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.

‘There and back?’ he said, and conveyed a compliment 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.

‘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?’

‘My brother is not of the army now, my lord.’

She waved her 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.

‘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?’

‘My tent is pitched there,’ was the answer.

‘Good-bye, my brother,’ said Carinthia.

Chillon folded his arms round her. ‘God bless you, dear love. Let me see

you soon.’ He murmured:

‘You can protect yourself.’

‘Fear nothing for me, dearest.’

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 Welshman’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

fog.

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 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 whiteheaded

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.

Frontward 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, philosophers 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, 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 girl’s 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,’ 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:

‘It is an admired, beautiful place.’

‘I came,’ said he, ‘to have your assurance that it suits you.’

‘I thank you, my lord.’

‘“My lord” would like a short rest, Carinthia.’

She seemed placidly acquiescing. ‘You have seen the boy?’

‘Twice to-day. We were having a conversation just now.’

‘We think him very intelligent.’

‘Lady Arpington tells me you do the honours here excellently.’

‘She is good to me.’

‘Praises the mother’s management of the young one. John Edward: Edward

for call-name. Madge boasts his power for sleeping.’

‘He gives little trouble.’

‘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 perpetual suspicion.

‘Leddings, Queeney, the servants here, run smoothly?’

‘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.’

‘We ‘re to be “the artist of the day,” Gower Woodseer says, and we get

an attachment to the dreariest; we are to study “small variations of the

commonplace”--dear me! But he may be right. The “sky of lead and scraped

lead” over those lines, 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 astonished, 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.

‘Do people see likenesses?’ he asked.

‘Some do,’ said the mother.

‘You?’

She was constrained to give answer. ‘There is a likeness to my father, I

have thought.’

There’s a dotage of idolatrous daughters, he could have retorted; and

his gaze was a polite offer to humdrum reconcilement, if it pleased her.

She sent the child up the steps.

‘Do you come in, my lord?’

‘The house is yours, my lady.’

‘I cannot feel it mine.’

‘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.’

‘--Our child.’

‘Yes.’

‘It is our child.’

‘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’ll 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 would 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.

‘Ah! You must be feeling the cold North-wind here.’

‘I 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.’

‘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 extraordinary wild animal you--the impression may

have been produced; I see, I see. If I were in the house, I should not

be rageing at your doors; and it is not my intention 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. The word given, she

went off with it, disengaged mistress 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 dirited 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

conversation.

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 South-wester blew-a wind altogether preferable to

the chill North-east. Women, when they are no longer warm, are colder

than the deadliest catarrh wind 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 worships in similes, running away from

them, leering sheepishly. 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

North-easter 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 brightest 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 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 desperately to Mrs.

Rundles’ 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 Woodseer the contemplative pipe, which for half a dozen puffs

wafted him to bracing deserts, or primaeval forests, or old highways

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 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 North-easter

swung and banged him. He creaked high, in complaint,--low, in some

partial contentment. 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!

Whitechapel, after one night of it, beckons as a haven of grace.