CHAPTER XLVI

A CHAPTER OF UNDERCURRENTS AND SOME SURFACE FLASHES

Thus a round and a good old English practical repartee, worthy a place in

England's book of her historical popular jests; conceived ingeniously, no

bit murderously, even humanely, if Englishmen are to be allowed

indulgence of a jolly hit back for an injury--more a feint than a real

stroke--gave the miserly veteran his final quake and cut Chillon's knot.

Lord Levellier dead of the joke detracted from the funny idea there had

been in the anticipation of his hearing the libertine explosion of his

grand new powder, and coming out cloaked to see what walls remained

upright. Its cleverness, however, was magnified by the shades into which

it had despatched him. The man who started the 'rouse for old Griphard'

was named: nor did he shuffle his honours off. Chillon accused him, and

he regretfully grinned; he would have owned to it eloquently, excited by

the extreme ingenuity, but humour at the criminal bar is an abject thing,

that has to borrow from metaphysics for the expository words. He lacked

them entirely, and as he could not, fronting his master, supply the

defect with oaths, he drew up and let out on the dead old lord, who

wanted a few pounds of blasting powder, like anything else in everybody's

way. Chillon expected the lowest of his countrymen to show some degree of

chivalry upon occasions like the present. He was too young to perceive

how it is, that a block of our speech in the needed direction drives it

storming in another, not the one closely expressing us. Carinthia liked

the man; she was grieved to hear of his having got the sack summarily,

when he might have had a further month of service or a month's pay. Had

not the workmen's forbearance been much tried? And they had not stolen,

they had bought the powder, only intending to startle.

She touched her brother's native sense of fairness and vexed him with his

cowardly devil of impatience, which kicked at a simply stupid common man,

and behaved to a lordly offender, smelling rascal, civilly. Just as her

father would have--treated the matter, she said: 'Are we sorry for what

has happened, Chillon?' The man had gone, the injustice was done; the

master was left to reflect on the part played by his inheritance of the

half share of ninety thousand pounds in his proper respect for Lord

Levellier's memory. Harsh to an inferior is a horrible charge. But the

position of debtor to a titled cur brings a worse for endurance. Knowing

a part of Lord Fleetwood's message to Lord Levellier suppressed, the

bride's brother, her chief guardian, had treated the omission as of no

importance, and had all the while understood that he ought to give her

his full guess at the reading of it: or so his racked mind understood it

now. His old father had said: A dumb tongue can be a heavy liar; and,

Lies are usurers' coin we pay for ten thousand per cent. His harshness in

the past hour to a workman who had suffered with him and had not intended

serious mischief was Chillon's unsounded motive for the resolution to be

out of debt to the man he loathed. There is a Muse that smiles aloft

surveying our acts from the well-springs.

Carinthia heard her brother's fuller version of the earl's communication

to her uncle before the wild day of her marriage. 'Not particularly

fitted for the married state,' Chillon phrased it, saying: 'He seems to

have known himself, he was honest so far.' She was advised to think it

over, that the man was her husband.

She had her brother's heart in her breast, she could not misread him. She

thought it over, and felt a slight drag of compassion for the reluctant

bridegroom. That was a stretch long leagues distant from love with her;

the sort of feeling one has for strange animals hurt and she had in her

childish blindness done him a hurt, and he had bitten her. He was a weak

young nobleman; he had wealth for a likeness of strength; he had no glory

about his head. Why had he not chosen a woman to sit beside him who would

have fancied his coronet a glory and his luxury a kindness? But the poor

young nobleman did not choose! The sadly comic of his keeping to the

pledge of his word--his real wife--the tyrant of the tyrant--clothed him;

the vision of him at the altar, and on the coach, and at the Royal

Sovereign Inn, and into the dimness where a placidly smiling recollection

met a curtain and lost the smile.

Suppose that her duty condemned her to stay in England on guard over

Chillon's treasure! The perpetual struggle with a weak young nobleman of

aimless tempers and rightabout changes, pretending to the part of

husband, would, she foresaw, raise another figure of duty, enchaining a

weak young woman. The world supported his pretension; and her passion to

serve as Chillon's comrade sank at a damping because it was flame.

Chillon had done that; Lady Arpington, to some extent; Henrietta more. A

little incident, pointing in no direction, had left a shadow of a cloud,

consequent upon Lady Arpington's mention of Henrietta's unprotectedness.

