treated, and a cave of the yawns, he merely 
 commented on his observations. 
 
 ' Yes, there he is, don't look at him,' Madge said to 
 Grower ; ' and whatever he 's here for, he has a bad 
 time of it, and rather more than it 's pleasant for him 
 to think over, if a slave to a " paytron " thinks at all. 
 I won't judge him ; my mistress is bitten with the fear 
 for the child, worse than ever. And the earl, my lord, 
 not coming, and he wanting her to move again, seems 
 to her he durstn't do it here and intends to snap at 
 
3S6 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the child on the road. She's forced to believe any- 
 thing of such a husband and father. And why does he 
 behave so? I can't spell it. He's kind to my Sally — 
 you Ve seen the Piccadilly shop ? — because she was 
 . . . she did her best in love and duty for my lady. 
 And behaves like a husband hating his wife's life on 
 earth ! When he went down with good Mr. Woodseer, 
 and called on Sally, pretending to inquire, after she 
 was kidnapped by that Kit Ines acting to please his 
 paytron, he must be shown up to the room where she 
 slept, and stands at the door and peeps in, Sally's letter 
 says, and asks if he may enter the room. He went to 
 the window looking on the chimneys she used to see, 
 and touched an ornament over the fireplace, called 
 grandfather's pigtail case — he was a sailor ; only a 
 ridiculous piece of china, that made my lady laugh 
 about the story of its holding a pigtail. But he turns 
 it over because she did — Sally told him. He couldn't 
 be pretending when he bought the beautiful shop and 
 stocked it for Sally. He gets her lots of customers; 
 and no rent to pay till next Michaelmas a year. She 's 
 a made woman through him. He said to her, he had 
 heard from Mr. Woodseer the Countess of Fleetwood 
 called her sister ; he shook her hand.' 
 
 'The Countess of Fleetwood called both of you her 
 sisters, I think,' said Gower. 
 
 'I'm her servant. I'd rather serve her than have a 
 fortune.' 
 
 'You were born with a fortune one would like to 
 have a nibble at, Madge.' 
 
 ' I can't lay hand on it, then.' 
 
 ' It 's the capacity for giving, my dear.' 
 
 ' Please, Mr. Gower, don't say that ; you '11 make me 
 
REBECCA WYTHAN 337 
 
 cry. He keeps his wife so poor she hasn't a shilling 
 of her own ; she wearies about her brother ; she can't 
 help. He can spend hundreds on my Sally for having 
 been good to her, in our small way — it 's a fairy tale ; 
 and he won't hear of money for his wife, except that 
 she 's never to want for anything it can buy."' 
 
 6 You give what it can't buy.' 
 
 * Me. I 'm " a pugilist's wench " — I 've heard myself 
 called. She was the first who gave me a lift ; never 
 mind me. Have you come to take her away ? She 'd 
 trust herself and the child to you.' 
 
 ' Take her ? — reason with her as to the best we can 
 do. He holds off from a meeting just now. I fancy 
 he 's wearing round to it. His keeping his wife with- 
 out money passes comprehension. After serving him 
 for. a few months, I had a store invested to support me 
 for years — as much as I need before I join the ranks 
 of the pen. I was at my reading and writing and 
 drowsing, and down he rushes : I 'm in harness again. 
 I can't say it 's dead waste of time ; besides I pick up 
 an independence for the days ahead. But I don't 
 respect myself for doing the work. Sere's the differ- 
 ence between us two servants, Madge: I think of myself, 
 and you don,'t.' 
 
 ' The difference is more like between the master and 
 mistress we serve, Mr. Gower.' 
 
 'Well, I'd rather be the woman in this case."* 
 
 4 You know the reputation I 've got. And can only 
 just read, and can't spell. My mistress teaches me bits 
 of German and French on her walks.' 
 
 Gower took a new observation of this girl, whom 
 he had not regarded as like himself, a pushing blade 
 among the grasses. He proposed to continue her 
 
 y 
 
338 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 lessons, if she cared to learn ; saying it could be done 
 in letters. 
 
 ' 1 won't be ashamed of writing, if you mean it," said 
 she. c My mistress will have a usefuller servant. She 
 had a strange honeymoon of a marriage, if ever was : 
 and told me t'other day she was glad because it brought 
 us together — she a born lady ! ' 
 
 6 A fling above born ladies. She 's quick as light to 
 hit on a jewel where there is one, whether it shines or 
 not. She stands among the Verities of the world.' 
 
 1 Yes,' Madge said, panting for more. ' Do speak of 
 her. When you praise her, I feel she 's not wasted. 
 Mistress ; and friend and wife — if he 'd let her be ; and 
 mother ; never mother like her. The boy '11 be a sturdy. 
 She 11 see he has every chance. He 's a lucky little one 
 to have that mother. ' 
 
 ' You think her handsome, Madge ? ' 
 
 Gower asked it, wishing to hear a devotee's confusion 
 of qualities and looks. 
 
 The question was a drop on lower spheres, and it 
 required definitions, to touch the exact nature of the 
 form of beauty, and excuse a cooler tone on the com- 
 moner plane. These demanded language. She rounded 
 the difficulty, saying : s You see engravings of archery ; 
 that 's her figure — her real figure. I think her face 
 • . . I can't describe ... it flashes.' 
 
 4 That 's it,' said Gower, delighted with his perception 
 of a bare mind at work and hitting the mark perforce 
 of warmth. ' When it flashes, it's unequalled. There 's 
 the supremacy of irregular lines. People talk of per- 
 fect beauty : suitable for paintings and statues. Living 
 faces, if they 're to show the soul, which is the star 
 on the peak of beauty, must lend themselves to com- 
 
REBECCA WYTHAN 339 
 
 motion. Nature does it in a breezy tree or over ruffled 
 waters. Repose has never such splendid reach as 
 animation — I mean, in the living face. Artists prefer 
 repose. Only Nature can express the uttermost beauty 
 with her gathering and tuning of discords. Well, 
 your mistress has that beauty. I remember my im- 
 pression when I saw her first on her mountains abroad. 
 Other beautiful faces of women go pale, grow stale. 
 The diversified in the harmony of the flash are 
 Nature's own, her radiant, made of her many notes, 
 beyond our dreams to reproduce. We can't hope to 
 have a true portrait of your mistress. Does Madge 
 understand ? ' 
 
 The literary dose was a strong one for her ; but she 
 saw the index, and got a lift from the sound. Her 
 bosom heaved. ' Oh, I do try, Mr. Gower. I think 
 I do a little. I do more while you 're talking. You 
 are good to talk so to me. You should have seen her 
 the night she went to meet my lord at those beastly 
 Gardens Kit Ines told me he was going to. She was 
 defending him. I've no words. You teach me 
 what 's meant by poetry. I couldn't understand that 
 once.' 
 
 Their eyes were on the countess and her escort in 
 advance. Gower's praises of her mistress's peculiar 
 beauty set the girl compassionately musing. His 
 eloquence upon the beauty was her clue. 
 
 Carinthia and Mr. Wythan started at a sharp trot 
 in the direction of the pair of ponies driven by a 
 groom along the curved decline of the .narrow roadway. 
 His whip was up for signal. 
 
 It concerned the house and the master of it. His 
 groom drove rapidly down, while he hurried on the 
 
340 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 homeward way, as a man will do, with the dread upon 
 lii m that his wife's last breath may have been yielded 
 before he can enfold her. 
 
 Carinthia walked to be overtaken, not daring to fever 
 her blood at a swifter pace ; * lamed with an infant,** 
 the thought recurred. 
 
 ' She is very ill, she has fainted, she lies insensible,' 
 Madge heard from her of Mrs. Wythan. 'We were 
 speaking of her when the groom appeared. It has 
 happened twice. They fear the third. He fears it, 
 though he laughs at a superstition. Now step, I know 
 you like walking, Mr. Woodseer. Once I left you 
 behind.' 
 
 1 1 have the whole scene of the angel and the cripple,' 
 Gower replied. 
 
 ' O that day ! ' 
 
 They were soon speculating on the unimpressionable 
 house in its clump of wood midway below, which had 
 no response for anxieties. 
 
 A maid-servant at the garden gate, by Mr. Wythan's 
 orders, informed Carinthia that her mistress had opened 
 her eyes. There was a hope of weathering the ominous 
 third time. But the hope was a bird of short flight 
 from bush to bush until the doctor should speak to 
 confirm it. Even the child was under the shadow of 
 the house. Carinthia had him in her arms, trusting to 
 life as she hugged him, and seeing innumerable darts 
 out of all regions assailing her treasure. 
 
 ' She wishes to have you,' Mr. Wythan came and said 
 to her. ' Almost her first word. The heart is quicken- 
 ing. She will live for me if she can.' 
 
 He whispered it. His features shot the sparkle. 
 
 Rebecca Wythan had strength to press Carinthia's 
 
REBECCA WYTHAN 341 
 
 hand faintly. She made herself heard : i No pain.** 
 Her husband sat upright, quite still, attentive for any 
 sign. His look of quiet pleasure ready to show spright- 
 liness dwelt on her. She returned the .look, unable to 
 give it greeting. Past the sense of humour, she wanted 
 to say : ' See the poor simple fellow who will think it a 
 wife that he has ! 1 She did but look. 
 
 Carinthia spoke his name, ' Mr. Wythan, 1 by chance, 
 and Rebecca breathed heavily until she formed the 
 words : ' Owain to me.' 
 
 'To me, 1 Owain added. 
 
 The three formed a chain of clasped hands. 
 
 It was in the mind of the sick lady to disburden her- 
 self of more than her weakness could utter, so far was 
 she above earthly links. The desire in her was to be 
 quit of the flesh, bearing a picture of her husband as 
 having the dues of his merits. 
 
 Her recovered strength next day brought her nearer 
 to our laws. ' You will call him Owain, Carinthia ? ' 
 she said. 'He is not one to presume on familiarity. 
 I must be going soon. I cannot leave him the wife I 
 would choose. I can leave him the sister. He is a sure 
 friend. He is the knightly man women dream of. I 
 harp on it because I long for testimony that I leave 
 him to have some reward. And this may be, between 
 two so pure at heart as you two. 1 
 
 ' Dear soul ! friend, yes, and Owain, yes, I can say it, 1 
 Carinthia rejoined. 'Brother ? I have only my Chillon. 
 My life is now for him. I am punished for separating 
 myself from the son of my father. I have no heart for 
 a second brother. What I can give to my friend I will. 
 I shall love you in him, if I am to lose you. 1 
 
 ' Not Owain — it was I was the wretch refused to call 
 
342 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 on the lonely lady at the castle until I heard she had 
 done a romantic little bit of thing — hushed a lambkin's 
 bleating. My loss ! my loss ! And I could afford it so 
 poorly. Since then Carinthia has filled my days. I 
 shudder to leave you and think of your going back to 
 the English. Their sneer withers. They sent you down 
 among us as a young woman to be shunned.'* 
 
 1 I did wildly, I was ungoverned, I had one idea,' 
 said Carinthia. One idea is a bullet, good for the day 
 of battle to beat the foe, father tells us. It was a 
 madness in me. Now it has gone, I see all round. 
 I see straight, too. With one idea, we see nothing — 
 nothing but itself. Whizz ! we go. I did. I shall 
 no longer offend in that way. Mr. Gower Woodseer is 
 here from my lord.' 
 
 4 With him the child will be safe." 
 
 'I am not alarmed. It is to request — they would 
 have me gone, to prepare the way for my lord."' 
 
 'You have done it; he has the castle to himself. 
 I cannot spare you. A tyrant ordering you to go 
 should be defied. My Lord Fleetwood puts lightning 
 into my slow veins. ' 
 
 ' We have talked : we shall be reproved by the 
 husband and the doctor, 1 said Carinthia. 
 
 Sullen days continued and rolled over to night at the 
 mines. Gower's mission was rendered absurd by the 
 countess's withdrawal from the castle. He spoke of it 
 to Mr. Wythan once, and the latter took a big breath 
 and blew such a lord to the winds. 'Persuade our 
 guest to leave us, that the air may not be tainted for 
 her husband when he comes ? He needn't call ; he 'a 
 not obliged to see her. She 's offered Esslemont to live 
 in ? I believe her instinct 's right — he has designs on 
 
 
REBECCA WYTHAN 343 
 
 the child. A little more and we shall have a mad dog 
 in the fellow. He doubles my work by keeping his 
 men out. If she were away we should hear of black 
 doings. Twenty dozen of his pugilists wouldn't stop 
 the burning. 1 
 
 They agreed that persuasions need not be addressed 
 to the countess. She was and would remain Mr. 
 Wythan's guest. As for the earl, Gower inclined to 
 plead hesitatingly, still to plead, on behalf a nobleman 
 owning his influence and very susceptible to his wisdom, 
 whose echo of a pointed saying nearly equalled the 
 satisfaction bestowed by print. The titled man affected 
 the philosopher in that manner; or rather, the crude 
 philosopher's relish of brilliant appreciation stripped 
 him of his robe. For he was with Owain Wythan at 
 heart to scorn titles which did not distinguish practical 
 offices. A nation bowing to them has gone to pith, 
 for him ; he had to shake himself, that he might not 
 similarly stick ; he had to do it often. Objects elevated 
 even by a decayed world have their magnetism for us 
 unless we nerve the mind to wakeful repulsion. He 
 protested he had reason to think the earl was humaniz- 
 ing, though he might be killing a woman in the 
 process. ' Could she wish for better ? ' he asked, with 
 at least the gravity of the undermining humorist ; and 
 he started Owain to course an idea when he remarked 
 of Lord Fleetwood : 6 Imagine a devil on his back on a 
 river, flying a cherub.'' 
 
 Owain sparkled from the vision of the thing to wrath 
 with it. 
 
 6 Ay, but while he 's floating, his people are edging 
 on starvation. And I Ve a personal grievance. I keep, 
 you know, open hall, bread and cheese and beer, for 
 

 344 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 poor mates. His men are favouring us with a call. 
 We have to cart treble from the town. If I straighten 
 the sticks he tries to bend, it'll be a grievance against 
 me — and a fig for it ! But I like to be at peace with 
 my neighbours, and waft them penillion instead of 
 dealing the cleddyj'al of Llewellyn.' 
 
 At last the tension ceased ; they had intelligence of 
 the earl's arrival. 
 
 His countess was little moved by it ; and the reason 
 for that lay in her imagination being absorbed. Hen- 
 rietta had posted her a journal telling of a deed of 
 Chillon's : no great feat, but precious for its ' likeness 
 to him,' as they phrased it; that is, for the light it 
 cast on their conception of the man. Heading a squad- 
 ron in a riotous Midland town, he stopped a charge, 
 after fire of a shot from the mob, and galloped up the 
 street to catch a staggering urchin to his saddle-bow, 
 and place the mite in safety. Then it -was a simple 
 trot of the hussars ahead ; way was made for him. 
 
 Now, to see what banquet there is for the big of 
 heart in the world's hot stress, take the view of Carin- 
 thia, to whom her brother's thoughtful little act of 
 gentleness at the moment of the red-of-the-powder 
 smoke was divinest bread and wine, when calamity 
 hung around, with the future an unfooted wilderness, 
 her powers untried, her husband her enemy. 
 
EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 345 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 WE HAVE AGAIN TO DEAL WITH THE EXAMPLES OF OUR 
 
 YOUNGER MAN 
 
 The most urgent of Dames is working herself up to 
 a grey squall in her detestation of imagerial epigrams. 
 Otherwise Gower Woodseer's dash at the quintessential 
 young man of wealth would prompt to the carrying of 
 it further, and telling how the tethered flutterer above 
 a ' devil on his back on a river ' was beginning to pull 
 if not drag his withholder and teaser. 
 
 Fleetwood had almost a desire to see the small dot 
 of humanity which drew the breath from him ; — and 
 was indistinguishably the bubbly grin and gurgle of 
 the nurses, he could swear. He kicked at the bondage 
 to our common fleshly nature imposed on him by the 
 mother of the little animal. But there had been a 
 mother to this father: odd movements of a warmish 
 curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mount- 
 ing guard. They were, it seemed, external — no part of 
 him : like blasts of a wayside furnace across wintry air. 
 They were, as it chanced, Nature's woman in him 
 plucking at her separated partner, Custom's man ; I 
 something of an oriental voluptuary on his isolated 
 regal seat; and he would suck the pleasures without 
 a descent into the stale old ruts where Life's convict 
 couple walk linked to one another, to their issue more. 
 
 There was also a cold curiosity to see the male infant 
 such a mother would have. The grandson of Old Law- 
 less might turn out a rascal, — he would be no mean 
 one, no coward. 
 
346 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 That mother, too, who must have been a touch aston- 
 ished to find herself a mother : — Fleetwood laughed a 
 curt bark, and heard rebukes, and pleaded the marriage- 
 trap to the man of his word ; devil and cherub were at 
 the tug, or say, dog and gentleman, a survival of the 
 schoolboy : — that mother, a girl of 'the mountains, per- 
 haps wanted no more than smoothing by the world. 
 ' It is my husband ' sounded foolish, sounded freshish, 
 — a new note. Would she repeat it ? The bit of sim- 
 plicity would bear repeating once. Gower Woodseer 
 says the creature grows and studies to perfect herself. 
 She's a good way off that, and may spoil herself in the 
 process ; but she has a certain power. Her donkey 
 obstinacy in refusing compliance, and her pursuit of 
 6 my husband,' and ability to drench him with ridicule, 
 do not exhibit the ordinary young female. She stamps 
 her impression on the people she meets. Her husband 
 is shaken to confess it likewise, despite a disagreement 
 between them. 
 
 He has owned he is her husband : he has not dis- 
 avowed the consequence. That fellow, Gower Wood- 
 seer, might accuse the husband of virtually lying, if 
 he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. 
 By heaven ! as felon a deed as could be done. Argue 
 the case anyhow, it should be undone. Let her but 
 cease to madden. For whatever the rawness of the 
 woman, she has qualities ; and experience of the facile 
 loves of London very sharply defines her qualities. 
 Think of her as raw, she has the gift of rareness : 
 forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps. In 
 the grasp of her character, one inclines, and her hus- 
 band inclines, to become her advocate. She has only 
 to discontinue maddening. 
 
EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 347 
 
 The wealthy young noble prized any form of rare- 
 ness wherever it was visible, having no thought of the 
 purchase of it, except with worship. He could listen 
 pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing 
 boot-leather. He picked up a roadside tramp and 
 made a friend of him, and valued the fellow's honesty, 
 submitted to his lectures, pardoned his insolence. The 
 sight of Carinthia's narrow bedroom and strip of bed 
 over Sarah Winch's Whitechapel shop had gone a step 
 to drown the bobbing Whitechapel Countess. At least, 
 he had not been hunted by that gaunt chalk-quarry 
 ghost since his peep into the room. Own it ! she like- 
 wise has things to forgive. Women nurse their larvae 
 of ideas about fair dealing. But observe the distinc- 
 tion : and if women understood justice they would be 
 the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together, 
 the one who does the other serious injury is more 
 naturally excused than the one who — tenfold abhorrent 
 if a woman ! — calls up the grotesque to extinguish 
 both. 
 
 With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew 
 tolerant of the person honourably avowed as his wife. 
 So, therefore, the barrier between him and his thoughts 
 of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red roses 
 were selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. 
 If agreeable, she could be wooed ; if barely agreeable, 
 tormented ; if disagreeable, left as before. 
 
 Although it was the hazard of a die, he decided to 
 follow his taste. Her stay at the castle had kept him 
 long from the duties of his business ; and he could 
 imagine it a grievance if he pleased, but he put it 
 aside. 
 
 Alighting at his chief managers office, he passed 
 
348 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 through the heated atmosphere of black -browed, wiry 
 little rebels, who withheld the salute as they lounged : 
 a posture often preceding the spring in compulsorily 
 idle workers. He was aware of instinct abroad, an 
 antagonism to the proprietor's rights. They roused 
 him to stand by them, and were his own form of 
 instinct, handsomely clothed. It behoved that he 
 should examine them and the claims against them, to 
 be sure of his ground. He and Mr. Howell Edwards 
 debated the dispute tor an hour; agreeing, partially 
 differing. There was a weakness on the principle in 
 Edwards. These fellows fixed to the spot are for com- 
 promise too much. An owner of mines has no steady 
 reckoning of income if the rate of wage is perpetually 
 to shift according to current, mostly ignorant, versions 
 of the prosperity of the times. Are we so prosperous ? 
 It is far from certain. And if the rate ascends, the 
 question of easing it down to suit the discontinuance 
 of prosperity agitating our exchequer — whose demand 
 is for fixity — perplexes us further. 
 
 However, that was preliminary. He and Howell 
 Edwards would dine and wrangle it out. The earl 
 knew himself a hot disputant after dinner. Incident- 
 ally he heard of Lady Fleetwood as a guest of Mrs. 
 Wythan ; and the circumstance was injurious to him 
 because he stood against Mr. Wythan's pampering 
 system with his men. 
 
 Ines up at the castle smelt of beer, and his eyelids 
 were sottish. Nothing to do tries the virtue of the 
 best. He sought his excuse in a heavy lamentation 
 over my lady's unjust suspicion of him, — a known man 
 of honour, though he did serve his paytron. 
 
 The cause of Lady Fleetwood's absence was exposed 
 
EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 349 
 
 to her outraged lord, who had sent the man purely to 
 protect her at this castle, where she insisted on staying. 
 The suspicion cast on the dreary lusher was the wife's 
 wild shot at her husband. One could understand a 
 silly woman's passing terror. Her acting under the 
 dictate of it struck the husband's ribbed breast as a 
 positive clap of hostilities between them across a chasm. 
 
 His previous placable mood was immediately con- 
 ceived by him to have been one of his fits of generosity; 
 a step to a frightful, dutiful embrace of an almost 
 repulsive object. He flung the thought of her back on 
 her Whitechapel. She returned from that place with 
 smiles, dressed in a laundry white with a sprinkle of 
 smuts, appearing to him as an adversary armed and 
 able to strike. There was a blow, for he chewed resent- 
 ments ; and these were goaded by a remembered shy- 
 ness of meeting her eyes when he rounded up the slope 
 of the hill, in view of his castle, where he supposed she 
 would be awaiting ' my husband.' The silence of her 
 absence was lively mockery of that anticipation. 
 
 Gower came on him sauntering about the grounds. 
 
 'You're not very successful down here,' Fleetwood 
 said, without greeting. 
 
 'The countess likes the air of this country,' said 
 Gower, evasively, impertinently, and pointlessly ; offen- 
 sively to the despot employing him to be either sub- 
 servient or smart. 
 
 6 1 wish her to leave it.' 
 
 * She wishes to see you first.' 
 
 'She takes queer measures. I start to-morrow for 
 my yacht at Cardiff.' 
 
 There the matter ended ; for Fleetwood fell to 
 talking of the mines. At dinner and after dinner 
 
350 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 it was the topic, and after Howell Edwards had 
 departed. 
 
 When the man who has a heart will talk of nothing 
 but what concerns his interests, and the heart is hurt, it 
 may be perceived by a cognizant friend, that this is his 
 proud, mute way of petitioning to have the tenderer 
 subject broached. Gower was sure of the heart, 
 armoured or bandaged though it was, — a haunt of evil 
 spirits as well, — and he began : ' Now to speak of me 
 half a minute. You caj oled me out of my Surrey room, 
 where I was writing, in the vein. . . .' 
 
 'I've had the scene before me!' the earl interposed. 
 4 Juniper dells and that tree of the flashing leaf, and 
 that dear old boy, your father, young as you and me, 
 and saying love of Nature gives us eternal youth. On 
 with you." 
 
 ' I doubted whether I should be of use to you. I told 
 you the amount of alloy in my motives. A year with 
 you, I have subsistence for ten years assured to me.' 
 
 ' Don't be a prosy dog, Gower Woodseer.' 
 
 ' Will you come over to the Wythans before you go V 
 
 ' 1 will not.' 
 
 ' You would lengthen your stride across a wounded 
 beast ? ' 
 
 * I see no wound to the beast."* 
 
 ' You can permit yourself to kick under cover of a 
 metaphor.' 
 
 ' Tell me what you drive at, Gower.' 
 
 'The request is, for you to spare pain by taking 
 one step — an extra strain on the muscles of the leg. 
 It's only the leg wants moving.' 
 
 'The lady has legs to run away, let them bring her 
 back.' 
 
EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 351 
 
 4 Why have me with you, then ? I 'm useless. But 
 you read us all, see everything, and wait only for the 
 mood to do the right. You read me, and I 'm not 
 open to everybody. You read the crux of a man like 
 me in my novel position. You read my admiration of 
 a beautiful woman and effort to keep honest. You 
 read my downright preference of what most people 
 would call poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery 
 and good company. You enlist among the crew below 
 as one of our tempters. You find I come round to the 
 thing I like best. Therefore, you have your liking 
 for me ; and that 's why you turn to me again, after 
 your natural infidelities. So much for me. You read 
 this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose to cloud 
 her with your moods. She was at a disadvantage, arriving 
 in a strange country, next to friendless ; and each new 
 incident bred of a luckless beginning — I could say more.' 
 
 Fleetwood nodded. ' You are read without the 
 words. You read in history, too, I suppose, that there 
 are two sides to most cases. The loudest is not often 
 the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself 
 crazed. That 's reading her charitably. Else she has 
 to be taken for a spiteful shrew, who pretends to sus- 
 pect anything that 's villanous, because she can hit on 
 no other way of striking.' 
 
 'Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world, 1 
 muttered Gower. 'Lady Fleetwood had a troubled 
 period after her marriage. She suffered a sort of kid- 
 napping when she was bearing her child. There's a 
 book by an Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to 
 you. It enlightens me. She will have a distrust of 
 you, as regards the child, until she understands you 
 by living with you under one roof.' 
 
352 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' Such animals these women are ! Good Lord ! ' 
 Fleetwood ejaculated. 'I marry one, and I'm to take 
 to reading medical books !' He yawned. 
 
 ' You speak that of women and pretend to love 
 Nature,'' said Gower. • You hate Nature unless you 
 have it served on a dish by your own cook. That's the 
 way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we 
 expiate the sin of sins. A man finds the woman of all 
 women fitted to stick him in the soil, and. trim and 
 point him to grow, and she 's an animal for her pains ! 
 The secret of your malady is, you 've not yet, though 
 you Ve on a healthy leap for the practices of Nature, 
 hopped to the primary conception of what Nature 
 means. Women are in and of Nature. I Ve studied 
 them here — had nothing to do but study them. That 
 most noble of ladies' whole mind was knotted to pre- 
 serve her child during her time of endurance up to her 
 moment of trial. Think it over. It 's your one chance 
 of keeping sane. And expect to hear flat stuff from me 
 while you go on playing tyrant.' 
 
 'You certainly take liberties,' Fleetwood's mildest 
 voice remarked. 
 
 ' I told you I should try you, when you plucked me 
 out of my Surrey nest.' 
 
 Fleetwood passed from a meditative look to a 
 malicious half-laugh. * You seem to have studied the 
 * most noble of ladies ' latterly rather like a barrister 
 with a brief for the defendant — plaintiff, if you like !' 
 
 4 As to that, I '11 help you to an insight of a par- 
 ticular weakness of mine,' said Gower. ' I require to 
 have persons of even the highest value presented to me 
 on a stage, or else I don't grasp them at all — they 're 
 simply pictures. I saw the lady ; admired, esteemed, 
 
EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 353 
 
 sufficiently, I supposed, until her image appeared to me 
 in the feelings of another. Then I saw fathoms. No 
 doubt, it was from feeling warmer. I went through 
 the blood of the other for my impression.'' 
 
 6 Name the other,' said the earl, and his features were 
 sharp. 
 
 ' You can have the name,'' Gower answered. ' It was 
 the girl, Madge Winch. 1 
 
 Fleetwood's hard stare melted to surprise and con- 
 temptuous amusement. i You see the lady to be the 
 " most noble of ladies " through the warming you get 
 by passing into the feelings of Madge Winch ? ' 
 
 Sarcasm was in the tone, and beneath it a thrill of 
 compassionateness traversed him and shot a remorseful 
 sting with the vision of those two young women on the 
 coach at the scene of the fight. He had sentience of 
 their voices, nigh to hearing them. The forlorn bride's 
 hand given to the anxious girl behind her flashed an 
 image of the sisterhood binding women under the pangs 
 they suffer from men. He craved a scourging that he 
 might not be cursing himself; and he provoked it, for 
 Gower was very sensitive to a cold breath on the weak- 
 ness he had laid bare ; and when Fleetwood said : ' You 
 recommend a bath in the feelings of Madge Winch ?' the 
 retort came : 6 It might stop you on the road to a cowl.' 
 
 Fleetwood put on the mask of cogitation to cover a 
 shudder, ' How ? ' 
 
 * A question of the man or the monk with you, as I 
 fancy I Ve told you more than once ! ' 
 
 'You may fancy committing any impertinence and 
 be not much out.'' 
 
 { The saving of you is that you digest it when you Ve 
 stewed it down.' 
 
354 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 1 You try me ! ' 
 
 ' I don't impose the connection.' 
 
 1 No, I take the blame for that. 1 
 
 They sat in dumbness, fidgeted, sprang to their feet, 
 and lighted bedroom candles. 
 
 Mounting the stairs, Gower was moved to let fall a 
 benevolent look on the worried son of fortune. 'I 
 warned you I should try you. It ought to be done 
 politely. If I have to speak a truth I 'm boorish. The 
 divinely damnable naked truth won't wear ornaments. 
 It's about the same as pitching a handful of 
 earth. , 
 
 ' You dirt your hands, hit or miss. Out of this cor- 
 ridor ! Into my room, and spout your worst,' cried the 
 earl. 
 
 Gower entered his dressing-room and was bidden to 
 smoke there. 
 
 6 You 're a milder boor when you smoke. That day 
 down in Surrey with the grand old bootmaker was one 
 of our days, Gower Woodseer ! There 's no smell of the 
 boor in him. Perhaps his religion helps him, more than 
 Nature-worship : not the, best for manners. You won't 
 smoke your pipe ? — a cigar ? Lay on, then, as hard as 
 you like.' 
 
 6 You 're asking for the debauchee's last luxury — not 
 a correction,' said Gower, grimly thinking of how his 
 whip might prove effective and punish the man who 
 kept him fruitlessly out of his bed. 
 
 ' I want stuff for a place in the memory,' said Fleet- 
 wood ; and the late hour, with the profitless talk, made 
 it a stinging taunt. 
 
 ' You want me to flick your indecision.' 
 
 'That's half a hit.' 
 
EXAMPLES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 355 
 
 1 1 'm to talk italics, for you to store a smart word 
 or so.' 
 
 1 True, I swear ! And, please, begin.' 
 
 'You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be 
 smothered in you, the man or the lord — and it ends 
 in the monk, if you hang much longer.*' 
 
 6 A bit of a scorpion in his intention,'' Fleetwood 
 muttered on a stride. c 1 11 tell you this, Gower Wood- 
 seer ; when you lay on in earnest, your diction is not 
 so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady 
 Fleetwood ? ' 
 
 'All should. I don't presume to allude to Lady 
 Fleetwood.'* 
 
 ' She has not charged you to complain ? , 
 
 ' Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or 
 condescend to speak of injuries.'' 
 
 ' She insults me with her insane suspicion.' 
 
 A swollen vein on the young nobleman's forehead 
 went to confirm the idea at the Wythans that he was 
 capable of mischief. They were right ; he was as 
 capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to 
 be thanking Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable 
 numbness he felt at Carinthia , s behaviour, while detest- 
 ing her for causing him to desire it and endure it, 
 and exonerate his prosy castigator. 
 
 He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, 
 whose diction had not been particularly estimable. 
 In the feebleness of a man vainly courting sleep, the 
 disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the 
 other through the remaining hours of darkness, pol- 
 ishing sentences that were natural spouts of choicest 
 diction ; and still the earl's virulent small sneer rankled. 
 He understood why, after a time. The fervour of ad- 
 
356 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 vocacy, which inspires high diction, had been wanting. 
 He had sought more to lash the earl with his personal 
 disgust — and partly to parade his contempt of a lucra- 
 tive dependency — than he had felt for the countess. 
 No wonder his diction was poor. It was a sample of 
 limp thinness ; a sort of tongue of a Master Slender : 
 — flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object: 
 measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. 
 He had nevertheless a heart to feel for the dear lady, 
 and heat the pleading for her, especially when it ran 
 to its object, as along a shaft of the sun-rays, from 
 the passionate devotedness of that girl Madge. 
 
 He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath 
 him to drive him from his bed and across the turfy 
 roller of the hill to the Wythans', in the front of an 
 autumnal sunrise — grand where the country is shorn 
 of surface decoration, as here and there we find some 
 unadorned human creature, whose bosom bears the 
 ball of warmth. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 IN WHICH WE SEE CAR1NTHIA PUT IX PRACTICE ONE 
 OF HER OLD FATHER^ LESSONS 
 
 Seated at his breakfast-table, the earl saw Gower 
 stride in, and could have wagered he knew the destina- 
 tion of the fellow's morning walk. It concerned him 
 little ; he would be leaving the castle in less than an 
 hour. She might choose to come or choose to keep 
 away. The whims of animals do not affect men unless 
 
CARINTHIA PRACTISES FATHER'S LESSON 357 
 
 they are professionally tamers. Petty domestic dissen- 
 sions are besides poor webs to the man pulling single- 
 handed at ropes with his revolted miners. On the topic 
 of wages, too, he was Grower's master, and could hold 
 forth : by which he taught himself to feel that practical 
 affairs are the proper business of men, women and 
 infants being remotely secondary ; the picturesque and 
 poetry, consequently, sheer nonsense. 
 
 'I suppose your waiting here is useless, to quote 
 you, 1 he said. 'The countess can decide now to re- 
 main, if she pleases. Drive with me to Cardiff — I 
 miss you if you 're absent a week. Or is it legs ? 
 Drop me a line of your stages on the road, and don't 
 loiter much.'' 
 
 Gower spoke of starting his legs next day, if he had 
 to do the journey alone : and he clouded the yacht for 
 Fleetwood with talk of the Wye and the Usk, Here- 
 ford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains. 
 
 'Yes, 1 the earl acquiesced jealously; 'we ought to 
 have seen — tramped every foot of our own country. 
 That yacht of mine, there she is, and I said I would 
 board her and have a fly with half a dozen fellows 
 round the Scottish isles. WeVe never free to do as 
 we like. 1 
 
 'Legs are the only things that have a taste of 
 freedom, 1 said Gower. 
 
 They strolled down to Howell Edwards 1 office at 
 nine, Kit Ines beside the luggage cart to the rear. 
 
 Around the office and along to the street of the 
 cottages crowds were chattering, gesticulating ; Ines 
 fancied the foreign jabberers inclined to threaten. 
 Howell Edwards at the door of his office watched 
 them calculatingly. The lord of their destinies passed 
 
358 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 in with him, leaving Gower to study the features of the 
 men, and Ines to reckon the chance of a fray. 
 
 Fleetwood came out presently, saying to Edwards: 
 * That concession goes far enough. Because I have a 
 neighbour who yields at every step ? No, stick to the 
 principle. I've said my final word. And here's the 
 carriage. If the mines are closed, more's the pity: but 
 I 'm not responsible. You can let them know if you 
 like, before I drive off ; it doesn't matter to me.' 
 
 The carriage was ready. Gower cast a glance up 
 the hill. Three female figures and a pannier-donkey 
 were visible on the descent. He nodded to Edwards, 
 who took the words out of his mouth. ' Her ladyship, 
 my lord.' 
 
 She was distinctly seen, and looked formidable in 
 definition against the cloud. Madge and the nurse- 
 maid Martha were the two other young women. On 
 they came, and the angry man seated in the carriage 
 could not give the order to start. Nor could he quite 
 shape an idea of annoyance, though he hung to it and 
 faced at Gower a battery of the promise to pay him 
 for this. Tattling observers were estimated at their 
 small importance there, as everywhere, by one so high 
 above them. But the appearance of the woman of the 
 burlesque name and burlesque actions, and odd ascen- 
 sion out of the ludicrous into a form to cast a spell, 
 so that she commanded serious recollections of her, 
 disturbed him. He stepped from his carriage. Again 
 he had his incomprehensible fit of shyness ; and a 
 vision of the complacent, jowled, redundant, blue- 
 coated monarch aswing in imbecile merriment on the 
 signboard of the Royal Sovereign inn ; constitutionally 
 his total opposite, yet instigating the sensation. 
 
CARINTHIA PRACTISES FATHER'S LESSON 359 
 
 In that respect his countess and he had shifted 
 characters. Carinthia came on at her bold mountain 
 stride to within hail of him. Met by Gower, she 
 talked, smiled, patted her donkey, clutched his ear, 
 lifted a silken covering to show the child asleep ; en- 
 tirely at her ease and unhurried. These women get an 
 aid from their pride of maternity. And when they 
 can boast a parson behind them, they are indecorous 
 up to insolent in their ostentation of it. 
 
 She resumed her advance, with a slight abatement 
 of her challenging match, sedately ; very collectedly 
 erect ; changed in the fulness of her figure and her 
 poised, calm bearing. 
 
 He heard her voice addressing Gower : J Yes, they do ; 
 we noticed the slate-roofs, looking down on them. They 
 do look like a council of rooks in the hollow ; a parlia- 
 ment, you said. They look exceedingly like, when a 
 peep of sunshine falls. Oh, no, not clergymen V 
 
 She laughed at the suggestion. 
 
 She might be one of the actresses by nature. 
 
 Is the man unsympathetic with women a hater of 
 Nature deductively ? Most women are actresses. As 
 to worshipping Nature, we go back to the state 
 of heathen beast, Mr. Philosopher Gower could be 
 answered. . . . 
 
 Fleetwood drew in his argument. She stood before 
 him. There was on his part an insular representation 
 of old French Court salute to the lady, and she re- 
 plied to it in the exactest measure, as if an instructed 
 proficient. 
 
 She stood unshadowed. ' We have come to bid 
 you adieu, my lord,' she said, and no trouble of the 
 bosom shook her mellow tones. Her face was not the 
 
360 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 chalk-quarry or the rosed rock ; it was oddly individual, 
 and, in a way, alluring, with some gentle contraction 
 of her eyelids. But evidently she stood in full repose, 
 mistress of herself. 
 
 Upon him, it appeared, the whole sensibilty of the 
 situation was to be thrown. He hardened. 
 
 6 We have had to settle business here,' he said, 
 speaking resonantly, to cover his gazing discomposedly, 
 all but furtively. 
 
 The child was shown, still asleep. A cunning infant: 
 not a cry in him to excuse a father for preferring con- 
 cord or silence or the bachelor's exemption. 
 
 ' He is a strong boy, 1 the mother said. ' Our doctor 
 promises he will ride over all the illnesses.' 
 
 Fleetwood's answer set off with an alarum of the 
 throat, and dwindled to 'We'll hope so. Seems to 
 sleep well.' 
 
