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 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE
 
 THE 
 AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1895 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 KortoootJ ^rrss 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
 
 Jforwood Mass. U.S.A.
 
 \ \ . 
 
 To my Friend 
 Frederick Jameson 
 
 599040
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Enter Dame Gossip as Chorus 1 
 
 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 17 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Continuation of the Introductory Meanderings of Dame Gos- 
 sip, together with her Sudden Extinction .... 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Morning and Farewell to an Old Home 41 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A Mountain Walk in Mist and Sunshine .... 52 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The Natural Philosopher 69 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 The Lady's Letter 82 
 
 Y
 
 VI CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Of the Encounter of Two Strange Young Men and their Con- 
 sorting : in which the Male Eeader is requested to bear in 
 Mind what Wild Creature he was in his Youth, while 
 the Female should marvel credulously .... 90 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Concerning the Black Goddess Fortune and the "Worship of 
 her, together with an Introduction of Some of her 
 Votaries 109 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Small Causes 129 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Prisoner of his Word 141 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Henrietta's Letter treating of the Great Event . . . 167 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 An Irruption of Mistress Gossip in Breach of the Convention 166 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 A Pendant of the Foregoing 184 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 Opening Stage of the Honeymoon . ... . . . 187
 
 CONTENTS Vll 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In which the Bride from Foreign Parts is given a Taste of 
 
 Old England 206 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Records a Shadow Contest close on the Foregoing . . . 219 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 Down Whitechapel Way 230 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 The Girl Madge 245 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Studies in Fog, Gout, an Old Seaman, a Lovely Serpent, and 
 the Moral Effects that may come of a Borrowed Shirt . 257 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 In which we have Further Glimpses of the Wondrous Mech- 
 anism of our Younger Man 271 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 A Right-minded Great Lady 281 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 In Dame Gossip's Vein 288 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 A Kidnapping and No Great Harm 307
 
 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 
 
 Everybody lias heard of the beautiful Countess of 
 Cressett, who was one of the lights of this country at 
 the time when crowned heads were running over Europe, 
 crying out for charity's sake to be amused, after their 
 tiresome work of slaughter : and you know what a dread 
 they have of moping. She was famous for her fun and 
 high spirits besides her good looks, which you may 
 judge of for yourself on a walk down most of our great 
 noblemen's collections of pictures in England, where you 
 will behold her as the goddess Diana fitting an arrow to 
 a bow ; and elsewhere an Amazon holding a spear ; or a 
 lady with dogs, in the costume of the day ; and in one 
 place she is a nymph, if not Diana herself, gazing at her 
 naked feet before her attendants loosen her tunic for her 
 to take the bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, 
 and you see antlers of a stag behind a block of stone. 
 She was a wonderful swimmer, among other things, and 
 one early morning, when she was a girl, she did really 
 
 B 1
 
 Z THE AMAZING MAERIAGE 
 
 swim, they say, across the Shannon and back to win a 
 bet for her brother Lord Levellier, the colonel of cavalry, 
 who left an arm in Egypt, and changed his way of life to 
 become a wizard, as the common people about his neigh- 
 bourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather and 
 had cures for aches and pains without a doctor's diploma. 
 But we know now that he was only a mathematician and 
 astronomer, all for inventing military engines. The 
 brother and sister were great friends in their youth, when 
 he had his right arm to defend her reputation with ; and 
 she would have done anything on earth to please him. 
 
 There is a picture of her in an immense flat white silk 
 hat trimmed with pale blue, like a pavilion, the broadest 
 brim ever seen, and she simply sits on a chair; and 
 Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been extinguished 
 under that hat, I am sure ; and only to look at Countess 
 Eanny's eye beneath the brim she has tipped ever so 
 slightly in her artfulness makes the absurd thing grace- 
 ful and suitable. Oh ! she was a cunning one. But you 
 must be on your guard against the scandalmongers and 
 collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, the critic of 
 our Galleries of Art; for she being in almost all 
 of them (the principal painters of the day were on their 
 knees for the favour of a sitting), they have to speak of 
 her pretty frequently, and they season their dish, the 
 coxcombs do, by hinting a knowledge of her history. 
 
 ^'Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful 
 but, we fear, naughty Countess of Cressett."
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 3 
 
 You are to imagine that they know everything, and 
 they are so indulgent when they drop their blot on a 
 lady's character! 
 
 They can boast of nothing more than having read 
 Nymney's Letters and Correspondence, published, fort- 
 unately for him, when he was no longer to be called 
 to account below for his malicious insinuations, pre- 
 tending to decency in initials and dashes. That man 
 was a hater of women and the clergy. He was one 
 of the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, 
 which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have 
 known it myself, and I own it to my shame ; and if I 
 happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess 
 Fanny, I could not refute his wantonness. He has 
 just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, 
 if we are to make a choice, the beggar's breech for 
 decency, I say : I like it vastly in preference to a 
 Nymney who leads you up to the curtain and agitates 
 it, and bids you to retire on tiptoe. You cannot help 
 being angry with the man for both reasons. But he 
 is the writer society delights in, to show what it is 
 composed of. A man brazen enough to declare that 
 he could hold us in suspense about the adventures of 
 a broomstick, with the aid of a yashmak and an ankle, 
 may know the world; you had better not know him — 
 that is my remark; and do not trust him. 
 
 He tells the story of the Old Buccaneer in fear of 
 the public, for it was general property, but of course
 
 4 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 he finishes with a Nymney touch : " So the Old Buc- 
 caneer is the doubloon she takes in exchange for a 
 handful of silver pieces." There was no such handful 
 to exchange — not of the kind he sickeningly nudges 
 at you. I will prove to you it was not the Countess 
 Fanny's naughtiness, though she was indeed very 
 blamable. Women should walk in armour as if they 
 were born to it; for. these cold sneerers will never 
 waste their darts on cuirasses. An independent brave 
 young creature, exposing herself thoughtlessly in her 
 reckless innocence, is the victim for them. They will 
 bring all society down on her with one of their explo- 
 sive sly words appearing so careless, the cowards. I 
 say without hesitation, her conduct with regard to 
 Kirby, the Old Buccaneer, as he was called, however 
 indefensible in itself, warrants her at heart an inno- 
 cent young woman, much to be pitied. Only to think 
 of her, I could sometimes drop into a chair for a 
 good cry. And of him too! and their daughter Ca- 
 rinthia Jane was the pair of them, as to that, and so 
 was Chillon John, the son. 
 
 Those critics quoting Nymney should look at the 
 portrait of her in the Long Saloon of Cressett Castle, 
 where she stands in blue and white, completely dressed, 
 near a table supporting a couple of holster pistols, 
 and then let them ask themselves whether they would 
 speak of her so if her little hand could move. 
 
 Well, and so the tale of her swim across the Shan-
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 5 
 
 non Eiver and back drove the young Earl of Cressett 
 straight over to Ireland to propose for her, he saying, 
 that she was the girl to suit his book; not allowing 
 her time to think of how much he might be the man 
 to suit hers. The marriage was what is called a good 
 one : both full of frolic, and he wealthy and rather 
 handsome, and she quite lovely and spirited. 
 
 No wonder the whole town was very soon agog about 
 the couple, until at the end of a year people began to 
 talk of them separately, she going her way, and he his. 
 She could not always be on the top of a coach, which 
 was his throne of happiness. 
 
 Plenty of stories are current still of his fame as a 
 four-in-hand coachman. They say he once drove an 
 Emperor and a King, a Prince Chancellor and a pair 
 of Field Marshals, and some ladies of the day, from 
 the metropolis to Richmond Hill in fifty or sixty odd 
 minutes, having the ground cleared all the way by bell 
 and summons, and only a donkey-cart and man, and a 
 deaf old woman, to pay for ; and went, as you can im- 
 agine, at such a tearing gallop, that these Grand High- 
 nesses had to hold on for their lives and lost their hats 
 along the road; and a publican at Kew exhibits one 
 above his bar to the present hour. And Countess Eanny 
 was up among them, they say. She was equal to it. 
 And some say, that was the occasion of her meeting 
 the Old Buccaneer. 
 
 She met him at Richmond in Surrey we know for
 
 6 THE AMAZING MAEKIAGE 
 
 certain. It was on Richmond Hill, where the old King 
 met his Lass. They say Countess Fanny was parading 
 the hill to behold the splendid view, always admired 
 so much by foreigners, with their Achs and Hechs ! 
 and surrounded by her crowned courtiers in frogged 
 uniforms and moustachioed like sea-horses, a little before 
 dinner-time, when Kirby passed her, and the emperor 
 made a remark on him, for Kirby was a magnificent 
 figure of a man and used to be compared to a three- 
 decker entering harbour after a victory. He stood six 
 feet four, and was broad-shouldered and deep-chested 
 to match, and walked like a king who has humbled 
 his enemy. You have seen big dogs. And so Countess 
 Fanny looked round. Kirby was doing the same. But 
 he had turned right about, square-chested, and appeared 
 transfixed and like a royal beast angry with his wound. 
 If ever there was love at first sight, and a dreadful 
 love, like a runaway mail-coach in a storm of wind and 
 lightning at black midnight, by the banks of a flooded 
 river, which was formerly our comparison for terrible 
 situations, it was when those two met. 
 
 And, what! you exclaim, Buccaneer Kirby full sixty- 
 five, and Countess Fanny no more than three and 
 twenty, a young beauty of the world of fashion, 
 courted by the highest, and she in love with him ! 
 Go and gaze at one of our big ships coming out of 
 an engagement, home with all her flags flying and her 
 crew manning the yards. That will give you an idea
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS < 
 
 of a young woman's feelings for an old warrior never 
 beaten down an inch by anything he had to endure; 
 matching him, I dare say, in her woman's heart, with 
 the Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the out- 
 side edge of battle. She did rarely admire a valiant 
 man. Old as Methuselah, he would have made her 
 kneel to him. She was all heart for a real hero. 
 
 The story goes, that Countess Fanny sent her hus- 
 band to Captain Kirby, at the emperor's request, to 
 inquire his name; and on hearing it, she struck her 
 hands on her bosom, telling his Majesty he saw there 
 the bravest man in the king's dominions ; which the 
 emperor scarce crediting, and observing that the man 
 must be, then, a superhuman being to be so dis- 
 tinguished in a nation of the brave. Countess Eanny 
 related the well-known tale of Captain Kirby and the 
 shipful of mutineers; and how when not a man of 
 them stood by him, and he in the service of the first 
 insurgent State of Spanish America, to save his ship 
 from being taken over to the enemy, he blew her up, 
 fifteen miles from land: and so he got to shore swim- 
 ming and floating alternately, and was called Old Sky- 
 High by English sailors, any number of whom could 
 always be had to sail under Buccaneer Kirby. He 
 fought on shore as well ; and once he came down 
 from the tops of the Andes with a black beard turned 
 white, and went into action with the title of Kirby's 
 Ghost.
 
 8 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 But his heart was on salt water; he was never so 
 much at home as in a ship foimdering or splitting 
 into the clouds. ^Ye are told that he never forgave 
 the Admiralty for striking him off the list of English 
 naval captains : which is no doubt why in his old age 
 he nursed a grudge against his country. 
 
 Ours, I am sure, was the loss ; and many have 
 thought so since. He was a mechanician, a master of 
 stratagems, and would say, that brains will beat 
 Grim Death, if ice have enough of them. He was a 
 standing example of the lessons of his o^ti Maxims 
 for Men, a very curious book, that fetches a rare 
 price now wherever a copy is put up for auction. I 
 shudder at them as if they were muzzles of firearms 
 pointed at me; but they were not addressed to my 
 sex; and still they give me an interest in the writer 
 who would declare, that "7ie had never failed in an 
 undertaking ivithout stripping hare to expose to himself 
 where he had been wanting in Intention and Determinor 
 tion.^^ 
 
 There you may see a truly terrible man. 
 
 So the emperor being immensely taken with Kirby's 
 method of preserving discipline on board ship, because 
 (as we say to the madman. Your strait-icaistcoat is my 
 easy-chair) monarchs have a great love of discipline, 
 he begged Countess Fanny's permission that he might 
 invite Captain Kirby to his table ; and Countess Eanny 
 (she had her name from the ballad:
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 9 
 
 ^^ lam the star of Prince and Czar, 
 My light is shed on many, 
 But I IV ait here till my bold Buccaneer 
 Makes prize of Countess Fanny: " — 
 
 for the popular imagination was extraordinarily roused 
 by the elopement, and there were songs and ballads out 
 of number), Countess Fanny despatched her husband to 
 Captain Kirby again, meaning no harm, though the poor 
 man is laughed at in the songs for going twice upon his 
 mission. 
 
 None of the mighty people repented of having the 
 Old Buccaneer — for that night, at all events. He sat 
 in the midst of them, you may believe, like the lord of 
 that table, with his great white beard and hair — not a 
 lock of it shed — and his bronze lion-face, and a resolute 
 but a merry eye that he had. He was no deep drinker 
 of wine, but when he did drink, and the Avine cham- 
 pagne, he drank to show his disdain of its powers ; and 
 the emperor wishing for a narrative of some of his 
 exploits, particularly the blowing up of the ship, Kirby 
 p?id his Majesty the compliment of giving it him as 
 baldly as an official report to the Admiralty. So disen- 
 gaged and calm was he, with his bottles of champagne 
 in him, where another would have been sparkling and 
 laying on the colours, that he was then and there offered 
 Admiral's rank in the Imperial navy; and the Old 
 Buccaneer, like a courtier of our best days, bows to 
 Countess Fanny, and asks her, if he is a free man to go :
 
 10 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and, !N"o, says she, we cannot spare you! And there 
 was a pretty wrangle between Countess Fanny and the 
 emperor, each pulling at the Old Buccaneer to have 
 possession of him. 
 
 He was rarely out of her sight after their first meet- 
 ing, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's 
 family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and 
 made a Cossack of ! and young Lord Cressett, her hus- 
 band, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a 
 man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age 
 were the injury ! He seemed to think it so, and vowed 
 he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him 
 on the grounds of Cressett : " like vermin," he said, and 
 it was considered that he had the right, and no jury 
 would have convicted him. You know what those days 
 were. 
 
 He had his opportunity one moonlight night, not far 
 from the castle, and peppered Kirby with shot from a 
 fowling-piece at, some say, five paces' distance, if not 
 point-blank. 
 
 But Kirby had a maxim. Steady shakes them, and he 
 acted on it to receive his enemy's fire : and the young 
 lord's hand shook, and the Old Buccaneer stood out of 
 the smoke not much injured, except in the coat-collar, 
 Y^ith a pistol cocked in his hand, and he said: — 
 
 ^'' Many would take that for a declaration of war, but 
 I know it's only your lordship's diplomacy " ; and then 
 he let loose to his mad fun, astounding Lord Cressett
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 11 
 
 and Ms gamekeeper, and vowed, as tlie young lord tried 
 to relate subsequently, as well as he could recollect tlie 
 words — here I have it in print: — ^^ tlicit he v:as a man 
 pickled in saltpetre ichen an infant, like Achilles, and X)roof 
 against powder and shot not marked icith cross and key, 
 and fetched up from the square magazine in the central 
 depot of the infernal factory, third turning to the right off 
 the grand arcade in Kingdom-come, ichere the night-porter 
 has to zcear ivet petticoats, like a Highland, chief, to make 
 short icork of the spxirks flying about, othencise this ivorld 
 and many another v:ould not have to u:ait long for combus- 
 tion.'' 
 
 Kirby had the wildest way of talking when he was 
 not issuing orders under fire, best understood by sailors. 
 I give it you as it stands here printed. I do not profess 
 to understand. 
 
 So Lord Cressett said : " Diplomacy and infernal fac- 
 tories be hanged ! Have your shot at me ; it's only 
 fair." And Kirby discharged his pistol at the top 
 twigs of an old oak tree, and called the young lord a 
 Briton, and proposed to take him in hand and make a 
 man of him, as nigh worthy of his wife as any one not 
 an Alexander of Macedon could be. 
 
 So they became friendly, and the young lord con- 
 fessed it was his family that had urged him to the at- 
 tack ; and Kirby abode at the castle, and all three were 
 happy, in perfect honour, I am convinced: but such 
 was not the opinion of the Cressetts and Levelliers.
 
 12 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Down they trooped to Cressett Castle witli a rusli 
 and a roar, crying on the disgrace of an old desperado 
 like Kirby living there ; Dukes, Marchionesses, Cabinet 
 Ministers, leaders of fashion, and fire-eating colonels 
 of the King's body-guard, one of whom Captain John 
 Peter Kirby laid on his heels at ten paces on an April 
 morning, when the duel was fought, as early as the 
 blessed heavens had given them light to see to do it. 
 Such days those were! 
 
 There was talk of shutting up the infatuated lady. If 
 not incarcerated, she was rigidly watched. The earl 
 her husband fell altogether to drinking and coaching, 
 and other things. The ballad makes her say : — 
 
 " My family my gaolers be, 
 My husband is a zany ; 
 Naught see I clear save my bold Buccaneer 
 To rescue Countess Fanny !" 
 
 and it goes on : — 
 
 " little lass^ at play on the grass. 
 Come earn a silver penny ^ 
 And you'' II be dear to my bold Buccaneer 
 For news of his Countess Fanny" 
 
 In spite of her bravery, that poor woman suffered! 
 
 We used to learn by heart the ballads and songs 
 upon famous events in those old days when poetry was 
 worshipped.
 
 ENTER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 13 
 
 But Captain Kirby gave provocation enough, to both 
 families when he went among the taverns and clubs, 
 and vowed before Providence over his big fist that they 
 should rue their interference, and he would carry off 
 the lady on a day he named ; he named the hour as 
 well, they say, and that was midnight of the month of 
 June. The Levelliers and Cressetts foamed at the 
 mouth in speaking of him, so enraged they were on 
 account of his age and his passion for a young woman. 
 As to blood, the Kirbys of Lincolnshire were quite 
 equal to the Cressetts of Warwick. The Old Buccaneer 
 seems to have had money too. But you can see what 
 her people had to complain of: his insolent contempt 
 of them was unexampled. And their tyranny had 
 roused my lady's high spirit not a bit less, and she 
 said right out : '^ When he comes, I am ready and will 
 go with him." 
 
 There was boldness for you on both sides ! All the 
 town was laughing and betting on the event of the 
 night in June : and the odds were in favour of Kirby ; 
 for though Lord Cressett was quite the popular young 
 English nobleman, being a capital whip and free of his 
 coin, in those days men who had smelt powder were often 
 prized above titles, and the feeling, out of society, was 
 very strong for Kirby, even previous to the fight on 
 the heath. And the age of the indomitable adventurer 
 must have contributed to his popularity. He was the 
 hero of every song.
 
 14 THE AMAZIKG MARRIAGE 
 
 " Whafs age to me ! " cries Kirhy ; 
 *' Why^ young and fresh let her he, 
 
 But ifs mighty better reasoned 
 
 For a man to he well seasoned, 
 And a man she has in me,''"' cries Kirhy. 
 
 As to his exact age : — 
 
 " Write me down sixty -three, '^ cries Kirhy. 
 
 I have always maintained that it was an understate- 
 ment. We must remember, it was not Kirby speaking, 
 but the song-writer. Kirby would not, in my opinion, 
 have numbered years he was proud of below their due 
 quantity. He was more, if he died at ninety -one ; and 
 Chillon Switzer John Kirby, born eleven months after 
 the elopement, was, we know, twenty-three years old when 
 the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed him 
 little besides a law-suit with the Austrian Government, 
 and the care of Carinthia Jane, the second child of this 
 extraordinary union : both children born in wedlock, as 
 you will hear. Sixty-three, or sixty-seven, near upon 
 seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their 
 sins with groans and weak knees, Kirby was a match 
 for his juniors, which they discovered. 
 
 Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincoln- 
 shire squire of an ancient stock, was proud of his blood 
 and claimed descent from a chief of the Danish rovers. 
 
 " WhaVs rank to we /" cries Kirhy; 
 " A titled lass let her he,
 
 ENT^ER DAME GOSSIP AS CHORUS 15 
 
 But unless my plans miscarry, 
 Til show her lohen we marry, 
 As brave a pedigree,'''' cries Kirhy. 
 
 That was the song-writer's answer to the charge that 
 the countess had stooped to a degrading alliance. 
 
 John Peter was fourth of a family of seven children, 
 all males, and hard at the bottle early in life : "/or 
 want of proper occupation,''^ he says in his Memoirs, and 
 applauds his brother Stanson, the clergyman, for being 
 ahead of him in renouncing strong drinks, because he 
 found that he " cursed better upon tcater.'^ Water, however, 
 helped Stanson Kirby to outlive his brothers and inherit 
 the Lincolnshire property, and at the period of the great 
 scandal in London he was palsied and waited on by his 
 grandson and heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the hero of 
 an adventure celebrated in our law courts and on the 
 English stage ; for he took possession of his coachman's 
 wife, and was accused of compassing the death of the 
 husband. He was not hanged for it, so we are bound 
 to think him not guilty. 
 
 The stage-piece is called Saturday Night, and it 
 had an astonishing run, but is only remembered now 
 for the song of " Saturday," sung by the poor coach- 
 man and labourers at the village ale-house before he 
 starts to capture his wife from the clutches of her 
 seducer and meets his fate. Never was there a more 
 popular song: you heard it everywhere. I recollect 
 one verse : —
 
 16 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " Saturday money is slippery metal, 
 And Saturday ale it is tipsy stuff: 
 At home the old woman is boiling her kettle. 
 She thinks ice donH know whenwe''ve tippled enough. 
 We drink, and of never a man are we jealous, 
 And never a man against us will he speak : 
 For who can he hard on a set of poor fellows 
 Who only see Saturday once a weekf'' 
 
 You chorus the last two lines. 
 
 That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of 
 Kirby Hall joined in singing before he went out to face 
 his end for the woman he loved. He believed in her 
 virtue to the very last. 
 
 " Tlie ravished imfe of my hosom,^^ he calls her all 
 through the latter half of the play. It is a real tragedy. 
 The songs of that day have lost their effect now, I sup- 
 pose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and to 
 hear the poor coachman William Martin invoking the 
 name of his dear stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, 
 so tearfully, while he joins the song of Saturday, was 
 a most moving thing. You saw nothing but handker- 
 chiefs out all over the theatre. What it is that has 
 gone from our drama, I cannot tell : I am never affected 
 now as I was then ; and people in a low station of life 
 could affect me then, without being flung at me, for 
 I dislike an entire dish of them, I own. We were 
 simpler in our habits and ways of thinking. Eliza- 
 beth Martin, according to report, was a woman to make 
 better men than Ealph Thorkill act evilly — as to
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 17 
 
 good looks, I mean. She was not entirely guiltless, I 
 am afraid; though, in the last scene, Mrs. Kempson, 
 who played the part (as, alas, she could do to the 
 very life ! ), so threw herself into the pathos of it that 
 there were few to hold out against her, and we felt 
 that Elizabeth had been misled. So much for morality 
 in these days ! 
 
 And noAV for the elopement. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE 
 COUXTESS 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 ^larchioness 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 of the shutting the car- 
 riage-door on Countess Fanny, were brother officers 
 c
 
 18 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of liisj General Abrane, Colonel Jack Potts, and Sir 
 Upton Toniber. 
 
 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 resist- 
 ance, 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 5 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 disen- 
 gaged 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 hav- 
 ing 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 pro- 
 cession, 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 
 Eussell, 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
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 19 
 
 Hm, 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 
 wds anxious, and well he might be, seeing Countess 
 Fanny alight and pass up between two lines of gentle- 
 men 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 ? ''
 
 20 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 But Jack Potts grew more positive and bellowed, 
 " Peel her wig ! we're done ! " 
 
 And slie did not speak a word, but stood huddled-up 
 and hooded ; and Lord Levellier caught her 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 : '^ Eight ! 
 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, trem- 
 bling 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 ex-
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 21 
 
 planation 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 shoAver 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 con- 
 demn the whole sex upon her testimony, is a nice idea 
 of justice. Manj^ of the gentlemen present became noto- 
 rious 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
 
 22 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 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 pursue. 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. "\"\nio, 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 
 highroad 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
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 23 
 
 proceed, and lie did not like it, but he had to deal with 
 pistols behind, where men feel weak, and he went bob- 
 bing 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 laugh- 
 ing 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
 
 24 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 not begun to talk. So tlie scene of tlie 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 break- 
 fast, 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 mag- 
 istrates, 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 postil- 
 lion, had been telling the story. 
 
 Those who credited Charles Dump's veracity specu- 
 lated 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 knoAv 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 be- 
 witched him to a consuming passion, as we are told. 
 
 About eleven miles distant, as the crow flies and a 
 bold huntsman will ride in the 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
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 26 
 
 wealthiest of the old county families until Curtis Faken- 
 hani 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 lesrs before the
 
 26 THE AMAZING- MARRIAGE 
 
 war was over, and said merrily, '' Stumps for life!" 
 while they were carrying Mm 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 : ^- TJiere's to my brother 
 Jeff," he said, and flinging away the dregs of his glass : 
 " TJiere^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 Gen- 
 tleman 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 ha.rm ; 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 admiraPs reputation as a British sailor of the old 
 school made him, or rather his name, a great favourite
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 27 
 
 at Court ; but to Court lie 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 com- 
 mon 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 Coun- 
 tess Fanny's adorers: she certainly chose to be silent 
 about the name of the assailant. And it has been at- 
 tested 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 J and his head gamekeeper, John Wiltshire, a reso-
 
 28 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 lute 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 ivas agreeable to Hampshire^^ — his county. 
 People asked what that meant. Yet according to the 
 tale, it was the surviving servant, by whom he, or who- 
 ever 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 proces- 
 sion of armed gentlemen conducting her in her carriage, 
 as they supposed; and he was known to have started 
 off, on the discovery of the cheat, with horrible impre- 
 cations against Frenchwomen. It became known, too, 
 that horses of his were standing saddled in his inn- 
 yard at midnight. And more, Charles Dump the postil- 
 lion 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 every-
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 29 
 
 where 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 ivas a figure on a horse, and naught 
 when off iV^ 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 pos- 
 sible. 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 "/le ic7io drained the Funch-Boid, for 
 though he helped to put the capital into it, he took all the 
 interest out of it J' 
 
 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 con- 
 fessed 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
 
 30 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 father the doctor. It was often the occasion of the 
 story bemg told over again, and used to hang in the 
 patient's 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 up- 
 hill, 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
 
 MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 31 
 
 reputation for civility. What I call liuman events, 
 tMngs concerning you and me^ instead of the deafen- 
 ing catastrophes now affl.icting and taking all conver- 
 sation 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 country was anxious 
 about Countess Fanny and the Old Buccaneer, wonder- 
 ing 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 vrhat the 
 foreign people abroad thought of that strange pair. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 COXTIXUATIOX OF THE IXTRODUCTORY MEAXDERIXGS OF 
 DAME GOSSIP, TOGETHER WITH HER SUDDEX EXTIXC- 
 TION 
 
 I HAVE still time before me, according to the terms 
 of my agreement with the person to whom I have, I 
 fear foolishly, entrusted the letters and documents of 
 a story surpassing ancient as well as modern in the 
 wonderment it causes, that would make the law 
 courts bless their hearts, judges no less than the
 
 32 THE AMAZING MAKRIAGE 
 
 barristers, to have it running through, them day by 
 day, with every particular to wrangle over, and many 
 to serve as a text for the pulpit. So to proceed. 
 
 It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles 
 Dump is not represented, and I have no conception 
 of the reason why not, sitting on horseback, in the 
 portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I 
 have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had 
 offended Dr. Cawthorne by once in an urgent case 
 calling in another doctor, who, he would have it, was 
 a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased 
 to visit; but a gentleman who was an established 
 patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had frequent opportu- 
 nities of judging the portrait, in the course of a chronic 
 malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small 
 man looking diminished from a very much longer one 
 by shrinkage in thickish wrinkles from the shoulders 
 to the shanks. His hat is enormous and very gay. 
 He is rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his 
 collar behind the ears, and pointed at the neck, gives 
 you notions of his having dropped from some hook. 
 He stands with his forefinger extended, like a disused 
 semaphore-post, that seems tumbling and desponding 
 on the hill by the highroad, in his attitude while tell- 
 ing the tale; if standing it may be called, where the 
 whole figure appears imploring for a seat. That was 
 his natural position, as one would suppose any artist 
 must have thought, and a horse beneath him. But it
 
 MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 33 
 
 has been suggested that the artist in question was no 
 painter of animals. Then why did he not get a painter 
 of animals to put in the horse? It is vain to ask, 
 though it is notorious that artists combine without 
 bickering to do these things; and one puts his name 
 on the animal, the other on the human being or land- 
 scape. 
 
 My informant adds, that the prominent feature, tell- 
 ing a melancholy tale of its own, is of sanguine colour, 
 and while plainly in the act of speaking, Charles Dump 
 might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He was 
 impressed by the dreaminess of the face; and I must 
 say I regard him as an interesting character. Daring 
 my girlhood Napoleon Bonaparte alone would have 
 been his rival for filling an inn along our roads. I 
 have known our boys go to bed obediently and get up 
 at night to run three miles to The Wheatsheaf, 
 only to stand on the bench or traveller's-rest outside 
 the window and look in at Charles Dump reciting, 
 with just room enough in the crowd to point his finger, 
 as his way was. 
 
 He left a child, Mary Dump, who grew up to become 
 lady's maid to Livia Fakenham, daughter of Curtis, 
 the beauty of Hampshire, equalled by no one save 
 her cousin Henrietta Fakenham, the daughter of 
 Commodore Baldwin; and they were two different 
 kinds of beauties, not to be compared, and different 
 were their fortunes; for this lady was likened to the
 
 34 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 sun going down on a clondy noon, and that lady to 
 the moon riding through, a stormy night. Livia was the 
 young widow of Lord Duffiekl when she accepted the 
 Earl of Fleetwood, and was his third countess, and 
 again a widow at eight and twenty, and stepmother 
 to young Croesus, the Earl of Fleetwood of my story. 
 Mary Dump testifies to her kindness of heart to her 
 dependents. If we are to speak of goodness, I am 
 afraid there are other witnesses. 
 
 I resent being warned that my time is short and that 
 I have wasted much of it over " the attractive Charles." 
 AVhat I have done I have done with a purpose, and it 
 must be a story-teller devoid of the rudiments of his art 
 who can complain of my dwelling on Charles Dump, for 
 the world to have a pause and pin its faith to him, 
 which it would not do to a grander person — that is, as 
 a peg. Wonderful events, however true they are, must 
 be attached to something common and familiar, to make 
 then credible. Charles Dump, I say, is like a front- 
 page picture to a history of those old quiet yet exciting 
 days in England, and when once you have seized him 
 the whole period is alive to you, as it was to me in the 
 delicious dulness I loved, that made us thirsty to hear 
 of adventures and able to enjoy to the utmost every 
 thing occurring. The man is no more attractive to me 
 than a lump of clay. How could he be? But suppos- 
 ing I took up the lump and told you that there where I 
 fomid it, that lump of day had been rolled over and flung
 
 MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 85 
 
 off by the left wheel of the prophet'' s Chariot of Fire before 
 it mounted aloft and disappeared in the heavens above! — 
 you would examine it and cherish, it and have the scene 
 present with you, you may be sure: and magnificent 
 descriptions would not be one-half so persuasive. And 
 that is what we call, in my profession, Art, if you 
 please. 
 
 So to continue: The Earl of Cressett fell from his 
 coach-box in a fit, and died of it, a fortnight after 
 the flight of his wife ; and the people said she might as 
 well have waited. Kirby and Countess Fanny were at 
 Lucerne or Lausanne, or some such place in Switzerland 
 when the news reached them, and Kirby without losing 
 an hour laid hold of an English clergyman of the Estab- 
 lished Church and put him through the ceremony of cele- 
 brating his lawful union with the beautiful young creature 
 he adored. And this he did, he said, for the world to 
 guard his Fan in a jvider circle than his two arms could 
 compass, if not quite so well. 
 
 So the Old Buccaneer was ever after that her lawful 
 husband, and as his wedded wife, not wedded to a fool, 
 she was an example to her sex, like nxany another 
 woman who has begun badly with a light-headed mate. 
 It is hard enough for a man to be married to a fool, but 
 a man is only half-cancelled by that burden, it has been 
 said ; whereas a woman finds herself on board a rudder- 
 less vessel, and often the desperate thing she does is to 
 avoid perishing! Ten months, or eleven, some say,
 
 36 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 following the proclamation of the marriage-tie, a son 
 was born to Countess Fanny, close by the castle of 
 Chillon on the lake, and he had the name of Chillon 
 Switzer John Kirby given to him to celebrate the fact. 
 Two years later the girl was born, and for the reason 
 of her first seeing the light in that Austrian province, 
 she was christened Carinthia Jane. She was her old 
 father's pet; but Countess Fanny gloried in the boy. 
 She had fancied she would be a childless woman before 
 he gave sign of coming ; and they say she wrote a little 
 volume of Meditations in Prospect of Approaching Mother- 
 hood, for the guidance of others in a similar situation. 
 I have never been able to procure the book or pam- 
 phlet, but I know she was the best of mothers, and of 
 wives too. And she, with her old husbaiidr- growing 
 like a rose out of a weather-beaten rock, proved she was 
 that, among those handsome foreign officers poorly 
 remarkable for their morals. Not once had the Old 
 Buccaneer to teach them a lesson. Think of it and you 
 will know that her feet did not stray — nor did her 
 pretty eyes. Her heart was too full for the cravings of 
 vanity. Innocent ladies who get their husbands into 
 scrapes are innocent, perhaps; but knock you next 
 door in their bosoms, where the soul resides, and ask 
 for information of how innocence and uncleanness may 
 go together. Kirby purchased a mine in Carinthia, on 
 the borders of Styria, and worked it himself. His 
 native land displeased him, so that he would not have
 
 MEANDERINGS OF DAME GOSSIP 37 
 
 been unwilling to see Chillon enter the Austrian ser- 
 vice, which, the young man was inclined for, subsequent 
 to his return to his parents from one of the English 
 public schools, notwithstanding his passionate love for 
 Old England. But Lord Levellier explained the mys- 
 tery in a letter to his half-forgiven sister, praising the 
 boy for his defence of his mother's name at the school, 
 where a big brutal fellow sneered at her, and Chillon 
 challenged him to sword or pistol ; and then he walked 
 down to the boy's home in Staffordshire to force him to 
 fight; and the father of the boy made him offer an 
 apology. That was not much balm to Master Chillon's 
 wound. He returned to his mother quite heavy, unlike 
 a young man ; and the unhappy lady, though she knew 
 him to be bitterly sensitive on the point of honour, and 
 especially as to everything relating to her, saw herself 
 compelled to tell him the history of her life, to save 
 him, as she thought, from these chivalrous vindications 
 of her good name. She may have even painted herself 
 worse than she was, both to excuse her brother's miserli- 
 ness to her son and the world's evil speaking of her. 
 Wisely or not, she chose this course devotedly to pro- 
 tect him from the perils she foresaw in connection with 
 the name of the once famous Countess Fanny in the 
 British Isles. And thus are we stricken by the days of 
 our youth. It is impossible to moralize conveniently 
 when one is being hurried by a person at one's elbow. 
 So the young man heard his mother out and kissed her,
 
 38 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and then lie went secretly to Vienna and enlisted and 
 served for a year as a private in the regiment of Hussars 
 called, my papers tell me, Liechtenstein, and what with 
 his good conduct and the help of Kirby's friends, he 
 would have obtained a commission from the emperor, 
 when, at the right moment to keep a sprig of Kirby's 
 growth for his country. Lord Levellier sent word that he 
 was down for a cornetcy in a British regiment of dra- 
 goons. Chillon came home from a garrison town, and 
 there was a consultation about his future career. Shall 
 it be England ? Shall it be Austria ? Countess Eanny's 
 voice was for England, and she carried the vote, knowing 
 though she did that it signified separation, and it might 
 be alienation — where her son would chance to hear 
 things he could not refute. She believed that her son by 
 such a man as Kirby would be of use to his country, and 
 her voice, against herself, was for England. 
 
 It broke her heart. If she failed to receive the regu- 
 lar letter, she pined and was disconsolate. He has heard 
 more of me ! was in her mind. Her husband sat look- 
 ing at her with his old large grey glassy eyes. You 
 would have fancied him awaiting her death as the signal 
 for his own release. But she, poor mother, behind her 
 weeping lids beheld her son's filial love of her wounded 
 and bleeding. When there was anything to be done for 
 her, old Kirby was astir. When it was nothing, either 
 in physic or assistance, he was like a great corner of 
 rock. You may indeed imagine grief in the very rock
 
 MEANDERINGS OF DAIVIE GOSSIP 39 
 
 that sees its flower fading to the withered shred. On 
 the last night of her life this old man of past ninety 
 carried her in his arms up a flight of stairs to her bed. 
 
 A week after her burial, Kirby was found a corpse in 
 the mountain forest. His having called the death of his 
 darling his lightning-stroke must have been the origin of 
 the report that he died of lightning. He touched not a 
 morsel of food from the hour of the dropping of the 
 sod on her coflin of ebony wood. An old crust of their 
 mahogany bread, supposed at first to be a specimen of 
 quartz, was found in one of his coat pockets. He kissed 
 his girl Carinthia before going out on his last journey 
 from home, and spoke some wandering words. The 
 mine had not been worked for a year. She thought she 
 would find him at the mouth of the shaft, where he 
 would sometimes be sitting and staring, already dead at 
 heart with the death he saw coming to the beloved 
 woman. They had to let her down with ropes, that she 
 might satisfy herself he was not below. She and her 
 great dog and a faithful man-servant discovered the body 
 in the forest. Chillon arrived from England to see the 
 common grave of both his parents. 
 
 And now good-bye to sorroAv for a while. Keep your 
 tears for the living. And first I am going to describe to 
 you the young Earl of Eleetwood, son of the strange 
 Welsh lady, the richest nobleman of his time, and how 
 he pursued and shunned the lady who had fascinated 
 him, Henrietta, the daughter of Commodore Baldwin
 
 40 THE AMAZING MAREIAGE 
 
 Fakenham ; and how he met Carinthia Jane ; and con- 
 cerning that lovely Henrietta and Chillon Kirby-Level- 
 lier ; and of the young poet of ordinary parentage, and 
 the giant Captain Abrane, and Livia the widowed Coun- 
 tess of Fleetwood, Henrietta's cousin, daughter of Cur- 
 tis Fakenham ; and numbers of others ; Lord Levellier, 
 Lord Brailstone, Lord Simon Pitscrew, Chumley Potts, 
 young Ambrose Mallard ; and the English pugilist, such 
 a man of honour though he drank ; and the adventures 
 of Madge, Carinthia Jane's maid. Just a few touches. 
 And then the Marriage dividing Great Britain into 
 halves, taking sides. After that, I trust you may go on, 
 as I "would carry you were we all twenty years younger, 
 had I but sooner been in possession of these treasured 
 papers. I promise you excitement enough, if justice is 
 done to them. But I must and will describe the wed- 
 ding. This young Earl of Fleetwood, you should know, 
 was a very powder-magazine of ambition, and never 
 would he break his word: which is right, if Ave are 
 properly careful; and so he — 
 
 She ceases. According to the terms of the treaty, the 
 venerable lady's time has passed. An extinguisher de- 
 scends on her, giving her the likeness of one under 
 condemnation of the Most Holy Inquisition, in the 
 ranks of an auto da fe; and singularly resembling that 
 victim at the first sharp bite of the flames she will be 
 when she hears the version of her story.
 
 FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 41 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 MORNING AND FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 
 
 Brother and sister were about to leave the moun- 
 tain-land for England. They had not gone to bed over- 
 night, and from the windows of their deserted home, 
 a little before dawn, they saw the dwindled moon, a 
 late riser, break through droves of hunted cloud, di- 
 rectly topping their ancient guardian height, the triple 
 peak and giant of the range, friendlier in his name 
 than in aspect for the two young people clinging to 
 the scene they v/ere to quit. His name recalled old 
 days: the apparition of his head among the heavens 
 drummed on their sense of banishment. 
 
 To the girl, this was a division of her life, and the 
 dawn held the sword. She felt herself midswing across 
 a gulf that was the grave of one half, without a light 
 of promise for the other. Her passionate excess of 
 attachment to her buried home robbed the future of 
 any colours it might have worn to bid a young heart 
 quicken. And England, though she was of British 
 blood, was a foreign place to her, not alluring: her 
 brother had twice come out of England reserved in 
 speech; her mother's talk of England had been un- 
 happy ; her father had suffered ill-treatment there from 
 a brutal institution termed the Admiralty, and had never
 
 42 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 regretted the not seeing England again. The thought 
 that she was bound thitherward enfolded her like a 
 frosty mist. But these bare walls, these loud floors, 
 chill rooms, dull windows, and the vault-sounding of the 
 ghostly house, everywhere the absence of the faces in 
 the house, told her she had no choice, she must go. 
 The appearance of her old friend the towering mountain- 
 height, up a blue night-sky, compelled her swift mind 
 to see herself far away, yearning to him out of exile, an 
 exile that had no local features ; she would not imagine 
 them to give a centre of warmth, her wilful grief pre- 
 ferred the blank. It resembled death in seeming some 
 hollowness behind a shroud, which we shudder at. 
 
 The room was lighted by a stable-lantern on a 
 kitchen-table. Their seat near the window was a 
 rickety garden-bench rejected in the headlong sale of 
 the furniture ; and when she rose, unable to continue 
 motionless while the hosts of illuminated cloud flew fast, 
 she had to warn her brother to preserve his balance. 
 He tactily did so, aware of the necessity. 
 
 She walked up and down the long seven-windowed 
 saloon, haunted by her footfall, trying to think, chafing 
 at his quietness and acknowledging that he did well 
 to be quiet. They had finished their packing of boxes 
 and of wearing apparel for the journey. There was 
 nothing to think of, nothing further to talk of, nothing 
 for her to do save to sit and look, and deaden her throbs 
 by counting them. She soon returned to her seat beside
 
 FAKEWELL TO AN OLD HOME 43 
 
 her brother, with the marvel in her breast that the 
 house she desired so much to love should be cold and 
 repel her now it was a vacant shell. Her memories 
 could not hang within it anywhere. She shut her eyes 
 to be with the images of the dead, conceiving the method 
 as her brother's happy secret, and imitated his posture, 
 elbows propped on knees to support the chin. His 
 quietness breathed of a deeper love than her own. 
 