Stepping up the hill to meet her sister, on the morning of Henrietta's

departure for London under the convoy of Mr. Wythan, Carinthia's long

sight spied Kit Ines, or a man like him, in the meadow between Lekkatts

and Croridge. He stood before Henrietta, and vanished light-legged at a

gesture. Henrietta was descending to take her leave of her busied

husband; her cheeks were flushed; she would not speak of the fellow,

except to reply, 'oh, a beggar,' and kept asking whether she ought not to

stay at Stoneridge. And if she did she would lose the last of the Opera

in London! How could she help to investigate the cause of an explosion so

considerate to them? She sang snatches of melodies, clung to her husband,

protested her inability to leave him, and went, appearing torn away. As

well bid healthy children lie abed on a bright summer morning, as think

of holding this fair young woman bound to the circle of safety when she

has her view of pleasure sparkling like the shore-sea mermaid's mirror.

Suspicions were not of the brood Carinthia's bosom harboured. Suspicion

of Chillon's wife Carinthia could not feel. An uncaptained vessel in the

winds on high seas was imagined without a picturing of it. The apparition

of Ives, if it was he, would not fit with any conjecture. She sent a

warning to Madge, and at the same time named the girl's wedding day for

her; pained in doing it. She had given the dear girl her word that she

would be present at this of all marriages. But a day or two days or more

would have to be spent away from Chillon; and her hunger for every hour

beside her brother confessed to the war going on within her, as to which

was her holier duty, the one on the line of her inclinations, or that one

pointing to luxury-choice between a battle-horse and a cushioned-chair;

between companionship with her glorious brother facing death, and

submission to a weak young nobleman claiming his husband's rights over

her. She had submitted, had forgotten his icy strangeness, had thought

him love; and hers was a breast for love, it was owned by the sobbing

rise of her breast at the thought. And she might submit again--in honour?

scorning the husband? Chillon scorned him. Yet Chillon left the decision

to her, specified his excuses. And Henrietta and Owain, Lady Arpington,

Gower Woodseer, all the world--Carinthia shuddered at the world's blank

eye on what it directs for the acquiescence of the woman. That shred of

herself she would become, she felt herself becoming it when the view of

her career beside her brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart

was the only soul among her friends whose voice was her own against the

world's.

But there came a turn where she and Rebecca separated. Rebecca's

insurgent wishes taking shape of prophecy, robbed her of her friend

Owain, to present her an impossible object, that her mind could not

compass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and let her keep the fancy of

Owain as her good ghost of a sun in the mist of a frosty morning; sweeter

to her than an image of love, though it were the very love, the love of

maidens' dreams, bursting the bud of romance, issuing its flower.

Delusive love drove away with a credulous maiden, under an English

heaven, on a coach and four, from a windy hill-top, to a crash below, and

a stunned recovery in the street of small shops, mud, rain, gloom,

language like musket-fire and the wailing wounded.

No regrets, her father had said; they unman the heart we want for

to-morrow. She kept her look forward at the dead wall Chillon had thrown

up. He did not reject her company; his prospect of it had clouded; and

there were allusions to Henrietta's loneliness. 'His Carin could do her

service by staying, if she decided that way.' Her enthusiasm dropped to

the level of life's common ground. With her sustainment gone, she beheld

herself a titled doll, and had sternly to shut her eyes on the behind

scenes, bar any shadowy approaches of womanly softness; thinking her

father's daughter dishonoured in the submissive wife of the weak young

nobleman Chillon despised as below the title of man.

Madge and Gower came to Stoneridge on their road to London three days

before their union. Madge had no fear of Ines, but said: 'I never let Mr.

Gower out of my sight.' Perforce of studying him with the thirsty wonder

consequent upon his proposal to her, she had got fast hold of the skirts

of his character; she 'knew he was happy because he was always making her

laugh at herself.' Her manner of saying, 'She hoped to give him a

comfortable home, so that he might never be sorry for what he had done,'

was toned as in a church, beautiful to her mistress. Speaking of my

lord's great kindness, her eyes yearned for a second and fell humbly. She

said of Kit Ives, 'He's found a new "paytron," Sarah says Mr. Woodseer

tells her, my lady. It's another nobleman, Lord Brailstone, has come into

money lately and hired him for his pugilist when it's not horseracing.'

Gower spoke of thanks to Lord Fleetwood for the independence allowing him

to take a wife and settle to work in his little Surrey home. He, too,

showed he could have said more and was advised not to push at a shut

gate. My lord would attend their wedding as well as my lady, Carinthia

heard from Madge; counting it a pity that wealthy noblemen had no

professions to hinder the doing of unprofitable things.