 She had her rocky brows. They were not barren 
 crags, and her shape was Nature's ripeness, it was 
 acknowledged. She stood like a lance in air — rather 
 like an Amazon schooled by Athene, one might imagine. 
 Hues of some going or coming flush hinted the magical 
 trick of her visage. She spoke in modest manner, or it 
 might be indifferently, without a flaunting of either. 
 
 * I wish to consult you, my lord. He is not baptized. 
 His Christian names ? ' 
 
 4 1 have no choice.' 
 
 'I should wish him to bear one of my brother's 
 names.' 
 
 ' I have no knowledge of your brother's names.' 
 
 6 Chillon is one.' 
 
 8 Ah ! Is it, should you think, suitable to our 
 climate ? ' 
 
CARINTHIA PRACTISES FATHER'S LESSON 361 
 
 ' Another name of my brother's is John. 1 
 
 ' Bull.' The loutish derision passed her and re- 
 bounded on him. ' That would be quite at home.' 
 
 ' You will allow one of your own names, my lord ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, certainly, if you desire it, choose. There are 
 four names you will find in a book of the Peerage 
 or Directory or so. Up at the castle — or you might 
 have written : — better than these questions on the 
 public road. I don't demur. Let it be as you like."' 
 
 6 1 write empty letters to tell what I much want," 1 
 Carinthia said. 
 
 ' You have only to write your plain request.' 
 
 6 If, now I see you, I may speak another request, my 
 lord.' 
 
 6 Pray, 1 he said, with courteous patience, and stepped 
 forward down to the street of the miners 1 cottages. 
 She could there speak out — bawl the request, if it 
 suited her to do so. 
 
 On the point of speaking, she gazed round. 
 
 ' Perfectly safe ! no harm possible, 1 said he, fretful 
 under the burden of this her maniacal maternal 
 anxiety. 
 
 6 The men are all right, they would not hurt a child. 
 What can rationally be suspected ! 1 
 
 ' I know the men ; they love their children, 1 she 
 replied. 4 1 think my child would be precious to them. 
 Mr. Woodseer and Mr. Edwards and Madge are there. 1 
 
 6 Is -the one more request — I mean, a mother's anxiety 
 does not run to the extent of suspecting everybody ? ' 
 
 ' Some of the children are very pretty,' said Carinthia, 
 and eyed the bands of them at their games in the road- 
 way and at the cottage doors. 6 Children of the poor 
 have happy mothers.' 
 
362 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Her eyes were homely, though they were so much a 
 morning over her face. They were open now to what 
 that fellow Woodseer (who could speak to the point 
 when he was not aiming at it) called the parlour, or 
 social sitting-room ; where we may have converse with 
 the tame woman's mind, seeing the door to the clawing 
 recesses temporarily shut. 
 
 ' Forgive me if I say you talk like the bigger child,' 
 Fleetwood said lightly, not ungenially ; for the features 
 he looked on were m useful, a picture in their one ex- 
 pression. 
 
 Her answer chilled him. ' It is true, my lord. I will 
 not detain you. I would beg to be supplied with money.' 
 
 He was like the leaves of a frosted plant, in his crisp 
 curling inward : — he had been so genial. 
 
 ' You have come to say good-bye, that you may have 
 an opportunity to — as you put it — beg for money. I 
 am not sure of your having learnt yet the right disposal 
 of money.' 1 
 
 6 1 beg, my lord, to have two thousand pounds a year 
 allowed me.' 
 
 'Ten — and it's a task to spend the sum on a single 
 household — shall be allotted to your expenditure at 
 Esslemont ; — stables, bills, et caetera. You can enter- 
 tain. My steward Leddings will undertake the 
 management. You will not be troubled with payings.** 
 
 Her head acknowledged the graciousness. ' I would 
 have two thousand pounds and live where I please.' 
 
 6 Pardon me : the two, for a lady living where she 
 pleases, exceeds the required amount.' 
 
 4 1 will accept a smaller sum, my lord.' 
 
 * Money ! — it seems a singular demand when all 
 supplies are furnished.' 
 
CARINTHIA PRACTISES FATHER'S LESSON 363 
 
 6 1 would have control of some money.'* 
 
 ' You are thinking of charities. 1 
 
 ' Not charities. , 
 
 ' Edwards here has a provision for the hospital needs 
 of the people. Mr. Woodseer applies to me in cases 
 he can certify. Leddings will do the same at Essle- 
 mont.' 
 
 'I am glad, I am thankful. The money I would 
 have is for my own use. It is for me.' 
 
 * Ah. Scarcely that, I fancy.' 
 
 The remark should have struck home. He had a 
 thirst for the sign of her confessing to it. He looked. 
 Something like a petrifaction of her wildest face was 
 shown. 
 
 Carinthia's eyes were hard out on a scattered knot of 
 children down the street. 
 
 She gathered up her skirts. Without a word to him, 
 she ran, and running shouted to the little ones around 
 and ahead : ' In ! in ! indoors, children ! Blant, Yr ty ! 
 Mothers, mothers, ho ! get them in. See the dog ! Ci ! 
 Ci ! In with them ! Blant, €r ty ! iV ty ! ' 
 
 A big black mongrel appeared worrying at one of 
 two petticoated urchins on the ground. 
 
 She scurried her swiftest, with such warning Welsh 
 as she had on the top of her mountain cry ; and doors 
 flew wide, there was a bang of doors when she darted 
 by : first gust of terrible heavens that she seemed to the 
 cottagers. 
 
 Other shouts behind her rent the air, gathering to a 
 roar, from the breasts of men and women. ' Mad dog 
 about ' had been for days the rumour, crossing the hills 
 over the line of village, hamlet, farm, from Cardiff 
 port. 
 
364 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Dead hush succeeded the burst. Men and women 
 stood off. The brute was at the lady. 
 
 Her arms were straight above her head ; her figure 
 overhanging, on a bend of the knees. Right and left, 
 the fury of the slavering fangs shook her loose droop 
 of gown ; and a dull, prolonged growl, like the clamour 
 of a far body of insurrectionary marching men, told of 
 the rage. 
 
 Fleetwood hovered helpless as a leaf on a bough. 
 
 * Back, I pray,' she said to him, and motioned it, her 
 arms at high stretch. 
 
 He held no weapon. The sweat of his forehead half 
 blinded him. And she waved him behind her, beckoned 
 to the crowd to keep wide way, used her lifted hands 
 as flappers ; she had all her wits. There was not a 
 wrinkle of a grimace. Nothing but her locked lips 
 betrayed her vision of imminent doom. The shaking 
 of her gown and the snarl in the undergrowl sounded 
 insatiate. 
 
 The brute dropped hold. With a weariful jog of the 
 head, it pursued its course at an awful even swinging 
 pace : Death's own, Death's doer, his reaper, — he, the 
 very Death of the Terrors. 
 
 Carinthia's cry rang for clear way to be kept on either 
 side, and that accursed went the path through a sharp- 
 edged mob, as it poured pell-mell and shrank back, 
 closing for the chase to rear of it. 
 
 'Father taught me, 1 she said to the earl, not more 
 discomposed than if she had taken a jump. 
 
 ' It 's over ! ' he groaned, savagely white, and bellowed 
 for guns, any weapons. c Your father ? pray ? ' She 
 was entreated to speak. 
 
 * Yes, it must be shot ; it will be merciful to kill it, 1 
 
CARINTHIA PRACTISES FATHER'S LESSON 365 
 
 she said. ' They have carried the child indoors. The 
 others are safe. Mr. Woodseer, run to my nurse-girl, 
 Martha. He goes, 1 she murmured, and resumed to the 
 earl : * Father told me women have a better chance 
 than men with a biting dog. He put me before him 
 and drilled me. He thought of everything. Usually 
 the poor beast snaps — one angry bite, not more. My 
 dress teased it.' 
 
 Fleetweed grinned civilly in his excitement ; intend- 
 ing to yield patient hearing, to be interested by any 
 mortal thing she might choose to say. 
 
 She was advised by recollection to let her father rest. 
 
 ' No, dear girl, not hurt, no scratch, — only my gown 
 torn,' she said to Madge ; and Madge heaved and whim- 
 pered, and stooped to pin the frayed strips. 6 Quite 
 safe ; you see it is easy for women to escape, Mr. 
 Edwards.' 
 
 Carinthia's voice hummed over the girl's head : 
 ' Father made me practise it, in case. He forethought. 
 Madge, you heard of this dog. I told you how to act. 
 I was not feverish. Our babe will not feel it.' 
 
 She bade Madge open her hands. ' A scratch would 
 kill. Never mind the tearings ; I will hold my dress. 
 Oh ! there is that one child bitten. Mr. Edwards, 
 mount a man for the doctor. I will go in to the child. 
 He was bitten. Lose not one minute, Mr. Edwards. 
 I see you go.' 
 
 He bowed and hastened. 
 
 The child's mother was red eyes at her door for ease 
 of her heart to the lady. Carinthia stepped into the 
 room, where the little creature was fetching sobs after 
 the spout of screams. 
 
 ' God in heaven ! she can't be going to suck the 
 
366 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 bite?' Fleetwood cried to Madge, whose answer was 
 disquieting : ' If it 'a to save life, my mistress won't 
 stop at anything/ 
 
 His heart sprang with a lighted comprehension of 
 Grower Woodseer's meaning. This giiTs fervour opened 
 portals to new views of her mistress, or opened eyes. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 
 
 Pushing through a swarm into the cot, Fleetwood saw 
 Carinthia on a knee beside a girl's lap, where the 
 stripped child lay. Its mother held a basin for the dab- 
 bing at raw red spots. 
 
 A sting of pain touched the memory of its fright, 
 and brought further screams, then the sobs. Carinthia 
 hummed a Styrian cradle-song as the wailing 
 lulled. 
 
 She glanced up ; she said to the earl : ' The bite was 
 deep ; it was in the blood. We may have time. Get 
 me an interpreter. I must ask the mother. I know 
 not many words.' 
 
 ' What now ? ' said he, at the looming of new vexa- 
 tions. 
 
 i We have no choice. Has a man gone ? Dr. Grif- 
 fiths would hurry fast. An hour may be too late. 
 The poison travels. Father advised it: — Fifty years 
 for one brave minute! This child should be helped to 
 live; 
 
 ' We '11 do our best. Why an interpreter ? , 
 
 
A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 367 
 
 6 A poker in the fire. The interpreter — whether the 
 mother will bear to have it done.' 
 
 ' Burn, do you mean ? < 
 
 c It should be burnt. 1 
 
 6 Not by you ? , 
 
 'Quick! Quick! 1 
 
 6 But will you — could you ? No, I say ! ' 
 
 ' If there is no one else.' 
 
 ' You forget your own child." 1 
 
 6 He is near the end of his mother.'' 
 
 1 The doctor will soon arrive. 1 
 
 ' The poison travels. It cannot be overtaken unless 
 we start nearly equal, father said. 1 
 
 ' Work like that wants an experienced hand. 1 
 
 i A steady one. I would not quake — not tremble/ 
 
 ' I cannot permit it. 1 
 
 6 Mr. Wythan would know ! — he would know ! ' 
 
 'Do you hear, Lady Fleetwood — the dog may not 
 be mad ! ' 
 
 6 Signs ! He ran heavy, he foamed. 1 
 
 'Foam^ no sign. 1 
 
 ' Go ; order to me a speaker of English and 
 Welsh. 1 
 
 The earl spun round, sensible of the novelty of his 
 being commanded, and submitting ; but no sooner had 
 he turned than he fell into her view of the urgency, 
 and he went, much like the boy we see at school, with 
 a strong hand on his collar running him in. 
 
 Madge entered, and said : { Mr. Woodseer has seen 
 baby and Martha and the donkey all safe. 1 
 
 ' He is kind, 1 said Carinthia. ' Do we right to 
 bathe the wound ? It seems right to wash it. Little 
 things that seem right may be exactly wrong after all, 
 
368 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 when we are ignorant. I know burning the wound is 
 right/ 
 
 Madge asked : ' But, my lady, who is to do it ? ' 
 
 1 You would do it, dear, if I shrank, 1 her mistress 
 replied. 
 
 ' Oh, my lady, I don't know, I can't say. Burning a 
 child ! And there 's our baby.' 
 
 ■ He has had me nearly his time/ 
 
 ' Oh, my dear lady ! Would the mother consent ? ' 
 
 • My Madge ! I have so few of their words yet. 
 You would hold the child to save it from a dreadful 
 end/ 
 
 * God help me, my lady — I w r ould, as long as I live 
 I will. . . . Oh ! poor infant, we do need our courage 
 now; 
 
 Seeing that her mistress had not a tear or a tremor, 
 the girl blinked and schooled her quailing heart, still 
 under the wicked hope that the mother would not con- 
 sent ; in a wonderment at this lady, who w r as womanly, 
 and who could hold the red iron at living flesh, to save 
 the poor infant from a dreadful end. Her flow of love 
 to this dear lady felt the slicing of a cut ; was half 
 revulsion, half worship ; uttermost worship in estrange- 
 ment, with the further throbbing of her pulses. 
 
 The cottage door was pushed open for Lord Fleetwood 
 and Howell Edwards, whom his master had prepared 
 to stand against immediate operations. A mounted 
 messenger had been despatched. But it was true, the 
 doctor might not be at home. Assuming it to be a 
 bite of rabies, minutes lost meant the terrible: Edwards 
 bowed his head to that. On the other hand, he foresaw 
 the closest of personal reasons for hesitating to be in 
 agreement with the lady wholly. The countess was 
 
A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 369 
 
 not so much a persuasive lady as she was, in her breath 
 and gaze, a sweeping and a wafting power. After a 
 short argument, he had a sense of hanging like a 
 bank detached to fatality of motion by the crack of 
 a landslip, and that he would speedily be on his man- 
 hood to volunteer for the terrible work. 
 
 He addressed the mother. Her eyes whitened from 
 their red at his first word of laying hot iron on the 
 child : she ran out with the wild woman's howl to her 
 neighbours. 
 
 c Poor mother ! ' Carinthia sighed. ' It may last a 
 year in the child's body, and one day he shudders at 
 water. Father saw a bitten man die. I could fear 
 death with the thought of that poison in me. I pray 
 Dr. Griffiths may come.' 
 
 Fleetwood shuffled a step. ( He will come, he will 
 come. 1 
 
 The mother and some women now packed the room. 
 A gabble arose between them and Edwards. They 
 fired sharp snatches of speech, and they darted looks at 
 the lady and her lord. 
 
 ' They do not know ! ' said Carinthia. 
 
 Gower brought her news that the dog had been 
 killed ; Martha and her precious burden were outside, 
 a mob of men, too. He was not alarmed ; but she went 
 to the door and took her babe in her arms, and when 
 the women observed the lady holding her own little 
 one, their looks were softened. At a hint of explana- 
 tion from Edwards, the guttural gabble rattled up to 
 the shrill vowels. 
 
 Fleetwood's endurance broke short. The packed 
 small room, the caged-monkey lingo, the wailful child, 
 and the past and apprehended debate upon the burning 
 
 2 A 
 
370 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of flesh, composed an intolerable torture. He said to 
 Edwards : ' Go to the men ; settle it with them. We 
 have to follow that man Wythan ; no peace otherwise. 
 Tell the men the body of the dog must be secured for 
 analysis. Mad or not, it's the same. These Welsh 
 mothers and grandmothers won't allow cautery at any 
 price. Hark at them ! ' 
 
 He turned to Carinthia: 'Your ladyship will let 
 Mr. Edwards or Mr. Woodseer conduct you to the 
 house where you are residing. You don't know these 
 excitable people. I wish you to leave.' 
 
 She replied softly : ' I stay for the doctor's coming.' 
 1 Impossible for me to wait, and I can't permit you 
 to be here.' 
 
 * It is life and death, and I must not be commanded.' 
 ' You may be proposing gratuitous agony.' 
 
 ' I would do it to my own child.' 
 
 The earl attacked Gower : ' Add your voice to per- 
 suade Lady Fleetwood.' 
 
 Gower said : ' What if I think with Lady Fleet- 
 wood ? ' 
 
 * You would see her do it ? ' 
 
 ' Do it myself, if there was no one else.' 
 6 This dog — all of you have gone mad,' the earl 
 cried. * Griffiths may keep his head ; it 's the only 
 chance. Take my word, these Welshwomen — just listen 
 to them — won't have it. You '11 find yourself in a nest 
 of Furies. It may be right to do, it 's folly to propose 
 it, madness to attempt it. And I shall be bitten if I 
 stop here a minute longer ; I 'm gone ; I can neither 
 command nor influence. I should have thought Gower 
 Woodseer would have kept his wits.' 
 
 Fleetwood's look fell on Madge amid the group. 
 
A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 371 
 
 Gower's perception of her mistress through the girl's 
 devotion to her moved him. He took Madge by the 
 hand, and the sensation came that it was the next thing 
 to pressing his wife's. ' You're a loyal girl. You have 
 a mistress it 's an honour to serve. You bind me. By 
 the way, Ines shall run down for a minute before I 
 go.' 
 
 ' Let him stay where he is,' Madge said, having 
 bobbed her curtsy. 
 
 1 Oh, if he 's not to get a welcome ! ' said the earl ; 
 and he could now fix a steadier look on his countess, 
 who would have animated him with either a hostile face 
 or a tender. She had no expression of a feeling. He 
 bent to her formally. 
 
 Carinthia's words were : ' Adieu, my lord.' 
 
 ' I have only to say, that Esslemont is ready to receive 
 you,' he remarked, bowed more curtly, and walked 
 out. 
 
 Gower followed him. They might as well have been 
 silent, for any effect from what was uttered between 
 them. They spoke opinions held by each of them — 
 adverse mainly ; speaking for no other purpose than to 
 hold their positions. 
 
 6 Oh, she has courage, no doubt ; no one doubted it/ 
 Fleetwood said, out of all relation to the foregoing. 
 
 Courage to grapple with his pride and open his heart 
 was wanting in him. 
 
 Had that been done, even to the hint of it, instead of 
 the lordly indifference shown, Gower might have ven- 
 tured on a suggestion, that the priceless woman he 
 could call wife was fast slipping away from him and 
 withering in her allegiance. He did allude to his 
 personal sentiment. 'One takes aim at Philosophy; 
 
372 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Lady Fleetwood pulls us up to pay tribute to our debts. 1 
 But this was vague, and his hearer needed a present 
 thunder and lightning to shake and pierce him. 
 
 1 1 pledged myself to that yacht, 1 said Fleetwood, by 
 way of reply, * or you and I would tramp it, as we did 
 once — jolly old days ! I shall have you in mind. Now 
 turn back. Do the best you can.' 
 
 They parted midway up the street, Gower bearing 
 away a sharp contrast of the earl and his countess ; for, 
 until their senses are dulled, impressionable young men, 
 however precociously philosophical, are mastered by 
 appearances ; and they have to reflect under new lights 
 before vision of the linked eye and mind is given 
 them. 
 
 Fleetwood jumped into his carriage and ordered the 
 coachman to drive smartly. He could not have 
 admitted the feeling small; he felt the having been 
 diminished, and his requiring a rapid transportation 
 from these parts for him to regain his proper stature. 
 Had he misconducted himself at the moment of danger ? 
 It is a ghastly thought, that the craven impulse may 
 overcome us. But no, he could reassure his repute for 
 manliness. He had done as much as a man could do in 
 such a situation. 
 
 At the same time he had done less than the woman. 
 Needed she to have gone so far ? Why precipitate her- 
 self into the jaws of the beast ? 
 
 Now she proposes to burn the chikTs wound. And 
 she will do it if they let her. One sees her at the work, 
 — pale, flinty ; no faces ; trebly the terrific woman in her 
 mild way of doing the work. All because her old father 
 recommended it. Because she thinks it a duty, we will 
 say ; that is j uster. This young woman is a very sword 
 
A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 373 
 
 in the hand of her idea of duty. She can be feminine, 
 too, — there is one who knows. She can be particularly 
 distant, too. If in timidity, she has a modest view of 
 herself — or an enormous conception of the man that 
 married her. Will she take the world's polish a 
 little ? 
 
 Fleetwood asked with the simplicity of the superior 
 being who will consequently perhaps bestow the debt 
 he owes. 
 
 But his was not the surface nature which can put a 
 question of the sort and pass it. As soon as it had been 
 formed, a vision of the elemental creature calling him 
 husband smote to shivers the shell we walk on, and 
 caught him down among the lower forces, up amid the 
 higher; an infernal and a celestial contest for the 
 extinction of the one or the other of them, if it was not 
 for their union. She wrestled with him where the 
 darknesses roll their snake-eyed torrents over between 
 jagged horns of the netherworld. She stood him in the 
 white ray of the primal vital heat, to bear unwithering 
 beside her the test of light. They flew, they chased, 
 battled, embraced, disjoined, adventured apart, brought 
 back the count of their deeds, compared them, — and 
 name the one crushed ! It was the one weighted to 
 shame, thrust into the cellar-corner of his own disgust, 
 by his having asked whether that starry warrior spirit 
 in the womatfs frame would c take polish a little.' 
 
 Why should it be a contention between them ? For 
 this reason : he was reduced to admire her act ; and if 
 he admired, he could not admire without respecting; 
 if he respected, perforce he reverenced ; if he rever- 
 enced, he worshipped. Therefore she had him at her 
 feet. At the feet of any woman, except for the trifling 
 
374 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 object ! But at the feet of c It is my husband ! ' That 
 would be a reversal of things. 
 
 Are not things reversed when the name Carinthia 
 sounds in the thought of him who laughed at the name 
 not less angelically martial than Feltre's adored silver 
 trumpets of his papal procession ; sweeter of the new 
 morning for the husband of the woman, if he will but 
 consent to the worshipper's posture ? Yes, and when 
 Gower Woodseer's 'Malady of the Wealthy,"' as he 
 terms the pivotting of the whole marching and wheel- 
 ing world upon the favoured of Fortune's habits and 
 tastes, promises to quit its fell clutch on him ? 
 
 Another voice in the young nobleman cried : Pooh, 
 dolt and dupe ! and surrounded her for half a league 
 with reek of burnt flesh and shrieks of a tortured child; 
 giving her the aspect of a sister of the Parcae. But it 
 was not the ascendant voice. It growled underneath, 
 much like the deadly beast at Carinthia's gown while 
 she stood : — an image of her to dominate the princeliest 
 of men ! 
 
 The princeliest must have won his title to the place 
 before he can yield other than complimentary station 
 to a woman without violation of his dignity ; and vast 
 wealth is not the title ; worldly honours are not ; deeds 
 only are the title. Fleetwood consented to tell himself 
 that he had not yet performed the deeds. 
 
 Therefore, for him to be dominated was to be ob- 
 scured, eclipsed. A man may outrun us ; it is the 
 fortune of war. Eclipsed behind the skirts of a woman 
 waving her upraised hands, with, * Back, pray ! , — no, 
 that ignominy is too horribly abominable ! Be sure, the 
 situation will certainly recur in some form ; will constantly 
 recur. She will usurp the lead ; she will play the man. 
 
A FRIGHTFUL DEBATE 375 
 
 Let matters go on as they are. We know our 
 personal worth. 
 
 Arrived at this point in the perpetual round of the 
 conflict Carinthia had implanted, Fleetwood entered 
 anew the ranks of the ordinary men of wealth and a 
 coronet, and he hugged himself. He enj oyed repose ; 
 knowing it might be but a truce. Matters might go 
 on as they were. Still, he wished her away from those 
 Wythans, residing at Esslemont. There she might 
 come eventually to a better knowledge of his personal 
 worth : — ' the gold mine we carry in our bosoms till it 
 is threshed out of us in sweat,' that fellow Gower 
 Woodseer says ; adding, that we are the richer for not 
 exploring it. Philosophical cynicism is inconclusive. 
 Fleetwood knew his large capacities ; he had proved 
 them and could again. In case a certain half foreseen 
 calamity should happen : — imagine it a fact, imagine 
 him seized, besides admiring her character, with a taste 
 for her person ! Why, then, he would have to impress 
 his own mysteriously deep character on her portion of 
 understanding. The battle for domination would then 
 begin. 
 
 Anticipation of the possibility of it hewed division 
 between the young man's pride of being and his warmer 
 feelings. Had he been free of the dread of subjection, 
 he would have sunk to kiss the feet of the statuesque 
 young woman, arms in air, firm-fronted over the hideous 
 death that tore at her skirts. 
 
376 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 A SURVEY OF THE RIDE OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS ES- 
 CORTING THE COUNTESS OF FLEETWOOD TO KENTISH 
 ESSLEMONT 
 
 A formal notification from the earl, addressed to the 
 Countess of Fleetwood in the third person, that Essle- 
 mont stood ready to receive her, autocratically concealed 
 her lord's impatience to have her there; and by the 
 careful precision with which the stages of her journey 
 were marked, as places where the servants despatched 
 to convey their lady would find preparations for her 
 comfort, again alarmed the disordered mother's mind 
 on behalf of the child she deemed an object of the 
 father's hatred, second to his hatred of the mother. 
 But the mother could defend herself, the child was 
 prey. The child of a detested wife was heir to his 
 title and estates. His look at the child, his hasty one 
 look down at her innocent, was conjured before her as 
 resembling a kick at a stone in his path. His indiffer- 
 ence to the child's Christian names pointed darkly over 
 its future. 
 
 The distempered wilfulness of a bruised young woman 
 directed her thoughts. She spoke them in the tone of 
 reason to her invalid friend Rebecca Wythan, who saw 
 with her, felt with her, yearned to retain her till breath 
 was gone. Owain Wythan had his doubts of the tyrant 
 guilty of maltreating this woman of women. 'But 
 when you do leave Wales,' he said, 'you shall be 
 guarded up to your haven.' 
 
 Carinthia was not awake to his meaning then. She 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 377 
 
 sent a short letter of reply, imitating the style of her 
 lord ; very baldly stating, that she was unable to leave 
 Wales because of her friend's illness and her part as 
 nurse. Regrets were unmentioned. 
 
 Meanwhile Rebecca Wythan was passing to death. 
 Not cheerlessly, more and more faintly, her thread of 
 life ran to pause, resembling a rill of the drought ; 
 and the thinner it grew, the shrewder were her murmurs 
 for Carinthia's ears in commending ' the most real of 
 husbands of an unreal wife ' to her friendly care of him 
 when he would no longer see the shadow he had 
 wedded. She had the privilege of a soul beyond our 
 minor rules and restrainings to speak her wishes to 
 the true wife of a mock husband — no husband ; less a 
 husband than this shadow of a woman a wife, she said ; 
 and spoke them without adjuring the bowed head beside 
 her to record a promise or seem to show the far willing- 
 ness, but merely that the wishes should be heard on 
 earth in her last breath, for a good man's remaining 
 one chance of happiness. On the theme touching her 
 husband Owain, it was verily to hear a soul speak, and 
 have knowledge of the broader range, the rich inter- 
 flowings of the tuned discords, a spirit past the flesh 
 can find. Her mind was at the same time alive to our 
 worldly conventions when other people came under its 
 light ; she sketched them and their views in her brief 
 words between the gasps or heaved on them, with per- 
 spicuous, humorous bluntness, as vividly as her twitched 
 eyebrows indicated the laugh. Gower Woodseer she 
 read startlingly, if correctly. 
 
 Carinthia could not leave her. Attendance upon this 
 dying woman was a drinking at the springs of life. 
 
 Rebecca Wythan under earth, the earl was briefly 
 
378 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 informed of Lady Fleetwood's consent to quit Wales, — 
 obedient to a summons two months old, — and that she 
 would be properly escorted ; for the which her lord had 
 made provision. Consequently the tyrant swallowed 
 his wrath, little conceiving the monstrous blow she was 
 about to strike. 
 
 In peril of fresh floods from our Dame, who should 
 be satisfied with the inspiring of these pages, it is 
 owned that her story of ' the four and twenty squires 
 of Glamorgan and Caermarthen in their brass-buttoned 
 green coats and buckskins, mounted and armed, an 
 escort of the Countess of Fleetwood across the swollen 
 Severn, along midwinter roads, up to the Kentish gates 
 of EsslemonV has a foundation, though the story is not 
 the more credible for her flourish of documentary old 
 ballad-sheets, printed when London's wags had ears on 
 cock to any whisper of the doings of their favourite 
 Whitechapel Countess ; and indeed hardly depended on 
 whispers. 
 
 Enthusiasm sufficient to troop forth four and twenty 
 and more hundreds of Cambrian gentlemen, and still 
 more of the common folk, as far as they could journey 
 afoot, was over the two halves of the Principality, to 
 give the countess a reputable and gallant body-guard. 
 London had intimations of kindling circumstances con- 
 cerning her, and magnified them in the interests of the 
 national humour : which is the English way of exalting 
 to criticize, criticizing to depreciate, and depreciating 
 to restore, ultimately to cherish, in reward for the 
 amusement furnished by an eccentric person, not devoid 
 of merit. 
 
 These little tales of her, pricking cool blood to some 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 379 
 
 activity, were furze-fires among the Welsh. But where 
 the latter heard Bardic strings inviting a chorus, the 
 former as unanimously obeyed the stroke of their 
 humorous conductor's baton for an outburst from the 
 ribs or below. And it was really funny to hear of 
 Whitechapel's titled heroine roaming Taffyland at her 
 old pranks. Catching a maddened bull by the horns 
 in the market-place, and hanging to the infuriate beast, 
 a wild whirl of clouts, till he is reduced to be a subject 
 for steaks, — that is no common feat. 
 
 Her performances down mines were things of the 
 underworld. England clapped hands, merely objecting 
 to her not having changed her garb for the picador's or 
 matador's, before she seized the bull. Wales adopted 
 and was proud of her in any costume. Welshmen North 
 and South, united for the nonce, now propose her gal- 
 lantry as a theme to the rival Bards at the next 
 Eisteddfod. She is to sit throned in full assembly, oak 
 leaves and mistletoe interwoven on her head, a white 
 robe and green sash to clothe her, and the vanquished 
 beast's horns on a gilded pole behind the dais ; hearing 
 the eulogies respectively interpreted to her by Colonel 
 Fluellen Wythan at one ear, and Captain Agincourt 
 Gower at the other. A splendid scene ; she might well 
 insist to be present. 
 
 There, however, we are at the pitch of burlesque 
 beyond her illustrious lord's capacity to stand. Per- 
 emptory orders from England arrive, commanding her 
 return. She temporizes, postpones, and supplicates to 
 have the period extended up to the close of the Eistedd- 
 fod. My lord's orders are imperatively repeated, and 
 very blunt. He will not have her 'continue playing 
 the fool down there.'' She holds her ground from 
 
380 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 August into February, and then sets forth, to undergo 
 the further process of her taming at Esslemont in 
 England ; with Llewellyn and Vaughan and Cadwall- 
 ader, and Watkyn and Shenkyn and the remains of the 
 race of Owen Tudor, attending her ; vowed to extract 
 a receipt from the earl her lord's responsible servitors 
 for the safe delivery of their heroine's person at the 
 gates of Esslemont ; ich dun their trumpeted motto. 
 
 Counting the number at four and twenty, it wears 
 the look of an invasion. But the said number is a 
 ballad number, and has been since the antique time. 
 There was, at a lesser number, enough of a challenge 
 about it for squires of England, never in those days 
 backward to pick up a glove or give the ringing re- 
 joinder for a thumb-bite, to ride out and tilt compli- 
 ments with the Whitechapel Countess's green cavaliers, 
 rally their sprites and entertain them exactly according 
 to their degrees of dignity, as exhibited by their 'haviour 
 under something of a trial ; and satisfy also such tem- 
 porary appetites as might be excited in them by (among 
 other matters left to the luck of events) a metropolitan 
 play upon the Saxon tongue, hard of understanding to 
 the leeky cocks until their ready store of native pepper 
 seasons it ; which may require a corresponding English 
 condiment to rectify the flavour of the stew. 
 
 Now the number of Saxe-Normans riding out to 
 meet and greet the Welshmen is declared to have not 
 exceeded nine. So much pretends to be historic, in 
 opposition to the poetic version. They would, we may 
 be sure, have made it a point of honour to meet and 
 greet their invading guests in precisely similar numbers : 
 a larger would have overshot the mark of courtesy ; and 
 doubtless a smaller have fallen deplorably short of it. 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 381 
 
 Therefore, an acquaintance with her chivalrous, if less 
 impulsive, countrymen compels to the dismissing of the 
 Dame's ballad authorities. She has every right to 
 quote them for her own good pleasure, and may create 
 in others an enjoyment of what has been called 'the 
 Mackrell fry. 1 
 
 Her notion of a ballad is, that it grows like mush- 
 rooms from a scuffle of feet on grass overnight, and is a 
 sort of forest mother of the pied infant reared and 
 trimmed by historians to show the world its fatherly 
 antecedent steps. The hand of Rose Mackrell is at 
 least suggested in more than one of the ballads. Here 
 the Welsh irruption is a Chevy Chase ; next we have 
 the countess for a disputed Helen. 
 
 The lady's lord is not a shining figure. How can an 
 
 undecided one be a dispenser of light ? Poetry could 
 
 never allow him to say with her : — 
 
 f Where'er I go I make a name. 
 And leave a song to follow/ 
 
 Yet he was the master of her fortunes at the time ; all 
 the material power was his. Even doggerel verse (it is 
 worth while to brood on the fact) denies a surviving 
 pre-eminence to the potent moody, reverses the position 
 between the driven and the driver. Poetry, however 
 erratic, is less a servant of the bully Present, or pom- 
 pous Past, than History. The Muse of History has 
 neither the same divination of the intrinsic nor the 
 devotion to it, though truly, she has possession of all the 
 positive matter and holds us faster by the crediting 
 senses. 
 
 Nine English cavaliers, then, left London early on a 
 January or February morning in a Southerly direction, 
 bearing East; and they were the Earl of Fleetwood's 
 
382 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 intimates, of the half-dependent order ; so we may 
 suppose them to have gone at his bidding. That they 
 met the procession of the Welsh, and claimed to take 
 charge of the countess's carriage, near the Kentish 
 border-line, is an assertion supported by testimony 
 fairly acceptable. 
 
 Intelligence of the advancing party had reached the 
 earl by courier, from the date of the first gathering on 
 the bridge of Pont-y-pridd ; and from Gloucester, along 
 to the Thames at Reading ; thence away to the Mole, 
 from Mickleham, where the Surrey chalk runs its final 
 turfy spine North-eastward to the slope upon Kentish 
 soil. 
 
 Greatly to the astonishment of the Welsh cavaliers, 
 a mounted footman, clad in the green and scarlet fac- 
 ings of Lord Fleetwood's livery, rode up to them a mile 
 outside the principal towns and named the inn where 
 the earl had ordered preparations for the reception of 
 them. England's hospitality was offered on a princely 
 scale. Cleverer fencing could not be. 
 
 The meeting, in no sense an encounter, occurred 
 close by a thirty-acre meadow, famous over the county ; 
 and was remarkable for the punctilious exchange of 
 ceremonial speech, danger being present; as we see 
 powder-magazines protected by their walls and fosses 
 and covered alleys. Notwithstanding which, there was 
 a scintillation of sparks. 
 
 Lord Brailstone, spokesman of the welcoming party, 
 expressed comic regrets that they had not an inter- 
 preter with them. 
 
 Mr. Owain Wythan, in the name of the Cambrian 
 chivalry, assured him of their comprehension and 
 appreciation of English slang. 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 383 
 
 Both gentlemen kept their heads uncovered in a sus- 
 pense ; they might for a word or two more of that 
 savour have turned into the conveniently spacious 
 meadow. They were induced, on the contrary, to enter 
 the channel of English humour, by hearing Chumley 
 Potts exclaim : 6 His nob ! ' and all of them laughed at 
 the condensed description of a good hit back, at the 
 English party's cost. 
 
 Laughter, let it be but genuine, is of a common 
 nationality, indeed a common fireside ; and profound 
 disagreement is not easy after it. The Dame pro- 
 fesses to believe that ' Carinthia Jane , had to inter- 
 vene as peacemaker, before the united races took the 
 table in Esslemont's dining-hall for a memorable night 
 of it, and a contest nearer the mark of veracity than 
 that shown in another of the ballads she would have 
 us follow. Whatever happened, they sat down at table 
 together, and the point of honour for them each and 
 every was, not to be first to rise from it. Once more 
 the pure Briton and the mixed if not fused English 
 engaged, Bacchus for instrument this time, Bacchus 
 for arbiter of the fray. 
 
 You may imagine ! says the Dame. She cites the 
 old butler at Esslemont, 'as having been much ques- 
 tioned on the subject by her family relative, Dr. 
 Glossop, and others interested to know the smallest 
 items of the facts,'' — and he is her authority for the 
 declaration that the Welsh gentlemen and the English 
 gentlemen, 'whatever their united number,'' consumed 
 the number of nine dozen and a half of old Esslemont 
 wine before they rose, or as possibly sank, at the festive 
 board at the hour of five of the morning. 
 
 Years later, this butler, Joshua Queeney, 6 a much 
 
384 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 enfeebled old man, 1 retold and enlarged the tale of the 
 enormous consumption of his best wine ; with a sacred 
 oath to confirm it, and a tear expressive of elegiacal 
 feelings. 
 
 'They bled me twelve dozen, not a bottle less," 
 she quotes him, after a minute description of his coun- 
 tenance and scrupulously brushed black suit, pensioner 
 though he had become. He had grown, during the 
 interval, to be more communicative as to particulars. 
 The wines were four. Sherry led off the parade pace, 
 Hock the trot into the merry canter, Champagne the 
 racing gallop, Burgundy the grand trial of constitu- 
 tional endurance for the enforced finish. All these 
 wines, except the sparkling, had their date of birth in 
 the precedent century. ' They went like water.' 
 
 Questioned anxiously by Dr. Glossop, Queeney main- 
 tained an impartial attitude, and said there was no 
 victor, no vanquished. They did not sit in blocks. 
 The tactics for preserving peace intermingled them. 
 Each English gentleman had a Welsh gentleman beside 
 him ; they both sat firm ; both fell together. The 
 bottles or decanters were not stationary for the guest 
 to fill his glass, they circulated, returning to an empty 
 glass. All drank equally. Often the voices were high, 
 the talk was loud. The gentlemen were too serious 
 to sing. 
 
 At one moment of the evening Queeney confidently 
 anticipated a ' fracassy,' he said. One of the foreign 
 party — and they all spoke English, after five dozen 
 bottles had gone the round, as correct as the English 
 themselves — remarked on the seventy-years Old Brown 
 Sherry, that ' it had a Madeira flavour.' He spoke it 
 approvingly. Thereupon Lord Simon Pitscrew calls to 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 385 
 
 Queeney, asking him ' why Madeira had been supplied 
 instead of Esslemont's renowned old Sherry ? , A 
 second Welsh gentleman gave his assurances that his 
 friend had not said it was Madeira. But Lord Brail- 
 stone accused them of the worse unkindness to a ven- 
 erable Old Brown Sherry, in attributing a Madeira 
 flavour to it. Then another Welsh gentleman briskly 
 and emphatically stated his opinion, that the attribution 
 of Madeira flavour to it was a compliment. At this, 
 which smelt strongly, he said, of insult, Captain Abrane 
 called on the name of their absent host to warrant the 
 demand of an apology to the Old Brown Sherry, for 
 the imputation denying it an individual distinction. 
 Chumley Potts offered generally to bet that he would 
 distinguish blindfold at a single sip any Madeira from 
 any first-class Sherry, Old Brown or Pale. c Single sip 
 or smell ! ' Ambrose Mallard cried, either for himself 
 or his comrade, Queeney could not say which. 
 
