CHAPTER XIX

THE GIRL MADGE

Customers were at the counter of the shop, and these rational figures,

together with the piles of cabbages, the sacks of potatoes, the pale

small oranges here and there, the dominant smell of red herrings, denied

the lurking of an angelical presence behind them.

Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter. Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers

into a corner knocked off the shop and called a room. Below the top bars

of a wizened grate was a chilly fire. London's light came piecemeal

through a smut-streaked window. If the wonderful was to occur, this was

the place to heighten it.

'My son may be an intruder,' Mr. Woodseer said. 'He is acquainted with a

Lord Fleetwood . . .'

'Madge will know, sir,' replied Sarah, and she sent up a shrill cry for

Madge from the foot of the stairs.

The girl ran down swiftly. She entered listening to Sarah, looking at

Gower; to whom, after a bob and pained smile where reverence was owing,

she said, 'Can you tell me, sir, please, where we can find Lord Fleetwood

now?'

Gower was unable to tell. Madge turned to Mr. Woodseer, saying soon

after: 'Oh, she won't mind; she'll be glad, if he knows Lord Fleetwood.

I'll fetch her.'

The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common

sense lectured the wildest of hearts for expecting such a possibility as

the presence of his lofty lady here.

And, of course, common sense proved to be right: the lady was quite

another. But she struck on a sleeping day of his travels. Her face was

not one to be forgotten, and to judge by her tremble of a smile, she

remembered him instantly.

They were soon conversing, each helping to paint the scene of the place

where they had met.

'Lord Fleetwood has married me,' she said.

Gower bent his head; all stood silent.

'May I?' said Madge to her. 'It is Lord Fleetwood's wedded wife, sir. He

drove her from her uncle's, on her wedding day, the day of a prize-fight,

where I was; he told me to wait on his lady at an inn there, as I 've

done and will. He drove away that evening, and he hasn't'--the girl's

black eyebrows worked: 'I've not seen him since. He's a great nobleman,

yes. He left his lady at the inn, expenses paid. He left her with no

money. She stayed on till her heart was breaking. She has come to London

to find him. She had to walk part of the way. She has only a change of

linen we brought in a parcel. She's a stranger to England: she knows

nobody in London. She had no place to come to but this poor hole of ours

she 's so good as let welcome her. We can't do better, and it 's no use

to be ashamed. She 's not a lady to scorn poor people.'

The girl's voice hummed through Gower.

He said: 'Lord Fleetwood may not be in London,' and chafed at himself for

such a quaver.

'It's his house we want, sir, he has not been at his house in Kent. We

want his London house.'

'My dear lady,' said Mr. Woodseer; 'it might be as well to communicate

the state of things to your family without delay. My son will call at any

address you name; or if it is a country address, I can write the items,

with my assurances of your safety under my charge, in my house, which I

beg you to make your home. My housekeeper is known to Sarah and Madge for

an excellent Christian woman.'

Carinthia replied: 'You are kind to me, sir. I am grateful. I have an

uncle; I would not disturb my uncle; he is inventing guns and he wishes

peace. It is my husband I have come to find. He did not leave me in

anger.'

She coloured. With a dimple of tenderness at one cheek, looking from

Sarah to Madge, she said: 'I would not leave my friends; they are sisters

to me.' Sarah, at these words, caught up her apron. Madge did no more

than breathe deep and fast.

An unoccupied cold parlour in Mr. Woodseer's house that would be heated

for a guest, urged him to repeat his invitation, but he took the check

from Gower, who suggested the doubt of Mary Jones being so good an

attendant upon Lady Fleetwood as Madge. 'And Madge has to help in the

shop at times.'

Madge nodded, looked into the eyes of her mistress, which sanctioned her

saying: 'She will like it best here, she is my lady and I understand her

best. My lady gives no trouble: she is hardy, she's not like other

ladies. I and Sarah sleep together in the room next. I can hear anything

she wants. She takes us as if she was used to it.'

Sarah had to go to serve a customer. Madge made pretence of pricking her

ears and followed into the shop.

'Your first visit to London is in ugly weather, Lady Fleetwood,' said

Gower.

'It is my first,' she answered.

How the marriage came about, how the separation, could not be asked and

was not related.

'Our district is not all London, my dear lady,' said Mr. Woodseer. 'Good

hearts are here, as elsewhere, and as many, if one looks behind the dirt.

I have found it since I laboured amongst them, now twenty years. Unwashed

human nature, though it is natural to us to wash, is the most human, we

find.'

Gower questioned the naturalness of human nature's desire to wash; and

they wrangled good-humouredly, Carinthia's eyes dwelling on them each in

turn; until Mr. Woodseer, pursuing the theme started by him to interest

her, spoke of consolations derived from his labours here, in exchange for

the loss of his mountains. Her face lightened.