Her sensibility was warmer on the wedding-day of these two dear ones. He

graced the scene, she admitted, when reassured by his perfect reserve

toward her personally. He was the born nobleman in his friendliness with

the bridal pair and respectfulness to Mr. Woodseer. High social breeding

is an exquisite performance on the instrument we are, and his behaviour

to her left her mind at liberty for appreciation of it. Condescension was

not seen, his voice had no false note. During the ceremony his eyelids

blinked rapidly. At the close, he congratulated the united couple,

praising them each for the wisdom of their choice. He said to his

countess:

'This is one of the hopeful marriages; chiefly of your making.'

She replied: 'My prayers will be for them always.'

'They are fortunate who have your prayers,' he said, and turned to Sarah

Winch. She was to let him know when she also had found her 'great

philosopher.' Sarah was like a fish on a bank, taking gasps at the marvel

of it all; she blushed the pale pink of her complexion, and murmured of

'happiness.' Gower had gone headlong into happiness, where philosophers

are smirkers and mouthers of ordinary stuff. His brightest remark was to

put the question to his father: 'The three good things of the Isle of

Britain?' and treble the name of Madge Woodseer for a richer triad than

the Glamorgan man could summon. Pardonably foolish; but mindful of a past

condition of indiscipline, Nature's philosopher said to the old minister:

'Your example saved me for this day at a turn of my road, sir.' Nature's

poor wild scholar paid that tribute to the regimental sectarian. Enough

for proud philosophy to have done the thing demonstrably right, Gower's

look at his Madge and the world said. That 'European rose of the

coal-black order,' as one of his numerous pictures of her painted the

girl, was a torch in a cavern for dusky redness at her cheeks. Her

responses beneath the book Mr. Woodseer held open had flashed a distant

scene through Lord Fleetwood. Quaint to notice was her reverence for the

husband she set on a towering monument, and her friendly, wifely;

whispered jogs at the unpractical creature's forgetfulness of his wraps,

his books; his writing-desk--on this tremendous occasion, his pipe. Again

the earl could have sworn, that despite her antecedents, she brought her

husband honest dower, as surely as she gave the lucky Pagan a whole

heart; and had a remarkably fine bust to house the organ, too; and a

clarionet of a voice, curiously like her, mistress's. And not a bad

fellow, but a heathen dog, a worshipper of Nature, walked off with the

girl, whose voice had the ring of Carinthia's. The Powers do not explain

their dispensations.

These two now one by united good-will for the junction Lord Fleetwood

himself drove through Loudon to the hills, where another carriage awaited

them by his orders, in the town of London's race-course. As soon as they

were seated he nodded to them curtly from his box, and drove back,

leaving them puzzled. But his countess had not so very coldly seen him

start his horses to convey the modest bridal pair. His impulses to

kindness could be politic. Before quitting Whitechapel, she went with

Sarah to look at the old shop of the fruits and vegetables. They found it

shut, untenanted; Mr. Woodseer told them that the earl was owner of it by

recent purchase, and would not lease it. He had to say why; for the

countess was dull to the notion of a sentimental desecration in the

occupying of her bedchamber by poor tradespeople. She was little

flattered. The great nobleman of her imagination when she lay there

dwindled to a whimsy infant, despot of his nursery, capricious with his

toys; likely to damage himself, if left to himself.

How it might occur, she heard hourly from her hostess, Lady Arpington;

from Henrietta as well, in different terms. He seemed to her no longer

the stationed nobleman, but one of other idle men, and the saddest of

young men. His weakness cast a net on her. Worse than that drag of

compassion, she foresaw the chance of his having experience of her own

weakness, if she was to be one among idle women: she might drop to the

love of him again. Chillon's damping of her enthusiasm sank her to a mere

breathing body, miserably an animal body, no comrade for a valiant

brother; this young man's feeble consort, perhaps: and a creature

thirsting for pleasure, disposed to sigh in the prospect of caresses.

Enthusiasm gone, her spirited imagination of active work on the field of

danger beside her brother flapped a broken wing.

