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

disengaged 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: ‘Ives!’

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 bargefaced men of the British Isles, broad, and

battered flattish, with sentinel eyes.

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.

Fleet-wood 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?’

‘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’; 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 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

duellists 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’ 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 illustrious driver’s team.

His meditation, as he subsequently stated to Chillon, was upon his

vanquished antagonist’s 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, Northwestward.