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, Countess Fanny kissed her hand to them and drew up

the window, seeming merry, and as they had expected indignation and

perhaps resistance, 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 disengaged from the ruck two

deep, walked on each side of it in the road all the way to Lord

Cressett's town 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 procession, 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 gentlemen all

bowing low before her: not a sign of the Old Buccaneer anywhere to right

or left! Heads were on the look out, and vows offered up for his

appearance.

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' 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 positive and bellowed, 'Peel her wig!

we're done!'

And she did not speak a word, but stood huddled-up and hooded; and Lord

Levellier caught her up 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!'

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 hearing that her penalty

for the share she had taken in the 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 explanation of the

simplicity of the trick turns all the wonder upon yourself, you know, and

the backers of the Old Buccaneer and the wagerers 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 testimony, 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 Levellier was, and Lord Fleetwood, the wicked man! And

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 persue. 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 he jogged;

and 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,' for they

had been arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Continent, 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 gentleman 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

discovered 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

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 speculated 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 Kirby's

children by 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 oddness 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 known along 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 girlhood the boys were always bringing home anecdotes of old Admiral

Showery: not all of them true ones, perhaps, 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 himself, and crawling

on his knees to a female Parleyvoo; and when Geoffrey died, the admiral

drank to his rest in the grave: 'There's to my brother Jeff,' he said,

and flinging away the dregs of his glass: 'There 's to the Frog!' and

flinging away the glass to shivers: 'There's to the Turncoat!'

He salted his language in a manner I cannot repeat; no epithet ever stood

by itself. When I was young the 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 Gentleman 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, rather his

name, a great favourite at Court; 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; 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 subsequent 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 Wiltshire 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, according 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

gentleman conducting her in her carriage, as they supposed; and he was

known to have started off, on the discovery of the cheat, with horrible

imprecations against Frenchwomen. It became known, too; that horses of

his were standing saddled in his innyard at midnight. And more, Charles

Dump the postillion 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 had never seen

Mr. Curtis Fakenham 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 everywhere 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 adornments, and that same remark, made him the popular man of the

county; people said he might enter Parliament, 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 took all the interest out of it.'

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

confessed 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 story being told over again, and used to hang in the

patients' 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

uphill, 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 highwaymen, 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; 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 Buccaneer, 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.