She fell too low in her esteem to charge it upon Henrietta that she stood

hesitating, leaning on the hated side of the debate; though she could

almost have blamed Chillon for refusing her his positive counsel, and not

ordering his wife to follow him. Once Lady Arpington, reasoning with her

on behalf of the husband who sought reconciliation, sneered at her

brother's project, condemned it the more for his resolve to carry it out

now that he had means. The front of a shower sprang to Carinthia's

eyelids. Now that her brother had means, he from whom she might be

divided was alert to keep his engagement and study war on the field, as

his father had done in foreign service, offering England a trained

soldier, should his country subsequently need him. The contrast of her

heroic brother and a luxurious idle lord scattering blood of bird or

stag, and despising the soldier's profession, had a singular bitter

effect, consequent on her scorn of words to defend the man her heart

idolized. This last of young women for weeping wept in the lady's

presence.

The feminine trick was pardoned to her because her unaccustomed betrayal

of that form of enervation was desired. It was read as woman's act of

self-pity over her perplexity: which is a melting act with the woman when

there is no man to be dissolved by it. So far Lady Arpington judged

rightly; Carinthia's tears, shed at the thought of her brother under the

world's false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist her

husband's advocates. Unusual as they were, almost unknown, they were

thunder-drops and shook her.

All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses laid on

undercurrents. There is no bridling her unless the tale be here told of

how Lord Brailstone in his frenzy of the disconcerted rival boasted over

town the counterstroke he had dealt Lord Fleetwood, by sending Mrs.

Levellier a statement of the latter nobleman's base plot to thwart her

husband's wager, with his foul agent, the repentant and well-paid ruffian

in person, to verify every written word. The town's conception of the

necessity for the reunion of the earl and countess was too intense to let

exciting scandal prosper. Moreover, the town's bright anticipation of its

concluding festivity on the domain of Calesford argued such tattle down

to a baffled adorer's malice. The Countess of Cressett, having her

cousin, the beautiful Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, in her house, has denied Lord

Brailstone admission at her door, we can affirm. He has written to her

vehemently, has called a second time, has vowed publicly that Mrs.

Levellier shall have her warning against Lord Fleetwood. The madness of

jealousy was exhibited. Lady Arpington pronounced him in his conduct

unworthy the name of gentleman. And how foolish the scandal he

circulates! Lord Fleetwood's one aim is to persuade his offended wife to

take her place beside him. He expresses regret everywhere, that the death

of her uncle Lord Levellier withholds her presence from Calesford during

her term of mourning; and that he has given his word for the fete on a

particular day, before London runs quite dry. His pledge of his word is

notoriously inviolate. The Countess of Cressett--an extraordinary

instance of a thrice married woman corrected in her addiction to play by

her alliance with a rakish juvenile--declares she performs the part of

hostess at the request of the Countess of Fleetwood. Perfectly

convincing. The more so (if you have the gossips' keen scent of a

deduction) since Lord Fleetwood and young Lord Cressett and the Jesuit

Lord Feltre have been seen confabulating with very sacerdotal

countenances indeed. Three English noblemen! not counting eighty years

for the whole three! And dear Lady Cressett fears she may be called on to

rescue her boy-husband from a worse enemy than the green tables, if Lady

Fleetwood should unhappily prove unyielding, as it shames the gentle sex

to imagine she will be. In fact, we know through Mrs. Levellier, the

meeting of reconciliation between the earl and the countess comes off at

Lady Arpington's, by her express arrangement, to-morrow: 'none too soon,'

the expectant world of London declared it.

The meeting came to pass three days before the great day at Calesford.

Carinthia and her lord were alone together. This had been his burning

wish at Croridge, where he could have poured his heart to her and might

have moved the wife's. But she had formed her estimate of him there: she

had, in the comparison or clash of forces with him, grown to contemplate

the young man of wealth and rank, who had once been impatient of an

allusion to her father, and sought now to part her from her brother--stop

her breathing of fresh air. Sensationally, too, her ardour for the

exercise of her inherited gifts attributed it to him that her father's

daughter had lived the mean existence in England, pursuing a husband,

hounded by a mother's terrors. The influences environing her and pressing

her to submission sharpened her perusal of the small object largely

endowed by circumstances to demand it. She stood calmly discoursing, with

a tempered smile: no longer a novice in the social manner. An equal whom

he had injured waited for his remarks, gave ready replies; and he, bowing

to the visible equality, chafed at a sense of inferiority following his

acknowledgement of it. He was alone with her, and next to dumb; she froze

a full heart. As for his heart, it could not speak at all, it was a

swinging lump. The rational view of the situation was exposed to her; and

she listened to that favourably, or at least attentively; but with an

edge to her civil smile when he hinted of entertainments, voyages,

travels, an excursion to her native mountain land. Her brother would then

be facing death. The rational view, she admitted, was one to be

considered. Yes, they were married; they had a son; they were bound to

sink misunderstandings, in the interests of their little son. He ventured

to say that the child was a link uniting them; and she looked at him. He

blinked rapidly, as she had seen him do of late, but kept his eyes on her

through the nervous flutter of the lids; his pride making a determined

stand for physical mastery, though her look was but a look. Had there

been reproach in it, he would have found the voice to speak out. Her look

was a cold sky above a hungering man. She froze his heart from the marble

of her own.

