CHAPTER XLI

IN WHICH THE FATES ARE SEEN AND A CHOICE OF THE REFUGES FROM THEM

The home of husband and wife was under one roof at last. Fleetwood went,

like one deported, to his wing of the house, physically sensible, in the

back turned to his wife's along the corridor, that our ordinary

comparison for the division of a wedded twain is correct. She was Arctic,

and Antarctic he had to be, perforce of the distance she put between

them. A removal of either of them from life--or from 'the act of

breathing,' as Gower Woodseer's contempt of the talk about death would

call it--was an imaginable way of making it a wider division. Ambrose

Mallard was far enough from his fatal lady now--farther than the Poles

asunder. Ambrose, if the clergy will allow him, has found his peace. .

But the road and the means he chose were a madman's.

The blotting of our character, to close our troubles, is the final proof

of our being 'sons of vapour,' according to Gower Woodseer's heartless

term for poor Ambrose and the lot. They have their souls; and above

philosophy, 'natural' or unnatural, they may find a shelter. They can

show in their desperation that they are made of blood, as philosophers

rather fail of doing. An insignificant brainless creature like Feltre had

wits, by the aid of his religion, to help or be charitable to his

fellows, particularly the sinners, in the crisis of life, surpassing any

philosopher's.

Information of her ladyship's having inspected the apartments, to see to

the minutest of his customary luxuries, cut at him all round. His valet

had it from the footmen and maids; and their speaking of it meant a

liking for their mistress; and that liking, added to her official

solicitude on his behalf, touched a soft place in him and blew an icy

wind; he was frozen where he was warmed. Here was evidence of her

intending the division to be a fixed gap. She had entered this room and

looked about her. He was here to feel her presence in her absence.

Some one or something had schooled her, too. Her large-eyed directness of

gaze was the same as at that inn and in Wales, but her easy sedateness

was novel, her English, almost the tone of the English world: he gathered

it, at least, from the few remarks below stairs.

His desire to be with her was the desire to escape the phantasm of the

woman haunting to subjugate him when they were separate. He could kill

illusion by magnifying and clawing at her visible angles and audible

false notes; and he did it until his recollections joined to the sight of

her, when a clash of the thought of what she had been and the thought of

what she was had the effect of conjuring a bitter sweet image that was a

more seductive illusion. Strange to think, this woman once loved the man

who was not half the value of the man she no longer loved. He took a shot

at cynicism, but hit no mark. This woman protected her whole sex.

They sat at the dinner-table alone, thanks to a handsome wench's

attractions for a philosopher. Married, and parents of a lusty son, this

was their first sitting at table together. The mouth that said 'I guard

my rooms' was not obtruded; she talked passingly of her brother, much of

Lady Arpington and of old Mr. Woodseer; and, though she reserved a smile,

there was no look of a lock on her face. She seemed pleased to be treated

very courteously; she returned the stately politeness in exactest

measure; very simply, as well. Her face had now an air of homeliness,

well suited to an English household interior. She could chat. Any pauses

occurring, he was the one guilty of them; she did not allow them to be

barrier chasms, or 'strids' for the leap with effort; she crossed them

like the mountain maid over a gorge's plank--kept her tones perfectly.

Her Madge and Mr. Gower Woodseer made a conversible topic. She was

inquisitive for accounts of Spanish history and the land of Spain.

They passed into the drawing-room. She had heard of the fate of the poor

child in Wales, she said, without a comment.

'I see now, I ought to have backed your proposal,' he confessed, and was

near on shivering. She kept silent, proudly or regretfully.

Open on her workbasket was a Spanish guide-book and a map attached to it.

She listened to descriptions of Cadiz, Malaga, Seville, Granada. Her

curiosity was chiefly for detailed accounts of Catalonia and the

Pyrenees.

'Hardly the place for you; there's a perpetual heaving of Carlism in

those mountains; your own are quieter for travellers,' he remarked; and

for a moment her lips moved to some likeness of a smile; a dimple in a

flowing thought.

He remarked the come and go of it.

He regretted his inability to add to her knowledge of the Spanish

Pyrenees.

Books helped her at present, she said.