 Of all Lord Fleetwood's following, Mr. Potts and Mr. 
 Mallard were, the Dame informs us, Queeney's favour- 
 ites, because they were so genial ; and he remembered 
 most of what they said and did, being moved to it by 
 ' poor young Mr. Mallard's melancholy end and Mr. 
 Potts's grief! ' 
 
 The Welsh gentlemen, after paying their devoirs to 
 the countess next morning, rode on in fresh health and 
 spirits at midday to Barlings, the seat of Mr. Mason 
 Fennell, a friend of Mr. Owain Wythan's. They 
 shouted, in an unseemly way, Queeney thought, at their 
 breakfast-table, to hear that three of the English party, 
 namely, Captain Abrane, Mr. Mallard, and Mr. Potts, 
 had rung for tea and toast in bed. Lord Simon Pits- 
 crew, Lord Brailstone, and the rest of the English 
 
 2 b 
 
386 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 were sore about it ; for it certainly wore a look of con- 
 stitutional inferiority on the English side, which could 
 boast of indubitably stouter muscles. The frenzied 
 spirits of the Welsh gentlemen, when riding off, let it 
 be known what their opinion was. Under the protec- 
 tion of the countess's presence, they were so cheery as 
 to seem triumphantly ironical ; they sent messages of 
 condolence to the three in bed. 
 
 With an undisguised reluctance, the countess, hold- 
 ing Mr. Owain Wythan's hand longer than was publicly 
 decent, calling him by his Christian name, consented to 
 their departure. As they left, they defiled before her ; 
 the vow was uttered by each, that at the instant of 
 her summons he would mount and devote himself to 
 her service, individually or collectively. She waved her 
 hand to them. They ranged in line and saluted. She 
 kissed her hand. Sweeping the cavaliers 1 obeisance, 
 gallantest of bows, they rode away. 
 
 A striking scene, Dame Gossip says ; but raises a 
 wind over the clipped adventure, and is for recounting 
 what London believed about it. Enough has been con- 
 ceded for the stoppage of her intrusion ; she is left in 
 the likeness of a full-charged pistol capless to the 
 clapping trigger. 
 
 That which London believed, or affected to believe 
 about it, would fill chapters. There was during many 
 months an impression of Lord Fleetwood's countess as 
 of a tenacious, dread, prevailing young woman, both 
 intrepid and astute, who had, by an exercise of various 
 arts, legitimate in open war of husband and wife, 
 gathered the pick of the Principality to storm and 
 carry another of her husband's houses. The certifica- 
 tion that her cavaliers were Welsh gentlemen of wealth 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 387 
 
 and position required a broader sneer at the Welsh than 
 was warranted by later and more intimate acquaintance, 
 if it could be made to redound to her discredit. So, 
 therefore, added to the national liking for a plucky 
 woman, she gained the respect for power. Whitechapel 
 was round her like London's one street's length exten- 
 sion of smoky haze, reminder of the morning's fog 
 under novel sunbeams. 
 
 Simultaneously, strange to say, her connubial antag- 
 onist, far from being overshadowed, grew to be propor- 
 tionately respected, and on the strength of his deserts, 
 apart from his title and his wealth. He defended him- 
 self, as he was bound to do, by welcoming the picked 
 Welsh squires with hospitable embrace, providing cere- 
 monies, receptions, and most comfortable arrangements 
 for them, along the route. But in thus gravely entering 
 into the knightly burlesque of the procession, and assist- 
 ing to swell the same, he not only drew the venom from 
 it, he stood forth as England's deputed representative, 
 equal to her invasive, challenging guests at all points, 
 comic, tragic, or cordial. He saw that it had to be 
 treated as a national affair ; and he parried the imputa- 
 tion which would have injured his country's name for 
 courtly breeding, had they been ill-received, while he 
 rescued his own good name from derision by joining the 
 extravagance. 
 
 He was well inspired. It was popularly felt to be 
 the supreme of clever — nay, noble — fencing. Really 
 noble, though the cleverness was conspicuous. A defen- 
 sive stroke, protecting him against his fair one's violent 
 charge of horse, warded off an implied attack upon Old 
 England, in Old England's best-humoured, easy manner. 
 
 Supposing the earl to have acted otherwise, his 
 
S88 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 countess would virtually have ridden over him, and 
 wild Wales have cast a shadow on the chivalry of 
 magisterial England. He and his country stood to 
 meet the issue together the moment the Countess of 
 Fleetwood and her escort crossed the Welsh border ; 
 when it became a question between the hot-hearted, at 
 their impetuous gallop, and the sedatively minded, in 
 an unfortified camp of arm-chairs. The earl's adroit- 
 ness, averting a collision fatal or discomforting to both, 
 disengaged him from an incumbent odium, of which, it 
 need hardly be stated, neither the lady nor her attendant 
 cavaliers had any notion at the hour of the assembly 
 for the start for England on the bridge of Pont-y-pridd. 
 The hungry mother had the safety of her babe in 
 thought. The hot-headed Welshmen were sworn to 
 guard their heroine. 
 
 That is the case presented by the Dame's papers, 
 when the incredible is excised. She claims the being 
 a good friend to fiction in feeding popular voracity with 
 all her stores. But the Old Buccaneer, no professed 
 friend to it, is a sounder guide in the maxim, where he 
 says : Deliver yourself by permit of your cheque on the 
 Bank of Reason, and your account is increased instead 
 of lessened. 
 
 Our account with credulity, he would signify. 
 
 The Dame does not like the shaking for a sifting. 
 Romance, however, is not a mountain made of gold, 
 but a vein running some way through ; and it must be 
 engineered, else either we are filled with wind from 
 swallowing indigestible substance, or we consent to a 
 debasing of the currency, which means her to-morrow's 
 bankruptcy; and the spectacle of Romance in the bank- 
 ruptcy court degrades us (who believe we are allied to 
 
A SURVEY OF THE WELSH CAVALIERS 389 
 
 her) as cruelly as it appals. It gives the cynic licence 
 to bark day and night for an entire generation. 
 
 Surely the Countess of Fleetwood's drive from the 
 Welsh borders to Esslemont, accompanied by the chosen 
 of the land, followed by the vivats of the whole Princi- 
 pality, and England gaping to hear the stages of her 
 progress, may be held sufficiently romantic without 
 stuffing of surprises and conflicts, adventures at inns, 
 alarms at midnight, windings of a horn over hilly verges 
 of black heaths, and the rape of the child, the pursuit, 
 the recovery of the child, after a new set of heroine per- 
 formances on the part of a strung-wire mother, whose 
 outcry in a waste country district, as she clasps her boy 
 to her bosom again : ' There 's a farm I see for milk for 
 him ! ' the Dame repeats, having begun with an admis- 
 sion that the tale has been contradicted, and is not pro- 
 duced on authority. The end in design is to win the 
 ear by making a fuss, and roll event upon event for 
 the braining of common intelligence, until her narra- 
 tive resembles dusty troopings along a road to the 
 races. 
 
 Carinthia and her babe reached Esslemont, no matter 
 what impediments. There, like a stopped runner whose 
 pantings lengthen to the longer breath, her alarms over 
 the infant subsided, ceasing for as long as she clasped it 
 or was in the room with it. Walking behind the pre- 
 cious donkey-basket round the park, she went armed, and 
 she soon won a fearful name at Kentish cottage-hearths, 
 though she was not black to see, nor old. No, she was 
 very young. But she did all the things that soldiers do, 
 — was a bit of a foreigner ; — she brought a reputation 
 up from the Welsh land, and it had a raven's croak and 
 a glow-worm's drapery and a goblin's origin. 
 
390 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Something was hinted of her having agitated London 
 once. Somebody dropped word of her and that old Lord 
 Levellier up at Croridge. She stalked park and country 
 at night. Stories, one or two near the truth, were told 
 of a restless and a very decided lady down these parts as 
 well; and the earl her husband daren't come nigh in his 
 dread of her, so that he runs as if to save his life out of 
 every place she enters. And he 's not one to run for a 
 trifle. His pride is pretty well a match for princes and 
 princesses. 
 
 All the same, he shakes in his shoes before her, durst 
 hardly spy at Esslemont again while she's in occupation. 
 His managing gentleman comes down from him, and 
 goes up from her ; that 's how they communicate. One 
 week she 's quite solitary ; another week the house is 
 brimful as can be. She 's the great lady entertaining 
 then. Yet they say it 's a fact, she has not a shilling of 
 her own to fling at a beggar. She 11 stock a cottage 
 wanting it with provision for a fortnight or more, and 
 she 11 order the doctor in, and she 11 call and see the 
 right things done for illness. But no money ; no one 's 
 to expect money of her. The shots you hear in Esslemont 
 grounds out of season are she and her maid, always 
 alongside her, at it before a target on a bank, trying 
 that old Lord Levellier's gunpowder out of his mill ; and 
 he 's got no money either ; not for his workmen, they 
 say, until they congregate, and a threatening to blow 
 him up brings forth half their pay, on account. But 
 he 's a known miser. She 's not that. She 's a pleasant- 
 faced lady for the poor. She has the voice poor people 
 like. It 's only her enemy, maybe her husband, she can 
 be terrible to. She'd drive a hole through a robber 
 stopping her on the road, as soon as look at him. 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 391 
 
 This was Esslemont's atmosphere working its way to 
 the earl, not so very long after the establishment of his 
 countess there. She could lay hold of the English, too, 
 it seemed. Did she call any gentleman of the district 
 by his Christian name ? Lord Simon Pitscrew reported 
 her doing so in the case of one of the Welshmen. 
 Those Welshmen ! Apparently they are making a 
 push for importance in the kingdom ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 IN WHICH CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 
 
 Behind his white plaster of composure, Lord Fleet- 
 wood had alternately raged and wondered during the 
 passage of the Welsh cavalcade up Eastward : — a 
 gigantic burlesque, that would have swept any husband 
 of their heroine off the scene had he failed to encounter 
 it deferentially, preserving his countenance and osten- 
 sibly his temper. An idiot of a woman, incurable in 
 her lunacy, suspects the father of the infant as guilty 
 of designs done to death in romances ; and so she 
 manages to set going solemnly a bigger blazing Tom 
 Fool's show than any known or written romance gives 
 word of ! And that fellow, Gower Woodseer, pleads, 
 in apology, for her husband's confusion, physiologically, 
 that it comes of her having been carried off and kept a 
 prisoner when she was bearing the child and knitting 
 her whole mind to ensure the child. But what sheer 
 animals these women are, if they take impressions in 
 such a manner ! And Mr. Philosopher argues that the 
 
392 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 abusing of woman proves the hating of Nature ; names 
 it ' the commonest insanity, and the deadliest,' and men 
 are ' planted in the bog of their unclean animal condi- 
 tion until they do proper homage to the animal Nature 
 makes the woman be."' Oh, pish, sir ! — as Meeson 
 Corby has the habit of exclaiming when Abrane's 
 ' fiddler' argues him into a corner. The fellow can 
 fiddle fine things and occasionally clear sense : — ' Men 
 hating Nature are insane. Women and Nature are 
 close. If it is rather general to hate Nature and mal- 
 treat women, we begin to see why the world is a mad 
 world.' That is the tune of the fiddler's fiddling. As 
 for him, something protects him. He was the slave. 
 of Countess Livia ; like Abrane, Mallard, Corby, 
 St. Ombre, young Cressett, and the dozens. He is now 
 her master. Can a man like that be foolish, in saying 
 of the Countess Carinthia, she is 'not only quick to 
 understand, she is in the quick of understanding ' ? 
 Gower Woodseer said it of her in Wales, and again on 
 the day of his walk up to London from Esslemont, 
 after pedestrian exercise, which may heat the frame, 
 but cools the mind. She stamped that idea on a 
 thoughtful fellow. 
 
 He's a Welshman. They are all excitable, — have 
 heads on hound's legs for a flying figure in front. Still, 
 they must have an object, definitely seen by them — 
 definite to them if dim to their neighbours ; and it will 
 run in the poetic direction : and the woman to win 
 them, win all classes of them, within so short a term, is 
 a toss above extraordinary. She is named Carinthia : 
 suitable name for the Welsh pantomimic procession. 
 Or cry out the word in an amphitheatre of Alpine 
 crags, — it sounds at home. 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 393 
 
 She is a daughter of the mountains, — should never 
 have left them. She is also a daughter of the Old 
 Buccaneer — no poor specimen of the fighting English- 
 man of his day. According to Rose Mackrell, he, this 
 Old Buccaneer, it was, who, by strange adventures, 
 brought the great Welsh mines into the family ! He 
 would not be ashamed in spying through his nautical 
 glass, up or down, at his daughter's doings. She has 
 not yet developed a taste for the mother's tricks : — the 
 mother, said to have been a kindler. That Countess of 
 Cressett was a romantic little fly-away bird. Both 
 parents were brave : the daughter would inherit gal- 
 lantry. She inherits a kind of thwarted beauty. Or it 
 needs the situation seen in Wales : her arms up and her 
 unaffrighted eyes over the unappeasable growl. She 
 had then the beauty coming from the fathom depths, 
 with the torch of Life in the jaws of Death to light 
 her: beauty of the nether kingdom mounting to an 
 upper place in the higher. Her beauty recognized, the 
 name of the man who married her is not Longears — 
 not to himself, is the main point ; nor will it be to the 
 world when he shows that it is not so to himself. 
 
 Suppose he went to her, would she be trying at 
 domination ? The woman's pitch above woman's beauty 
 was perceived to be no intermittent beam, but so living 
 as to take the stamp of permanence. More than to 
 say it was hers, it was she. What a deadly peril 
 brought into view was her character — soul, some call 
 it : generally a thing rather distasteful in women, or 
 chilling to the masculine temperament. Here it 
 attracts. Here, strange to say, it is the decided 
 attraction, in a woman of a splendid figure and a 
 known softness. By rights, she should have more 
 
394 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 understanding than to suspect the husband as guilty 
 of designs done to death in romances. However, she 
 is not a craven who compliments him by fearing him, 
 and he might prove that there is no need for fear. 
 But she would be expecting explanations before the 
 reconcilement. The bosom of these women will keep 
 on at its quick heaving until they have heard certain 
 formal words, oaths to boot. How speak them ? 
 
 His old road of the ladder appeared to Fleetwood 
 an excellent one for obviating explanations and effect- 
 ing the reconcilement without any temporary seeming 
 forfeit of the native male superiority. For there she 
 is at Esslemont now ; any night the window could be 
 scaled. c It is my husband. 1 The soul was in her voice 
 when she said it. 
 
 He remembered that it had not ennobled her to him 
 then ; had not endeared ; was taken for a foreign example 
 of the childish artless, imperfectly suited to our Eng- 
 lish clime. The tone of adorable utterances, however 
 much desired, is never for repetition ; nor is the cast of 
 divine sweet looks ; nor are the particular deeds — once 
 pardonable, fitly pleaded. A second scaling of her 
 window — no, night's black hills girdle the scene with 
 hoarse echoes ; the moon rushes out of her clouds 
 grimacing. Even Fleetwood's devil, much addicted to 
 cape and sword and ladder, the vulpine and the gryphine, 
 rejected it. 
 
 For she had, by singular transformation since, and 
 in spite of a deluging grotesque that was antecedently 
 incredible, she had become a personage, counting her 
 adherents ; she could put half the world in motion on 
 her side. Yell those Welshmen to scorn, they were 
 on a plane finding native ground with as large a body 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 395 
 
 of these English. His baser mind bowed to the fact. 
 Her aspect was entirely different ; her attitude toward 
 him as well : insomuch that he had to chain her to her 
 original features by the conjuring of recollected phrases 
 memorable for the vivid portraiture of her foregone 
 simplicity and her devotion to ' my husband.' 
 
 Yes, there she was at Esslemont, securely there, near 
 him, to be seen any day ; worth claiming, too ; a com- 
 batant figure, provocative of the fight and the capture 
 rather than repellent. The respect enforced by her atti- 
 tude awakened in him his inherited keen old relish for 
 our intersexual strife and the indubitable victory of the 
 stronger, with the prospect of slavish charms, fawning 
 submission, marrowy spoil. Or perhaps, preferably, a 
 sullen submission, reluctant charms ; far more marrowy. 
 Or who can say ? — the creature is a rocket of the shot 
 into the fiery garland of stars ; she may personate any 
 new marvel, be an unimagined terror, an overwhelming 
 bewitchment: for she carries the unexpected in her 
 bosom. And does it look like such indubitable victory, 
 when the man, the woman's husband, divided from her, 
 toothsome to the sex, acknowledges within himself and 
 lets the world know his utter dislike of other women's 
 charms, to the degree that herbal anchorites positively 
 could not be colder, could not be chaster : — and he no 
 forest bird, but having the garden of the variety of 
 fairest flowers at nod and blush about him ! That was 
 the truth. Even Henrietta's beauty had the effect of 
 a princess's birthday doll admired on show by a con- 
 temptuous boy. 
 
 Wherefore, then, did the devil in him seek to pervert 
 this loveliest of young women and feed on her humilia- 
 tion for one flashing minute ? The taste had gone, the 
 
396 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 desire of the vengeance was extinct, personal gratifica- 
 tion could not exist. He spied into himself, and set it 
 down to one among the many mysteries. 
 
 Men uninstructed in analysis of motives arrive at 
 this dangerous conclusion, which spares their pride and 
 caresses their indolence, while it flatters the sense of 
 internal vastness, and invites to headlong intoxication. 
 It allows them to think they are of such a compound, 
 and must necessarily act in that manner. They are not 
 taught at the schools or by the books of the honoured 
 places in the libraries, to examine and see the simplicity 
 of these mysteries, which it would be here and there 
 a saving grace for them to see ; as the minstrel, duti- 
 fully inclining to the prosy in their behalf and moral- 
 ity's, should exhibit ; he should arrest all the characters 
 of his drama to spring it to vision and strike perchance 
 the chord primarily if not continually moving them, 
 that readers might learn the why and how of a germ 
 of evil, its flourishing under rebuke, the persistency of 
 it after the fell creative energy has expired and pleasure 
 sunk to be a phlegmatic dislike, almost a loathing. 
 
 This would here be done, but for signs of a barometric 
 dead fall in Dame Gossip's chaps, already heavily pen- 
 dent. She would be off with us on one of her whirling 
 cyclones or elemental mad waltzes, if a step were taken 
 to the lecturing-desk. We are so far in her hands that 
 we have to keep her quiet. She will not hear of the 
 reasons and the change of reasons for one thing and 
 the other. Things were so : narrate them, and let 
 readers do their reflections for themselves, she says, 
 denouncing our conscientious method as the direct road 
 downward to the dreadful modern appeal to the senses 
 and assault on them for testimony to the veracity of 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 397 
 
 everything described ; to the extent that, at the men- 
 tion of a vile smell, it shall be blown into the reader's 
 nostrils, and corking-pins attack the comfortable seat 
 of him simultaneously with a development of surprises. 
 ' Thither your conscientiousness leads.' ' 
 
 It is not perfectly visible. And she would gain in- 
 formation of the singular nature of the young of the 
 male sex in listening to the wrangle between Lord 
 Fleetwood and Gower Woodseer on the subject of 
 pocket-money for the needs of the Countess Carinthia. 
 For it was a long and an angry one, and it brought 
 out both of them, exposing, of course, the more com- 
 plex creature the most. They were near a rupture, so 
 scathing was Gower's tone of irate professor to shirky 
 scholar — or it might be put, German professor to 
 English scuffle-shoe. 
 
 She is for the scene of ' Chillon John's ' attempt to 
 lestore the respiration of his bank-book by wager; to 
 wit, that he would walk a mile, run a mile, ride a mile, 
 and jump ten hurdles, then score five rifle-shots at a 
 three hundred yards' distant target within a count of 
 minutes ; twenty-five, she says ; and vows it to have 
 been one of the most exciting of scenes ever witnessed 
 on green turf in the land of wagers ; and that he was 
 accomplishing it quite certainly when, at the first of 
 the hurdles, a treacherous unfolding and waving of a 
 white flag caused his horse to swerve and the loss of one 
 minute, seven and twenty seconds, before he cleared the 
 hurdles ; after which, he had to fire his shots hurriedly, 
 and the last counted blank, for being outside the circle 
 of the stated time. 
 
 So he was beaten. But a terrific uproar over the 
 field proclaimed the popular dissatisfaction. Presentlv 
 
398 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 there was a eleavage of the mob, and behold a chase at 
 the heels of a fellow to rival the very captain himself 
 for fleetness. He escaped, leaving his pole with the 
 sheet nailed to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul 
 play ; or a proof, as the other side declared, of an 
 innocently premature signalizing of the captain's victory. 
 However that might be, he ran. Seeing him spin his 
 legs at a hound's pace, half a mile away, four country- 
 men attempted to stop him. All four were laid on 
 their backs in turn with stupefying celerity ; and on 
 rising to their feet, and for the remainder of their 
 natural lives, they swore that no man but a Champion 
 could have floored them so. This again may have 
 been due to the sturdy island pride of four good 
 men knocked over by one. We are unable to decide. 
 Wickedness there was, the Dame says; and she counsels 
 the world to ' put and put together,' for, at any rate, 
 c a partial elucidation of a most mysterious incident.' 
 As to the wager-money, the umpires dissented ; a 
 famous quarrel, that does not concern us here, sprang 
 out of the dispute ; which was eventually, after great 
 disturbance of the country, referred to three leading 
 sportsmen in the metropolitan sphere, who pronounced 
 the wager 'off,' being two to one. Hence arose the 
 dissatisfied third party, and the letters of this minority 
 to the newspapers, exciting, if not actually dividing, 
 all England for several months. 
 
 Now the month of December was the month of the 
 Dame's mysterious incident. From the date of January, 
 as Madge Winch knew, Christopher Ines had ceased 
 to be in the service of the Earl of Fleetwood. At 
 Esslemont Park gates, one winter afternoon of a North- 
 east wind blowing 'rum-shrub into men for a stand 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 399 
 
 against rheumatics/ as he remarked, Ines met the girl 
 by appointment, and informing her that he had money, 
 and that Lord Fleetwood was * a black nobleman, 1 he 
 proposed immediate marriage. The hymeneal invita- 
 tion, wafted to her on the breath of rum-shrub, ob- 
 tained no response from Madge until she had received 
 evasive answers as to why the earl dismissed him, and 
 whence the stock of money came. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood, he repeated, was a black nobleman. 
 She brought him to say of his knowledge, that Lord 
 Fleetwood hated, and had reason to hate, Captain 
 Levellier. * Shouldn't I hate the man took my sweet- 
 heart from me and popped me into the noose with his 
 sister instead ? ' Madge was now advised to be over- 
 come by the smell of rum-shrub : — a mere fancy drink 
 tossed off by heroes in their idle moments, before they 
 settle down to the serious business of real drinking, 
 Kit protested. He simulated envious admiration of 
 known heroes, who meant business, and scorned any 
 of the weak stuff under brandy, and went at it till 
 the bottles were the first to give in. For why ? They 
 had to stomach an injury from the world or their 
 young woman, and half-way on they shoved that 
 young person and all enemies aside, trampled 'em. 
 That was what Old CTDevy signified ; and many 's the 
 man driven to his consolation by a cat of a girl, who 's 
 like the elements in their puffs and spits at a gallant 
 ship, that rides the tighter and the tighter for all they 
 can do to capsize. ' Tighter than ever I was tight I '11 
 be to-night, if you can't behave.' 
 
 They fell upon the smack of words. Kit hitched 
 and huffed away, threatening bottles. Whatever he 
 had done, it was to establish the petticoated hornet 
 
400 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 in the dignity of matron of a champion light-weight's 
 wholesome retreat of a public-house. A spell of his 
 larkish hilarity was for the punishment of the girl 
 devoted to his heroical performances, as he still con- 
 sidered her to be, though women are notoriously 
 volatile, and her language was mounting a stage above 
 the kitchen. 
 
 Madge had little sorrow for him. She was the girl 
 of the fiery heart, not the large heart ; she could never 
 be devoted to more than one at a time, and her mistress 
 had all her heart. In relation to Kit, the thought of 
 her having sacrificed her good name to him, flung her 
 on her pride of chastity, without the reckoning of it 
 as a merit. It was the inward assurance of her inde- 
 pendence : the young spinster's planting of the standard 
 of her proud secret knowledge of what she is, let it be 
 a thing of worth or what you will, or the world think 
 as it may. That was her thought. 
 
 Her feeling, the much livelier animation, was bitter 
 grief, because her mistress, unlike herself, had been 
 betrayed by her ignorance of the man into calling him 
 husband. Just some knowledge of the man ! The 
 warning to the rescue might be there. For nothing 
 did the dear lady weep except for her brother's evil 
 fortune. The day when she had intelligence from Mrs. 
 Levellier of her brother's defeat, she wept over the 
 letter on her knees long hours. 'Me, my child, my 
 brother ! ' she cried more than once. She had her 
 suspicion of the earl then, and instantly, as her loving 
 servant had. The suspicion was now no dark light, 
 but a clear day-beam to Madge. She adopted Kit's 
 word of Lord Fleetwood. ' A black nobleman he is ! 
 he is ! ' Her mistress had written like a creature 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 401 
 
 begging him for money. He did not deign a reply. 
 To her! When he had seen good proof she was the 
 bravest woman on earth ; and she rushed at death to 
 save a child, a common child, as people say. And 
 who knows but she saved that husband of hers, too, 
 from bites might have sent him out of the world 
 barking, and all his wealth not able to stop him ! 
 
 They were in the month of March. Her dear mis- 
 tress had been begging my lord through Mr. Woodseer 
 constantly of late for an allowance of money ; on her 
 knees to him, as it seemed ; and Mr. Woodseer was 
 expected at Esslemont. Her mistress was looking for 
 him eagerly. Something her heart was in depended on 
 it, and only her brother could be the object, for now 
 she loved only him of these men ; though a gentleman 
 coming over from Barlings pretty often would pour 
 mines of money into her lap for half a word. 
 
 Carinthia had walked up to Croridge in the morning 
 to meet her brother at Lekkatts. Madge was left 
 guardian of the child. She liked a stroll any day round 
 Esslemont Park, where her mistress was beginning to 
 strike roots ; as she soon did wherever she was planted, 
 despite a tone of pity for artificial waters and gar- 
 deners' arts. Madge respected them. She knew nothing 
 of the grandeur of wildness. Her native English ven- 
 eration for the smoothing hand of wealth led her to 
 think Esslemont the home of all homes for a lady with 
 her husband beside her. And without him, too, if he 
 were wafted over seas and away : if there would but 
 come a wind to do that ! 
 
 The wild Northeaster tore the budded beeches. 
 Master John Edward Russett lay in the cradling-basket 
 drawn by his docile donkey, Martha and Madge to 
 
 2 c 
 
402 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 right and left of him, a speechless rustic, graduating in 
 footman's livery, to rear. 
 
 At slow march round by the wrinkled water, Madge 
 saw the park gates flung wide. A coach drove up the 
 road along on the farther rim of the circle, direct for 
 the house. It stopped, the team turned leisurely and 
 came at a smart pace toward the carriage-basket. Lord 
 Fleetwood was recognized. 
 
 He alighted, bidding one of his grooms drive to 
 stables. Madge performed her reverence, aware that 
 she did it in clumsy style ; his presence had startled 
 her instincts and set them travelling. 
 
 6 Coldish for the youngster,' he said. * All well, 
 Madge?' 
 
 6 Baby sleeps in the air, my lord,' she replied. ' My 
 lady has gone to Croridge.' 
 
 4 Sharp air for a child, isn't it ? ' 
 
 * My lady teaches him to breathe with his mouth 
 shut, like her father taught her when she was little. 
 Our baby never catches colds."' 
 
 Madge displayed the child's face. 
 
 The father dropped a glance on it from the height of 
 skies. 
 
 6 Croridge, you said ? ' 
 
 ' Her uncle, Lord Levellier's.'' 
 
 ' You say, never catches cold ? ' 
 
 6 Not our baby, my lord.' 
 
 Probably good management on the part of the 
 mother. But the wife's absence disappointed the hus- 
 band strung to meet her, and an obtrusion of her 
 practical motherhood blurred the prospect demanded 
 by his present step. 
 
 * When do you expect her return, Madge ? ' 
 
CERTAIN CHANGES MAY BE DISCERNED 403 
 
 ' Before nightfall, my lord.' 
 
 'She walks?' 
 
 ' Oh yes, my lady is fond of walking.' 
 
 'I suppose she could defend herself?' 
 
 ' My lady walks with a good stick.' 
 
 Fleetwood weighed the chances ; beheld her figure 
 attacked, Amazonian. 
 
 ' And tell me, my dear — Kit ? ' 
 
 6 1 don't see more of Kit Ines.' 
 
 ' What has the fellow done ? ' 
 
 6 1 'd like him to let me know why he was dismissed.' 
 
 ' Ah. He kept silent on that point.' 
 
 6 He let out enough.' 
 
 'You've punished him, if he's to lose a bonny 
 sweetheart, poor devil ! Your sister Sally sends you 
 messages ? ' 
 
 ' We 're both of us grateful, my lord.' 
 
 He lifted the thin veil from John Edward Russett's 
 face with a loveless hand. 
 
 ' You remember the child bitten by a dog down in 
 Wales. I have word from my manager there. Poor 
 little wretch has died — died raving.' 
 
 Madge's bosom went shivering up and sank. ' My 
 lady was right. She 's not often wrong.' 
 
 6 She 's looking well ? ' said the earl, impatient with 
 her moral merits : — and this communication from Wales 
 had been the decisive motive agent in hurrying him at 
 last to Esslemont. The next moment he heard coolly 
 of the lady's looking well. He wanted fervid eulogy of 
 his wife's looks, if he was to hear any. 
 
404 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE 
 
 The girl was counselled by the tremor of her instincts 
 to forbear to speak of the minor circumstance, that her 
 mistress had, besides a good stick, a good companion 
 on the road to Cro ridge : and she rejoiced to think her 
 mistress had him, because it seemed an intimation of 
 justice returning upon earth. She was combative, a 
 born rebel against tyranny. She weighed the powers, 
 she felt to the worth, of the persons coming into her 
 range of touch : she set her mistress and my lord front- 
 ing for a wrestle, and my lord's wealth went to thin 
 vapour, and her mistress's character threw him. More 
 dimly, my lord and the Welsh gentleman were put to 
 the trial : a tough one for these two men. She did not 
 proclaim the winner, but a momentary flutter of pity 
 in the direction of Lord Fleetwood did as much. She 
 pitied him ; for his presence at Esslemont betrayed an 
 inclination ; he was ignorant of his lady's character, of 
 how firm she could be to defy him and all the world, in 
 her gratitude to the gentleman she thought of as her 
 true friend, smiled at for his open nature, called by his 
 Christian name. 
 
 The idea of a piece of information stinging Lord 
 Fleetwood, the desire to sting, so to be an instrument 
 of retribution (one of female human nature's ecstasies) ; 
 and her abstaining, that she might not pain the lord 
 who had been generous to her sister Sally, made the 
 force in Madge's breast which urges to the gambling 
 
BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE 405 
 
 for the undeveloped, entitled prophecy. She kept it 
 low and felt it thrill. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood chatted; Madge had him wincing. 
 He might pull the cover of the child's face carelessly — 
 he looked at the child. His look at the child was a 
 thought of the mother. If he thought of the mother, 
 he would be wanting to see her. If he heard her call a 
 gentleman by his Christian name, and heard the gentle- 
 man say 6 Carinthia,' my lord would begin to shiver at 
 changes. Women have to do unusual things when they 
 would bring that outer set to human behaviour. Per- 
 haps my lord would mount the coach-box and whip his 
 horses away, adieu forever. His lady would not weep. 
 He might, perhaps, command her to keep her mouth 
 shut from gentlemen's Christian names, all except his 
 own. His lady would not obey. He had to learn 
 something of changes that had come to others as well 
 as to himself. Ah, and then would he dare hint, as 
 base men will ? He may blow foul smoke on her, she 
 will shine out of it. He has to learn what she is, 
 that is his lesson ; and let him pray all night and work 
 hard all day for it not to be too late. Let him try 
 to be a little like Mr. Woodseer, who worships the 
 countess, and is hearty with the gentleman she treats 
 as her best of friends. There is the real nobleman. 
 
 Fleetwood chatted on airily. His instincts were 
 duller than those of the black-browed girl, at whom he 
 gazed for idle satisfaction of eye from time to time 
 while she replied demurely and maintained her drama 
 of the featureless but well-distinguished actors within 
 her bosom, — a round, plump bust, good wharfage and 
 harbourage, he was thinking. Excellent harbourage, 
 supposing the arms out in pure good-will. A girl to 
 
4.06 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 hold her voyager fast and safe ! Men of her class had 
 really a capital choice in a girl like this. Men of 
 another class as well, possibly, for temporary anchorage 
 out mid-channel. No ? — possibly not. Here and there 
 a ffirl is a Tartar. Ines talked of her as if she were a 
 kind of religious edifice and a doubt were sacrilege. 
 She could impress the rascal : girls have their arts for 
 reaching the holy end, and still they may have a 
 welcome for a foreign ship. 
 
 The earl said humorously : ' You will grant me 
 permission to lunch at your mistress's table in her 
 absence ? ' And she said : * My lord ! , And he re- 
 sumed, to waken her interest with a personal question : 
 ' You like our quiet country round Esslemont ? * She 
 said : ' I do,' and gave him plain look for look. Her 
 eye was undefended : he went into it, finding neither 
 shallow nor depth, simply the look, always the look ; 
 whereby he knew that no story of man was there, and 
 not the shyest of remote responsive invitations from 
 Nature's wakened and detected rogue. The bed of an 
 unmarried young woman's eye yields her secret of past 
 and present to the intrepid diver, if he can get his 
 plunge ; he holds her for the tenth of a minute, that is 
 the revealment. Jewel or oyster-shell, it is ours. She 
 cannot withhold it, he knew right well. This girl, 
 then, was, he could believe, one of the rarely ex- 
 ampled innocent in knowledge. He was practised to 
 judge.^ 
 
 Invitation or challenge or response from the hand- 
 somest he would have scorned just" then. His native 
 devilry suffered a stir at sight of an innocent in 
 knowledge and spotless after experiences. By a sudden 
 singular twist, rather unfairly, naturally, as it happened, 
 
BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE 407 
 
 he attributed it to an influence issuing from her mistress, 
 to whom the girl was devoted, whom consequently she 
 copied; might physically, and also morally, at a distance, 
 resemble. 
 
 1 Well, you Ve been a faithful servant to your lady, 
 my dear ; I hope you '11 be comfortable here, 1 he said. 
 ' She likes the mountains." 
 
 4 My lady would be quite contented if she could pass 
 two months of the year in the mountains,' Madge 
 answered. 
 
 ' Look at me. They say people living together get 
 a likeness to one another. What 's your opinion ? Upon 
 my word, your eyebrows remind me, though they Ve not 
 the colour — they have a bend . . .' 
 
 6 You Ve seen my lady in danger, my lord ? '' 
 
 6 Yes ; well, there 's no one to resemble her there, 
 she has her mark — kind of superhuman business. We Ve 
 none of us 'fifty feet high, with phosphorous heads,' as 
 your friend Mr. Gower Woodseer says of the prodigio- 
 sities. Lady Fleetwood is back — when ? ' 
 
 6 Before dark, she should be.' 
 
 He ran up the steps to the house. 
 
 At Lekkatts beneath Croridge a lean midday meal 
 was being finished hard on the commencement by a 
 silent company of three. When eating is choking to 
 the younger members of the repast, bread and cold 
 mutton-bone serve the turn as conclusively as the 
 Frenchman's buffet-dishes. Carinthia's face of unshed 
 tears dashed what small appetite Chillon had. Lord 
 Levellier plied his fork in his right hand ruminating, 
 his back an arch across his plate. 
 
 Riddles to the thwarted young, these old people 
 will not consent to be read by sensations. Carinthia 
 
408 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 watched his jaws at their work of eating under his 
 victim's eye — knowing Chillon to be no longer an 
 officer in the English service; knowing that her be- 
 loved had sold out for the mere money to pay debts and 
 support his Henrietta ; knowing, as he must know, that 
 Chillon's act struck a knife to pierce his mother's breast 
 through her coffin-boards ! This old man could eat, and 
 he could withhold the means due to his dead sister's 
 son. Could he look on Chillon and not feel that the 
 mother's heart was beating in her son's fortunes ? Half 
 the money due to Chillon would have saved him from 
 ruin. 
 
 Lord Levellier laid his fork on the plate. He 
 munched his grievance with his bit of meat. The 
 nephew and niece here present feeding on him were 
 not so considerate as the Welsh gentleman, a total 
 stranger, who had walked up to Lekkatts with the 
 Countess of Fleetwood, and expressed the preference 
 to feed at an inn. Relatives are cormorants. 
 
 His fork on his plate released the couple. Barely 
 half a dozen words, before the sitting to that niggard 
 restoration, had informed Carinthia of the step taken 
 by her brother. She beckoned him to follow her. 
 
 ' The worst is done now, Chillon. I am silent. Uncle 
 is a rock. You say we must not offend. I have given 
 him my whole mind. Say where Riette is to live.' 
 
 * Her headquarters will be here, at a furnished house. 
 She's with her cousin, the Dowager.' 
 
 ' Yes. She should be with me.' 
 
 ' She wants music. She wants — poor girl ! let her 
 have what comes to her.' 
 
 Their thoughts beneath their speech were like fish 
 darting under shadow of the traffic bridge. 
 
V 
 
 BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE 409 
 
 ' She loves music,' said Carinthia ; ' it is almost life 
 to her, like fresh air to me. Next month I am in 
 London ; Lady Arpington is kind. She will give me 
 as much of their polish as I can take. I dare say I 
 should feel the need of it if I were an enlightened 
 person.' 
 
 ' For instance, did I hear " Owain," when your Welsh 
 friend was leaving ? ' Chillon asked. 
 
 ' It was his dying wife's wish, brother.' 
 
 1 Keep to the rules, dear.' 
 
 f They have been broken, Chillon.' 
 
 6 Mend them.' 
 
 6 That would be a step backward.' 
 
 6 " The right one for defence I " father says.' 
 
 * Father says, " The habit of the defensive paralyzes 
 will?" 
 
 ' " Womanizes? he says, Carin. You quote him 
 falsely, to shield the sex. Quite right. But my sister 
 must not be tricky. Keep to the rules. You're an 
 exceptional woman, and it would be a good argument, 
 if you were not in an exceptional position.' 
 
 6 Owain is the exceptional man, brother.' 
 
 < My dear, after all, you have a husband.' 
 
 6 1 have a brother, I have a friend, I have no — I am a 
 man's wife and the mother of his child ; I am free, or 
 husband would mean dungeon. Does my brother want 
 an oath from me ? That I can give him.' 
 
