CHAPTER XXXII. IN WHICH WE SEE CARINTHIA PUT IN PRACTICE ONE OF HER OLD

FATHER’S LESSONS

Seated at his breakfast-table, the earl saw Gower stride in, and could

have wagered he knew the destination 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 they are professionally tamers.

Petty domestic dissensions are besides poor webs to the man pulling

singlehanded at ropes with his revolted miners. On the topic of wages,

too, he was Gower’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,’ he said. ‘The

countess can decide now to remain, 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, Hereford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains.

‘Yes,’ 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. We’re never free to do as we like.’

‘Legs are the only things that have a taste of freedom,’ said Gower.

They strolled down to Howell Edwards’ 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 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 ascension 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.

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; entirely at her ease and unhurried.

These women get 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 challengeing

match, sedately; very collectedly erect; changed in the fulness of her

figure and her poised calm bearing.

He heard her voice addressing Gower: ‘Yes, they do; we noticed the

slate-roofs, looking down on them. They do look like a council of rooks

in the hollow; a parliament, you said. They look exceedingly like, when

a peep of sunshine falls. Oh, no; not clergymen!’

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 replied 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 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 sensibility of the situation was to be

thrown. He hardened.

‘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 concord or silence or the bachelor’s

exemption.

‘He is a strong boy,’ 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?’

‘I have no choice.’

‘I should wish him to bear one of my brother’s names.’

‘I have no knowledge of your brother’s names.’

‘Chillon is one.’

‘Ah! Is it, should you think, suitable to our climate?’

‘Another name of my brother’s is John.’

‘Bull.’ The loutish derision passed her and rebounded 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.’

‘I write empty letters to tell what I much want,’ Carinthia said.

‘You have only to write your plain request.’

‘If, now I see you, I may speak another request, my lord.’

‘Pray,’ he said, with courteous patience, and stepped forward down to

the street of the miners’ 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,’ said he, fretful under the burden of

this her maniacal maternal anxiety.

‘The men are all right, they would not hurt a child. What can rationally

be suspected!’

‘I know the men; they love their children,’ she replied. ‘I think my

child would be precious to them. Mr. Woodseer and Mr. Edwards and Madge

are there.’

‘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 roadway and at the cottage doors.

‘Children of the poor have happy mothers.’

Her eyes were homely, 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 museful, a

picture in their one expression.

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 an opportunity to--as you put

it--beg for money. I am not sure of your having learnt yet the right

disposal of money.’

‘I 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

alloted to your expenditure at Esslemont;--stables, bills, et caetera.

You can entertain. 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.’

‘Pardon me: the two, for a lady living where she pleases, exceeds the

required amount.’

‘I will accept a smaller sum, my lord.’

‘Money!-it seems a singular demand when all supplies are furnished.’

‘I would have control of some money.’

‘You are thinking of charities.’

‘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 Esslemont.’

‘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, i’r ty!” Mothers, mothers, ho! get them in. See the dog! “Ci!

Ci!” In with them! “Blant, i’r ty! Vr 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.

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,’ 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. ‘Your father? pray?’ She was entreated to speak.

‘Yes, it must be shot; it will be merciful to kill it,’ she said. ‘They

have carried the child indoors. The others are safe. Mr. Woodseer, run

to my nurse-girl, Martha. He goes,’ 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.’

Fleetwood grinned civilly in his excitement; intending 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 whimpered, and stooped to pin the frayed

strips. ‘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 bite?’ Fleetwood cried to

Madge, whose answer was disquieting ‘If it’s to save life, my mistress

won’t stop at anything.’

His heart sprang with a lighted comprehension of Gower Woodseer’s

meaning. This girl’s fervour opened portals to new views of her

mistress, or opened eyes.