 Meanwhile the high wind had sunk ; the moon, after 
 pushing up her withered half to the zenith, was climb- 
 ing the dusky edge, revealed fitfully ; threads and wisps 
 of thin vapour travelled along a falling gale, and 
 branched from the dome of the sky in migratory broken 
 lines, like mid birds shifting the order of flight, north 
 and east, where the dawn sat in a web, but as yet had done 
 no more than shoot up a glow along the central heavens, 
 in amid the waves of deepened cloud: a mirror for 
 night to see her dark self in her own hue. A shiver 
 between the silent couple pricked their wits, and she 
 said : " Chillon, shall we run out and call the morning ? '' 
 
 It was an old game of theirs, encouraged by their 
 hearty father, to be out in the early hour on a rise of 
 ground near the house and "call the morning.'' Her 
 brother was glad of the challenge, and upon one of 
 the yawns following a sleepless night, replied with a 
 return to boyishness : " Yes, if you like. It's the last 
 time we shall do her the service here. Let's go.'^ 
 
 They sprang up together and the bench fell behind
 
 44 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 them. Swinging the lantern he carried inconsiderately, 
 the ring of it was left on his finger, and the end of 
 candle rolled out of the crazy frame to the floor and 
 was extinguished. Chillon had no match-box. He 
 said to her: — 
 
 "What do you think of the window? — we've done 
 it before, Carin. Better than groping down stairs and 
 passages blocked with lumber.'^ 
 
 " I'm ready," she said, and caught at her skirts by 
 instinct to prove her readiness on the spot. 
 
 A drop of a dozen feet or so from the French window 
 to a flower-bed was not very difficult. Her father had 
 taught her how to jump, besides the how of many other 
 practical things. She leapt as lightly as her brother, 
 never touching earth Avith her hands ; and rising from 
 the proper contraction of the legs in taking the descent, 
 she quoted her father : " Mean it ivJien you're doing it.'' 
 
 " Fo7' no enemy's shot is equal to a iveak heart in the 
 act," Chillon pursued the quotation, laying his hand on 
 her shoulder for a sign of approval. She looked up at 
 him. 
 
 They passed down the garden and a sloping meadow 
 to a brook swollen by heavy rains ; over the brook on 
 a narrow plank, and up a steep and stony pathway, 
 almost a watercourse, between rocks, to another meadow, 
 level with the house, that led ascending through a 
 firwood ; and there the change to thicker darkness told 
 them light was abroad, though whether of the clouded
 
 FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 45 
 
 moon or of tlie first grey of the quiet revolution was 
 uncertain. Metallic light of a subterranean realm, it 
 might have been thought. 
 
 "You remember everything of father,'^ Carinthia 
 said. 
 
 "We both do/' said Chillon. 
 
 She pressed her brother's arm. " We will. We will 
 never forget anything." 
 
 Beyond the firwood light was visibly the dawn's. 
 Half way down the ravines it resembled the light cast 
 off a torrent water. It lay on the grass like a sheet of 
 unreflecting steel, and was a face without a smile above. 
 Their childhood ran along the tracks to the forest by 
 the light, which was neither dim nor cold, but grave; 
 presenting tree and shrub and dwarf growth and grass 
 austerely, not deepening or confusing them. They 
 wound their way by borders of crag, seeing in a dell 
 below the mouth of the idle mine begirt Avith weedy and 
 shrub-hung rock, a dripping semi-circle. Farther up 
 they came on the flat juniper and crossed a wet ground- 
 thicket of the whortleberry : their feet were in the moist 
 moss among sprigs of heath ; and a great fir tree stretched 
 his length, a peeled multitude of his dead fellows leaned 
 and stood upright in the midst of scattered fire-stained 
 members, and through their skeleton limbs the sheer 
 precipice of slate-rock of the bulk across the chasm, 
 nursery of hawk and eagle, wore a thin blue tinge, the 
 sign of warmer light abroad.
 
 46 THE AMAZING MARKIAGB 
 
 " This way, my brother ! " cried Carinthia, shuddering 
 at a path he was about to follow. 
 
 Dawn in the mountain-land is a meeting of many 
 friends. The pinnacle, the forest-head, the latchen- 
 tufted mound, rock-bastion and defiant cliff, and giant 
 of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a 
 common recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, 
 unfeatured and bloomless. Another minute and they 
 had flung off their mail and changed to various, indented, 
 intricate, succinct in ridge, scar and channel; and they 
 had all a look of watchfulness that made them one 
 company. The smell of rock-waters and roots of herb 
 and moss grew keen ; air became a wine that raised the 
 breast high to breathe it ; an uplifting coolness pervaded 
 the heights. What wonder that the moimtain-bred girl 
 should let fly her voice. The natural carol woke an echo. 
 She did not repeat it. 
 
 " And we will not forget our home, Chillon," she said, 
 touching him gently to comfort some saddened feeling. 
 
 The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the 
 lofty arch of dawn and melted from brown to purple- 
 black. The upper sky swam with violet; and in a 
 moment each stray cloud-feather was edged with rose, 
 and then suffused. It seemed that the heights fronted 
 East to eye the interflooding of colours, and it was 
 imaginable that all turned to the giant whose forehead 
 first kindled to the sim : a greeting of god and king. 
 
 On the morning of a farewell we fluctuate sharply
 
 FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 47 
 
 between the very distant and the close and homely: 
 and even in memory the fluctuation recurs, the grander 
 scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and 
 that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination 
 to embrace the splendour and wonder. But the wrench 
 of an immediate division from what we love makes the 
 things within reach the dearest, we put out our hands for 
 them, as violently-parted lovers do, though the soul in 
 days to come would know a craving and imagination flap 
 a leaden wdng, if we had not looked beyond them. 
 
 " Shall we go down ? " said Carinthia, for she knew 
 a little cascade near the house, showering on rock and 
 fern, and longed to have it round her. 
 
 They descended, Chillon saying that they would soon 
 have the mists rising, and must not delay to start on 
 their journey. 
 
 The armies of the young sunrise in mountain-lands 
 neighbouring the plains, vast shadows, were marching 
 over woods and meads, black against the edge of 
 golden; and great heights were cut with them, and 
 bounding waters took the leap in a silvery radiance 
 to gloom; the bright and dark-banded valleys were like 
 night and morning taking hands down the sweep of 
 their rivers. Immense was the range of vision scud- 
 ding the peaks and over the illimitable eastward plains 
 fiat to the very East and sources of the sun. 
 
 Carinthia said: "When I marry I shall come here to 
 live and die."
 
 48 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Her brother glanced at her. He was fond of her, 
 and personally he liked her face; but such a confident 
 anticipation of marriage on the part of a portionless 
 girl set him thinking of the character of her charms 
 and the attraction they would present to the world 
 of men. They were expressive enough; at times he 
 had thought them marvellous in their clear cut of the 
 animating mind. No one could fancy her handsome; 
 and just now her hair was in some disorder, a night 
 without sleep had an effect on her complexion. 
 
 " It's not usually the wife who decides where to live," 
 said he. 
 
 Her ideas were anywhere but with the dream of a 
 husband. " Could we stay on another day ? " 
 
 " My dear girl ! Another night on that crazy stool ! 
 Besides, Mariandl is bound to go to-day to her new 
 place, and who's to cook for us ? Do you propose 
 fasting as well as watching?'' 
 
 " Could I cook ? " she asked him humbly. 
 
 "No, you couldn't; not for a starving regiment! 
 Your accomplishments are of a different sort. No, it's 
 better to get over the pain at once, if we can't escape 
 it." 
 
 "That I think too," said she, "and we should have 
 to buy provisions. Then, brother, instantly after break- 
 fast. Only, let us walk it. I know the whole way, 
 and it is not more than a two days' walk for you and 
 me. Consent. Driving would be like going gladly. I
 
 FAREWELL TO AN OLD HOME 49 
 
 could never bear to remember that I was driven away. 
 And walking will save money; we are not rich, you 
 tell me, brother. '^ 
 
 " A few florins more or less ! " he rejoined, rather 
 fro^vning. "You have good Styrian boots, I see. But 
 I want to be over at the Baths there soon; not later 
 than to-morrow." 
 
 " But, brother, if they know we are coming they will 
 wait for us. And we can be there to-morrow night or 
 the next morning!'' 
 
 He considered it. He wanted exercise and loved 
 this mountain-land; his inclinations melted into hers, 
 though he had reasons for hesitating. " Well, we'll 
 send on my portmanteau and your boxes in the cart; 
 we'll walk it. You're a capital walker, you're a gallant 
 comrade ; I wouldn't wish for a better." He wondered, 
 as he spoke, whether any true-hearted gentleman be- 
 sides himself would ever think the same of this lonely 
 girl. 
 
 Her eyes looked a delighted " No-really ? " for the 
 sweetest on earth to her was to be prized by her 
 brother. 
 
 She hastened forward. "We will go down and have 
 our last meal at home," she said in the dialect of the 
 country. " We have five eggs. No meat for you, dear, 
 but enough bread and butter, some honey left, and 
 plenty of coffee. I should like to have left old Mari- 
 andl more, but we are unable to do very much for poor
 
 60 THE AMAZING JVIARRIAGE 
 
 people now. Milk, I cannot say. She is just the kind 
 soul to be up and out to fetch us milk for an early 
 first breakfast; but she may have overslept herself." 
 
 Chillon smiled. "You were right, Janey, about not 
 going to bed last night; we might have missed the 
 morning." 
 
 "I hate sleep: I hate anything that robs me of my 
 will," she replied. 
 
 "You'd be glad of your doses of sleep if you had 
 to work and study." 
 
 "To fall down by the wayside tired out — yes, 
 brother, a dead sleep is good. Then you are in the 
 hands of God. Father used to say, four hours for a 
 man, six for a woman." 
 
 "And four and twenty for a lord," added Chillon. 
 "I remember." 
 
 "A lord of that Admiralty," she appealed to his 
 closer recollection. " But I mean, brother, dreaming is 
 what I detest so." 
 
 " Don't be detesting, my dear ; reserve your strength," 
 said he. " I suppose dreams are of some use, now and 
 then." 
 
 "I shall never think them useful." 
 
 " When we can't get what we want, my good Carin." 
 
 "Then we should not waste ourselves in dreams." 
 
 "They promise falsely sometimes. That's no reason 
 why we should reject the consolation when we can't 
 get what we want, my little sister."
 
 FAEEWELL TO AN OLD HOME 51 
 
 "I would not be denied." 
 
 "There's the impossible." 
 
 "Kot for you, brother." 
 
 Perhaps a half-minute after she had spoken, he 
 said, pursuing a dialogue within himself aloud rather 
 than revealing a secret: "You don't know her posi- 
 tion." 
 
 Carinthia's heart stopped beating. Who was this 
 person suddenly conjured up? 
 
 She fancied she might not have heard correctly ; she 
 feared to ask: and yet she perceived a novel softness 
 in him that would have answered. Pain of an unknown 
 kind made her love of her brother conscious that if she 
 asked she would suffer greater pain. 
 
 The house was in sight, a long white building with 
 blinds down at some of the windows, and some wide 
 open, some showing unclean glass : the three aspects 
 and signs of a house's emptiness when they are seen 
 together. 
 
 Carinthia remarked on their having met nobody. It 
 had a serious meaning for them. Formerly they were 
 proud of outstripping the busy population of the mine, 
 coming do"\\Ti on them with wild wavings and shouts at 
 sunrise. They felt the death again, a whole field laid 
 low by one stroke, and wintriness in the season of glad 
 life. A wind had blown and all had vanished. 
 
 The second green of the year shot lively sparkles off 
 the meadows, from a fringe of coloured globelets to a
 
 52 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 warm silver lake of dews. The firwood was already 
 breathing rich and sweet in the sun. The half-moon 
 fell rayless and paler than the fan of fleeces pushed up 
 westward, high overhead, themselves dispersing on the 
 blue in downy feathers, like the mottled grey of an 
 eagle's breast : the smaller of them bluish, like traces 
 of the beaked wood-pigeon. 
 
 She looked above, then below on the slim and straight- 
 grown flocks of naked purple crocuses in bud and blow 
 abounding over the meadow that rolled to the level of 
 the house, and two of these she gathered. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A MOUNTAIN WALK IX MIST AND SUNSHINE 
 
 Chillon was right in his forecast of the mists. An 
 over-moistened earth steaming to the sun obscured it 
 before the two had finished breakfast, which was a finish 
 to everything eatable in the ravaged dwelling, with the 
 exception of a sly store for the midday meal, that old 
 Mariandl had stuffed into Chillon's leather sack — the 
 fruit of secret begging on their behalf about the neigh- 
 bourhood. He found the sack heavy and bulky as he 
 slung it over his shoulder; but she bade him make 
 nothing of such a trifle till he had it inside him. "And 
 you that love tea so, my pretty one, so that you always
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 53 
 
 laughed and sang after drinking a cup with your mother," 
 she said to Carinthia, " you will find one pinch of it in 
 your bag at the end of the left-foot slipper, to remember 
 your home by when you are out in the Avorld." 
 
 She crossed the strap of the bag on her mistress's 
 bosom, and was embraced by Carinthia and Chillon in 
 turns, Carinthia telling her to dry her eyes, for that she 
 would certainly come back and perhaps occupy the house 
 one day or other. The old soul moaned of eyes that 
 would not be awake to behold her ; she begged a visit 
 at her grave, though it was to be in a Catholic burial- 
 place and the priests had used her dear master and 
 mistress ill, not allowing them to lie in consecrated 
 ground; affection made her a champion of religious 
 tolerance and a little afraid of retribution. Carinthia 
 soothed her, kissed her, gave the promise, and the part- 
 ing was over. 
 
 She and Chillon had on the previous day accomplished 
 a pilgrimage to the resting-place of their father and 
 mother among humble Protestants, iron-smelters, in a 
 valley out of the way of their present line of march to 
 the glacier of the great snow-mountain marking the 
 junction of three Alpine provinces of Austria. Josef, 
 the cart-driver with the boxes, who was to pass the 
 valley, vowed of his own accord to hang a fresh day's 
 wreath on the rails. He would not hear of money for 
 the purchase, and they humoured him. The family had 
 been beloved. There was an offer of a home for Carin-
 
 54 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 thia in the castle of Count Lebern, a friend of lier 
 parents, much taken with her, and she would have 
 accepted it had not Chillon overruled her choice, deter- 
 mined that, as she was English, she must come to 
 England and live under the guardianship of her uncle, 
 Lord Levellier, of whose character he did not speak. 
 
 The girl's cheeks were drawn thin and her lips shut 
 as they departed; she was tearless. A phantom ring 
 of mist accompanied her from her first footing outside 
 the house. She did not look back. The house came 
 swimming and plunging after her, like a spectral ship 
 on big seas, and her father and mother lived and died 
 in her breast; and now they were strong, consulting, 
 chatting, laughing, caressing ; now still and white, 
 caught by a vapour that dived away with them either 
 to right or left, but always with the same suddenness, 
 leaving her to question herself whether she existed, for 
 more of life seemed to be with their mystery than with 
 her speculations. The phantom ring of mist enclosing 
 for miles the invariable low-sweeping dark spruce-fir 
 kept her thoughts on them as close as the shroud. She 
 walked fast, but scarcely felt that she was moving. 
 Near midday the haunted circle widened; rocks were 
 loosely folded in it, and heads of trees, whose round 
 intervolving roots grasped the yellow roadside soil ; the 
 mists shook like a curtain, and partly opened and 
 displayed a tapestry-landscape, roughly worked, of 
 woollen crag and castle and suggested glen, threaded
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 55 
 
 waters, very prominent foreground, Autumn flowers on 
 banks, a predominant atmospheric greyness. The sun 
 threw a shaft, liquid instead of burning, as we see his 
 beams beneath a wave; and then the mists narrowed 
 again, boiled up the valleys and streams above the 
 mountain, curled and flew, and were Python coils pierced 
 by brighter arrows of the sun. A spot of blue signalled 
 his victory above. 
 
 To look at it was to fancy they had been walking 
 under water and had now risen to the surface. Carin- 
 thia's mind stepped out of the chamber of death. The 
 different air and scene breathed into her a timid 
 warmth toward the future, and between her naming of 
 the lesser mountains on their side of the pass, she 
 asked questions relating to England, and especially the 
 ladies she was to see at the Baths beyond the glacier- 
 pass. She had heard of a party of his friends awaiting 
 him there, without much encouragement from him to 
 ask particulars of them, and she had hitherto abstained, 
 as she was rather shy of meeting her countrywomen. 
 The ladies, Chillon said, were cousins ; one was a young 
 widow, the Countess of Fleetwood, and the other was 
 Miss Fakenham, a younger lady. 
 
 Carinthia murmured in German : " Poor soul ! " Which 
 one was she pitying ? The widow, she said, in the tone 
 implying, naturally. 
 
 Her brother assured her the widow was used to it, 
 for this was her second widowhood.
 
 56 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " She marries again ! " exclaimed the girl. 
 
 " You don't like that idea ? " said he. 
 
 Carinthia betrayed a delicate shudder. 
 
 Her brother laughed to himself at her expressive 
 present tense. " And marries again ! " he said. " There 
 will certainly be a third." 
 
 "Husband? " said she, as at the incredible. 
 
 "Husband, let's hope," he answered. 
 
 She dropped from her contemplation of the lady, and 
 her look at her brother signified : It will not be you ! 
 
 Chillon was engaged in spying for a place where he 
 could spread out the contents of his bag. Sharp hunger 
 beset them both at the mention of eating. A bank of 
 sloping green shaded by a chestnut proposed the seat, 
 and here he relieved the bag of a bottle of wine, slices 
 of meat, bread, hard eggs, and lettuce, a chipped cup to 
 fling away after drinking the wine, and a supply of 
 small butter-cakes known to be favourites with Carin- 
 thia. She reversed the order of the feast by commenc- 
 ing upon one of the cakes, to do honour to Mariandl's 
 thoughtfulness. As at their breakfast, they shared the 
 last morsel. 
 
 " But we would have made it enough for our dear old 
 dog Pluto as well, if he had lived," said Carinthia, sigh- 
 ing with her thankfulness and compassionate regrets, a 
 mixture often inspiring a tender babbling melancholy. 
 "Dogs' eyes have such a sick look of love. He might 
 have lived longer, though he was very old, only he could
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 57 
 
 not survive the loss of father. I know the finding of 
 the body broke his heart. He sprang forward, he 
 stopped and threw up his head. It was human lan- 
 guage to hear him, Chillon. He lay in the yard, trying 
 to lift his eyes when I came to him, they were so hea^y ; 
 and he had not strength to move his poor old tail more 
 than once. He died with his head on my lap. He 
 seemed to beg me, and I took him, and he breathed 
 twice, and that was his end. Pluto ! old dog ! Well, for 
 you or for me, brother, we could not have a better wish. 
 As for me^ death ! . . . When we know we are to die ! 
 Only let my darling live ! that is my prayer, and that 
 we two may not be separated till I am taken to their 
 grave. Father bought ground for four — his wife and 
 himself and his two children. It does not oblige us to 
 be buried there, but could we have any other desire ? " 
 
 She stretched her hand to her brother. He kissed it 
 spiritedly. 
 
 ^"'Look ahead, my dear girl. Help me to finish this 
 wine. There's nothing like good hard walking to give 
 common wine of the country a flavour — and out of 
 broken crockery." 
 
 "I think it so good," Carinthia replied, after drink- 
 ing from the cup. '^ In England they do not grow wine. 
 Are the people there kind ? " 
 
 "They're civilized people, of course." 
 
 "Kind — warm to you, Chillon?" 
 
 "Some of them, when you know them. 'Warm,' is
 
 58 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 hardly the word. Winter's warm on skates. You 
 must do a great deal for yourself. They don't boil 
 over. By the way, don't expect much of your uncle." 
 
 " Will he not loA^e me ? " 
 
 "He gives you a lodging in his house, and food — 
 enough, we'll hope. You won't see company or much of 
 him.'' 
 
 "I cannot exist without being loved. I do not care 
 for company. He must love me a little." 
 
 " He is one of the warm-hearted race — he's mother's 
 brother ; but where his heart is, I've not discovered. 
 Bear with him just for the present, my dear, till I 
 am able to support you." 
 
 " I will," she said. 
 
 The dreary vision of a home with an unloving uncle 
 was not brightened by the alternative of her brother's 
 having to support her. She spoke of money. "Have 
 we none, Cliillon ? " 
 
 " We have no debts," he answered. " We have a claim 
 on the Government here for indemnification for property 
 taken to build a fortress upon one of the passes into 
 Italy. Father bought the land, thinking there would be 
 a yield of ore thereabout; and they have seized it, 
 rightly enough, but they dispute our claim for the val- 
 uation we put on it. A small sum they would consent 
 to pay. It would be a very small sum, and I'm my 
 father's son, I will have justice." 
 
 " Yes ! " Carinthia joined with him to show the same 
 stout nature.
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 59 
 
 "We have nothing else except a bit to toss up for 
 hick.'^ 
 
 " And how can I help being a burden on my brother ? " 
 she inquired, in distress. 
 
 "Marry, and be a blessing to a husband," he said 
 lightly. 
 
 They performed a sacrifice of the empty bottle and 
 cracked cup on the site of their meal, as if it had been a 
 ceremony demanded from travellers, and leaving them in 
 fragments, proceeded on their journey refreshed. 
 
 Walking was now high enjoyment, notwithstanding the 
 force of the sun, for they were a hardy couple, requiring 
 no more than sufficient nourishment to combat the ele- 
 ments with an exulting blood. Besides they loved 
 mountain air and scenery, and each step to the ridge of 
 the pass they climbed was an advance in splendour. 
 Peaks of ashen hue and pale dry red and pale sulphur 
 pushed up, straight, forked, twisted, naked, striking their 
 minds with an indeterminate ghostliness of Indian, so 
 strange they were in shape and colouring. These sharp 
 points were the first to greet them between the blue and 
 green. A depression of the pass to the left gave sight 
 of the points of black fir forest below, round the girths 
 of the barren shafts. Mountain blocks appeared pushing 
 up in front, and a mountain wall and woods on it, and 
 mountains in the distance, and cliffs riven with falls of 
 water that were silver skeins, down lower to meadows, 
 villages and spires, and lower finally to the whole valley
 
 60 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of the foaming river, field and river seeming in imagina- 
 tion rolled out from the hand of the heading mountain. 
 
 " But see this in winter, as I did with father, Chillon ! " 
 said Carinthia. 
 
 She said it upon love's instinct to halo the scene with 
 something beyond present vision, and to sanctify it for 
 her brother, so that this walk of theirs together should 
 never be forgotten. 
 
 A smooth fold of cloud, moveless along one of the 
 upper pastures, and still dense enough to be luminous in 
 sunlight, was the last of the mist. 
 
 They watched it lying in the form of a fish, leviathan 
 diminished, as they descended their path; and the head 
 was lost, the tail spread peacockwise, and evaporated 
 slowly in that likeness ; and soft to a breath of air as 
 gossamer down, the body became a ball, a cock, a little 
 lizard, nothingness. 
 
 The bluest bright day of the year was shining. Chil- 
 lon led the descent. With his trim and handsome figure 
 before her, Carinthia remembered the current saying, 
 that he should have been the girl and she the boy. That 
 was because he resembled their mother in face. But the 
 build of his limbs and shoulders was not feminine. To 
 her admiring eyes, he had a look superior to simple 
 strength and grace ; the look of a great sky-bird about 
 to mount, a fountain-like energy of stature, delightful to 
 her contemplation. And he had the mouth women put 
 faith in for decision and fixedness. She did, most fully ;
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 61 
 
 and reflecting how entirely she did so, the thought as- 
 sailed her : some one must be loving him ! 
 
 She allowed it to surprise her, not choosing to revert 
 to an uneasy sensation of the morning. 
 
 That some one, her process of reasoning informed her, 
 was necessarily an English young lady. She reserved 
 her questions till they should cease this hopping and 
 heeling down the zigzag of the slippery path-track. 
 When children they had been collectors of beetles and 
 butterflies, and the flying by of a ^royal-mantle,' the 
 purple butterfly grandly fringed, could still remind Ca- 
 rinthia of the event it was of old to spy and chase one. 
 Chillon himself was not above the sentiment of their very 
 early days ; he stopped to ask if she had seen that lus- 
 trous blue-wing, a rarer species, prized by youngsters, 
 shoot through the chestnut trees : and they both paused 
 for a moment, gazing into the fairyland of infancy, she 
 seeing with her brother's eyes, this prince of the realm 
 having escaped her. He owned he might have been mis- 
 taken, as the brilliant fellow flew swift and high between 
 leaves, like an ordinary fritillary. Not the less did they 
 get their glimpse of the wonders in the sunny eternity of 
 a child's afternoon. 
 
 " An Auerhahn, Chillon ! " she said, picturing the 
 maturer day when she had scaled perilous heights 
 with him at night to stalk the blackcock in the prime 
 of the morning. She wished they could have had 
 another such adventure to stamp the old home on
 
 62 THE AMAZING MAKRIAGE 
 
 liis heart freshly, to the exclusion of beautiful Eng- 
 lish faces. 
 
 On the level of the valley, where they met the torrent- 
 river, walking side by side with him, she ventured an 
 inquiry : " English girls are fair girls, are they not ? '' 
 
 "There are some dark also," he replied. 
 
 "But the best-looking are fair?" 
 
 "Perhaps they are, with us." 
 
 "Mother was fair." 
 
 "She was." 
 
 "I have only seen a few of them, once at Vienna, 
 and at Venice, and those Baths we are going to ; and at 
 Meran I think." 
 
 " You considered them charming ? " 
 
 "Not all." 
 
 It was touching that she should be such a stranger to 
 her countrywomen! He drew a portrait-case from his 
 breast-pocket, pressing the spring, and handed it to her, 
 saying: "There is one." He spoke indifferently, but 
 as soon as she had seen the face inside it, Avith a look at 
 him and a deep breath, she understood that he was an 
 altered brother, and that they were three instead of two. 
 
 She handed it back to him, saying hushedly and only : 
 "Yes." 
 
 He did not ask an opinion upon the beauty she had 
 seen. His pace increased, and she hastened her steps 
 beside him. She had not much to learn when some 
 minutes later she said : " Shall I see her, Chillon ? "
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 63 
 
 " She is one of the ladies we are to meet." 
 
 " What a pity ! " Carinthia stepped faster, enlightened 
 as to his wish to get to the Baths without delay ; and her 
 heart softened in reflecting how readily he had yielded 
 to her silly preference for going on foot. 
 
 Her cry of regret was equivocal; it produced no 
 irapression on him. They reached a village where her 
 leader deemed it advisable to drive for the remainder 
 of the distance up the valley to the barrier snow- 
 mountain. She assented instantly; she had no longer 
 any active wishes of her own, save to make amends to 
 her brother, who was and would ever be her brother: 
 she could not be robbed of their relationship. 
 
 Something undefined in her feeling of possession 
 she had been robbed of, she knew it by her spiritless- 
 ness ; and she would fain have attributed it to the idle 
 motion of the car, now and then stupidly jolting her on, 
 after the valiant exercise of her limbs. They were in 
 a land of waterfalls and busy mills, a narrowing vale 
 where the runs of grass grew short and wild, and the 
 glacier-river roared for the leap, more foam than water, 
 and the savagery, naturally exciting to her, breathed of 
 its lair among the rocks and ice-fields. 
 
 Her brother said : " There he is." She saw the white- 
 crowned king of the region, of whose near presence to 
 her old home she had been accustomed to think proudly, 
 and she looked at him without springing to him, and 
 continued imaging her English home and her loveless
 
 64 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 uncle, merely admiring the scene, as if the fire of her 
 soul had been extinguished. — " Marry, and be a bless- 
 ing to a husband." Chillon's words whispered of the 
 means of escape from the den of her uncle. 
 
 But who would marry me! she thought. An unre- 
 proved sensation of melting pervaded her; she knew 
 her capacity for gratitude, and conjuring it up in her 
 heart, there came with it the noble knightly gentleman 
 who would really stoop to take a plain girl by the hand, 
 release her, and say : " Be mine ! " His vizor was down, 
 of course. She had no power of imagining the linea- 
 ments of that prodigy. Or was he a dream ? He came 
 and went. Her mother, not unkindly, sadly, had 
 counted her poor girl's chances of winning attention 
 and a husband. Her father had doted on her face; 
 but, as she argued, her father had been attracted by 
 her mother, a beautiful woman, and this was a circum- 
 stance that reflected the greater hopelessness on her 
 prospects. She bore a likeness to her father, little to 
 her mother, though he fancied the reverse and gave 
 her the mother's lips and hair. Thinking of herself, 
 however, was destructive to the form of her mirror 
 of knightliness : he wavered, he fled for good, as the 
 rosy vapour born of our sensibility must do when we 
 relapse to coldness, and the more completely when 
 we try to command it. No, she thought, a plain girl 
 should think of work, to earn her independence. 
 
 "Women are not permitted to follow armies, Chil- 
 lon?" she said.
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 65 
 
 He laughed out. " What's in your head ? " 
 
 The laugh abashed her; she murmured of women 
 being good nurses for wounded soldiers, if they were 
 good walkers to march with the army; and, as evi- 
 dently it sounded witless to him, she added, to seem 
 reasonable : " You have not told me the Christian names 
 of those ladies." 
 
 He made queer eyes over the puzzle to connect the fore- 
 going and the succeeding in her remarks, but answered 
 straightforw^ardly : " Livia is one, and Henrietta." 
 
 Her ear seized on the stress of his voice. "Henri- 
 etta ! " She chose that name for the name of the 
 person disturbing her; it fused best, she thought, w^ith 
 the new element she had been compelled to take into 
 her system, to absorb it if she could. 
 
 "You're not scheming to have them serve as army 
 hospital nurses, my dear?" 
 
 " No, Chillon." 
 
 "You can't explain it, I suppose." 
 
 "A sister could go too, when you go to war, Chillon." 
 
 A sister could go, if it were permitted by the au- 
 thorities, and be near her brother to nurse him in case 
 of wounds; others would be unable to claim the privi- 
 lege. That was her meaning, involved with the hazy 
 project of earning an independence; but she could not 
 explain it, and Chillon set her down for one of the 
 inexplicable sex, which the simple adventurous girl had 
 not previously seemed to be.
 
 66 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She was inwardly warned of having talked foolishly, 
 and she held her tongue. Her humble and modest 
 jealousy, scarce deserving the title, passed with a sigh 
 or two. It was her first taste of life in the world. 
 
 A fit of heavy-mindedness ensued, that heightened 
 the contrast her recent mood had bequeathed, between 
 herself, ignorant as she was, and those ladies. Their 
 names, Livia and Henrietta, soared above her and sang 
 the music of the splendid spheres. Henrietta was 
 closer to earth, for her features had been revealed; 
 she was therefore the dearer, and the richer for him 
 who loved her, being one of us, though an over-earthly 
 one; and Carinthia gave her to Chillon, reserving for 
 herself a handmaiden's place within the circle of their 
 happiness. 
 
 This done, she sat straight in the car. It was toil- 
 ing up the steep ascent of a glen to the mountain vil- 
 lage, the last of her native province. Her proposal 
 to walk was accepted, and the speeding of her blood, 
 now that she had mastered the new element in it, soon 
 restored her to her sisterly affi.nity with natural glo- 
 ries. The sunset was on yonder side of the snows. 
 Here there was a feast of variously-tinted sunset shad- 
 ows on snow, meadows, rock, river, serrated cliff. The 
 peaked cap of the rushing rock-dotted sweeps of up- 
 ward snow caught a scarlet illumination : one flank of 
 the white in heaven was violetted wonderfully. 
 
 At nightfall, under a clear black sky, alive Avith
 
 MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE 67 
 
 wakeful fires round liead and breast of tlie great Alp, 
 Chillon and Carinthia strolled out of the village, and 
 he told her some of his hopes. They referred to in- 
 ventions of destructive weapons, which were primarily 
 to place his country out of all danger from a world 
 in arms ; and also, it might be mentioned, to bring 
 him fortune. " For I must have money ! " he said, 
 sighing it out like a deliberate oath. He and his 
 uncle were associated in the inventions. They had an 
 improved rocket that would force military chiefs to 
 change their tactics: they had a new powder, a rifle, 
 a model musket — the latter based on his own plans; 
 and a scheme for fortress artillery likely to turn the 
 preponderance in favour of the defensive once again. 
 "And that will be really doing good," said Chillon, 
 " for where it's with the offensive, there's everlast- 
 ing bullying and plundering." 
 
 Carinthia warmly agreed with him, but begged him 
 be sure his uncle divided the profits equally. She 
 discerned what his need of money signified. 
 
 Tenderness urged her to say : " Henrietta ! Chillon." 
 
 " Well ? " he answered quickly. 
 
 "AYill she wait?" 
 
 "Can she, you should ask." 
 
 " Is she brave ? " 
 
 " Who can tell, till she has been tried ? " 
 
 " Is she quite free ? " 
 
 "She has not yet been captured."
 
 68 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "Brother, is there no one else? . . ." 
 
 "There's a nobleman anxious to bestow his titles 
 on her." 
 
 "He is rich?" 
 
 "The first or second wealthiest in Great Britain, 
 they say." 
 
 " Is he young ? " 
 
 "About the same age as mine." 
 
 " Is he a handsome young man ? " 
 
 "Handsomer than your brother, my girl." 
 
 "No, no, no ! " said she. " And what if he is, 
 and your Henrietta does not choose him ? I^ow let 
 me think what I long to think. I have her close to 
 me." 
 
 She rocked a roseate image on her heart and went 
 to bed with it by starlight. 
 
 By starlight they sprang to their feet and departed 
 the next morning, in the steps of a guide carrying, 
 Chillon said, "a better lantern than we left behind 
 us at the smithy." 
 
 " Father ! " exclaimed Carinthia on her swift in- 
 ward breath, for this one of the names he had used 
 to give to her old home revived him to her thoughts 
 and senses fervently.
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 69 
 
 CHAPTEK YI 
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 
 
 Three parts down a swift decline of shattered slate, 
 where travelling stones loosened from rows of scree 
 hurl away at a bound after one roll over, there sat a 
 youth dusty and torn, nursing a bruised leg, not in 
 the easiest of postures, on a sharp tooth of rock, that 
 might at any moment have broken from the slanting 
 slab at the end of which it formed a stump, and 
 added him a second time to the general crumble of 
 the mountain. He had done a portion of the descent 
 in excellent imitation of the detached fragments, and 
 had parted company with his alpenstock and plaid; 
 preserving his hat and his knapsack, or at least the 
 contents. He was alone, disabled, and cheerful; in 
 doubt of the arrival of succour before he could trust 
 his left leg to do him further service unaided; but it 
 was morning still, the sim was hot, the air was cool ; 
 just the tempering opposition to render existence pleas- 
 ant as a piece of vegetation, especially when there 
 has been a question of your ceasing to exist; and 
 the view was of a sustaining sublimity of desolate- 
 ness : crag and snow overhead ; a gloomy vale below : 
 no life either of bird or herd; a voiceless region 
 where there had once been roars at the bowling of
 
 70 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 a liill from a mountain to tlie deep, and tlie third 
 flank of the mountain spoke of it in the silence. 
 
 He woukl have enjoyed the scene unremittingly, like 
 the philosopher he pretended to be, in a disdain of civi- 
 lization and the ambitions of men, had not a contest with 
 earth been forced on him from time to time to keep the 
 heel of his right foot, dug in shallow shale, fixed and 
 supporting. As long as it held he was happy and 
 maintained the attitude of a guitar-player, thrumming 
 the calf of the useless leg to accompany tuneful thoughts, 
 but the inevitable lapse and slide of the foot recurred, 
 and the philosopher was exhibited as an infant learning 
 to crawl. The seat, moreover, not having been fashioned 
 for him or for any soft purpose, resisted his pressure 
 and became a thing of violence, that required to be 
 humiliatingiy coaxed. His last resource to propitiate 
 it was counselled by nature turned mathematician: 
 tenacious extension solved the problem; he lay back at 
 his length, and with his hat over his eyes consented to 
 see nothing for the sake of comfort. Thus he was 
 perfectly rational, though when others beheld him he 
 appeared the insanest of mortals. 
 
 A girl's voice gave out the mountain carol ringingly 
 above. His heart and all his fancies were in motion at 
 the sound. He leaned on an elbow to listen; the slide 
 threatened him, and he resumed his full stretch, deter- 
 mined to take her for a dream. He was of the class of 
 youths who, in apprehension that their bright season
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 71 
 
 may not be permanent, choose to fortify it by a syste- 
 matic contempt of material realities unless they come 
 in the fairest of shapes, and as he was quite sincere in 
 this feeling and election of the right way to live, dis- 
 appointment and sullenness overcame him on hearing 
 men's shouts and steps; despite his helpless condition 
 he refused to stir, for they had jarred on his dream. 
 Perhaps his temper, unknown to himself, had been a 
 little injured by his mishap, and he would not have 
 been sorry to charge them with want of common 
 humanity in passing him ; or he did not think his 
 plight so bad, else he would have bawled after them 
 had they gone by : for the youths of his description are 
 fools only upon system, however earnestly they indulge 
 the present self-punishing sentiment. The party did 
 not pass ; they stopped short, they consulted, and a 
 feminine tongue more urgent than the others, and 
 very musical, sweet to hear anywhere, put him in 
 tune. She said '^ Brother ! brother ! " in German. Our 
 philosopher flung off his hat. 
 
 " You see ! " said the lady's brother. 
 
 "Ask him, Anton," she said to their guide. 
 
 " And quick ! " her brother added. 
 
 The guide scrambled along to him, and at a closer 
 glance shouted : " The Englishman ! " wheeling his finger 
 to indicate what had happened to the Tomnoddy islander. 
 
 His master called to know if there were broken 
 bones, as if he could stop for nothing else.
 
 72 THE AMAZING INIAKRIAGE 
 
 The cripple was raised. The gentleman and lady 
 made their way to him, and he tried his hardest to keep 
 from tottering on the slope in her presence. No injury 
 had been done to the leg ; there was only a stiffness, 
 and an idiotic doubling of the knee, as though at each 
 step his leg pronounced a dogged negative to the act 
 of walking. He said something equivalent to " this 
 donkey leg," to divert her charitable eyes from a coun- 
 tenance dancing with ugly twitches. She was the 
 Samaritan. A sufferer discerns his friend, though it 
 be not the one who physically assists him: he is 
 inclined by nature to put material aid at a lower 
 mark than gentleness, and her brief words of encourage- 
 ment, the tone of their delivery yet more, were medical 
 to his blood, better help than her brother's iron arm, 
 he really believed. Her brother and the guide held him 
 on each side, and she led to pick out the safer footing 
 for him ; she looked round and pointed to some pro- 
 jection that would form a step; she drew attention 
 to views here and there, to win excuses for his resting ; 
 she did not omit to soften her brother's visible im- 
 patience as well, and this was the art which affected 
 her keenly sensible debtor most. 
 
 "I suppose I ought to have taken a guide," he said. 
 
 "There's not a doubt of that," said Chillon Kirby. 
 
 Carinthia halted, leaning on her staff: "But I had 
 the same wish. They told us at the inn of an English- 
 man who left last night to sleep on the mountain, and
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 73 
 
 would go alone; and did I not say, brother, that must 
 be true love of the mountains ? " 
 
 "These freaks get us a bad name on the Continent," 
 her brother replied. He had no sympathy with non- 
 sense, and naturally not Avith a youth who smelt of 
 being a dreamy romancer and had caused the name 
 of Englishman to be shouted in his ear in derision. 
 And the fellow might delay his arrival at the Baths 
 and sight of the lady of his love for hours ! 
 
 They managed to get him hobbling and slipping to 
 the first green tufts of the base, where long black 
 tongues of slate-rubble pouring into the grass like 
 shore-waves that have spent their burden seem about 
 to draw back to bring the mountain down. Thence 
 to the level pasture was but a few skips performed 
 sliding. 
 
 "Well, now," said Chillon, "you can stand?" 
 
 "Pretty well, I think." He tried his foot on the 
 ground, and then stretched his length, saying that it 
 only wanted rest. Anton pressed a hand at his ankle 
 and made him wince, but the bones were sound, leg 
 and hip not worse than badly bruised. He was advised 
 by Anton to plant his foot in the first running water 
 he came to, and he was considerate enough to say to 
 Chillon : — 
 
 "Now you can leave me, and let me thank you. 
 Half an hour will set me right. My name is Wood- 
 seer, if ever we meet again."
 
 74 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Chillon nodded a hurried good-bye, without a thought 
 of giving his name in return. But Carinthia had thrown 
 herself on the grass. Her brother asked her in dismay 
 if she was tired. She murmured to him: "I should 
 like to hear more English." 
 
 "My dear girl, you'll have enough of it in two or 
 three weeks." 
 
 " Should we leave a good deal half done, Chillon ? " 
 
 "He shall have our guide." 
 
 "He may not be rich." 
 
 "I'll pay Anton to stick to him." 
 
 "Brother, he has an objection to guides." 
 
 Chillon cast hungry eyes on his watch : " Five min- 
 utes, then." He addressed Mr. AVoodseer, who was re- 
 posing, indifferent to time, hard by: "Your objection 
 to guides might have taught you a sharp lesson. It's 
 like declining to have a master in studying a science 
 — trusting to instinct for your knowledge of a bargain. 
 One might as well refuse an oar to row in a boat." 
 
 " I'd rather risk it," the young man replied. " These 
 guides kick the soul out of scenery. I came for that 
 and not for them." 
 
 "You might easily have been a disagreeable part of 
 the scene." 
 
 "Why not here as well as elsewhere?" 
 
 " You don't care for your life ? " 
 
 " I try not to care for it a fraction more than Destiny 
 does."
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 75 
 
 "Fatalism. I suppose you care for something?" 
 
 " Besides I've a slack purse, and slum guides and inns 
 when I can. I care for open air, colour, flowers, weeds, 
 birds, insects, moimtains. There's a world behind the 
 mask. I call this life ; and the town's a boiling pot, in- 
 tolerably stuffy. ]My one ambition is to be out of it. I 
 thank Heaven I have not another on earth. Yes, I care 
 for my note-book, because it's of no use to a human 
 being except me. I slept beside a spring last night, and 
 I never shall like a bedroom so well. I think I have 
 discovered the great secret : I may be wrong, of course." 
 And if so, he had his philosophy, the admission was 
 meant to say. 
 
 Carinthia expected the revelation of a notable secret, 
 but none came ; or if it did it eluded her grasp : — he 
 was praising contemplation, he was praising tobacco. 
 He talked of the charm of poverty upon a settled income 
 of a very small sum of money, the fruit of a compact he 
 would execute with the town to agree to his perpetual 
 exclusion from it, and to retain his identity, and not be 
 the composite which every to^vnsman was. He talked 
 of Buddha. He said : '^ Here the brook's the brook, the 
 mountain's the mountain : they are as they always 
 were." 
 
 " You'd have men be the same," Chillon remarked, as 
 to a nursling prattler, and he rejoined: "They've lost 
 more than they've gained ; though," he admitted, " there 
 has been some gain, in a certain way."
 
 76 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Fortunately for tliem, young men have not the habit 
 of reflecting upon the indigestion of ideas they receive 
 from members of their community, sometimes upon ex- 
 change. They compare a view of life with their own 
 view, to condemn it summarily ; and he was a curious 
 object to Chill on as the perfect opposite of himself. 
 