Feeling acutely that hostility would have brought them closer than her

uninviting civility, he spoke of the assault on Mr. Wythan, and Gower

Woodseer's conjecture, and of his having long since discharged the rascal

Ines.

To which her unreproachful answer, 'You made use of those men, my lord,'

sent a cry ringing through him, recalling Feltre's words, as to the grip

men progressively are held in by their deeds done.

'Oh, quite true, we change our views and ways of life,' he said, thinking

she might set her considerations on other points of his character. But

this reflection was a piece of humility not yet in his particular

estimate of his character, and he spurned it: an act of pride that drove

his mind, for occupation, to contemplate hers; which speedily became an

embrace of her character, until he was asking whether the woman he called

wife and dared not clasp was one of those rarest, who can be idealized by

virtue of their being known. For the young man embracing a character

loses grasp of his own, is plucked out of himself and passes into it, to

see the creature he is with the other's eyes, and feel for the other as a

very self. Such is the privilege and the chastisement of the young.

Gower Woodseer's engagement with the girl Madge was a happier subject for

expatiation and agreement. Her deeper tones threw a light on Gower, and

where she saw goodness, he could at least behold the natural philosopher

practically philosophizing.

'The girl shall have a dowry from me,' he said; and the sum named was

large. Her head bent acknowledgingly; money had small weight with her

now. His perception of it stripped him and lamed him.

He wished her ladyship good-night. She stood up and performed a

semi-ceremonious obeisance, neatly adapted to their mutual position. She

had a well-bred mother.

Probably she would sleep. No such expectation could soothe the friend,

and some might be thinking misleader, of Ambrose Mallard, before he had

ocular proof that the body lay underground. His promise was given to

follow it to the grave, a grave in consecrated earth. Ambrose died of the

accidental shot of a pocket-pistol he customarily carried loaded. Two

intimate associates of the dead man swore to that habit of his. They lied

to get him undisputed Christian burial. Aha! The earl laughed outright at

Chummy Potts's nursery qualms. The old fellow had to do it, and he lied

like a man for the sake of Ambrose Mallard's family. So much is owing to

our friend.

Can ecclesiastical casuists decide upon cases of conscience affecting men

of the world?

A council sat upon the case the whole night long. A committee of the

worldly held argumentation in a lower chamber.

These are nights that weaken us to below the level of women. A shuttle

worked in Fleetwood's head. He defended the men of the world. Lord Feltre

oiled them, damned them, kindled them to a terrific expiatory blaze, and

extinguishingly salved and wafted aloft the released essence of them.

Maniacal for argument, Fleetwood rejected the forgiveness of sins, if

sins they be. Prove them sins, and the suffering is of necessity

everlasting, his insomnia logic insisted. Whichever side he took, his

wife was against him; not in speech, but in her look. She was a dumb

figure among the wranglers, clouded up to the neck. Her look said she

knew more of him than they knew.

He departed next day for London, after kissing his child; and he would

have done wisely to abstain from his exhibition of the paternal. Knowing

it a step to conciliation, he checked his impulsive warmth, under the

apprehension that the mother would take it for a piece of acting to

propitiate--and his lips pecked the baby's cheek. Its mother held arms

for it immediately.

Not without reason did his heart denounce her as a mere mother, with

little of a mind to see.

The recent series of feverishly sleepless nights disposed him to snappish

irritability or the thirst for tenderness. Gower had singular experiences

of him on the drive North-westward. He scarcely spoke; he said once: 'If

you mean to marry, you'll be wanting to marry soon, of course,' and his

curt nod before the reply was formulated appeared to signify, the sooner

the better, and deliverance for both of us. Honest though he might, be

sometimes deep and sometimes picturesque, the philosopher's day had come

to an end. How can Philosophy minister to raw wounds, when we are in a

rageing gale of the vexations, battered to right and left! Religion has a

nourishing breast: Philosophy is breastless. Religion condones offences:

Philosophy has no forgiveness, is an untenanted confessional: 'wide air

to a cry in anguish,' Feltre says.

All the way to London Fleetwood endured his companion, letting him talk

when he would.