'You love the mountains?'

'I am a son of the mountains.'

'Ah, I love them! Father called me a daughter of the mountains. I was

born in the mountains. I was leaving my mountains on the day, I think it

yesterday, when I met this gentleman who is your son.'

'A glorious day it was!' Gower exclaimed.

'It was a day of great glory for me,' said Carinthia. 'Your foot did not

pain you for long?'

'The length of two pipes. You were with your brother.'

'With my brother. My brother has married a most beautiful lady. He is now

travelling his happy time--my Chillon!'

There came a radiance on her under-eyelids. There was no weeping.

Struck by the contrast between the two simultaneous honeymoons, and a

vision of the high-spirited mountain girl, seen in this place a young

bride seeking her husband, Gower Woodseer could have performed that

unphilosophical part. He had to shake himself. She seemed really a

soaring bird brought down by the fowler.

Lord Fleetwood's manner of abandoning her was the mystery.

Gower stood waiting for her initiative, when the minister interposed:

'There are books, books of our titled people-the Peers, books of the

Peerage. They would supply the address. My son will discover where to

examine them. He will find the address. Most of the great noblemen have a

London house.'

'My husband has a house in London,' Carinthia said.

'I know him, to some degree,' said Gower.

She remarked: 'I have heard that you do.'

Her lips were shut, as to any hint at his treatment of her.

Gower went into the shop to speak with Madge. The girl was talking in the

business tone to customers; she finished her commission hurriedly and

joined him on the pavement by the doorstep. Her voice was like the change

for the swing of a door from street to temple.

'You've seen how brave she is, sir. She has things to bear. Never cries,

never frets. Her marriage day--leastways . . . I can't, no girl can tell.

A great nobleman, yes. She waited, believing in him; she does. She hasn't

spoken to me of what she's had to bear. I don't know; I guess; I'm sure

I'm right--and him a man! Girls learn to know men, call them gentlemen or

sweeps. She thinks she has only to meet him to persuade him she 's fit to

be loved by him. She thinks of love. Would he--our tongues are tied

except among ourselves to a sister. Leaves her by herself, with only me,

after--it knocks me dumb! Many a man commits a murder wouldn't do that.

She could force him to--no, it isn't a house she wants, she wants him.

He's her husband, Mr. Woodseer. You will do what you can to help; I judge

by your father. I and Sarah 'll slave for her to be as comfortable--as

we--can make her; we can't give her what she 's used to. I shall count

the hours.'

'You sold me apples when your head was just above the counter,' said

Gower.

'Did I?--you won't lose time, sir?' she rejoined. 'Her box is down at the

beastly inn in Kent. Kind people, I dare say; their bill was paid any

extent, they said. And he might do as he liked in it--enter it like a

thief, if it pleased him, and off like one, and they no wiser. She walked

to his big house Esslemont for news of him. And I'm not a snivelling

wench either; but she speaks of him a way to make a girl drink her tears,

if they ain't to be let fall.'

'But you had a victory down there,' Gower hinted congratulations.

'Ah,' said she.

'Christopher Ines is all right now?'

'I've as good as lost my good name for Kit Ines, Mr. Woodseer.'

'Not with my dad, Madge.'

'The minister reads us at the heart. Shall we hear the street of his

house in London before night?'

'I may be late.'

'I'll be up, any hour, for a rap at the shutters. I want to take her to

the house early next morning. She won't mind the distance. She lies in

bed, her eyes shut or open, never sleeping, hears any mouse. It shouldn't

go on, if we can do a thing to help.'

'I'm off,' said Gower, unwontedly vexed at his empty pocket, that could

not offer the means for conveyance to a couple of young women.

The dark-browed girl sent her straight eyes at him. They pushed him to

hasten. On second thoughts, he stopped and hailed her; he was moved to

confirm an impression of this girl's features.

His mind was directed to the business burning behind them, honestly

enough, as soon as he had them in sight again.

'I ought to have the address of some of her people, in case,' he said.

'She won't go to her uncle, I 'm sure of that,' said Madge. 'He 's a lord

and can't be worried. It 's her husband to find first.'

'If he's to be found!--he's a lord, too. Has she no other relatives or

friends?'

'She loves her brother. He's an officer. He's away on honeymoon. There 's

an admiral down Hampshire way, a place I've been near and seen. I'd not

have you go to any of them, sir, without trying all we can do to find

Lord Fleetwood. It's Admiral Fakenham she speaks of; she's fond of him.

She's not minded to bother any of her friends about herself.'

'I shall see you to-night,' said Gower, and set his face Westward,

remembering that his father had named Caermarthen as her mother's

birthplace.