 " I would advise you/' Chillon said, " to get a pair of 
 Styrian boots, if you intend to stay in the Alps. Those 
 boots of yours are London make." 
 
 " They're my father's make," said Mr. Woodseer. 
 
 Chillon drew out his watch. " Come, Carinthia, we 
 must be off." He proposed his guide, and, as Anton 
 Avas rejected, he pointed the route over the head of 
 the village, stated the distance to an inn that way, 
 saluted and strode. 
 
 Mr. Woodseer, partly rising, presumed, in raising his 
 hat and thanking Carinthia, to touch her fingers. She 
 smiled on him, frankly extending her open hand, and 
 pointing the route again, counselling him to rest at the 
 inn, even saying : " You have not yet your strength to 
 come on with us ? " 
 
 He thought he would stay some time longer : he had a 
 disposition to smoke. 
 
 She tripped away to her brother and was watched 
 through the whiffs of a pipe far up the valley, guiltless 
 of any consciousness of producing an impression. But 
 her mind was with the stranger sufficiently to cause her 
 to say to Chillon, at the close of a dispute between him
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 77 
 
 and Anton on the interesting subject of the growth of 
 the horns of chamois: "Have we been quite kind to 
 that gentleman?'' 
 
 Chillon looked over his shoulder. -^ He's there still ; 
 he's fond of solitude. And, CariUj my dear, don't give 
 your hand when you are meeting or parting with people : 
 it's not done." 
 
 His uninstructed sister said: "Did you not like 
 him?" 
 
 She was answered with an " Oh," the tone of which 
 balanced lightly on the neutral line. "Some of the 
 ideas he has are Lord Fleetwood's, I hear, and one can 
 understand them in a man of enormous wealth, who 
 doesn't know what to do with himself and is dead-sick of 
 flattery ; though it seems odd for an English nobleman 
 to be raving about Nature. Perhaps it's because none 
 else of them does." 
 
 " Lord Fleetwood loves our mountains, Chillon ? " 
 
 " But a fellow who probably has to make his way in 
 the world ! — and he despises ambition ! " ... Chillon 
 dropped him. He was antipathetic to eccentrics, and 
 his soldierly and social training opposed the profession 
 of heterodox ideas : to have listened seriously to them 
 coming from the mouth of an unambitious bootmaker's 
 son involved him in the absurdity. He considered that 
 there was no harm in the lad, rather a commendable sort 
 of courage and some notion of manners ; allowing for his 
 ignorance of the convenable in putting out his hand to
 
 78 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 take a young lady's, with the plea of thanking her. He 
 hoped she would be more on her guard. 
 
 Carinthia was sure she had the name of the nobleman 
 wishing to bestow his title upon the beautiful Henrietta. 
 Lord Fleetwood ! That slender thread given her of the 
 character of her brother's rival who loved the mountains, 
 was woven in her mind with her passing experience of 
 the youth they had left behind them, until the two 
 became one, a highly transfigured one, and the moimtain 
 scenery made him very threatening to her brother. A 
 silky-haired youth, brown-eyed, unconquerable in adver- 
 sity, immensely rich, fond of solitude, curled, decorated, 
 bejewelled by all the elves and gnomes of inmost soli- 
 tude, must have marvellous attractions, she feared. She 
 thought of him so much, that her humble spirit con- 
 ceived the stricken soul of the woman as of necessity the 
 pursuer ; as shamelessly, though timidly, as she herself 
 pursued in imagination the enchanted secret of the 
 mountain-land. She hoped her brother Avould not sup- 
 plicate, for it struck her that the lover who besieged the 
 lady would forfeit her roaming and hunting fancy. 
 
 '•I wonder what that gentleman is doing now," she 
 said to Chillon. 
 
 He grimaced slightly, for her sake; he would have 
 liked to inform her, for the sake of educating her in the 
 customs of the world she was going to enter, that the 
 word " gentleman " conveys in English a special signifi- 
 cation.
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 79 
 
 Her expression of wonder whether they were to meet 
 him again gave Chillon the opportunity of saying : 
 "It's the unlikeliest thing possible — at all events in 
 England." 
 
 "But I think we shall/' said she. 
 
 "My dear, you meet people of your own class; you 
 don't meet others." 
 
 " But we may meet anybody, Chillon ! " 
 
 "In the street. I suppose you would not stop to 
 speak to him in the street." 
 
 " It would be strange to see him in the street ! " 
 Carinthia said. 
 
 " Strange or not ! " . . . Chillon thought he had said 
 sufficient. She was under his protectorship, otherwise 
 he would not have alluded to the observance of class 
 distinctions. He felt them personally in this case be- 
 cause of their seeming to stretch grotesquely by the 
 pretentious heterodoxy of the young fellow, whom 
 nevertheless, thinking him over now that he was 
 mentioned, he approved for his manliness in blimtly 
 telling his origin and status. 
 
 A chalet supplied them with fresh milk, and the inn 
 of a village on a perch with the midday meal. Their 
 appetites were princely and swept over the little inn 
 like a conflagration. Only after clearing it did they 
 remember the rearward pedestrian, whose probable 
 wants Chillon Avas urged by Carinthia to speak of to 
 their host. They pushed on, clambering up, scurrying
 
 80 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 down, tramping gaily, till by degrees the chambers of 
 Carinthia's imagination closed their doors and would 
 no longer intercommunicate. Her head refused to 
 interest her, and left all activity to her legs and her 
 eyes, and the latter became unobservant, except of 
 foot-tracks, animal-like. She felt that she was a fine 
 machine, and nothing else : and she was rapidly 
 approaching those ladies! 
 
 '^ You will tell them how I walked with you," she said. 
 
 " Your friends over yonder ? " said he. 
 
 ^' So that they may not think me so ignorant, 
 brother.'^ She stumbled on the helpless word in a 
 hasty effort to cloak her vanity. 
 
 He laughed. Her desire to meet the critical English 
 ladies with a towering reputation in one department 
 of human enterprise was comprehensible, considering 
 the natural apprehensiveness of the half wild girl 
 before such a meeting. As it often happens with the 
 silly phrases of simple people, the wrong word, foolish 
 although it was, went to the heart of the hearer and 
 threw a more charitable light than ridicule on her. 
 So that they may know I can do something they can- 
 not do, was the interpretation. It showed her deep 
 knowledge of her poorness in laying bare the fact. 
 
 Anxious to cheer her, he said : " Come, come, you can 
 dance. You dance well, mother has told me, and she 
 was a judge. You ride, you swim, you have a voice — 
 for country songs, at all events. And you're a bit of a
 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER 81 
 
 botanist too. You're good at English, and German ; you 
 had a French governess for a couple of years. By the 
 way, you understand the use of a walking-stick in self- 
 defence : you could handle a sword on occasion." 
 
 " Father trained me/' said Carinthia. " I can fire a 
 pistol, aiming." 
 
 "With a good aim too. Father told me you could. 
 How fond he was of his girl ! Well, bear in mind that 
 father was proud of you, and hold up your head wher- 
 ever you are." 
 
 "I will," she said. 
 
 He assured her he had a mind to have a bugle blown 
 at the entrance of the Baths for a challenge to the 
 bathers to match her in warlike accomplishments. 
 
 She bit her lips : she could not bear much rallying 
 on the subject just then. 
 
 " Which is the hard one to please ? " she asked. 
 
 "The one you will find the kinder of the two." 
 
 " Henrietta ? " 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "Has she a father?" 
 
 " A gallant old admiral : Admiral Baldwin Fakenham." 
 
 " I am glad of that ! " Carinthia sighed out heartily. 
 " And he is v/ith her ? And likes you, Chillon ? " 
 
 "On the whole, I think he does." 
 
 " A brave officer ! " Such a father would be sure to 
 like him. 
 
 So the domestic prospect was hopeful.
 
 82 THE AMAZING MARKIAGE 
 
 At sunset tliey stood on the hills overlooking the 
 basin of the Baths, all enfolded in swathes of pink and 
 crimson up to the shining grey of a high heaven that 
 had the fresh brightness of the morning. 
 
 "We are not tired in the slightest/' said Carinthia, 
 trifling with the vision of a cushioned rest below. "I 
 could go on through the night quite comfortably." 
 
 " Wait till you wake up in your little bed to-morrow/' 
 Chillon replied stoutly, to drive a chill from his lover's 
 heart, that had seized it at the bare suggestion of 
 their going on. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn 
 
 THE lady's letter 
 
 Is not the lover a prophet? He that fervently de- 
 sires may well be one ; his hurried nature is alive 
 with warmth to break the possible blow: and if they 
 were not needed they were shadows ; and if fulfilled, 
 was he not convinced of his misfortune by a dark 
 anticipation that rarely erred? Descending the hills, 
 he remembered several omens : the sun had sunk when 
 he looked down on the villas and clustered houses, 
 not an edge of the orb had been seen; the admiral's 
 quarters in the broad-faced hotel had worn an ap- 
 pearance resembling the empty house of yesterday; 
 the encounter with the fellow on the rocks had a
 
 bad whisper of impish, tripping. And what moved 
 Carinthia to speak of going on? 
 
 A letter was handed to Chillon in the hall of the 
 admiral's hotel, where his baggage had already been 
 delivered. The manager was deploring the circum- 
 stance that his rooms were full to the roof, when 
 Chillon said : " Well, we must wash and eat " ; and 
 Carinthia, from watching her brother's forehead during 
 his perusal of the letter, declared her readiness for 
 anything. He gave her the letter to read by herself 
 while preparing to sit at table, unwilling to ask her 
 for a further tax on her energies — but it was she 
 who had spoken of going on! He thought of it as of 
 a debt she had contracted and might be supposed to 
 think payable to their misfortune. 
 
 She read off the first two sentences. 
 
 "We can have a carriage here, Chillon; order a 
 carriage ; I shall get as much sleep in a carriage as in 
 a bed ; I shall enjoy driving at night," she said imme- 
 diately, and strongly urged it and forced him to yield, 
 the manager observing that a carriage could be had. 
 
 In the privacy of her room, admiring the clear flow- 
 ing hand, she read the words, delicious in their 
 strangeness to her, notwithstanding the heavy news, 
 as though they were sung out of a night-sky : — 
 
 "Most picturesque of Castles! 
 May none these marks efface, 
 For they appeal from Tyranny . . .
 
 84 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "We start at noon to-day. Sailing orders have been 
 issued, and I could only have resisted them in my own 
 person by casting myself overboard. I go like the 
 boat behind the vessel. You were expected yesterday, 
 at latest this morning. I have seen boxes in the hall, 
 with a name on them not foreign to me. Why does the 
 master tarry? Sir, of your valiance you should have 
 held to your good vow, quoth the damozel, for now you 
 see me sore perplexed and that you did not your devoir 
 is my affliction. Where lingers chivalry, she should 
 have proceeded, if not with my knight? I feast on 
 your regrets. I would not have you less than miser- 
 able : and I fear the reason is, that I am not so very, 
 very sure you will be so at all or very hugely, as I 
 would command it of you for just time enough to 
 see that change over your eyebrows I know so well. 
 
 " If you had seen a certain Henrietta yesterday you 
 would have the picture of how you ought to look. The 
 admiral was heard welcoming a new arrival — you can 
 hear him. She ran down the stairs quicker than any 
 cascade of this district, she would have made a bet ^vith 
 Livia that it could be no one else — her hand was out — 
 before she was aware of the difference it was locked in 
 Lord F.'s ! 
 
 "Let the guilty absent suffer for causing such a be- 
 trayal of disappointment. I must be avenged ! But if 
 indeed you are unhappy and would like to chide the 
 innocent, I am full of compassion for the poor gentle-
 
 THE lady's letter 85 
 
 man inheriting my legitimate feelings of wrath, and beg 
 merely that he will not pour them out on me with pen 
 and paper, but from his lips and eyes. 
 
 " Time pressing, I chatter no more. The destination 
 is Livia's beloved Baden. We rest a night in the city 
 of Mozart, a night at Munich, a night at Stuttgart. 
 Baden will detain my cousin full a week. She has 
 Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson Corby in attendance — 
 her long shadow and her short: both devoted to Lord 
 F., to win her smile, and how he drives them ! The 
 captain has been paraded on the promenade, to the stu- 
 pefaction of the foreigner. Princes, counts, generals, 
 diplomats passed under him in awe. I am told that he 
 is called St. Christopher. 
 
 ^^ Why do we go thus hastily ? my friend, this letter 
 has to be concealed. I know some one who sees in the 
 dark. 
 
 " Think no harm of Livia. She is bent upon my 
 worldly advantage, and that is plain even to the person 
 rejecting it. How much more so must it be to papa, 
 though he likes you, and when you are near him would 
 perhaps, in a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reck- 
 less as the creature he calls madcap and would rather 
 call countess. ISTo ! sooner with a will-o'-the-wisp, my 
 friend. Who could ever know where the man was 
 when he himself never knows where he is. He is the 
 wind that bloweth as it listeth — because it is without 
 an aim or always with a new one. And am I the one
 
 86 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 to direct him ? I need direction. My lord and sov- 
 ereign must fix my mind. I am volatile, earthly, not 
 to be trusted if I do not worship. He himself said to 
 me that — he reads our characters. ^Nothing but a 
 proved hero will satisfy Henrietta,' his words ! And 
 the hero must be shining like a beacon-fire kept in 
 a blaze. Quite true ; I own it. Is Chillon Kirby satis- 
 fied ? He ought to be. 
 
 "But oh! — to be yoked is an insufferable thought, 
 unless we name all the conditions. But to be yoked to 
 a creature of impulses! Really I could only describe 
 his erratic nature by commending you to the study of 
 a dragon-fly. It would map you an idea of what he has 
 been in the twenty-four hours since we had him here. 
 They tell me a vain sort of person is the cause. Can 
 she be the cause of his resolving to have a residence 
 here, to buy up half the valley — erecting a royal palace 
 — and marking out the site — raving about it in the 
 wildest language, poetical if it had been a little reason- 
 able: — and then, after a night, suddenly, unaccoimt- 
 ably, hating the place, and being under the necessity of 
 flying from it in hot haste, tearing us all away, as if 
 we Avere attached to a kite that will neither mount not 
 fall, but rushes about headlong. Has he heard, or sus- 
 pected ? or seen certain boxes bearing a name ? Livia 
 has no suspicion, though she thinks me wonderfully 
 contented in so dull a place, where it has rained nine 
 days in a fortnight. I ask myself whether my manner
 
 THE lady's letter 87 
 
 of greeting him betrayed my expectation of another. 
 He has brains. It is the greatest of errors to suppose 
 him at all like the common run of rich young noble- 
 men. He seems to thrist for brilliant wits and original 
 sayings. His ambition is to lead all England in every- 
 thing! I readily acknowledge that he has generous 
 ideas too ; but try to hold him, deny him his liberty, 
 and it would be seen how desperate and relentless he 
 would be to get loose. Of this I am convinced: he 
 would be either the most abject of lovers, or a woman 
 (if it turned out not to be love) would find him the most 
 unscrupulous of yokefellows. Yokefellow! She would 
 not have her reason in consenting. A lamb and a furi- 
 ous bull! Papa and I have had a serious talk. He 
 shut his ears to my comparisons, but admits, that as I 
 am the principal person concerned, etc. Eich and a 
 nobleman is too tempting for an anxious father; and 
 Livia's influence is paramount. She has not said a 
 syllable in depreciation of you. That is to her credit. 
 She also admits that I raust yield freely if at all, and 
 she grants me the use of similes ; but her tactics are to 
 contest them one by one, and the admirable pretender is 
 not as shifty as the mariner's breeze, he is not like the 
 wandering spark in burnt paper, of which you cannot 
 say whether it is chasing or chased : it is I who am the 
 shifty pole to the steadiest of magnets. She is a prin- 
 cess in other things besides her superiority to Physics. 
 There will be wild scenes at Baden.
 
 88 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " My Diary of to-day is all bestowed on you. What 
 have I to write in it except the pair of commas under 
 the last line of yesterday — ^ He has not come!^ Oh! 
 to be caring for a he. 
 
 " that I were with your sister now, on one side of 
 her idol, to correct her extravagant idolatry ! I long for 
 her. I had a number of nice little phrases to pet her 
 with. 
 
 ^' You have said (I have it written) that men who are 
 liked by men are the best friends for women. In which 
 case, the earl should be worthy of our friendship ; he is 
 liked. Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson, in spite of the 
 hard service he imposes on them with such comical 
 haughtiness, incline to speak well of him, and Methuen 
 Eivers — here for two days on his way to his embassy at 
 Vienna — assured us he is the rarest of gentlemen on the 
 point of honour of his word. They have stories of him, 
 to confirm Livia's eulogies, showing him punctilious to 
 chivalry. No man alive is like him in that, they say. 
 He grieves me. All that you have to fear is my pity 
 for one so sensitive. So speed, sir ! It is not good for 
 us to be much alone, and I am alone when you are 
 absent. 
 
 '' I hear military music ! 
 
 "How grand that music makes the dullest world 
 appear in a minute. There is a magic in it to bring you 
 to me from the most dreadful of distances. — Chillon ! it 
 would kill me ! — Writing here, and you perhaps behind
 
 THE lady's letter 89 
 
 the hill, I can hardly bear it ; — I am torn away, my 
 hand will not any more. This music burst out to mock 
 me ! Adieu. 
 
 "I am yours. 
 
 ^'Your Henrietta. 
 " A kiss to the sister. It is owing to her." 
 
 Carinthia kissed the letter on that last line. It 
 seemed to her to end in a celestial shower. 
 
 She was oppressed by wonder of the writer who could 
 run like the rill of the mountains in written speech ; and 
 her recollection of the contents perpetually hurried to 
 the close, which was more in her way of writing, for 
 there the brief sentences had a throb beneath them. 
 
 She did not speak of the letter to her brother when 
 she returned it. A night in the carriage, against his 
 shoulder, was her happy prospect, in the thought that 
 she would be with her dearest all night, touching him 
 asleep, and in the sweet sense of being near to the 
 beloved of the fairest angel of her sex. They pursued 
 their journey soon after Anton was dismissed with warm 
 shakes of the hand and appointments for a possible year 
 in the future. 
 
 The blast of the postillion's horn on the dark highway 
 moved Chillon to say : " This is what they call posting, 
 my dear." 
 
 She replied: "Tell me, brother: I do not under- 
 stand, ^ Let none these marks efface,^ at the commence-
 
 90 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ment, after most ' picturesque of Castles : ' — ttiat is 
 you." 
 
 " They are quoted from tlie verses of a lord who was 
 a poet, addressed to the castle on Lake Leman. She 
 will read them to you." 
 
 "Will she?" 
 
 The mention of the lord set Carinthia thinking of 
 the lord whom that bea^utiful she pitied because she 
 was forced to wound him and he was very sensitive. 
 Wrapped in Henrietta, she slept through the joltings of 
 the carriage, the grinding of the wheels, the blowing of 
 the horn, the flashes of the late moonlight and the 
 kindling of dawn. 
 
 CHAPTEE yill 
 
 OF THE EXCOUXTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN AND 
 THEIR consorting: in which the male READER IS 
 REQUESTED TO BEAR IN MIND WHAT WILD CREATURE 
 HE WAS IN HIS YOUTH, WHILE THE FEMALE SHOULD 
 MARVEL CREDULOUSLY 
 
 The young man who fancied he had robed himself in 
 the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age 
 of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the 
 mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the 
 Fates for having seen her ; and reproving the remainder 
 of superstition within him, which would lay him open
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 91 
 
 -to smarts of evil fortune if he encouraged a senseless 
 gratitude for good; seeing that we are simply to take 
 what happens to us. The little inn of the village on 
 the perch furnished him a night's lodging and a laugh 
 of satisfaction to hear of a yoimg lady and gentleman, 
 and their guide, who had devoured everything eatable 
 half a day in advance of him, all save the bread and 
 butter, and a few scraps of meat, apologetically spread 
 for his repast by the maid of the inn: not enough for 
 a bantam cock, she said, promising eggs for breakfast. 
 He vowed with an honest heart, that it was more than 
 enough, and he was nourished by sympathy with the 
 appetites of his precursors and the maid's description 
 of their deeds. That name, Carinthia, went a good way 
 to fill him. 
 
 Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment. He 
 was compelled to acknowledge that he had expected to 
 meet Carinthia again at the Baths. Her absence dealt 
 a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in ; for 
 though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was 
 unfeigned, as was his calm overlooking of social dis- 
 tinctions, the self-indulgent dreamer became troubled 
 with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the 
 passions of the world of men was to risk the falling 
 lower than most. Women are a cause of dreams, but 
 they are dreaded enemies of his kind of dream, deadly 
 enemies of the immaterial dreamers ; and should one of 
 them be taken on board a vessel of the vapourish texture
 
 92 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 young Woodseer sailed in above the clouds lightly while 
 he was in it alone, questions of past, future, and present, 
 the three weights upon humanity, bear it down, and she 
 must go, or the vessel sinks. And cast out of it, what 
 was he ? The asking exposed him to the steadiest wind 
 the civilized world is known to blow. Prom merely 
 thinking upon one of the daughters of earth, he was 
 made to feel his position in that world, though he 
 refused to understand it, and assisted by two days of 
 hard walking he reduced Carinthia to an abstract enthu- 
 siasm, no very serious burden. His note-book sustained 
 it easily. He wrote her name in simple fondness of the 
 name ; a verse, and hints for more, and some sentences, 
 which he thought profound. They were composed as he 
 sat by the roadway, on the tops of hills, and in a boat 
 crossing a dark green lake deep under wooded mountain 
 walls : things of priceless value. 
 
 It happened, that midway on the lake he perceived 
 his boatman about to prime a pistol to murder the 
 mild-eyed stillness, and he called to the man in his 
 best German to desist. During the altercation, there 
 passed a countryman of his in another of the punts, 
 who said gravely: "I thank you for that." It was 
 early morning, and they had the lake to themselves, 
 each deeming the other an intruder ; for the courtship 
 of solitude wanes w^hen we are haunted by a second 
 person in pursuit of it ; he is discolouring matter in our 
 pure crystal cup. Such is the worship of the pict-
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 93 
 
 uresque; and it would appear to say, that the spirit 
 of man finds itself yet in the society of barbarians. 
 The case admits of good pleading either way, even upon 
 the issue whether the exclusive or the vulgar be the 
 more barbarous. But in those days the solicitation of 
 the picturesque had been revived by a poet of some 
 impassioned rhetoric, and two devotees could hardly 
 meet, as the two meet here, and not be mutually 
 obscurants. 
 
 They stepped ashore in turn on the same small shoot 
 of land where a farm-house near a chapel in the shadow 
 of cliffs did occasional service for an inn. Each had 
 intended to pass a day and a night in this lonely dwell- 
 ing-place by the lake, but a rival was less to be tol- 
 erated there than in love, and each awaited the other's 
 departure, with an air that said: "You are in my 
 sunlight '' ; and going deeper, more sternly : " Sir, you 
 are an offence to Nature's pudency ! " 
 
 Woodseer was the more placable of the two ; he had 
 taken possession of the bench outside, and he had his 
 note-book and much profundity to haul up with it while 
 fish were frying. His countryman had rushed inside 
 to avoid him, and remained there pacing the chamber 
 like a lion newly caged. Their boatmen were brotherly 
 in the anticipation of provision and payment. 
 
 After eating his fish, Woodseer decided abruptly, that 
 as he could not have the spot to himself, memorable 
 as it would have been to intermarry with Nature in so
 
 94 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 sacred a well-depth, of the mountains, he had better be 
 walking and climbing. Another boat paddling np the 
 lake had been spied: solitude was not merely shared 
 with a rival, but violated by numbers. In the first case, 
 we detest the man ; in the second, we fly from an out- 
 raged scene. He wrote a line or so in his book, hurriedly 
 paid his bill, and started, full of the matter he had 
 briefly committed to his pages. 
 
 At noon, sitting beside the beck that runs from the 
 lake, he was overtaken by the gentleman he had left 
 behind, and accosted in the informal English style, 
 with all the politeness possible to a nervously blunt 
 manner: "This book is yours, — I have no doubt it is 
 yours ; I am glad to be able to restore it ; I should be 
 glad to be the o^raer — writer of the contents, I mean. 
 I have to beg your excuse; I found it lying open; 
 I looked at the page, I looked through the whole ; I am 
 quite at your mercy." 
 
 AVoodseer jumped at the sight of his note-book, felt 
 for the emptiness of his pocket, and replied : " Thank 
 you, thank you. It's of use to me, though to no one 
 else." 
 
 " You pardon me ? " 
 
 "Certainly. I should have done it myself." 
 
 "I cannot offer you my apologies as a stranger." 
 Lord Fleetwood was the name given. 
 
 Woodseer's plebeian was exchanged for it, and he 
 stood up.
 
 ENCOUISITER OF TWO STRANGE YOUXG MEN 95 
 
 The young lord had fair, straight, thin features, with 
 large restless eyes that lighted quickly, and a mouth 
 that was winning in his present colloquial mood. 
 
 " You could have done the same ? I should find it 
 hard to forgive the man who pried into my secret 
 thoughts," he remarked. 
 
 "There they are. If one jDuts them to paper! . . .'^ 
 Woodseer shrugged. 
 
 "Yes, yes. They never last long enough with me. 
 So far I'm safe. One page led to another. You can 
 meditate. I noticed some remarks on Eeligions. You 
 think deeply." 
 
 Woodseer was of that opinion, but modesty urged 
 him to reply with a small flourish. "' Just a few heads 
 of ideas. When the wind puffs down a sooty chimney 
 the air is filled with little blacks that settle pretty 
 much like the notes in this book of mine. There they 
 wait for another puff, or my fingers to stamp them." 
 
 " I could tell you were the owner of that book," said 
 Lord Fleetwood. He swept his forehead feverishly. 
 " What a power it is to relieve one's brain by writing ! 
 May I ask you, which one of the Universities ? . . . " 
 
 The burden of this question had a ring of irony to 
 one whom it taught to feel rather defiantly, that he 
 carried the blazon of a reeking tramp. "My Univer- 
 sity," Woodseer replied, "was a merchant's oflB.ce in 
 Bremen for some months. I learnt more Greek and 
 Latin in Bremen than business.^ I was invalided home,
 
 96 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and then tried a merchant's office in London. I put on 
 my hat one day, and walked into the country. My 
 College fellows were hawkers, tinkers, tramps and 
 ploughmen, choughs and crows. A volume of our Poets 
 and a History of Philosophy composed my library. I 
 had scarce any money, so I learnt how to idle inexpen- 
 sively — a good first lesson. We're at the bottom of the 
 world when we take to the road; we see men as they 
 were in the beginning — not so eager for harness till 
 they get acquainted with hunger, as I did, and studied 
 in myself the old animal having his head pushed into 
 the collar to earn a feed of corn." 
 
 Woodseer laughed, adding, that he had been of a 
 serious mind in those days of the alternation of smooth 
 indifference and sharp necessity, and he had plucked a 
 flower from them. 
 
 His nature prompted him to speak of himself with 
 simple candour, as he had done spontaneously to Chillon 
 Kirby, yet he Avas now anxious to let his companion know 
 at once the common stuff he was made of, together with 
 the great stuff he contained. He grew conscious of an 
 over-anxiety, and was uneasy, recollecting how he had 
 just spoken about his naturalness, dimly if at all 
 apprehending the cause of this disturbance within. 
 What is a lord to a philosopher! But the world is 
 around us as a cloak, if not a coat ; in his ignorance he 
 supposed it specially due to a lord seeking acquaintance 
 with him, that he should expose his condition: doing
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 97 
 
 the which appeared to subject him to parade his intel- 
 lectual treasures and capacity for shaping sentences ; and 
 the effect upon Lord Fleetwood was an incentive to the 
 display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape 
 from the discomposing society of a lord; he fixed his 
 knapsack and began to saunter. 
 
 The young lord was at his elbow. " I can't part with 
 you. Will you allow me ? " 
 
 Woodseer was puzzled and had to say : " If you wish 
 it." 
 
 "I do wish it: an hour's walk with you. One does 
 not meet a man like you every day. I have to join a 
 circle of mine in Baden, but there's no hurry ; I could be 
 disengaged for a week. And I have things to ask you, 
 owing to my indiscretion — but you have excused it." 
 
 Woodseer turned for a farewell gaze at the great 
 Watzmann, and saluted him. 
 
 " Splendid," said Lord Fleetwood 5 " but don't clap 
 names on the mountains. — I saw written in your book: 
 ' A text for Dada. ' You write : ' A despotism would prom re 
 a perfect solitude, hut kill the ghost.' That was my thought 
 at the place where we were at the lake. I had it. Tell 
 me — though I could not have written it, and ' ghost ' 
 is just the word, the exact word — tell me, are you of 
 Welsh blood? 'Dad' is good Welsh — pronounce it 
 hard." 
 
 Woodseer answered : " My mother was a Glamor- 
 ganshire woman. My father, I know, walked up from
 
 98 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Wales, mending boots on Ms road for a livelihood. 
 He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like 
 it. He is a Dissenting preacher. When I strike a 
 truism, I've a habit of scoring it to give him a peg or 
 tuning-fork for one of his discourses. He's a man of 
 talent ; he taught himself, and he taught me more than I 
 learnt at school. He is a thinker in his way. He loves 
 Nature too. I rather envy him in some respects. He 
 and I are hunters of Wisdom on different tracks ; and he, 
 as he says ^ waits for me.' He's patient ! " 
 
 " Ah, and I wanted to ask you," Lord Fleetwood ob- 
 served, bursting with it, "I was puzzled by a name 
 you Avrite here and there near the end, and permit 
 me to ask it : Carinthia ! It cannot be the country ? 
 You write after the name: 'A beautiful Gorgon — 
 a haggard Venus.' It seized me. I have had the face 
 before my eyes ever since. You must mean a woman. 
 I can't be deceived in allusions to a woman: they 
 have heart in them. You met her somewhere about 
 Carinthia, and gave her the name ? You write — 
 may I refer to the book ? " 
 
 He received the book and flew through the leaves : 
 "Here — ^A panting look': you write again: 'A look 
 of beaten flame : a look of one tcho has run and at last 
 beholds ! ' But that is a living face : I see her ! Here 
 again: 'From minute to minute she is the rock that 
 loses the sun at night and reddens in the morning' 
 You could not create an idea of a woman to move
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 99 
 
 you like that. No one could, I am certain of it, 
 certain; if so, you're a wizard — I swear you are. 
 But that's a face high over beauty. Just to know 
 there is a woman like her, is an antidote. You com- 
 pare her to a rock. Who would imagine a compar- 
 ison of a woman to a rock ! But rock is the very 
 picture of beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus. Tell me [ 
 you met her, you saw her. I want only to hear she ^ 
 lives, she is in the world. Beautiful v*^omen compared j 
 to roses may whirl away with their handsome dragoons ! i 
 A pang from them is a thing to be ashamed of. And / 
 there are men who trot about whining with it ! But / 
 a Carinthia makes pain honourable. You have done 
 what I thought impossible — fused a woman's face and 
 grand scenery, to make them inseparable. She might 
 be wicked for me. I should see a bright rim round 
 hatred of her ! — the rock you describe. I could en-/ 
 dure horrors and not annihilate her! I should thinW 
 her sacred.'^ * 
 
 Woodseer turned about to have a look at the person 
 who was even quicker than he at realizing a person 
 from a hint of description, and almost insanely ex- 
 travagant in the pitch of the things he uttered to a 
 stranger. For himself, he was open with everybody, 
 his philosophy not allowing that strangers existed on 
 earth. But the presence of a lord brought the conven- 
 tional world to his feelings, though at the same time 
 the title seemed to sanction the exceptional abrupt- 
 
 /
 
 -4. 
 
 100 THE AMAZING MAKRIAGE 
 
 ness and wildness of this lord. As for suspecting 
 him to be mad, it wonld have been a common idea: 
 no stretching of speech or overstepping of social rules 
 could waken a suspicion so spiritless in Woodseer. 
 
 He said: "I can tell you I met her and she lives. 
 I could as soon swim in that torrent or leap the moun- 
 tain as repeat what she spoke, or sketch a feature of 
 her. She goes into the blood, she is a new idea of 
 women. She has the face that would tempt a gypsy 
 to evil tellings. I could think of it as a history written 
 in a line: Carinthia, Saint and Martyr! As for com- 
 parisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire." 
 
 "I have had that — I have thought that," said Lord 
 Fleetwood. "Go on; talk of her, pray; without com- 
 parisons. I detest them. How did you meet her ? 
 What made you part ? AVhere is she now ? I have no 
 wish to find her, but I want thoroughly to believe in 
 her." 
 
 Another than Woodseer would have perceived the 
 young lord's malady. Here w^as one bitten by the 
 serpent of love, and athirst for an image of the sex to 
 serve for the cooling herb, as youth will be. Woodseer 
 put it down to a curious imaginative fellowship with 
 himself. He forgot the lord, and supposed he had 
 found his own likeness, less gifted in speech. After 
 talking of Carinthia more and more in the abstract, he 
 fell upon his discovery of the Great Secret of life, 
 against which his hearer struggled for a time, though
 
 EKCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 101 
 
 that was cooling to him, too ; but ultimately there was 
 no resistance, and so deep did they sink into the idea 
 of pure contemplation, that the idea of woman seemed 
 to have become a part of it. No stronger proof of their 
 aethereal conversational earnestness could be offered. 
 A locality was given to the Great Secret, and of course 
 it was the place where the most poAverful recent 
 impression had been stamped on the mind of the 
 discoverer; the shado^^'y valley rolling from the slate- 
 rock. Woodseer was too artistic a dreamer to present 
 the passing vision of Carinthia with any associates there. 
 She passed : the solitude accepted her and lost her ; and 
 it was the richer for the one swift gleam : she brought 
 no trouble, she left no regrets ; she was the ghost of the 
 rocky obscurity. But now remembering her mountain 
 carol, he chanced to speak of her as a girl. 
 
 " She is a girl ? " cried Lord Fleetwood, frowning over 
 an utter revolution of sentiment at the thought of the 
 beautiful Gorgon being a girl; for rapid as he was to 
 imagine, he had raised a solid fabric upon his concep- 
 tion of Carinthia the woman, necessarily the woman — 
 logically. Who but the woman could look the Gorgon ! 
 He tried to explain it to be impossible for a girl to wear 
 the look : and his notion evidently was, that it had come 
 upon a beautiful face in some staring horror of a world 
 that had bitten the tender woman. She touched him 
 sympathetically through the pathos. 
 
 Woodseer flung out vociferously for the contrary.
 
 102 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Who but a girl could look the beautiful G-orgon ! What 
 other could seem an emanation of the mountain solitude ? 
 A woman would instantly breathe the world on it to 
 destroy it. Hers would be the dramatic and not the 
 poetic face. It would shriek of man, wake the echoes 
 with the tale of man, slaughter all quietude. But a 
 girl's face has no story of poisonous intrusion. She 
 indeed may be cast in the terrors of Nature, and yet be 
 sweet with Nature, beautiful because she is purely of 
 Nature. Woodseer did his best to present his view 
 irresistibly. Perhaps he was not clear ; it was a piece of 
 skiamachy, difficult to render clear to the defeated. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood had nothing to say but " Gorgon ! a 
 girl a Gorgon ! " and it struck AVoodseer as intensely 
 unreasonable, considering that he had seen the girl 
 whom, in his effort to portray her, he had likened to 
 a beautiful Gorgon. He recounted the scene of the 
 meeting with her, pictured it in effective colours, but 
 his companion gave no response, nor a nod. They 
 ceased to converse, and when the young lord's hired 
 carriage drew up on the road, Woodseer required persua- 
 sion to accompany him. They were both in their differ- 
 ent stations young tyrants of the world, ready to fight the 
 world and one another for not having their immediate 
 view of it such as they wanted it. They agreed, how- 
 ever, not to sleep in the city. Beds were to be had 
 near the top of a mountain on the other side of the 
 Salza, their driver informed them, and vowing them-
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 103 
 
 selves to that particular height, in a mutual disgust of s<; 
 the city, they waxed friendlier. 
 
 Woodseer soon had experience that he was receiv- 
 ing exceptional treatment from Lord Fleetwood, whose 
 man-servant was on the steps of the hotel in Salzburg 
 on the lookout for his master. 
 
 "Sir Meeson has been getting impatient, my lord," 
 said the man. 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby appeared; Lord Fleetwood cut 
 him short : " You're in a hurry ; go at once, don't wait 
 for me ; I join you in Baden. — Do me the favour to eat 
 with me," he turned to Woodseer. " And here, Corby ! 
 tell the countess I have a friend to bear me company, 
 aud there is to be an extra bedroom secured at her 
 hotel. That swinery of a place she insists on visiting 
 is usually crammed. With you there," he turned to 
 Woodseer, " I might find it agreeable. — You can take 
 my man, Corby ; I shall not want the fellow." 
 
 "Positively, my dear Fleetwood, you know," Sir 
 Meeson expostulated, " I am under orders ; I don't see 
 how — I really can't go on without you." 
 
 "Please yourself. This gentleman is my friend, Mr. 
 Woodseer." 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, 
 at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail 
 coat and brass buttons a victory. His tightness made 
 his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, 
 and could hardly hold on a leg ; but the presentation of
 
 104 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, carry- 
 ing a tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disor- 
 derly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood's friend — the 
 friend of the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain ! — 
 fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that ex- 
 hausted interrogatives. Woodseer passed him, slouching 
 a bow. The circular stare of Sir Meeson seemed unable 
 to contract. He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and 
 was then reminded that he dealt with prickles. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " he said, blinking to refresh 
 his eyeballs. " I missed you, I ran roimd and round the 
 town after you." 
 
 " I have been to the lake." 
 
 '^ Queer fish there!" Sir Meeson dropped a glance 
 on the capture. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer's arm. " Do you eat 
 with us ? " he asked the baronet, who had stayed his eat- 
 ing for an hour and was famished ; so they strode to the 
 dining-room. 
 
 " Do you wash, sir, before eating ? " Sir Meeson said 
 to Woodseer, caressing his hands when they had seated 
 themselves at table. "Appliances are to be found in 
 this hotel." 
 
 " Soap ? " said Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 "Soap — at least, in my chamber." 
 
 " Fetch it, please." 
 
 Sir Meeson, of course, could not hear that. He re- 
 quested the waiter to show the gentleman to a room.
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 105 
 
 Lord Fleetwood ordered the waiter to bring a hand- 
 basin and towel. "We're off directly and must eat at 
 once," he said. 
 
 " Soap — soap ! my dear Fleetwood," Sir Meeson 
 knuckled on the table, to impress it that his appetite 
 and his gorge demanded a thorough cleansing of those 
 fingers, if they were to sit at one board. 
 
 " Let the waiter fetch it." 
 
 "The soap is in my pcjitmaaiteaAi." 
 
 " You spoke of it as a necessity for this gentleman and 
 me. Bring it." 
 
 Woodseer had risen. Lord Fleetwood motioned him 
 down. He kept an eye dead as marble on Corby, who 
 muttered : " You can't mean that you ask me ? . . ." 
 But the alternative was forced on Sir Meeson by too 
 strong a power of the implacable eye ; there was thun- 
 der in it, a continuity of gaze forcefuller than repetitions 
 of the word. He knew Lord Fleetwood. Men privi- 
 leged to attend on him were dogs to the flinty young 
 despot : they were sure to be called upon to expiate the 
 faintest offence to him. He had hastily to consider, that 
 he was banished beyond appeal, with the whole torture 
 of banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or 
 else the mad behest must be obeyed. He protested, 
 shrugged, sat fast, and sprang up, remarking, that he 
 went with all the willingness imaginable. It could not 
 have been the first occasion. 
 
 He was affecting the excessively obsequious when he
 
 106 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 came back bearing his metal soap-case. The perform- 
 ance was checked by another look solid as shot, and as 
 qnick. Woodseer, who would have done for Sir Meeson 
 Corby or Lazarus what had been done for him, thought 
 little of the service, but so intense a peremptoriness in 
 the look of an eye made him uncomfortable in his own 
 sense of independence. The humblest citizen of a free 
 nation has that warning at some notable exhibition of 
 tyranny in a neighbouring State : it acts like a concussion 
 of the air. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood led an easy dialogue with him and 
 Sir Meeson, on their different themes immediately, which 
 was not less impressive to an observer. He listened to 
 Sir Meeson's entreaties that he should start at once for 
 Baden, and appeared to pity the poor gentleman, con- 
 demned by his oifice to hang about him in terror of his 
 liege lady's displeasure. Presently, near the close of the 
 meal, drawing a ring from his finger, he handed it to the 
 baronet, and said, "Give her that. She knows I shall 
 follow that." He added to himself : — I shall have ill- 
 luck till I have it back ! and he asked Woodseer whether 
 he put faith in the virtue of talismans. 
 
 "I have never possessed one," said Woodseer, with 
 his natural frankness. "It would have gone long be- 
 fore this for a night's lodging." 
 
 Sir Meeson heard him, and instantly urged Lord 
 Fleetwood not to think of dismissing his man Francis. 
 " I beg it, Fleetwood ! I beg you to take the man.
 
 ENCOUNTER OF TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN 107 
 
 Her ladyship will receive me badly, ring or no ring, 
 if she hears of your being left alone. I really can't 
 present mj^self. I shall not go, not go. I say no." 
 
 " Stay, then, " said Fleetwood. 
 
 He turned to Woodseer with an air of deference, 
 and requested the privilege of glancing at his note- 
 book again, and scanned it closely at one of the 
 pages. "I believe it true," he cried; "I had a half 
 recollection of it — I have had some such thought, 
 but never could put it in words. You have thought 
 deeply." 
 
 "That is only a surface thought, or common reflec- 
 tion," said Woodseer. 
 
 Sir Meeson stared at them in turn. Judging by 
 their talk and the effect produced on the earl, he took 
 Woodseer for a sort of conjuror. 
 
 It was his duty to utter a warning. 
 
 He drew Fleetwood aside. A word was whispered, 
 and they broke asunder with a snax^. Francis was 
 called. His master gave him his keys, and despatched 
 him into the town to purchase a knapsack or bag for 
 the outfit of a jolly beggar. The prospect delighted 
 Lord Fleetwood. He sang notes from the deep chest, 
 flaunting like an opera brigand, and contemplating his 
 wretched satellite's indecision with brimming amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 "Eemember, we fight for our money. I carry 
 mine," he said to Woodseer.
 
 108 THE AMAZING MAERIAGE 
 
 "Wouldn't it be expedient, Fleetwood . . ." Sir 
 Meeson suggested a treasurer in the person of himself. 
 
 "Not a florin, Corby! I should find it all gambled 
 away at Baden." 
 
 "But I am not Abrane, I'm not Abrane! I never 
 play, I have no mania, none. It would be prudent, 
 Fleetwood." 
 