He spent the greater part of the night discussing human affairs and

spiritual with Lord Feltre, whose dialectical exhortations and

insinuations were of the feeblest, but to an isolated young man, yearning

for the tenderness of a woman thinking but of her grievances, the

ointment brought comfort.

It soothed him during his march to and away from Ambrose Mallard's grave;

where it seemed to him curious and even pitiable that Chumley Potts

should be so inconsolably shaken. Well, and if the priests have the

secret of strengthening the backbone for a bend of the knee in calamity,

why not go to the priests, Chummy? Potts's hearing was not addressed; nor

was the chief person in the meditation affected by a question that merely

jumped out of his perturbed interior.

Business at Calesford kept Fleetwood hanging about London several days

further; and his hatred of a place he wasted time and money to decorate

grew immeasurable. It distorted the features of the beautiful woman for

whose pleasure the grand entertainments to be held there had, somewhere

or other--when felon spectres were abroad over earth--been conceived.

He could then return to Esslemont. Gower was told kindly, with

intentional coldness, that he could take a seat in the phaeton if he

liked; and he liked, and took it. Anything to get to that girl of his!

Whatever the earl's inferiors did, their inferior station was not

suffered to discolour it for his judgement. But an increasing antagonism

to Woodseer's philosophy--which the fellow carried through with perpetual

scorings of satisfaction--caused him to set a hard eye on the damsel

under the grisly spotting shadow of the sottish bruiser, of whom, after

once touching the beast, he could not rub his hands clean; and he chose

to consider the winning of the prize-fighter's lass the final triumph or

flag on the apex of the now despised philosophy. Vain to ask how he had

come to be mixed up with the lot, or why the stolidly conceited,

pretentious fellow had seat here, as by right, beside him! We sow and we

reap; 'plant for sugar and taste the cane,' some one says--this Woodseer,

probably; he can, when it suits him, tickle the ears of the worldlings.

And there is worthier stuff to remember; stuff to nourish: Feltre's

'wisdom of our fathers,' rightly named Religion.

More in the country, when he traversed sweep and rise of open land,

Carinthia's image began to shine, and she threw some of her light on

Madge, who made Woodseer appear tolerable, sagacious, absurdly enviable,

as when we have the fit to wish we were some four-foot. The fellow's

philosophy wore a look of practical craft.

He was going to the girl he liked, and she was, one could swear, an

honest girl; and she was a comely girl, a girl to stick to a man. Her

throwing over a sot was creditable. Her mistress loved her. That said

much for any mortal creature. Man or woman loved by Carinthia could not

be cowardly, could not be vile, must have high qualities. Next to

Religion, she stood for a test of us. Had she any strong sense of

Religion, in addition to the formal trooping to one of their pallid

Protestant churches? Lord Feltre might prove useful to her. For merely

the comprehension of the signification of Religion steadies us. It had

done that for him, the earl owned.

He broke a prolonged silence by remarking to Gower 'You haven't much to

say to-day'; and the answer was 'Very little. When I'm walking, I'm

picking up; and when I'm driving, I'm putting together.'

Gower was rallied on the pursuit of the personal object in both cases. He

pointed at sheep, shepherd, farmer, over the hedge, all similarly

occupied; and admitted shamelessly, that he had not a thought for

company, scarce a word to fling. 'Ideas in gestation are the dullest

matter you can have.'

'There I quite agree with you,' said Fleetwood. Abrane, Chummy Potts,

Brailstone, little Corby, were brighter comrades. And these were his

Ixionides! Hitherto his carving of a way in the world had been

sufficiently ill-considered. Was it preferable to be a loutish

philosopher? Since the death of Ambrose Mallard, he felt Woodseer's title

for that crew grind harshly; and he tried to provoke a repetition of it,

that he might burst out in wrathful defence of his friends--to be named

friends when they were vilified: defence of poor Ambrose at least, the

sinner who, or one as bad, might have reached to pardon through the

priesthood.

Gower offered him no chance..

Entering Esslemont air, Fleetwood tossed his black mood to the winds. She

breathed it. She was a mountain girl, and found it hard to forgive our

lowlands. She would learn tolerance, taking her flights at seasons. The

yacht, if she is anything of a sailor, may give her a taste of England's

pleasures. She will have a special allowance for distribution among old

Mr. Woodseer's people. As to the rest of the Countess of Fleetwood's

wishes, her family ranks with her husband's in claims of any kind on him.

