CHAPTER XXIX. CARINTHIA IN WALES

An August of gales and rains drove Atlantic air over the Welsh

highlands. Carinthia’s old father had impressed on her the rapture of

‘smelling salt’ 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 untasted 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 experienced 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 her boy. He was her boy, and

strangely bestowed, not beautifully to be remembered rapturously

or gratefully, and with deep love of the father. She felt the wound

recollection dealt her. But the boy was her one treasure, and no

treasure to her husband. 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 limitation 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 insufficiency 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!

She was about to cross the hill and breakfast with Mrs. 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 exceptional 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,’ she said to Madge. ‘Mrs. Wythan

would like to see him every day. Martha can walk now.’

‘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.’

‘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 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 bade 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.

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,’ 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...?’

‘Your Rebecca bids you say, my darling.’

‘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.

‘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 him. The bitter ache to me is, that I can give nothing.

You abound in power to give.’

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 opening days all seem to end

in rain. We should turn to Mr. Wythan for a guide.’

‘He calls you Morgan le Fay christianized.’

‘What I am!’ Carinthia raised and let fall her head. ‘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 firedamp 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.

‘Kit Ines has arrived, my lady,’ Madge said. ‘I saw him on the road and

stopped a minute.’

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,’ said Carinthia; ‘I have no fear for

myself.’ 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.

‘He says, to protect you, my lady, since you won’t leave.’

‘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 Fleetwood,’

Mrs. Wythan said to Carinthia. ‘He should live among them. They will not

hurt their lady. Protecting may be his intention; but we will have our

baby safe here. Not?’ she appealed. ‘And baby’s mother. How otherwise?’

‘You read my wishes,’ 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 pleasure 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 opportunities 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 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 money 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, bankrup’, 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.’

‘It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no better than a tool

of a man,’ 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, 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 Ines.’

‘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.’

‘Be the woman and have the last word!’

His tongue was checked. He swallowed the exceeding 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 paytron; but her

contempt of him declined passing in small change.

‘So you’re off. What am I to tell my lord when he comes?’ Kit growled.

‘His yacht’s fetching for a Welsh seaport.’

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

discontented miners bringing my lord and my lady close, perhaps to meet.