Just in that tone of hers do Welshwomen talk of their country; of its

history, when at home, of its mountains, when exiled: and in a language

like hers, bare of superlatives to signify an ardour conveyed by the fire

of the breath. Her quick devotion to a lady exciting enthusiasm through

admiring pity for the grace of a much-tried quiet sweetness, was

explained; apart from other reasons, feminine or hidden, which might

exist. Only a Welsh girl would be so quick and all in it, with a voice

intimating a heated cauldron under her mouth. None but a Welsh-blooded

girl, risking her good name to follow and nurse the man she considered a

hero, would carry her head to look virgin eyes as she did. One could

swear to them, Gower thought. Contact with her spirited him out of his

mooniness.

He had the Cymric and Celtic respect of character; which puts aside the

person's environments to face the soul. He was also an impressionable

fellow among his fellows, a philosopher only at his leisure, in his

courted solitudes. Getting away some strides from this girl of the

drilling voice,--the shudder-voice, he phrased it,--the lady for whom she

pleaded came clearer into his view and gradually absorbed him; though it

was an emulation with the girl Madge, of which he was a trifle conscious,

that drove him to do his work of service in the directest manner. He then

fancied the girl had caught something of the tone of her lady: the savage

intensity or sincerity; and he brooded on Carinthia's position, the

mixture of the astounding and the woful in her misadventure. One could

almost laugh at our human fate, to think of a drop off the radiant

mountain heights upon a Whitechapel greengrocer's shop, gathering the

title of countess midway.

But nothing of the ludicrous touched her; no, and if we bring reason to

scan our laugh at pure humanity, it is we who are in the place of the

ridiculous, for doing what reason disavows. Had he not named her,

Carinthia, Saint and Martyr, from a first perusal of her face? And Lord

Fleetwood had read and repeated it. Lord Fleetwood had become the

instrument to martyrize her? That might be; there was a hoard of bad

stuff in his composition besides the precious: and this was a nobleman

owning enormous wealth, who could vitiate himself by disposing of a

multitude of men and women to serve his will, a shifty will. Wealth

creates the magician, and may breed the fiend within him. In the hands of

a young man, wealth is an invitation to devilry. Gower's idea of the

story of Carinthia inclined to charge Lord Fleetwood with every possible

false dealing. He then quashed the charge, and decided to wait for

information.

At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London's West, into which he

stepped like an easy member, the hall-porter did not examine his clothing

from German hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood's town address. He

could tell Madge at night by the door of the shuttered shop, that Lord

Fleetwood had gone down to Wales.

'It means her having to wait,' she said. 'The minister has been to the

coach-office, to order up her box from that inn. He did it in his name;

they can't refuse; no money's owing. She must have a change. Sally has

fifteen pounds locked up in case of need.'

Sally's capacity and economy fetched the penniless philosopher a slap.

'You've taken to this lady,' he said.

'She held my hand, while Kit Ines was at his work; and I was new to her,

and a prize-fighter's lass, they call me:--upon the top of that

nobleman's coach, where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight; and

she his wedded lady that morning. A queer groom. He may keep Kit Ines

from drink, he's one of you men, and rides over anything in his way. I

can't speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from what I know.

Those Rundles at that inn don't hear anything it suits him to do. All the

people down in those parts are slaves to him. And I thought he was a real

St. George before,--yes, ready I was to kiss the ground his feet crossed.

If you could, it's Chinningfold near where Admiral Fakenham lives, down

Hampshire way. Her friends ought to hear what's happened to her. They'll

find her in a queer place. She might go to the minister's. I believe

she's happier with us girls.'

Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold early as the light next

day. He liked the girl the better, in an amicable fashion, now that his

nerves had got free of the transient spell of her kettle tone--the hardly

varied one note of a heart boiling with sisterly devotion to a misused

stranger of her sex;--and, after the way of his race, imagination sprang

up in him, at the heels of the quieted senses, releasing him from the

personal and physical to grasp the general situation and place the

protagonist foremost.

He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. Some wrong had been

done, or some violation of the right, to guess from the girl Madge's

molten words in avoidance of the very words. It implied--though it might

be but one of Love's shrewder discords--such suspected traitorous dealing

of a man with their sister woman as makes the world of women all woman

toward her. They can be that, and their being so illuminates their hidden

sentiments in relation to the mastering male, whom they uphold.

But our uninformed philosopher was merely picking up scraps of sheddings

outside the dark wood of the mystery they were to him, and playing

imagination upon them. This primary element of his nature soon enthroned

his chosen lady above their tangled obscurities. Beneath her tranquil

beams, with the rapture of the knowledge that her name on earth was

Livia, he threaded East London's thoroughfares,--on a morning when day

and night were made one by fog, to journey down to Chinningfold, by

coach, in the service of the younger Countess of Fleetwood, whose right

to the title he did not doubt, though it directed surprise movements at

his understanding from time to time.