 ' Conduct, yes ; I couldn't doubt you,' said Chillon. 
 * But " the world \s a food at a dyke for women, and they 
 must keep watch? you 've read.' 
 
 6 But Owain is not our enemy,' said Carinthia, in her 
 deeper tones, expressive of conviction and not thereby 
 assuring to hear. ' He is a man with men, a child with 
 
410 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 women. His Rebecca could describe him ; I laugh now 
 at some of her sayings of him ; I see her mouth, so 
 tenderly comical over her big " simpleton," she called 
 him, and loved him so. 1 
 
 The gentleman appeared on the waste land above the 
 house. His very loose black suit and a peculiar roll of 
 his gait likened him to a mourning boatswain who was 
 jolly. In Lord Levellier's workshop his remarks were 
 to the point. Chillon's powders for guns and blasting 
 interested him, and he proposed to ride over from 
 Barlings to witness a test of them. 
 
 ' You are staying at Barlings ? ' Chillon said. 
 
 ' Yes ; now Carinthia is at Esslemont,'' he replied, 
 astoundingly the simpleton. 
 
 His conversation was practical and shrewd on the 
 walk with Chillon and Carinthia down to Esslemont : 
 evidently he was a man well armed to encounter the 
 world ; social usages might be taught him. Chillon 
 gained a round view of the worthy simple fellow, unlikely 
 to turn out impracticable, for he talked such good sense 
 upon matters of business. 
 
 Carinthia saw her brother tickled and interested. A 
 feather moved her. Full of tears though she was, her 
 heart lay open to the heavens and their kind, small, 
 wholesome gifts. Her happiness in the walk with her 
 brother and her friend — the pair of them united by 
 her companionship, both of them showing they counted 
 her their comrade — was the nearest to the radiant day 
 before she landed on an island, and imagined happiness 
 grew here, and found it to be gilt thorns, loud mockery. 
 A shaving Northeaster tore the scream from hedges 
 and the roar from copses under a faceless breadth of 
 sky, and she said, as they turned into Esslemont Park 
 
BELOW THE SURFACE AND ABOVE 411 
 
 lane: 'We have had one of our old walks to-day, 
 Chillon!' 
 
 c You used to walk together long walks over in your 
 own country,'' said Mr. Wythan. 
 
 6 Yes, Owain, we did, and my brother never knew me 
 tired.' 
 
 4 Never knew you confess to it,' said Chillon, as he 
 swallowed the name on her lips. 
 
 ' Walking was flying over there, brother.' 
 
 'Say once or twice in Wales, too, 1 Mr. Wythan 
 begged of her. 
 
 'Wales reminded. Yes, Owain, I shall not forget 
 Wales, Welsh people. Mr. Woodseer says they have 
 the three-stringed harp in their breasts, and one string 
 is always humming, whether you pull it or no.' 
 
 ' That 's love of country ! that 's their love of wild 
 Wales, Carinthia.'* 
 
 There was a quiet interrogation in Chillon's turn of 
 the head at this fervent simpleton. 
 
 'I love them for that hum,' said she. * It joins one 
 in me. 1 
 
 ' Call to them any day, they are up, ready to march ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, dear souls ! ' Carinthia said. 
 
 Her breath drew in. 
 
 The three were dumb. They saw Lord Fleetwood 
 standing in the park gateway. 
 
412 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD 
 
 The earl's easy grace of manner was a ceremonial 
 mantle on him as he grasped the situation in a look. 
 He bent with deferential familiarity to his countess, 
 exactly toning the degree of difference which befitted a 
 salute to the two gentlemen, amiable or hostile. 
 
 1 There and back ? ' he said, and conveyed a compli- 
 ment to Carinthia's pedestrian vigour in the wary smile 
 which can be recalled for a snub. 
 
 She replied : ' We have walked the distance, my lord.'' 
 
 Her smile was the braced one of an untired stepper. 
 
 8 A cold wind for you/ 
 
 * We walked fast.' 
 
 She compelled him to take her in the plural, though 
 he addressed her separately, but her tones had their 
 music. 
 
 ' Your brother, Captain Kirby-Levellier, I believe ? ' 
 
 6 My brother is not of the army now, my lord.' 
 
 She waved hand for Madge to conduct donkey and 
 baby to the house. He noticed. He was unruffled. 
 
 The form of amenity expected from her, in relation 
 to her brother, was not exhibited. She might perhaps 
 be feeling herself awkward at introductions, and had 
 to be excused. 
 
 c I beg,' he said, and motioned to Chillon the way 
 of welcome into the park, saw the fixed figure, and 
 passed over the unspoken refusal, with a remark to 
 Mr. Wythan : ' At Barlings, I presume ? 1 
 
 1 My tent is pitched there, 1 was the answer. 
 
BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD 413 
 
 ' Good-bye, my brother,' said Carinthia. 
 
 Chillon folded his arms round her. ' God bless you, 
 dear love. Let me see you soon." 1 He murmured : 
 ' You can protect yourself. 1 
 
 ' Fear nothing for me, dearest. 1 
 
 She kissed her brother's cheek. The strain of her 
 spread fingers on his shoulder signified no dread at her 
 being left behind. 
 
 Strangers observing their embrace would have vowed 
 that the pair were brother and sister, and of a notable 
 stock. 
 
 'I will walk with you to Croridge again when you 
 send word you are willing to go ; and so, good-bye, 
 Owain,' she said. 
 
 She gave her hand ; frankly she pressed the Welsh- 
 man's, he not a whit behind her in frankness. 
 
 Fleetwood had a skimming sense of a drop upon a 
 funny, whirly world. He kept from giddiness, though 
 the whirl had lasted since he beheld the form of a wild 
 forest girl, dancing, as it struck him now, over an 
 abyss, on the plumed shoot of a stumpy tree. 
 
 Ay, and she danced at the ducal schloss; — she 
 mounted his coach like a witch of the Alps up crags ; 
 — she was beside him pelting to the vale under a leaden 
 Southwester; — she sat solitary by the fireside in the 
 room of the inn. 
 
 Veil it. He consented to the veil he could not lift. 
 He had not even power to try, and his heart thumped. 
 
 London's Whitechapel Countess glided before him 
 like a candle in the foff. 
 
 He had accused her as the creature destroying 
 Romance. Was it gold in place of gilding, absolute 
 upper human life that the ridiculous object at his heels 
 
414 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 over London proposed instead of delirious brilliancies, 
 drunken gallops, poison-syrups, — puffs of a young man's 
 vapours ? 
 
 There was Madge and the donkey basket-trap ahead 
 on the road to the house, bearing proof of the veiled 
 had-been : signification of a might-have-been. Why 
 not a possible might-be ? Still the might-be might be. 
 Looking on this shaven earth and sky of March with 
 the wrathful wind at work, we know that it is not the 
 end : a day follows for the world. But looking on 
 those blown black funeral sprays, and the wrinkled chill 
 waters, and the stare of the Esslemont house-windows, 
 it has an appearance of the last lines of our written 
 volume : dead Finis. Not death ; fouler, the man alive 
 seeing himself stretched helpless for the altering of his 
 deeds ; a coffin carrying him ; the fatal white-headed 
 sacerdotal official intoning his aims on the march to 
 front, the drear craped files of the liveried, salaried 
 mourners over his failure trooping at his heels. 
 
 Frontword was the small lake's grey water, rearward 
 an avenue of limes. 
 
 But the man alive, if but an inch alive, can so take 
 his life in his clutch, that he does alter, cleanse, recast 
 his deeds : — it is known ; priests proclaim it, philoso- 
 phers admit it. 
 
 Can he lay his clutch on another's life, and wring out 
 the tears shed, the stains of the bruises, recollection of 
 the wrongs ? 
 
 Contemplate the wounded creature as a woman. 
 Then, what sort of woman is she ? She was once under 
 a fascination — ludicrously, painfully, intensely like a 
 sort of tipsy poor puss, the trapped hare tossed to her 
 serpent ; and thoroughly reassured for a few caresses, 
 
BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD 415 
 
 quite at home, caged and at home ; and all abloom 
 with pretty ways, modest pranks, innocent fondlings. 
 Gobbled, my dear ! 
 
 It is the doom of the innocents, a natural fate. 
 Smother the creature with kindness again, show we are 
 a point in the scale above that old coiler snake — which 
 broke no bones, bit not so very deep ; — she will be, she 
 ought to be, the woman she was. That is, if she was 
 then sincere, a dose of kindness should operate happily to 
 restore the honeymoony fancies, hopes, trusts, dreams, 
 all back, as before the honeymoon showed the silver 
 crook and shadowy hag's back of a decaying crescent. 
 And true enough, the poor giiTs young crescent of a 
 honeymoon went down sickly-yellow rather early. It 
 can be renewed. She really was at that time rather 
 romantic. She became absurd. Romance is in her, 
 nevertheless. She is a woman of mettle: she is probably 
 expecting to be wooed. One makes a hash of yesterday's 
 left dish, but she may know no better. ' Add a pickle, 1 
 as Chummy Potts used to say. The dish is rendered 
 savoury by a slight expenditure of attentions, just a dab 
 of intimated soft stuff. 
 
 ' Pleasant to see you established here, if you find the 
 place agreeable,' he said. 
 
 She was kissing her hand to her brother, all her eyes 
 for him — or for the couple ; and they were hidden by 
 the park lodge before she replied : 6 It is an admired, 
 beautiful place. 1 
 
 6 1 came,' said he, 6 to have your assurance that it 
 suits you. 1 
 
 6 1 thank you, my lord. 1 
 
 '"My lord" would like a short rest, Carin- 
 thia/ 
 
416 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She seemed placidly acquiescing. ' You have seen 
 the boy? 1 
 
 ' Twice to-day. We were having a conversation just 
 now. 1 
 
 * We think him very intelligent." 
 
 * Lady Arpington tells me you do the honours here 
 excellently.' 
 
 6 She is good to me. 1 
 
 ' Praises the mother's management of the young one. 
 John Edward : Edward for call-name. Madge boasts 
 his power for sleeping.' 
 
 1 He gives little trouble.' 
 
 1 And babes repay us ! We learn from small things. 
 Out of the mouth of babes wisdom? Well, their habits 
 show the wisdom of the mother. A good mother ! 
 There 's no higher title. A lady of my acquaintance 
 bids fair to win it, they say.' 
 
 Carinthia looked in simplicity, saw herself, and said : 
 * If a mother may rear her boy till he must go to school, 
 she is rewarded for all she does.' 
 
 'Ah,' said he, nodding over her mania of the per- 
 petual suspicion. ' Leddings, Queeney, the servants 
 here, run smoothly ? ' 
 
 6 They do : they are happy in serving.' 
 
 ' You see, we English are not such bad fellows when 
 we 're known. The climate to-day, for example, is 
 rather trying.' 
 
 'I miss colours most in England,' said Carinthia. 
 ' I like the winds. Now and then we have a day to 
 remember.' 
 
 6 We 're to be " the artist of the day," Gower Wood- 
 seer says, and we get an attachment to the dreariest ; 
 we are to study "small variations of the commonplace" 
 
BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD 417 
 
 — dear me ! But he may be right. The " sky of lead 
 and scraped lead " over those limes, he points out ; and 
 it 's not a bad trick for reconciling us to gloomy English 
 weather. You take lessons from him ? ' 
 
 ' I can always learn from him,' said Carinthia. 
 
 Fleetwood depicted his plodding Gower at the tussle 
 with account-books. She was earnest in sympathy; 
 not awake to the comical ; dull as the clouds, dull as 
 the discourse. Yet he throbbed for being near her: 
 took impression of her figure, the play of her features, 
 the carriage of her body. 
 
 He was shut from her eyes. The clear brown eyes 
 gave exchange of looks; less of admission than her 
 honest maid's. 
 
 Madge and the miracle infant awaited them on the 
 terrace. For so foreign did the mother make herself 
 to him, that the appearance of the child, their own 
 child, here between them, was next to miraculous ; and 
 the mother, who might well have been the most aston- 
 ished, had transparently not an idea beyond the verified 
 palpable lump of young life she lifted in her arms 
 out of the arms of Madge, maternally at home with 
 its presence on earth. 
 
 Demonstrably a fine specimen, a promising youngster. 
 The father was allowed to inspect him. This was his 
 heir : a little fellow of smiles, features, puckered brows 
 of inquiry ; seeming a thing made already, and active 
 on his own account. 
 
 6 Do people see likenesses ? ' he asked. 
 
 * Some do,' said the mother.' 
 
 4 You?' 
 
 She was constrained to give answer. 'There is a 
 likeness to my father, I have thought.' 
 
 2 n 
 
418 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 There 's a dotage of idolatrous daughters, he could 
 have retorted ; and his gaze was a polite offer to hum- 
 drum reconcilement, if it pleased her. 
 
 She sent the child up the steps. 
 
 4 Do you come in, my lord ? ' 
 
 ' The house is yours, my lady.' 
 
 1 1 cannot feel it mine.' 
 
 6 You are the mistress to invite or exclude.' 
 
 ' I am ready to go in a few hours, for a small income 
 of money, for my child and me. 1 
 
 ' Our child.' 
 
 1 Yes. 1 
 
 ' It is our child/* 
 
 6 it is; 
 
 ' Any sum you choose to name. But where would 
 you live ? , 
 
 ' Near my brother I would live.' 
 
 ' Three thousand a year for pin-money, or more, are 
 at your disposal. Stay here, I beg. You have only to 
 notify your wants. And we 11 talk familiarly now, as 
 we 're together. Can I be of aid to your brother ? 
 Tell me, pray. I am disposed in every way to subscribe 
 to your wishes. Pray, speak, speak out.' 
 
 So the earl said. He had to force his familiar tone 
 against the rebuke of her grandeur of stature ; and he 
 was for inducing her to deliver her mind, that the 
 mountain girl's feebleness in speech might reinstate 
 him. 
 
 She rejoined unhesitatingly : ' My brother w r ould not 
 accept aid from you, my lord. I will take no money 
 more than for my needs.' 
 
 ' You spoke of certain sums down in Wales.' 
 
 * I did then.' Her voice was dead. 
 
BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD 419 
 
 * Ah ! You must be feeling the cold Northwind 
 here.' 
 
 6 1 do not. You may feel the cold, my lord. Will 
 you enter the house ? ' 
 ' Do you invite me ? ' 
 
 * The house is your own.' 
 
 ' Will the mistress of the house honour me so far ? ' 
 
 * I am not the mistress of the house, my lord.' 
 ' You refuse, Carinthia ? ' 
 
 ' I would keep from using those words. I have no 
 right to refuse the entry of the house to you.'' 
 
 ' If I come in ? ' 
 
 ( I guard my rooms.' 
 
 She had been awake, then, to the thrusting and 
 parrying behind masked language. 
 
 * Good. You are quite decided, I may suppose.' 
 
 ' I will leave them when I have a little money, or 
 when I know of how I may earn some.' 
 
 6 The Countess of Fleetwood earning a little money?' 
 ' I can put aside your title, my lord.' 
 
 * No, you can't put it aside while the man with the 
 title lives, not even if you're running off in earnest, 
 under a dozen Welsh names. Why should you desire to 
 do it ? The title entitles you to the command of half 
 my possessions. As to the house, don't be alarmed ; 
 you will not have to guard your rooms. The extraordi- 
 nary wild animal you — the impression may have been 
 produced ; I see, I see. If I were in the house, I should 
 not be raging at your doors ; and it is not my inten- 
 tion to enter the house. That is, not by right of 
 ownership. You have my word.' 
 
 He bowed to her, and walked to the stables. 
 
 She had the art of extracting his word from him. 
 
420 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 The word given, she went oft' with it, disengaged mis- 
 tress of Esslemont. And she might have the place for 
 residence, but a decent courtesy required that she 
 should remain at the portico until he was out of sight. 
 She was the first out of sight, rather insolently. 
 
 She returned him without comment the spell he had 
 cast on her, and he was left to estimate the value of a 
 dinted piece of metal not in the currency, stamped false 
 coin. An odd sense of impoverishment chilled him. 
 Chilly weather was afflicting the whole country, he was 
 reminded, and he paced about hurriedly until his horses 
 were in the shafts. After all, his driving away would 
 be much more expected of him than a stay at the house 
 where the Whitechapel Countess resided, chill, dry, 
 talking the language of early Exercises in English, 
 suitable to her Welshmen. Did she ' Owain ' them 
 every one ? 
 
 As he whipped along the drive and left that glassy 
 stare of Esslemont behind him, there came a slap of 
 a reflection : — here, on the box of this coach, the bride 
 just bursting her sheath sat, and was like warm wax to 
 take impressions. She was like hard stone to retain 
 them, pretty evidently. Like women the world over, 
 she thinks only of her side of the case. Men disdain to 
 plead theirs. Now money is offered her, she declines it. 
 Formerly, she made it the principal subject of her con- 
 versation. 
 
 Turn the mind to something brighter. Fleetwood 
 strung himself to do so, and became agitated by the 
 question whether the bride sat to left or to right of him 
 when the Southwester blew — a wind altogether prefer- 
 able to the chill Northeast. Women, when they are no 
 longer warm, are colder than the deadliest catarrh wind 
 
BETWEEN CARINTHIA AND HER LORD 421 
 
 scything across these islands. Of course she sat to left 
 of him. In the line of the main road, he remembered 
 a look he dropped on her, a look over his left shoulder. 
 
 She never had a wooing : she wanted it, had a kind 
 of right to it, or the show of it. How to begin ? But 
 was she worth an effort ? Turn to something brighter. 
 Religion is the one refuge from women, Feltre says : — 
 his Roman Catholic recipe. The old shoemaker, Mr. 
 Woodseer, hauls women into his religion, and purifies 
 them by the process, — fancies he does. He gets them 
 to wear an air. Old Gower, too, has his Religion of 
 Nature, with free admission for women, whom he wor- 
 ships in similes, running away from them, leering sheep- 
 ishly. No, Feltre's rigid monastic system is the sole 
 haven. And what a world, where we have no safety 
 except in renouncing it ! The two sexes created to 
 devour one another must abjure their sex before they 
 gain ' The Peace,' as Feltre says, impressively, if 
 absurdly. He will end a monk if he has the courage of 
 his logic. A queer spectacle — an English nobleman a 
 shaven monk ! 
 
 Fleetwood shuddered. We are twisted face about to 
 discover our being saved by women from that horror — 
 the joining the ranks of the nasal friars. By what 
 women ? Bacchante, clearly, if the wife we have is a 
 Northeaster to wither us, blood, bone, and soul. 
 
 He was hungry ; he waxed furious with the woman 
 who had flung him out upon the roads. He was thirsty 
 as well. The brighter something to refresh his thoughts 
 grew and glowed in the form of a shiny table, bearing 
 tasty dishes, old wines ; at an inn or anywhere. But, 
 out of London, an English inn to furnish the dishes 
 and the wines for a civilized and self-respecting man is 
 
422 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 hard to seek, as difficult to find as a perfect skeleton of 
 an extinct species. The earl's breast howled derision of 
 his pursuit when he drew up at the sign of the Royal 
 Sovereign, in the dusky hour, and handed himself des- 
 perately to Mrs. Rundles 1 mercy. 
 
 He could not wait for a dinner, so his eating was 
 cold meat. Warned by a sip, that his drinking, if he 
 drank, was to be an excursion in chemical acids, the 
 virtues of an abstainer served for his consolation. 
 Tolerant of tobacco, although he did not smoke, he 
 fronted the fire, envying Gower Wood seer the con- 
 templative pipe, which for half a dozen puffs wafted 
 him to bracing deserts, or primeval forests, or old high- 
 ways with the swallow thoughts above him, down the 
 Past, into the Future. A pipe is pleasant dreams at 
 command. A pipe is the concrete form of philosophy. 
 Why, then, a pipe is the alternative of a friar's frock 
 for an escape from women. But if one does not 
 smoke ! . . . Here and there a man is visibly in the 
 eyes of all men cursed : let him be blest by Fortune ; 
 let him be handsome, healthy, wealthy, courted, he is 
 cursed. 
 
 Fleetwood lay that night beneath the roof of the 
 Royal Sovereign. Sleep is life's legitimate mate. It 
 will treat us at times as the faithless wife, who becomes 
 a harrying beast, behaves to her lord. He had no sleep. 
 Having put out his candle, an idea took hold of him, 
 and he jumped up to light it again and verify the idea 
 that this room . • . He left the bed and strode round 
 it, going in the guise of an urgent somnambulist, or 
 ghost bearing burden of an imperfectly remembered 
 mission. This was the room. 
 
 Reason and cold together overcame his illogical 
 
A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS 423 
 
 scruples to lie down on that bed soliciting the sleep 
 desired. He lay and groaned, lay and rolled. All 
 night the Naval Monarch with the loose cheeks and 
 jelly smile of the swinging sign-board creaked. Flaws 
 of the Northeaster swung and banged him. He 
 creaked high, in complaint, — low, in some partial con- 
 tentment. There was piping of his boatswain, shrill 
 piping — shrieks of the whistle. How many nights had 
 that most ill-fated of brides lain listening to the idiotic 
 uproar ! It excused a touch of craziness. But how 
 many ? Not one, not two, ten, twenty : — count, count 
 to the exact number of nights the unhappy girl must 
 have heard those mad colloquies of the hurricane 
 boatswain and the chirpy king. By heaven ! White- 
 chapel, after one night of it, beckons as a haven of 
 grace. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 A DIP INTO THE SPRING*^ WATERS 
 
 The night Lord Fleetwood had passed cured him of 
 the wound Carinthia dealt, with her blunt, defensive 
 phrase and her Welshman. Seated on his coach-box, 
 he turned for a look the back way leading to Essle- 
 mont, and saw rosed crag and mountain forest rather 
 than the soft undulations of parkland pushing green 
 meadows or brown copse up the slopes under his eye. 
 She had never been courted : she deserved a siege. She 
 was a daughter of the racy highlands. And she, who 
 could say to her husband, ' I guard my rooms,' without 
 
424 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 sign of the stage-face of scorn or defiance or flinging of 
 the glove, she would have to be captured by siege, it 
 was clear. She wore an aspect of the confident fortress, 
 which neither challenges nor cries to treat, but com- 
 mands respect. How did she accomplish this miracle 
 of commanding respect after such a string of somersaults 
 before the London world ? 
 
 He had to drive Northwestward : his word was 
 pledged to one of his donkey Ixionides — Abrane, he 
 recollected — to be a witness at some contemptible 
 exhibition of the fellow's muscular skill : a match to 
 punt against a Thames waterman this time. Odd how 
 it should come about that the giving of his word forced 
 him now to drive away from the woman once causing 
 him to curse his luck as the prisoner of his word ! 
 However, there was to be an end of it soon — a change ; 
 change as remarkable as Harry Monmouth , s at the 
 touching of his crown. Though in these days, in our 
 jog-trot Old England, half a step on the road to great- 
 ness is the utmost we can hop ; and all England jeers 
 at the man attempting it. He caps himself with this 
 or that one of their titles. For it is not the popular 
 thing among Englishmen. Their hero, when they have 
 done their fighting, is the wealthy patron of Sport. 
 What sort of creatures are his comrades? But he 
 cannot have comrades unless he is on the level of them. 
 Yet let him be never so high above them, they charge 
 him and point him as a piece of cannon ; assenting to 
 the flatteries they puff into him, he is their engine. 
 6 The idol of the hour is the mob's wooden puppet, and 
 the doing of the popular thing seed of no harvest, 1 
 Gower Woodseer says, moderately well, snuffing incense 
 of his happy delivery. Not to be the idol, to have an 
 
A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS 425 
 
 aim of our own, there lies the truer pride, if we intend 
 respect of ourselves. 
 
 The Mr. Pulpit young men have in them, until their 
 habits have fretted him out, was directing Lord Fleet- 
 wood's meditations upon the errors of the general man, 
 as a cover for lateral references to his hitherto erratic 
 career : not much worse than a swerving from the right 
 line, which now seemed the desirable road for him, and 
 had previously seemed so stale, so repulsive. He was, 
 of course, only half-conscious of his pulpitizing ; he 
 fancied the serious vein of his thoughts attributable 
 to a tumbled night. Nevertheless, he had the question 
 whether that woman — poor girl ! — was influencing his 
 thoughts. For in a moment, the very word ' respect ' 
 pitched him upon her character ; to see it a character 
 that emerged beneath obstacles, and overcame ridicule, 
 won suffrages, won a reluctant husband's admiration, 
 pricked him from distaste to what might really be taste 
 for her companionship, or something more alarming to 
 contemplate in the possibilities, — thirst for it. He 
 was driving away, and he longed to turn back. He 
 did respect her character: a character angular as her 
 features were, and similarly harmonious, splendid in 
 action. ^/ 
 
 Respect seems a coolish form of tribute from a man 
 who admires. He had to say that he did not vastly 
 respect beautiful women. Have they all the poetry ? 
 Know them well, and where is it ? 
 
 The pupil of Gower Woodseer asked himself to 
 specify the poetry of woman. She is weak and inferior, 
 but she has it ; civilized men acknowledge it ; and it is 
 independent, or may be beside her gift of beauty. She 
 has more of it than we have. Then name it. 
 
426 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Well, the flowers of the field are frail things. Pluck 
 one, and you have in your hand the frailest of things. 
 But reach through the charm of colour and the tale of 
 its beneficence in frailty to the poetry of the flower, 
 and secret of the myriad stars will fail to tell you 
 more than does that poetry of your little flower. Lord 
 Feltre, at the heels of St. Francis, agrees in that. 
 
 Well, then, much so with the flowers of the two 
 hands and feet. We do homage to those ungathered, 
 and reserve our supremacy ; the gathered, no longer 
 courted, are the test of men. When the embraced 
 woman breathes respect into us, she wings a beast. 
 We have from her the poetry of the tasted life ; excel- 
 ling any garden-gate or threshold lyrics called forth 
 by purest early bloom. Respect for her person, for her 
 bearing, for her character : that is in the sum a beauty 
 plastic to the civilized young man's needs and cravings, 
 as queenly physical loveliness has never so fully been 
 to him along the walks of life, and as ideal worships 
 cannot be for our nerving contentment. She brings us 
 to the union of body and soul ; as good as to say, earth 
 and heaven. Secret of all human aspirations, the ripe- 
 ness of the creeds, is there ; and the passion for the 
 woman desired has no poetry equalling that of the 
 embraced respected woman. -^ 
 
 Something of this went reeling through Fleetwood ; 
 positively to this end; accompanied the while with 
 flashes of Carinthia, her figure across the varied scenes. 
 Ridicule vanished. Could it ever have existed? If 
 London had witnessed the scene down in Wales, London 
 never again would laugh at the Whitechapel Countess. 
 
 He laughed amicably at himself for the citizen 
 sobriety of these views, on the part of a nobleman whose 
 
A DIP INTO THE SPRING'S WATERS 427 
 
 airy pleasure it had been to flout your sober citizens, 
 with their toad-at-the-hop notions, their walled concep- 
 tions, their drab propriety ; and felt a petted familiar 
 within him dub all pulpitizing, poetizing drivellers 
 with one of those detested titles, invented by the 
 English as a corrective of their maladies or the excesses 
 of their higher moods. But, reflection telling him that 
 he had done injury to Carinthia — had inflicted the 
 sorest of the wounds a young woman a new bride can 
 endure, he nodded acquiescence to the charge of mis- 
 behaviour, and muzzled the cynic. 
 
 As a consequence, the truisms flooded him and he 
 lost his guard against our native prosiness. Must we 
 be prosy if we are profoundly, uncynically sincere? 
 Do but listen to the stuff we are maundering ! Extracts 
 of poetry, if one could hit upon the right, would serve 
 for a relief and a lift when we are in this ditch of the 
 serious vein. Gower Woodseer would have any num- 
 ber handy to spout. Or Feltre : — your convinced and 
 fervent Catholic has quotations of images and Latin 
 hymns to his Madonna or one of his Catherines, by the 
 dozen, to suit an enthusiastic flt of the worship of some 
 fair woman, and elude the prosy in commending her. 
 Feltre is enviable there. As he says, it is natural to 
 worship, and only the Catholics can prostrate them- 
 selves with dignity. That is matter for thought. Stir 
 us to the depths, it will be found that we are poor 
 soupy stuff. For estimable language, and the preserva- 
 tion of self-respect in prostration, we want ritual, cere- 
 monial elevation of the visible object for the souFs 
 adoring through the eye. So may we escape our foul 
 or empty selves. 
 
 Lord Feltre seemed to Fleetwood at the moment a 
 
428 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 more serviceable friend than Gower Woodseer preaching 
 'Nature' — an abstraction, not inspiring to the devout 
 poetic or giving us the tongue above our native prosy. 
 He was raised and refreshed by recollected lines of a 
 Gregorian chant he and Feltre had heard together under 
 the roof of that Alpine monastery. 
 
 — The Dame collapses. There is little doubt of her 
 having the world to back her in protest against all 
 fine, filmy work of the exploration of a young man's 
 intricacies or cavities. Let her not forget the fact 
 she has frequently impressed upon us, that he was 
 ' the very wealthiest nobleman of his time,' instructive 
 to touch inside as well as out. He had his share of 
 brains, too. And also she should be mindful of an 
 alteration of English taste likely of occurrence in the 
 remote posterity she vows she is for addressing after 
 she has exhausted our present hungry generation. The 
 posterity signified will, it is calculable, it is next to 
 certain, have studied a developed human nature so far 
 as to know the composition of it a not unequal mixture 
 of the philosophic and the romantic, and that credible 
 realism is to be produced solely by an involvement of 
 those two elements. Or else, she may be sure, her 
 story once out of the mouth, goes off dead as the spirits 
 of a vapour that has performed the stroke of energy. 
 She holds a surprising event in the history of 'the 
 wealthiest nobleman of his time, 1 and she would launch 
 it upon readers unprepared, with the reference to our 
 mysterious and unfathomable nature for an explanation 
 of the stunning crack on the skull. This may do now. 
 It will not do ten centuries hence. For the English, 
 too, are a changeable people in the sight of ulterior 
 Time. 
 
RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 429 
 
 One of the good pieces of work Lord Fleetwood could 
 suppose he had performed was recalled to him near 
 the turning to his mews by the handsome Piccadilly 
 fruit-shop. He jumped to the pavement, merely to 
 gratify Sarah Winch with a word of Madge ; and being 
 emotional just then, he spoke of Lady Fleetwood's 
 attachment to Madge ; and he looked at Sarah straight, 
 he dropped his voice : ' She said, you remember, you 
 were sisters to her.' 
 
 Sarah remembered that he had spoken of it before. 
 Two brilliant drops from the deepest of woman's ready 
 well stood in her eyes. 
 
 He carried the light of them away. They were such 
 pure jewels of tribute to the Carinthia now seen by 
 him as worshipping souls of devotees offer to their 
 Madonna for her most glorious adornment. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THE RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 
 
 Desiring loneliness or else Lord Feltre's company, 
 Fleetwood had to grant a deferred audience at home 
 to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy about having the 
 house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished com- 
 plete and habitable on the very day stipulated by his 
 peremptory orders that the place should be both habit- 
 able and hospitable. They were right, they were 
 excused ; grand entertainments of London had been 
 projected, and he fell into the weariful business with 
 them, thinking of Henrietta's insatiable appetite for 
 
430 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the pleasures. He had taken the lease of this burden- 
 some Calesford, at an eight-miles drive from the North- 
 west of town, to gratify the devouring woman's taste : 
 which was, to have all the luxuries of the town in a 
 framework of country scenery. 
 
 Gower Woodseer and he were dining together in the 
 evening. The circumstance was just endurable, but 
 Gower would play the secretary, and doggedly sub- 
 jected him to hear a statement of the woeful plight 
 of Countess Livia's affairs. Gower, commissioned to 
 examine them, remarked : 'If we have all the figures ! ' 
 
 ' If we could stop the bleeding ! ' Fleetwood replied. 
 c Come to the Opera to-night; I promised. I promised 
 Abrane for to-morrow. There's no end to it. This 
 gambling mania's a flux. Not one of them except 
 your old enemy, Corby, keeps clear of it ; and they 're 
 at him for subsidies, as they are at me, and would be 
 at you or any passenger on the road suspected of a 
 purse. Corby shines among them.' 
 
 That was heavy judgment enough, Gower thought. 
 No allusion to Esslemont ensued. The earl ate sparely, 
 and silently for the most part. 
 
 He was warmed a little at the Opera by hearing 
 Henrietta's honest raptures over her Columelli in the 
 Pirata. But Lord Brailstone sat behind 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 interpreted by Livia. Why did it darken ? 
 The demurest of fuliginous intriguers argued that Brail- 
 stone was but doing the spiriting required of him, and 
 
RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 431 
 
 would have to pay the penalty unrewarded, let him 
 Italianize as much as he pleased. Not many months 
 longer, and there would be the bit of an outburst, the 
 whiff of scandal, perhaps a shot, and the rupture of an 
 improvident alliance, followed by Henrietta's free hand 
 to the moody young earl, who would then have posses- 
 sion of the only woman he could ever love : and at no 
 cost. Jealousy of a man like Brailstone, however in- 
 fatuated the man, was too foolish. He must perceive 
 how matters were tending ? The die-away and eye- 
 balls-at-the-ceiling of a pair of fanatics per la musica 
 might irritate a husband, but the lover should read 
 and know. Giddy as the beautiful creature deprived 
 of her natural aliment seems in her excusable hunger 
 for it, she has learnt her lesson, she is not a reeling 
 libertine. 
 
 Brailstone peered through his eyelashes at the same 
 shadow of a frown where no frown sat on his friend's 
 brows. Displeasure was manifest, and why ? Fleet- 
 wood had given him the dispossessing shrug of the man 
 out of the run, and the hint of the tip for winning, 
 with the aid of operatic arias ; and though he was in 
 Fleetwood's books ever since the prize-fight, neither 
 Fleetwood nor the husband nor any skittishness of a 
 timorous wife could stop the pursuer bent to capture 
 the fairest and most inflaming woman of her day. 
 
 6 I prefer your stage Columelli, 1 Fleetwood said. 
 
 ' I come from exile ! , said Henrietta ; and her plea 
 in excuse of ecstatics wrote 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 retired like a trumped card 
 
432 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 on the appearance of M. de St. Ombre. The courtly 
 Frenchman won the ladies to join him in whipping the 
 cream of the world for five minutes, and passed out 
 before his flavour was exhausted. Brailstone took his 
 lesson and deparrecQ<to spji at tljem from other boxes 
 and heave an inflated shirt-front. Young Cressett, the 
 bottle of 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 of his Yorkshire 
 moors. The picture of the little baronet arose upon 
 the narration, and it amused. Chumley Potts came 
 to * confirm every ite*n,' as he said. ' Plucked Corby 
 clean. Pistol at his head. Quite old style. Time, 
 ten p.m. Suspects Great Britain, King, Lords and 
 Commons, and buttons twenty times tighter. Brosey 
 Mallard down on him for a few fighting men. Perfect 
 answer to Brosey.' 
 
 ' Mr. Mallard did not mention the robbery,' Henrietta 
 remarked. 
 
 1 Feared to shock : Corby such a favoured swain,' 
 Potts accounted for the omission. 
 
 ' 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 V 
 
 6 Egyptian, but decipherable,' said Gower. 
 
 The rising of the curtain drew his habitual groan 
 from Potts, and he fled to collogue with the goodly 
 number of honest fellows in the house of music who 
 detested 'squallery.' Most of these afflicted pilgrims 
 to the London conservatory were engaged upon the 
 
 I 
 
HED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 4,33 
 
 business of the Goddess richly inspiring the Heliconian 
 choir, but rendering the fountain-waters heady. Here 
 they had to be, if they would enjoy the spectacle of 
 London's biggest and choicest bouquet : and in them, 
 too, there was an unattached air during Potts'* cooling 
 discourse of turf and tables, except when he tossed 
 them a morsel of tragedy, or the latest joke, not yet 
 past the full gallop on its course. Their sparkle was 
 transient ; woman had them fast. Compelled to think 
 of them as not serious members of our group, he 
 assisted at the crush-room exit, and the happy riddance 
 of the beautiful cousins dedicated to the merry London 
 midnights 1 further pastures. 
 
 Fleetwood's word was extracted, that he would visit 
 the * palazzo ' within a couple of hours. 
 
 Potts exclaimed : ' Good. You promise. Hang me, 
 if I don't think it 's the only certain thing a man can 
 depend upon in this world.' 
 
 He left the earl and Gower Woodseer to their lunatic 
 talk. He still had his ideas about the association of 
 the pair. ' Hard-headed player of his own 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, deploring his rashness, 
 reproving his persistency, Potts allowed his verdict 
 to go by results; for it was clear that Mallard and 
 Fortune were in opposition. Something like real awe 
 of the tremendous encounter kept him from a plunge 
 or a bet. Mallard had got the vertigo, he reported 
 the gambler's launch on dementedness to the earl. 
 Gower's less experienced optics perceived it. The 
 « 2e 
 
434 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 plainly doomed duellist with the insensible Black God- 
 dess offered her all the advantages of the Immortals 
 challenged by flesh. His effort to smile was a line 
 cut awry in wood ; his big eyes were those of a cat for 
 sociability ; he looked cursed, and still he wore the 
 smile. In this condition, the gambler runs to empti- 
 ness of everything he has, his money, his heart, his 
 brains, like a coal-truck on the incline of the rails to a 
 collier. 
 
 Mallard applied to the earl for a loan of fifty 
 guineas. He had them and lost them, and he came, 
 not begging, blustering for a second supply ; quite in 
 the wrong tone, Potts knew. Fleetwood said : ' Back 
 it with pistols, Brosey ; ' and, as Potts related subse- 
 quently, ' Old Brosey had the look of a staked horse.' 
 
 Fortune and he having now closed the struggle, per- 
 force of his total disarmament, he regained the wits 
 we forfeit when we engage her. He said to his friend 
 Chummy: 'Abrane to-morrow? Ah, yes, punts a 
 Thames waterman. Start of — how many yards ? Sun- 
 bury-Walton : good reach. Course of two miles : 
 Braney in good training. Straight business ? I mayn't 
 be there. 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's pretext of much occupation 
 masked a bashfully sentimental dislike of the flooding 
 of quiet country places by the city's hordes. ' You 're 
 right, right,' said Fleetwood, in sympathy, resigned to 
 the prospect of despising his associates without a handy 
 helper. He named Esslemont once, shot up a look at 
 the sky, and glanced it Eastward. 
 
RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 435 
 
 Three coaches were bound for Sunbury from a com- 
 mon starting-point at nine of the morning. Lord 
 Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and Lord Simon Pitscrew 
 were the whips. Two hours in advance of them, the 
 earl's famous purveyors of picnic feasts bowled along to 
 pitch the riverside tent and spread the tables. Our 
 upper and lower London world reported the earl as out 
 on another of his expeditions : and, say what we will, 
 we must think kindly of a wealthy nobleman ever to 
 the front to enliven the town's dusty eyes and increase 
 Old England's reputation for pre-eminence in the 
 Sports. He is the husband of the Whitechapel 
 Countess — got himself into that 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 a thoroughbred 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's military promptitude to do the 
 work he had no taste for, and envied the self-compres- 
 sion which could assume so pleasant an air. He heard 
 here and there crisp comments on his lordship's coach 
 and horses and personal smartness; the word 'style,' 
 which reflects handsomely on the connoisseur conferring 
 it, and the question whether one of the ladies up there 
 was the countess. His task of unearthing and disen- 
 tangling the monetary affairs of 'one of the ladies' 
 compelled the wish to belong to the party soon 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 
 
436 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 she loves them best — are those who have 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, and no need to lose the rosy wisdom 
 of the children when we wrap ourselves in the 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 travel- 
 ler 's-rest for thinkers behind him ; while the volatile 
 were simply breaking their bubbles. 
 
 He was discontented all day, both with himself and 
 the sentences he coined. A small street-boy at his run 
 along the pavement nowhither, distanced him altogether 
 in the race for the great Secret ; precipitating the 
 thought, that the conscious are too heavily handicapped. 
 The unburdened unconscious win the goal. Ay, but 
 they leave no legacy. So we must fret and stew, and 
 look into ourselves, and seize the brute and 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 Captain Abrane ; the cries of his backers, 
 the smiles of the ladies, Lord Fleetwood's happy style 
 in the teeth of tattle — an Aurora's chariot for over- 
 riding it. One might hope, might almost see, that he 
 was coming to his better senses on a certain subject. 
 As for style overriding the worst of indignities, has not 
 Scotia given her poet to the slack dependant of the 
 gallows-tree, who so rantingly played his jig and 
 wheeled it round in the shadow of that institution ? 
 Style was his, he hit on the right style to top the situa- 
 
RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 437 
 
 tion, and perpetually will he 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 is beyond our reach, we may at least 
 pray to have the mantle. 
 
 Strangest of fancies, most unphilosophically Gower 
 conceived a woman's love 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 it resolving to a form of one. He stood humbly 
 before the one, and she waned into swarms of her 
 sisters. So did she charge him with the loving of her 
 sex, not her. And could it be denied, if he wanted a 
 woman's love just to give him a style ? No, not that, 
 but to make him feel proud of himself. That was the 
 heart's way of telling him a secret in owning to a 
 weakness. Within it the one he had thought of forth- 
 with obtained her lodgement. He discovered this truth, 
 in this roundabout way, and knew it a truth by the 
 warm fireside glow the contemplation of her cast over 
 him. 
 
 Dining alone, as he usually had to do, he was aston- 
 ished to see the earl enter his room. 
 
 ' Ah, you always make the right choice ! ' Fleetwood 
 said, and requested him 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 concerning the ladies. He joined the earl and 
 asked. 
 
 6 Safe. Oh yes. We managed to keep it from them,' 
 said Fleetwood. ' Nothing particular, perhaps you '11 
 
438 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 think. Poor devil of a fellow ! Father and mother 
 alive, too ! He did it out of hearing, that 's one merit. 
 Mallard : Ambrose Mallard. He has blown his brains 
 out.' 
 
 Seated plunged in the armchair, with stretched legs 
 and eyes at the black fire-grate, Fleetwood told of the 
 gathering under the tent, and Mallard seen, seen drink- 
 ing champagne ; Mallard no longer seen, not missed. 
 
 6 He killed himself three fields off. He must have 
 been careful to deaden the sound. Small pocket-pistol 
 hardly big enough to — but anything serves. Couple 
 of brats came running up to Chummy Potts : — c Gentle- 
 man's body 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 're crockery ! 
 crockery ! I had to keep Chummy standing. I couldn't 
 bring him back to our party. We got help at a farm ; 
 the body lies there. And that 's not the worst. We 
 found a letter to me in his pocket pencilled — his 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, 
 to hear the ladies ask ! Give me your hand.' 
 
 The earl squeezed Gower's hand an instant ; and it 
 was an act unknown for him 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's impressions had not been shaken 
 off. He kicked at it and sunk under it as his talk 
 rambled. c Add five thousand,' he commented, on the 
 spread of Livia's papers over the table. ' I 've been 
 having an hour with her. Two thousand more, she says. 
 
RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 439 
 
 Better multiply by two and a half for a woman's con- 
 fession. 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 to be clear of must be 
 St. Ombre. I like the fellow ; but these Frenchmen — 
 they don't spare women. Ambrose,' — the earl's eye- 
 lids quivered. — ' Jealousy fired that shot. Quite ground- 
 less. She 's cool as a marble Venus, as you said. Go 
 straight from her house to Esslemont. I don't plead 
 a case. Make the best account you can of it. Say — 
 you may say my eyes are opened. I respect her. If 
 you think that says little, say more. It can't mean 
 more. Whatever the Countess of Fleetwood may think 
 due 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 to march over the ground. She 
 has a heap to forgive. Her father owns or boasts, in 
 that book of his Rose Mackrell lent me, he never for- 
 gave an injury.' 
 
 Gower helped the quotation, rubbing his hands over 
 it, for cover of his glee at the words he had been hearing. 
 'Never forgave an injury without a 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 the blood, if we try. But 
 then, there 's a manner of hitting back. It is not to 
 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 wife hitting back is not a pleasant — 
 well, petticoats make the difference. If she's for 
 
440 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 amends, she shall exact them ; and she may be hard 
 to satisfy, she shall have her full revenge. Call it by 
 any other term you like. I did her a wrong. I don't 
 defend myself; it 's not yet in the 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 Ye all 
 guilty of mistakes at starting : I speak of men. Women 
 are protected ; and if they Ye not, there 's the convent 
 for them, Feltre says. But a man has to live it on 
 before 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 a youngster, 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 title of half-mother to me. 
 God help me ! What are my sins ? She feels nothing, 
 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. Ombre talking 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 winning post. St. Ombre's a cool 
 player ; that 's at the bottom of the story. He 's cool 
 because play doesn't bite him, as it did Ambrose. I 
 should say the other passion has never bitten him. 
 And he 's alive and presentable ; Ambrose under a 
 sheet, with Chummy Potts to watch. Chummy cried 
 like a brat 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 
 
RED WARNING FROM A SON OF VAPOUR 441 
 
 my opinion of her gamblers, and retorted that young 
 Cressett's turn for the 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 ; con- 
 fessed she wanted governing. Why, she 's young, in a 
 way. She has that particular 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 of everything 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 her arrow." Well, she showed feeling 
 for young Cressett, and her hit at me was 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 
 called her. She has her beauty, yes. She respects you. 
 I should be relieved — a load off me ! Tell her, all debts 
 paid ; fifty thousand invested, in her name and her 
 husband's. Tell her, speak it, there 's my consent — if 
 only the man to govern her ! She has it from me, but 
 repeat it, as from me. That sum and her portion would 
 make a fair income for the two. Relieved ? By heaven, 
 what a relief ! Go early. Coach to Esslemont at eleven. 
 Do my work there. I haven't to repeat my directions. 
 I shall present myself two days after. I wish Lady 
 Fleetwood to do the part of hostess at Calesford. Tell 
 her I depute you to kiss my son for me. Now I leave 
 
442 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 you. Good night. I shan't sleep. I remember your 
 saying, " bad visions come under the eyelids. " I shall 
 keep mine open and read — read her father's book of 
 the Maxims ; I generally find two or three at a dip to 
 stimulate. No wonder she venerates him. That sort 
 of progenitor is your " permanent aristocracy."" Hard 
 enemy. She must have some of her mother 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't believe anything higher 
 than respect can be offered to a woman. No defence of 
 me to her, but I '11 tell you, that when I undertook to 
 keep my word with her, I plainly said — never mind ; 
 good night. If we meet in the morning, let this business 
 rest until it 's done. I must drive to help poor Chums 
 and see about the Inquest.' 
 
 Fleetwood nodded from the doorway. Gower was 
 left with humming ears. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 
 
 They went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as 
 the solitaries of a sleepless night. They met next day 
 like a couple emerging from sirocco deserts, indisposed 
 for conversation or even short companionship, much of 
 the night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would 
 have preferred the sight of an enemy; and it was 
 hardly concealed by them, for they inclined to regard 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 443 
 
 one another as the author of their infernal passage 
 through the drear nights wilderness. 
 
 Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective 
 duties being clear, however abhorrent. But he had 
 inflicted a monstrous disturbance on the man he meant 
 in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not benefit. 
 Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his 
 projects, was playing juggler's tricks with him, drama- 
 tizing upon hypotheses, which mounted in stages and 
 could pretend to be soberly conceivable, assuming that 
 the earl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis. 
 He transported himself to his first view of the Countess 
 Livia, the fountain of similes born of his prostrate 
 adoration, close upon the invasion and capture of him 
 by the combined liqueurs in the giddy Baden lights ; 
 and joining the Arabian magic in his breast at the 
 time with the more magical reality now proposed as a 
 sequel to it, he entered the land where dreams confess 
 they are outstripped by revelations. 
 
 Yet it startled him to hear the earl say : ' You **11 
 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 
 me and every one of us a service past paying. Not a 
 man of her set worth . . . She — but you 11 stop it ; 
 no one else can. Of course, you Ve had your breakfast. 
 Off, and walk yourself into a talkative mood, as you 
 tell me you do.' 
 
 8 One of the things I do when I Ve nobody to hear,"* 
 said Gower, speculating whether the black sprite in 
 this young nobleman was for sending him as a rod to 
 scourge the lady : an ingenious device, that smelt of 
 mediaeval Courts and tickled his humour. 
 
444 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 4 Will she listen ? ' he said gravely. 
 
 4 She will listen; she has not to learn you admire. 
 You admit she has helped to trim and polish, and the 
 rest. She declares you 're incorruptible. There *a the 
 ground open. I fling no single sovereign more 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 and deposit Mr. Woodseer's port- 
 manteau at the coach-office. 
 
 \ The principal point is to make sure we have all the 
 obligations,'' Gower said. 
 
 'You know the principal point, 1 said the earl. 
 1 Relieve me.' 
 
 He faced to the opening street door. Lord Feltre 
 stood in the framing of it — a welcome sight. The 
 * monastic man of fashion,' of Gower's phrase for him, 
 entered, crooning condolences, with a stretched waxen 
 hand for his friend, a partial nod for nature's wor- 
 shipper — inefficient at any serious 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 the Coun- 
 tess Li via, and himself, and the tyrant, who benevo- 
 lently and providentially, or sardonically, hurled them 
 to their interview, the situation was comic, certainly, in 
 the sense of its being an illumination of this life's odd 
 developments. For thus had things come about, that 
 if it were possible even to think of the lady's con- 
 descending, he, thanks to the fair one he would see 
 before evening, was armed and proof against his old 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 445 
 
 infatuation or any renewal of it. And he had been 
 taught to read through the beautiful twilighted woman, 
 as if she were burnt paper held at the fire consuming 
 her. His hopes hung elsewhere. Nevertheless, an in- 
 tellectual demon-imp very lively in his head urged him 
 to speculate on such a contest between them, and weigh 
 the engaging forces. Difficulties were perceived, the 
 scornful laughter on her side was plainly heard ; but 
 his feeling of savage mastery, far from beaten down, 
 swelled so as to become irritable for the trial; and when 
 he was near her house he held a review of every personal 
 disadvantage he could summon, incited by an array 
 of limping deficiencies that flattered their arrogant 
 leader with ideas of the power he had in spite of 
 them. 
 
 In fact, his emancipation from sentiment inspired the 
 genial mood to tease. Women, having to encounter a 
 male adept at the weapon for the purpose, must be 
 either voluble or supportingly proud to keep the skin 
 from shrinking : which is a commencement of the retro- 
 gression ; and that has frequently been the beginning 
 of a rout. Now the Countess Livia was a lady of 
 queenly pose and the servitorial conventional speech 
 likely at a push to prove beggarly. When once on a 
 common platform with a man of agile tongue instigated 
 by his intellectual demon to pursue inquiries into her 
 moral resources, after a ruthless exposure of the wrecked 
 material, 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 she would 
 take it. Hence a string of possible events, astounding 
 to mankind, but equally calculable, should one care to 
 
446 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 give imagination headway. Gower looked signally 
 Captain Abrane's 'fiddler 1 while he waited at Livia's 
 house door. A studious intimacy with such a lady 
 was rather like the exposure of the silver moon to the 
 astronomer's telescope. 
 
 The Dame will have nought of an interview and 
 colloquy not found mentioned in her collection of 
 ballads, concerning a person quite secondary in Dr. 
 Glossop's voluminous papers. She as vehemently pro- 
 hibits 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 quaint idyll of an 
 affection slowly formed, rationally based while seeming 
 preposterous, tending to bluntly funny utterances on 
 both sides. The girl was a creature of the enthusiasms, 
 and had lifted that passion of her constitution into 
 higher than the worship of sheer physical bravery. 
 She had pitied Mr. Gower Woodseer for his apparently 
 extreme, albeit reverential, devotion to her mistress. 
 The plainly worded terms of his asking a young woman 
 of her position and her reputation to marry him came 
 on her like an instrument of dazzling day upon the 
 closed eyelids of the night, requiring time, and her 
 mistress's consent, and his father's expressed approval, 
 before she could yield him an answer that might ap- 
 pear a forgetfulness of her station, her ignorance, her 
 damaged character. Gower protested himself, with 
 truth, a spotted pard, an ignoramus, and an outcast 
 of all established classes, as the worshipper of Nature 
 cannot well avoid being. 
 
 'But what is it you like me for, Mr. Gower?' 
 Madge longed to know, that she might see a way 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 447 
 
 in the strange land where he had planted her after 
 a whirl ; and he replied : ' I 've thought of you till I 
 can say I love you because you have naturally every- 
 thing I shoot at.' 
 
 The vastness of the compliment drove her to think 
 herself empty of anything. 
 
 He named courage, and its offspring, honesty, and 
 devotedness, constancy. Her bosom rose at the word. 
 
 6 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 his recollection of a moment she knew to 
 have been weak with her, or noisy of herself. 
 
 Madge went straightway to her mistress and related 
 her great event, in the tone of a confession of crime. 
 Her mistress's approbation was timidly suggested rather 
 than besought. 
 
 It came on a flood. Carinthia's eyes filled ; she ex- 
 claimed : ' Oh, that good 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 saying it. Then yes, and yes, from me for both 
 your sakes, dear girl. He will have the faithfullest, 
 he will have the kindest — Oh ! and I shall know there 
 can be a happy marriage in England.' 
 
 She summoned Gower; she clasped his hand, to thank 
 him for appreciating her servant and sister, and for the 
 happiness she had in hearing it ; and she gazed at him 
 and the laden brows of her Madge alternately, encour- 
 aging him to repeat his recital of his pecuniary means, 
 for the poetry of the fact it verified, feasting on the 
 sketch of a four-roomed cottage and an agricultural 
 labourer's widow for cook and housemaid ; Madge to 
 
448 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 listen to his compositions of the day in the evening ; 
 Madge to praise him, Madge to correct his vanity. 
 
 Love was out of the count, but Carinthia"s leaping 
 sympathy decorated the baldness of the sketch and 
 spied his features through the daubed mask he chose 
 to wear as a member of the order of husbands, without 
 taking it for his fun. Dry material statements pre- 
 sented the reality she doted to think of. Moreover, 
 the marriage of these two renewed her belief in true 
 marriages, and their intention to unite was evidence of 
 love. 
 
 'My journey to England was worth all troubles for 
 the meeting Madge,' she said. ' I can look with plea- 
 sure to that day of my meeting her first — the day, it 
 was then ! ' 
 
 She stopped. Madge felt the quivering upward of a 
 whimper to a sob in her breast. She slipped away. 
 
 ' It 's a day that has come round to be repaired, Lady 
 Fleetwood,'' said Gower. ' If you will. Will you not ? 
 He has had a blow — the death of a friend, violent 
 death. It has broken him. He wants a month or so 
 in your 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 our means of 
 livelihood, enough for cottagers, until I carve my way. 
 His feelings are much more independent of his rank 
 than those of most noblemen. He will repeat your kind 
 words to Madge and me ; I am sure of it. He has had 
 heavy burdens ; he is young, hardly formed yet. He 
 needs a helper ; I mean, one allied to him. You forgive 
 me ? I left him with a Catholic lord for comforter, who 
 regards my prescript of the study of Nature, when we 're 
 in grief, as about the same as an offer of a dish of cold 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 449 
 
 boiled greens. Silver and ivory images are more con- 
 soling. Neither he nor I can offer the right thing for 
 Lord Fleetwood. It will be found here. 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 soon learn to understand one anothei 
 on that head, if not as to management of mines. ' 
 
 The pleading was crafty, and it was penetrative in 
 the avoidance of stress. Carinthia shook herself to feel 
 moved. The endeavour chilled her to a notion that 
 she was but half alive. She let the question approach 
 her, whether Chillon could pardon Lord Fleetwood. 
 She, with no idea of benignness, might speak pardon's 
 word to him, on a late autumn evening years hence, 
 perhaps, or to his friends to-morrow, if he would con- 
 siderately keep distant. She was upheld by the thought 
 of her brother's more honourable likeness to their father, 
 in the certainty of his 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 had no 
 wish for that to be done, she could anticipate his with- 
 holding of the word. 
 
 For her brother at wrestle with his fallen fortunes 
 was now the beating heart of Carinthia's mind. Her 
 husband was a shadow there. He did obscure it, and 
 he might annoy, he was unable to set it in motion. 
 He sat there somewhat like Youth's apprehension of 
 Death : — the dark spot seen mistily at times through 
 people's tears, or visioned as in an ambush beyond the 
 hills ; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness ; 
 oftener overlooked, acknowledged for the undesired 
 remote of life's conditions, life's evil, fatal, ill-assorted 
 yokefellow ; and if it was in his power to burst out 
 
 2 F 
 
450 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of his corner and be terrible to her, she could bring 
 up a force unnamed and unmeasured, that being the 
 blood of her father in her veins. Having done her 
 utmost to guard her babe, she said her prayers ; site 
 stood for peace or the struggle. 
 
 1 Does Lord Fleetwood speak of coming here ? * she 
 said. 
 
 'To-morrow. 1 
 
 ' I go to Croridge to-morrow."* 
 
 ' Your ladyship returns ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, I return. Mr. Gower, you have fifty minutes 
 before you dress for dinner.'' 
 
 He thought only of the exceeding charity of the 
 intimation ; and he may be excused for his not seeing 
 the feminine full answer it was, in an implied, unmedi- 
 tated contrast. He went gladly to find his new comrade, 
 his flower among grass-blades, the wonderful creature 
 astonishing him and surcharging his world by setting 
 her face at him, opening her breast to him, breathing 
 a young man's word of words from a woman's mouth. 
 His flower among grass-blades for a head looking studi- 
 ously down, she was his fountain of wisdom as well, 
 in the assurance she gave him of the wisdom of his 
 choice. 
 
 But Madge had put up the ' prize-fighter's lass, 1 by 
 way of dolly defence, to cover her amazed confusion 
 when the proposal of this well-liked gentleman to a 
 girl such as she sounded churchy. He knocked it over 
 easily; it left, however, a bee at his ear and an itch 
 to transfer the buzzer's attentions and tease his darling ; 
 for she had betrayed herself as right good game. Nor 
 is there happier promise of life-long domestic enliven- 
 ment for a prescient man of Letters than he has in the 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 451 
 
 contemplation of a pretty face showing the sensitiveness 
 to the sting, which is not allowed to poison her temper, 
 and is short of fetching tears. The dear innocent girl 
 gave this pleasing promise ; moreover,, she could be 
 twisted to laugh at herself, just a little. Now, the 
 young woman who can do that has already jumped the 
 hedge into the highroad of philosophy, and may become 
 a philosopher's mate in its by-ways, where the minute 
 discoveries are the notable treasures. 
 
 They had their ramble, agreeable to both, despite the 
 admonitory dose administered to one of them. They 
 might have been espied at a point or two from across 
 the park-palings ; their laughter would have caught an 
 outside pedestrian's hearing. Whatever the case, Owain 
 Wythan, riding down off Croridge, big with news of 
 her brother for the countess, dined at her table, and 
 walking up the lane to the Esslemont Arms on a moon- 
 less night, to mount his horse, pitched against an active 
 and, as it was deemed by Gower's observation of his 
 eyes, a scientific fist. The design to black them finely 
 was attributable to the dyeing accuracy of the stroke. 
 A single blow had done it. Mr. Wythan's watch and 
 purse were untouched ; and a second look at the swollen 
 blind peepers led Gower to surmise that they were, in 
 the calculation of the striker, his own. 
 
 He walked next day to the Royal Sovereign inn. 
 There he came upon the earl driving his phaeton. 
 Fleetwood jumped down, and Gower told of the mys- 
 terious incident, as the chief thing he had to tell, not 
 rendering it so mysterious in his narrative style. He 
 had the art of indicating darkly. 
 
 6 Ines, you mean ? , Fleetwood cried, and he appeared 
 as nauseated and perplexed as he felt. Why should 
 
452 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Ines assault Mr. Wythan ? It happened that the pugi- 
 list's patron had, within the last fifteen minutes, driven 
 past a certain thirty-acre meadow, sight of which on 
 his way to Carinthia had stirred him. He had even 
 then an idea of his old deeds dogging him to bind him, 
 every one of them, the smallest. 
 
 'But youVe nothing to go by,' he said. 'Why 
 guess at this rascal more than another.' 
 
 Gower quoted Mrs. Rundles and the ostler for wit- 
 nesses to Kit's visit yesterday to the Royal Sovereign, 
 though Kit shunned the bar of the Esslemont Arms. 
 
 ' I guess pretty clearly, because I suspect he was 
 hanging about and saw me 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 to stop a run to per- 
 dition. But, Madge ? Madge ? I 'd swear to the girl ! ' 
 
 ' Not so hard as I,' said Gower, and spoke of the 
 oath to come between the girl and him. 
 
 Fleetwood's dive into the girl's eyes drew her before 
 him. He checked a spirt of exclamations. 
 
 c 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 the incident. 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. 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 453 
 
 c You undervalue Lord Feltre. You avoid your ad- 
 versaries,' Fleetwood now rebuked his hearer. ' It 's an 
 easy way to have the pull of them in your own mind. 
 You might learn from him. He's willing for contro- 
 versy. Nature- worship — or "aboriginal genuflexion ," he 
 calls it ; Anglicanism, Methodism ; he stands to engage 
 them. It can't be doubted, that in days of trouble he 
 has a faith " stout as a rock, with an oracle in it," as he 
 says ; and he *s right, — " men who go into battle require 
 a rock to back them or a staff to lean on." You have 
 your " secret," you think ; as far as I can 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 in the language used. 
 
 Gower answered mildly : ' That can hardly be said of 
 a man who 's going to marry.' 
 
 ' Perhaps not. Lady Fleetwood is aware ? ' 
 
 'Lady Fleetwood does me the honour to approve 
 my choice.' 
 
 4 You mean, you 're dead on to it with this girl ? ' 
 
 ' For a year and more.' 
 
 6 Fond of her?' 
 
 ' All my heart.' 
 
 4 In love ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, in love. The proof of it is, I 've asked her 
 now I can support her as a cottager leaning on the 
 Three Per Cents.' 
 
 'Well, it helps you to a human kind of talk. It 
 carries out your theories. I never disbelieved in your 
 honesty. The wisdom 's another matter. Did you ever ^ 
 tell any one, that there 's not an act of a man's life lies 
 dead behind him, but it is blessing or cursing him every 
 step he takes ? ' 
 
454 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 4 By that," rejoined Gower, 'I can say Lord Feltre 
 proves there 'a wisdom in 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 melancholy sunset, with a grimace in it. 
 
 * Lord Feltre might show you the " leanness of 
 Philosophy " ; — you would learn from hearing him : — 
 " an old gnawed bone for the dog that chooses to be no 
 better than a dog." ' 
 
 1 The vertiginous roast haunch is recommended,' 
 Gower said. 
 
 1 See a higher than your own head, good sir. But, 
 hang the man ! he manages to hit on the thing he 
 wants.' Fleetwood set his face at Gower with cutting 
 heartiness. ' In love, you say, and Madge : and mean 
 it to be the holy business ! Well, poor old Chummy 
 always gave you credit for knowing 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 the bad lookout. Explained, if you like, 
 but women's impressions won't get explained away. 
 We must down on our knees or they. Her ladyship 
 attentive at all to affairs of the house ? ' 
 
 4 Every day with Queeney ; at intervals with Led- 
 dings.' 
 
 * Excellent ! You speak like a fellow recording the 
 devout observances of a 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, or she 's hard as nails. We shall 
 
A RECORD OF MINOR INCIDENTS 455 
 
 see. Generally, Madge and the youngster parade the 
 park at this hour. I drive round to the stables. Go 
 in and offer your version of that rascally dog's trick. 
 It seems the nearest we can come at. He 's a sot, and 
 drunken dogs 11 do anything. IVe had him on my 
 hands, and I Ve got the stain of him. 1 
 
 They trotted through Esslemont Park gates. ' I 've 
 got that place, Calesford, on my hands, too,"' the earl 
 said, suddenly moved to a liking for his Kentish home. 
 
 He and Gower were struck by a common thought of 
 the extraordinary burdens his indulgence in impulses 
 drew upon him. Present circumstances pictured to 
 Gower the opposing weighed and matured good reason 
 for his choosing Madge, and he complimented himself 
 in his pity for the earl. But Fleetwood, as he reviewed 
 a body of acquaintances perfectly free from the wretched 
 run in harness, though they had their fits and their 
 whims, was pushed to the conclusion that fatalism 
 marked his particular course through life. He could 
 not hint at such an idea to the unsympathetic fellow, 
 or rather, the burly antagonist to anything of the sort, 
 beside him. Lord Feltre would have understood and 
 appreciated it instantly. Where is aid to be had if we 
 have the Fates against us ? Feltre knew the Power, he 
 said ; was an example of ' the efficacy of supplications 1 ; 
 he had been c fatally driven to find the Power, 1 and had 
 found it — on the road to Rome, of course : not a 
 delectable road for an English nobleman, except that 
 the noise of another convert in pilgrimage on it would 
 deal our English world a lively smack, the very stroke 
 that heavy body wants. But the figure of a ' monastic 
 man of fashion 1 was antipathetic to the earl, and he 
 flouted an English Protestant mass merely because of 
 
456 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 his being highly individual, and therefore revolutionary 
 for the minority. 
 
 He cast his bitter cud aside. 'My man should have 
 arrived. Lady Fleetwood at home ? 1 
 
 Gower spoke of her having gone to Croridge in the 
 morning. 
 
 1 Has she taken the child ? 1 
 
 ' She has, yes. For the air of the heights. 1 
 
 8 For greater security. Lady Arpington praises the 
 thoughtful mother. I rather expected to see the 
 child. 1 
 
 ' They can't be much later, 1 Gower supposed. 
 
 1 You don't feel your long separation from " the 
 object 11 ? 1 
 
 Letting him have his cushion for pins, Gower said : 
 i It needs all my philosophy. 1 
 
 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 terrace to meet 
 Lady Fleetwood driving her pony-trap. She gave a 
 brief single nod to the salute of her lord, quite in the 
 town-lady^ 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 
 
THE FATES AND CHOICE OF REFUGES 457 
 
 of the house, physically sensible, in the back turned to 
 his wife's along the corridor, that our ordinary com- 
 parison for the division of a wedded twain is correct. 
 She was Arctic, and Antarctic he had to be, perforce 
 of the distance she put between them. A removal of 
 either of them from life — or from 6 the act of breath- 
 ing,' as Gower Woodseer's contempt of the talk about 
 death would call it — was an imaginable way of making 
 it a wider division. Ambrose Mallard was far enough 
 from his fatal lady now — farther than the Poles 
 asunder. 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 proof of our being ' sons of vapour,' accord- 
 ing to Gower Woodseer's heartless term for poor 
 Ambrose and the lot. They have their souls ; and 
 above philosophy, ' natural ' or unnatural, they may 
 find a shelter. They can show in their desperation 
 that they are made of blood, as philosophers rather fail 
 of doing. An insignificant, brainless creature like 
 Feltre had wits, by the aid of his religion, to help or be 
 charitable to his fellows, particularly the sinners, in the 
 crises of life, surpassing any philosopher's. 
 
 Information of her ladyship's having inspected the 
 apartments, to see to the minutest of his customary 
 luxuries, cut at him all round. His valet had it from 
 the footmen and maids ; and their speaking of it meant 
 a liking for their mistress ; and that liking, added to 
 her official solicitude on his behalf, touched a soft place 
 in him and blew an icy wind ; he was frozen where he 
 was warmed. Here was evidence of her intending the 
 division to be a fixed gap. She had entered this room 
 
458 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and looked about her. He was here to feel her presence 
 in her absence. 
 
 Some one or something had schooled her, too. Her 
 large-eyed directness of gaze was the same as at that 
 inn and in Wales, but her easy sedateness was novel, 
 her English almost the tone of the JCnglish world : 
 he gathered it, at least, from the few remarks below 
 stairs. 
 
 His desire to be with her was the desire to escape 
 the phantasm of the woman haunting to subjugate him 
 when they were separate. He could kill illusion by 
 magnifying and clawing at her visible angles and audible 
 false notes; and he did it until his recollections joined 
 to the sight of her, when a clash of the thought of 
 what she had been and the thought of what she was 
 had the effect of conjuring a bitter sweet image that 
 was a more seductive illusion. Strange to think, this 
 woman once loved the man who was not half the value 
 of the man she no longer loved. He took a shot at 
 /cynicism, but hit no mark. This woman protected her 
 'whole sex. 
 
 They sat at the dinner- table alone, thanks to a hand- 
 some wench's attractions 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 reserved a smile, there was 
 no look of a lock on her face. She seemed pleased to 
 be treated very courteously ; she returned the stately 
 politeness in exactest measure; very simply, as well. 
 Her face had now an air of homeliness, well suited to 
 an English household interior. She could chat. Any 
 
THE FATES AND CHOICE OF REFUGES 459 
 
 pauses occurring, he was the one guilty of them ; she 
 did not allow them to be barrier chasms, or 6 strids ' for 
 the leap with effort ; she crossed them like the mountain 
 maid over a gorge's plank — kept her tones perfectly. 
 Her Madge and Mr. Gower Woodseer made a con- 
 versible topic. She was inquisitive for accounts of 
 Spanish history and the land of Spain. 
 
 They passed into the drawing-room. She had heard 
 of the fate of the poor child in Wales, she said, without 
 a comment. 
 
 ' I see now, I ought to have backed your proposal, 1 
 he confessed, and was near 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 in those mountains ; your own are 
 quieter for travellers, 1 he remarked ; and for a moment 
 her lips moved to some likeness of a smile ; a dimple in 
 a flowing thought. 
 
 He marked 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 
 
460 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of those men, my lord,' sent a cry ringing through him, 
 recalling Feltre's words, as to the grip men progressively 
 are held in by their deeds done. 
 
 'Oh, quite true, we change our views and ways of 
 life,** he said, thinking she might set her considerations 
 on other points of his character. But this reflection 
 was a piece of humility not yet in his particular esti- 
 mates of his character, and he spurned it : an act of 
 pride that drove his mind, for occupation, to contem- 
 plate hers ; which speedily became an embrace of her 
 character, until he was asking whether the woman he 
 called wife and dared not clasp was one of those rarest, 
 who can be idealized by virtue of their being known. 
 For the young man embracing a character loses 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 other as a very self. Such is the 
 privilege and the chastisement of the young. 
 
 Gower Woodseer's engagement with the girl Madge 
 was a happier subject for expatiation and agreement. 
 Her deeper tones threw a light on Gower, and where 
 she saw goodness he could at least behold the natural 
 philosopher practically philosophizing. 
 
 ' The girl shall have a dowry from me,' he said ; and 
 the sum named was large. Her head bent acknowledg- 
 ingly ; money had small weight with her now. His 
 perception of it stripped him and lamed him. 
 
 He wished her ladyship good night. She stood up 
 and performed a semi-ceremonious obesiance, neatly 
 adapted to their mutual position. She had a w r ell- 
 bred mother. 
 
 Probably she would sleep. No such expectation 
 could soothe the friend, and some might be thinking 
 
THE FATES AND CHOICE OF REFUGES 461 
 
 misleacler, of Ambrose Mallard, before he had ocular 
 proof that the body lay underground. His promise 
 was given to follow it to the grave, a grave in con- 
 secrated earth. Ambrose died of the 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 laughed outright 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 much is owing to our friend. 
 
 Can ecclesiastical casuists decide upon cases of con- 
 science affecting men of the world ? 
 
 A council sat upon the case the whole night long. 
 A committee of the worldly held argumentation in a 
 lower chamber. 
 
 These are nights that weaken us to below the level 
 of women. A shuttle worked in Fleetwood's head. 
 He defended the men of the world. Lord Feltre 
 oiled them, damned them, kindled them to a terrific 
 expiatory blaze, and extinguishingly salved and wafted 
 aloft the released essence of them. Maniacal for argu- 
 ment, Fleetwood rejected the forgiveness of sins, if 
 sins they be. Prove them sins, and the suffering is 
 of necessity everlasting, his insomnia logic insisted. 
 Whichever side he took, his wife was against him; 
 not in speech, but in her look. She was a dumb 
 figure among the wranglers, clouded up to the neck. 
 Her look said she knew more of him than they knew. 
 
 He departed next day for London, after kissing his 
 child ; and he would have done wisely to abstain from 
 his exhibition of the paternal. Knowing it a step to 
 conciliation, he checked his impulsive warmth, under 
 
462 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the apprehension that the mother would take it for a 
 piece of acting to propitiate — and his lips pecked the 
 baby's cheek. Its mother held arms for it immediately. 
 Not without reason did his heart denounce her as a 
 mere mother, with little of a mind to see. 
 
 The recent series of feverishly sleepless nights dis- 
 posed him to snappish irritability or the thirst for 
 tenderness. Gower had singular experiences of him on 
 the drive Northwestward. He scarcely spoke ; he said 
 once : ' If you mean to marry, you "11 be wanting to 
 marry soon, of course,' and his curt nod before the 
 reply was formulated appeared to signify, 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 minister to raw wounds, when 
 we are in a raging gale of the vexations, battered to 
 right and left ! Religion has a nourishing breast : 
 Philosophy is breastless. Religion condones offences : 
 Philosophy has no forgiveness, is an untenanted con- 
 fessional : — ' wide air to a cry in anguish, 1 Feltre says. 
 
 All the way to London Fleetwood endured his com- 
 panion, letting him talk when he would. 
 
 He spent the greater part of the night discussing 
 human affairs and spiritual with Lord Feltre, whose 
 dialectical exhortations and insinuations were of the 
 feeblest, but to an isolated young man, yearning for 
 the tenderness of a woman thinking but of her griev- 
 ances, the ointment 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 Potts should 
 be so inconsolably shaken. Well, and if the priests 
 
THE FATES AND CHOICE OF REFUGES 463 
 
 have the secret of strengthening the backbone for 
 a bend of the knee in calamity, why not go to the 
 priests, Chummy ? Potts' hearing was not addressed ; 
 nor was the chief person in the meditation affected by 
 a question that merely jumped out of his perturbed 
 interior. 
 
 Business at Calesford kept Fleetwood hanging about 
 London several days further ; and his hatred of a place 
 he wasted time and money to decorate grew immeasur- 
 able. It distorted the features of the beautiful woman 
 for whose pleasure the grand entertainments to be held 
 there had, somewhere or other — when felon spectres 
 were abroad over earth — been conceived. 
 
 He could then return to Esslemont. Gower was told 
 kindly, with intentional coldness, that he could take a 
 seat in the phaeton if he liked ; and he liked, and took 
 it. Anything to get to that girl of his ! 
 
 Whatever the earl's inferiors did, their inferior station 
 was not suffered to discolour it for his j uclgement. But 
 an increasing antagonism to Woodseer's philosophy — 
 which the fellow carried through with perpetual scorings 
 of satisfaction — caused him to set a hard eye on the 
 damsel under the grisly spotting shadow of the sottish 
 bruiser, of whom, after once touching the beast, he 
 could not rub his hands clean ; and he chose to consider 
 the winning of the prize-fighter's lass the final triumph 
 or flag on the apex of the now despised philosophy. 
 Vain to ask how he had come 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 we 
 reap; 'plant for sugar and taste the cane J some one 
 says — this Woodseer, probably ; he can, when it suits 
 him, tickle the ears of the worldlings. And there is 
 
464 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 worthier stuff to remember ; stuff to nourish : Felt re's 
 1 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 on Madge, who made 
 Woodsccr appear tolerable, sagacious, absurdly enviable, 
 as when we have the fit to wish we were some four- 
 foot. The fellow's philosophy wore a look of practical 
 craft. He was going to the girl he liked, and she was, 
 one could swear, an honest girl ; and she was a comely 
 girl, a girl to stick to a man. Her throwing over a sot 
 was creditable. Her mistress loved her. That said 
 much for any mortal creature. Man or woman loved 
 by Carinthia could not be cowardly, could not be vile, 
 must have high qualities. Next to Religion, she stood 
 for a test of us. Had she any strong sense of Religion, 
 in addition to the formal trooping to one of their 
 pallid Protestant churches ? Lord Feltre might prove 
 useful to her. For merely the comprehension of the 
 signification of Religion steadies us. It had done that 
 for him, the earl owned. 
 
 He broke a prolonged silence by remarking to Gower : 
 6 You haven't much to say to-day ' ; and the answer 
 was : i Very little. When I 'm walking, I 'm picking 
 up ; and when I 'm driving I "m putting to- 
 gether. , 
 
 Gower was rallied on the pursuit of the personal 
 object in both cases. He pointed at sheep, shepherd, 
 farmer, over the hedge, all similarly occupied ; and 
 admitted shamelessly, that he had not a thought for 
 company, scarce a word to fling. ( Ideas in gestation 
 are the dullest matter you can have.' 
 
 'There I quite agree with you,' said Fleetwood. 
 
THE FATES AND CHOICE OF REFUGES 4,65 
 
 Abrane, Chummy Potts, Brailstone, little Corby, were 
 brighter comrades. And these were his Ixionides ! 
 Hitherto his carving of a way in the world had been 
 sufficiently ill-considered. Was it preferable to be a 
 loutish philosopher? Since the death of Ambrose 
 Mallard, he felt Woodseer's title for that crew grind 
 harshly; and he tried to provoke a repetition of it, 
 that he might burst out in wrathful defence of his 
 friends — to be named friends when they were vilified : 
 defence of poor Ambrose at least, the sinner who, or 
 one as bad, might have reached to pardon through the 
 priesthood. Gower offered him no chance. 
 