There would be--she would require and had a right to demand--say, a warm

half-hour of explanations: he knew the tone for them, and so little did

he revolve it apprehensively, that his mind sprang beyond, to the hearing

from her mouth of her not intending further to 'guard her rooms.' How

quietly the words were spoken! There was a charm in the retrospect of her

mouth and manner. One of the rare women who never pout or attitudinize,

she could fling her glove gracefully--one might add, capturingly under

every aspect, she was a handsome belligerent. The words he had to combat

pleased his memory. Some good friend, Lady Arpington probably, had

instructed her in the art of dressing to match her colour.

Concerning himself, he made no stipulation, but he reflected on Lord

Feltre's likely estimate of her as a bit of a heathen. And it might be to

her advantage, were she and Feltre to have some conversations. Whatever

the faith, a faith should exist, for without the sentiment of religion, a

woman, he says, is where she was when she left the gates of Eden. A man

is not much farther. Feltre might have saved Ambrose Mallard. He is,

however, right in saying, that the woman with the sentiment of religion

in her bosom is a box of holy incense distinguishing her from all other

women. Empty of it, she is devil's bait. At best, she is a creature who

cannot overlook an injury, or must be exacting God knows what

humiliations before she signs the treaty.

Informed at the house that her ladyship had been staying up on Croridge

for the last two days, Fleetwood sent his hardest shot of the eyes at

Gower. Let her be absent: it was equal to the first move of war, and

absolved him from contemplated proposals to make amends. But the enforced

solitary companionship with this ruminator of a fellow set him asking

whether the godless dog he had picked up by the wayside was not incarnate

another of the sins he had to expiate. Day after day, almost hourly, some

new stroke fell on him. Why? Was he selected for persecution because he

was wealthy? The Fates were driving him in one direction, no doubt of

that.

This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessation of English

storm-weather bequeathed him gloom. Ashamed of the mood, he was

nevertheless directed by its final shadows to see the ruminating tramp in

Gower, and in Madge the prize-fighter's jilt: and round about Esslemont a

world eyeing an Earl of Fleetwood, who painted himself the man he was, or

was held to be, by getting together such a collection, from the daughter

of the Old Buccaneer to the ghastly corpse of Ambrose Mallard. Why,

clearly, wealth was the sole origin and agent of the mischief. With

somewhat less of it, he might have walked in his place among the nation's

elect, the 'herd of the gilt horns,' untroubled by ambitions and ideas.

Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and Madge walking over the

grounds near the western plantation, and he regretted the disappearance

of them, with the fellow talking hard into the girl's ear. Those two

could think he had been of some use. The man pretending to philosophical

depth was at any rate honest; one could swear to the honesty of the girl,

though she had been a reckless hussy. Their humble little hopes and means

to come to union approached, after a fashion, hymning at his ears. Those

two were pleasanter to look on than amorous lords and great ladies, who

are interesting only when they are wicked.

Four days of desolate wanderings over the estate were occupied chiefly in

his decreeing the fall of timber that obstructed views, and was the more

imperatively doomed for his bailiff's intercession. 'Sound wood' the

trees might be: they had to assist in defraying the expense of separate

establishments. A messenger to Queeney from Croridge then announced the

Countess's return 'for a couple of hours.' Queeney said it was the day

when her ladyship examined the weekly bills of the household. That was in

the early morning. The post brought my lord a letter from Countess Livia,

a most infrequent writer. She had his word to pay her debts; what next

was she for asking? He shrugged, opened the letter, and stared at the

half dozen lines. The signification of them rapped on his consciousness

of another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent.

All possible anticipation seemed here outdone: insomuch that he held

palpable evidence of the Fates at work to harass and drive him. She was

married to the young Earl of Cressett!'

Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs. They were the politely

flowing feminine of a statement of the fact, which might have been in one

line. They flourished wantonly: they were deadly blunt. And of all men,

this youngster, who struck at him through her lips with the reproach,

that he had sped the good-looking little beast upon his road to

ruin:--perhaps to Ambrose Mallard's end!