 "The slightest bulging of a pocket Avould show on 
 you, Corby; and they Avould be at you, they would 
 fall on you and pluck you to have another fling. I'd 
 rather my money should go to a knight of the road 
 than feed that dragon's jaw. A highwayman seems 
 an honest fellow compared with your honourable cor- 
 poration of fly-catchers. I could surrender to him 
 with some satisfaction after a trial of the better man. 
 I've tried these tables, and couldn't stir a pulse. Have 
 you ? " 
 
 It had to be explained to Woodseer what was 
 meant by trying the tables. "Not I," said he, in 
 strong contempt of the queer allurement. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood studied him half a minute, as if 
 measuring and discarding a suspicion of the young 
 philosopher's possible weakness under temptation. 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby accompanied the oddly assorted 
 couple through the toAvn and a short way along the 
 road to the mountain, for the sake of quieting his con- 
 science upon the subject of his leaving them together. 
 He could not have sat down a second time at a table
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 109 
 
 icith those hands. He said it : — he could not have 
 done the thing. So the best he could do was to let 
 them go. Like many of his class, he had a mind 
 open to the effect of striking contrasts, and the spec- 
 tacle of the wealthiest nobleman in Great Britain 
 tramping the road, pack on back, with a young nobody 
 for his comrade, a total stranger, who might be a cut- 
 throat, and was avowedly next to a mendicant, charged 
 him with quantities of inter jectory matter, that he 
 caught himself firing to the foreign people on the 
 highway. Hundreds of thousands a year, and tramp- 
 ing it like a pedlar, with a beggar for his friend! 
 He would have given something to have an English 
 ear near him as he watched them rounding under the 
 mountain they were about to climb. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONCERNING THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE AND THE 
 WORSHIP OF HER, TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 OF SOME OF HER VOTARIES 
 
 In those early days of Fortune's pregnant alternations 
 of colour between the Red and the Black, exhibited pub- 
 licly, as it were a petroleum spring of the ebony-fiery 
 lake below, Black-Forest Baden was the sprightliest of 
 the ante-chambers of Hades. Thither in the ripeness of
 
 110 THE AMAZING MABBIAGE 
 
 the year trooped tlie devotees of the sable goddess to 
 perform sacrifice ; and annually among them the beauti- 
 ful Livia, the Countess of Fleetwood ; for nowhere else 
 had she sensation of the perfect repose which is rocked 
 to a slumber by gales. 
 
 She was not of the creatures who are excited by an 
 atmosphere of excitement; she took it as the nj^mph of 
 the stream her native wave, and swam on the flood with 
 expansive languor, happy to have the master passions 
 about her; one or two of which her dainty hand ca- 
 ressed, fearless of a sting ; the lady petted them as her 
 swans. It surprised her to a gentle contempt of men 
 and women, that they should be rufB.ed either by love or 
 play. A withholding from the scene will naturally arouse 
 disturbing wishes ; but to be present lulls ; for then we 
 live, we are in our element. And who could expect, 
 what sane person can desire, perpetual good luck ? For- 
 tune, the goddess, and young Love, too, are divine in 
 their mutability: and Fortune would resemble a hum- 
 drum housewife. Love a droning husband, if constancy 
 were practised by them. Observe the staggering and 
 plunging of the blindfold wretch seeking to be per- 
 suaded of their faithfulness. 
 
 She could make for herself a quiet centre in the heart 
 of the whirlwind, but the whirlwind was required. The 
 clustered lights at the corner of the vale under forest 
 hills, the bursts of music, the blazing windows of the 
 saloons of the Furies, and the gamblers advancing and
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 111 
 
 retreating, witli their totally opposite views of conse- 
 quences, and fashions of wearing or tearing the mask; 
 and closer, the figures shifting up and down the prom- 
 enade, known and unknown faces, and the histories 
 half known, half woven, weaving fast, which flew their 
 threads to provoke speculation; pleasantly embraced 
 and diverted the cool-blooded lady surrounded by her 
 courtiers, who could upon occasion supply the lumi- 
 nous clue or anecdote. She had an intuitive liveliness 
 to detect interchanges of eyes, the shuttle of intrigue; 
 the mild hypocrisy, the clever audacity, the suspicion 
 confirmed, the complication threatening to become reso- 
 nant and terrible; and the old crossing the young and 
 the young outwitting the old, wiles of fair traitors 
 and dark, knaves of all suits of the pack. A more 
 intimate acquaintance with their lineaments inspired 
 a regard for them, such as poets may feign the throned 
 high moon to entertain for objects causing her rays to 
 flash. 
 
 The simple fools, performing in character, were a 
 neutral people, grotesques and arabesques wreathed 
 about the margins of the scene. Venus or Fortune 
 smote them to a relievo distinguishing one from another. 
 Here, however, as elsewhere, the core of interest was 
 with the serious population, the lovers and the players 
 in earnest, Avho stood round the furnace and pitched 
 themselves into it, not always under a miscalculation 
 of their chances of emerging transfigured instead of
 
 112 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 serving for fuel. These, the tragical children of folly, 
 were astute : they played with lightning, and they knew 
 the conditions of the game; victories were to be had. 
 
 The ulterior conditions of the game, the price paid for 
 a victory, they thought little of : for they were feverish 
 worshippers of the phantasmal deity called the Present ; 
 a god reigning over the Past, appreciable only in the 
 Future ; whose whiff of actual being is composed of the 
 embryo idea of the union of these two periods. Still 
 he is occasionally a benevolent god to the appetites ; 
 which have but to be continuous to establish him in 
 permanence ; and as nothing in us more readily supposes 
 perpetuity than the appetite rushing to destroy itself, 
 the rational nature of the most universal worship on 
 earth is perceived at once. 
 
 oSTow the price paid for a victory is this : that having 
 been favoured in a single instance by the spouse of the 
 aforesaid eminent divinity — the Black Goddess of the 
 golden fringes — men believe in her forever after, behold 
 her everywhere, they belong to her. Their faith as to 
 sowing and reaping has gone ; and so has their capacity 
 to see the actual as it is; she has the power to attach 
 them to her skirts the more by rewarding their impas- 
 sioned devotion with cuffs and scorns. They have 
 ceased to have a first notion upon anything without a 
 second haunting it, which directs them to propitiate 
 Fortune. 
 
 But I am reminded by the convulsions of Dame Gos-
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 113 
 
 sip, that the wisdom of our ancestors makes it a mere 
 hammering of commonplace to insist on such reflections. 
 Many of them, indeed, took the union of the Black God- 
 dess and the Kosy Present for the composition of the 
 very Arch-Fiend. Some had a shot at the strange con- 
 jecture, figuring her as tired of men in the end and 
 challenging him below — equally tired of his easy con- 
 quests of men since the glorious old times of the duel- 
 ling saints. By virtue of his one incorrigible weakness, 
 which we know him to have as long as we have it our- 
 selves : viz., the belief in her existence ; she is to get the 
 better of him. 
 
 Upon this point the experience of Captain Abrane has 
 a value. Livia was a follower of the Eed and Black, 
 and the rounding ball in the person of the giant captain, 
 through whom she received her succession of sweetly 
 teasing thrills and shocks, as one of the adventurous 
 company they formed together. The place was known 
 to him as the fair Philistine to another muscular hero ; 
 he had been shorn there before, and sent forth tottering, 
 treating the friends he met as pillars to fall with him ; 
 and when the operation was done thoroughly, he pro- 
 nounced himself refreshed by it, like a more sensible 
 Samson, the cooler for his clipping. Then it was that he 
 relapsed undistractedly upon processes of his mind : and 
 he often said he thought Fortune would beat the devil. 
 
 Her power is shown in the moving of her solicitors 
 to think, instantly after they have made their cast, that
 
 114 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 tlie reverse of it was what they intended. It conies as 
 though she had withdrawn the bandage from her fore- 
 head and dropped a leaden glance on them, like a great 
 dame angry to have her signal misinterpreted. Well, 
 then, distinguished by the goddess in such a manner, we 
 have it proved to us how she wished to favour : for the 
 reverse wins, and we who are pinched blame not her 
 cruelty but oui- blind folly. This is true worship. 
 Henceforth the pain of her nip is mingled with the 
 dream of her kiss : between the positive and the imag- 
 ined of her we remain confused until the purse is an 
 empty body on a gallows, honour too, perhaps. 
 
 Captain Abrane was one of the Countess Livia's 
 numerous courtiers on the border of the promenade 
 under the lighted saloons. A colossus inactive, he had 
 little to say among the chattering circle; for when 
 seated, cards were wanted to animate him: and he 
 \ looked entirely out of place and unfitted, like a great 
 j vessel's figure-head in a shipwright's yard. 
 
 She murmured : " Not this evening ? " 
 
 Abrane quoted promptly a line of nursery song: 
 " How shall he cut it without e'er a knife ? " 
 
 *^ Have we rim it down so low ! " said she, with no 
 reproach in her tone. 
 
 The captain shrugged over his clean abyss, where 
 nothing was. 
 
 Yesterday their bank presented matronly propor- 
 tions. But an importuned goddess reduces the most
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 115 
 
 voluminous to bare stitches within a few ^vinks of an 
 eye. 
 
 Livia turned to a French gentleman of her court, 
 M. de St. Ombre, and pursued a conversation. He 
 was a stately cavalier, of the Gallicised Prankish out- 
 lines, ready, but grave in his bearing, grave in his de- 
 livery, trimly moustached, with a Guise beard. 
 
 His profound internal question relating to this un- 
 English beauty of the British Isles : — had she no 
 passion in her nature ? was not convinced by her ap- 
 parent insensibility to Fortune's whips. 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby inserted a word of Bull French out 
 of place from time to time. 
 
 As it might be necessary to lean on the little man 
 for weapons of war, supposing Lord Fleetwood delayed 
 his arrival yet another day, Livia was indulgent. She 
 assisted him to think that he spoke the foreign 
 tongue. 
 
 Mention of Lord Fleetwood set Sir Meeson harping 
 again on his alarms, in consideration of the vagabond 
 object the young lord had roamed away with. 
 
 " You forget that Russett has gypsy in him : Welsh ! 
 it's about the same," said Livia. "He can take excel- 
 lent care of himself and his purse." 
 
 "Countess, he is a good six days overdue." 
 
 "He will be in time for the ball at the Schloss." 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby produced an aspect of the word 
 "if," so perkily, that the dejected Captain Abrane
 
 116 THE AMAZING MARKIAGE 
 
 laughed outright and gave him double reason to fret 
 for Lord Fleetwood's arrival, by saying : ^' If he hangs 
 off much longer, I shall have to come on you for 
 another fifty." 
 
 Our two pedestrians out of Salzburg were standing 
 up in the night of cloud and pines above the glittering 
 pool, having made their way along the path from the 
 hill anciently dedicated to the god Mercury ; and at 
 the moment when Sir Meeson put forth his frilled wrists 
 to say: *'If you had seen his hands — the creature 
 Fleetwood trotted off alone with ! — you'd be a bit 
 anxious too " ; the young lord called his comrade to 
 gaze underneath them: "There they are, hard at it, at 
 their play ! — it's the word used for the filthiest gutter 
 scramble." 
 
 They had come to know something of one another's 
 humours ; which are taken by young men for their char- 
 acters ; and should the humours please, they are friends, 
 until further humours develop, trying these nascent con- 
 servatives hard to suit them to their moods as well as 
 the accustomed. Lord Fleetwood had discovered in 
 his companion, besides the spirit of independence and 
 the powers of thought impressed on him by Woodseer's 
 precocious flashes, a broad playfulness, that trenched 
 on buffoonery; it astonished, amused, and relieved him, 
 loosening the spell of reverence cast over him by one 
 who could so wonderfully illumine his brain. Prone 
 to admire and bend the knee where he admired, he
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 117 
 
 chafed at subjection, unless lie had the particular spell 
 constantly renewed. A tone in him once or twice of 
 late, different from the comrade's, had warned Woodseer 
 to be guarded. 
 
 Susceptible, however, of the extreme contrast between 
 the gamblers below and Nature's lover beside him, 
 Fleetwood retm-ned to his enthusiasm without think- 
 ing it a bondage. 
 
 "I shall never forget the walk we've had. I have 
 to thank you for the noblest of pleasures. You've 
 taught me — well, a thousand things ; the things 
 money can't buy. What mornings they were! And 
 the dead-tired nights ! Under the rock and up to see 
 the snowy peak pink in a gap of thick mist. You 
 were right : it made a crimsoning colour shine like a new 
 idea. Up in those mountains one walks with the divini- 
 ties, you said. It's perfectly true. I shall remember 
 I did. I have a treasure for life ! 'Now I understand 
 where you get your ideas. The life we lead down 
 there is hoggish. You have chosen the right. You're 
 right, over and over again, when you say, the dirty 
 sweaters are nearer the angels for cleanliness, than my 
 Lord. and Lady Sybarite out of a bath, in chemical scents. 
 A man who thinks, loathes their High Society. I went 
 through Juvenal at college. But you — to be sure, you 
 add example — make me feel the contempt of it more. 
 I am everlastingly indebted to you. Yes, I won't forget : 
 you preach against the despising of anything."
 
 118 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Now this was pleasant in Woodseer's ears, inasmuch 
 as it established the young nobleman as the pupil of 
 his philosophy for the conduct of life; and to fortify 
 him, he replied: — 
 
 "Set your mind on the beauty, and there'll be no 
 room for comparisons. Most of them are unjust, pre- 
 cious few instructive. In this case, they spoil both 
 pictures : and that scene down there rather hooks me ; 
 though I prefer the Dachstein in the wane of the after- 
 glow. You called it Carinthia." 
 
 "I did: the beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus — if 
 she is to be a girl ! " Fleetwood rejoined. " She looked 
 burnt out — a spectre." 
 
 "One of the admirably damned,'' said Woodseer, and 
 he murmured with enjoyment: "Between the lights — 
 that's the beauty and the tragedy of Purgatory ! " 
 
 His comrade fell in with the pictured idea: "You 
 hit it : — not what you called the ^ sublimely milky,' 
 and not squalid, as you'll see the faces of the gam- 
 bling women at the tables below. Oblige me — may I 
 beg ? — don't clap names on the mountains we've seen. 
 It stamps guide-book on them, English tourist, horrors. 
 We'll moralize over the crowds at the tables down 
 there. On the whole, it's a fairish game: you know 
 the odds against you, as you don't on the Turf or 
 the Bourse. Have your fling; but don't get bitten. 
 There's a virus. I'm not open to it. Others are." 
 
 Hereupon Woodseer, wishing to have his individual-
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 119 
 
 ity recognized in the universality it consented to, 
 remarked on an exchequer that could not afford to 
 lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win. 
 
 These were, no doubt, good reasons for abstaining, 
 and they were grand morality. They were, at the 
 same time, customary phrases of the unfleshed in folly. 
 They struck Fleetwood with a curious reminder of the 
 puking inexperienced, whom he had seen subsequently 
 plunge suicidally. He had a sharp vision of the 
 attractive forces of the game; and his elemental nat- 
 ure exulted in siding with the stronger against a pre- 
 tender to the superhuman. For Woodseer had spoken 
 a trifle loftily, as quite above temptation. To see a 
 forewarned philosopher lured to try the swim on those 
 tides, pulled along the current, and caught by the 
 undertug of the lasher, would be fun. 
 
 "We'll drop down on them, find our hotel, and have 
 a look at what they're doing," he said, and stepped. 
 
 Woodseer would gladly have remained. The starlit 
 black ridges about him and the dragon's mouth yawning 
 underneath were an opposition of spiritual and mundane ; 
 innocent, noxious ; exciting to the youthful philosopher. 
 He had to follow, and so rapidly in the darkness that he 
 stumbled and fell on an arm ; a small matter. 
 
 Bed-chambers awaited them at the hotel, none of 
 the party: and Fleetwood's man-servant was absent: 
 " Gambling, the rascal ! " he said. Woodseer heard the 
 first note of the place in that.
 
 120 THE AMAZING MABEIAGE 
 
 His leader was washedj neatly dressed, and knocking 
 at his door very soon, impatient to be off, and lie flung 
 a promise of " supper presently " to one whose modest 
 purse had fallen into a debate with this lordly hostelry, 
 counting that a supper and a night there would do for 
 it. They hurried on to the line of promenaders, a river 
 of cross-currents by the side of seated groups ; and the 
 willowy swish of silken dresses, feminine perfumery, 
 cigar-smoke, chatter, laughter, told of pleasure reigning. 
 
 Fleetwood scanned the groups. He had seen enough 
 in a moment and his face blackened. A darting 
 waiter was called to him. 
 
 He said to Woodseer, savagely, as it sounded : " You 
 shall have something to joint your bones!" What 
 cause of wrath he had was past a guess : a wolf at his 
 vitals bit him, hardening his handsome features. 
 
 The waiter darted back, bearing a tray and tall glasses 
 filled each with piled parti-coloured liquors, on the top 
 of which an egg-yolk swam. Fleetwood gave example. 
 Swallowing your egg, the fiery-velvet triune behind 
 slips after it, in an easy milky way, like a princess's 
 train on a state-march, and you are completely trans- 
 formed, very agreeably ; you have become a merry de- 
 mon. ^^Well, yes, it's next to magic," he replied to 
 Woodseer's astonished snigger after the draught, and 
 explained, that it was famous Viennese four-of-the- 
 morning panacea, the revellers' electrical restorer. 
 "Now you can hold on for an hour or two, and then 
 we'll sup. At Kome ? "
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 121 
 
 " Ay ! Druids to-morrow ! " cried the philosopher 
 bewitched. 
 
 He found himself bowing to a most heavenly lady, 
 composed of day and night in her colouring, but more of 
 night, where the western edge has become a pale steel 
 blade. Men were around her, forming a semi-circle. 
 The world of men and women was mere timber and 
 leafage to this flower of her sex, glory of her kind. 
 How he behaved in her presence, he knew not ; he was 
 beyond self-criticism or conscious reflection ; simply the 
 engine of the commixed three liquors, with parlous 
 fine thoughts, and a sense of steaming into the infinite. 
 
 To leave her was to have her as a moon in the heavens 
 and to think of her creatively. A swarm of images 
 rushed about her and away, took lustre and shade. She 
 was a miracle of greyness, her eyes translucently grey, 
 a dark-haired queen of the twilights ; and his heart 
 sprang into his brain to picture the novel beauty ; lan- 
 guage became a flushed Bacchanal in a ring of dancing 
 similes. Lying beside a bank of silvery cinquefoil 
 against a clear evening sky, where the planet Venus is 
 a point of new and warmer light, one has the vision of 
 her. Or something of Persephone rising to greet her 
 mother, when our beam of day first melts through her as 
 she kneels to gather an early bud of the year, would be 
 near it. Or there is a lake in mid-forest, that curls part 
 in shadow under the foot of morning : there we have 
 her.
 
 122 THE AMAZING MABRIAGE 
 
 He strained to the earthly and the skyey likenesses of 
 his marvel of human beauty because they bestowed her 
 on him in passing. All the while, he was gazing on a 
 green gaming-table. 
 
 The gold glittered, and it heaped or it vanished. Con- 
 temptuous of money, beyond the limited sum for his 
 needs, he gazed ; imagination was blunted in him to the 
 hot drama of the business. Moreover his mind was 
 engaged in insisting that the Evening Star is not to 
 be called Venus, because of certain stories; and he 
 was vowed to defend his lady from any allusion to 
 them. This occupied him. By degrees, the visible 
 asserted its authority; his look on the coin fell to 
 speculating. Oddly, too, he was often right ; — the 
 money, staked on the other side, would have won. 
 He considered it rather a plain calculation than a 
 guess. 
 
 Philosophy withdrew him from his temporary interest 
 in the tricks of a circling white marble ball. The chuck- 
 farthing of street urchins has quite as much dignity. 
 He compared the creatures dabbling over the board to 
 summer flies on butcher's meat, periodically scared by 
 a cloth. More in the abstract, they were snatching at a 
 snapdragon bowl. It struck him, that the gamblers had 
 thronged on an invitation to drink the round of seed- 
 time and harvest in a gulp. Again they were desperate 
 gleaners, hopping, skipping, bleeding, amid a whizz of 
 scythe-blades, for small wisps of booty. Nor was it
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 123 
 
 long before the presidency of an ancient hoary Goat- 
 Satan might be perceived, with skew-eyes and pucker- 
 mouth, nursing a hoof on a knee. 
 
 Our mediseval Enemy sat symbolical in his deform- 
 ities, as in old Italian and Dutch thick-line engravings 
 of him. He rolled a ball for souls, excited like kittens, 
 to catch it, and tumbling into the dozens of vacant pits. 
 So it seemed to Woodseer, whose perceptions were 
 discoloured by hereditary antagonism. Had he pre- 
 served his philosopher's eye, he would have known 
 that the Hoofed One is too wily to show himself, owing 
 to his ugliness. The Black Goddess and no other pre- 
 sides at her own game. She (it is good for us to know 
 it) is the Power who challenges the individual, it is he 
 who spreads the net for the mass. She liquefies the 
 brain of man; he petrifies or ossifies the heart. From 
 her comes craziness, from him perversity : a more pro- 
 vocative and, on the whole, more contagious disease. 
 The gambler does not seek to lead his fellows into per- 
 dition; the snared of the Demon have i^leasure in the 
 act. Hence our naturally interested forecasts of the 
 contest between them : for if he is beaten, as all must 
 be at the close of an extended game with her, we have 
 only to harden the brain against her allurements and 
 we enter a clearer field. 
 
 Woodseer said to Fleetwood; "That ball has a look 
 of a nymph running round and round till she changes 
 to one of the Fates."
 
 124 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " We'll have a run with her/' said Fleetwood, keener 
 for business thaai for metaphors at the moment. 
 
 He received gold for a bank-note. Captain Abrane 
 hurriedly begged a loan. Both of them threw. Neither 
 of them threw on the six numbers Woodseer would have 
 selected, and they lost. He stated that the number of 
 17 had won before. Abrane tried the transversal en- 
 closing this favoured -number. " Of course ! " he cried, 
 with foul resignation and a hostile glare: the ball had 
 seated itself and was grinning at him from the lowest 
 of the stalls. 
 
 Fleetwood quitted the table-numbers to throw on 
 Pair; he won, Avon again, pushed his luck and lost, 
 dragging Abrane with him. The giant varied his tone 
 of acquiescence in Fortune's whims : " Of course ! I've 
 only to fling ! Luck hangs right enough till I put down 
 my stake." 
 
 '' If the luck has gone three times, the chances . . ." 
 AVoodseer was rather inquiring than pronouncing : Lord 
 Fleetwood cut him short. "The chances are equally 
 the contrary ! " and discomposed his argumentative 
 mind. 
 
 As argTiment in such a place was impossible, he had 
 a wild idea of example — "just to see;" and though 
 he smiled, his brain was liquefying. Upon a calcula- 
 tion of the chances, merely for the humour of it, he 
 laid a silver piece on the first six, which had been neg- 
 lected. T]iey were now blest. He laid his winnings
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 125 
 
 on the number 17. Who would have expected it? 
 why, the player, surely ! Woodseer comported himself 
 like a veteran: he had proved that you can calculate 
 the chances. Instead of turning in triumph to Lord 
 Fleetwood, he laid gold pieces to hug the number 17, 
 and ten in the centre. And it is the truth, he hoped 
 then to lose and have done with it — after proving his 
 case. The ball whirled, kicked, tried for seat in two, in 
 three points, and entered 17. The usual temporary 
 wonderment flew round the table; and this number 
 was courted in dread, avoided with apprehension. 
 
 Abrane let fly a mighty breath : " Virgin, by Jove ! " 
 
 Success was a small matter to Gower Woodseer. He 
 displayed his contempt of fortune by letting his heap 
 of bank-notes lie on Impair, and he won. Abrane 
 bade him say " Maximum '^ in a furious whisper. He 
 did so, as one at home with the word; and winning 
 repeatedly, observed to Fleetwood : " Now I can under- 
 stand what historians mean, in telling us of heroes 
 rushing into the fray and vainly seeking death. I 
 always thought death was to be had, if you were in 
 earnest." 
 
 Fleetwood scrutinized the cast of his features and 
 the touch of his fingers on the crispy i^aper. 
 
 "Come to another of these ^ green fields,'" he 
 returned briefly. "The game here is child's play." 
 
 Urging Virgin Luck not to quit his initiatory table, 
 the captain reluctantly went at their heels. Shortly
 
 126 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 before the tables were clad in mantles for the night, 
 he reported to Livia one of the great cases of Virgin 
 Luck; described it, from the silver piece to the big 
 heap of notes, and drew on his envy of the fellow to 
 sketch the indomitable coolness shown in following or 
 in quitting a run. " That fellow it is, Fleetwood's 
 tag-rag ; holds his head like a street-fiddler ; Woodier 
 or some name. But there's nothing to be done if we 
 don't cultivate him. He must have pocketed a good 
 three thousand and more. They had a quarrel about 
 calculations of chances, and Fleet ran the V up his fore- 
 head at a piece of impudence. Fellow says some high-fly- 
 ing stuff ; Fleet brightens like a Sunday chimney-sweep. 
 If I believe in Black Arts upon my word ! " 
 
 "Russett is not usually managed with ease," the 
 lady said. 
 
 Her placid observation was directed on the pair 
 then descending the steps. 
 
 "Be careful how you address this gentleman," she 
 counselled Abrane. '- The name is not Woodier, I 
 know. It must be the right name or none." 
 
 Livia's fairest smile received them. She heard the 
 captain accosting the child of luck as Mr. Woodier, 
 and she made a rustle in rising to take Fleetwood's arm. 
 
 "We haven't dined, we have to sup," said he. 
 
 "You are released at the end of the lamps. You 
 redeem your ring, Russett, and I will restore it. I 
 have to tell you, Henrietta is here, to-morrow."
 
 THE BLACK GODDESS FORTUNE 127 
 
 "She might be in a better place." 
 
 "The place where she is to be seen is not generally 
 undervalued by men. It is not her fault that she is 
 absent. The admiral was persuaded to go and attend 
 those cavalry manoeuvres with the grand duke, to 
 whom he had been civil when in command in the 
 Mediterranean squadron. You know, the admiral 
 believes he has military — I mean soldierly — genius; 
 and the delusion may have given him wholesome 
 exercise and helped him to forget his gout. So far, 
 Henrietta will have been satisfied. She cannot have 
 found much amusement among dusty troopers or at 
 that court at Carlsruhe. Our French milliner there 
 has helped in retarding her — quite against her will. 
 She has had to choose a ball-dress for the raw 
 mountain-girl they have with them, and get her fitted, 
 and it's a task ! Why take her to the ball ? But the 
 admiral's infatuated Avith this girl^ and won't hear of 
 her exclusion — because, he says, she understands a 
 field of battle ; and the Ducal party have taken to 
 her. Ah, Eussett, you should not have flown! No 
 harm, only Henrietta does require a trifle of manage- 
 ment. She writes, that she is sure of you for the 
 night at the Schloss." 
 
 "Why, ma'am?" 
 
 " You have given your word. ' He never breaks 
 his lightest word,' she says." 
 
 " It sounds like the beginning of respect."
 
 128 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "The rarest thing men teach women to feel for 
 them ! " 
 
 " A respectable love match — eh ? Good Lord ! — 
 You'll be civil to my friend. You have struck him to 
 the dust. You have your one poetical admirer in him." 
 
 " I am honoured, E/Ussett." 
 
 "Cleared out, I suppose? Abrane is a funnel for 
 pouring into that Bank. Have your fun as you like it ! 
 I shall get supplies to-morrow. By the way^ you have 
 that boy Cressett here. What are you doing with him ? " 
 
 Livia spoke of watching over him and guarding him. 
 
 " He was at the table beside me, bursting to liave a 
 fling ; and my friend Mr. Woodseer said, it was ^ Adonis 
 come to spy the boar ' : — the picture ! " 
 
 Prompt as bugle to the breath, Livia proposed to bet 
 him fifty pounds that she would keep young Cressett 
 from gambling a single louis. The pretty saying did 
 not touch her. 
 
 Fleetwood moved and bowed. Sir Meeson Corby simu- 
 lated a petrifaction of his frame at seeing the Countess 
 of Fleetwood actually partly bent with her gracious 
 acknowledgment of the tramp's gawky homage.
 
 SMALL CAUSES 129 
 
 CHAPTEE X 
 
 SMALL CAUSES 
 
 A CLOCK sounded one of the later morning hours of 
 the night as Gower Woodseer stood at his hotel door, 
 having left Fleetwood with a band of revellers. The 
 night was now clear. Stars were low over the ridge of 
 pines, di'opped to a league of our strange world to record 
 the doings. Beneath this roof lay the starry She. He 
 was elected to lie beneath it also: and he beheld his 
 heavenly lady floating on the lull of soft white cloud 
 among her sister spheres. After the way of imaginative 
 young men, he had her features more accurately now 
 she was hidden, and he idealized her more. He could 
 escape for a time from his coil of similes and paint for 
 himself the irids of her large, long, grey eyes darkly 
 rimmed ; purest water-grey, lucid within the ring, beneath 
 an arch of lashes. He had them fast ; but then he fell 
 to contemplating their exceeding rareness; and the 
 mystery of the divinely grey swung a kindled fancy to 
 the flight with some queen-witch of woods, of whom a 
 youth may dream under the spell of twilights East or 
 West among forest branches. 
 
 She had these marvellous eyes and the glamour for 
 men. She had not yet met a man with the poetical 
 twist in the brain to prize her elementally. All ad-
 
 130 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 mitted the glamour; none of her courtiers was able to 
 name it, even the poetical head giving it a name did not 
 think of the witch in her looks as a witch in her deeds, 
 a modern daughter of the mediaeval. To her giant 
 squire the eyes of the lady were queer : they were 
 unlit glass lamps to her French suppliant; and to the 
 others, they were attractively uncommon; the charm 
 for them being in her fine outlines, her stature, carriage 
 of her person and unalterable composure ; particularly 
 her latent daring. She had the effect on the general 
 mind of a lofty crag-castle with a history. There was a 
 whiff of gunpowder exciting the atmosphere in the anec- 
 dotal part of the history known. 
 
 Woodseer sat for a certain time Q,ver his note-book. 
 He closed it with a thrilling conceit of the right thing 
 written down; such as entomologists feel when they 
 have pinned the rare insect. But what is butterfly or 
 beetle compared with the chiselled sentences carved out 
 of air to constitute us part owner of the breathing image 
 and spirit of an adored fair woman ? We repeat them, 
 and the act of repeating them makes her close on ours, 
 by virtue of the eagle thought in the stamped gold of 
 the lines. 
 
 Then, though she is not ever to be absolutely ours (and 
 it is an impoverishing desire that she should be), we have 
 beaten out the golden sentence — the essential she and we 
 in one. But is it so precious after all ? A suspicious 
 ring of an adjective drops us on a sickening descent.
 
 SMALL CAUSES 131 
 
 The author dashed at his book, examined, approved, 
 keenly enjoyed, and he murderously scratched the 
 adjective. She stood better Avithout it, as a bright 
 planet star issuing from clouds, which are perhaps an 
 adornment to our hackneyed moon. This done, he 
 restored the book to his coat's breast-pocket, smiling 
 or sneering at the rolls of bank-notes there, disdaining 
 to count them. They stuffed an inner waistcoat pocket 
 and his trousers also. They at any rate warranted 
 that we can form a calculation of the chances, let 
 Lord Fleetwood rave as he may please. 
 
 Woodseer had caught a glimpse of the elbow-point 
 of his coat when flinging it back to the chair. There 
 was distinctly abrasion. Philosophers laugh at such 
 things. But they must be the very ancient pallium 
 philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to 
 merriment over the spectacle of nether garments gapped 
 at the spot where man is most vulnerable. He got 
 loose from them and held them up to the candle, and 
 the rays were admitted, neither winking nor peeping. 
 Serviceable old clothes, no doubt. Time had not dealt 
 them the final kick before they scored a good record. 
 They dragged him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession 
 of 'some weakness, that he could not analyze for the 
 swirl of emotional thoughts in the way; and they had 
 him to the ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a 
 mere squat toad through one of these petty material 
 strokes. Where then is Philosophy? But who can
 
 132 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a glorious 
 lady ! Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can pre- 
 sume to think of her or stand within fifty miles of 
 her orbit? 
 
 A dreary two hours brought round daylight. Wood- 
 seer quitted his restless bed and entered the abjured 
 habiliments, chivalrous enough to keep from denounc- 
 ing them until he could cast the bad skin they now 
 were to his uneasy sensations. He remembered having 
 stumbled and fallen on the slope of the hill into this 
 vale, and probably then the mischief had occurred: 
 though a brush would have been suflS.cient, the slightest 
 collision. Only, it was odd that the accident should 
 have come to pass just previous to his introduction. 
 How long antecedent was it ? He belaboured his 
 memory to reckon how long it was from the moment 
 of the fall to the first sight of that lady. 
 
 His window looked dowai on the hotel stable-yard. 
 A coach-house door was open. Odd or not — and it 
 certainly looked like fate — that he should be bowing 
 to his lady so shortly after the mishap expelling him, 
 he had to leave the place. A groom in the yard 
 was hailed, and cheerily informed him he could be 
 driven to Carlsruhe as soon as the coachman had 
 finished his breakfast. At Carlsruhe a decent refitting 
 might be obtained, and he could return from exile 
 that very day, thanks to the praiseworthy early hours 
 of brave old Germany.
 
 SMALL CAUSES 133 
 
 He had swallowed a cup of coffee with a roll of 
 stale bread, in the best of moods, and entered his 
 carriage ; he was calling the order to start when a 
 shout surprised his ear : " The fiddler bolts ! '' 
 
 Captain Abrane's was the voice. About twenty- 
 paces behind, Abrane, Fleetwood, and one whom they 
 called Chummy Potts, were wildly waving arms. Wood- 
 seer could hear the captain's lowered roar : " Race you, 
 Chummy, couple of louis, catch him first ! " The two 
 came pelting up to the carriage abreast. 
 
 They were belated revellers, and had been carelessly 
 strolling under the pinky cloudlets bedward, after a pro- 
 longed carousal with the sons and daughters of hilarious 
 nations, until the apparition of Virgin Luck on the wing 
 shocked all prospect of a dead fight with the tables that 
 day. 
 
 " Here, come, no, by Jove, you, Mr. Woodsir ! won't 
 do, not a bit ! can't let you go," cried Abrane, as 
 he puffed. " What ! cut and run and leave us, post 
 winnings — bankers — knock your luck on the head ! 
 '\^Tiat a fellow ! Can't let you. Countess never forgive 
 us. You promised — swore it — play for her. Struck 
 all aheap to hear of your play! You've got the trick. 
 Her purse for you in my pocket. Never a fellow played 
 like you. Cool as a cook over a gridiron! Comme 
 un phare ! St. Ombre says — that Frenchman. You 
 astonished the Frenchman ! And now cut and run ? 
 Can't allow it. Honour of the country at stake."
 
 134 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "Hands off!'^ Woodseer bellowed, feeling himself 
 a leaky vessel in dock, his infirmities in danger of 
 exposure. " If yon pull ! — what the deuce do you 
 want ? Stop ! " 
 
 "Out you come," said the giant, and laughed at the 
 fun to his friends, who were entirely harmonious when 
 not violently dissenting, as is the way with Night's 
 rollickers before their beds have reconciled them to the 
 day-beams. 
 
 Woodseer would have had to come and was coming ; 
 he happened to say : " Don't knock my pipe out of my 
 mouth," and touched a chord in the giant. 
 
 "All right; smoke your pipe," was answered to his 
 remonstrance. 
 
 During the amnesty, Fleetwood inquired: "Where 
 are you going ? " 
 
 " For a drive, to be sure. Don't you see ! " 
 
 "You'll return?" 
 
 " I intend to return.'^ 
 
 " He's beastly excited," quoth Abrane. 
 
 Fleetwood silenced him, though indeed Woodseer 
 appeared suspiciously restive. 
 
 " Step down and have a talk with me before you start. 
 You're not to go yet." 
 
 "I must. I'm in a hurry." 
 
 "What's the hurry?" 
 
 " I want to smoke and think." 
 
 " Takes a carriage on the top of the morning to smoke
 
 SMALL CAUSES 135 
 
 and think ! Hark at that ! " Abrane sang ont. " Oh, 
 come along quietly, you fellow, there's a good fellow ! 
 It concerns us all, every man Jack; we're all bound up 
 in your fortunes. Fellow with luck like yours can't 
 pretend to behave independently. Out of reason ! " 
 
 " Do you give me your word you return ? " said 
 Fleetwood. 
 
 Woodseer replied : " Very well, I do ; there, I give 
 my word. Hang it ! now I know what they mean by 
 ^ anything for a quiet life.' Just a shake brings us down 
 on that cane-bottomed chair ! " 
 
 " You return to-day ? " 
 
 " To-day, yes, yes." 
 
 Fleetwood signified the captive's release ; and Abrane 
 immediately suggested : — 
 
 "Pop old Chummy in beside the fellow to mount 
 guard." 
 
 Potts was hustled and precipitated into the carriage 
 by the pair, with whom he partook this last glimmer of 
 their night's humorous extravagances, for he was an 
 easy creature. The carriage drove off. 
 
 " Keep him company ! " they shouted. 
 
 " Escort him back ! " said he, nodding. 
 
 He remarked to Woodseer : " With your permission," 
 concerning the seat he took, and that " a draught of morn- 
 ing air would do him good." Then he laughed politely, 
 exchanged wavy distant farewells with his comrades, 
 touched a breast-pocket for his case of cigars, pulled forth
 
 136 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 one, obtained " the loan of a light,'' blew clouds and fell 
 into the anticipated composure^ quite understanding the 
 case and his office. 
 
 Both agreed as to the fine morning it was. Woodseer 
 briefly assented to his keeper's reiterated encomium on 
 the morning, justified on oath. A fine morning, indeed. 
 '^ Damned if I think I ever saw so fine a morning ! " 
 Potts cried. He had no other subject of conversation 
 with this hybrid: and being equally disposed for hot 
 discourse or for sleep, the deprivation of the one and 
 the other forced him to seek amusement in his famous 
 reading of character ; which was profound among the 
 biped equine, jockeys, turfmen, sharpers, pugilists, 
 demireps. He fronted Woodseer with square shoulders 
 and wide knees, an elbow on one, a fist on the other, 
 engaged in what he termed the "prodding of his eel," 
 or '^ nicking of his man," a method of getting straight 
 at the riddle of the fellow by the test of how long he 
 could endure a flat mute stare and return look for look 
 unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly 
 covers the insolence. But if by chance an equable, not 
 too narrowly focussed, counterstare is met, our imperti- 
 nent inquisitor may resemble the fisherman pulled into 
 deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man, 
 he was not attempting to fathom him: he had besides 
 other stuff in his head. Potts had naught, and the poor 
 particle he was wriggled under detection. 
 
 " Tobacco before breakfast ! " he said disgustedly,
 
 SMALL CAUSES 137 
 
 tossing his cigar to the road. "Your pipe holds on. 
 Bad thing, I can tell you, that smoking on an empty- 
 stomach. No trainer'd allow it, not for a whole fee or 
 double. Kills your wind. Let me ask you, my good 
 sir, are you going to turn ? We've sat a fairish stretch. 
 I begin to want my bath and a shave, linen and coffee. 
 Thirsty as a dog." 
 
 He heard with stupefaction, that he could alight on 
 the spot, if he pleased, otherwise he would be driven 
 into Carlsruhe. And now they had a lingual encounter, 
 hot against cool ; but the eyes of Chummy Potts having 
 been beaten, his arguments and reproaches were not 
 backed by the powerful looks which are an essential 
 part of such eloquence as he commanded. They fled 
 from his enemy's currishly, even while he was launching 
 epithets. His pathetic position subjected him to beg 
 that Woodseer would direct the driver to turn, for he 
 had no knowledge of " their German lingo." And said 
 he : " You've nothing to laugh at, that I can see. I'm at 
 your mercy, you brute ; caught in a trap. I never walk ; 
 — and the sun fit to fry a mackerel along that road ! I 
 apologize for abusing you ; I can't do more. You're an 
 infernally clever player — there ! And, upon my soul, I 
 could drink ditchwater ! But if you're going in for 
 transactions at Carlsruhe, mark my words, your luck's 
 gone. Laugh as much as you like." 
 
 Woodseer happened to be smiling over the excellent 
 reason for not turning back which inflicted the woful-
 
 138 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ness. He was not without sympathy for a thirsty 
 wretch, and guessing, at the sight of an avenue of limes 
 to the left of the road, that a wayside inn was below, he 
 said: "You can have coffee or beer in two minutes," 
 and told the driver where to pull up. 
 
 The sight of a grey-jacketed, green-collared sportsman, 
 dog at heel, crossing the flat land to the hills of the 
 forest, pricked him enviously, and caused him to ask 
 what change had come upon him, that he should be 
 hurrying to a town for a change of clothes. Just as 
 Potts was about to jump out, a carriage, with a second 
 behind it, left the inn door. He rubbed a hand on his 
 unshaven chin, tried a glance at his shirt-front, and 
 remarking : '' It won't be any one Avho knows me," stood 
 to let the carriages pass. In the first were a young lady 
 and a gentleman: the lady brilliantly fair, an effect of 
 auburn hair and complexion, despite the signs of a storm 
 that had swept them and had not cleared from her eye- 
 lids. Apparently her maid, a damsel sitting straight up, 
 occupied the carriage following; and this fresh-faced 
 young person twice quickly and bluntly bent her head 
 as she was driven by. Potts was unacquainted with the 
 maid. But he knew the lady well, or well enough for 
 her inattention to be the bigger puzzle. She gazed at 
 the Black Porest hills in the steadiest manner, with eyes 
 betraying more than they saw ; which solved part of the 
 puzzle, of course. Her reasons for declining to see him 
 were exposed by the presence of the gentleman beside
 
 SMALL CAUSES 139 
 
 her. At the same time, in so highly bred a girl, a 
 defenceless exposure was unaccountable. Half a nod 
 and the shade of a smile would have been the proper 
 course ; and her going along on the road to the valley 
 seemed to say it might easily have been taken; except 
 that there had evidently been a bit of a scene. 
 
 Potts ranked Henrietta's beauty far above her cousin 
 Livia's. He was therefore personally offended by her 
 disregard of him, and her bit of a scene with the fellow 
 carrying her off did him injury on behalf of his friend 
 Fleetwood. He dismissed Woodseer curtly. Thirsting 
 more to gossip than to drink, he took a moody draught 
 of beer at the inn, and by the aid of a conveyance, 
 "hastily built of rotten planks to serve his needs, and 
 drawn by a horse of the old wars," as he reported on his 
 arrival at Baden, reached that home of the maltreated 
 innocents twenty minutes before the countess and her 
 party were to start for lunch up the Lichtenthal. Natu- 
 rally, he was abused for letting his bird fly : but as he 
 was shaven, refreshed, and in clean linen, he could pull 
 his shirt-cuffs and take seat at his breakfast-table with 
 equanimity while Abrane denounced him. 
 
 "1 bet you the fellow's luck has gone," said Potts. 
 " He's no new hand and you don't think him so either, 
 Fleet. I've looked into the fellow's eye and seen a leery 
 old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile stuff. How- 
 ever, perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering Carls- 
 ruhe road for nothing."
 