 Entering Esslemont air, Fleetwood tossed his black 
 mood to the winds. She breathed it. She was a moun- 
 tain girl, and found it hard to forgive our lowlands. 
 She would learn tolerance, taking her flights at seasons. 
 The yacht, if she is anything of a sailor, may give her a 
 taste of England's pleasures. She will have a special 
 allowance for distribution among old Mr. Woodseer's 
 people. As to the rest of the Countess of Fleetwood's 
 wishes, her family ranks with her husband's in claims 
 of any kind on him. There would be — she would 
 require and had a right to demand — say, a warm half- 
 hour of explanations : he knew the tone for them, and 
 so little did he revolve it apprehensively, that his mind 
 sprang beyond, to the hearing from her mouth of her not 
 intending further to ' guard her rooms. 1 How quietly 
 the words were spoken ! There was a charm in the 
 retrospect of her mouth and manner. One of the rare 
 women who never pout or attitudinize, she could fling 
 her glove gracefully — one might add, capturingly : 
 under every aspect, she was a handsome belligerent. 
 The words he had to combat pleased his memory. Some 
 
 2g 
 
466 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 good friend, Lady Arpington probably, had instructed 
 her in the art of dressing to match her colour. 
 
 Concerning himself, he made no stipulation, but he 
 reflected on Lord Feltre's likely estimate of her as a bit 
 of a heathen. And it might be to her advantage, were 
 she and Feltre to have some conversations. Whatever 
 the faith, a faith should exist, for without the sentiment 
 of religion, a woman, he says, is where she was when 
 she left the gates of Eden. A man is not much farther. 
 Feltre might have saved Ambrose Mallard. He is, how- 
 ever, right in saying, that the woman with the sentiment 
 of religion in her bosom is a box of holy incense distin- 
 guishing her from all other women. Empty of it, she 
 is devil's bait. At best, she is a creature who cannot 
 overlook an inj ury, or must be exacting God knows what 
 humiliations before she signs the treaty. 
 
 Informed at the house that her ladyship had been 
 staying up on Croridge for the last two days, Fleetwood 
 sent his hardest shot of the eyes at Gower. Let her be 
 absent : it was equal to the first move of war, and 
 absolved him from contemplated proposals to make 
 amends. But the enforced solitary companionship with 
 this ruminator of a fellow set him asking whether the 
 godless dog he had picked up by the wayside was not 
 incarnate another of the sins he had to expiate. Day 
 after day, almost hourly, some new stroke fell on him. 
 Why ? Was he selected for persecution because he was 
 wealthy ? The Fates were driving him in one direction, 
 no doubt of that. 
 
 This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessa- 
 tion of English storm-weather bequeathed him gloom. 
 Ashamed of the mood, he was nevertheless directed by 
 its final shadows to see the ruminating tramp in Gower, 
 
THE RETARDED COURTSHIP 467 
 
 and in Madge the prize-fighter's jilt : and round about 
 Esslemont a world eyeing an Earl of Fleetwood, who 
 painted himself the man 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 Ambrose 
 Mallard. Why, clearly, wealth was the sole origin and 
 agent of the mischief. With somewhat less of it, he 
 might have walked in his place among the nation's 
 elect, the 6 herd of the gilt horns,' untroubled by 
 ambitions and ideas. 
 
 Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and 
 Madge walking over the grounds near the western plan- 
 tation, and he regretted the disappearance of them, with 
 the fellow talking hard into the girl's ear. Those two 
 could think he had been of some use. The man pre- 
 tending to philosophical depth 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 and 
 means 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 in his decreeing the fall of timber 
 that obstructed views, and was the more imperatively 
 doomed for his bailiffs intercession. ' Sound wood ' 
 the trees might be : they had to assist in defraying the 
 expense of separate establishments. A messenger to 
 Queeney from Croridge then announced the Countess's 
 return ' for a couple of hours.' Queeney said it was the 
 day when her ladyship examined the weekly bills of 
 the household. That was in the early morning. The 
 post brought my lord a letter from Countess Livia, a 
 
468 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 most infrequent writer. She had his word to pay her 
 debts ; what next was she for asking ? He shrugged, 
 opened the letter, and stared at the half dozen lines. 
 The signification of them rapped on his consciousness of 
 another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent. 
 
 All possible anticipation seemed here outdone : inso- 
 much that he held palpable evidence of the Fates at 
 work to harass and drive him. She was married to the 
 young Earl of Cressett ! 
 
 Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs. They 
 were the politely flowing feminine of a statement of the 
 fact, which might have been in one line. They flour- 
 ished 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 come unaccompanied, stick in hand, 
 her dress looped for the roads. Madge bustled her 
 shorter steps up the park beside her ; Fleetwood met 
 her on the 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. 6 The 
 boy is at Croridge ? ' 
 
THE RETARDED COURTSHIP 469 
 
 4 With me. He has his nurse. Madge was at home 
 here more than there.' 
 
 6 Why do you go back ? ' 
 
 6 1 am of use to my brother."* 
 
 6 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 in protecting him ? ' 
 
 She smiled, and her smile was like the hint of the 
 steel blade an inch out of sheath. 
 
 < My brother does not count me a weak woman.' 
 
 ' Oh no ! No one would think that,' Fleetwood said 
 hurriedly and heartily. 6 Least of all men, I, Carinthia. 
 But you might be rash.' 
 
 6 My brother knows me cautious.' 
 
 'Chillon?' 
 
 6 It is my brother's name.' 
 
 * You used to call him by his name.' 
 
 ' 1 love his name.' 
 
 6 Ah, well ! I may be pardoned for wishing to hear 
 what part you play there.' 
 
 ' I go the rounds with my brother.' 
 
 ' Armed ? ' 
 
 6 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 : 
 6 We do not hire defenders.' 
 
470 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 * In civilized lands . . . ' he began and stopped. 
 4 You have Mr. Wythan ? ' 
 
 1 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." 1 
 
 * There is none.'* 
 
 ' But you will not call your brother Chillon to me. 1 
 
 ( You dislike the name. 1 
 
 ' 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 view of it and the white light of 
 this woman's nature flashed on his emotion into 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 at Esslemont ? ' 
 
 " I heard from Madge.' 
 
 6 It is positive you must return to Croridge ?' 
 
 8 1 must be with my brother, yes.' 
 
 ' Your ladyship will permit me to conduct you. 1 
 
 Her head assented. There was nothing to complain 
 of, but he had not gained a step. 
 
 The rule is, that when we have yielded initiative to 
 a woman, we are unable to recover it without uncivil 
 bluster. So, therefore, women dealing with gentlemen 
 are allowed unreasonable advantages. He had never 
 
THE RETARDED COURTSHIP 471 
 
 granted it in colloquy or act to any woman but this 
 one. Consequently, he was to see, that if the gentle- 
 man in him was not put aside, the lady would continue 
 moving on lines of the independence he had likewise 
 yielded, or rather flung, to her. Unless, as a result, he 
 besieged and wooed his wife, his wife would hold on a 
 course inclining constantly farther from the union he 
 desired. Yet how could he begin to woo her if he saw 
 no spark of womanly tenderness ? He asked himself, 
 because the beginning of the wooing might be checked 
 by the call on him for words of repentance only just 
 possible to conceive. Imagine them uttered, and she 
 has the initiative for life. 
 
 She would not have it, certainly, with a downright 
 brute. But he was not that. 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. And between the good and the bad in him, the 
 sole point of strength was a pride 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 per- 
 fect brute with any other woman he would have his 
 mastery. The summoning of an idea of personal power 
 to match this woman in a contest was an effort exhaust- 
 ing the idea. 
 
 They passed out of Esslemont gates together at that 
 hour of the late afternoon when Southwesterly breezes, 
 after a summer gale, drive their huge white flocks over 
 blue fields fresh as morning, on the march to pile the 
 crown of the sphere, and end a troubled day with 
 grandeur. Up the lane by the park they had open 
 land to the heights of Croridge, 
 
472 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 4 Splendid clouds/ Fleetwood remarked. 
 
 She looked up, thinking of the happy long day's 
 walk with her brother to the Styrian Baths. Pleasure 
 in the sight made her face shine superbly. s A flying 
 Switzerland, Mr. Woodseer says, 1 she replied. • England 
 is beautiful on days like these. For walking, I think 
 the English climate very good. 1 
 
 He dropped a murmur: 'It should suit so good a 
 walker, 1 and burned to compliment her spirited easy 
 stepping, and scorned himself for the sycophancy it 
 would be before they were on the common ground of a 
 restored understanding. But an approval of any of 
 her acts threatened him with enthusiasm for the whole 
 of them, her person included ; and a dam in 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 and Syria. Nature 
 r is well enough ; she is, as he says, a savage. Men's 
 works, acting under divine direction to escape from 
 that tangle, are better worthy of study, perhaps. If 
 one has done wrong, for example. 1 
 
 * I could listen to him, 1 she said. 
 
 ' You would not need — except, yes, one thing. Your 
 father's book speaks of not forgiving an injury. 1 
 
 8 My father does. He thinks it weakness to forgive 
 an injury. Women do, and are disgraced, they are 
 thought slavish. My brother is much stronger than I 
 am. He is my father alive in that. 1 
 
 1 It is anti-Christian, some would think. 1 
 
 'Let offending people go. He would not punish 
 them. They may go where they will be forgiven. For 
 them our religion is a happy retreat; we are glad 
 
THE RETARDED COURTSHIP 473 
 
 they have it. My father and my brother say that 
 injury forbids us to be friends again. My father was 
 injured by the English Admiralty: he never forgave 
 it ; but he would have fought one of their ships and 
 offered his blood any day, if his country called to 
 battle.' 
 
 ' You have the same feeling, you mean.'' 
 4 1 am a woman. I follow my brother, whatever he 
 decides. It is not to say he is the enemy of persons 
 offending him ; only that they have put the division.' 
 ' They repent ? ' 
 
 ' If they do, they do well for themselves.' 1 
 ' 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/ 
 4 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, what have you ? ' was added in the 
 tone. 
 
 ' My heart is my brother's,' she said. 
 ' All your heart ? ' 
 
 6 My heart is my brother's until one of us drops.' 
 8 There is not another on earth beside your brother 
 Chillon?' 
 
 ' There is my child.' 
 
 The dwarf square tower of Croridge village church 
 fronted them against the sky, seen of both. 
 
474 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 4 You remember it," he said ; and she answered : 
 * I was married there.** 
 
 * You have not forgotten that injury, Carinthia?"* 
 
 * I am a m other. , 
 
 1 Uy all the saints ! you hit hard. Justly. Not you. 
 Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn when they 
 begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke ! Suppose we 
 hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the 
 ground — 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 I describe 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. 1 
 
 ' You consider it holy ? " 
 
 6 My father and my mother spoke to me of the 
 marriage-tie. I read the service 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 ? ' 
 
 1 My husband broke that for me/ 
 
 6 Carinthia, if he bids you, begs you to renew it ? 
 God knows what you may save me from ! ' 
 
 ' Pray to God. Do not beg of me, my lord. I have 
 my brother and my little 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/ 
 
THE RETARDED COURTSHIP 475 
 
 With those words she barred the gates on him ; at 
 the same time she bestowed the frank look of an amiable 
 face brilliant in the lively red of her exercise, in its 
 bent-bow curve along the forehead, out of the line of 
 beauty, touching, as her voice was, to rnake an under- 
 tone of anguish swell an ecstasy. So he felt it, for his 
 mood was now the lover's. A torture smote him, to 
 find himself transported by that voice at his ear 
 to the scene of the young bride in thirty-acre 
 meadow. 
 
 ' 1 propose to call on Captain Kirby-Levellier to- 
 morrow, Carinthia,' he said. 4 The name of his house ? ' 
 
 ' My brother is not now any more in the English 
 army,' she replied. ' He has hired a furnished house 
 named Stoneridge. 1 
 
 ' He will receive me, I presume ? ' 
 
 ' My brother is a courteous gentleman, my lord."' 
 
 c Here is the church, and here we have to part for 
 to-day. Do we?' 
 
 6 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 stammered beginning of his appeal to her. 
 
 Their parting by the graveyard of the church that 
 had united them was what the world would class as 
 curious. To him it was a further and a well-marked 
 stroke of the fatality pursuing him. He sauntered 
 by the graveyard wall until her figure slipped out 
 of sight. It went like a puffed candle, and still it 
 haunted the corner where last seen. Her vanishing 
 
476 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 seemed to say, that less of her belonged to him than 
 the phantom his eyes retained behind them some- 
 where. 
 
 There was in his pocket a memento of Ambrose Mal- 
 lard, that the family had given him at his request. 
 He felt the lump. It had an answer for all perplex- 
 ities. It had been charged and emptied since it was 
 in his possession ; and it could be charged again. 
 The thing was a volume as big as the world to study. 
 For the touch of a finger, one could have its entirely 
 satisfying contents, and fly and be a raven of that 
 night wherein poor Ambrose wanders lost, but cured 
 of human wounds. 
 
 He leaned on the churchyard wall, having the graves 
 to the front of eyes bent inward. They were Protes- 
 tant graves, not so impressive to him as the wreathed 
 and gilt of those under dedication to Feltre's Madonna. 
 But whatever they were, they had ceased to nurse 
 an injury or feel the pain for having inflicted it. Their 
 wrinkles had gone from them, whether of anger or 
 suffering. Ambrose Mallard lay as peaceful in conse- 
 crated ground : and Chumley Potts would be unlikely 
 to think that the helping to lay Ambrose in his quiet 
 last home would cost him a roasting until priestly 
 intercession availed. So Chummy continues a Protes- 
 tant ; dull consciences can ! But this is incompre- 
 hensible, that she, nursing her injury, should be per- 
 fectly civil. She is a woman without emotion. She 
 is a woman full of emotion, one man knows. She ties 
 him to her, to make him feel the lash of his remorse. 
 He feels it because of her casting him from her — and 
 so civilly. If this were a Catholic church, one might 
 go in and give the stained soul free way to get a cleans- 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 477 
 
 ing. As it is, here are the graves ; the dead every- 
 where have their sanctity, even the heathen. 
 
 Fleetwood read the name of the family of Meek on 
 several boards at the 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 
 up the ghost prematurely, with a couplet, at eighty- 
 one. A healthy spot, Croridge, or there were virtues 
 in the Meek family, he reflected, and had a shudder 
 that he did not trace to its cause, beyond an acknow- 
 ledgment of 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 the stillness of the hour after matins from 
 his hated empty Esslemont up again to the village of 
 the long-lived people, enjoying the moist earthiness of 
 the air off the ironstone. He rode fasting, a good pre- 
 paratory state for the simple pleasures, which are vir- 
 tually the Great Nourisher's teats to her young. The 
 earl was relieved of his dejection by a sudden filling of 
 his nostrils. Fat Esslemont underneath had no such 
 air. Except on the mornings of his walk over the 
 Salzkammergut and Black Forest regions, he had never 
 consciously drawn that deep breath of the satisfied 
 rapture, charging the whole breast with thankfulness. 
 Huntsmen would know it, if the chase were not urgent 
 to pull them at the tail of the running beast. Once or 
 
478 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 twice on board his yacht he might have known some- 
 thing like it, but the salt sea-breeze could not be 
 disconnected from his companion Lord Feltre, and a 
 thought of Feltre swung vapour of incense all about him. 
 Breathing this air of the young sun's kiss of earth, his 
 invigoration repelled the seductions of the burnt Oriental 
 gums. 
 
 Besides, as he had told his friend, it was the sincerity 
 of the Catholic religion, not the seductiveness, that won 
 him to a form of homage — the bend 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 
 essence extracted of the scourge, flesh vanquished ; and 
 it stands apart from controversy. Those monks of the 
 forested moimtain heights, rambling for their herbs, 
 know the blessedness to be found in mere breathing : a 
 neighbour readiness to yield the breath inspires it the 
 more. For when we 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. But 
 before we taste that happiness we must perform our 
 penance ; ' No living happiness can be for the unclean, 1 
 as the holy father preached to his flock of the monastery 
 dispersing at matins. 
 
 Ay, but penance ? penance ? Is there not such a 
 thing as the doing of penance out of the Church, in the 
 manly fashion? So to regain the right to be numbered 
 among the captains of the world's fighting men, incon- 
 testably the best of comrades, whether or no they led 
 away on a cataract leap at the gates of life. Boldly to 
 say we did a wrong will clear our sky for a few 
 shattering peals. 
 
 The penitential act means, youth put behind us, and 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 479 
 
 a steady course ahead. But, for the keeping of a steady 
 course, men made of blood in the walks of the world 
 must be steadied. Say it plainly — mated. There is 
 the humiliating point of our human condition. We 
 must have beside us and close beside us the woman we 
 have learned to respect ; supposing ourselves lucky 
 enough to have found her ; — ' that required other scale 
 of the human balance,"' as Woodseer calls her now he 
 has got her, wiser than Lord Feltre in reference to men 
 and women. We get no balance without her. That is 
 apparently the positive law ; and by reason of men's 
 wretched enslavement, it is the dance to dissolution 
 when we have not honourable union with women. 
 Feltre's view of women sees the devilish or the 
 angelical ; and to most men women are knaves or 
 ninnies. Hence do we behold 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 the intermittent whims 
 and moods and spites ; the universal Patron, whose 
 ambition to be leader of his world made him handle 
 foul brutes — corrupt and cause their damnation, they 
 retort, with curses, in their pangs. She was expected 
 to pardon the husband, who had not abstained from 
 his revenge on her for keeping him to the pledge of his 
 word. And what a revenge ! — he had flung the world 
 at her. She is consequently to be the young bride 
 she was on the memorable morning of the drive off these 
 heights of Croridge down to thirty-acre meadow ! It 
 must be a saint to forgive such offences; and she is 
 not one, she is deliciously not one, neither a Genevieve 
 nor a Griselda. He handed her the rod to chastise him. 
 
480 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Her exchange of Christian names with the Welshman 
 would not do it ; she was too transparently sisterly, 
 provincially simple ; she was, in fact, 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 of austerest asceticism brought the sensation 
 as bracingly as the Boreal morning animates men of 
 high blood in ice regions. She could but gently sting, 
 even if vindictive. 
 
 Along the heights, outside the village, some way 
 below a turn of the road to Lekkatts, a gentleman 
 waved hand. The earl saluted with his whip, and 
 waited for him. 
 
 6 Nothing wrong, Mr. Wy than ? ' 
 
 1 Nothing to fear, my lord. 1 
 
 * I get a trifle uneasy. 1 
 
 4 The countess will not leave her brother. 1 
 
 A glow of his countess's friendliness for this open- 
 faced, prompt-speaking, good fellow of the faintly inky 
 eyelids, and possibly sheepish inclinations, melted Fleet- 
 wood. Our downright repentance of misconduct toward 
 a woman binds us at least to the tolerant recognition 
 of what poor scraps of consolement she may have picked 
 up between then and now — when we can stretch fist 
 in flame to defy it on the oath of her being a woman of 
 honour. 
 
 The earl alighted and said : * Her brother, I suspect, 
 is the key of the position. 1 
 
 'He's worth it — she loves her brother, 1 said Mr. 
 Wythan, betraying a feature of his quick race, with 
 whom the reflection upon a statement is its lightning 
 in advance. 
 
 Gratified by the instant apprehension of his meaning, 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 481 
 
 Fleetwood interpreted the Welshman's. ' I have to see 
 the brother worthy of her love. Can you tell me the 
 hour likely to be convenient ? ' 
 
 Mr. Wythan thought an appointment unnecessary : 
 which conveyed the sufficient assurance of audience 
 granted. 
 
 ' You know her brother well, Mr. Wythan ?' 
 
 8 Know him as if I had known him for years. They 
 both come to the mind as faith comes — no saying how ; 
 one swears by them.' 
 
 Fleetwood eyed the Welsh gentleman, with an idea 
 that he might readily do the same by him. 
 
 Mr. Wythan's quarters were at the small village inn, 
 whither he was on his way to breakfast. The earl 
 slipped an arm through the bridle reins and walked 
 beside him, listening to an account of the situation at 
 Lekkatts. It was that extraordinary complication of 
 moves and checks which presents in the main a knot, for 
 the powers above to cut. A miserly old lord withholds 
 arrears of wages ; his workmen strike at a critical 
 moment; his nephew, moved by common humanity, 
 draws upon crippled resources to supply their extremer 
 needs, though they are ruining his interests. They 
 made one night a demonstration of the terrorizing sort 
 round Lekkatts, to. give him a chorus ; and the old lord 
 fired at them out of window and wounded a man. For 
 that they vowed vengeance. All the new gunpowder 
 milled in Surrey was, for some purpose of his own, 
 stored by Lord Levellier on the alder island of the 
 pond near his 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 at last the 
 Government had undertaken to submit it to experi- 
 
 2 H 
 
482 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ments. And there they stood on ground too strong for 
 ' the Captain,' as they called him, to force, because of 
 the quantity stored at Lekkatts being largely beyond 
 the amount under cover of Lord Levellier's licence. 
 The old lord was very ill, and he declined to see a 
 doctor, but obstinately kept from dying. His nephew 
 had to guard him, and at the same time support an 
 enemy having just cause of complaint. This, how- 
 ever, his narrow means would not much longer permit 
 him to do. The alternative was then offered him of 
 either siding arbitrarily against the men and his con- 
 science or of taking a course c imprudent on the part of 
 a presumptive heir,' Mr. Wythan said hurriedly at the 
 little inn's doorsteps. 
 
 'You make one of his lordship's guard? 1 said 
 Fleetwood. 
 
 ' The countess, her brother, and I, yes."* 
 
 1 Danger at all ? ' 
 
 c 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 every Cambrian 
 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, ana the 
 hand was grasped by one who looked happy in doing it. 
 He understood and trusted the man after that, warmed 
 in thinking how politic his impulses could be. 
 
 His intention of riding up to Croridge at noon to 
 request his interview with Mr. Kirby-Levellier was then 
 stated. 
 
 1 The key of the position, as you said,' Mr. Wythan 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 483 
 
 remarked, not proffering an opinion of it more than was 
 expressed by a hearty, rosy countenance, that had to 
 win its way with the earl before excuse was found for 
 the venturesome repetition of his phrase^ 
 
 Cantering back to that home of the loves of Gower 
 Woodseer and Madge Winch, the thought of his first 
 act of penance done, without his feeling the poorer for 
 it, reconciled Fleetwood to the aspect of the hollow 
 place. 
 
 He could not stay beneath the roof. His task of 
 breakfasting done, he was off before the morning's 
 delivery of letters, riding round the country under 
 Croridge, soon up there again. And Henrietta might 
 be at home, he was reminded by hearing band-music as 
 he followed the directions to the house named Stone- 
 ridge. The band consisted of eight wind instruments ; 
 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 upon Henrietta'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 open for 
 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 very generous of 
 you ! ' He protested ignorance. She had seen him speak 
 to the conductor and receive the patron's homage ; and 
 who but he knew her adored of operas, or would have 
 had the benevolent impulse to think of solacing her 
 exile from music in the manner so sure of her taste ! 
 
484 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She was at her loveliest : her features were one sweet 
 bloom, as of the sunny flower garden ; and, touched to 
 the heart by the music and the kindness, she looked the 
 look that kisses ; innocently, he felt, feeling himself on 
 the same good ground while he could own he admired 
 the honey creature, much as an amateur may admire 
 one of the pictures belonging to the nation. 
 
 1 And you have come ? . . .' she said. ' We are to 
 believe in happy endings ? ' 
 
 He shrugged, as the modest man should, who says : 
 1 If it depends on me ' ; but the words were firmly 
 spoken and could be credited. 
 
 '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 is danger 
 Janey's at home.'' Henrietta mimicked her Janey. 
 6 Parades with her brother at night ; old military cap 
 on her head ; firearms primed ; sings her Austrian 
 mountain songs or the Light Cavalry call, till it rings 
 all day in my ears — she has a thrilling contralto. You 
 are not to think her wild, my lord. She's for adventure 
 or domesticity, u whichever the Fates decree.'" She 
 really is coming to the perfect tone. 1 
 
 4 Speak of her,'' said the earl. ' She can't yet over- 
 look ? . . .' 
 
 6 It 's in the family. She will overlook anything her 
 brother excuses.'* 
 
 1 I 'm here to see him."* 
 
 * I heard it from Mr. Wythan.' 
 
 '"Owa^," I believe ?' 
 
 Henrietta sketched apologies, with a sidled head, soft 
 pout, wavy hand. ' He belongs to the order of primitive 
 people. His wife — the same pattern, one supposes — 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 485 
 
 pledged them to their Christian names. The man is 
 a simpleton, but a gentleman ; and Janey holds his 
 dying wife's wish sacred. 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 of grateful tenderness in return for 
 his magnanimity, oblivious of the inflamer it was : and 
 her heart thanked him more warmly, without the 
 perilous show of emotion, when she found herself 
 secure. 
 
 She was beautiful, she was tempting, and probably 
 the weakest of players in the ancient game of two ; and 
 clearly she was not disposed to the outlaw game ; was 
 only a creature of ardour. That he could see, seeing 
 the misinterpretation a fellow like Brailstone would put 
 upon a temporary flush of the feminine, and the advan- 
 tage he would take of it, perhaps not unsuccessfully — 
 the dog ! He committed the absurdity of casting a 
 mental imprecation at the cunning tricksters of emo- 
 tional women, and yelled at himself in the worn old 
 surplice of the converted rake. But letting his mind 
 run this way, the tradito amor of the band outside the 
 lady's window was instantly traced to Lord Brailstone ; 
 so convictingly, that he now became a very counsel for 
 an injured husband in denunciation of the seductive 
 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's handwriting. 
 4 1 've written my opinion,' he said. 
 
 ' Not too severe, pray.' 
 
 'Posted.' 
 
486 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ' Livia wanted a protector. 1 
 
 ■ And chose — what on earth are you saying ! ' 
 
 Livia and her boyish lord were abandoned on the 
 spot, though Henrietta could have affirmed stoutly that 
 there was much to be pleaded, if a female 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, 1 she said. ' Everything Spanish for Janey now. 
 You are aware ? — no ? ' 
 
 He was unaware and desired to be told. 
 
 1 Janey's latest idea ; only she would have conceived 
 the notion. You solve our puzzle, my lord.' 
 
 She renewed the thanks she persisted in offering for 
 the military music now just ceasing: vexatiously, con- 
 sidering that it was bad policy for him to be unmasking 
 Brailstone to her. At the same time, the blindness 
 which rendered her unconscious of Brailstone's hand 
 in sending members of a military band to play selections 
 from the favourite opera they had jointly drunk of to 
 ecstasy, was creditable ; touching when one thought of 
 the pursuer's many devices, not omitting some treason 
 on the part of her present friend. 
 
 ' Tell me — I solve ? ' he said. 
 
 Henrietta spied the donkey-basket bearing the two 
 little ones. 
 
 4 Yes, I hope so — on our way down,' she made answer. 
 ' I want you to see the 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 ob- 
 servation of them. 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 487 
 
 4 Very imperious — Mr. Boy ! ' she replied, straighten- 
 ing her back under a pretty frown, to convey the humour 
 of the infant tyrant. 
 
 The father's mind ran swiftly on a comparison of the 
 destinies of the two children, from his estimate of their 
 parents ; many of Gower Woodseer's dicta converging 
 to reawaken thoughts upon Nature's laws, which a 
 knowledge of his own nature blackened. He had to 
 persuade himself that this 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 
 of her young charm ; the pain of keeping to his resolve 
 to quit her, lest she should subjugate him and despoil 
 him of his wrath ; the fatalism in his coming and going ; 
 the romantic freak it had been, — a situation then so 
 clearly wrought, now blurred past comprehension. But 
 there must have been love, or some love on his part. 
 Otherwise he was bound to pray for the mother to pre- 
 dominate in the child, all but excluding its father. 
 
 Carinthia's image, as a result, ascended sovereignly, 
 and he hung to it. 
 
 For if we are human creatures with consciences, nothing 
 is more certain than that we make our taskmasters of 
 those to whom we have done a wrong, the philosopher 
 says. Between Lord Feltre and Gower Woodseer, influ- 
 enced pretty equally by each of them, this young noble- 
 man was wakening to the claims of others — Youth's 
 infant conscience. Fleetwood now conceived the verbal 
 supplication for his wife's forgiveness involved in the 
 act of penance ; and verbal meant abject ; with him, 
 going so far, it would mean naked, 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 
 
488 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 as in their number, if men pretend to a step above the 
 savage. Or, well, his wife was a power. 
 
 He had forgotten the puzzle spoken of by Henrietta, 
 when she used the word again and expressed her happi- 
 ness in the prospect before them — caused by his pre- 
 sence, of course. 
 
 ' You are aware, my dear lord, Janey worships her 
 brother. He was defeated, by some dastardly contriv- 
 ance, in a wager to do wonderful feats — for money ! 
 money ! money ! a large stake. How we come off our 
 high horses ! I hadn't an idea of money before I was 
 married. I think of little else. My husband has 
 notions of honour ; he engaged himself to 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 to sell out 
 of the army in consequence. I shall never have Janey's 
 face of suffering away from my sight. He is a soldier 
 above all things. It seems hard on me, but I cannot 
 blame him for snatching at an opportunity to win 
 military distinction. He is in treaty for the post of aide 
 to the Colonel — the General of the English contingent 
 bound for Spain, for the cause of the Queen. My hus- 
 band will undertake to be at the orders of his chief as 
 soon as he can leave this place. Janey goes with him, 
 according to present arrangements.' 
 
 Passing through a turnstile, that led from the road 
 across a meadow-slope to the broken land below, Hen- 
 rietta had view of the earl's hard white face, and she 
 hastened to say : ' You have altered that, my lord. 
 She is devoted to her brother ; and her brother running 
 dangers, . . . and danger in itself is an attraction to 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 489 
 
 her. But her husband will have the first claim. She 
 has her good sense. She will never insist on going, if 
 you oppose. She will be ready to fill her station. It 
 will be her pride and her pleasure.'* 
 
 Henrietta continued in the vein of these assur- 
 ances ; and Carinthia's character was shooting lightnings 
 through him, withering that of the woman who referred 
 to his wife's good sense and her station ; and certainly 
 would not have betrayed herself by such drawlings if 
 she had been very positive that Carinthia 1 s disposition 
 toward wealth and luxury resembled hers. She knew 
 the reverse ; or so his contemptuously generous effort 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 he heard of her design to go with 
 her brother. 
 
 Wildest of enterprises ! But a criminal saw himself 
 guilty of a large part in the disaster the two heroical 
 souls were striving desperately to repair. If her Chillon 
 went, Carinthia would go — sure as flame is drawn to 
 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 her husband no other rival 
 than a beloved brother, no ground of complaint save her 
 devotion to her brother, pervaded him, without illumi- 
 nating or lifting ; rather with an indication of a foul 
 contrast, that prostrated him. 
 
 Half of our funny heathen lives we are bent double 
 to gather things we have tossed away ! was one of the 
 numbers of apposite sayings that hummed about him, 
 for a chorus of the world's old wisdom in derision, when 
 he descended the heathy path and had sight of Carinthia 
 beside her Chillon. Would it be the same thing if he 
 
490 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 had it in hand again ? Did he wish it to be the same ? 
 Was not he another man ? By the leap of his heart to 
 the woman standing down there, he was a better man ! 
 But recent spiritual exercises brought him to see super- 
 stitiously how by that sign she was lost to him; for 
 everlastingly in this life the better pays for the worse ; 
 thus is the better a proved thing. 
 
 Both Chillon and Carinthia, it is probable, might 
 have been stirred to deeper than compassion, had the 
 proud young nobleman taken them into his breast to 
 the scouring of it ; exposing the grounds of his former 
 brutality, his gradual enlightenment, his ultimate 
 acknowledgment of the pricelessness of the woman he 
 had won to lose her. An imploring of forgiveness 
 would not have been necessary with those two, however 
 great their — or the woman's — astonishment at the 
 revelation of an abysmal male humanity. A complete 
 exposure of past meanness is the deed of present 
 courage certain of its reward without as well as 
 within ; for then we show our fellows that the slough 
 is cast. But life is a continuous fight ; and members 
 of the social world display its degree of civilization 
 by fighting in armour ; most of them are born in it ; and 
 their armour is more sensitive than their skins. It 
 was Fleetwood's instinct of his inability to fling it off 
 utterly which warned him of his loss of the wife, whose 
 enthusiasm to wait on her brother in danger might have 
 subsided into the channel of duty, even tenderness, 
 had he been able resolutely to strip himself bare. This 
 was the further impossible to him, because of a belief 
 he now imposed upon himself, to cover the cowardly 
 shrinking from so extreme a penitential act, that such 
 confessions are due from men to the priest only, and 
 
ON THE ROAD TO THE ACT OF PENANCE 491 
 
 that he could confess wholly and absolutely to the 
 priest — to heaven, therefore, under seal, and in safety, 
 but with perfect repentance. 
 
 So, compelled to keep his inner self unknown, he 
 fronted Chillon; courteously, in the somewhat lofty 
 seeming of a guarded manner, he requested audience 
 for a few minutes; observing the princely figure of 
 the once hated man, and understanding Henrietta's 
 sheer womanly choice of him ; Carinthia's idolatry, too, 
 as soon as he had spoken. The man was in his voice. 
 
 Chillon said : * It concerns my sister, I have to think. 
 In that case, her wish is to be present. Your lordship 
 will shorten the number of minutes for 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 her husband. 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 save time by speaking three together, 
 my lord/ 
 
 He was led into the long room of the workshop, 
 where various patterns of muskets, rifles, pistols, and 
 swords were stars, crosses, wedges, over the walls, and 
 a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied 
 the middle place, on a block. 
 
 Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the 
 art of war were common in those days among a people 
 beginning to sit with habitual snugness at the festive 
 board provided for them by the valour of their fathers. 
 Fleetwood had not been on the side of the banqueting 
 citizens, though his country's journals and her feasted 
 popular wits made a powerful current to whelm opposi- 
 
492 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 tion. But the appearance of the woman, his wife, here, 
 her head surrounded by destructive engines in the form 
 of trophy, and the knowledge that this woman bearing 
 his name designed to be out at the heels of a foreign 
 army or tag-rag of uniformed rascals, inspired him to 
 reprobate men's bad old game as heartily as good sense 
 does in the abstract, and as derisively as it is the 
 way with comfortable islanders before the midnight 
 trumpet-notes of panic have tumbled them to their legs. 
 He took his chair, sickened. 
 
 He was the next moment taking Carinthia's impres- 
 sion of Chillon, compelled to it by an admiration that 
 men and women have alike for shapes of strength in the 
 mould of grace, over whose firm build a flicker of agility 
 seems to run. For the young soldier's figure was 
 visibly in its repose prompt to action as the mind's 
 movement. This was her brother ; her enthusiasm for 
 her brother was explained to him. No sooner did he 
 have the conception of it than it plucked at him pain- 
 fully ; and, feeling himself physically eclipsed by the 
 object of Carinthia's enthusiasm, his pride of the rival 
 counselled him to preserve the mask on what was going 
 on within, lest it should be seen that he was also morally 
 beaten at the outset. A trained observation told him, 
 moreover, that her Chillon's correctly handsome features, 
 despite their conventional urbanity, could knit to smite, 
 and held less of the reserves of mercy behind them than 
 Carinthia's glorious barbaric ruggedness. Her eyes, 
 each time she looked at her brother, had, without 
 doting, the light as of the rise of happy tears to the 
 underlids : as they had on a certain day at the altar, 
 when ' my lord 1 was my husband,' — more shyly then. 
 He would have said, as beautifully, but for envy of the 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 493 
 
 frank, pellucid worship in that look on her proved hero. 
 It was the jewel of all the earth to win back to him- 
 self; and it subjected him, through his desire for it, to 
 a measurement 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 
 craft and the direction of her wishes. She preferred the 
 braving of hazards and horrors beside her brother, in 
 scorn of the advantages he could offer ; and he yearned 
 to her for despising by comparison the bribe he proposed 
 in the hope that he might win her to him. She was 
 with religion to let him know the meanness of wealth. 
 
 Thus, at the edge of the debate, or contest, the young 
 lord's essential nobility disarmed him ; and the reveal- 
 ing of it, which would have appealed to Carinthia and 
 Chillon both, was forbidden by its constituent pride, 
 which helped him to live and stood obstructing explana- 
 tory 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 Madge and my Gower are waiting to 
 have the day named for them.' 
 
494 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She said : ' I respect him so much for his choice of 
 Madge. They shall not wait, if I am to decide. 1 
 
 ' 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 her brother's judicial eye. Any small 
 chance word may carry a sting for the neophyte in 
 penitence. 
 
 ' My lawyers will send down the settlement on her, 
 to be read to them to-day or to-morrow. With the 
 interest on that and the sum he tells me he 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'll work in 
 that cottage.' 
 
 6 They have a good friend to them in you, my lord. 
 It will not be poverty for their simple wants. I hear 
 of the little cottage in Surrey where they are to lodge 
 at first, before they take one of their own.' 
 
 6 We will visit them.' 
 
 'When I am in England I shall visit them 
 often.' 
 
 He submitted. 
 
 ' The man up here wounded is recovering ? ' 
 
 6 Yes, my lord. I am learning to nurse the wounded, 
 with the surgeon to direct me.' 
 
 6 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 expedition reminds me of favourable reports 
 of your chief.' 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 495 
 
 'Thoroughly able and up to the work, 1 Chillon 
 answered. 
 
 ' Queer people to meddle with.'' 
 
 ' We "re on the right side in 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 her would rest on you.' 
 
 ' My brother has not persuaded me,' Carinthia's bell 
 tones intervened. ' I proposed it. The persuasion was 
 mine. It is my happiness to be near him, helping, if 
 I can.' 
 
 ' Lady Fleetwood, I am entitled to think that your 
 brother yielded to a request urged in ignorance of the 
 nature of the risks a woman runs.' 
 
496 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 '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 not endure, 
 — life may go. There can be no fear for me. 1 
 
 She spoke plain truth. The soul of this woman 
 came out in its radiance to subdue him, as her visage 
 sometimes did ; and her voice enlarged her words. 
 She was a warrior woman, Life her sword, Death 
 her target, never to 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 the 
 miners'' cottages, her lord could have knelt to her ; and 
 for an unprotesting longer space now. He choked a 
 sigh, shrugged, and said, in the world's patient manner 
 with mad people : ' You have set your mind on it ; 
 you see it rose-coloured. You would not fear, no, but 
 your friends would 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 checked in Fleetwood by the horror of the 
 feeling that she had gone, was ankle-deep in bloody 
 mire, captive, prey of a rabble soldiery, meditating the 
 shot 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 the thick 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.' 
 
 6 Their hospitals are not safe.' 
 
 :, 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 497 
 
 4 Well ! Safety ! ' 
 
 For safety is nowhere to be had. But the earl 
 pleaded : 4 At least in our country. 1 
 
 6 In our country women are safe ? ' 
 
 4 They are, we may say, protected." 
 
 4 Laws and constables are poor protection for them.' 
 
 4 The women we name ladies are pretty safe, as a rule." 
 
 4 My sister, then, was the exception.' 
 
 After a burning half minute the earl said : 4 I have 
 to hear it from you, Mr. Levellier. You see me here/ 
 
 That was handsomely spoken. But Lord Fleetwood 
 had been judged and put aside. His opening of an old 
 case to hint at repentance for brutality annoyed the 
 man who had let him go scathless for a sister's sake. 
 
 6 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's movements.' 
 
 4 My sister does not acknowledge your claim. 1 
 
 'The Countess of Fleetwood's acts involve her 
 husband.' 
 
 4 One has to listen at times to what old sailors call 
 Caribbee ! ' Chillon exclaimed impatiently, half aloud. 
 4 My sister received your title ; she has 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 as it 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 lordship does not 
 exist for her.' 
 