And because she was for adventuring with her brother at bloody work of

civil war in the pay of a foreign government!--he found a short refuge in

that mute sneer, and was hurled from it by an apparition of the Welsh

scene of the bitten infant, and Carinthia volunteering to do the bloody

work which would have saved it; which he had contested, ridiculed. Right

then, her insanity now conjured the wretched figure of him opposing the

martyr her splendid humaneness had offered her to be, and dominated his

reason, subjected him to admire--on to worship of the woman, whatever she

might do. Just such a feeling for a woman he had dreamed of in his

younger time, doubting that he would ever meet the fleshly woman to

impose it. His heart broke the frost she breathed. Yet, if he gave way to

the run of speech, he knew himself unmanned, and the fatal habit of

superiority stopped his tongue after he had uttered the name he loved to

speak, as nearest to the embrace of her.

'Carinthia--so I think, as I said, we both see the common sense of the

position. I regret over and over again--we'll discuss all that when we

meet after this Calesford affair. I shall have things to say. You will

overlook, I am sure--well, men are men!--or try to. Perhaps I'm not worse

than--we'll say, some. You will, I know,--I have learnt it,--be of great

service, help to me; double my value, I believe; more than double it. You

will receive me--here? Or at Croridge or Esslemont; and alone together,

as now, I beg.'

That was what he said. Having said it, his escape from high tragics in

the comfortable worldly tone rejoiced him; to some extent also the

courteous audience she gave him. And her hand was not refused. Judging by

her aspect, the plain common-sense ground of their situation was accepted

for the best opening step to their union; though she must have had her

feelings beneath it, and God knew that he had! Her hand was friendly. He

could have thanked her for yielding her hand without a stage scene; she

had fine breeding by nature. The gracefullest of trained ladies could not

have passed through such an interview so perfectly in the right key; and

this was the woman he had seen at the wrestle with hideous death to save

a muddy street-child! She touched the gentleman in him. Hard as it was

while he held the hand of the wife, his little son's mother, who might be

called his bride, and drew him by the contact of their blood to a memory,

seeming impossible, some other world's attested reality,--she the angel,

he the demon of it,--unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a fact beyond

his mind, he let her hand fall scarce pressed. Did she expect more than

the common sense of it to be said? The 'more' was due to her, and should

partly be said at their next meeting for the no further separating; or

else he would vow in his heart to spread it out over a whole life's

course of wakeful devotion, with here and there a hint of his younger

black nature. Better that except for a desire seizing him to make

sacrifice of the demon he had been, offer him up hideously naked to her

mercy. But it was a thing to be done by hints, by fits, by small doses.

She could only gradually be brought to the comprehension of how the man

or demon found indemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching

her, to torment, perhaps betray; and solace for the hurt to his pride in

spreading a snare for the beautiful Henrietta. A confession! It could be

to none but the priest.

Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the confession

straightway. In spite of horror, the task of helping to wash a black soul

white would have been her compensation for loss of companionship with her

soldier brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabid wound and come

to a love of the rescued sufferer.

It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose Mackrell's applications

to get back his volume of her father's Book of Maxims.

'There is mine,' she said.

For the sake of winning her quick gleam at any word of the bridal couple,

he conjured a picture of her Madge and his Gower, saying: 'That

marriage--as you will learn--proves him honest from head to foot; as she

is in her way, too.'

'Oh, she is,' was the answer.

'We shall be driving down to them very soon, Carinthia.'

'It will delight them to see either of us, my lord.'

'My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford,' he gestured, as in

fetters.

She spared him the my lording as she said adieu, sensitive as she was,

and to his perception now.

Lady Arpington had a satisfactory two minutes with him before he left the

house. London town, on the great day at Calesford, interchanged

communications, to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleetwood

would reign over the next entertainment.