 140 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 He screwed a look at the earl, who sent Abrane to 
 carry a message and heard the story Potts had to tell. 
 
 " Henrietta Fakenham ! no mistake about her ; driving 
 out from a pothouse ; man beside her, military man ; 
 might be a German. And, if you please, quite unac- 
 quainted with your humble servant, though we were as 
 close as you to me. Something went wrong in that pot- 
 house. Red eyes. There had been a scene, one could 
 swear. Behind the lady another carriage, and her maid. 
 Never saw the girl before, and sets to bowing and smirk- 
 ing at me, as if I was the fellow of all others ! Comical. 
 I made sure they were bound for this place. They were 
 on the Strasburg road. No sign of them ? " 
 
 " You speak to me ? '' said Fleetwood. 
 
 Potts muttered. He had put his foot into it. 
 
 '' You have a bad habit of speaking to yourself," Fleet- 
 wood remarked, and left him. He suffered from the 
 rustics he had to deal with among his class, and it was 
 not needed that he should thunder at them to make his 
 wrath felt. 
 
 Livia swam in, asking : " What has come to Eussett ? 
 He passed me in one of his black fits." 
 
 The tale of the Carlsruhe road was repeated by Potts. 
 She reproved him. " How could you choose Eussett for 
 such a report as that ! The admiral was on the road 
 behind. Henrietta — you're sure it was she? German 
 girls have much the same colouring. The gentleman 
 with her must have been one of the Court equerries.
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 141 
 
 They were driving to some chateau or battle-field the 
 admiral wanted to inspect. Good-looking man? Mili- 
 tary man ? " 
 
 "Oh ! the man ! pretty fair, I dare say," Potts rejoined. 
 " If it wasn't Henrietta Fakenham, I see with the back 
 of my head. German girl ! The maid was a German 
 girl." 
 
 " That may Avell be," said Livia. 
 
 She conceived the news to be of sufficient importance 
 for her to countermand the drive up the Lichtenthal, and 
 take the Carlsruhe road instead; for Henrietta was weak, 
 and Chillon Kirby an arch-plotter, and pleader too, one 
 of the desperate lovers. He was outstaying his leave of 
 absence already, she believed ; he had to be in England. 
 If he feared to lose Henrietta, he would not hesitate to 
 carry her off. Livia knew him, and knew the power of 
 his pleading with a firmer woman than Henrietta. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PRISOXEE, OF HIS WORD 
 
 Nothing to rouse alarm was discovered at Carlsruhe. 
 Livia's fair cousin was there with the red-haired gaunt 
 girl of the mountains ; and it was frankly stated by 
 Henrietta, that she had accompanied the girl a certain 
 distance along the Strasburg road, for her to see the last
 
 142 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of her brother Chillon on his way to England. Livia 
 was not the woman to push inquiries. On that subject, 
 she merely said, as soon as they were alone together: 
 "You seem to have had the lion's share of the 
 parting." 
 
 " Yes, we passed Mr. Chmnley Potts," was Henrietta's 
 immediate answer; and her reference to him disarmed 
 Livia. 
 
 They smiled at his name transiently, but in agree- 
 ment : the tattler-spout of their set was a fatal person to 
 encounter, and each deemed the sudden apparition of 
 him in the very early morning along the Carlsruhe road 
 rather magical. 
 
 " You place particular confidence in E-ussett's fidelity 
 to his word, Eiette — as you have been hearing yourself 
 called. You should be serious by this time. Eussett 
 won't bear much more. I counted on the night of the 
 Ball for the grand effect. You will extinguish every 
 woman there — and if he is absent?" 
 
 "I shall excuse him." 
 
 " You are not in a position to be so charitable. You 
 ought to know your position, and yourself too, a little 
 better than you do. How could you endure poverty? 
 Chillon Kirby stands in his uniform, and all's told. He 
 can manoeuvre, we know. He got the admiral away to 
 take him to those reviews cleverly. But is he thinking 
 of your interests when he does it ? He requires twenty 
 years of active service to give you a roof to your head.
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 143 
 
 I hate such allusions. But look for a moment at your 
 character: you must have ordinary luxuries and pleas- 
 ures, and if you were to find yourself grinding against 
 common necessities — imagine it! Eussett is quite 
 manageable. He is, trust me ! He is a gentleman ; he 
 has more ability than most young men: he can do 
 anything he sets his mind to do. He has his great 
 estates and fortune all in his own hands. AVe call him 
 eccentric. He is only young, with a lot of power. Add, 
 he's in love, and some one distracts him. Not love, do 
 you say ? — You look it. He worships. He has no 
 chance given him to show himself at his best. Perhaps 
 he is off again now. Will you bet me he is not?' 
 
 "I should incline to make the bet, if I betted," said 
 Henrietta. "His pride is in his word, and supposing 
 he's in love, it's with his pride, which never quits him." 
 
 "There's firmness in a man who has pride of that 
 kind. You must let me take you back to Baden. I hold 
 to having you with me to-day. You must make an 
 appearance there. The Admiral will bring us his Miss 
 Kirby to-morrow, if he is bound to remain here to-night. 
 There's no harm in his bachelor dinners. I suspect his 
 twinges of gout come of the prospect of affairs when he 
 lands in England. Eemember our bill with Madame Cle- 
 mence. There won't be the ghost of a bank-note for me 
 if Eussett quits the field ; we shall all be stranded." 
 
 Henrietta inquired: "Does it depend on my going 
 with you to-day ? "
 
 144 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " Consider, that lie is now fancying a thousand things. 
 We won't talk of the road to Paris." 
 
 A shot of colour swept over Henrietta. 
 
 "I will speak to papa. If he can let me go. He 
 has taken to Miss Kirby." 
 
 " Does she taste well ? " 
 
 Henrietta debated. "It's impossible to dislike her. 
 Oh ! she is wild ! She knows absolutely nothing of 
 the world. She can do everything we can't — or don't 
 dare to try. Men would like her. Papa's beginning 
 to dote. He says she would have made a first-rate 
 soldier. She fears blood as little as her morning cup 
 of milk. One of the orderlies fell rather badly from 
 a frightened horse close by our carriage. She was 
 out in a moment and had his head on her lap, calling 
 to papa to keep the carriage fast and block the way 
 of the squadron, for the man's leg was hurt. I really 
 thought we were lost. At these manoeuvres anything 
 may happen, at any instant. Papa will follow the 
 horse-artillery. You know his vanity to be a mili- 
 tary quite as much as a naval commander — like the 
 Greeks and Komans, he says. We took the bruised 
 man into our carriage and drove him to camp, Ca- 
 rinthia nursing him on the way." 
 
 " Carinthia ! She's well fitted with her name. What 
 with her name and her hair and her build and her 
 singular style of attire, one wonders at her coming 
 into civilized parts. She's utterly unlike Chillon."
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 145 
 
 Henrietta reddened at the mention of one of her 
 OAvn thoughts in the contrasting of the pair. 
 
 They had their points of likeness, she said. 
 
 It did not concern Livia to hear what these were. 
 Back to Baden, with means to procure the pleasant 
 shocks of the galvanic battery there, was her thought; 
 for she had a fear of the earl's having again departed 
 in a huff at Henrietta's behaviour. 
 
 The admiral consented that his daughter should go, 
 as soon as he heard that Miss Kirby was to slay. 
 He had when a young man met her famous father; 
 he vowed she was the Old Buccaneer young again in 
 petticoats and had made prize of an English man-of- 
 war by storm ; all the profit, however, being his. This 
 he proved with a courteous clasp of the girl and a 
 show of the salute on her cheek, which he presumed 
 to take at the night's farewell. "She's my tonic," he 
 proclaimed heartily. She seemed to Livia somewhat 
 unstrung and toneless. The separation from her brother 
 in the morning might account for it. And a man of the 
 admiral's age could be excused if he exalted the girl. 
 Senility, like infancy, is fond of plain outlines for the 
 laying on of its paints. The girl had rugged brows, a 
 short nose, red hair ; no young man would look at ^er 
 twice. She was utterly unlike Chillon ! Kissing her 
 hand to Henrietta from the steps of the hotel, ^e girl's 
 face improved. 
 
 Livia's little squire. Sir Meeson Corby, ejaculated as
 
 146 THE AMAZING MAKBIAGE 
 
 they were driving down the main street, "Fleetwood's 
 tramp ! There he goes. Now see, Miss Fakenham, the 
 kind of object Lord Fleetwood picks np and calls 
 friend! — calls that object friend! . . . But, what? 
 He has been to a tailor and a barber!" 
 
 " Stop the coachman. Eun, tell Mr. Woodseer I wish 
 him to join us," Livia said, and Sir Meeson had to 
 thank his tramp for a second indignity. He protested, 
 he simulated remonstrance, — he had to go, really feel- 
 ing a sickness. 
 
 The singular-looking person, whose necessities or 
 sense of the decencies had, unknown to himself and to 
 the others, put them all in motion that day, swung 
 round listening to the challenge to arms, as the puffy 
 little man's delivery of the countess's message sounded. 
 He was respectably clad, he thought, in the relief of 
 his escape from the suit of clothes discarded, and he 
 silently followed Sir Meeson's trot to the carriage. 
 " Should have mistaken you for a German to-day, sir," 
 the latter said, and trotted on. 
 
 "A stout one," Woodseer replied, with his happy 
 indifference to his exterior. 
 
 His dark lady's eyes were kindly overlooking, like 
 the heavens. Her fair cousin, to whom he bov/ed, 
 awakened him to a perception of the spectacle causing 
 the slight, quick arrest of her look, in an astonishment 
 not unlike the hiccup in speech, while her act of 
 courtesy proceeded. ^At once he was conscious of the
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 147 
 
 price he paid for respectability, and saw tlie Teuton 
 skin on the slim Cambrian, baggy at shoulders, baggy 
 at seat, pinched at the knees, short at the heels, show- 
 ing outrageously every spot where he ought to have 
 been bigger or smaller. How accept or how reject the 
 invitation to drive in such company to Baden ! 
 
 "You're decided enough, sir, in your play, they tell 
 me," the vindictive little baronet commented on his 
 hesitation, and Woodseer sprang to the proffered va- 
 cant place. But he had to speak of his fly waiting 
 for him at the steps of a certain hotel. 
 
 " Best hotel in the town ! " Sir Meeson exclaimed 
 pointedly to Henrietta, reading her constraint with 
 this comical object before her. It was the admiral's 
 hotel they stopped at. 
 
 '• Be so good as to step down and tell the admiral 
 he is to bring Madame Clemence in his carriage 
 to-morrow; and on your way, you will dismiss Mr. 
 Woodseer's fly," Livia mildly addressed her squire. 
 He stared: again he had to go, muttering: "That 
 nondescript's footman ! " and his mischance in being 
 checked and crossed and humiliated perpetually by 
 a dirty-fisted vagabond impostor astounded him. He 
 sent the flyman to the carriage for orders. 
 
 Admiral Fakenham and Carinthia descended. Sir 
 Meeson heard her cry out: "It is you!" and up 
 stood the pretentious lout in the German sack, affect- 
 ing the graces of a born gentlenfan fresh from Paris,
 
 148 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 — bowing, smirking, excusing himself for something; 
 and he jumped down to the young lady, he talked 
 intimately with her, with a joker's air; he roused 
 the admiral to an exchange of jokes, and the coun- 
 tess and Miss Fakenham more than smiled; evidently 
 at his remarks, unobservant of the preposterous figure 
 he cut. Sir Meeson Corby had intimations of the dis- 
 integration of his country if a patent tramp burlesquing 
 in those clothes could be permitted to amuse English 
 ladies of high station, quite at home with them. Among 
 the signs of England's downfall, this was decidedly one. 
 What to think of the admiral's favourite when, having 
 his arm paternally on her shoulder, she gave the tramp 
 her hand at parting, and then blushed ! All that the 
 ladies had to say about it was, that a spread of colour 
 rather went to change the character of her face. 
 
 Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened 
 under the recollection of Chillon's words to her as they 
 mounted the rise of the narrow vale, after leaving the 
 lame gentleman to his tobacco on the grass below the 
 rocks. Her brother might have counselled her wisely 
 and was to be obeyed. Only, the great pleasure in see- 
 ing the gentleman again inspired gratitude : he brought 
 the scene to her ; and it was alive, it chatted and it 
 beckoned ; it neighboured her home ; she had j)assed it 
 on her walk away from her home ; the gentleman was 
 her link to the mountain paths ; he was just outside an 
 association with her father and mother. At least, her
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 149 
 
 thinking of them led to him, he to them. Now she had 
 lost Chillon, no one was near to do so much. Besides, 
 Chillon loved Henrietta; he was her own. His heart 
 was hers and his mind his country's. This gentleman 
 loved the mountains ; the sight of him breathed moun- 
 tain air. To see him next day was her anticipation : for 
 it would be at the skirts of hilly forest land, where pine- 
 trees are a noble family, different from the dusty firs of 
 the weariful plains, which had tired her eyes of late. 
 
 Baden was her first peep at the edges of the world 
 since she had gro^vn to be a young woman. She had 
 but a faint idea of the significance of gambling. The 
 brilliant lights, the band music, the sitting groups and 
 company of promenaders were novelties ; the Ball of the 
 ensuing night at the Schloss would be a wonder, she 
 acknowledged in response to Henrietta, who was trying 
 to understand her; and she admired her ball-dress, she 
 said, looking unintelligently when she heard that she 
 would be guilty of slaying numbers of gentlemen before 
 the night was over. Madame Clemence thought her 
 chances in that respect as good as any other young 
 lady's, if only she could be got to feel interested. But 
 at a word of the pine forest, and saying she intended 
 to climb the hills early with the light in the morning, 
 a pointed eagerness flushed Carinthia, the cold engrav- 
 ing became a picture of colour. 
 
 She was out with the earliest light. Yesterday's part- 
 ing between Chillon and Henrietta had taught her to
 
 150 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 know some little about love ; and if her voice had been 
 heeded by Chillon's beloved, it would not have been a 
 parting. Her only success was to bring a flood of tears 
 from Henrietta. The tears at least assured her that 
 her brother's beautiful girl had no love for the other 
 one, — the young nobleman of the great wealth, who was 
 to be at the Ball, and had " gone flying," Admiral Taken- 
 ham shrugged to say ; for Lord Fleetwood was nowhere 
 seen. 
 
 The much talk of him on the promenade over night 
 fetched his name to her thoughts ; he scarcely touched a 
 mind that her father filled when she was once again 
 breathing early morning air among the stems of climb- 
 ing pines, broken alleys of the low-sweeping spruce 
 branches and the bare, straight shafts carrying their 
 heads high in the march upward. Her old father was 
 arch-priest of such forest land, always recoverable to her 
 there. The suggestion of mountains was enough to 
 make her mind play, and her old father and she were 
 aware of one another without conversing in speech. 
 He pointed at things to observe ; he shared her satisfied 
 hunger for the solitudes of the dumb and gromng and 
 wild sweet-smelling. He would not let a sorrowful 
 thought backward or an apprehensive idea forward dis- 
 turb the scene. A half-uprooted pine-tree stem propped 
 mid-fall by standing comrades, and the downy drop to 
 ground and muted scurry up the bark of long-brush 
 squirrels, cocktail on the wary watch, were noticed by
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 161 
 
 him as well as by her; even the rotting timber drift, 
 bark and cones on the yellow pine needles, and the tor- 
 tuous dwarf chestnut pushing level out, with a strain of 
 the head up, from a crevice of mossed rock, among ivy 
 and ferns; he saw what his girl saw. Power of heart 
 was her conjuring magician. 
 
 She climbed to the rock-slabs above. This was too 
 easily done. The poor bit of effort excited her frame 
 to desire a spice of danger, her walk was towering in 
 the physical contempt of a mountain girl for petty 
 lowland obstructions. And it was just then, by the 
 chance of things — by the direction of events, as Dame 
 Gossip believes it to be — while colour, expression, and 
 her proud stature marked her from her sex, that a 
 gentleman, who was no other than Lord Fleetwood, 
 passed Carinthia, coming out of the deeper pine forest. 
 
 Some distance on, round a bend of the path, she 
 was tempted to adventure by a projected forked head 
 of a sturdy, blunted, and twisted little rock-fostered 
 forest tree pushing horizontally for growth about thirty 
 feet above the lower ground. She looked on it, and 
 took a step down to the stem soon after. Fleetwood 
 had turned and followed, merely for the final curious 
 peep at an unexpected vision; he had noticed the 
 singular shoot of thick timber from the rock, and the 
 form of the goose neck it rose to, the sprout of 
 branches off the bill in the shape of a crest. And 
 now a shameful spasm of terror seized him at sight
 
 152 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of a girl doing what lie would have dreaded to 
 attempt. She footed coolly, well-balanced, upright. 
 She seated herself. 
 
 And there let her be. She was a German girl, 
 apparently. She had an air of breeding, something 
 more than breeding. German families of the nobles 
 give out, here and there, as the Great War showed 
 examples of, intrepid young women, who have the 
 sharp lines of character to render them independent 
 of the graces. But, if a young woman out alone in 
 the woods was hardly to be coimted among the well- 
 born, she held rank above them. Her face and bear- 
 ing might really be taken to symbolize the forest life. 
 She was as individual a representative as the Tragic 
 and Comic masks, and should be got to stand between 
 them for sign of the naturally straight-growing un- 
 trained, a noble daughter of the woods. 
 
 Not comparable to Henrietta in feminine beauty, she 
 was on an upper plateau, where questions as to beauty 
 are answered by other than the shallow aspect of a girl. 
 But would Henrietta eclipse her if they were side by 
 side ? Fleetwood recalled the strange girl's face. There 
 was in it a savage poignancy in serenity unexampled 
 among women — or modern women. One might imagine 
 an apotheosis of a militant young princess of Goths or 
 Vandals, the gloAv of blessedness awakening her martial 
 ardours through the languor of the grave : — Woodseer 
 would comprehend and hit on the exact image to por-
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS AYORD 153 
 
 tray lier in a moment, Fleetwood thought, and longed 
 for that fellow. 
 
 He walked hurriedly back to the stunted rock tree. 
 The damsel had vanished. He glanced below. She had 
 not fallen. He longed to tell Woodseer he had seen a 
 sort of Carinthia — a sister, cousin, one of the family. 
 A single glimpse of her had raised him out of his grov- 
 elling perturbations, cooled and strengthened him, more 
 than diverting the course of the poison Henrietta in- 
 fused, and to which it disgraced him to be so subject. 
 He took love unmanfully; the passion struck at his 
 weakness; in wrath at the humiliation, if only to re- 
 venge himself for that, he could be fiendish; he knew 
 it, and loathed the desired fair creature who caused and 
 exposed to him these cracks in his nature, whence there 
 came a brimstone stench of the infernal pits. And he 
 was made for better. Of this he was right well assured. 
 Superior to station and to wealth, to all mundane advan- 
 tages, he was the puppet of a florid puppet girl ; and 
 he had slept at the small inn of a village hard by, 
 because it was intolerable to him to see the face that 
 had been tearful over her lover's departure, and hear 
 her praises of the man she trusted to keep his word, 
 however grievously she wounded him. 
 
 He was the prisoner of his word ; — rather like the 
 donkeys known as married men : rather more honour- 
 able than most of them. He had to be present at the 
 ball at the Schloss and behold his loathed Henrietta,
 
 164 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 suffer torture of chains to tlie rack, by reason of Ms 
 having promised the bitter coquette he would be there. 
 So hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was 
 relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in 
 loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally 
 conjuring up the antidote face of the wood-sprite before 
 he was to undergo it. But, as he was not by nature a 
 dreamer, only dreamed of the luxury of being one, he 
 soon looked back with loathing on a notion of relief 
 to come from the state of ruminating animal, and 
 jumped up and shook off another of men's delusions — 
 that they can, if they have the heart to suffer pain, 
 deaden it with any semi-poetical devices, similar to 
 those which Eufus Abrane's " fiddler fellow " practised 
 and was able to carry out because he had no blood. 
 The spite of a present entire opposition to Woodseer's 
 professed views made him exult in the thought, that 
 the mouther of sentences was likely to be at work 
 stultifying them and himself in the halls there below 
 during the day. An imp of mischief offered consola- 
 tory sport in those halls of the Black Goddess ; already 
 he regarded his recent subservience to the conceited 
 and tripped peripatetic philosopher as among the ig- 
 nominies he had cast away on his road to a general 
 contempt ; which is the position of a supreme elevation 
 for particularly sensitive young men. 
 
 Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the wood-sprite 
 was a flitted vapour; he longed to be below there,
 
 THE PRISONER OF HIS WORD 155 
 
 observing Abrane and Potts and tlie philosopher con- 
 founded, and the legible placidity of Countess Livia. 
 Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, 
 impatient of the solitudes, till night, when, according to 
 his guess, the ladies were at their robing. 
 
 Half the fun was over : but the tale of it, narrated 
 in turn by Abrane and his Chummy Potts on the prom- 
 enade, was a very good half. The fiddler had played 
 for the countess and handed her back her empty 
 purse, with a bow and a pretty speech. Nothing had 
 been seen of him since. He had lost all his own 
 money besides. "As of course he would," said Potts. 
 "A fellow calculating the chances catches at a knife 
 in the air." 
 
 "Every franc-piece he had!" cried Abrane. "And 
 how could the jackass expect to keep his luck ! Flings 
 off his old suit and comes back here with a rig of 
 German bags — you never saw such a figure! — Shore- 
 ditch Jew's holiday ! — why, of course, the luck wouldn't 
 stand that." 
 
 They confessed ruefully to having backed him a 
 certain distance, notwithstanding. "He took it so 
 coolly, just as if paying for goods across a counter." 
 
 "And he had something to bear, Braney, when you 
 fell on him," said Potts, and murmured aside: "He 
 can be smartish. Hears me call Braney Eufus, and 
 says he, like a fellow — chin on his fiddle — 'Captain 
 Mountain, Rufus Mus'. Not bad, for a counter.'"
 
 156 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Fleetwood glanced round : he could have wrung 
 Woodseer's hand. He saw young Cressett instead, and 
 hailed him : " Here you are, my gallant ! You shall 
 flash your maiden sword to-night. When I was under 
 your age by a long count, I dealt sanctimoniousness a 
 flick o' the cheek, and you shall, and let 'em know 
 you're a man. Come and have your first boar-hunt 
 along with me. Petticoats be hanged." 
 
 The boy showed some recollection of the lectures of 
 his queen, but he had not the vocables for resistance 
 to an imperative senior at work upon sneaking inclina- 
 tions. "Promised Lady F.! — do you hear him?" 
 Fleetwood called to the couple behind ; and as gamblers 
 must needs be parasites, manly were the things they 
 spoke to invigorate the youthful plunger and second 
 the whim of their paymaster. 
 
 At half-past eleven, the prisoner of his word entered 
 under the Schloss portico, having vowed to himself on 
 the way, that he would satisfy the formulas to gain 
 release by a deferential bow to the great personages, 
 and straightway slip out into the heavenly starlight, 
 thence down among the jolly Parisian and Viennese 
 Bacchanals.
 
 Henrietta's letter 157 
 
 CHAPTEE XII 
 
 By tlie first light of an autumn morning, Henrietta 
 sat at her travelling-desk, to shoot a spark into the 
 breast of her lover with the story of the great event 
 of the night. Por there had been one, one of our big- 
 gest, beyond all tongues and trumpets and possible 
 anticipations. Wonder at it hammered on incredulity 
 as she wrote it for fact, and in writing had vision of 
 her lover's eyes over the page. 
 
 "Monsieur Du Lac! 
 
 "Grey Dawn. You are greeted. This, if you have 
 been tardy on the journey home, will follow close on 
 the heels of the prowest, I believe truest, of knights, 
 and bear perhaps to his quick mind some help to the 
 solution he dropped a hint of seeking. 
 
 " The Ball in every way a success. Grand Duke 
 and Duchess perfect in courtesy, not a sign of the 
 German morgue. Livia splendid. Compared to Day 
 and Night. But the Night eclipses the Day. A 
 summer sea of dancing. WTio, think you, eclipsed 
 those two ? 
 
 " I tell you the very truth when I say your Carinthia 
 did. If you had seen her, — the ' poor dear girl ' you
 
 158 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 sigh, to speak of, — witli the doleful outlook on her 
 fortunes : ' portionless', unattractive ! ' Chillon, she was 
 magical ! You cannot ever have seen her irradiated 
 with happiness. Her pleasure in the happiness of all 
 around her Avas part of the charm. One should be a 
 poet to describe her. It would task an artist to paint 
 the rose-crystal she became when threading her way 
 through the groups to be presented. This is not meant 
 to say that she looked beautiful. It was the some- 
 thing above beauty — more unique and impressive — 
 like the Alpine snow-cloak towering up from the 
 flowery slopes you know so well and I a little. 
 
 "You choose to think, is it Eiette who noticed my 
 simple sister so closely before . . . ? for I suppose 
 you to be reading this letter a second time and reflect- 
 ing as you read. In the first place, acquaintance with 
 her has revealed that she is not the simple person — 
 only in her manner. Under the beams of subsequent 
 events^ it is true I see her more picturesquely. But 
 I noticed also just a suspicion of the ^ grenadier ' stride 
 when she was on the march to make her curtsey. 
 But Livia had no cause for chills and quivers. She 
 was not the very strange bird requiring explanatory 
 excuses; she dances excellently, and after the first 
 dance, I noticed she minced her steps in the walk with 
 her partner. She catches the tone readily. If not the 
 image of her mother, she has inherited her mother's 
 bent for the graces ; she needs but . a small amount of 
 practice.
 
 Henrietta's letter 159 
 
 "Take my assurance of that; and you know who 
 has critical eyes. Your anxiety may rest ; she is equal 
 to any station. 
 
 "As expected by me, my Lord Tyrant appeared, 
 though late, near midnight. I saw him bowing to the 
 Ducal party. Papa had led your ^ simple sister ' there. 
 Next I saw the Tyrant and Carinthia conversing. 
 Soon they were dancing together, talking interestedly, 
 like cheerful comrades. Whatever his faults, he has 
 the merit of being a man of his word. He said he 
 would come, he did not wish to come, and he came. 
 
 "His word binds him — I hope not fatally; irrevo- 
 cably, it certainly does. There is the charm of char- 
 acter in that. His autocrat airs can be forgiven to 
 a man who so profoundly respects his word. 
 
 "It occurred during their third dance. Your Eiette 
 was not in the quadrille. but she was a snubbed 
 young woman last night! I refrain — the examples 
 are too minute for quotation. 
 
 "A little later and he had vanished. Carinthia 
 Kirby may already be written Countess of Fleetwood ! 
 His hand was offered and hers demanded in plain 
 terms. Her brother would not be so astounded if 
 he had seen the brilliant creature she was — is, I could 
 say ; for when she left me here, to go to her bed, she 
 still wore the 'afterglow'. She tripped over to me in 
 the ball-room to tell me. I might doubt, she had no 
 doubt whatever. I fancied he had subjected her to
 
 160 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 some degree of trifling. He was in a mood. His 
 moods are known to me. But no, he was precise; 
 her report of him strikes the ear as credible, in spite 
 of the marvel it insists on our swallowing. 
 ' '^ ' Lord Fleetwood has asked me to marry him.' 
 Neither assurance nor bashfulness; newspaper print; 
 and an undoubting air of contentment. 
 
 "Imagine me hearing it. 
 
 " • To be his wife ? ' 
 
 " ' He said wife.' 
 
 " ' And you replied ? ' 
 
 "^I said I would.' 
 
 "'Tell me all?' 
 
 " ' He said we were plighted.' 
 
 " Now, ' wife ' is one of the words he abhors ; and 
 he loathes the hearing of a girl as ' engaged.' How- 
 ever, ' plighted ' carried a likeness. 
 
 "I pressed her: 'My dear Carinthia, you thought 
 him in earnest ? ' 
 
 " ' He was.' 
 
 " 'How do you judge ? ' 
 
 "'By his look when he spoke.' 
 
 " ' Not by his words ? ' 
 
 "'I repeat them to you.' 
 
 " She has repeated them to me here in my bedroom. 
 There is no variation. She remembers every syllable. 
 He went so far as to urge her to say whether she would 
 as willingly utter consent if they were in a church 
 and a clergyman at the altar-rails.
 
 161 
 
 "That was like him. 
 
 " She made answer : ' Wherever it may be, I am 
 bound, if I say yes.' 
 
 "She then adds: ^He told me he joined hands with 
 me.' 
 
 " ' Did he repeat the word " wife " ? ' 
 
 "'He said it twice.' 
 
 "I transcribe verbatim scrupulously. There cannot 
 be an error, Chillon. It seems to show, that he has em- 
 braced the serious meaning of the word — or seriously 
 embraced the meaning, reads better. I have seen his 
 lips form 'wife.' 
 
 " But why wonder so staringly ? They both love 
 the mountains. Both are Avildish. She was looking 
 superb. And he had seen her do a daring thing on the 
 rocks on the heights in the early morning, when she 
 was out by herself, unaware of a spectator, he not 
 knowing who she was ; — the Fates had arranged it so. 
 That was why he took to her so rapidly. So he told 
 her. She likes being admired. The preparation for the 
 meeting does really seem 'under direction.' She likes 
 him too, I do think. Between her repetitions of his 
 com^jliments, she praised his tone of voice, his features. 
 She is ready to have the fullest faith in the sincerity of 
 his offer ; speaks without any impatience for the fulfil- 
 ment. If it should happen, what a change in the fort- 
 unes of a girl ! — of more than one, possibly. 
 
 "Now I must rest — 'eyelids fall.' It will be
 
 162 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 with a heart galloping. No rest for me till this letter 
 flies. Good morning is my good night to you, in a world 
 that has turned over." 
 
 Henrietta resumes : — 
 
 "Livia will not hear of it, calls up all her pretty 
 languor to put it aside. It is the same to-day as last 
 night. ' Why mention Eussett's nonsense to me ? ' 
 Carinthia is as quietly circumstantial as at first. She 
 and the Tyrant talked of her native home. Very 
 desirous to see it! means to build a mansion there! 
 'He said it must be the most romantic place on 
 earth.' 
 
 " I suppose I slept. I woke with my last line to 
 you on my lips, and the great news thundering. He 
 named Esslemont and his favourite — always uninhab- 
 ited — Cader Argau. She speaks them correctly. She 
 has an unfailing memory. The point is that it is a 
 memory. 
 
 "Do not forget also — Livia is affected by her dis- 
 taste — that he is a gentleman. He plays with his 
 nobility. With his reputation of gentleman, he has 
 never been known to play. You will understand the 
 slightly hypocritical air — it is not of sufficient impor- 
 tance for it to be alluded to in papa's presence — I 
 put on with her. 
 
 " Yes, I danced nearly all the dances. One, a prince- 
 ling in scarlet imiform, appearing fresh from under 
 earth, Prussian: a weighty young Graf in green, be-
 
 Henrietta's letter 163 
 
 tween sage and bottle, who seemed to have run off a 
 tree in the forest, and was trimmed with silver like 
 dew-drops : one in your Austrian white, dragon de 
 BoMme, if I caught his T'rench rightl}^. Others as 
 well, a list. They have the accomplishment. They are 
 drilled in it young, as girls are, and so few English- 
 men — even English officers. How it may be for 
 campaigning, you can pronoimce ; but for dancing, the 
 pantalon collant is the perfect uniform. Your critical 
 Henrietta had not to complain of her partners, in the 
 absence of the one. 
 
 "I shall be haunted by visions of Chillon's amaze- 
 ment until I hear or we meet. I serve for Carinthia's 
 mouthpiece, she cannot write it, she says. It would be 
 related in two copybook lines, if at all. 
 
 ^^The amazement over London! The jewel hand of 
 the kingdom gone in a flash, to ^ a raw mountain girl,' 
 as will be said. I can hear Lady Endor, Lady Eldritch, 
 Lady Cowry. The reasonable woman should be Lady 
 Arpington. I have heard her speak of your mother, 
 seen by her when she was in frocks. 
 
 "Enter the ^plighted.' Poor Livia! to be made a 
 dowager of by any but a damsel of the family. She may 
 well ridicule ^ that nonsense of Russett's last night ' ! 
 Carinthia kisses, embraces, her brother. I am to say : 
 ^What Henrietta tells you is true, Chillon.' She is 
 contented though she has not seen him again and has 
 not the look of expecting to see him. She still wears 
 the kind of afterglow.
 
 164 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " Chillon's Viennese waltz was played by the band : — 
 played a second time, special request, conveyed to the 
 leader by Prince Ferdinand. True, most true, she 
 longs to be home across the water. But be it admitted, 
 that to any one loving colour, music, chivalry, the Is- 
 land of Drab is an exile. Imagine, then, the strange 
 magnetism drawing her there ! Could warmer proof be 
 given ? 
 
 "Adieu. Livia's ^arch-plotter' will weigh the letter 
 he reads to the smallest fraction of a fraction before 
 he moves a step. 
 
 " I could leave it and come to it again and add and 
 add. I foresee in Livia's mind a dread of the afore- 
 said ^ arch,' and an interdict. So the letter must be 
 closed, sealed and into the box, with the hand I still 
 call mine, though I should doubt my right if it were 
 contested fervently. I am singing the waltz. 
 " Adieu, 
 
 "Ever and beyond it, 
 
 "Your obedient Queen, 
 
 " Henrietta. 
 
 "P.S. My Lord Tyrant has departed — as on other 
 occasions. The prisoner of his word is sure to take 
 his airing before he presents himself to redeem it. 
 His valet is left to pay bills, fortunately for Li\T.a. 
 She entrusted her purse j^esterday to a man picked 
 up on the road by my lord, that he might play for 
 her. Captain Abrane assured her he had a star, and
 
 HENRIETTA'S LETTER 165 
 
 Mr. Potts thought him a ruse compare, an adept of 
 those dreadful gambling-tables. Why will she continue 
 to play! The purse was returned to her, without so 
 much as a piece of silver in it; the man has flown. 
 Sir M. Corby says, he is a man whose hands betray 
 him — or did to Sir M. ; expects to see him one day 
 on the wrong side of the criminal bar. He struck me 
 as not being worse than absurd. He was, in any case, 
 an unfit companion, and our C. would help to rescue 
 the Eccentric from such complicating associates. I 
 see worlds of good she may do. Happily, he is no 
 slave of the vice of gambling; so she would not suffer 
 that anxiety. I wish it could be subjoined, that he 
 has no malicious pleasure in misleading others. Livia 
 is inconsolable over her pet,- young Lord Cressett, 
 whom he yesterday induced to ^try his luck' — with 
 the result. We leave, if bills are paid, in two days. 
 Captain Abrane and Mr. Potts left this afternoon; 
 just enough to carry them home. Papa and your 
 blissful sister out driving. Eiette within her four 
 walls and signing herself, 
 
 "The Prisoner of Chillox."
 
 166 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP IN BREACH OF 
 THE CONVENTION 
 
 "It is a dark land/' Carintliia said, on seeing our 
 island's lowered clouds in swift motion, without a 
 break of their folds, above the sheer white cliffs. 
 
 — She said it, we know. That poor child Carin- 
 thia Jane, when first she beheld Old England's shores, 
 tossing in the packet-boat on a wild Channel sea, did 
 say it and think it, for it is in the family that she 
 did; and no wonder that she should, the day being 
 showery from the bed of the sun, after a frosty three 
 days, at the close of autumn. We used to have an 
 eye of our own for English weather before printed 
 Meteorological Observations and Forecasts undertook 
 to supplant the shepherd and the poacher, and the 
 pilot with his worn brown leather telescope tucked 
 beneath his arm. All three would have told you, that 
 the end of a three days' frost in the late season of 
 the year and the early, is likely to draw the warm 
 winds from the Atlantic over Cornish Land's End and 
 Lizard. 
 
 Quite by the chance of things, Carinthia Jane looked 
 on the land of her father and mother for the first 
 time under those conditions. There can be no harm
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 167 
 
 in quoting her remark. Only — I have to say it — 
 experience causes apprehension, that we are again to 
 be delayed by descriptions, and an exposition of feel- 
 ings; taken for granted, of course, in a serious 
 narrative; which it really seems these moderns think 
 designed for a frequent arrest of the actors in the 
 story and a searching of the internal state of this one 
 or that one of them: who is laid out stark naked and 
 probed and expounded, like as in the celebrated pict- 
 ure by a great painter: and we, thirsting for events 
 as we are, are to stop to enjoy a lecture on Anatomy. 
 And all the while the windows of the lecture-room are 
 rattling, if not the whole fabric shaking, with exterior 
 occurrences or impatience for them to come to pass. 
 Every explanation is sure to be offered by the course 
 events may take; so do, in mercy, I say, let us bide 
 for them. 
 
 She thought our island all the darker because Henri- 
 etta had induced her to talk on the boat of her moun- 
 tain home and her last morning there for the walk 
 away with Chillon John. Soon it was to appear super- 
 naturally bright, a very magician's cave for brilliancy. 
 
 Now, this had happened — and comment on it to your- 
 selves, remembering always, that Chillon John was a 
 lover, and a lover has his excuses, though they will not 
 obviate the penalties he may incur; and dreadful they 
 were. After reading Henrietta's letter to him, he rode 
 out of his Canterbury quarters across the country to the
 
 168 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 borders of Sussex, where liis Tincle Lord Levellier lived, 
 on tlie ridge of ironstone, near tlie wild land of a forest, 
 Croridge the name of the place. Now, Chillon John 
 knew his uncle was miserly and dreaded the prospect of 
 having to support a niece in the wretched establishment 
 at Lekkatts, or, as it was popularly called, Leancats ; you 
 can understand why. But he managed to assure himself 
 he must in duty consult with the senior and chief mem- 
 ber of his family on a subject of such importance as the 
 proposal of marriage to his lordship's niece. 
 
 The consultation was short: " You will leave it to me," 
 his uncle said : and we hear of business affairs between 
 them, involving payment of moneys due to the young 
 man ; and how, whenever he touched on them, his uncle 
 immediately fell back on the honour of the family and 
 Carinthia Jane's reputation, her good name to be vindi- 
 cated, and especially that there must be no delays, to- 
 gether with as close a reckoning as he could make of the 
 value of Lord Fleetwood's estates in Kent and in Staf- 
 fordshire and South Wales, and his house property in 
 London. 
 
 "He will have means to support her," said the old 
 lord, shrugging as if at his own incapacity for that 
 burden. 
 
 The two then went to the workshops beside a large 
 pond, where there was an island bordered with birch trees 
 and Avorkmen's cottages near the main building; and 
 that was an arsenal containing every kind of sword and
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 169 
 
 lance and musket, rifle and fowling-piece and pistol, 
 and more gunpowder than was, I believe, allowed by law. 
 For they were engaged in inventing a new powder for 
 howitzer shells, of tremendous explosive power. 
 
 jSTothing further did either of them say concerning the 
 marriage. Nor did Carinthia Jane hear any mention of 
 Lord Fleetwood from her brother on the landing-place at 
 Dover. She was taken to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham's 
 house in Hampshire; and there she remained, the de- 
 light of his life, during two months, patiently expecting 
 and rebuking the unmaidenliness of her expectations, as 
 honest young women in her position used to do. So did 
 they sometimes wait for years; they have waited until 
 they withered into the graves, like the vapours of a brief 
 winter^s day ; a moving picture of a sex restrained by 
 modesty in those purer times from the taking of one step 
 forward unless inquired for. 
 
 Two months she waited in our ^ dark land.' January 
 \ arrived, and her brother. Henrietta communicated the 
 news : — 
 
 *'M.j Janey, you are asked by Lord Fleetwood whether 
 it is your wish that he should marry you." 
 
 Now, usually a well-born young woman's answer, if a 
 willing one, is an example of weak translation. Here it 
 was the heart's native tongue, without any roundabout, 
 simple but direct. 
 
 "Oh, I will, I am ready, tell him." 
 
 Eem ember, she was not speaking publicly.
 
 170 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Henrietta knew the man enough, to be glad he did not 
 hear. She herself would have felt a little shock on his 
 behalf ; only, that answer suited the scheme of the pair 
 of lovers. 
 
 How far those two were innocent in not delivering the 
 whole of Lord Fleetwood's message to Carinthia Jane 
 through Lord Levellier, we are unable to learn. We 
 may suspect the miserly nobleman of curtailing it for 
 his purposes; and such is my idea. But the answer 
 would have been the same, I am sure. 
 
 In consequence and straight away, Chillon John be- 
 takes him to Admiral Baldwin and informs him of Lord 
 Fleetwood's proposal on the night at Baden, and renewal 
 of it through the mouth of Lord Levellier, not communi- 
 cating, however (he may really not have known), the 
 story of how it had been wrung from the earl by a sur- 
 prise movement on the part of the one-armed old lord, 
 who burst out on him in the street from the ambush of a 
 club-window, where he had been stationed every day for 
 a fortnight, indefatigably to watch for the passing of the 
 earl, as there seemed no other way to find him. They 
 say, indeed, there was a scene, judging by the result, and 
 it would have been an excellent scene for the stage; 
 though the two noblemen were to all appearances po- 
 litely exchanging their remarks. But the audience hear- 
 ing what passes, appreciates the courteous restraint of an 
 attitude so contrasting with their tempers. Behind the 
 ostentation of civility, their words were daggers.
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 171 
 
 For it chanced, that the young earl, after a period of 
 refuge at his Welsh castle, supposing, as he well might, 
 that his latest mad freak of the proposal of his hand and 
 title to the strange girl in a quadrille at a foreign castle 
 had been forgotten by her, and the risks of annoyance 
 on the subject had quite blown over, returned to town, 
 happy in having done the penance for his impulsiveness, 
 and got clean again — that is to say, struck off his fetters 
 and escaped from importunities — the very morning of 
 the day when Lord Levellier sprang upon him! It 
 shows the old campaigner's shrewdness in guessing where 
 his prey would come, and not putting him on his guard 
 by a call at his house. Out of the window he looked for 
 all the hours of light during an entire fortnight. "In 
 the service of my sister's child,'^ he said. " To save him 
 from the cost of maintaining her," say his enemies. At 
 any rate he did it. 
 
 He was likely to have done the worse which I suspect. 
 
 Now, the imparting of the wonderful news to Admiral 
 Baldwin Fakenham was, we read, the whiff of a tropical 
 squall to lay him on his beam ends. He could not but 
 doubt ; and his talk was like the sails of a big ship rat- 
 tling to the first puff of wind. He had to believe ; and 
 then, we read, he was for hours like a vessel rolling in 
 the trough of the sea. Of course he was a disappointed 
 father. Naturally this glance at the loss to Henrietta 
 of the greatest prize of the matrimonial market of all 
 Europe and America was vexing and saddening. Then
 
 172 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 he woke up to think of the fortunes of his "other girl," 
 as he named her, and cried : " Crinny catches him ! " 
 
 He cried it in glee and rubbed his hands. 
 