 4 The father of her child must exist for her. 1 
 
 ' You raise that curtain, my lord ! ' 
 
 In the presence of three it would not bear a shaking. 
 
 2i 
 
4£)8 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Carinthia said, in pity of his torture . — 
 
 i I have my freedom, and am thankful for it, to follow 
 my brother, to share his dangers with him. That is 
 more to me than luxury and the married state. I take 
 only my freedom. , 
 
 ' Our boy ? You take the boy ? ' 
 
 1 My child is with my sister Henrietta.'' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 4 We none know yet.' 
 
 ■ You still mistrust me ? ' 
 
 Her eyes were on a man that she had put from her 
 peaceably ; and she replied, 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 you may. 
 My brother and I will go. If it is death for us, I pray 
 my child may have his father, and God directing his 
 father. 1 
 
 Her speech had the clang of the final. 
 
 * Yes, I hope — if it be the worst happening, I pray, 
 too, 1 said he, and drooped and brightened desperately : 
 * But you, too, Carinthia, you could aid by staying, by 
 being with the boy and me. Carinthia ! ' he clasped 
 her name, 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 of the kind of husband for you — a poor 
 kind ; I just knew myself well enough for that. You 
 claimed my word — the blessing of my life, if I had 
 known it ! We were married ; I played — I see the 
 beast I played. Money is power, they say. I see the 
 means it is to damn the soul, unless we — unless a man 
 does what I do now.' 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 499 
 
 Fleetwood stopped. He had never spoken such 
 words — arterial words, as they were, though the com- 
 monest ; and with moist brows, dry lips, he could have 
 resumed, have said more, have taken this woman, this 
 dream of the former bride, the present stranger, into 
 his chamber of the brave aims and sentenced deeds. 
 Her brother in the room was the barrier ; and she sat 
 mute, large-eyed, expressionless. He had plunged low 
 in the man's hearing ; the air of his lungs was thick, 
 hard to breathe, for shame of a degradation 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 of a 
 young nobleman stuttered a compliment to Carinthia 
 on her 'faith in God's assistance and the efficacy of 
 prayer,'' he jumped to his legs, not to be shouting 
 6 Hound ! ' at him. He said, under control : ' God's 
 name shall be left to the Church. My sister need not 
 be further troubled. She has shown she is not per- 
 suaded by me. Matters arranged here quickly, — we 
 start. If I am asked whether I think she does wisely 
 to run the risks in an insurrectionary country rather 
 than remain at home exposed to the honours and 
 amusements your lordship offers, I think so ; she is act- 
 ing in her best interests. She has the choice of being 
 abroad with me or staying here unguarded by me. She 
 has had her experience. She chooses rightly. Paint 
 the risks she runs, you lay the colours on those she 
 escapes. She thanks the treatment she has undergone 
 for her freedom to choose. I am responsible for nothing 
 but the not having stood against her most wretched 
 marriage. It might have been foreseen. Out there in 
 
500 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the war she is protected. Here she is with — I spare 
 your lordship the name. 1 
 
 Fleetwood would have heard harsher had he not 
 been Carinthia's husband. He withheld his reply. 
 The language moved him to proud hostility : but the 
 speaker was Carinthia's brother. 
 
 He said to her : l You won't forget Gower and 
 Madge? 1 
 
 She gave him a smile in saying : ' It shall be settled 
 for a day after next week. 1 
 
 The forms of courtesy were exchanged. 
 
 At the closing of the door on him, Chillon said : 4 He 
 did send a message : I gathered it — without the words 
 — from our Uncle Griphard. I thought him in honour 
 bound to you — and it suited me that I should. 1 
 
 ' I was a blindfold girl, dearest ; no warning would 
 have given me sight, 1 said Carinthia. ' That was my 
 treachery to the love of my brother. I dream of father 
 and mother reproaching me. 1 
 
 The misery of her time in England had darkened her 
 mind's picture of the early hour with Chillon on the 
 heights above the forsaken old home ; and the enthu- 
 siasm 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 him from their morning Eastern 
 Alps to smoky-crimson Pyrenees and Spanish sierras ; 
 she could imagine the cavernous interval her punish- 
 ment for having abandoned a sister's duties in the 
 quest of personal happiness. 
 
 But simultaneously, the growing force of her mind's 
 intelligence, wherein was no enthusiasm to misdirect 
 by overcolouring, enabled her to gather more than a 
 suspicion of comparative feebleness in the man stripped 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 501 
 
 of his terrors. She penetrated the discrowned tyrant's 
 nature some distance, 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. 
 The dwarfed object was then observed; and it was not 
 for a woman to measure herself beside him. She came, 
 however, of a powerful blood, and he was pressing her 
 back on her resources : without the measurement or a 
 thought of it, she did that which is the most ordinary 
 and the least noticed of our daily acts in civilized inter- 
 course, she subjected him to the trial of the elements 
 composing him, by collision with what she felt of her 
 own ; and it was because she felt them strongly, aware 
 of her feeling them, but unaware of any conflict, that 
 the wrestle occurred. She flung him, pitied him, and 
 passed on along her path elsewhere. This can be done 
 when love is gone. It is done more or less at any 
 meeting of men and men ; and men and women who 
 love not are perpetually doing it, unconsciously or 
 sensibly. Even in their love, a time for the trial 
 arrives among certain of them ; and the leadership is 
 assumed, and submission ensues, tacitly, nothing of the 
 contention being spoken, perhaps nothing definitely 
 known. 
 
 In Carinthia's case, her revived enthusiasm for her 
 brother drove to the penetration of the husband plead- 
 ing to thwart its course. His offer was wealth : that 
 is, luxury, amusement, ease. The sub-audible ' himself' 
 into the bargain was disregarded, not counting with 
 one who was an upward rush of fire at the thought 
 that she was called to share her brother's dangers. 
 
 Chillon cordially believed the earl to be the pestilent 
 
502 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 half madman, junction with whom is a constant trepida- 
 tion for the wife, when it is not a screaming plight. 
 He said so, and Carinthia let him retain his opinion. 
 She would have said it herself to support her scheme, 
 though * mad ' applied to a man moving in the world 
 with other men was not understood by her. 
 
 With Henrietta for the earl's advocate, she was 
 patient as the deaf rock-wall enthusiasm can be against 
 entreaties to change its direction or bid it disperse. 
 The ' private band of picked musicians , at the disposal 
 of the Countess of Fleetwood, and Opera singers (Hen- 
 rietta mentioned resonant names) hired for wonderful 
 nights at Esslemont and Calesford or on board the 
 earl's beautiful schooner yacht, were no temptation. 
 Nor did Henrietta's allusions to his broken appearance 
 move his wife, except in her saying regretfully : 4 He 
 changes.' 
 
 On the hall table at Esslemont, a letter from his 
 bankers informed the earl of a considerable sum of 
 money paid in to his account in the name of Lord 
 Brailstone. Chumley Potts, hanging at him like a 
 dog without a master since the death of his friend 
 Ambrose, had journeyed down : 6 Anxious about you,' 
 he said. Anxious about or attracted by the possessor 
 of Ambrose Mallard's 'clean sweeper,' the silver-mounted 
 small pistol ; sight of which he begged to have ; and he 
 lengthened his jaw on hearing it was loaded. A loaded 
 pistol, this dark little one to the right of the earl's 
 blotting-pad and pens, had the look of a fearful link 
 with 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 it all ' : 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 503 
 
 and ' Brosey knows now ! ' was followed by a twitch of 
 one cheek and the ejaculation : 4 Forever • ' Fleetwood 
 alive and Ambrose dead were plucking 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 be instructed on the subject of the mitigation 
 of our pains in the regions below. Potts affirmed that 
 he meant to die a Protestant Christian. Thereupon, 
 carrying a leaden burden of unlaughed laughable stuff 
 in his breast, and Chummy's concluding remark to speed 
 him : ' Damn it, no, well stick to our religion I 1 Fleet- 
 wood strode off to his library, and with the names of 
 the Ixionides of his acquaintance ringing round his 
 head, proceeded to strike one of them off the number 
 privileged at the moment to intrude on him. Others 
 would follow ; this one must be the first to go. Lie 
 wrote the famous letter to Lord Brailstone, which 
 debarred the wily pursuer from any pretext to be run- 
 ning down into Mrs. Levellier , s neighbourhood, and 
 also precluded the chance of his meeting the fair lady 
 at Calesford. With the brevity equivalent to the flick 
 of a glove on the cheek, Lord Brailstone was given to 
 understand by Lord Fleetwood that relations were at 
 an end between them. No explanation was added ; a 
 single sentence executed the work, and in the third 
 person. He did not once reflect on the outcry in the 
 ear of London coming from the receiver of 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 
 
504 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Gower Woodseer; though both were heathens, after 
 their diverse fashions, neither of them likely ever to set 
 out upon the grand old road of Rome : Lord Feltre's 
 ' Appian Way of the Saints and Comforters/* 
 
 Chummy was pardoned when they separated at night 
 for his reiterated allusions to the temptation of poor 
 Ambrose Mallard's conclusive little weapon lying on 
 the library table within reach of a man's armchair : in 
 its case, and the case locked, yes, but easily opened, 
 ' provoking every damnable sort of mortal curiosity ! ' 
 The soundest men among us have their fits of the 
 blues, Fleetwood was told. ' Not wholesome ! ' Chummy 
 shook his head resolutely, and made himself compre- 
 hensibly mysterious. He meant well. He begged his 
 old friend to promise he would unload and keep it 
 unloaded. ' For I know the infernal worry you have — 
 deuced deal worse than a night's bad luck ! ' said he ; 
 and Fleetwood smiled sourly at the world's total ignor- 
 ance of causes. His wretchedness was due now to the 
 fact that the aforetime huntress refused to be captured. 
 He took a silver cross from a table-drawer and laid it on 
 the pistol-case. ' There, Chummy,' he said ; that was 
 all ; not sermonizing or proselytizing. He was partly 
 comprehended by Chumley Potts, fully a week later. 
 The unsuspecting fellow, soon to be dispatched in the 
 suite of Brailstone, bore away an unwontedly affec- 
 tionate dismissal to his bed, and spoke some rather 
 squeamish words himself, as he recollected with disgust 
 when he ran about over London repeating his execu- 
 tioner's. 
 
 The Cross on the pistol-case may have conduced to 
 Lord Fleetwood's thought, that his days among unre- 
 pentant ephemeral Protestant sinners must have their 
 
THE EARL, THE COUNTESS, AND CHILLON 505 
 
 immediate termination. These old friends were the 
 plague-infected clothes he flung off his body. But the 
 Cross where it lay, forbidding a movement of the hand 
 to that box, was authoritative to decree his passage 
 through a present torture, by the agency of the hand 
 he held back from the solution of his perplexity, at 
 the cost which his belief in the Eternal would pay. 
 Henrietta had mentioned her husband's defeat, by some 
 dastardly contrivance. He had to communicate, for 
 the disburdening of his soul, not only that he was 
 guilty, but the meanest of criminals, in being no more 
 than half guilty. His training told him of the con- 
 tempt women entertain toward the midway or cripple 
 sinner, when they have no special desire to think him 
 innocent. How write, or even how phrase his having 
 merely breathed in his ruffian's hearing the wish that 
 he might hear of her husband's defeat ! And with 
 what object? Here, too, a woman might, years hence, 
 if not forgive, bend her head resignedly over the man's 
 vile nature, supposing strong passion his motive. But 
 the name for the actual motive ? It would not bear 
 writing, or any phrasing round it. An unsceptred 
 despot bidden take a fair woman's eyes into his breast, 
 saw and shrank. And now the eyes were Carinthia's : 
 he saw a savage bridegroom, and a black ladder-climber, 
 and the sweetest of pardoning brides, and the devil in 
 him still insatiate for revenge upon her who held him 
 to his word. 
 
 He wrote, read, tore the page, trimmed the lamp, and 
 wrote again. He remembered Gower Woodseer's having 
 warned him he would finish his career a monk. Not, 
 like Feltre, an oily convert, but under the hood, yes, 
 and extracting a chartreuse from his ramble through 
 
506 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 woods richer far than the philosopher's milk of Mother 
 Nature's bosom. There flamed the burning signal of 
 release from his torments ; there his absolving refuge, 
 instead of his writing fruitless, intricate, impossible stuff 
 to a woman. The letter was renounced and shredded : 
 the dedicated ascetic contemplated a hooded shape, 
 washed of every earthly fleck. It proved how men may 
 by power 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 c the strangeness of it, 1 that a poor, small, sparse 
 village, hardly above a hamlet, on the most unproduc- 
 tive of Kentish heights, part of old forest land, should 
 at this period become 6 the cynosure of a city beauti- 
 fully named by the poet Great 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 of the extraordinary 
 and not so wonderful. Lady Arpington, equal to a 
 Parliament in herself, spoke of the place and the 
 countess courted by her repentant lord. Brailstone 
 and Chumley Potts were town criers of the executioner 
 letter each had received from the earl ; Potts with his 
 chatter of a suicide's pistol kept loaded in a case under 
 a two-inch -long silver Cross, and with sundry dramatic 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 507 
 
 taps on the forehead, dottings over the breast, an awful 
 grimace of devoutness. There was no mistaking him. 
 The young nobleman of the millions was watched ; the 
 town spy-glass had him in its orbit. Tales of the 
 ancestral Fleetwoods ran beside rumours of a Papist 
 priest at the bedside of the Foredoomed to Error's 
 dying mother. His wealth was counted, multiplied by 
 the ready naughts of those who know little and dread 
 much. Sir Meeson Corby referred to an argument 
 Lord Fleetwood had held on an occasion hotly against 
 the logical consistency of the Protestant faith ; and to 
 his alarm lest some day 6 all that immense amount of 
 money should slip away from us to favour the machina- 
 tions of Roman Catholicism ! ' The Countess of Cressett, 
 Li via, anticipated her no surprise at anything Lord 
 Fleetwood might do : she knew him. 
 
 So thereupon, with the whirr of a covey on wing 
 before the fowler, our crested three of immemorial 
 antiquity and a presumptive immortality, the Ladies 
 Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting 
 across the dormant chief city Old England's fell word of 
 the scarlet shimmer above the nether pit-flames, Rome. 
 An ancient horror in the blood of the population, con- 
 ceiving the word to signify, beak, fang, and claw, the 
 fiendish 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 a 
 pillar of the structure sends tremors to our foundations. 
 
 The coupling of Rome and England's wealthiest 
 nobleman struck a match to terrorize the Fire Insur- 
 ance of Smithfield. That meteoric, intractable, perhaps 
 wicked, but popular, reputedly clever, manifestly evil- 
 
508 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 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 company 
 once more with the pervert, the Jesuit agent, that 
 crafty Catesby of a Lord Feltre, arm in arm the pair of 
 them, and uninterruptedly conversing, utterly unlike 
 Englishmen. Mr. Rose Mackrell passed them, and 
 his breezy salutation of the earl was unobserved in 
 my lord's vacant glass optics, as he sketched the 
 scene. London had reports of the sinister tempter 
 and the imperilled young probationer undisguisedly 
 entering the Roman Catholic chapel of a fashionable 
 district — chapel erected on pervert's legacies, down a 
 small street at the corner of a grandee square, by 
 tolerance or connivance of our constabulary, — entering 
 it linked ; and linked they issued, their heads bent ; 
 for the operation of the tonsure, you would say. Two 
 English noblemen ! But is there no legislation to stop 
 the disease? Our female government asks it vixenly 
 of our impotent male ; which pretends, beneath an air 
 of sympathy, that we should abstain from any com- 
 pulsory action upon the law to interfere, though the 
 situation is confessedly grave; and the aspect men 
 assume is correspondingly, to the last degree provok- 
 ingly, grave — half alive that they are, or void of 
 patriotism, or Babylonian at heart ! 
 
 Lord Fleetwood's yet undocked old associates vowed 
 he 'smelt strong'' of the fumes of the whirled silver 
 censer-balls. His disfavour had caused a stoppage of 
 supplies, causing vociferous abomination of their success- 
 ful rivals, the Romish priests. Captain Abrane sniffed, 
 loud as a horse, condemnatory as a cat, in speaking of 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 509 
 
 hiin. He said : ' By George, it comes to this ; we shall 
 have to turn Catholics for a loan ! ' Watchdogs of the 
 three repeated the gigantic gambler's melancholy roar. 
 And, see what gap, cried the ratiocination of alarm, see 
 the landslip it is in our body, national and religious, 
 when exalted personages go that way to Rome ! 
 
 As you and the world have reflected in your sager 
 moods, an ordinary pebble may roll where it likes, for 
 individualism of the multitudinously obscure little affects 
 us. Not so the costly jewel, which is a congregation of 
 ourselves, in our envies and longings and genuflexions 
 thick about its lustres. The lapses of precious things 
 must needs carry us, both by weight and example, and 
 it will ceaselessly be, that we are possessed by the 
 treasure we possess, we hang on it. A still, small voice 
 of England's mind under panic sent up these truisms 
 containing admonitions to the governing Ladies. They, 
 the most conservative of earthly bodies, clamoured in 
 return, like cloud-scud witches that have caught fire at 
 their skirts from the torches of marsh-fire radicals. 
 They cited for his arrest the titled millionaire who 
 made a slide for the idiots of the kingdom ; they stigma- 
 tized our liberty as a sophistry, unless we have in it 
 the sustaining element of justice ; — and where is the 
 justice that punishes his country for any fatal course a 
 mad young Croesus may take ! They shackled the hands 
 of testators, who endangered the salvation of coroneted 
 boys by having sanction to bequeath vast wealth in bulk. 
 They said, in truth, that it was the liberty to be un- 
 christian. Finally, they screeched a petitioning of 
 Parliament to devote a night to a sitting, and empower 
 the Lord Chancellor to lay an embargo on the personal 
 as well as the real estate of wealthy perverts; in common 
 
510 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 prudence depriving Rome of the coveted means to turn 
 our religious weapons against us. 
 
 The three guardian ladies and their strings of followers 
 headed over the fevered and benighted town, as the 
 records of the period attest, windpiping these and similar 
 Solan notes from the undigested cropful of alarms Lord 
 Fleetwood's expected conduct crammed into them. They 
 and all the world traced his present madness to the act 
 foregoing : that marriage ! They reviewed it to deplore 
 it, every known incident and the numbers imagined ; 
 yet merely to deplore : frightful comparisons of then 
 with now rendered the historical shock to the marriage 
 market matter for a sick smile. Evil genius of some 
 sort beside him the wealthy young nobleman is sure to 
 have. He has got rid of one to take up with a viler. 
 First, a sluttish trollop of German origin is foisted on 
 him for life; next, he is misled to abjure the faith of 
 his fathers for Rome. But patently, desperation in 
 the husband of such a wife weakened his resistance to 
 the Roman Catholic pervert's insinuations. There we 
 punctuate the full stop to 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 a tolerably 
 agreeable tune, on the whole. O hear ! The Mar- 
 chioness of Arpington proclaims not merely acquain- 
 tanceship with Lord Fleetwood's countess, she professes 
 esteem for the young person. She has been heard 
 to 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 mountains on the Countess 
 of Fleetwood : such unbounded enthusiasm there was 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 511 
 
 for her character when she sojourned down there. As 
 it is, they do speak of her in their Welsh by some 
 title. Their bards are offered prizes to celebrate her 
 deeds. You remember the regiment of mounted Welsh 
 gentlemen escorting her to her Kentish seat, with 
 their band of the three-stringed harps ! She is well- 
 born, educated, handsome, a perfectly honest woman, 
 and a sound Protestant. Quite the reverse of Lord 
 Fleetwood's seeking to escape her, it is she who flies ; 
 she cannot forgive him his cruelties and infidelities : 
 and that is the reason why he threatens to commit the 
 act of despair. Only she can save him ! She has flown 
 for refuge to her uncle, Lord Levelliers house at a 
 place named Croridge — not in the gazetteer — hard of 
 access and a home of poachers, where shooting goes 
 on hourly ; but most picturesque and romantic, as she 
 herself 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, and heading mobs wielding 
 bludgeons, are absolutely false, traceable to scandalizing 
 anecdotists like Mr. Rose Mackrell. She is the beauti- 
 ful example of an injured wife doing honour to her 
 sex in the punishment of a faithless husband, yet so 
 little cherishing her natural right to deal him retri- 
 bution, that we dare hope she will listen to her patriotic 
 duty in consenting to the reconcilement, which is 
 Lord Fleetwood's alternative : — his wife or Rome ! 
 They say she has an incommunicable charm, account- 
 ing for the price he puts on her now she holds aloof 
 and he misses it. Let her but rescue him from England's 
 
512 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 most vigilant of her deadly enemies, she will be entitled 
 to the nation's lasting gratitude. She has her oppor- 
 tunity for winning the Anglican English, as formerly 
 she won the Dissenter Welsh. She may yet be the 
 means of leading back the latter to our fold. 
 
 A notation of the cries in air at a time of surgent 
 public excitement can hardly yield us music ; and the 
 wording of them, by the aid of compounds and trans- 
 plants, metaphors and similes only just within range 
 of the arrows of Phoebus"' bow (i.e. the farthest flight 
 known), would, while it might imitate the latent 
 poetry, expose venturesome writers to the wrath of a 
 people commendably believing their language a per- 
 fected instrument when they prefer the request for a 
 plateful, and commissioning their literary police to 
 brain audacious experimenters who enlarge or wing it 
 beyond the downright aim at that mark. The gossip 
 of the time must therefore appear commonplace, in 
 resemblance to the panting ventre a terre of the toad, 
 instead of the fiery steed's ; although we have docu- 
 mentary evidence that our country's heart was moved ; 
 — ' in no common degree,' Dr. Glossop's lucid English 
 has it, at the head of a broadsheet ballad discovered by 
 him ; wherein the connubially inclined young earl and 
 the nation in turn beseech the countess to resume her 
 place at Esslemont, and so save both from a terrific 
 dragon's jaw, scarlet as the infernal flames; 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 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 513 
 
 intended for burlesque by the wits who dogged without 
 much enlivening an anxious period of our history, 
 when corner-stones were falling the way the young lord 
 of the millions threatened to go, did, there is little 
 doubt, according to another part of their design (Rose 
 Mackrell boasts it indirectly in his Memoirs), inter- 
 pret public opinion, that is, the English humour of 
 it — the half laugh in their passing and not simulated 
 shudder. 
 
 Carinthia had a study of the humours of English 
 character in the person of the wounded man she 
 nursed on little Croridge, imagining it the most un- 
 observed of English homes, and herself as unimportant 
 an object. Daniel Charner took his wound, as he 
 took his medicine and his posset from her hand, 
 kindly, and seemed to have a charitable understanding 
 of Lord Levellier now that the old nobleman had 
 driven a pellet of lead into him and laid him flat. 
 It pleased him to assure her that his mates were men 
 of their word, and had promised to pay the old lord 
 with 4 a rouse ' for it, nothing worse. Her father used 
 to speak of the 'clean hearts of the English' as to 
 the husbanding of revenge; that is, the 'no spot of bad 
 blood ' to vitiate them. Captain John Peter seconded 
 all good-humoured fighters ' for the long account ' : 
 they will surely win ; and it was one of his maxims : 
 ' My foe can spoil my face ; he beats vie if he spoils my 
 temper? 
 
 Recalling the scene of her bridal day — the two 
 strong Englishmen at the shake of hands, that had 
 spoiled one another's faces, she was enlightened with a 
 comprehension of her father s love for the people; seeing 
 the spiritual of the gross ugly picture, as not every 
 
 2k 
 
514 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 man can do, and but a warrior Joan among women. 
 Chillon shall teach the Spanish people English hearti- 
 ness, she thought. Lord Fleetwood's remarks on the 
 expedition would have sufficed to stamp it righteous 
 with her ; that was her logic of the low valuation of 
 him. She fancied herself absolutely released at his 
 departure. Neither her sister Riette nor her friend 
 Owain, administering sentiment and common sense to 
 her by turns, could conceive how the passion for the 
 recovery of her brother's military name fed the hope 
 that she might aid in it, how the hope fed the passion. 
 She had besides her hunger to be at the work she 
 could do ; her Chillon's glory for morning 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 
 'my brother'' irritated the great lady, whose argu- 
 ment was directed to make her see that these duties 
 toward her brother were primarily owing to her hus- 
 band, the man she would reclaim and could guide. 
 And the Countess of Fleetwood's position, her duty 
 to society, her dispensing of splendid hospitality, the 
 strengthening of her husband to do his duty to the 
 nation, the saving of him from a fatal step — from 
 Rome ; these were considerations for a reasonable 
 woman to weigh before she threw up all to 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 the prolongation of the sermon it 
 criticized. It had an air of reversing their positions 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 515 
 
 while she listened to the charge of folly, and incident- 
 ally replied. 
 
 Her reason for not fearing Roman Catholic encroach- 
 ments was, she said, her having known good Catholics 
 in the country she came from. For herself, she should 
 die professing the faith of her father and mother. 
 Behind her correct demeanour a rustic intelligence 
 was exhibited. She appreciated her duty to her mar- 
 riage oath : ' My husband's honour is quite safe with 
 me.' Neither England nor religion, nor woman's 
 proper devotion to a husband's temporal and spiritual 
 welfare, had claims rivalling her devotion to her 
 brother. She could not explain a devotion that 
 instigated her to an insensate course. It seemed a 
 kind of enthusiasm ; and it was coldly spoken ; in the 
 tone referring to 'her husband's honour.' Her brother's 
 enterprise had her approval because ' her mother's 
 prayer was for him to serve in the English army.' 
 By running over to take a side in a Spanish squabble ? 
 she was asked and answered : ' He will learn war ; my 
 Chillon will show his value ; he wilj come back a tried 
 soldier.' 
 
 She counted on his coming back ? She did. 
 
 6 1 cannot take a step forward without counting on 
 success. We know the chances we are to meet. My 
 father has written of death. We do not fear it, so 
 it is nothing to us. We shall go together ; we shall 
 not have to weep for one another.' 
 
 The strange young woman's avoidance of any popular 
 sniffle of the pathetic had a recognized merit. 
 
 ' Tell me,' Lady Arpington said abruptly ; ' this 
 maid of yours, who is to marry the secretary, or what- 
 ever he was — you are satisfied with her ? ' 
 
516 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 * She is my dear servant Madge/ A cloud opened 
 as Carinthia spoke the name. ' She will be a true 
 wife to him. They will always be my friends.'' 
 
 Nothing against the earl in that direction, apparently; 
 unless his countess 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 glanced at Carinthia and 
 asked : ' Have you thought of it ? ' 
 
 Carinthia's eyes were on the great lady's. Their 
 meaning was, ' You hit my chief thought.' They 
 were read as her farthest thought. For the hint of 
 Henrietta's weakness deadened her feelings with a 
 reminder of warm and continued solicitations re- 
 butted ; the beautiful creature's tortures at the idea 
 of her exile from England. An outwearied hopeless- 
 ness expressed a passive sentiment very like indifference 
 in the clear wide gaze. She replied : ' I have. My 
 proposal to her was Cadiz, with both our young ones. 
 She will not.' 
 
 And there is an end to that part of the question ! 
 Lady Arpington interpreted it, by the gaze more than 
 the words, under subjection of the young woman's char- 
 acter. Nevertheless, she bore away Carinthia's consent 
 to a final meeting with the earl at her house in London, 
 as soon as things were settled at Croridge. Chillon, 
 whom she saw, was just as hard, unforgiving, careless 
 of his country's dearest interests ; brother and sister 
 were one heart of their one blood. She mentioned the 
 general impression in town, that the countess and only 
 she could save the earl from Rome. A flash of polite 
 laughter was Chillon's response. But after her in- 
 spection of the elegant athlete, she did fancy it possible 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 517 
 
 for a young wife, even for Henrietta, to bear his name 
 proudly in his absence — if that was worth a moment's 
 consideration beside the serious issues involved in her 
 appeal to the countess ; especially when the suggestion 
 regarding young wives left unprotected, delicately con- 
 veyed to the husband, had failed of its purpose. The 
 handsome husband's brows fluttered an interrogation, 
 as if her clear-obscure should be further lighted ; and 
 it could not be done. He weighed the wife by the 
 measure of the sister, perhaps ; or his military head 
 had no room for either. His callousness to the danger 
 of his country's disintegration, from the incessant, be- 
 coming overt, attacks of a foreign priesthood might — 
 an indignant great lady's precipitation to prophecy said 
 would — bring chastisement on him. She said it, and 
 she liked Henrietta, vowing to defeat her forecast as 
 well as she could in a land seeming forsaken by stable 
 principles ; its nobles breaking up its national church, 
 going over to Rome, embracing the faith of the im- 
 postor Mahomet. 
 
 Gossip fed to the starvation bone of Lady Arpington's 
 report, until one late afternoon, memorable for the 
 breeding heat in the van of elemental artillery, news- 
 boys waved damp sheets of fresh print through the 
 streets, and society's guardians were brought to con- 
 fess, in shame and gladness, that they had been growing 
 sceptical of the active assistance of Providence. At 
 first the * Terrible explosion of gunpowder at Croridge ' 
 alarmed them lest the timely Power should have done 
 too much. A day later the general agitation was paci- 
 fied ; Lady Arpington circulated the word ' safe,' and 
 the world knew the disaster had not engulphed Lady 
 Fleetwood's valuable life. She had the news by word 
 
518 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of mouth from the lovely Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, sister- 
 in-law to the countess. We are convinced we have proof 
 of Providence intervening when some terrific event of 
 the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and 
 no more than the thing desired. Pitiful though it may 
 seem for a miserly old lord to be blown up in his bed, 
 it is necessarily a subject of congratulation if the life, 
 or poor remnant of a life, sacrificed was an impediment 
 to our righteous wishes. But this is a theme for the 
 Dame, who would full surely have committed another 
 breach of the treaty, had there not been allusion to 
 her sisterhood's view of the government of human 
 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 
 the spectral old lord on the plank to the powder store, 
 clad in his long black cloak, erect. He was crossing, 
 he told them, to count his barrels ; a dream had dis- 
 turbed him. Chillon fell to rapid talk upon various 
 points of business, and dispersed Lord Levellier's 
 memory relating to his errand. Leaning on Carinthia's 
 arm, he went back to the house, where he was put 
 to bed in peace of mind. His resuscitated physical 
 vigour blocked all speculation for the young people 
 assembled at Stoneridge that night. They hardly 
 spoke ; they strangled thoughts forming as larvae of 
 wishes. Henrietta would be away to Lady Arpington's 
 next day, Mr. Wythan to Wales. The two voyagers 
 were sadder by sympathy than the two whom they were 
 leaving to the clock's round of desert sameness. About 
 ten at night Chillon and Mr. Wythan escorted Carinthia, 
 
A RECORD OF WHAT HAPPENED 519 
 
 for the night's watch beside her uncle, down to Lek- 
 katts. It was midway that the knocks on air, 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 her brother'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 wreathe and 
 stretch a languid flag. The c rouse ' promised to Lord 
 Levellier by Daniel Charner's humorous mates had hit 
 beyond its aim. Intended to give him a start — or 
 6 One-er in return,' it surpassed his angry shot at the 
 body 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 her Spanish phrase- 
 book ; and she could have wept, if she had been a 
 woman for tears. Her duty to stay in England with 
 Chillon's fair wife crossed the beckoning pages like a 
 black smoke. Her passion to go and share her brother's 
 dangers left the question of its righteousness at each 
 fall of the big breath. 
 
 Her uncle's grey head on his pillow was like a flint- 
 stone in chalk under her look by light of dawn; the 
 chin had dropped. 
 
520 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI 
 
 A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE 
 
 FLASHES 
 
 Thus a round and a good old English practical repar- 
 tee, worthy a place in England's book of her historical 
 popular jests ; conceived ingeniously, no bit murder- 
 ously, even humanely, if Englishmen are to be allowed 
 indulgence of a jolly hit back for an injury — more a 
 feint than a real stroke — gave the miserly veteran his 
 final quake and cut Chillon's knot. 
 
 Lord Levellier dead of the joke detracted from the 
 funny idea there had been in the anticipation of his hear- 
 ing the libertine explosion of his grand new powder, and 
 coming out cloaked to see what walls remained upright. 
 Its cleverness, however, was magnified by the shades 
 into which it had dispatched him. The man who 
 started the 6 rouse for old Griphard ' was named : nor 
 did he shuffle his honours off. Chillon accused him, and 
 he regretfully grinned ; he would have owned to it elo- 
 quently, excited by the extreme ingenuity, but humour 
 at the criminal bar is an abject thing, that has to bor- 
 row from metaphysics for the expository words. He 
 lacked them entirely, and as he could not, fronting his 
 master, supply the defect with oaths, he drew up and 
 let out on the dead old lord, who wanted a few pounds 
 of blasting powder, like anything else in everybody's 
 way. Chillon expected the lowest of his countrymen to 
 show some degree of chivalry upon occasions like the 
 present. He was too young to perceive how it is, that 
 a block of our speech in the needed direction drives it 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 521 
 
 storming in another, not the one closely expressing us. 
 Carinthia liked the man ; she was grieved to hear of his 
 having got the sack summarily, when he might have had 
 a further month of service or a month's pay. Had not 
 the workmen's forbearance been much tried ? And they 
 had not stolen, they had bought the powder, only in- 
 tending to startle. 
 
 She touched her brother's native sense of fairness and 
 vexed him with his cowardly devil of impatience, which 
 kicked at a simply stupid common man, and behaved to 
 a lordly offender, smelling rascal, civilly. Just as her 
 father would have treated the matter, she said : ' Are 
 we sorry for what has happened, Chillon ? ' The man 
 had gone, the injustice was done ; the master was left to 
 reflect on the part played by his inheritance of the half 
 share of ninety thousand pounds in his proper respect 
 for Lord Levellier's memory. Harsh to an inferior is a 
 horrible charge. But the position of debtor to a titled 
 cur brings a worse for endurance. Knowing a part of 
 Lord Fleetwood's message to Lord Levellier suppressed, 
 the bride's brother, her chief guardian, had treated the 
 omission as of no importance, and had all the while 
 understood that he ought to give her his full guess at 
 the reading of it : or so his racked mind understood it 
 now. 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 harshness in the past hour 
 to a workman who had suffered with him and had 
 not intended serious mischief was Chillon's unsounded 
 motive for the resolution to be out of debt to the man 
 he loathed. There is a Muse that smiles aloft survey- 
 ing our acts from the well-springs. 
 
 Carinthia heard her brother's fuller version of the 
 
522 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 carl's communication to her uncle before the wild day 
 of her marriage. ' Not particularly fitted for the married 
 state,' Chillon phrased it, saying : ' He seems to have 
 known himself, he was honest so far.' She was advised 
 to think it over, 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 the reluctant bridegroom. That 
 was a stretch long leagues distant from love with her ; 
 the sort of feeling one has for strange animals hurt : 
 and she had in her childish blindness done him a hurt, 
 and he had bitten her. He was a weak young noble- 
 man ; he had wealth for a likeness of strength ; he had 
 no glory about his head. Why had he not chosen a 
 woman to sit beside him who would have fancied his 
 coronet a glory and his luxury a kindness ? But the 
 poor young nobleman did not choose ! The sadly 
 comic of his keeping to the pledge of his word — his real 
 wife — the tyrant of the tyrant — clothed him ; the vision 
 of him at the altar, and on the coach, and at the Royal 
 Sovereign Inn, and into the dimness where a placidly 
 smiling recollection met a curtain and lost the smile. 
 
 Suppose that her duty condemned her to stay in 
 England on guard over Chillon's treasure ! The per- 
 petual struggle with a weak young nobleman of aimless 
 tempers and rightabout changes, pretending to the part 
 of husband, would, she foresaw, raise another figure of 
 duty, enchaining a weak young woman. The world 
 supported his pretension ; and her passion to serve 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, point- 
 ing in no direction, had left a shadow of a cloud, conse- 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 523 
 
 quent upon Lady Arpington's mention of Henrietta's 
 unprotectedness. Stepping up the hill to meet her 
 sister, on the morning of Henrietta's departure for 
 London under convoy of Mr. Wythan, Carinthia's long 
 sight spied Kit Ines, or a man like him, in the meadow 
 between Lekkatts and Croridge. He stood before 
 Henrietta, and vanished light-legged at a gesture. 
 Henrietta was descending to take her leave of her 
 busied husband ; her cheeks were flushed ; she would 
 not speak of the fellow, except to reply, ' oh, a beggar, 1 
 and kept asking whether she ought not to stay at Stone- 
 ridge. And if she did she would lose the last of the 
 Opera in London ! How could she help to investigate 
 the cause of an explosion so considerate to them ? She 
 sang snatches of melodies, clung to her husband, pro- 
 tested her inability to leave him, and went, appearing 
 torn away. As well bid healthy children lie abed on a 
 bright summer morning, as think of holding this fair 
 young woman bound to the circle of safety when she 
 has her view of pleasure sparkling like the shore-sea 
 mermaid's mirror. 
 
 Suspicions were not of the brood Carinthia's bosom 
 harboured. Suspicion of Chillon's wife Carinthia could 
 not feel. An uncaptained vessel in the winds on high 
 seas was imagined without a picturing of it. The 
 apparition of Ines, if it was he, would not fit with any 
 conjecture. She sent a warning to Madge, and at the 
 same time named the girl's wedding day for her ; pained 
 in doing it. She had given the dear girl her word that 
 she would be present at this of all marriages. But a 
 day or two days or more would have to be spent away 
 from Chillon ; and her hunger for every hour beside her 
 brother confessed to the war going on within her, as to 
 
524- THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 which was her holier duty, the one on the line of her 
 inclinations, or that one pointing to luxury — choice 
 between a battle-horse and a cushioned-chair ; between 
 companionship with her glorious brother facing death, 
 and submission to a weak young nobleman claiming his 
 husband's rights over her. She had submitted, had 
 forgotten his icy strangeness, had thought him love ; 
 and hers was a breast for love, it was owned by the 
 sobbing rise of her breast at the thought. And she 
 might submit again — in honour ? scorning the husband ? 
 Chillon scorned him. Yet Chillon left the decision to 
 her, specified his excuses. And Henrietta and Owain, 
 Lady Arpington, Gower Woodseer, all the world — 
 Carinthia shuddered at the world's blank eye on what 
 it directs for the acquiescence of the woman. That 
 shred of herself she would become, she felt herself 
 becoming it when the view of her career beside her 
 brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart 
 was the only soul among her friends whose voice was 
 her own against the world's, 
 
 But there came a turn where she and Rebecca 
 separated. Rebecca's insurgent wishes taking shape 
 of prophecy, robbed her of her friend Owain, to 
 present her an impossible object, that her mind could 
 not compass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and 
 let her keep the fancy of Owain as her good ghost of 
 a sun in the mist of a frosty morning ; sweeter to her 
 than an image of love, though it were the very love, 
 the love of maidens' dreams, bursting the bud of 
 romance, issuing its flower. Delusive love drove away 
 with a credulous maiden, under an English heaven, on 
 a coach and four, from a windy hill-top, to a crash 
 below, and a stunned recovery in the street of small 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 525 
 
 shops, mud, rain, gloom, language like musket-fire and 
 the wailing wounded. 
 
 No regrets, her father had said ; they unman the 
 heart we want Jor to-morrow. She kept her look for- 
 ward at the dead wall Chillon had thrown up. He 
 did not reject her company ; his prospect of it had 
 clouded ; and there were allusions to Henrietta's lone- 
 liness. ' His Carin could do her service by staying, if 
 she decided that way. 1 Her enthusiasm dropped to the 
 level of life's common ground. With her sustainment 
 gone, she beheld herself a titled doll, and had sternly 
 to shut her eyes on the behind scenes, bar any shadowy 
 approaches of womanly softness ; thinking her father's 
 daughter dishonoured in the submissive wife of the 
 weak young nobleman Chillon despised as below the 
 title of man. 
 
 Madge and Gower came to Stoneridge on their road 
 to London three days before their union. Madge had 
 no fear of Ines, but said : ' I never let Mr. Gower out 
 of my sight.' Perforce of studying him with the thirsty 
 wonder consequent upon his proposal to her, she had 
 got fast hold of the skirts of his character ; she * knew 
 he was happy because he was always making her laugh 
 at herself.' Her manner of saying, 6 She hoped to give 
 him a comfortable home, so that he might never be 
 sorry for what he had done,' was toned as in a church, 
 beautiful to her mistress. Speaking of my lord's great 
 kindness, her eyes yearned for a second and fell humbly. 
 She said of Kit Ines, ' 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 not horse-racing.' Gower spoke of thanks to Lord 
 
526 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Fleetwood for the independence allowing him to take 
 a wife and settle to work in his little Surrey home. 
 He, too, showed he could have said more and was 
 advised not to push at a shut gate. My lord would 
 attend their wedding as well as my lady, Carinthia 
 heard from Madge; counting it a pity that wealthy 
 noblemen 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 reserve toward her per- 
 sonally. He was the born nobleman in his friendliness 
 with the bridal pair and respectfulness to Mr. Woodseer. 
 High social breeding is an exquisite performance on the 
 instrument we are, and his behaviour to her left her 
 mind at liberty for appreciation of it. Condescension 
 was not seen, his voice had no false note. During the 
 ceremony his eyelids blinked rapidly. At the close, he 
 congratulated the united couple, praising them each for 
 the wisdom of their choice. He said to his countess : 
 ' This is one of the hopeful marriages ; chiefly of your 
 making. 1 
 
 She replied : ' My prayers will be for them always.' 
 6 They are fortunate who have your prayers, 1 he said, 
 and turned to Sarah Winch. She w r as to let him know 
 when she also had found her ' great philosopher. 1 Sarah 
 was like a fish on a bank, taking gasps at the marvel of 
 it all ; she blushed the pale pink of her complexion, and 
 murmured of ' happiness. 1 Gower had gone headlong 
 into happiness, where philosophers are smirkers and 
 mouthers of ordinary stuff. His brightest remark was 
 to put the question to his father : * The three good 
 things of the Isle of Britain ? 1 and treble the name of 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 527 
 
 Madge Woodseer for a richer triad than the Glamorgan 
 man could summon. Pardonably foolish ; but mindful 
 of a past condition of indiscipline, Nature's philosopher 
 said to the old minister : ' Your example saved me for 
 this day at a turn of my road, sir.' Nature's poor wild 
 scholar paid that tribute to the regimental sectarian. 
 Enough for proud philosophy to have done the thing 
 demonstrably right, Gower's look at his Madge and the 
 world said. That 'European rose of the coal-black 
 order,"* as one of his numerous pictures of her painted 
 the girl, was a torch in a cavern for dusky redness at her 
 cheeks. Her responses beneath the book Mr. Woodseer 
 held open had flashed a distant scene through Lord 
 Fleetwood. Quaint to notice was her reverence for the 
 husband she set on a towering monument, and her 
 friendly, wifely, whispered jogs at the unpractical 
 creature's forgetfulness of his wraps, his books, his 
 writing-desk — on this tremendous occasion, his pipe. 
 Again the earl could have sworn, that despite her ante- 
 cedents, she brought her husband honest dower, as 
 surely as she gave the lucky Pagan a whole heart ; and 
 had a remarkably fine bust to 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 
 of Nature, walked off with the girl, whose voice had the 
 ring of Carinthia's. The Powers do not explain their 
 dispensations. 
 
 These two now one by united good- will for the junc- 
 tion Lord Fleetwood himself drove through London to 
 the hills, where another carriage awaited them by his 
 orders, in the town of London's race-course. As soon 
 as they were seated he nodded to them curtly from his 
 box, and drove back, leaving them puzzled. But his 
 
528 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 countess had not so very coldly seen him start his horses 
 to convey the modest bridal pair. His impulses to 
 kindness could be politic. Before quitting White- 
 chapel, she went with Sarah to look at the old shop 
 of the fruits and vegetables. They found it shut, un- 
 tenanted ; Mr. Woodseer told them that the earl was 
 owner of it by recent purchase, and would not lease it. 
 He had to say why ; for the countess was dull to the 
 notion of a sentimental desecration in the occupying 
 of her bed-chamber by poor tradespeople. She was 
 little flattered. The great nobleman of her imagina- 
 tion when she lay there dwindled to a whimsy infant, 
 despot of his nursery, capricious with his 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 longer the 
 stationed nobleman, but one of other idle men, and 
 the saddest of young men. His weakness cast a net 
 on her. Worse than that drag of compassion, she fore- 
 saw the chance of his having experience of her own 
 weakness, if she was to be one among idle women : she 
 might drop to the love of him again. Chillon 1 s damp- 
 ing of her enthusiasm sank her to a mere breathing 
 body, miserably an animal body, no comrade for a 
 valiant brother; this young man's feeble consort, 
 perhaps : and a creature thirsting for pleasure, disposed 
 to sigh in the prospect of caresses. Enthusiasm gone, 
 her spirited imagination of active work on the field of 
 danger beside her brother flapped a broken wing. 
 
 She fell too low in her esteem to charge it upon 
 Henrietta that she stood hesitating, leaning on the 
 hated side of the debate ; though she could almost 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 529 
 
 have blamed Chillon for refusing her his positive 
 counsel, and not ordering his wife to follow him. 
 Once Lady Arpington, reasoning with her on behalf 
 of the husband who sought reconciliation, sneered at 
 her brother's project, condemned it the more for his 
 resolve to carry it out now that he had means. The 
 front of a shower sprang to Carinthia's eyelids. Now 
 that her brother had means, he from whom she might 
 be divided was alert to keep his engagement and study 
 war on the field, as his father had done in foreign 
 service, offering England a trained soldier, should his 
 country subsequently need him. The contrast of her 
 heroic brother and a luxurious idle lord scattering 
 blood of bird or stag, and despising the soldier's pro- 
 fession, had a singular bitter effect, consequent on her 
 scorn of words to defend the man her heart idolized. 
 This last of young women for weeping wept in the 
 lady's presence. 
 
 The feminine trick was pardoned to her because her 
 unaccustomed betrayal of that form of enervation was 
 desired. It was read as woman's act of self-pity over 
 her perplexity : which is a melting act with the woman 
 when there is no man to be dissolved by it. So far 
 Lady Arpington judged rightly ; Carinthia's tears, 
 shed at the thought of her brother under the world's 
 false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist her 
 husband's advocates. Unusual as they were, almost 
 unknown, they were thunder-drops and shook her. 
 
 All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses 
 laid on undercurrents. There is no bridling her unless 
 the tale be here told of how Lord Brailstone in his 
 frenzy of the disconcerted rival boasted over town the 
 counterstroke he had dealt Lord Fleetwood, by sending 
 
 2l 
 
530 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Mrs. Levellier a statement of the latter nobleman's base 
 plot to thwart her husband's wager, with his foul agent, 
 the repentant and well-paid ruffian in person, to verify 
 every written word. The town's conception of the 
 necessity for the reunion of the earl and countess was 
 too intense to let exciting scandal prosper. More- 
 over, the town's bright anticipation of its concluding 
 festivity on the domain of Calesford argued such tattle 
 down to a baffled adorer's malice. The Countess of 
 Cressett, having her cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Kirby- 
 Levellier, in her house, has denied Lord Brailstone 
 admission at her door, we can affirm. He has written 
 to her vehemently, has called a second time, has vowed 
 publicly that Mrs. Levellier ^hall have her warning 
 against Lord Fleetwood. The madness of jealousy was 
 exhibited. Lady Arpington pronounced him in his 
 conduct unworthy the name of gentleman. And how 
 foolish the scandal he circulates ! Lord Fleetwood's 
 one aim is to persuade his offended wife to take her 
 place beside him. He expresses regret everywhere, that 
 the death of her uncle Lord Levellier withholds her 
 presence from Calesford during her term of mourning ; 
 and that he has given his word for the fete on a par- 
 ticular day, before London runs quite dry. His pledge 
 of his word is notoriously inviolate. The Countess of 
 Cressett — an extraordinary instance of a thrice married 
 woman corrected in her addiction to play by her alli- 
 ance with a rakish juvenile — declares she performs the 
 part of hostess at the request of the Countess of Fleet- 
 wood. Perfectly convincing. The more so (if you 
 have the gossips' keen sent of a deduction) since Lord 
 Fleetwood and young Lord Cressett and the Jesuit 
 Lord Feltre have been seen confabulating with very 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 531 
 
 sacerdotal countenances indeed. Three English noble- 
 men ! not counting eighty years for the whole three ! 
 And dear Lady Cressett fears she may be called on 
 to rescue her boy-husband from a worse enemy than 
 the green tables, if Lady Fleetwood should unhappily 
 prove unyielding, as it shames the gentle sex to imagine 
 she will be. In fact, we know through Mrs. Levellier, 
 the meeting of reconciliation between the earl and the 
 countess comes off at Lady Arpington's, by her express 
 arrangement, to-morrow: 'none too soon, 1 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 burning wish at Croridge, 
 where he could have poured his heart to her and 
 might have moved the wife's. But she had formed 
 her estimate of him there : she had, in the comparison 
 or clash of forces with him, grown to contemplate the 
 young man of wealth and rank, who had once been 
 impatient of an allusion to her father, and sought 
 now to part her from her brother — stop her breathing 
 of fresh air. Sensationally, too, her ardour for the 
 exercise of her inherited gifts attributed it to him 
 that her father's daughter had lived the mean existence 
 in England, pursuing a husband, hounded by a mother's 
 terrors. The influences environing her and pressing 
 her to submission sharpened her perusal of the small 
 object largely endowed by circumstances to demand 
 it. She stood calmly discoursing, with a tempered 
 smile : no longer a novice in the social manner. An 
 equal whom he had injured waited for his remarks, 
 gave ready replies; and he, bowing to the visible 
 equality, chafed at a sense of inferiority following 
 
532 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 his acknowledgment of it. He was alone with her, 
 and next to dumb ; she froze a full heart. As for 
 his heart, it could not speak at all, it was a swinging 
 lump. The rational view of the situation was exposed 
 to her; and she listened to that favourably, or at 
 least attentively ; but with an edge to her civil smile 
 when he hinted of entertainments, voyages, travels, an 
 excursion to her native mountain land. Her brother 
 would then be facing death. The rational view, she 
 admitted, was one to be considered. Yes, they were 
 married ; they had a son ; they were bound to sink 
 misunderstandings, in the interests of their little 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 of late, but kept his eyes 
 on her through the nervous flutter of the lids ; his 
 pride making a determined stand for physical mastery, 
 though her look was but a look. Had there been 
 reproach in it, he would have found the voice to speak 
 out. Her look was a cold sky above a hungering man. 
 She froze his heart from the marble of her own. 
 
 And because she was for adventuring with her brother 
 at bloody work of civil war in the pay of a foreign 
 government ! — he found a short refuge in that mute 
 sneer, and was hurled from it by an apparition of 
 the Welsh scene of the bitten infant, and Carinthia 
 volunteering to do the bloody work which would have 
 saved it ; which he had contested, ridiculed. Right 
 then, her insanity now conjured the wretched figure 
 of him opposing the martyr her splendid humaneness 
 had offered her to be, and dominated his reason, sub- 
 jected him to admire — on to worship of the woman, 
 whatever she might do. Just such a feeling for a 
 
 
UNDERCURRENTS AND SURFACE FLASHES 533 
 
 woman he had dreamed of in his younger time, doubt- 
 ing that he would ever meet the fleshly woman to im- 
 pose it. His heart broke the frost she breathed. Yet, 
 if he gave way to the run of speech, he knew himself 
 unmanned, and the fatal habit of superiority stopped 
 his tongue after he had uttered the name he loved to 
 speak, as nearest to the embrace of her. 
 
 6 Carinthia — so I think, as I said, we both see the 
 common sense of the position. I regret over and over 
 again — we '11 discuss all that when we meet after this 
 Calesford affair. I shall have things to say. You will 
 overlook, I am sure — well, men are men ! — or try 
 to. Perhaps I "m not worse than — we '11 say, some. 
 You will, I know, — I have learnt it, — be of great 
 service, help to me ; double my value, I believe ; more 
 than double it. You will receive me — here ? Or at 
 Croridge or Esslemont ; and alone together, as now, I 
 beg. 1 
 
 That was what he said. Having said it, his escape 
 from high tragics in the comfortable worldly tone re- 
 joiced him ; to some extent also the courteous audience 
 she gave him. And her hand was not refused. Judging 
 by her aspect, the plain common-sense ground of their 
 situation was accepted for the best opening step to 
 their union ; though she must have had her feelings 
 beneath it, and God knew that he had ! Her hand 
 was friendly. He could have thanked her for yielding 
 her hand without a stage scene ; she had fine breeding 
 by nature. The gracefullest of trained ladies could 
 not have passed through such an interview so per- 
 fectly in the right key ; and this was the woman 
 he had seen at the wrestle with hideous death to save 
 a muddy street-child ! She touched the gentleman in 
 
534 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 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 by the contact of their blood to 
 a memory, seeming impossible, some other world's 
 attested reality, — she the angel, he the demon of it, — 
 unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a fact beyond his 
 mind, he let her hand fall scarce pressed. Did she 
 expect more than the common sense of it to be said ? 
 The 'more' was due to her, and should partly be said 
 at their next meeting for the no further separating ; 
 or else he would vow in his heart to spread it out 
 over a whole life's course of wakeful devotion, with 
 here and there a hint of his younger black nature. 
 Better that — except for a desire seizing him to make 
 sacrifice of the demon he had been, offer him up 
 hideously naked to her mercy. But it was a thing to 
 be done by hints, by fits, by small doses. She could 
 only gradually be brought to the comprehension of how 
 the man or demon found indemnification under his 
 yoke of marriage in snatching her, to torment, perhaps 
 betray ; and solace for the hurt to his pride in spread- 
 ing a snare for the beautiful Henrietta. A confession ! 
 It could be to none but the priest. 
 
 Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the 
 confession straightway. In spite of horror, the task of 
 helping to wash a black soul white would have been her 
 compensation for loss of companionship with her soldier 
 brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabid 
 wound and come to a love of the rescued sufferer. 
 
 It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose 
 Mackrell's applications to get back his volume of her 
 father's Book of Maxims. 
 
 * There is mine,' she said. 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 535 
 
 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, in her way, too.' 
 
 4 Oh, she is,' was the answer. 
 
 'We shall be driving down to them very soon. 
 Carinthia. 1 
 
 4 It will delight them to see either of us, my lord.'* 
 
 ' My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford,' 
 he gestured, as in fetters. 
 
 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 left the house. London town, on the 
 great day at Calesford, interchanged communications, 
 to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleet- 
 wood would 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, however little for the man himself, 
 when she who has much to pardon can depict him in a 
 manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse 
 the miniature man-child sobbing off to sleep after a 
 frenzy ; an example of a genus framed for excuses, and 
 he more than others. Chillon was amused up to 
 inquisitive surprise by Carinthia , s novel idea of her 
 
536 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 formerly dreaded riddle of a husband. As she sketched 
 the very rational alliance proposed to her, and his kick 
 at the fetters of Calesford, a shadowy dash for an image 
 of the solicitous tyrant was added perforce to complete 
 the scene ; following which, her head moved sharply, 
 the subject was flung over her shoulder. 
 
 She was developing; she might hold her ground 
 with the husband, if the alliance should be resumed ; 
 and she would be a companion for Henrietta in Eng- 
 land : she was now independent, as to money, and she 
 could break an intolerable yoke without suffering priva- 
 tion. He kept his wrath under, determined not to use 
 his influence either way, sure though he was of her old 
 father's voting for her to quit the man and enter the 
 field where qualities would be serviceable. The man 
 probably feared a scandal more than the loss of his wife 
 in her going. He had never been thrashed — the sole 
 apology Chillon discovered for him, in a flushed review 
 of the unavenged list of injuries Carinthia had sus- 
 tained. His wise old father insisted on the value of an 
 early thrashing to trim and shape the growth of most 
 young men. There was no proof of Lord Fleetwood's 
 having schemed to thwart his wager, so he put that 
 accusation by : thinking for an instant, that if the man 
 desired to have his wife with him, and she left the 
 country with her brother, his own act would recoil ; or 
 if she stayed to hear of a villany, Carinthia's show of 
 scorn could lash. Henrietta praised my lord's kindness. 
 He had been one of the adorers — as what man would 
 not be ! — and upon her at least (he could hardly love 
 her husband) he had not wreaked his disappoint- 
 ment. A young man of huge wealth, having nothing 
 to do but fatten his whims, is the monster a rich 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 537 
 
 country breeds under the blessing of peace. His wife, 
 if a match for him, has her work traced out : — mean 
 work for the child of their father, Chillon thought. 
 She might be doing braver, more suitable to the blood 
 in her veins. But women have to be considered as 
 women, not as possible heroines; and supposing she 
 held her own with this husband of hers ; which meant, 
 judging by the view of their unfolded characters at 
 present, a certain command of the freakish beast ; she, 
 whatever her task, would not be the one set trotting. 
 He came to his opinion through the estimate he had 
 recently formed of Lord Fleetwood, and a study of his 
 changed sister. 
 
 Her brows gloomed at a recurrence to that subject. 
 Their business of the expedition absorbed her, each 
 detail, all the remarks he quoted of his chief, hopeful 
 or weariful ; for difficulties with the Spanish Govern- 
 ment, and with the English too, started up at every 
 turn ; and the rank and file of the contingent were 
 mostly a rough lot, where they were rather better than 
 soaked weeds. A small body of trained soldiers had 
 sprung to the call to arms; here and there an officer 
 could wheel a regiment. 
 
 Carinthia breasted discouragement. ' Father said the 
 English learn from blows, Chillon.' 
 
 6 He might have added, they lose half their number 
 by having to learn from blows, Carin. , 
 
 6 He said, " Let me lead Britons ! " ' 
 
 6 When the canteen 's fifty leagues to the rear, yes ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, it is a wine country ,' she sighed. * But would 
 the Spaniards have sent for us if their experience had 
 told them they could not trust us ? ' 
 
 Chillon brightened rigorously : ( Yes, yes ; there 's 
 
538 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 j ust a something about our men at their best, hard to 
 find elsewhere. We 're right in thinking that. And our 
 chief's the right man/ 
 
 * He is O wain's friend and countryman," said Carin- 
 thia, and pleased her brother for talking like a girl, 
 in the midst of methodical calculations of the cost of 
 this and that, to purchase the supplies he would need. 
 She had an organising head. On her way down from 
 London she had drawn on instructions from a London 
 physician of old Peninsula experience to pencil a list 
 of the medical and surgical stores required by a cam- 
 paigning army ; she had gained information of the 
 London shops where they were to be procured ; she 
 had learned to read medical prescriptions for the com- 
 position of drugs. And she was at her Spanish still, 
 not behind him in the ordinary dialogue, and able to 
 correct him on points of Spanish history relating to 
 fortresses, especially the Basque. A French bookseller 
 had supplied her with the Vicomte d'Eschargue's recently 
 published volume of a Travels in Catalonia. Chillon 
 saw paragraphs marked, pages dog-eared, for reference. 
 At the same time, the question of Henrietta touched 
 her anxiously. Lady Arpington's hints had sunk into 
 them both. 
 
 4 I have thought of St. Jean de Luz, Chillon, if Riette 
 would consent to settle there. French people are 
 friendly. You expect most of your work in and round 
 the Spanish Pyrenees.' 
 
 ' Riette alone there ? ' said he, and drew her by her 
 love of him into his altered mind ; for he did not object 
 to his wife's loneliness at Cadiz when their plan was new. 
 
 London had taught her that a young woman in the 
 giddy heyday of her beauty has to be guarded ; her 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 539 
 
 belonging to us is the proud burden involving sacrifices. 
 But at St. Jean de Luz, if Riette would consent to reside 
 there, Lord Fleetwood's absence and the neighbour- 
 hood of the war were reckoned on to preserve his yoke- 
 fellow from any fit of the abominated softness which 
 she had felt in one premonitory tremor during their 
 late interview, and deemed it vile compared with the 
 life of action and service beside, almost beside, her 
 brother, sharing his dangers at least. She would have 
 had Chillon speak peremptorily to his wife regarding 
 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, 1 he 
 said. 
 
 All he refrained from was, the persuading her to stay 
 in England and live reconciled with the gaoler of the 
 dungeon, as her feelings pictured it. 
 
 Chillon and Carinthia journeyed to London for pur- 
 chases and a visit to lawyer, banker, and tradesmen, 
 on their way to meet his chief and Owain Wythan at 
 Southampton. They lunched with Livia. The morrow 
 was the great Calesford day ; Henrietta carolled of it. 
 Lady Arpington had been affiictingly demure on the 
 theme of her presence at Calesford within her term of 
 mourning. ' But I don't mourn, and I 'm not related 
 to the defunct, and I can't be denied the pleasure in- 
 vented for my personal gratification,' Henrietta's happy 
 flippancy pouted at the prudish objections. Moreover, 
 the adored Columelli was to be her slave of song. The 
 termination of the London season had been postponed 
 a whole week for Calesford : the utmost possible strain ; 
 and her presence was understood to represent the 
 Countess of Fleetwood, temporarily in decorous retire- 
 
540 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 raent. Chillon was assured by her that the earl had 
 expressed himself satisfied with his wife's reasonable- 
 ness. 'The rest will follow.' Pleading on the earl's 
 behalf was a vain effort, but she had her grounds for 
 painting Lord Fleetwood's present mood to his countess 
 in warm colours. ' Nothing short 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 spoke feverishly. A mention of 
 St. Jean de Luz for a residence inflicted, it appeared, a 
 more violent toothache than she had suffered from the 
 proposal of quarters in Cadiz. And now her husband 
 had money ? . . . she suggested his reinstatement in 
 the English army. Chillon hushed that : his chief had 
 his word. Besides, he wanted schooling in war. Why 
 had he married ! His love for her was the answer ; and 
 her beauty argued 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 and ambition. 
 Nevertheless, the mournful strange fact she recalled, 
 that they had never waltzed together since they were 
 made one, troubled his countenance in the mirror of 
 hers. Instead of the waltz, grief, low worries, dulness, 
 an eclipse of her, had been the beautiful creature's 
 portion. It established mighty claims to a young hus- 
 band's indulgence. She hummed a few bars of his 
 favourite old Viennese waltz, with 6 Chillon ! ' invitingly 
 and reproachfully. His loathing of Lord Fleetwood 
 had to withstand an envious jump at the legs in his 
 vision of her partner on the morrow. He said : ' You TJ 
 think of someone absent.' 
 
 " You really do wish me to go, my darling ? It is 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 541 
 
 Chillon's wish ? ' She begged for the words ; she had 
 them, and then her feverishness abated to a simple 
 sparkling composure. 
 
 Carinthia had observed her. She was heart-sick 
 under pressure of thoughts the heavier for being form- 
 less. They signified in the sum her doom to see her 
 brother leave England for the war, and herself crumble 
 to pieces from the imagined figure of herself beside 
 him on or near the field. They could not be phrased, 
 for they accused the beloved brother of a weakness 
 in the excessive sense of obligation to the beauti- 
 ful woman who had wedded him. Driving down to 
 Southampton by the night-coach, her tenderness toward 
 Henrietta held other thoughts unshaped, except one, 
 that moved in its twilight, murmuring of how the love 
 of pleasure keeps us blind children. And how the inno- 
 cents are pushed by it to snap at wicked bait, which the 
 wealthy angle with, pointed a charitable index on some 
 of our social story. The Countess Livia, not an inno- 
 cent like Henrietta, had escaped the poisoned tongues 
 by contracting a third marriage — 6 in time ! , Lady 
 Arpington said ; and the knotty question was presented 
 to a young mind : Why are the innocents tempted to 
 their ruin, and the darker natures allowed an escape ? 
 Any street-boy could have told her of the virtue in 
 quick wits. But her unexercised reflectiveness was on 
 the highroad of accepted doctrines, with their chorus 
 of the moans of gossips for supernatural intervention 
 to give us j ustice. She had not learnt that those inno- 
 cents, 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 intel- 
 ligence through suffering. 
 
542 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 However, the result of her meditations was to show 
 her she was directed to be Henrietta's guardian. After 
 that, she had no thoughts; travelling beside Chillon, 
 she was sheer sore feeling, as of a body aching for its 
 heart plucked out. The bitterness of the separation to 
 come between them prophesied a tragedy. She touched 
 his hand. It was warm now. 
 
 During six days of travels from port to port along 
 the Southern and Western coasts, she joined in the in- 
 spection of the English contingent about to be shipped. 
 They and their chief and her brother were plain to 
 sight, like sample print of a book's first page, blank 
 sheets for the rest of the volume. If she might have 
 been one among them, she would have dared the reck- 
 less forecast. Her sensations were those of a bird that 
 has flown into a room, and beats wings against the 
 ceiling and the window-panes. A close, hard sky, a 
 transparent prison wall, narrowed her powers, mocked 
 her soul. She spoke little; what she said impressed 
 Chillon's chief, Owain Wythan was glad to tell her. 
 The good friend had gone counter to the tide of her 
 breast by showing satisfaction with the prospect that 
 she would take her rightful place in the world. Her 
 concentrated mind regarded the good friend as a phan- 
 tom of a man, the world's echo. His dead Rebecca 
 would have understood her passion to be her brother's 
 comrade, her abasement in the staying at home to 
 guard his butterfly. Owain had never favoured her 
 project ; he could not now perceive the special dangers 
 Chillon would be exposed to in her separation from 
 him. She had no means of explaining what she felt 
 intensely, that dangers, death, were nothing to either 
 of them, if they shared the fate together. 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 54,3 
 
 Her rejected petition to her husband for an allow- 
 ance of money, on the day in Wales, became the vivid 
 memory which brings out motives in its glow. Her 
 husband hated her brother ; and why ? But the 
 answer was lighted fierily down another avenue. A 
 true husband, a lord of wealth, would have rejoiced to 
 help the brother of his wife. He was the cause of 
 Chillon's ruin and this adventure to restore his fortunes. 
 Could she endure a close alliance with the man while 
 her brother's life was imperilled ? Carinthia rebuked 
 her drowsy head for not having seen his reason for 
 refusing at the time. 'How long I am before I see 
 anything that does not stare in my faee ! ' She was a 
 married woman, whose order of mind rendered her 
 singularly subject to the holiness of the tie; and she 
 was a weak woman, she feared. Already, at intervals, 
 now that action on a foreign field of the thunders and 
 lightnings was denied, imagination revealed her dissolv- 
 ing to the union with her husband, and cried her com- 
 ment on herself as the world's basest of women for 
 submitting to it while Chillon's life ran risks; until 
 finally she said : 6 Not before I have my brother home 
 safe ! ' an exclamation equal to a vow. 
 
 That being settled, some appearance of equanimity 
 returned ; she talked of the scarlet business as one she 
 participated in as a distant spectator. Chillon's chief 
 was hurrying the embarkation of his troops ; within 
 ten days the whole expedition would be afloat. She 
 was to post to London for further purchases, he follow- 
 ing to take leave of his wife and babe. Curiously, but 
 hardly remarked on during the bustle of work, Livia 
 had been the one to send her short account of the 
 great day at Calesford ; Henrietta, the born corre- 
 
544 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 spondent, pencilling a couple of lines ; she was well, 
 dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip of her 
 foot and fall over a low wire fence. Her message of 
 love thrice underlined the repeated word. 
 
 Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have 
 expected to meet midway on the London road. Her 
 name was called from a carriage as she drove up to the 
 door of the Winchester hostelry, and in the lady, over 
 whose right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk con- 
 cealed a bandage, the voice was her sister Riette's. 
 With her were two babes and their nursemaids. 
 
 ' Chillon is down there — you have left him there ? ' 
 Henrietta greeted her, saw the reply, and stepped out 
 of her carriage. * You shall kiss the children after- 
 wards ; come into one of the rooms, Janey.' 
 
 Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the 
 voice of tears hardening to the world's business, ' Chil- 
 lon must not enter London. You see the figure I am. 
 My character's in as bad case up there — thanks to 
 those men ! My husband has lost his ' golden Riette.' 
 When you see beneath the bandage ! He will have the 
 right to put me away. His ' beauty of 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 amusement, flattery. Was ever a punish- 
 ment so cruel to the noblest of generous husbands ! 
 Because I know he will overlook it, make light of it, 
 never reproach his Riette. And the rose he married 
 comes to him a shrivelled leaf of a pot-pourri 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 a kiss, and Henrietta pursued, in 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 545 
 
 words liker to sobs : 'Anywhere, Cadiz, St. Jean de Luz, 
 hospital work either, anywhere my husband likes, any- 
 thing ! I want to work, or 111 sit and rock the children. 
 I'm awake at last. Janey, we're lambs to vultures with 
 those men. I don't pretend I was the perfect fool. I 
 thought myself so safe. I let one of them squeeze my 
 hand one day, he swears. You know what a passion is; 
 you have it for mountains and battles, I for music. I 
 do remember, one morning before sunrise, driving back 
 to town out of Windsor, — a dance, the officers of tire 
 Guards, — and my lord's trumpeter at the back of the 
 coach blowing notes to melt a stone, I found a man's 
 hand had mine. I remember Lord Fleetwood looking 
 over his shoulder and smiling hard and lashing his 
 horses. But listen — yes, at Calesford it happened. He 
 — oh, hear the name, then ; Chillon must never hear it ; 
 — Lord Brailstone was denied the right to step on 
 Lord Fleetwood's grounds. The Opera company had 
 finished selections from my Pirata. I went out for cool 
 air ; little Sir Meeson beside me. I had a folded gauze 
 veil over my head, tied at the chin in a bow. Some one 
 ran up to me — Lord Brailstone. He poured forth their 
 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 against Lord Fleetwood. There's no 
 mighty difference between one beast of prey and another. 
 Let me get away from them all ! Though now ! — they 
 would not lift an eyelid. This is my husband's treasure 
 returning to him. We have to be burnt to come to our 
 senses. Janey — oh ! you do well ! — it was fiendish ; 
 old ballads, melodrama plays, I see they were built on 
 men's deeds. Janey, I could not believe it, I have to 
 believe, it is forced down my throat ; — that man, your 
 
 2m 
 
546 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 husband, because he could not forgive my choosing 
 Chillon, schemed for Chillon's ruin. I could not believe 
 it until I saw in the glass this disfigured wretch he has 
 made of me. Li via serves 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 
 my face 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's door twice a 
 day, inquiring anxiously ; begs the first appointment 
 possible. He has no shame ; he is accustomed to buy 
 men and women ; he thinks 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 not the loss of her beauty — there will be a wrinkled 
 patch on the cheek for life, the surgeon says ; I am to 
 bear a brown spot, like a bruised peach they 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 think of myself as guilty, a really guilty 
 woman, when I compare my loss with my 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-looking thing he was proud of ? It 's gone. 
 Oh, the accident. Brailstone had pushed little Corby 
 away; he held my hand, kept imploring, he wanted the 
 usual two minutes, and all to warn me against — I've 
 told you ; and he saw Lord Fleetwood coming. I got 
 my hand free, and stepped back, my head spinning ; 
 and I fell. That I recollect, and a sight of flames, like 
 the end of the world. I fell on one of the oil-lamps 
 bordering the grass ; my veil lighted ; I had fainted ; 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 547 
 
 those two men saw nothing but one another ; and little 
 Sir Meeson was no help ; young Lord Cressett dashed 
 out the flames. They brought me to my senses for a 
 second swoon. Livia says I woke 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. 1 
 
 'We will return to Chillon together, my own, 1 said 
 Carinthia. ' It may not be so bad. 1 And in the hope 
 that her lovely sister exaggerated a defacement leaving 
 not much worse than a small scar, her heart threw off 
 its load of the recent perplexities, daylight broke 
 through her dark wood. Henrietta brought her liberty. 
 How far guilty her husband might be, she was absolved 
 from considering ; sufficiently guilty to release her. 
 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 to Croridge 
 to fetch the babes, her journey down out of a sick-room 
 to stop Chillon's visit to London, proved her an awakened 
 woman, well paid for the stain on her face, though the 
 stain were lasting. Never had she loved Henrietta, 
 never shown her so much love, as on the road to the 
 deepening Western hues. Her sisterly warmth surprised 
 the woeful spotted beauty with a reflection that this 
 martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one 
 whom her husband, if he came to know it and the 
 depth of it, the rich sound of it, would mourn in sack- 
 cloth to have lost. 
 
 And he did, the Dame interposes for the final word, 
 
548 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 he mourned his loss of Carinthia Jane in sackcloth and 
 ashes, notwithstanding that he had the world's affec- 
 tionate condolences about him to comfort him, by 
 reason of his ungovernable countess's misbehaviour 
 once more, according to the report, in running away 
 with a young officer to take part in a foreign insurrec- 
 tion ; and when he was most the idol of his countrymen 
 and countrywomen, which it was once his immoderate 
 aim to be, he mourned her day and night, knowing her 
 spotless, however wild a follower of her father's Maxims 
 for Men. He believed — some have said his belief was 
 not in error — that the woman to aid and make him 
 man and be the star in human form to him, was miracu- 
 lously revealed on the day of his walk through the 
 foreign pine forest, and his proposal to her at the ducal 
 ball was an inspiration of his Good Genius, continuing 
 to his marriage morn, and then running downwards, 
 like an overstrained reel, under the leadership of his 
 Bad. From turning to turning of that descent, he saw 
 himself advised to retrieve the fatal steps, at each point 
 attempting it just too late ; until too late by an hour, 
 he reached the seaport where his wife had embarked ; 
 and her brother, Chillon John, cruelly, it was the 
 common opinion, refused him audience. No syllable of 
 the place whither she fled abroad was vouchsafed to 
 him ; and his confessions of sins and repentance of 
 them were breathed to empty air. The wealthiest 
 nobleman of all England stood on the pier, watching 
 the regiments of that doomed expedition mount ship, 
 ready with the bribe of the greater part of his posses- 
 sions for a single word to tell him of his wife's destina- 
 tion. Lord Feltre, his companion, has done us the 
 service to make his emotions known. He describes 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 549 
 
 them, true, as the Papist who sees every incident con- 
 tribute to precipitate sinners into the bosom of his 
 Church. But this, we have warrant for saying, did not 
 occur before the earl had visited and strolled in the 
 woods with his former secretary, Mr. Gower Woodseer, 
 of whom so much has been told, and he little better 
 than an infidel, declaring his aim to be at contented- 
 ness in life. Lord Fleetwood might envy for a while, 
 he could not be satisfied with Nature. 
 
 Within six months of Carinthia Jane's disappear- 
 ance, people had begun to talk of strange doings at 
 Calesford ; and some would have it, that it was the 
 rehearsal of a play, in which friars were prominent 
 characters, for there the frocked gentry were seen 
 flitting across the ground. Then the world learnt too 
 surely that the dreaded evil had happened, its wealthiest 
 nobleman had gone over to the Church of Rome ! — 
 carrying all his personal and unentailed estate to 
 squander it on images and a dogma. Calesford was 
 attacked by the mob ; — one of the notorious riots in 
 our history was a result of the Amazing Marriage, and 
 roused the talk of it again over Great Britain. When 
 Carinthia Jane, after two years of adventures and perils 
 rarely encountered by women, returned to these shores, 
 she was, they say, most anxious for news of her hus- 
 band ; and then, indeed, it has been conjectured, they 
 might have been united to walk henceforward as one 
 for life, but for the sad fact — Dr. Glossop has the 
 dates — that the Earl of Fleetwood had two months 
 and some days previously abjured his rank, his remain- 
 ing property, his freedom and his title, to become the 
 Brother Russett of the mountain monastery he visited 
 in simple curiosity once with his betraying friend, Lord 
 
550 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Feltre. For he was never the man to stop at anything 
 half way. 
 
 Mr. Rose Mackrell, in his Memoirs, was the first who 
 revealed to the world, that the Mademoiselle de Levellier 
 of the French Count fighting with the Carlists — falsely 
 claimed by him as a Frenchwoman — was, in very truth, 
 Carinthia Jane, the Countess of Fleetwood, to whom 
 Carlists and Legitimists alike were indebted for tender 
 care of them on the field and in hospital ; and who rode 
 from one camp through the other up to the tent of the 
 Pretender to the throne of Spain, bearing her petition 
 for her brother's release ; which was granted, in acknow- 
 ledgment of her ' renowned humanity to both conflicting 
 armies, 1 as the words translated by Dr. Glossop run. 
 Certain it is she brought her wounded brother safe 
 home to England, and prisoners in that war usually 
 had short shrift. For three years longer she was the 
 Countess of Fleetwood, ' widow of a living suicide," 1 Mr. 
 Rose Mackrell describes the state of the Marriage at 
 that period. No whisper of divorce did she tolerate. 
 
 Six months after it was proved that Brother Russett 
 had perished of his austerities, we learn she said to the 
 beseeching applicant for her hand, Mr. Owain Wythan, 
 with the gift of it, in compassion : ' Rebecca could fore- 
 tell events." Carinthia Jane had ever been ashamed 
 of second marriages, and the union with her friend 
 Rebecca's faithful simpleton gave it, one supposes, a 
 natural air, for he as little as she had previously known 
 the wedded state. She married him, Henrietta has 
 written, 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 
 
A CONCLUDING WORD BY THE DAME 551 
 
 told you enough to make us think it a providential 
 intervention for such ends as were 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 the lamentable conclusion. 
 But the melancholy, the pathos of it, the heart of all 
 England stirred by it, have been — and the panting 
 excitement it was to every listener — sacrificed in the 
 vain effort to render events as consequent to your 
 understanding as a piece of logic, through an exposure 
 of character ! "^Character must ever be a mystery, only 
 to be explained in some degree by conduct ; and that 
 is very dependent upon accident : and unless we have 
 a perpetual whipping of the tender part of the reader's 
 mind, interest in invisible persons must needs flag. 
 For it is an infant we address, and the story-teller whose 
 art excites an infant to serious attention succeeds best; 
 with English people assuredly, I rejoice to think, though 
 I pray their patience here while that philosophy and 
 exposure of character block the course along a road 
 inviting to traffic of the most animated kind. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 
 

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