 So thereupon, standing before him, Chillon John, from 
 whom he had the news, bent to him slightly, as his ele- 
 gant manner was, and lengthened the admiral's chaps 
 with another proposal; easy, deliberate, precise, quite 
 the respectful bandit, if you please, determined on hav- 
 ing his daughter by all means, only much preferring the 
 legal, formal, and friendly. Upon that, in the moment 
 of indecision, Henrietta enters, followed by Admiral 
 Baldwin's heroine, his Crinny, whom he embraced and 
 kissed, congratulated and kissed again. One sees the 
 contrivance to soften him. 
 
 So it was done, down in that Hampshire household on 
 the heights near the downs, whence you might behold, 
 off a terra firma resembling a roll of billows, England's 
 big battle-ships in line fronting the island; when they 
 were a spectacle of beauty as well as power : which now 
 they are no more, but will have to be, if they are both 
 to float and to fight. For I have had quoted to me by a 
 great admirer of the Old Buccaneer, one of the dark say- 
 ings in his Maxims for Men, where Captain John 
 Peter Kirby commends his fellow-men to dissatisfaction 
 with themselves if they have not put an end to their enemy 
 handsomely. And he advises the copying of ligature in 
 this ; whose elements have always, he says, a pretty, 
 besides a thorough, style of doing it, when they get the
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 173 
 
 better of us ; and the one by reason of the other. He 
 instances the horse, the yacht, and chiefly the sword, 
 for proof, that the handsomest is the most effective. 
 And he prints large : " ugly is only half way to a 
 THING." To an invention, I suppose he intends to say. 
 But looking on our huge foundering sea-monsters and 
 the disappearance of the unwieldy in Nature, and the 
 countenances of criminals, who are, he bids us observe, 
 always in the long run beaten, I seem to see a meaning 
 our country might meditate on. 
 
 So, as I said, it was done; for Admiral Baldwin 
 could refuse his Crinny nothing; as little as he would 
 deny anything to himself, the heartiest of kindly hosts, 
 fathers, friends. Carinthia Jane's grand good fortune 
 covered that pit, the question of money, somehow, and 
 was, we may conceive, a champagne wine in their reason- 
 ing faculties. The admiral was in debt, Henrietta had 
 no heritage, Chillon John was the heir of a miserly uncle 
 owing him sums and evading every application for them, 
 yet they behaved as people who had the cup of golden 
 wishes. Perhaps it was because Henrietta and her lover 
 were so handsome a match as to make it seem to them 
 and others they must marry; and as to character, her 
 father could trust her to the man of her choice more 
 readily than to the wealthy young nobleman ; of whose 
 discreetness he had not the highest opinion. He recon- 
 ciled this view with his warm feeling for the Countess 
 of Fleetwood to be, by saying : " Crinny will tame him I ''
 
 174 THE AJslAZmG MARRIAGE 
 
 His faith, was in her dauntless bold spirit, not thinking 
 of the animal she was to tame. 
 
 Countess Livia, after receiving Henrietta's letter of 
 information, descended on them and thought them each 
 and all a crazed set. Love, as a motive of action for a 
 woman, she considered the female's lunacy and suicide. 
 Men are born subject to it, happily, and thus the bal- 
 ance between the lordly half of creation and the frail is 
 rectified. We women dress, and smile, sigh, if you like, 
 to excite the malady. But if we are the fools to share 
 it, we lose our chance ; instead of the queens, we are the 
 slaves, and instead of a life of pleasure, we pass from 
 fever to fever at a tyrant's caprice : he does rightly in 
 despising us. Ay, and many a worthy woman thinks 
 the same. Educated in dependency as they are, they 
 come to the idea of love to snatch at it for their weapon 
 of the man's weakness. Eor Avhich my lord calls them 
 heartless, and poets are angry with them, rightly or 
 wrongly. 
 
 It must, I fear, be admitted for a truth, that sorrow 
 is the portion of young women who give the full 
 measure of love to the engagement, marrying for love. 
 At least. Countess Livia could declare subsequently she 
 had foretold it and warned her cousin. Not another 
 reflection do you hear from me, if I must pay forfeit 
 of my privilege to hurry you on past descriptions of 
 places and anatomy of character and impertinent talk 
 about philosophy — in a story. "Wlien we are startled
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 175 
 
 and offended by the insinuated tracing of principal 
 incidents to a thread-bare spot in the nether garments 
 of a man of no significance, I lose patience. 
 
 Henrietta's case was a secondary affair. ^Vhat with 
 her passion — it was nothing less — and her lover's 
 cunning arts, and her father's consent given, and in 
 truth the look of the two together, the dissuasion of 
 them from union was as likely to keep them apart 
 as an exhortation addressed to magnet and needle. 
 Countess Livia attacked Carinthia Jane and the ad- 
 miral backing her. But the admiral, having given 
 his consent to his daughter's marriage, in consequence 
 of the earl's pledged word to 'his other girl,' had 
 become a zealot for this marriage : and there was 
 only not a grand altercation on the subject because 
 Livia shunned annoyances. Alone with Carinthia Jane, 
 as she reported to Henrietta, she spoke to a block, 
 that shook a head and wore a thin smile and nursed 
 its own idea of the better knowledge of Edward 
 Eussett, Earl of Fleetwood, gained in the run of a 
 silly quadrille at a ball. 
 
 What is a young man's word to his partner in a 
 quadrille ! 
 
 Livia put the question, she put it twice rather 
 sternly, and the girl came out with: "Oh, he meant 
 it!" 
 
 The nature, the pride, the shifty and furious moods 
 of Lord Fleetwood were painted frightful to her.
 
 176 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 She had conceived her own image of him. 
 
 Whether to set her down as an enamoured idiot or 
 a creature not a whit less artful than her brother, was 
 Countess Livia's debate. Her inclination was to mis- 
 doubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer: she might 
 be simple, at her age; and she certainly was ignorant; 
 but she climg to her prize. Still the promise was ex- 
 tracted from her, that she would not worry the earl to 
 fulfil the word she supposed him to mean in its full 
 meaning. 
 
 The promise was unreluctantly yielded. No, she 
 would not write. Admiral Fakenham, too, engaged 
 to leave the matter to a man of honour. 
 
 Meanwhile, Chillon John had taken a journey to 
 Lekkatts; following which, his uncle went to London. 
 Lord Fleetwood heard that Miss Kirby kept him bound. 
 He was again the fated prisoner of his word. 
 
 And following that, not so very long, there was the 
 announcement of the marriage of Chillon John Kirby- 
 Levellier, Lieutenant in the King's Own Hussars, 
 and Henrietta, daughter of Admiral Baldwin Faken- 
 ham. A county newspaper paragraph was quoted for 
 its eulogy of the Beauty of Hampshire — not too strong, 
 those acquainted with her thought. Interest at Court 
 obtained an advancement for the bridegroom : he was 
 gazetted Captain during his honeymoon, and his pros- 
 pects imder his uncle's name were considered fair, 
 though certain people said at the time, it was likely
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 177 
 
 to be all lie would get while old Lord Levellier of 
 Leancats remained in the flesh. 
 
 Now, as it is good for those to tell who intend pre- 
 serving their taste for romance and hate anatomical 
 lectures, we never can come to the exact motives of 
 any extraordinary piece of conduct on the part of man 
 or woman. Girls are to read, and the study of a boy 
 starts from the monkey. But no literary surgeon or 
 chemist shall explain positively the cause of the be- 
 haviour of men and women in their relations together; 
 and speaking to rescue my story, I say we must with 
 due submission accept the facts. We are not a bit 
 the worse for wondering at them. So it happened that 
 Lord Fleetwood's reply to Lord Levellier's hammer — 
 hammer by post and messenger at his door, one may 
 call it, on the subject of the celebration of the mar- 
 riage of the young Croesus and Carinthia Jane, in which 
 there was demand for the fixing of a date forthwith, 
 was despatched on the day when London had tidings 
 of Henrietta Fakenham's wedding. 
 
 The letter, lost for many years, turned up in the 
 hands of a Kentish auctioneer, selling it on behalf of 
 a farm-serving man, who had it from Lord Levellier's 
 cook and housemaid, among the things she brought 
 him as her wifely portion after her master's death, 
 and this she had not found salable in her husband's 
 village at her price, but she had got the habit of 
 sticking to the scraps, being proud of hearing it said
 
 178 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 that she had skinned Leancats to some profit: and 
 her expectation proved correct after her own demise, 
 for her husband putting it up at the auction, our 
 relative on the mother's side, Dr. Glossop, interested in 
 the documents and particulars of the story as he was, 
 had it knocked down to him, in contest with an agent 
 of a London gentleman, going as high as two pounds, 
 ten shillings, for the sum of two pounds and fifteen 
 shillings. Count the amount that makes for each word 
 of a letter a marvel of brevity, considering the purport ! 
 But Dr. Glossop was right in saying he had it cheap. 
 The value of that letter may now be multiplied by 
 ten: nor for that sum would he part with it. 
 
 Thus it ran, I need not refer to it in Bundle Ko. 3 : 
 
 " My Lord : I drive to your church-door on the 
 fourteenth of the month at ten a.m., to keep my 
 appointment with Miss C. J. Kirby, if I do not 
 blunder the initials. 
 
 <^Your lordship's obedient servant, 
 
 " Fleetwood." 
 
 That letter will ever be a treasured family posses- 
 sion with us. 
 
 That letter was dated from Lord Fleetwood's Kent- 
 ish mansion, Esslemont, the tenth of the month. He 
 must have quitted London for Esslemont, for change 
 of scene, for air, the moment after the news of Henri- 
 etta's marriage. Carinthia Jane received the summons
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF ]MISTRESS GOSSIP 179 
 
 without transmission of the letter from her uncle on 
 the morning of the twelfth. It was a peremptory 
 summons. 
 
 Unfortunately, Admiral Fakenham, a real knight 
 and chevalier of those past times, would not let her 
 mount the downs to haA^e her farewell view of the big 
 ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely 
 in pure chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of 
 England's grandeur, as shown in her great vessels of 
 war, thrilled him, too, and restored his youthful enthu- 
 siasm for his noble profession or made it effervesce. 
 However it was, he rode beside her and rejoiced to 
 hear the young girl's talk of her father as a captain 
 of one of England's thunderers, and of the cruelty of 
 that Admiralty to him : at which Admiral Baldwin 
 laughed, but had not the heart to disagree with her, 
 for he could belabour the Admiralty in season, cause 
 or no cause. Altogether he much enjoyed the ride, 
 notwithstanding intimations of the approach of ^his 
 visitor,' as he called his attacks of gout. 
 
 Kiding home, however, the couple passed through a 
 heavy rainfall, and the next day, when he was to 
 drive with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the fieriest he 
 had ever known, chained him fast to his bed. Such 
 are the petty accidents affecting circumstances. They 
 are the instruments of Destiny. 
 
 There he lay, protesting that the ceremony could 
 not possibly be for the fourteenth, because Countess
 
 180 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Livia had, lie now remembered, written of her engage- 
 ment to meet Rnssett on the night of that day at a 
 ball at Mrs. Cowper Quillett's place, Canleys, lying 
 south of the Surrey hills: a house famed for its gath- 
 erings of beautiful women; whither Lord Fleetwood 
 would be sure to engage to go, the admiral now said; 
 and it racked him like gout in his mind, and perhaps 
 troubled his conscience about handing the girl to such 
 a young man. But he was lying on his back, the post- 
 ure for memory to play the fiend with us, as we 
 read in the Book of Maxims of the Old Buccaneer. 
 Admiral Baldwin wished heartily to be present at his 
 Crinny's wedding "to see her launched," if wedding 
 it was to be, and he vowed the date of the fourteenth, 
 in Lord Levellier's announcement of it, must be an 
 error and might be a month in advance, and ought to 
 be. But it was sheer talking and raving for a solace 
 to his disappointment or his anxiety. He had to let 
 Carinthia Jane depart under the charge of his house- 
 keeper, Mrs. Carthew, a staid excellent lady, poorly 
 gifted with observation. 
 
 Her report of the performance of the ceremony at 
 Croridge village church, a half mile from Lekkatts, was 
 highly reassuring to the anxious old admiral still 
 lying on his back with memory and gout at their 
 fiend's play, and livid forecasts hovering. He had 
 recollected that there had been no allusion in Lord 
 Levellier's message to settlements or any lawyer's pre-
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 181 
 
 liminaries, and lie raged at liimself for having to own 
 it would have been the first of questions on behalf of 
 his daughter. 
 
 " All passed off correctly," Mrs. Carthew said. " The 
 responses of the bride and bridegroom were particularly- 
 articulate." 
 
 She was reserved upon the question of the hospitality 
 of Lekkatts. The place had entertained her during 
 her necessitated residence there, and honour forbade 
 her to smile concordantly at the rosy admiral's men- 
 tion of Leancats. She took occasion, however, to 
 praise the Earl of Fleetwood's "eminently provident 
 considerateness for his bride, inasmuch as he had 
 packed a hamper in his vehicle," which was a four- 
 in-hand, driven by himself. 
 
 Admiral Baldwin inquired : " Bride inside ? " 
 
 He was informed: "The Countess of Fleetwood sat 
 on the box on the left of my lord." 
 
 She had made no moan about the absence of brides- 
 maids. 
 
 " She appeared too profoundly happy to meditate an 
 instant upon deficiencies." 
 
 " How did the bridegroom behave ? " 
 
 "Lord Fleetwood was very methodical. He is not, 
 or was not, voluntarily a talker." 
 
 " Blue coat, brass buttons, hot-house flower ? old 
 style or new ? " 
 
 "His lordship wore a rather low beaver and a but-
 
 182 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 toned white overcoat, not out of harmony with the 
 bride's plain travelling-dress." 
 
 " Ah ! he's a good whip, men say. Keeps first-rate 
 stables, hacks, and bloods. Esslemont hard by will be 
 the place for their honeymoon, I guess. And he's a 
 lucky dog, if he knows his luck." 
 
 So said Admiral Baldwin. He was proceeding to 
 say more, for he had a prodigious opinion of the 
 young countess and the benefit of her marriage to 
 the British race. As it concerned a healthy constitu- 
 tion and motherhood, Mrs. Carthew coughed and 
 retired. Kor do I reprove either of them. The 
 speculation and the decorum are equally commend- 
 able. Masculine ideas are one thing; but let femi- 
 nine ever be feminine, or our civilization perishes. 
 
 At Croridge village church, then, — one of the 
 smallest churches in the kingdom, — the ceremony was 
 performed and duly witnessed, names written in the 
 vestry book, the clergyman's fee, the clerk, and the 
 pew-woman, paid by the bridegroom. And thus we 
 see how a pair of lovers, blind with the one object 
 of lovers in view; and a miserly uncle, all on edge to 
 save himself the expense of supporting his niece; 
 and an idolatrous old admiral, on his back with 
 gout; conduced in turn and together to the marriage 
 gradually exciting the world's wonder, till it eclipsed 
 the story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Tanny, 
 which it caused to be discussed afresh.
 
 AN IRRUPTION OF MISTRESS GOSSIP 188 
 
 Mrs. Cartliew remembered Carintliia Jane's last 
 maiden remark and her first bridal utterance. On 
 the way, walking to the church of Croridge from 
 LekkattSj the girl said: '-'Going on my feet, I feel I 
 continue the mountain walk with my brother when 
 we left our home." And after leaving the church, 
 about to mount the coach, she turned to Mrs. Carthew, 
 saying, as she embraced her: ^'A happy bride's kiss 
 should bring some good fortune." And looking down 
 from her place on the top of the coach: "Adieu, dear 
 Mrs. Carthew. A day of glory it is to-day." 
 
 She must actually have had it in her sight as a day 
 of glory : and it was a day of the clouds off our rainy 
 quarter, similar in every way to the day of her step- 
 ping on English soil and saying : " It is a dark land." 
 For the heart is truly declared to be our colourist. A 
 day ha^dng the gale in its breast, sweeping the whole 
 country and bending the trees for the twigs to hiss like 
 spray of the billows around our island, was a day of 
 golden splendour to the young bride of the Earl of 
 Fleetwood, though he scarcely addressed one syllable 
 to her, and they sat side by side all but dumb, he like 
 a coachman driving an imkno^m lady fare, on a morn- 
 ing after a night when his wife's tongue may have 
 soured him for the sex.
 
 184 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A PEXDANT OF THE FOREGOING 
 
 JMention has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy- 
 Dame, in her vagrant fowl's treatment of a story she 
 cannot incubate, will not relinquish, and may ultimately 
 addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a dis- 
 engaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to 
 his coach ' and four at the cross of the roads to Lekkatts 
 and the lowland, abruptly, and as one pursuing a 
 deferential line of conduct he had prescribed to himself, 
 asked his bride, what seat she would prefer. 
 
 He shouted: "Ines!" 
 
 A person inside the coach appeared to be ineffectually 
 roused. 
 
 The glass of the window dropped. The head of a man 
 emerged. It was the head of one of the barge-faced men 
 of the British Isles, broad, and battered flattish, with 
 sentinel eyes. 
 
 In an instant the heavy-headed but not ill-looking 
 fellow was nimble and jumped from the coach. 
 
 "Napping, my lord," he said. 
 
 Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were 
 light ; they flipped a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the 
 ground. Perhaps they were allowed to go with their 
 instinct for the dance, that his master should have a
 
 A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING 185 
 
 sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and 
 stood to take orders ; clad in a flat blue cap, a brown 
 overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the temporary bustle of 
 his legs had revealed. 
 
 Fleetwood heard the young lady say: "I would 
 choose, if you please, to sit beside you.'' 
 
 He gave a nod of enforced assent, glancing at the 
 vacated box. 
 
 The man inquired : " A knee and a back for the lady 
 to mount up, my lord ? " 
 
 ^' In ! " was the smart command to him ; and he popped 
 in with the agility of his popping out. 
 
 Then Carinthia made reverence to the grey lean figure 
 of her uncle and kissed Mrs. Carthew. She needed no 
 help to mount the coach. Fleetwood's arm was rigidly 
 extended, and he did not visibly wince when this foreign 
 girl sprang to the first hand-grip on the coach and said : 
 "No, my husband, I can do it," unaided, was implied. 
 
 Her stride from the axle of the wheel to the step 
 higher would have been a graceful spectacle on Alpine 
 crags. 
 
 Fleetwood swallowed that, too, though it conjured up 
 a mocking recollection of the Baden woods, and an 
 astonished wild donkey preparing himself for his 
 harness. A sour relish of the irony in his present 
 position sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as 
 the finest form of loathing: on the principle, that if 
 we find ourselves consigned to the nether halls, we do
 
 186 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 well to dance drunkenly. He had cried for Eomance — 
 here it was! 
 
 He raised his hat to Mrs. Carthew and to Lord 
 Levellier. Previous to the ceremony, the two noblemen 
 had interchanged the short speech of mannered duel- 
 lists punctiliously courteous in the opening act. Their 
 civility was maintained at the termination of the deadly 
 work. The old lord's bosom thanked the j^oung one for 
 not requiring entertainment and a repast; the young 
 lord's thanked the old one for a strict military demeanour 
 at an execution and the abstaining from any nonsensical 
 talk over the affair. 
 
 A couple of liveried grooms at the horses' heads ran 
 and sprang to the hinder seats as soon as their master 
 had taken the reins. He sounded the whip caressingly : 
 off those pretty trotters went. 
 
 Mrs. Carthew watched them, waving to the bride. 
 She was on the present occasion less than usually an 
 acute or a reflective observer, owing to her admiration 
 of lordly state and masculine commandership ; and 
 her thought was : " She has indeed made a brilliant 
 marriage ! " 
 
 The lady thought it, notwithstanding an eccentricity 
 in the wedding ceremony, such as could not but be 
 noticeable. But very wealthy noblemen were commonly, 
 perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved 
 themselves egregious, which the world expected them 
 to be.
 
 A PENDANT OF THE FOREGOING 187 
 
 Lord Levellier sounded loud eulogies of the illustri- 
 ous driver's team. His meditation, as lie subsequently 
 stated to Chillon, was upon his vanquished antagonist's 
 dexterity, in so conducting matters, that he had to be 
 taken at once, with naught of the customary preface 
 and apology for taking to himself the young lady, of 
 which a handsome settlement is the memorial. 
 
 We have to suppose, that the curious occupant of the 
 coach inside aroused no curiosity in the pair of absorbed 
 observers. 
 
 Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain 
 followed the coach until it sank and the backs of the 
 two liveried grooms closed the chapter of the wedding ; 
 introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven 
 miles distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts. It was 
 out of sight that the coach turned to the left, north- 
 westward. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV 
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 
 
 A FAMOUS maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, 
 treating of precaution, as " Tlie brave man's clean con- 
 science,^' with sound counsel to the adventurous, has 
 it: — 
 
 " Then you sail away into the tornado^ happy as a sealed 
 bottle of ripe wine J'
 
 188 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 It sh-ould mean, that brave men entering the jaws of 
 hurricanes are found to have cheerful hearts in them 
 when they know they have done their best. But, 
 touching the picture of happiness, conceive the boun- 
 teous Bacchic spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, 
 and you find comparison neighbour closely between the 
 sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is being driven by 
 her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage 
 morn. 
 
 Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut 
 mouth, in a strange land, travelling cloud-like, rushing 
 like the shower-cloud to the vale, this Carinthia, sud- 
 denly wedded, passionately grateful for humbleness 
 exalted, virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, 
 resembled the inanimate and most inspiring ; was mind- 
 less and inexpressive, past memory, beyond the hopes, 
 a thing of the tludlled blood and skylark air, since she 
 laid her hand in this young man's. His not speaking 
 to her was accepted. Her blood rather than recollection 
 revived their exchanges during the dance at Baden, for 
 assurance that their likings were one, their aims raptur- 
 ously one; that he was she, she he, the two hearts 
 making one soul. 
 
 Could she give as much as he ? It was hardly asked. 
 If we feel we can give our breath of life, the strength 
 of the feeling fully answers. It bubbles perpetually 
 from the depth like a well-spring in tumult. Two hearts 
 that make one soul do not separately count their gifts.
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 189 
 
 For the rest, her hunger to admire disposed her to an 
 absorbing sentience of his acts; the trifles, gestures, 
 manner of this and that; which were seized as they 
 flew, and swiftly assimilated to stamp his personality. 
 Driving was the piece of skill she could not do. Her 
 husband's mastery of the reins endowed him with the 
 beauty of those harmonious trotters he guided and kept 
 to their pace ; and the humming rush of the pace, the 
 smooth torrent of the brown heath-knolls and reddish 
 pits and hedge-lines and grass-flats and copses pouring 
 the counterway of her advance, belonged to his "wizardry. 
 The bearing of her onward was her abandonment to him. 
 Delicious as mountain air, the wind sang ; it had a song 
 of many voices. Quite as much as on the mountains, 
 there was the keen, the blissful, nerve-knotting catch of 
 the presence of danger in the steep descents, taken as if 
 swallowed, without swerve or check. She was in her 
 husband's hands. At times, at the pitch of a rapid 
 shelving, that was like a fall, her heart went down; 
 and at the next throb exalted before it rose, not reason- 
 ing why; — her confidence was in him; she was his 
 comrade whatever chanced. Up over the mountain- 
 peaks she had known edged moments, little heeded in 
 their passage, when life is poised as a crystal pitcher 
 on the head, in peril of a step. Then she had been 
 dependent on herself. !N'ow she had the joy of trusting 
 to her husband. 
 
 His hard leftward eye had view of her askant, if he
 
 190 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 cared to see how she bore the trial ; and so relentlessly 
 did he' take the slopes, that the man inside pushed 
 out an inquiring pate, the two grooms tightened arms 
 across their chests. Her face was calmly set, wake- 
 ful, but un wrinkled : the creature did not count among 
 timid girls — or among civilized. She had got what 
 she wanted from her madman — mad in his impulses, 
 mad in his reading of honour. She was the sister of 
 Henrietta's husband. Henrietta bore the name she 
 had qtiitted. Could madness go beyond the marrying 
 of the creature ? He chafed at her containment, at 
 her courage, her silence, her withholding the brazen 
 or the fawnish look-up, either of which he would have 
 hated. 
 
 He, however, was dragged to look down. Neither 
 Gorgon nor Venus, nor a mingling of them, she had 
 the chasm of the face, -recalling the face of his 
 bondage, seen first that night at Baden. It recalled 
 and it was not the face ; it was the skull of the face, 
 or the flesh of the spirit. Occasionally she looked, for 
 a twinkle or two, the creature or vision she had been, 
 as if to mock by reminding him. She was the 
 abhorred delusion, who captured him by his nerves, 
 ensnared his word — the doing of a foul witch. How 
 had it leapt from his mouth? She must have worked 
 for it. The word spoken — she must have known it 
 — he was bound, or the detested Henrietta would 
 have said: Not even true to his word!
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 191 
 
 To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his 
 name, for a slip of his- tongue, despite the warning 
 sent her through her uncle, had that face much as a 
 leaden winter landscape ^ pretends to be " the country 
 radiant in colour. She belonged to the order of the 
 variable animals — a woman indeed! — ^^ womanish enough 
 in that. There are men who love Vv'omen -r— the idea 
 of woman. Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He 
 loved freedom, loathed the subjection of a partnership; 
 could undergo it only in adoration of an ineffable 
 splendour. He had stepped to the altar fancying she 
 might keep to her part of the contract by appear- 
 ing the miracle that subdued him. Seen by light of 
 day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without 
 her spells ; that is, the skeleton of the seductive, 
 ghastliest among horrors and ironies. Let her have 
 the credit of doing her work thoroughly before the 
 exposure. She had done it. She might have ' helped 
 — such was the stipulation of his mad freak in con- 
 senting to the bondage — yes, she might have helped 
 to soften the sting of his wound. She was beside 
 him bearing his name, for the perpetual pouring of 
 an acid on the wound that vile Henrietta — poisoned 
 honey of a girl ! — had dealt. 
 
 He glanced down at his possession: — heaven and 
 the yawning pit were the contrast ! Poisoned honey 
 is after all honey while you eat it. Here there was 
 nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness. And who was
 
 192 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 she ? Site was the sister of Henrietta's husband. He 
 was expected to embrace the sister of Henrietta's 
 husband. Those two were on their bridal tour. 
 
 This creature was also the daughter of an ancient 
 impostor and desperado called the Old Buccaneer; a 
 distinguished member of the family of the Lincoln- 
 shire Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly 
 acquitted, men said, on a trial for murder. An eminent 
 alliance ! Society considered the Earl of Fleetwood 
 wildish, though he could manage his affairs. He and 
 his lawyers had them under strict control. How of 
 himself ? The prize of the English marriage market 
 had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride the 
 daughter of the Old Buccaneer. He was to mix his 
 blood with the blood of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying 
 pallid under the hesitating acquittal of a divided jury. 
 
 How had he come to this pass, which swung him 
 round to think almost regretfully of the scorned multi- 
 tude of fair besiegers in the market, some of whom had 
 their unpoetic charms ? 
 
 He w^as renowned and unrivalled as the man of stain- 
 less honour: the one living man of his word. He had 
 never broken it — never would. There was his distinc- 
 tion among the herd. In that, a man is princely above 
 princes. The nobility of Edw^ard Eussett, Earl of Fleet- 
 wood, surpasses the nobility of common nobles. But, 
 by all that is holy, he pays for his distinction. 
 
 The creature beside him is a franked issue of her
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 193 
 
 old pirate of a father in one respect — nothing frightens 
 her^__, There she sits; not a screw of her brows or her 
 lips ; and the coach rocked, they were sharp on a spill 
 midway of the last descent. It rocks again. She 
 thinks it scarce worth while to look up to reassiu-e 
 him. She is looking over the country. 
 
 '' Have you been used to driving ? " he said. 
 
 She replied : " iSTo, it is new to me on a coach.'' 
 
 Carinthia felt at once how wild the wish or half 
 expectation that he would resume the glowing com- 
 munion of the night v/hich had plighted them. 
 
 She did not this time say '^my husband/' still it 
 flicked a whip at his ears. 
 
 She had made it more offensive, by so richly toning 
 the official title just won from him as to ring it on 
 the nerves ; one had to block it or be invaded. An 
 anticipation that it would certainly recur, haunted every 
 opening of her mouth. 
 
 Now that it did not, he felt the gap, relieved, and yet 
 pricked to imagine a mimicry of her tones, for the odd 
 foreignness of the word and the sound. She had a 
 voice of her own beside her courage. At the altar, her 
 responses had their music. No wonder: the day was 
 hers. "My husband " was a manner of saying "my fish." 
 
 He spoke very civilly. "Oblige me by telling me 
 what name you are accustomed to answer to." 
 
 She seemed unaware of an Arctic husband, and re- 
 plied : "My father called me Carin — short for Carinthia.
 
 194 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 My motlier called me Janey ; my second name is Jane. 
 My brother Chillon says both.. Henrietta calls me 
 Janey." 
 
 The creature was dead flesh to goads. But the name 
 of her sister-in-law on her lips returned the stroke 
 neatly. She spared him one whip, to cut him with 
 another. 
 
 " You have not informed me which of these names 
 you prefer." 
 
 " Oh, my husband, it is as you shall please." 
 
 Fleetwood smartened the trot of his team, and there 
 was a to-do with the rakish leaders. 
 
 Fairies of a malignant humour in former days used 
 to punish the unhappiest of the naughty men who were 
 not favourites, by suddenly planting a hump on their 
 backs. Off the bedevilled wretches pranced, and they 
 kicked, they snorted, whinnied, rolled, galloped, outfly- 
 ing the wind, but not the dismal rider. Marriage is our 
 incubus now. Ko explanation is offered of why we are 
 afflicted ; we have simply offended, or some one absent 
 has offended, and we are handy. The spiteful hag of 
 power ties a wife to us; perhaps for the reason, that 
 we behaved in the spirit of a better time by being 
 chivalrously honourable. Wives are just as inexplicable 
 curses, just as ineradicable and astonishing as humps 
 imposed on shapely backs. 
 
 Fleetwood lashed his horses until Carinthia's low 
 cry of entreaty rose to surprise. That stung him.
 
 OPENLN-G STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 195 
 
 "Leave the coackman to his devices: we have an 
 appointment and must keep it," he said. 
 
 " They go so willingly." 
 
 "Good beasts, in their way.'* 
 
 "I do not like the whip." 
 
 "I have the same objection." 
 
 They were on the level of the vale, going along a 
 road between farms and mansions, meadows and gar- 
 den-plots and park-palings. A strong warm wind drove 
 the pack of clouds over the tree-tops and charged at 
 the branches. English scenery, animating air ; a rouse 
 to the blood and the mind. Carinthia did not ask for 
 hues. She had come to love of the dark land with 
 the warm lifting wind, the big trees and the hedges, 
 and the stately houses, and people requiring to be 
 studied, who mean well and are warm somewhere below, 
 as chimney-pots are, though they are so stiff. 
 
 English people dislike endearments, she had found. 
 It might be that her husband disliked any show of 
 fondness. He would have to be studied very much. 
 He was not like others, as Henrietta had warned her. 
 From thinking of him fervidly, she was already past 
 the marvel of the thought that she called him husband. 
 At the same time, a curious intimation, gathered she 
 knew not whence, of the word ^husband' on a young 
 wife's lips as being a foreign sound in England, advised 
 her to withhold it. His behaviour was instructing her. 
 
 "Are you weather-wise? — able to tell when the
 
 196 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 clouds will hold off or pelt," he said, to be very civil 
 to a neighbour. 
 
 She collected her understanding, apparently ; treating 
 a conversational run of the tongue as a question to be 
 pondered; and the horses paid for it. Ordinarily he 
 was gentle with his beasts. He lashed at her in his 
 heart for perverting the humanest of men. 
 
 "Father was," she replied. 
 
 "Oh! I have heard of him." 
 
 Her face lightened. "Father had a great name in 
 England." 
 
 "The Old Buccaneer, I think." 
 
 "I do not know. He was a seaman of the navy, 
 like Admiral Fakenham is. Weather at sea, weather 
 on the mountains, he could foretell it always. He 
 wrote a book; I have a copy you will read. It is a 
 book of Maxims. He often speaks of the weather. 
 English weather and women, he says. But not my 
 mother. My mother he stood aside by herself — pas 
 capricieuse ; du tout! Because she would be out in 
 the weather and brave the weather. She rode, she 
 swam, best of any woman. If she could have known 
 you, what pleasure for me ! Mother learnt to read 
 mountain weather from father. I did it too. But 
 sometimes on the high fields' upper snows it is very 
 surprising. Father has been caught. Here the cloud 
 is down near the earth and the strong wind keeps the 
 rain from falling. How long the wind will blow I
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 19T 
 
 cannot guess. But you love the mountains. We 
 spoke . . . And mountains' adventures we both love. 
 I will talk French if you like, for, I think, German 
 you do not speak. I may speak English better than 
 French; but I am afraid of my English with you." 
 
 ^' Dear me ! " quoth Fleetwood, and he murmured 
 politely and curiously, attentive to his coachman busi- 
 ness. She had a voice that clove the noise of the 
 wheels, and she had a desire to talk — that was evi- 
 dent. Talk of her father set her prattling. It became 
 clear also to his not dishonest, his impressionable 
 mind, that her baby English might be natural. Or 
 she was mildly playing on it, to give herself an air. 
 
 He had no remembrance of such baby English at 
 Baden. There, however, she was in a state of enthu- 
 siasm — the sort of illuminated transparency they show 
 at the end of fireworks. Mention of her old scape- 
 grace of a father lit her up again. The girl there and 
 the girl here were no doubt the same. It could not 
 be said that she had duped him; he had done it for 
 himself — acted on by a particular agency. This 
 creature had not the capacity to dupe. He had armed 
 a blunt-witted young woman with his idiocy, and she 
 had dealt the stroke; different in scarce a degree by 
 nature from other young women of prey. 
 
 But her look at times, and now and then her voice, 
 gave sign that she counted on befooling him as well, 
 to reconcile him to his bondage. The calculation was
 
 198 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 excessive. No woman had done it yet. Idiocy plunged 
 him the step which reawakened understanding; and 
 to keep his whole mind alert on guard against any 
 sort of satisfaction with his bargain, he frankly re- 
 ferred to the cause. Not female arts, but nature's 
 impulses, it was his passion for the wondrous in 
 the look of a woman's face, the new morning of the 
 idea of women in the look, and the peep into imagi- 
 nary novel character, did the trick of ensla^dng him. 
 Call it idiocy. Such it was. Once acknowledged, it 
 is not likely to recur. An implacable reason sits in 
 its place, with a keen blade for efforts to carry the 
 imposture further afield or make it agreeable. Yet, 
 after giving his word to Lord Levellier, he had prodded 
 himself to think the burden of this wild young woman 
 might be absurdly tolerable and a laugh at the world. 
 
 A solicitude for the animal was marked by his 
 inquiry : " You are not hungry yet ? " 
 
 " Oh no, not yet," said she, oddly enlivened. 
 
 They had a hamper and were independent of stop- 
 pages for provision, he informed her. What more 
 delightful ? cried her look, seeing the first mid-day's 
 rest and meal with Chillon on the walk over the 
 mountain from their empty home. 
 
 She could get up enthusiasm for a stocked hamper ! 
 And when told of some business that drew him to 
 a meadow they were nearing, she said she would be 
 glad to help, if she could. " I learn quickly, I know.'*
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 199 
 
 His head acquiesced. The daughter of the Old 
 Buccaneer might learn the business quickly, perhaps; 
 a singularly cutting smile was on his tight lips, in 
 memory of a desire he had as a boy to join hands 
 with an Amazonian damsel and be out over the world 
 for adventures, comrade and bride as one. Here the 
 creature sat. Life is the burlesque of young dreams; 
 or they precipitate us on the roar and grin of a rec- 
 ognized beast world. 
 
 The devil possessing him gnawed so furiously that 
 a partial mitigation of the pain was afforded by sight 
 of waving hats on a hill-rise of the road. He flour- 
 ished his whip. The hats continued at windmill 
 work. It signified brisk news to him, and prospect 
 of glee to propitiate any number of devils. 
 
 "You will want a maid to attend on you," he 
 said. 
 
 She replied : " I am not used to attendance on me. 
 Henrietta's maid would help. I did not want her. 
 I had no maid at home. I can do for myself. Father 
 and mother liked me to be very independent." 
 
 He supposed he would have to hear her spelling her 
 words out next. 
 
 The hill-top was gained; twenty paces of pretty 
 trotting brought up the coach beside an inn porch, 
 in the style of the finish dear to whips, and even 
 imperative upon them, if they love their art. Two 
 gentlemen stood in the road, and a young woman at
 
 200 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the inn door; a dark-haired girl of an anxious counte- 
 nance. Her puckers vanished at some signal from 
 inside the coach. 
 
 "All right, Madge; nothing to fear," Fleetwood 
 called to her, and she curtseyed. 
 
 He alighted, saying to her, before he spoke to his 
 friends : " I've brought him safe ; had him under 
 my eye the last four and twenty hours. He'll do the 
 trick to-day. You don't bet ? " 
 
 "Oh! my lord, no." 
 
 " Help the lady down. Out with you, Ines ! " 
 
 The light-legged, barge-faced man touched ground 
 capering. He was greeted " Kit " by the pair of 
 gentlemen, who shook hands with him, after he had 
 faintly simulated the challenge to a jig with Madge. 
 She flounced from him, holding her arms up to the 
 lady. Landlord, landlady, and ostler besought the lady 
 to stay for the fixing of a ladder. Carinthia stepped, 
 leaped, and entered the inn, Fleetwood remarking: 
 "We are very independent, Chummy Potts." 
 
 " Cordy bally, by Jove ! " Potts cried. But the moment 
 after this disengaged ejaculation, he was taken with a 
 bewilderment. " At the Opera ? " he questioned of his 
 perplexity. 
 
 "No, sir, not at the Opera," Fleetwood rejoined. 
 "The lady's last public appearance was at the altar." 
 
 " Sort of a suspicion of having seen her somewhere. 
 Left her husband behind, has she?"
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 201 
 
 ^' You see : she has gone in." 
 
 The scoring of a proposition of Euclid on the fore- 
 head of Potts amused him and tlie other gentleman, 
 who was hailed '•' Mallard ! " and cared nothing for 
 problems involving the female of man when such 
 work was to the fore as the pugilistic encounter of the 
 Earl of Fleetwood's chosen Kit Ines, with Lord Brail- 
 stone's imbeaten and well-Vjacked Ben Todds. 
 
 Ines had done pretty things from the age of seven- 
 teen to his twenty-third year. Eemarkably clever things 
 they were, to be called great in the annals of the Ring. 
 The point, however, was that the pockets of his backers 
 had seriously felt his latest fight. He received a dog's 
 licking at the hands of Lummy Phelps, his inferior in 
 skill, fighting two to one of the odds ; and all because of 
 his fatal addiction to the breaking of Ids trainer's im- 
 posed fast in liquids on the night before the battle. 
 Eight through his training, up to that hour, the rascal 
 was devout; the majority's money rattled all on the 
 snug safe side. And how did he get at the bottle ? 
 His trainers never could say. But what made him 
 turn himself into a headlong ass, when he had only 
 to wait a night to sit among friends and worshippers 
 drinking off his tumbler upon tumbler with the honours ? 
 It was past his wits to explain. Endurance of his pri- 
 vation had snapped in him ; or else, which is more 
 likely, this Genius of the Eing was tempted by his 
 genius on the summit of his perfected powers to believe
 
 202 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the battle his own, and celebrate it, as became a victor 
 despising the drubbed antagonist. 
 
 In any case, he drank, and a minor man gave him the 
 dog's licking. "Went into it puffy, came out of it 
 bunged," the chronicle resounding over England ran. 
 Old England read of "an eyeless carcase" heroically 
 stepping up to time for three rounds of mashing punish- 
 ment. If he had won the day after all, the country 
 would have been electrified. It sympathized on the side 
 of his backers too much to do more than nod a short 
 approval of his fortitude. To sink with flag flying is 
 next to sinking the enemy. There was talk of a girl 
 present at the fight, and of how she received the eyeless, 
 almost faceless, carcase of her sweetheart Kit, and 
 carried him away in a little donkey-cart, comfortably 
 cushioned to meet disaster. This petty incident drew the 
 attention of the Earl of Eleetwood, then beginning to be 
 known as the diamond of uncounted facets, patron of the 
 pick of all departments of manly activity in England. 
 
 The devotion of the girl Madge to her sweetheart was 
 really a fine story. Eleetwood touched on it to Mr. 
 Mallard, speaking of it like the gentleman he could be, 
 while Chumley Potts wagged impatient acquiescence in 
 a romantic episode of the E-ing, that kept the talk from 
 the hotter theme. 
 
 "Money's Bank of England to-day, you- think?" he 
 interposed, and had his answer after Mallard had said : 
 "The girl's rather good looking, too."
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 203 
 
 "You may double your bets, Chummy. I had the 
 fellow to his tea at my dinner-table yesterday evening; 
 locked him in his bedroom, and had him up and out 
 for a morning spin at six. His trainer, Flipper, 's on 
 the field, drove from Esslemont at nine, confident as 
 trumps." 
 
 "Deuce of a good-looking girl," Potts could now 
 afford to say ; and he sang out : " Feel fit, lucky dog ? " 
 
 "Concert pitch!" was the declaration of Kit Ines. 
 
 "How about Lord Brailstone's man?" 
 
 "Female partner in a quadrille, sir." 
 
 "Ah!" Potts doted on his limbs with a butcher's 
 eye for prize joints. 
 
 "Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset," Mallard 
 observed. 
 
 Fleetwood offered him to take his bets. 
 
 " You're heavy on it with Brailstone ? " said Mallard. 
 
 "Three thousand." 
 
 "I'd back you for your luck blindfold." 
 
 A ruffle of sourness shot over the features of the earl, 
 and was noticed by both eager betters, who exchanged a 
 glance. 
 
 Potts inspected his watch, and said half aloud : " Liver, 
 ten to one ! That never meant bad luck — except bad 
 to act on. We slept here last night, you know. It's a 
 mile and a quarter from the Royal Sovereign to the field 
 of glory. Pretty well time to start. Brailstone has a 
 drive of a couple of miles. Coaches from London down
 
 204 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 by this time. Abrane's dead on Ben Todds, any odds. 
 Poor old Braney ! ' Steady man, Todds.' Backs him 
 because he's a 'respectable citizen/ — don't drink. A 
 prize-fighter total abstainer has no spurts. Old Braney's 
 branded for the losing side. You might bet against 
 Braney blindfold, Mallard. How long shall you take 
 to polish him off, Kit Ines ? " 
 
 The opponent of Ben Todds calculated. 
 
 "Well, sir, steady Benny ought to be satisfied with 
 his dose inj say, about forty minutes. Maybe he won't 
 own to it before an hour and ten. He's got a proud 
 English stomach." 
 
 "Shall we be late?" Potts asked. 
 
 " Jump in," Fleetwood said to his man. " We may be 
 five minutes after time. Chummy. I had a longer drive, and 
 had to get married on the way, and — ah, here they are!" 
 
 " Lady coming ? " 
 
 "I fancy she sticks to the coach ; I don't know her tastes. 
 Madge must see her hero through it, that's positive." 
 
 Potts deferred his astonishment at the things he was 
 hearing and seeing, which were only Fleetwood's riddles. 
 The fight and the bets rang every other matter out of his 
 head. He beheld the lady, who had come down from 
 the coach like a columbine, mount it like Bean-stalk 
 Jack. Madge was not half so clever, and required a 
 hand at her elbow. 
 
 After giving hurried directions to Eundles, the land- 
 lord of the Eoyal Sovereign, Fleetwood took the reins,
 
 OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON 205 
 
 and all three gentlemen toiiched hats to the curtseying 
 figure of Mrs. E-undles. 
 
 "You have heard, I dare say — it's an English scene," 
 he spoke, partly turning his face, to Carinthia; "particu- 
 larly select to-day. Their Majesties might look on, as 
 the Caesars did in Eome. Pity we can't persuade them. 
 They ought to set the fashion. Here we have the Eng- 
 lish people at their grandest, in prime condition, if they 
 were not drunk over-night ; and dogged, perfectly awake, 
 magnanimous, all for fair play ; fine fellows, upon my 
 word. A little blood, of course." 
 
 But the daughter of the Old Buccaneer would have 
 inherited a tenderness for the sight of blood. She 
 should make a natural Lady Patroness of England's 
 National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose ; 
 wander over England with a tail of shouting riff-raff; 
 have exhibitions, join in them, display our accomplish- 
 ments ; issue challenges to fence, shoot, walk, run, box, 
 in time : the creature has muscle. It's one way of 
 crowning a freak; we follow the direction, since the 
 deed done can't be undone ; and a precious poetical life, 
 too ! You may get as royally intoxicated on swipes as 
 on choice wine ; win a name for yourself as the husband 
 of such a wife; a name in sporting journals and shilling 
 biographies: quite a revival of the Peerage they have 
 begun to rail at ! 
 
 " I would not wish to leave you," said Carinthia. 
 
 " You have chosen," said Fleetwood.
 
 206 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 IN WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A 
 TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 
 
 Cheers at an open gate of a field saluted the familiar 
 scarlet of the Earl of Fleetwood's coach in Kentish land. 
 They were chorister cheers, the spontaneous ringing out 
 of English country hearts in homage to the nobleman 
 who brightened the heaviness of life on English land 
 with a spectacle of the noble art distinguishing their 
 fathers. He drove along over muffling turf; plough- 
 boys and blue butcher-boys, and smocked old men, with 
 an approach to a hundredweight on their heels, at the 
 trot to right and left ; all hoping for an occasional sight 
 of the jewel called Kitty, that he carried inside. Kitty 
 was there. 
 
 Kitty's eyes are shut. Think of that : cradled inno- 
 cence and angels' dreams and the whole of the hymn just 
 before ding-dong-bang on noses and jaws ! That means 
 confidence ? Looks like it. But Kitty's not asleep : 
 you try him. He's only quiet because he has got to 
 undergo great exertion. Last fight he was knocked out 
 of time, because he went into it honest drunk, they tell. 
 And the earl took him up, to give him a chance of recov- 
 ering his good name, and that's Christian. But the earl, 
 he knows a man as well as a horse. He's one to follow.
 
 A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 207 
 
 Go to a fayte down at Esslemont, you won't forget 
 your day. See there, lie's brought a lady on the top o' 
 the coach. That seems for to signify he don't expect it's 
 going to be much of a bloody business. But there's 
 no accounting. Anyhow, Broadfield '11 have a name in 
 the papers for Sunday reading. In comes t'other lord's 
 coach. They've timed it together close, they have. 
 
 They were pronounced to be both the right sort of 
 noblemen for the country. Lord Brailstone's blue 
 coach rattled through an eastern gate to the corner of 
 the thirty-acre meadow, where Lord Fleetwood had 
 drawn up, a toss from the ring. The meeting of the 
 blue and scarlet coaches drew forth Old England's 
 thunders ; and when the costly treasures contained in 
 them popped out heads, the moment was delirious. 
 Kit Ines came after his head on a bound, Ben Todds 
 was ostentatiously deliberate : his party said he was 
 no dancing-master. He stepped out, grave as a barge 
 emerging from a lock, though alive to the hurrahs of 
 supporters and punctilious in returning the formal por- 
 tion of his rival's too roguish nod. Their look was 
 sharp into the eyes, just an instant. 
 
 Brailstone and Fleetwood jumped to the grass and 
 met, talking and laughing, precise upon points of busi- 
 ness, otherwise cordial : plenipotentiaries of great powers, 
 whom they have set in motion and bind to the ceremo- 
 nial opening steps, according to the rules of civilized 
 warfare. They had a short colloquy with newspaper
 
 208 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 reporters ; — an absolutely fair, square, upright fight of 
 Britons was to be chronicled. Captain Abrane, a tower 
 in the crowd, registered bets whenever he could. Cur- 
 ricles, gigs, carts, pony-traps, boys on ponies, a swarm on 
 legs, flowed to the central point and huddled there. 
 
 Was either champion born in Kent ? An audacious 
 boy proclaimed Kit Ines a man of Kent. Why, of 
 course he was ! and that was why the Earl of Fleetwood 
 backed our cocky Kitty, and means to land him on the 
 top of his profession. Ben Todds was shufiled aside, as 
 one of their Londoners, destitute of coimty savour. 
 
 All very well, but have a spy at Benny Todds. Who 
 looks the square man ? And hear what that big 
 gentleman of the other lord's party says. A gentleman 
 of his height and weight has a right to his opinion. 
 He's dead against Kit Ines : it's fists, not feet, he says, 
 *11 do it to-day; stamina, he says. Benny has got the 
 stamina. 
 
 Todds' possession of the stamina, and the grand 
 voice of Captain Abrane, and the Father Christmas, 
 roast-beef-of-Old England, face of the umpire declared 
 to be on the side of Lord Brailstone's colour blue, dark- 
 ened the star of Kit Ines till a characteristic piece of 
 behaviour was espied. He dashed his cap into the 
 ring and followed it, with the lightest of vaults across 
 the ropes. There he was, the first in the ring : and that 
 stands for promise of first blow, first blood, first flat 
 knock-down, and last to cry for quarter. His pair of
 
 A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 209 
 
 seconds were soon after him. Fleetwood mounted his 
 box. 
 
 " Is it to fight ? " said Carinthia. 
 
 "To see which is the master." 
 
 "They fight to see?" 
 
 "Generally until one or the other can't see. You 
 are not obliged to see it; you can be driven away if 
 you wish." 
 
 " I will be here, if you are here. " 
 
 " You choose it. " 
 
 Fleetwood leaned over to Chumley Potts on the 
 turf. " Abrane's ruining himself. " 
 
 Potts frankly hoped that his friend might be doing 
 so. " Todds is jolly well backed. He's in prime condi- 
 tion. He's the favourite of the knowing ones." 
 
 " You wouldn't have the odds, if he weren't." 
 
 "No; but the odds are like ten per cent: they con- 
 jure the gale, and be hanged," said Potts; he swore 
 at his betting mania, which destroyed the pleasure of 
 the show he loved. 
 
 All in the ring were shaking hands. Shots of a desire 
 to question and comment sped through Carinthia's veins 
 and hurt her. She had gathered that she spoke foolishly 
 to her husband's ear, so she kept her mouth shut, though 
 the unanswered of her inquisitive ignorance in the strange 
 land pricked painfully at her bosom. She heard the 
 girl behind her say : " Our colours ! " when the colour 
 scarlet enwound with Lord Brailstone's blue was tied
 
 210 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 to the stake: and her husband nodded; he smiled; he 
 liked to hear the girl. 
 
 Potts climbed up, crying: ^^ Toilet's complete! Now 
 for paws out, and then at it, my hearties ! " 
 
 Choice of corners under the leaden low cloud counted 
 for little. A signal was given ; a man outside the ring 
 eyed a watch, raised a hand ; the two umpires Avere on 
 foot in their places; the pair of opposing seconds hur- 
 ried out cheery or bolt-business words to their men ; and 
 the champions advanced to the scratch. Todds first, 
 by the courtesy of Ines, whose decorous control of his 
 legs at a weighty moment was rightly read by his party. 
 
 Their hands grasped firmly : thereupon becoming fists 
 of a hostile couple in position. And simply to learn 
 which of us two the better man! Or in other words, 
 with four simple fists to compass a patent fact and stand 
 it on the historic pedestal, with a little red writing under- 
 neath: — 3^ou never can patent a fact without it. But 
 mark the differences of this kind of contention from all 
 other — especially the Parliamentary: this is positive, 
 it has a beginning and an end ; and it is good-humoured 
 from beginning to end; trial of skill, trial of stamina; 
 Nature and Art ; Old English ; which made us what we 
 are ; and no rancours, no vows of vengeance ; the beaten 
 man of the two bowing to the bit of history he has 
 helped to make. 
 
 Kittites had need to be confident in the skill of their 
 lither lad. His facer looked granite. Fronting that
 
 A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 211 
 
 mass, Kit you might — not to lash about for compari- 
 sons — call a bundle of bamboo. Ay, but well knitted, 
 springy, alive every inch of him ; crafty, too, as you will 
 soon bear witness. He knows he has got his task, and 
 he's the man to do it. 
 
 There was wary sparring, and mirrors watched them. 
 
 " Bigger fellow : but have no fear,'' the earl said over 
 his shoulder to Madge. 
 
 She said in return : '^ Oh, I don't know, I'm praying." 
 
 Kit was now on his toes, all himself, like one who has 
 found the key. He feinted. Quick as lightning, he 
 landed a bolt on Ben's jib, just at the toll-bar of the 
 bridge, between the eyes, and was off, out of reach, elas- 
 tic; Ben's counter fell short by a couple of inches. 
 Cheers for first blow. 
 
 The earl clucked to Madge. Her gaze at the ring was 
 a sullen intensity. 
 
 Will you believe it? — Ben received a second spank- 
 ing cracker on the spectacles-seat: neat indeed; and, 
 poor payment for the compliment, he managed to dig a 
 drive at the ribs. As much of that game as may suit 
 you, sturdy Ben! But hear the shout, and behold: 
 First blood to Kit Ines ! That tell-tale nose of old Ben's 
 has mounted the Earl of Fleetwood's colours, and all his 
 party are looking Brailstone-blue. 
 
 ^' So far ! " said Fleetwood. His grooms took an indi- 
 cation: the hamper was unfastened; sandwiches were 
 handed. Carinthia held one; she tried to nibble, in
 
 212 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 obedience to her husband's example. Madge refused a 
 bite of food. 
 
 Hearing Carinthia say to her : " I hope he will not be 
 beaten, I hope, I hope," she made answer : " You are 
 very good, miss"; and the young lady flushed. 
 
 Gentlemen below were talking up to the earl. A 
 Kentish squire of an estate neighbouring Esslemont 
 introduced a Welsh squire he had driven to see the fun, 
 by the name of Mr. Owain Wythan, a neighbour of the 
 earl's dovm in Wales. Eefreshments were offered. Ca- 
 rinthia submissively sipped the sparkling wine, which 
 stings the lips when Ave are indisposed to it. The voice 
 of the girl Madge rang on the tightened chords of her 
 breast. Madge had said she was praying : and to pray 
 was all that could be done by two women. Her husband 
 could laugh loudly with Mr. Potts and the other gentle- 
 men and the strangers. He was quite sure the man he 
 supported would win ; he might have means of knowing. 
 Carinthia clung to his bare words, for the sake of the 
 girl. 
 
 A roaring peal went up from the circle of combat. 
 Kit had it this time. Attacking Ben's peepers, he 
 was bent on defending his own, and he caught a body- 
 blow that sent him hopping back to his pair of seconds, 
 five clear hops to the rear, like a smashed surge-wave 
 off the rock. He was respectful for the remainder of 
 the round. But hammering at the system he had 
 formed, in the very next round, he dropped from a
 
 A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 213 
 
 tremendous repetition of the blow, and lay flat as a 
 turbot. The bets against him had simultaneously a 
 see-saw rise. 
 
 " Bellows, he appears to have none," was the com- 
 ment of Chumley Potts, 
 
 " Now for training, Chummy ! " said Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 " Chummy ! " signifying a crow over Potts, rang out of 
 the hollows of Captain Abrane on Lord Brailstone's coach. 
 
 Carinthia put a hand behind her to Madge. It was 
 grasped, in gratitude for sympathy or in feminine 
 politeness. The girl murmured : ^^ I've seen worse." 
 She was not speaking to ears. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood sat watch in hand. " Up," he said ; 
 and as if hearing him, Kit rose from the ministering 
 second's knee. He walked stiffly, squared after the 
 fashion of a man taught caution. Ben made play. 
 They rounded the ring, giving and taking. Ben 
 rushed, and had an emollient ; spouted again and was 
 corked ; again, and received a neat red waxen stopper. 
 He would not be denied at Kit's door, found him at 
 home and hugged him. Kit got himself to grass, after 
 a spell of heavy fibbing, Ben's game. 
 
 It did him no great harm ; it might be taken for an 
 enlivener ; he was dead on his favourite spot the ensu- 
 ing round, played postman on it. So cleverly, easily, 
 dancingly, did he perform the double knock and the 
 retreat, that Chumley Potts was moved to forget his 
 wagers and exclaim : " Eacket-ball, by Jove ! "
 
 214 THE AMAZING MAKRIAGE 
 
 "If he doesn't let the fellow fib the wind out of 
 him," Mallard addressed his own crab eyeballs. 
 
 Lord Fleetwood heard and said coolly : " Tight- 
 strung. I kept him fasting since he earned his break- 
 fast. You don't wind an empty rascal fit for action. 
 A sword through the lungs won't kill when there's no 
 air in them." 
 
 That was printed in the Few Words before the En- 
 counter, in the Book of Maxims for Men-. Carinthia, 
 hearing everything her husband uttered, burned to 
 remind him of the similarity between his opinions 
 and her father's. 
 
 She was learning, that for some reason, allusions to 
 her father were not acceptable. She squeezed the 
 hand of Madge, and felt a pressure, like a scream, 
 telling her the girl's heart was with the fight beneath 
 them. She thought it natural for her. She wished 
 she could continue looking as intently. She looked 
 because her husband looked. The dark hills and 
 clouds curtaining the run of the stretch of fields re- 
 lieved her sight. 
 
 The clouds went their way; the hills were solid, 
 but like a blue smoke ; the scene here made them very 
 distant and strange. Those two men were still hitting, 
 not hating one another; only to gratify a number of 
 unintelligible people and win a success. But the earth 
 and sky seemed to say. What is the glory ? They 
 were insensible to it, as they are not — they are never
 
 A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 215 
 
 insensible to noble grounds of strife. They bless the 
 spot, they light lamps on it ; they put it into books 
 of history, make it holy, if the cause was a noble 
 one or a good one. 
 
 Or supposing both those men loved the girl, who loved 
 one of them ! Then would Carinthia be less reluctantly 
 interested in their blows. 
 
 Her infant logic stumbled on for a reason while she 
 repressed the torture the scene was becoming, as though 
 a reason could be found by her submissive observation 
 of it. And she was right in believing that a reason 
 for the scene must or should exist. Only, like other 
 bewildered instinctive believers, she could not summon 
 the great universe or a life's experience to unfold it. 
 Her one consolation was in squeezing the hand of the 
 girl from time to time. 
 
 jSTot stealthily done, it was not objected to by the 
 husband whose eye was on all. But the persistence in 
 doing it, sank her from the benignity of her station to 
 the girl's level : it was conduct much too raw, and 
 grated on the deed of the man who had given her his 
 name. 
 
 Madge pleased him better. She had the right to 
 be excited, and she was very little demonstrative. 
 She had — well, in justice, the couple of them had, 
 only she had it more — the tone of the women who 
 can be screwed to witness a spill of blood, peculiarly 
 catching to hear — a tone of every string in them
 
 216 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 snapped except the silver string. Catcliing to hear? 
 It is worth, a stretching of them on the rack to hear 
 that low buzz-hum of their inner breast ... By 
 Heaven! we have them at their best when they sing 
 that note. 
 
 His watch was near an hour of the contest, and 
 Brailstone's man had scored first knock-down blow, a 
 particularly clean floorer. Thinking of that, he was 
 cheered by hearing Chummy Potts, whose opinions he 
 despised, cry out to Abrane: — 
 
 " Yeast to him ! " For the face of Todds was vis- 
 ibly swelling to the ripest of plums from Kit's deliv- 
 eries. Down he went. He had the sturdy legs which 
 are no legs to a clean blow. Odds were offered against 
 him. 
 
 "Oh! pretty play with your right, Kit!" exclaimed 
 Mallard, as Kit fetched • his man an ugly stroke on the 
 round of the waist behind, and the crowd sent up the 
 name of the great organs affected : a sickener of a 
 stroke, if dealt soundly. It meant more than it 
 showed. Kit was now for taking liberties. Light as 
 ever on his pins, he now and then varied his atten- 
 tions to the yeasty part, delivering a wakener in unex- 
 pected quarters : masterly as the skilled cook's carving 
 of a joint with hungry guests for admirers. 
 
 "Eh, Madge?" the earl said. 
 
 She kept her sight fixed, replying : " Yes, I think ..." 
 Carinthia joined with her: "I must believe it that he
 
 A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND 217 
 
 will : but will the other man, poor man, submit ? I 
 entreat him to put away his pride. It is his — oh, 
 poor man ! " 
 
 Ben was having it hot and fast on a torso physiognomy. 
 
 The voices of these alien women thrilled the fray 
 and were a Bardic harp to Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 He dropped a pleasant word on the heads in the 
 curricle. 
 
 Mr. Owain Wythan looked up. "AVorthy of The- 
 ocritus. It's the Boxing Twin and the Bembrycian 
 giant. The style of each. To the letter ! " 
 
 "Kit is assiduously fastening Ben's blinkers," Potts 
 remarked. 
 
 He explained to the incomprehensible lady he fan- 
 cied he had somewhere seen, that the battle might be 
 known as near the finish by the behaviour on board 
 Lord Brailstone's coach. 
 
 "It's like Foreign Affairs and the Stock Exchange," 
 he said to the more intelligent males. "If I want to 
 know exactly how the country stands, I turn to the 
 Money Article in the paj)ers. That's a barometrical 
 certainty. 'So use inquiring abroad. Look at old 
 Eufus Abrane. I see the state of the fight on the old 
 fellow's mug. He hasn't a bet left in him ! " 
 
 " Captain Mountain — Ruf us Mus ! " cried Lord Fleet- 
 wood and laughed at the penetrative portrait Wood- 
 seer's epigram sketched ; he had a desire for the 
 presence of the singular vagabond.
 
 218 THE AMAZING IVIARRIAGE 
 
 The Eufus Mus in the CaiDtain Mountain exposed 
 his view of the encounter, by growing stiller, appar- 
 ently growing smaller, without a squeak, like the 
 entrapped; and profoundly contemplative, after the 
 style of the absolutely detached, who foresee the fatal 
 crash, and are calculating, far ahead of events, the 
 means for meeting their personal losses. 
 
 The close of the battle was on the visage of Rufus 
 Abrane fifteen minutes before that Elgin marble under 
 red paint in the ring sat on the knee of a succouring 
 seconder, mopped, rubbed, dram-primed, puppy-peeping, 
 inconsolably comforted, preparatory to the resumption 
 of the great-coat he had so hopefully cast from his 
 shoidders. Not downcast, by any means. Like an old 
 Eoman, the man of the sheer hulk with purple eye- 
 mounds found his legs to do the manful thing, show 
 that there was no bad blood, stand equal to all forms. 
 Ben Todds, if ever man in Old England, looked the 
 picture you might label 'Bellyful,' it was remarked. 
 Kit Ines had an appearance of springy readiness to lead 
 off again. So they faced on the opening step of their 
 march into English History. 
 
 Vanquisher and vanquished shook hands, engaged 
 in a parting rally of good-humoured banter ; the beaten 
 man said his handsome word; the best man capped it 
 with a compliment to him. They drink of different 
 cups to-day. Both will drink of one cup in the day to 
 come. But the day went too clearly to crown the light
 
 A SHADOW CONTEST 219 
 
 and the tiglit and the right man of the two, for moral- 
 izing to wag its tail at the end. Oldsters and young- 
 sters agreed to that. Science had done it : happy the 
 backers of Science ! Not one of them alluded to the 
 philosophical ^lundred years hence.' For when Eng- 
 land, thanks to a spirited pair of our young noblemen, 
 has exhibited one of her characteristic performances 
 consummately, Philosophy is bidden fly; she is a 
 foreign bird. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 RECORDS A SHADOW CONTEST CLOSE ON" THE FOREGOING 
 
 Kit Ines cocked^ an eye at Madge, in the midst of 
 the congratulations and the paeans pumping his arms. 
 As he had been little mauled, he could present a face 
 to her, expecting a wreath of smiles for the victor. 
 
 What are we to think of the contrarious young woman 
 who, when he lay beaten, drove him off the field and 
 was all tenderness and devotion ? She bobbed her head, 
 hardly more than a trifle pleased, one might say. 
 Just like females. They're riddles, not worth spell- 
 ing. Then, drunk I'll get to-night, my pretty dear! 
 the man muttered, soured by her importune staidness, as 
 an opponent's bruisings could never have rendered him. 
 
 She smiled a lively beam in answer to the earl ; " Oh 
 yes, I'm glad. It's your doing, my lord." Him it was
 
 220 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 that she thanked, aud for the moment prized most. 
 The female riddle is hard to read, because it is com- 
 pounded of sensations, and they rouse and appeal to 
 the similar cockatrices in us, which either hiss back or 
 coil upon themselves. She admired Kit Ines for his 
 valour : she hated that ruinous and besotting drink. 
 It flung skeletons of a married couple on the wall of 
 the future. Nevertheless her love had been all maternal 
 to him when he lay chastized and disgraced on accoimt 
 of his vice. Pity had done it. Pity not being stirred, 
 her admiration of the hero declared victorious, whose 
 fortunes in uncertainty had stopped the beating of her 
 heart, was eclipsed by gratitude toward his preserver, 
 and a sentiment eclipsed becomes temporarily coldish, 
 against our wish and our efforts, in a way to astonish ; 
 making her think that she cannot hold two sentiments 
 at a time ; when it is but the fact that she is unable 
 to keep the two equally warm. 
 
 Carinthia said to her : " He is brave." 
 
 " Oh yes, he's brave," Madge assented. 
 
 Lord Brailstone, flourishing his whip, cried out : " At 
 Canleys to-night ? " 
 
 The earl nodded : " I shall be there." 
 
 " You, too. Chummy ? " came from Abrane. 
 
 "To see you dance," Potts rejoined, and mumbled: 
 " But will he dance ! Old Braney's down on his luck ; 
 he's a specimen of a fellow emptier and not lighter. 
 And won't be till supper-time. But, I say, Fleet, how
 
 A SHADOW CONTEST 221 
 
 the deuce? — funny sort of proceeding! — You haven't 
 introduced me." 
 
 "The lady bears my name, Mr. Chumley Potts." 
 
 With a bow to the lady's profile and a mention of a 
 glimpse at Baden, Potts ejaculated: "It happened this 
 morning ? " 
 
 "You allude to the marriage. It happened this 
 morning." 
 
 " How do I get to Canley s ? " 
 
 "I drive you. Another team from the Esslemont 
 stables is waiting at the Eoyal." 
 
 " You stay at Canleys ? '^ 
 
 "No." 
 
 " No ? Oh ! Funny, upon my word. Though I don't 
 know" why not — except that people . . ." 
 
 "' Count your winnings, Chummy." 
 
 Fleetwood remarked to his bride : " Our friend has 
 the habit of soliloquizing in company. I forgot to tell 
 you of an appointment of mine at a place called Can- 
 le^-s, about twenty miles or more from here. I gave my 
 word, so I keep it. The landlady at the inn, Mrs. Run- 
 dies, motherly kind of woman; she will be attentive. 
 They don't cook badly, for an English inn, I have heard. 
 Madge here will act as your lady's-maid for the time. 
 You will find her serviceable ; she's a bruiser's lass and 
 something above it. — Ines informed me, Madge, you 
 were going to friends of yours at the Wells. You will 
 stay at the Eoyal and wait on this lady, who bears my
 
 222 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 name. You understand ? — A girl I can trust for cour- 
 age, if tlie article is in request/' lie resumed to Ms 
 bride ; and talked generally of the inn and the manage- 
 ment of it, and its favoured position outside the 
 village and contiguous to the river, upon which it 
 subsisted. 
 
 Carinthia had heard. She was more than ever the 
 stunned young woman she had been since her mounting 
 of the coach, between the village church and Lekkatts. 
 
 She said not a word. Why should she ? — her object 
 was won. Give her that, and a woman's tongue will 
 consent to rest. The dreaded weapon rests also when 
 she is kept spinning by the whip. She gives out a 
 pleasant hum, too. Her complexion must be pronounced 
 dull in repose. A bride on her travels with an aspect of 
 wet chalk, rather helps to scare mankind from marriage : 
 which may be good or bad; but she reflects a sicklier 
 hue on the captured Chessman calling her his own. Let 
 her shine in privacy. 
 
 ^Fleetwood drew up at the Eoyal Sovereign, whereof 
 the reigning monarch, in blue uniform on the sign- 
 board, curtseyed to his equally windy subjects; and 
 a small congregation of the aged, and some cripples 
 and infants, greeted the patron of Old England's 
 manfullest display, cheering at news of the fight, 
 brought them by many little runners. 
 
 "Your box has been conveyed to your room," he 
 said to his bride.
 
 A SHADOW CONTEST 223 
 
 She bowed. This time she descended the coach by 
 the aid of the ladder. 
 
 Ines, victorious in battle, had scant notice from 
 his love. "Yes, I'm glad," and she passed him to 
 follow her newly constituted mistress. His pride was 
 dashed, all the foam of the first draw on the top 
 of him blown" off, as he figuratively explained the 
 cause of his gloom to the earl. "I drink and I gets 
 a licking — that girl nurses and cossets me. I don't 
 drink and I whops my man — she shows me her back. 
 Ain't it encouragement, my lord ? " 
 
 "You ought to know them by this time, you dolt," 
 returned his patron, and complimented him on his 
 bearing in the fight. " You shall have your two 
 hundred, and something will be added. Hold handy 
 here till I mount. I start in ten minutes." 
 
 Whether to speak a polite adieu to the bride, 
 whose absurd position she had brought on her own 
 head, was debated for half a minute. He considered 
 that the wet chalk-quarry of a beauty had at all events 
 the merit of not being a creature to make scenes. He 
 went up to the sitting-room. If she was not there, 
 he would leave his excuses. 
 
 She was there, and seated; neither crying, nor 
 smiling, nor pointedly serious in any way, not con- 
 ventionally at her ease either. And so clearly was 
 he impressed by her transparency in simplicity of 
 expression, that he took without a spurn at it the
 
 224 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 picture of a woman half drained of her blood, veiling 
 the wound. And a young woman, a stranger to suf- 
 fering : perhaps — as the creatures do — looking for the 
 usual flummery tenderness, what they call happiness; 
 wondering at the absence of it and the shifty ghost 
 of a husband she has got by floundering into the bog 
 kno^vn as Marriage. She would have it, and here 
 she was ! 
 
 He entered the situation and was possessed by the 
 shivering delicacy of it. Surface emotions were not 
 seen on her. She might be a creature with a soul. 
 Here and there the thing has been found in women. 
 It is priceless when found, and she could not be acting. 
 One migh|; swear the creature had no power to act. 
 
 She spoke without offence, the simplest of words, 
 affected no solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore 
 no reproaches : spoke to him as if so it happened — 
 he had necessarily a journey to perform. One could 
 see all the Avhile big drops falling from the wound 
 within. One could hear it in her voice. Imagine a 
 crack of the string at the bow's deep stress. Or imagine 
 the bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest 
 sounding. And yet the voice did not waver. She 
 had now the richness of tone carrying on a music 
 through silence. 
 
 Well, then, at least, he had not been the utterly duped 
 fool he thought himself since the consent was pledged 
 to wed her.
 
 A SHADOW CONTEST 225 
 
 More, slie had beauty — of its kind. Or splendour 
 or grandeur, was tlie term for it. But it bore no 
 name. None of lier qualities — if they were qualities 
 — had a name. She stood with a dignity that the 
 word did not express. She endured meekly, when 
 there was no meekness. Pain breathed out of her, 
 and not a sign of pain was visible. She had, under 
 his present observation of her, beauty, with the lines 
 of her face breaking in revolt from beauty — or re- 
 quiring a superterrestrial illumination to show the 
 harmony. He, as he now saw, had erred grossly in 
 supposing her insensitive, and therefore slow of a 
 woman's understanding. She drew the breath of pain 
 through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown 
 eyes were tearless, not alluring, or beseeching or re- 
 pelling; they did but look, much like the skies 
 opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her red- 
 dish hair — chestnut, if you will — let fall a skein 
 over one of the rugged brows, and softened the 
 ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a great bird 
 were winging across a shoulder of the mountain 
 ridges. Conceived of the mountains, built in their 
 image, the face partook alternately of mountain ter- 
 ror or splendour; wholly, he remembered, of the 
 splendour when her blood ran warm. No longer the 
 chalk-quarry face, — its paleness now was that of 
 night Alps beneath a moon chasing the shadows. 
 
 She might be casting her spells again. 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "You remember I told you," he said, "I have 
 given my word — I don't break it — to be at a 
 Ball. Your uncle was urgent to have the cere- 
 mony over. These clashes occur. The people here — I 
 have spoken of that : people of good repute for atten- 
 tion to guests. I am uncertain of the time ... we 
 have all to learn to wait. So then, good-bye till we 
 meet." 
 
 He was experiencing a novel nip of torment, of 
 just the degree which takes a partial appeasement 
 from the inflicting of it, and calls up a loathed 
 compassion. She might have been in his arms for 
 a step, though she would not have been the better 
 loved. 
 
 He was allowed his escape, bearing with him 
 enough of husband to execrate another enslaving 
 pledge of his word, that begat a frenzy to wreak 
 some caresses on the creature's intolerably haunting 
 image. Of course, he could not return to her. How 
 would she receive him? There was no salt in the 
 thought of it ; she was too submissive. 
 
 However, there would be fun with Chummy Potts 
 on the drive to Canleys; fun with Eufus Abrane at 
 Mrs. Cowper Quillet's ; and with the Countess Livia, 
 smothered, struggling, fighting for life "vvith the title 
 of Dowager. A desire for unbridled fun had hold of 
 him: any amount of it, to excess in any direction. 
 And through this cloud, as a dry tongue after much
 
 A SHADOW CONTEST 227 
 
 wine craves water, glimpses of his tramp's walk with 
 a fellow-tramp on a different road, enjoying strangely 
 healthy vagabond sensations and vast ideas, brought the 
 vagrant philosopher refreshfully to his mind: chiefly 
 for the reason that while in Woodseer's company he 
 had hardly suffered a stroke of pain from the thought 
 of Henrietta. She was now a married woman, he was 
 a married man — by the register. Stronger proof of 
 the maddest of worlds could not be furnished. 
 
 Sane in so mad a world, a man is your flabby citizen 
 among outlaws, good for plucking. Fun, at any cost, 
 is the one object worth a shot in such a world. And 
 the fun is not to stop. If it does, we are likely to be 
 got hold of, and lugged away to the altar — the termi- 
 nus. That foul disaster has happened, through our 
 having temporarily yielded to a fit of the dumps and 
 treated a mad world's lunatic issue with some serious- 
 ness. But fun shall be had with the aid of His High- 
 ness below. The madder the world, the madder the 
 fun. And the mixing in it of another element, which 
 it has to beguile us — romance — is not at all bad 
 cookery. Poetic romance is delusion — a tale of a 
 Corsair — a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a theatri- 
 cal wardrobe. Comic romance is about us everywhere, 
 alive for the tapping. 
 
 A daughter of the Old Buccaneer should participate 
 in it by right of birth : she would expect it in order 
 to feel herself perfectly at home. Then, be sure, she
 
 228 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 finds an English tongue and prattles away as merrily 
 as slie does when her old scapegrace of a father is the 
 theme. Son-in-law to him! But the i^ath of wisdom 
 runs in the line of facts, and to have wild fun and 
 romance on this pantomime path, instead of kicking to 
 break away from it, we follow things conceived by the 
 genius of the situation, for the delectation of the fair 
 countess of Fleetwood and the earl, her delighted hus- 
 band, quite in the spirit of the Old Buccaneer, father 
 of the bride. 
 
 Carinthia sat beside the fire, seeing nothing in the 
 room or on the road. Up in her bedchamber, the girl 
 Madge was at her window. She saw Lord Fleetwood 
 standing alone, laughing, it seemed, at some thought ; 
 he threw up his head. Was it a newly married man 
 leaving his bride and laughing ? The bride was a dear 
 lady, fit for better than to be driven to look on at a 
 prize-fight — a terrible scene to a lady. She was left 
 solitary : and this her wedding day ? The earl had said 
 it, he had said she bore his name, spoke of coming from 
 the altar, and the lady had blushed to hear herself 
 called Miss. The pressure of her hand was warm with 
 Madge: her situation roused the fervid latent sister- 
 hood in the breast of women. 
 
 Before he mounted the coach. Lord Fleetwood talked 
 to Kit Ines. The girl ran downstairs to bid her lover 
 good-bye and shoAV him she really rejoiced in his victory. 
 Kit came to her saying : ^^ Given my word of honour I
 
 A SHADOW CONTEST 229 
 
 won't make a beast of myself to-night. Got to watch 
 over you and your lady." 
 
 Lord Fleetwood started his fresh team, casting no 
 glance at the windows of the room where his bride was. 
 He and the gentlemen on the coach were laughing. 
 
 His leaving of his young bride to herself this day, 
 was classed among the murky flashes which distin- 
 guished the deeds of noblemen. But his laughter on 
 leaving her stamped it a cruelty; of the kind that 
 plain mortals, who can be monsters, commit. Madge 
 conceived a pretext for going into the presence of her 
 mistress, whose attitude was the same as when she first 
 sat in the chair. The lady smiled and said : " He is 
 not hurt much ? " She thought for them about her. 
 
 The girl's heart of sympathy thumped, and her hero 
 becapie a very minute object. He had spoken previ- 
 ously of the making or not making of a beast of him- 
 self, without inflicting a picture of the beast. His 
 words took shape now, and in consequence a little self- 
 pity began to move. It stirred to swell the great wave 
 of pity for the lady, that was in her bosom. " Oh, he ! " 
 she said, and extinguished the thought of him ; and at 
 once her underlip was shivering, her eyes filled and \/ 
 poured. 
 
 Carinthia rose anxiously. The girl dropped at her 
 feet. " You have been so good to me to-day, my lady ! 
 so good to me to-day ! I can't help it — I don't often — 
 just for this moment; I've been excited. Oh, he's well.
 
 230 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 he will do ; he's nothing. You say ^ poor child ! ' But 
 I'm not; it's only excitement. I do long to serve you 
 the best I can." 
 
 She stood up in obedience and had the arms of her 
 young mistress pressing her. Tears also were stream- 
 ing from Carinthia's eyes. Heartily she thanked the 
 girl for the excuse to cry. 
 
 They were two women. On the road to Canleys, the 
 coach conveying men spouted with the lusty anecdote, 
 relieved of the interdict of a tyrannical sex. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 
 
 Contention begets contention in a land of the pirate 
 races. Gigs were at high rival speed along the road 
 from the battle-field to London. They were the electri- 
 cal wires of the time for an expectant population burst- 
 ing to have report of so thundering an event as the 
 encounter of two champion light weights, nursed and 
 backed by a pair of gallant young noblemen, pick of 
 the whole row of coronets above. London panted gape- 
 ing and the gigs flew with the meat to fill it. 
 
 Chumley Potts offered Ambrose Mallard f?ir odds 
 that the neat little trap of the chief sporting journal.
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 231 
 
 which, had a reputation to maintain, would be over one 
 or other of the bridges crossing the Thames first. Mal- 
 lard had been struck by the neat little trap of an 
 impudent new and lower-priced journal, which had a 
 reputation to gain. He took the proffered odds, on the 
 cry as of a cracker sx^iitting. Enormous difficulties in 
 regard to the testimony and the verifications were 
 discussed; they were overcomiC. Potts was ready for 
 any amount of trouble ; Mallard the same. There was 
 clearly a race. There would consequently be a record. 
 Visits to the offices of those papers, perhaps half a day 
 at the south end of London or on Westminster bridge, 
 examining witnesses, corner shopmen, watermen, and 
 the like, would or should satisfactorily establish the 
 disputed point. 
 
 Fleetwood had his fun; insomuch that he laughed 
 himself into a sentiment of humaneness toward the 
 couple of donkeys and forgot his contempt of them. 
 Their gamblings and their bets increased his number 
 of dependents; and imbeciles were preferable to dolts 
 or the dry gilt figures of the circle he had to move in. 
 Matter for some astonishment had been furnished to 
 the latter this day; and would cause an icy Signor 
 stare and rather an angry Signora flutter. A character- 
 istic of that upper circle, as he knew it, is, that the good 
 are dull, the vicious very bad. They had nothing to 
 please him but manners. Elsewhere this land is a land 
 of no manners. Take it and make the most of it, then,
 
 232 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 for its quality of brute honesty: which is found to 
 flourish best in the British prize-ring. 
 
 His irony landed him there. It struck the country 
 a ringing blow. But it struck an almost effacing one 
 at the life of the young nobleman of boundless wealth, 
 whose highest renown was the being a patron of prize- 
 fighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Bucca- 
 neer as well ! perchance as a result. That philosopher 
 tramp named her ^beautiful Gorgon.' She has no 
 beauty; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look of 
 timid softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A 
 barbaric damsel beginning to nibble at civilization, is 
 nearer the mark ; and ought she to be discouraged ? 
 
 Fleetwood's wrath with his position warned him 
 against the dupery of any such alcove thoughts. For 
 his wrath revenged' him, and he feared the being 
 stripped of it, lest a certain fund of his own softness, 
 that he knew of, though few did, should pull him to 
 the creature's feet. She belonged to him indeed ; so 
 he might put her to the trial of whether she had a 
 heart and personal charm, without the ceremony of 
 wooing — which, in his case, tempted to the feeling 
 desperately earnest and becoming enslaved. He specu- 
 lated upon her eyelids and lips, and her voice, when 
 melting, as women do in their different ways; here 
 and there with an execrable — perhaps pardonable — 
 art; one or two divinely. The vision drew him to a 
 h^sadlong plunge and swim of. the amorous mind,
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 233 
 
 occupying a minute, filling an era. He corrected the 
 feebleness, and at the same time threw a practical 
 coachman's glance on peculiarities of the road, requir- 
 ing some knowledge of it if traversed backward at 
 a whipping pace on a moonless night. 
 
 He did not phrase it, that a talk with the fellow 
 Woodseer of his mountains and his forests, and nature, 
 philosophy, poetry, would have been particularly healthy 
 for him, almost as good as the good counsel he needed 
 and solicited none to give him. It swept among his 
 ruminations while he pricked Potts and Mallard to 
 supply his craving for satanical fare. 
 
 Gower Woodseer, the mention of whom is a dejection 
 to the venerable source of our story, was then in the 
 act of emerging from the eastward into the southward 
 of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set 
 forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a 
 walk of two days out of Dover. He descended Lon- 
 don's borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny for 
 refreshment, following a term of prudent starvation, 
 at the end of the walk. It is not a district seductive to 
 the A\^ayfarer's appetite ; as, for example, one may find 
 the Jew's fry of fish in oil, inspiriting the ShoreHitch 
 region, to be. jSTourishjnent is afforded^ according to 
 the laws of England's genius in the arts of refection, 
 at uninviting shops, to the necessitated stomach. A 
 penn'orth of crumb of bread, assisted on its laborious 
 passage by a penn'orth of the rinsings of beer, left
 
 234 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the natural philosopher a ha'penny for dessert at the 
 stall of an applewoman, where he withstood an inclina- 
 tion toward the juicy fruit and chose nuts. They 
 extend a meal, as a grimace broadens the countenance, 
 illusorily ; but they help to cheat an emptiness in time, 
 where it is nearly as offensive to our sensations as 
 within us; and that prolonged occupation of the jaws 
 goes a length to persuade us we are filling. All the 
 better if the substance is indigestible. Tramps of the 
 philosophical order, who are the practically sagacious, 
 prefer tough grain for the teeth. Woodseer's munch- 
 ing of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the pict- 
 ure of his father's dinner, seen one day and little 
 envied: a small slice of cold boiled mutton-flesh in a 
 crescent of white fat, with a lump of dry bread beside 
 the plate. 
 
 Thus he returned to the only home he had, not dis- 
 heartened, and bearing scenes that outvied London's 
 print-shops for polychrome splendour, an exultation to 
 recall. His condition, moreover, threw his father's life 
 and work into colour : the lean Whitechapel house of 
 the minister among the poor; the joy in the saving 
 of souls, if he could persuade himself that such good 
 labour advanced: and at the fall of light, the pastime 
 task of bootmaking — a desirable occupation for a 
 thinker. Thought flies best when the hands are easily 
 busy. Cobblers have excursive minds. Their occa- 
 sional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 235 
 
 often happily timed to settle an internal argument. 
 Seek in a village for information concerning the vil- 
 lage or the state of mankind, you will be less disap- 
 pointed at the cobbler's than elsewhere, it has been 
 said. 
 
 As Gower had anticipated with lively feelings of 
 pleasure, Mr. Woodseer was at the wonted corner of 
 his back room, on the stool between two tallow candle- 
 flames, leather-scented strongly, when the wanderer 
 stood before him, in the image of a ball that has 
 done with circling about a stable point. 
 
 " Back ? " the minister sang out at once, and his 
 wrinkles gleamed. 
 
 Their hands grasped. 
 
 "Hungry, sir, rather." 
 
 "To be sure, you are. One can read it on your 
 boots. Mrs. Jones will spread you a table. How 
 many miles to-day ? Show the soles. They tell a 
 tale of wear." 
 
 They had worn to resemble the half-dozen thin- 
 edged layers of still upper cloud round the peep of 
 coming sky. 
 
 "About forty odd to-day, sir. They've done their 
 hundreds of miles and have now come to dock. I'll 
 ask Mrs. Jones to bring me a plate here." 
 
 Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His 
 father's front door was unfastened by day ; she had 
 not set eyes on him yet and Mr. Woodseer murmured :
 
 236 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "Now she's got the boy. There's clasping and kissing. 
 He's all wild Wales to her." 
 
 The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with 
 Gower beside her, and a sniffle of her happiness audible. 
 She would not, although invited to stay and burning 
 to hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son 
 had to talk together after a separation, long to love's 
 counting. She was a Welshwoman of the pure blood, 
 therefore delicately mannered by nature. 
 
 ^'Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow 
 of your story, and I too will blow the cloud," said 
 Mr. Woodseer, when the plate was pushed aside and 
 the pipe appeared. 
 
 So Gower' s recital of his wanderings began, more 
 puffs than speech at the commencement. He was alter- 
 nately picturesque and sententious until he reached 
 Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a 
 revelation of beauty in woman. 
 
 Mr. Woodseer rapped the leather on his block. 
 
 "A place where they have started public gambling, 
 I am told." 
 
 '•We must look into all the corners of the world to 
 know it, sir, and the world has to be riddled or it 
 riddles us." 
 
 " Ah. Did you ever tell a lie, Gower Woodseer ? " 
 
 ''I played." 
 
 "You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept 
 your straight tongue ! The Lord can always enter a
 
 DOWN W HITECH APEL WAY 237 
 
 heart of truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But you 
 played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving ; and 
 that was a backsliding; and there will have to be a 
 climbing up. And what that means, your hold on truth 
 will learn. Touch sin and you accommodate yourself 
 to its vileness. Ay, you love Xature. Xature is not 
 anchorage for vessels like men. If you loved the Book 
 you would float in harbour. You played. I do trust 
 you lost." 
 
 "You have your wish, sir." 
 
 " To have won their money, Gower ! Eather starve." 
 
 " I did." 
 
 " Your reason for playing, poor lad ? " 
 
 "The reason eludes reason." 
 
 "Isot in you." 
 
 " Sight of the tables ; an itch to try them — one's 
 self as well; a notion that the losers were playing 
 wrong. In fine, a bit of a whirl of a medley of atoms ; 
 I can't explain it further." 
 
 " Ah. The tippler's fumes in his head ! Spotty 
 business, Gower Woodseer. ^Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion ' is worldly wisdom in addition to heavenly." 
 
 After listening to an extended homily, with a gen- 
 eral assent and tobacco's phlegm, Gower replied to 
 his father's " You starved manfully ? " nodding : " From 
 Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times helped 
 me along, milk and bread." 
 
 " AVholesome for body and for soul."
 
 238 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 "Entering Nancy I subscribed to the dictum of our 
 first fathers, which dogs would deliver, if they could 
 speak: that there is no driver like stomach: and I 
 went head on to the College, saw the Principal : plea 
 of urgency. jSTo engagement possible, to teach either 
 French or English. But he was inquisitive touching 
 the urgency. That was my chance. The French are 
 humane when they are not suspicious of you. They 
 are generous, if you put a light to their minds. As I 
 was dealing with a scholarly one, I made use of such 
 ornamental literary skill as I possessed, to prove 
 urgency. He supplied me with bread, fruit, and wine. 
 In the end he procured me pupils. I lodged over a 
 baker's shop. I had good walks, and learnt something 
 of forestry there — a taking study. When I had saved 
 enough to tramp it home, I said my adieux to that 
 good friend and tramped away, entering London with 
 about the same amount in small coin as when I en- 
 tered Nancy. A manner of exactly hitting the mark, 
 that some would not find so satisfactory as it is to me." 
 
 The minister sighed. "There comes in the 'philoso- 
 phy,' I suppose. When will you understand, that this 
 ' philosophy ' is only the passive of a religious faith ! It 
 seems to suit you gentlemen of the road while you are 
 young. Work among the Whitechapei poor. It would 
 be a way for discovering the shallows of your * philoso- 
 phy ' earlier." 
 
 Gower asked liim : " Going badly here, sir ? "
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 239 
 
 " Murders, robberies, misusage of women, and miscon- 
 duct of women ! — Drink, in sliort : about the same 
 amount. Drink is their death's river, rolling them on 
 helpless as corpses, on to — may they find mercy ! I and 
 a few stand — it's in the tide we stand here, to stop 
 them, pluck them out, make life a bit sweet to them 
 before the poor bodies go beneath. But come ! all's not 
 dark, we have our gleams. I speak distressed by one of 
 our girls : a good girl, I believe ; and the wilfullest that 
 ever had command of her legs. A well-favoured girl ! 
 You'll laugh, she has given her heart to a prize-fighter. 
 Well, you can say, she might have chosen worse. He 
 drinks, she hates it ; she loves the man and hates his 
 vice. He swears amendment, is hiccuping at night; 
 fights a match on the morrow, and gets beaten out of 
 formation. No matter: whenever, wherever, that man 
 goes to his fight, that girl follows to nurse him after it. 
 He's her hero. Women will have one, and it's their 
 lottery. You read of such things ; here Ave have it alive 
 and walking. I am led to think they're an honest 
 couple. They come of established families. Her 
 mother was out of Caermarthen; died under my minis- 
 tration, saintly, forgiving the drunkard. You may 
 remember the greengrocer, Tobias W^inch? He passed 
 away in shrieks for one drop. I had to pitch my voice 
 to the top notes to get hearing for the hymn. He was a 
 reverent man, with the craving by fits. That should 
 have been a lesson to Madge." 
 
 ^
 
 240 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 *' A little girl at the greengrocer's hard by ? She sold 
 me apples ; rather pretty/' said Gower. 
 
 "A fine grown girl now — Madge Winch; a comely 
 wench she is. It breaks her sister Sarah's heart. They 
 both manage the little shop ; they make it prosper in a 
 small way ; enough, and what need they more ? Then 
 Christopher Ines has on one of his matches. Madge 
 drives her cart out, if it's near town. She's off down 
 into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah tells me. A great 
 nobleman patronizes Christopher ; a Lord Fleetwood, a 
 lord of wealth. And he must be thoughtful for these 
 people : he sent Sarah word that Christopher should not 
 touch drink. You may remember a butcher Ines in the 
 street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad, always at 
 ' best man ' with every boy he met : went to sea — ran 
 away. He returned a pugilist. The girl will be nursing 
 him now. I have spoken to her of him; and I trust 
 to her; but I mourn her attachment to the man Avho 
 drinks." 
 
 " The lord's name ? " said Gower. 
 
 "Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it 
 pleases him to spend his money." 
 
 '*He has other tastes. I know something of him, 
 sir. He promises to be a patron of Literature as well. 
 His mother was a South Wales woman." 
 
 " Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition 
 of the Triads ? " Mr. Woodseer said at once. 
 
 "No man more likelv."
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 241 
 
 " If you see him, suggest it." 
 
 "Very little chance of my meeting him again. But 
 those Triads ! They're in our blood. They spring to 
 tie knots in the head. They push me to condense my 
 thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primi- 
 tive times : but they — or the trick of the mind engen- 
 dered by them — trip my steps along the lines of 
 composition. I produce pellets instead of flowing 
 sheets. It'll come right. At present I'm so bent to 
 pick and perfect, polish my phrase, that I lose my 
 survey. As a consequence, my vocabulary falters." 
 
 "Ah," Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. ''This 
 Literatui*e is to be your profession for the means of 
 living ? " 
 
 "Nothing else. And I'm so low down in the mar- 
 ket way of it, that I could not count on twenty pounds 
 per annum. Fifty would give me standing, an inde- 
 pendent fifty." 
 
 "' To whom are you crying, Gower ? " 
 
 "Not to gamble, you may be sure."' 
 
 "You have a home." 
 
 " Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. 
 I've too much of you in me for a comfortable pen- 
 sioner." 
 
 "' Or is it not, that you have been living the gentle- 
 man out there, with just a holiday title to it ? " 
 
 Gower was hit by his father's thrust. "I shall feel 
 myself a pieman's chuckpenny as long as I'm unpro-
 
 242 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ductive, now IVe come back and have to own to a 
 home, " he said. 
 
 Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather bright- 
 ened him until he considered that the enlivenment was 
 due to a purchase by money, of which he was incapable, 
 and he rejected it, like an honourable man. Simulta- 
 neously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a 
 prized sentence or two among his recent confections. It 
 was rejected for the best of reasons and the most dis- 
 comforting : because it racked our English ; signifying, 
 that he had not yet learnt the right use of his weapons. 
 
 He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for 
 several days, hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit's 
 victory, and hearing of Sarah Winch's anxiety on 
 account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of 
 joy or grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, 
 with Baden's Madonna for sole illumination of his dark- 
 ness. To her, to the illimitable gold-mist of perspective 
 and the innumerable images the thought of her painted 
 for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him from 
 contemplation of himself in a very disturbing stagnant 
 pool of the wastes ; wherein often will strenuous youth, 
 grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll inscribed 
 Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied into 
 that pool, and have seen the face. His glorious lady 
 would not let it haunt him. 
 
 The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him 
 clean out of a neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the
 
 DOWN WHITECHAPEL WAY 243 
 
 young man with thirst for air, solitudes, and colour. 
 Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here, in the 
 idea of her, more fixedly than where she had been visi- 
 ble, as it were, by right of her being celestially removed 
 from the dismal place. He was at the same time 
 not insensible to his father's contented ministrations 
 among these homes of squalor ; they pricked the curi- 
 osity, which was in the youthful philosopher a form of 
 admiration. For his father, like all Welshmen, loved 
 the mountains. Yet here he lived, exhorting, minister- 
 ing, aiding, supported up to high good cheer by some, 
 it seemed, superhuman backbone of uprightness : — his 
 religious faith ? Well, if so, the thing might be studied. 
 But things of the frozen senses, lean and hueless things, 
 were as repellent to Gower's imagination as his father's 
 dishes to an epicure. What he envied was, the worthy 
 old man's heart of feeling for others : his feeling at 
 present for the girl Sarah Winch and her sister Madge, 
 who had not been heard of since she started for the 
 fight. Mr. Woodseer had written to her relatives at 
 the Wells, receiving no consolatory answer. 
 
 He was relieved at last ; and still a little perplexed. 
 Madge had returned, he informed Gower. She was well, 
 she was well in health ; he had her assurances that she 
 was not excited about herself. 
 
 "She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to 
 lodge with her. She has brought the Countess of Fleet- 
 wood to lodsre with her."
 
 244 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Gower heard those words from his father; and his 
 father repeated them. To the prostrate worshipper of 
 the Countess of Fleetwood, they were a blow on the 
 head ; madness had set in here, was his first recovering 
 thought, or else a miracle had come to pass. Or was it 
 a sham Countess of Fleetwood imposing upon the girl ? 
 His father was to go and see the great lady, at the green- 
 grocer's shop ; at her request, according to Madge. Con- 
 jectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness 
 that deepened and made shipwreck of philosophy. Was 
 it the very Countess of Fleetwood penitent for her dalli- 
 ance with the gambling passion, in feminine need of 
 pastor's aid, having had report from Madge of this good 
 shepherd ? His father expressed a certain surprise ; his 
 countenance was mild. He considered it a merely 
 strange occurrence. 
 
 Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better 
 armed than a philosopher. Gower would not own that, 
 but he acknowledged the evidences, and owned to envy ; 
 especially when he accompanied his father to the green- 
 grocer's shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly said : — 
 
 "Here is the i^lace." The small stuffed shop ap- 
 peared to grow portentously cavernous and waveringly 
 illumined.
 
 THE GIRL MADGE 245 
 
 CHAPTEE 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. 
 
 •'IVry 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 Fleet- 
 wood now ? " 
 
 Gower was unable to tell. Madge turned to Mr. 
 Woodseer, saying soon after : " Oh, she won't mind ;
 
 246 THE AMAZING MARKIAGE 
 
 she'll be glad, if lie 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 Fleet- 
 wood'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 even- 
 ning, 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 break- 
 ing. 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
 
 THE GIKL MADGE 247 
 
 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 "^T.ite 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
 
 248 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 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-liumouredly, 
 Carinthia's eyes dwelling on them each in turn; until
 
 THE GIRL MADGE 249 
 
 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 moun- 
 tains. 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 Carin- 
 thia. "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 simul- 
 taneous honeymoons, and a vision of the high-spirited 
 mountain girl, seen in this place a young bride seek- 
 ing her husband, Gower Woodseer could have per- 
 formed that unphilosophical part. He had to shake 
 himself. She seemed really a soaring bird brought 
 down by the fowler.
 
 250 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Lord Fleetwood's manner of abandoning her -^as thn 
 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 custom- 
 ers ; 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
 
 THE GIRL MADGE 251 
 
 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 '11 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. 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."
 
 252 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " 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 con- 
 veyance 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
 
 THE GIRL MADGE 263 
 
 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 con- 
 sidered 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
 
 254 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 girl of the drilling voice, — tlie shudder-voice, he phrased 
 itj — 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 Ca- 
 rinthia'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 green- 
 grocer'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 poor humanity, it 
 is we who are in the place of the ridiculous, for doing 
 what reason disavows. Had he not named her, (7a- 
 rinthia, 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
 
 THE GIRL MADGE 255 
 
 to charge Lord Fleetwood witli very possible false deal- 
 ing. 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 ad- 
 dress. 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 min- 
 ister 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 
 Bundles at that inn don't hear anything it suits him to 
 do. All the people down in those parts are slaves to
 
 256 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 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 Faken- 
 ham 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
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 257 
 
 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 obscu- 
 rities. 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. 
 
 CHAPTEE XX 
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, GOUT, AN" OLD SEAMAN", A LOVELY 
 SERPENT, AND THE MORAL EFFECTS THAT MAY COME 
 OF A BORROWED SHIRT 
 
 Money of his father's enabled Gower to take the 
 coach ; and studies in fog, from the specked brown 
 to the woolly white and the dripping torn, were pro- 
 posed to the traveller, whose preference of Nature's 
 face did not arrest his observation of her domino and 
 petticoats ; across which blank sheets he curiously 
 read backward, that he journeyed by the aid of his 
 father's hard-earned, ungrudged piece of gold. With-
 
 258 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 out it, he would have been useless in this case of 
 need. The philosopher could starve with equanim- 
 ity, and be the stronger. But one had, it seemed 
 here clearly, to put on harness and trudge along a 
 line, if the unhappy were to have one's help. Gradual 
 experiences of his business among his fellows were 
 teaching an exercised mind to learn in regions where 
 minds unexercised were doctorial giants beside it. 
 
 The study of gout was offered at Chinningfold. 
 Admiral Fakenliam's butler refused at first to take a 
 name to his master. Gower persisted, stating the 
 business of his mission; and in spite of the very sus- 
 picious glib good English spoken by a man wearing 
 such a hat and suit, the butler was induced to consult 
 Mrs. Carthew. 
 
 She sprang up alarmed. After having seen the 
 young lady happily married and off with her lordly 
 young husband, the arrival of a messenger from the 
 bride gave a stir the wrong way to her flowing recol- 
 lections; the scenes and incidents she had smothered 
 under her love of the comfortable stood forth appall- 
 ingly. The messenger, the butler said, Avas no gentle- 
 man. She inspected Gower and heard him speak. 
 An anomaly had come to the house; for he had the 
 language of a gentleman, the appearance of a non- 
 descript; he looked indifferent, he spoke sympatheti- 
 cally; and he was frank as soon as the butler was 
 out of hearing. In return for the compliment, she
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 259 
 
 invited him to her sitting-room. The story of the 
 young countessj whom she had seen driven away by 
 her husband from the church on a coach and four, 
 as being now destitute, praying to see her friends, in 
 the Whitechapel of London — the noted haunt of 
 thieves and outcasts, bankrux^ts and the abandoned; 
 set her asking for the first time, who was the man 
 with dreadful countenance inside the coach? A pre- 
 viously disregarded horror of a man. She went 
 trembling to the admiral, though his health was 
 delicate, his temper excitable. It was, she considered, 
 an occasion for braving the doctor's interdict. 
 
 Gower was presently summoned to the chamber 
 where Admiral Fakenham reclined on cushions in an 
 edifice of an arm-chair. He told a plain tale. Its 
 effect was to straighten the admiral's back and 
 enlarge in grey glass a pair of sea-blue eyes. And, 
 "What's that? Whitechapel?" the admiral exclaimed, 
 — at high pitch, far above his understanding. The 
 particulars were repeated, whereupon the sick-room 
 shook with, " Greengrocer ? " He stunned himself 
 with another of the monstrous points in his pet girl's 
 honeymoon : " A prize-fight ? " 
 
 To refresh a saving incredulity, he took a closer 
 view of the messenger. Gower's habiliments were 
 those of the "queer fish" the admiral saw. But the 
 meeting at Carlsruhe was recalled to him, and there 
 was a worthy effort to remember it. "Prize-fight! —
 
 260 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Greengrocer ! — Whitechapel ! " he rang the changes 
 rather more moderately; till, swelling and purpling, 
 he cried: '-Where's the husband?" 
 
 That was the emissary's question likewise. 
 
 "If I could have found him, sir, I should not have 
 troubled you." 
 
 "Disappeared? Plays the man of his word, then 
 plays the madman! Prize-fight the first day of her 
 honeymoon ? Good Lord ! Leaves her at the inn ? " 
 
 "She was left." 
 
 "When was she left?" 
 
 "As soon as the fight was over — as far as I 
 understand." 
 
 The admiral showered briny masculine comments 
 on that bridegroom. 
 
 " Her brother's travelling somewhere in the Pyrenees 
 
 — married my daughter. She has an uncle, a hermit." 
 He became pale. "I must do it. The rascal insults 
 us all. Flings her off the day he married her ! It's a 
 slap in the face to all of us. You are acquainted with 
 the lady, sir. Would you call her a red-haired girl?" 
 \X*^Eed-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with 
 tl^reads of fire." 
 
 "She has the eyes for a man to swear by. I feel 
 the loss of her, I can tell you. She was wine and 
 no penalty to me. Is she much broken under it ? 
 
 — if I'm to credit ... I suppose I must. It floors 
 me."
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 261 
 
 Admiral Baldwin's frosty stare returned on him. 
 Gower caught an image of it, as comparable, without 
 much straining, to an Arctic region smitten by the 
 beams. 
 
 " Nothing breaks her courage," he said. 
 
 " To be sure, my poor dear ! Who could have 
 guessed when she left my house she was on her way 
 to a prize-fight and a greengrocer's in Whitechapel! 
 But the dog's not mad, though his bite's bad ; he's 
 an eccentric mongrel. He wants the whip; ought to 
 have had it regularly from his first breeching. He 
 shall whistle for her when he repents; and he will, 
 mark me. This gout here will be having a snap at 
 the vitals if I don't start to-night. Oblige me, half 
 a minute." 
 
 The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to 
 give support, stood, and dropped into the chair, signi- 
 fying a fit of giddiness in the word " Head." 
 
 Before the stupor had passed, Mrs. Carthew 
 entered, anxious lest the admittance of a messenger 
 of evil to her invalid should have been an error 
 of judgment. The butler had argued it with her. She 
 belonged to the list of persons appointed to cut life's 
 thread when it strains, their general kindness being 
 so liable to misdirection. 
 
 Gower left the room and went into the garden. 
 He had never seen a death ; and the admiral's peculiar 
 pallor intimated events proper to days of cold mist
 
 262 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and a dripping stillness. How we go, was tlie question 
 among Ms problems : — if we are to go ! his youthful 
 frame insistingly added. 
 
 The fog do^yn a wet laurel-walk contracted his 
 mind with the chilling of his blood, and he felt that 
 he would have to see the thing if he was to believe 
 in it. Of course he believed, but life throbbed rebel- 
 liously, and a picture of a desk near a lively fire-grate, 
 books and pen and paper, and a piece of writing to be 
 approved of by the Hesper of ladies, held ground with 
 a pathetic heroism against the inevitable. He got 
 his wits to the front by walking faster ; and then 
 thought of the young countess and the friend she 
 might be about to lose. She could number her friends 
 on her fingers. Admiral Fakenham's exclamations of 
 the name of the place where she now was, conveyed 
 an inky idea of the fall she had undergone. Counting 
 her absent brother, with himself, his father and the 
 two ^Vhitechapel girls, it certainly was an unexampled 
 fall, to say of her, that they and those two girls had 
 become by the twist of circumstances the most service- 
 able of her friends. 
 
 Her husband was the unriddled riddle we have in the 
 wealthy young lord, — burning to possess, and making 
 tatters of all he grasped, the moment it was his own. 
 Glints of the devilish had shot from him at the gaming- 
 tables, — fine haunts for the study of our lower man. 
 He could be magnificent in generosity; he had little
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 263 
 
 humaiieiiess. He coveted beauty in women hungrily, 
 and seemed to be born hostile to them; or so Gower 
 judged by the light of the later evidence on uncon- 
 sidered antecedent observations of him. Why marry 
 her to cast her off instantly ? The crude philosopher 
 asked it as helplessly as the admiral. And, further, 
 what did the girl Madge mean by the drop of her voice 
 to a hum of enforced endurance under injury, like the 
 furnace behind an iron door ? Older men might have 
 understood, as he was aware; he might have guessed, 
 only he had the habit of scattering meditation upon the 
 game of hawk and fowl. 
 
 Dame Gossip boils. Her one idea of animation is to 
 have her dramatis j^ersonm in violent motion, always the 
 biggest foremost ; and, indeed, that is the way to make 
 them credible, for the wind they raise and the succession 
 of collisions. The fault of the method is, that they do 
 not instruct; so the breath is out of them before they 
 are put aside; for the uninstructive are the humanly 
 deficient: they remain with us like the tolerated old 
 aristocracy, which may not govern, and is but socially 
 seductive. The deuteragonist or secondary person can 
 at times tell us more of them than circumstances at 
 furious heat will help them to reveal ; and the Dame 
 will have him only as an index-post. Hence her end- 
 less ejaculations over the mystery of Life, the inscruta- 
 bility of character, — in a plain world, in the midst of 
 such readable people ! To preserve Eomance (we ex-
 
 264 THE AMAZING MAKRIAGE 
 
 change a sky for a ceiling if we let it go), we must be 
 inside the heads of our people as well as the hearts, 
 more than shaking the kaleidoscope of hurried spec- 
 tacles, in days of a growing activity of the head. 
 
 Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn 
 on to fortune and the sight of his Hesper by Admiral 
 Fakenham's order that the visitor was to stay at his 
 house until he should be able to quit his bed, and jour- 
 ney with him to London, doctor or no doctor. The 
 doctor would not hear of it. The admiral threatened 
 it every night for the morning, every morning for the 
 night ; and Gower had to submit to postponements bale- 
 fully affecting his linen. Eemonstrance was not to be 
 thought of ; for at a mere show of reluctance the courtly 
 admiral flushed, frowned, and beat the bed where he 
 lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was passing 
 through the various complexions, and had approached 
 the Nubian on its way to negro. His natural candour 
 checked the downward course. He mentioned to Mrs. 
 Carthew with incidental gravity, on a morning at break- 
 fast, that this article of his attire "was beginning to 
 resemble London snow." She was amused; she prom- 
 ised him a change more resembling country snow. 
 
 " It will save me from buttoning so high up," he said, 
 as he thanked her. 
 
 She then remembered the daily increase of stiffness 
 in his figure : and a reflection upon his patient waiting, 
 and simpleness, and lexicographer speech to expose his
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 265 
 
 minor needs, touched her unused sense of humour on 
 the side where it is tender in women, from being 
 motherly. 
 
 In consequence, she spoke of him with a pleading 
 warmth to the Countess Livia, who had come down 
 to see the admiral "concerning an absurd but annoy- 
 ing rumour running over London." Gower was out for 
 a walk. He knew of the affair, iVIrs. Carthew said, for 
 an introduction to her excuses of his clothing. 
 
 " But I know the man," said Livia. " Lord Fleet- 
 wood picked him up somewhere, and brought him to 
 us. Clever. Why, is he here ? " 
 
 " He is here, sent to the admiral, as I understand, 
 my lady." 
 
 " Sent by whom ? " 
 
 Having but a weak vocabulary to defend a delicate 
 position, Mrs. Carthew stuttered into evasions, after 
 the way of ill-armed persons ; and naming herself a 
 stranger to the circumstances, she feebly suggested 
 that the admiral ought not to be disturbed before the 
 doctor's next visit; Mr. Woodseer had been allowed 
 to sit by his bed yesterday only for ten minutes, to 
 divert him with his talk. She protected in this 
 wretched manner the poor gentleman she sacrificed, 
 and emitted such a smell of secresy, that Livia wrote 
 three words on her card, for it to be taken to Admiral 
 Baldwin at once. Mrs. Carthew supplicated faintly ; 
 she was unheeded.
 
 266 THE AMAZING MAERIAGB 
 
 The Countess of Fleetwood mounted the stairs — to 
 descend them with the knowledge of her being the 
 Dowager Countess of Fleetwood ! Henrietta had spoken 
 of the Countess of Fleetwood's hatred of the title of 
 Dowager. But when Lady Fleetwood had the fact from 
 the admiral, would she forbear to excite him ? If she 
 repudiated it, she would provoke him to fire "one of 
 his broadsides," as they said in the family, to assert 
 it; and that might exhaust him; and there was peril 
 in that. And who was guilty ? Mrs. Carthew con- 
 fessed her guilt, asking how it could have been avoided. 
 She made appeal to Gower on his return, transfixing 
 him. 
 
 ]S"ot only is he no philosopher who has an idol, he 
 has to learn that he cannot think rationally; his due 
 sense of weight and measure is lost, the choice of his 
 thoughts as well. He was in the house with his de- 
 voutly, simply worshipped, pearl of women, and his 
 whole mind fell to work without ado upon the extrava- 
 gant height of the admiral's shirt-collar cutting his ears. 
 The very beating of his heart was perplexed to know 
 whether it was for rapture or annoyance. As a result 
 he was but histrionically master of himself when the 
 Countess Livia or the nimbus of the lady appeared in 
 the room. 
 
 She received his bow; she directed Mrs. Carthew to 
 have the doctor summoned immediately. The remorse- 
 ful woman flew.
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 267 
 
 " Admiral Fakenham is very ill, Mr. Woodseer, he has 
 had distracting news. Oh, no, the messenger is not 
 blamed. You are Lord Fleetwood's friend and will not 
 allow him to be prejudged. He will be in town shortly. 
 I know him well, you know him ; and could you hear 
 him accused of cruelty — and to a woman ? He is the 
 soul of chivalry. So, in his way, is the admiral. If he 
 were only more patient ! Let us wait for Lord Fleet- 
 wood's version. I am certain it will satisfy me. The 
 admiral wishes you to step up to him. Be very quiet ; 
 you will be ; consent to everything. I was unaware of 
 his condition: the things I heard were incredible. I 
 hope the doctor will not delay. Now go. Beg to retire 
 soon." 
 
 Livia spoke under her breath; she had fears. 
 
 Admiral Baldwin lay in his bed, submitting to a 
 nurse-woman — sign of extreme exhaustion. He plucked 
 strength from the sight of Gower and bundled the 
 woman out of the room, muttering: '-Kill myself? 
 Not half so quick as they'd do it. I can't rest for 
 that Whitechapel of yours. Please fetch pen and 
 paper: it's a letter." 
 
 The letter began, "Dear Lady Arpington." 
 
 The dictation of it came in starts. At one moment 
 it seemed as if life's ending shook the curtains on our 
 stage and were about to lift. An old friend in the 
 reader of the letter would need no excuse for its 
 jerky brevity. It said that his pet girl, Miss Kirby,
 
 268 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 was married to the Earl of Fleetwood in the first 
 week of last month, and was now to be found at a 
 shop ISTo. 45, Longways, Whitechapel; that the writer 
 was ill, unable to stir; that he would be in London 
 within eight and forty hours at farthest. He begged 
 Lady Arpington to send dovvm to the place and have 
 the young countess fetched to her, and keep her 
 until he came. 
 
 Admiral Baldwin sat up to sign the letter. 
 
 "Yes, and write, 'miracles happen when the devil's 
 abroad ' — done it ! " he said, sinking back. " Now seal, 
 you'll find wax — the ring at my watch-chain." 
 
 He sighed, as it were the sound of his very last; 
 he lay like a sleeper twitched by a dream. There 
 had been a scene with Livia. The dictating of the 
 letter took his remainder of strength out of him. 
 
 Gower called in the nurse, and went downstairs. He 
 wanted the address of Lady Arpington's town house. 
 
 "You have a letter for her?" said Livia, and held 
 her hand for it in a way not to be withstood. 
 
 "There's no superscription," he remarked. 
 
 "I will see to that, Mr. Woodseer." 
 
 "I fancy I am bound. Lady Fleetwood." 
 
 " By no means." She touched his arm. " You are 
 Lord Fleetwood's friend." 
 
 A slight convulsion of the frame struck the admiral's 
 shirt-collar at his ears; it virtually prostrated him 
 under foot of a lady so benign in overlooking the
 
 STUDIES IN FOG, ETC. 269 
 
 spectacle he presented. Still, he considered; he had 
 wits alive enough just to perceive a duty. 
 
 "The letter was entrusted to me, Lady Fleetwood.'' 
 
 " You are afraid to entrust it to the post ? " 
 
 "I was thinking of delivering it myself in town." 
 
 "You will entrust it to me." 
 
 "Anything on earth of my own." 
 
 "The treasure would be valued. This you confide 
 to my care." 
 
 " It is important." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Indeed it is." 
 
 " Say that it is, then. It is quite safe with me. It 
 may be important that it should not be delivered. Are 
 you not Lord Fleetwood's friend? Lady Arpington is 
 not so very, very prominent in the list with you and me. 
 Besides, I don't think she has come to town yet. She 
 generally sees out the end of the hunting season. Leave 
 the letter to me : it shall go. You, with your keen ob- 
 servation missing nothing, have seen that my uncle has 
 not his whole judgment at present. There are two 
 sides to a case. Lord Fleetwood's friend will know 
 that it would be unfair to offer him up to his enemies 
 while he is absent. Things going favourably here, I 
 drive back to town to-morrow, and I hope you will 
 accept a seat in my carriage." 
 
 He delivered his courtliest; he was riding on cloud. 
 
 They talked of Baden. His honourable surrender
 
 270 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 of her defeated purse was a subject for gentle humour 
 with her, venturesome compliment with him. He 
 spoke well; and though his hands were clean of Sir 
 Meeson Corby's reproach of them, the caricature of 
 presentable men blushed absurdly and seemed uneasy 
 in his monstrous collar. The touching of him again 
 would not be required to set him pacing to her steps. 
 His hang of the head testified to the unerring stamp 
 of a likeness Captain Abrane could affix with a stroke : 
 he looked the fiddler over his bow, playing wonder- 
 fully to conceal the crack of a string. The merit of 
 being one of her a.rmy of admirers was accorded to 
 him. The letter to Lady Arpington was retained. 
 
 Gower deferred the further mention of the letter 
 until a visit to the admiral's chamber should furnish 
 an excuse; and he had to wait for it. Admiral Bald- 
 win's condition was becoming ominous. He sent 
 messages downstairs by the doctor, forbidding his 
 guest's departure until they two could make the 
 journey together next day. The tortured and blissful 
 young man, stripped of his borrowed philosopher's 
 cloak, hung conscience-ridden in this delicious bower, 
 which was perceptibly an antechamber of the vaults, 
 offering him the study he thirsted for, shrank from, 
 and mixed with his cup of amorous worship.
 
 FURTHER GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 271 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI 
 
 IN WHICH WE HAVE FURTHER GLIMPSES OF THE WON- 
 DROUS MECHANISM OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 
 
 The report of Admiral Baldwin Fakenliam as hav- 
 ing died in the arms of a stranger visiting the house, 
 hit nearer the mark than usual. He yielded his last 
 breath as Gower Woodseer was lowering him to his 
 pillow, shortly after a husky Avhisper of the letter to 
 Lady Arpington; and that was one of Gower's crucial 
 trials. It condemned him, for the pacifying of a 
 dying man, to the murmur and shuffle, which was a 
 lie; and the lie burnt him, contributed to the brand 
 on his race. He and his father upheld a solitary bare 
 staff, where the Cambrian flag had flown, before their 
 people had been trampled in mire, to do as the 
 worms. His loathing of any shadow of the lie was 
 a protest on behalf of Welsh blood against an English 
 charge, besides the passion for spiritual cleanliness: 
 without which was no comprehension, therefore no 
 enjoyment, of nature possible to him. For nature is 
 the truth. 
 
 He begged the countess to let him have the letter; 
 he held to the petition, with supplications; he spoke 
 of his pledged word, his honour; and her countenance 
 did not deny to such an object as she beheld the right
 
 272 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 to a sense of honour. "We all liave the sentiment, 
 I hope, Mr. Woodseer," she said, stupefying the wor- 
 shipper, who did not see it manifested. There was 
 a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of common 
 grounds between them, accompanying the dead words. 
 Mistress of the letter, and the letter safe under lock, 
 the admiral dead, she had not to bestow a touch of 
 her hand on his coat-sleeve in declining to return 
 it. A face languidly and benevolently querulous was 
 bent on him, when he, so clever a man, resumed his 
 very silly petition. 
 
 She was moon out of cloud at a change of the 
 theme. Gower journeyed to London without the letter, 
 intoxicated, and conscious of poison; enamoured of it, 
 and straining for health. He had to reflect at the jour- 
 ney's end, that he had picked up nothing on the road, 
 neither a thing observed nor a thing imagined; he was 
 a troubled pool instead of a flowing river. 
 
 The best help to health for him was a day in his 
 father's house. We are perpetually at our comparisons 
 of ourselves with others ; and they are mostly profitless ; 
 but the man carrying his religious light, to light the 
 darkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, 
 as though the heart of him ran a mountain water 
 through the grimy region, plucked at Gower with an 
 envy to resemble him in practice. His philosophy, too, 
 reproached him for being outshone. Apart from his 
 philosophy, he stood confessed a bankrupt; and it had
 
 FURTHER GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 273 
 
 dwindled to near extinction. Adoration of a woman 
 takes the breath out of philosophy. And if one had 
 only to say sheer donkey, he consenting to be driven by 
 her ! One has to say worse in this case ; for the words 
 are, liar and traitor. 
 
 Carinthia's attitude toward his father conduced to 
 his emulous respect for the old man, below whom, and 
 indeed below the roadway of ordinary principles hedged 
 with dull texts, he had strangely fallen. The sight of 
 her lashed him. She made it her business or it was her 
 pleasiu-e to go the rounds beside Mr. Woodseer visiting 
 his poor people. She spoke of the scenes she witnessed, 
 and threw no stress on the wretchedness, having only 
 the wish to assist in ministering. Probably the great 
 wretchedness bubbling over the place blunted her feel- 
 ing of loss at the word of Admiral Baldwin's end ; her 
 bosom sprang up : " He was next to father," was all she 
 said; and she soon reverted to this and that house of 
 the lodgings of poverty. She had descended on the 
 world. There was of course a world outside "White- 
 chapel, but Whitechapel was hot about her ; the nests of 
 misery, the sharp note of want in the air, tricks of an 
 urchin who had amused her. 
 
 As to the place itself, she had no judgment to pro-'' 
 nounce, except that : " They have no mornings here " ; 
 and the childish remark set her quivering on her 
 heights, like one seen through a tear, in Gower's mem- \ 
 ory. Scarce anything of her hungry impatience to
 
 274 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 meet her husband was visible : she had come to London 
 to meet him; she hoped to meet him soon: before her 
 brother's return, she could have added. She mentioned 
 the goodness of Sarah Winch in not allowing that she 
 was a burden to support. Money and its uses had 
 impressed her; the quantity possessed by some, the 
 utter need of it for the first of human purposes by 
 others. Her speech was not of so halting or foreign 
 an English. She grew rapidly wherever she was 
 planted. 
 
 Speculation on the conduct of her husband, empty 
 as it might be, was necessitated in Gower. He pur- 
 sued it, and listened to his father similarly at work: 
 "A young lady fit for any station, the kindest of souls, 
 a born charitable human creature, void of pride, near 
 in all she does and thinks to the Shaping Hand, why 
 should her husband forsake her on the day of their 
 nuptials ! She is most gracious ; the simplicity of an 
 infant. Can you imagine the doing of an injury by a 
 man to a woman like her?" 
 
 Then it was that Gower screwed himself to say : — 
 
 "Yes, I can imagine it, I'm doing it myself. I 
 shall be doing it till I've written a letter and paid a 
 visit." 
 
 He took a meditative stride or two in the room, 
 thinking without revulsion of the Countess Livia under 
 a similitude of the bell of the plant henbane, and that 
 his father had immunity from temptation because of
 
 FUETHER GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 275 
 
 the insensibility to beauty. Out of which he passed 
 to the writing of the letter to Lord Fleetwood, in- 
 forming his lordship that he intended immediately to 
 deliver a message to the Marchioness of Arpington 
 from Admiral Baldwin Fakenham, in relation to the 
 Countess of Fleetwood. A duty was easily done by 
 Gower when he had surmounted the task of conceiving 
 his resolution to do it ; and this task, involving an 
 offence to the Lady Livia and intrusion of his name 
 on a nobleman's recollection, ranked next in severity 
 to the chopping off of his fingers by a man suspecting 
 them of the bite of rabies. 
 
 An interview with Lady Arpington was granted him 
 the following day. 
 
 She was a florid, aquiline, loud-voiced lady, evidently 
 having no seat for her v/onderments, after his account 
 of the origin of his acquaintance with the admiral had 
 quieted her suspicions. The world had only to stand 
 beside her, and it would hear what she had heard. 
 She rushed to the conclusion that Lord Fleetwood 
 had married a person of no family. 
 
 "Eeally, really, that young man's freaks appear 
 designed for the express purpose of heightening our 
 amazement ! " she exclaimed. " He won't easily get 
 beyond a wife in the east of London, at a shop; but 
 there's no knowing. Any wish of Admiral Baldwin 
 Fakenham's I hold sacred. At least I can see for 
 myself. You can't tell me more of the facts ? If
 
 276 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Lord Fleetwood's in town, I will call him here at once. 
 I will drive down to this address you give me. She 
 is a civil person?" 
 
 "Her breeding is perfect," said Gower. 
 
 "Perfect breeding, you say?" Lady Arpington was 
 reduced to a murmur. She considered the speaker: 
 his outlandish garb, his unprotesting self-possession. 
 He spoke good English by habit, her ear told her. 
 She was of an eminence to judge of a man impartially, 
 even to the sufferance of an opinion from him, on a 
 subject that lesser ladies would have denied to his 
 clothing. Outwardly simple, naturally frank, though a 
 tangle of the complexities inwardly, he was a touch- 
 stone for true aristocracy, as the humblest who bear 
 the main elements of it must be. Certain humorous 
 turns in his conversation won him an amicable smile 
 when he bowed to leave: they were the needed finish 
 of a favourable impression. 
 
 One day later the earl arrived in town, read Gower 
 Woodseer's brief words, and received the consequently 
 expected summons, couched in a great lady's plain 
 imperative. She was connected with his family on the 
 paternal side. 
 
 He went obediently : not unwillingly, let the deputed 
 historian of the Marriage, turning over documents, here 
 say. He went to Lady Arpington disposed for marital 
 humaneness and jog-trot harmony, by condescension; 
 equivalent to a submitting to the drone of an incessant
 
 FURTHER GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 277 
 
 psalm at the drum of the ear. He was, in fact, rather 
 more than inclined that way. When very young, at the 
 age of thirteen, a mood of religious fervour had spirit- 
 ualized the dulness of Protestant pew and pulpit for him. 
 Another fit of it, in the Roman Catholic direction, had 
 proposed, during his latest dilemma, to relieve him of 
 the burden of his pledged word. He had plunged for 
 a short space into the rapturous contemplation of a 
 monastic life — ' the clean soul for the macerated flesh,' 
 as that fellow Woodseer said once : and such as his friend, 
 the Eoman Catholic Lord Feltre, moodily talked of get- 
 ting in his intervals. He had gone down to a young and 
 novel trial establishment of English penitents in the for- 
 est of a Midland county, and had watched and envied, 
 and seen the escape from a lifelong bondage to the ^beau- 
 tiful Gorgon,' under cover of a white flannel frock. The 
 world pulled hard, and he gave his body into chains of a 
 woman, to redeem his word. 
 
 But there was a plea on behalf of this woman. The 
 life she offered might have psalmic iteration; the dead 
 monotony of it in prospect did, nevertheless, exorcise a 
 devil. Carinthia promised, it might seem, to chase and 
 keep the black beast out of him permanently, as she 
 could, he now conceived: for since the day of the 
 marriage with her, the devil inhabiting him had at least 
 been easier, ^up in a corner.' 
 
 He held an individual memory of his bride, rose- 
 veiled, secret to them both, that made them one, by sub-
 
 278 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 duing him. For it was a charm ; an actual feminine, an 
 unanticipated personal, charm; past reach of tongue to 
 name, wordless in thought. There, among the folds of 
 the incense vapours of our heart's holy of holies, it hung; 
 and it was rare, it was distinctive of her, and alluring, if 
 one consented to melt to it, and accepted for compensa- 
 tion the exorcising of a devil. 
 
 Oh, but no mere devil by title! — a very devil. It 
 ' was alert and frisky, flushing, filling the thin cold idea 
 of Henrietta at a thought ; and in the thought it made 
 Carinthia's intimate charm appear as no better than a 
 thing to enrich a beggar, while he knew that kings could 
 never command the charm. ISTot love, only the bathing 
 in Henrietta's incomparable beauty and the desire to be, 
 desire to have been, the casket of it, broke the world to 
 tempest and lightnings at a view of Henrietta the 
 married woman — married to the brother of the woman 
 calling him husband : — " it is my husband." The young 
 tyrant of wealth could have avowed that he did not love 
 Henrietta; but not the less was he in the swing of a 
 whirlwind at the hint of her loving the man she had 
 married. Did she ? It might be tried. 
 
 She? That Henrietta is one of the creatures who 
 love pleasure, love flattery, love their beauty: they 
 cannot love a man. Or the love is a ship that will 
 not sail a sea. 
 
 Now, if the fact were declared and attested, if her 
 shallowness were seen proved, one might get free of
 
 FURTHER GLIMPSES OF OUR YOUNGER MAN 279 
 
 the devil she plants in the breast. Absolutely to 
 despise her would be release, and it would allow of 
 his tasting Carinthia's charm, reluctantly acknowledged; 
 not 'money of the country' beside that golden Henri- 
 etta's. 
 
 Yet who can say ? — women are such deceptions. 
 Often their fairest, apparently sweetest, when brought 
 to the keenest of the tests, are graceless; or worse, 
 artificially consonant ; in either instance barren of the 
 poetic. Thousands of the confidently expectant among 
 men have been unbewitched; a lamentable process; 
 and the grimly reticent and the loudly discursive are 
 equally eloquent of the pretty general disillusion. 
 How they loathe and tear the mask of the sham 
 attraction that snatched them to the hag yoke, and 
 fell away to show its grisly horrors within the round 
 of the month, if not the second enumeration of twelve 
 by the clock ! Fleetwood had heard certain candid 
 seniors talk, delivering their minds in superior appre- 
 ciation of unpretentious boor wenches, nature's prod- 
 ucts, not esteemed by him. Well, of a truth, she — 
 "Eed Hair and Eugged Brows," as the fellow Wood- 
 seer had called her, in alternation with ^' Mountain 
 Face to Sun" — she at the unveiling was gentle, sur- 
 passingly; graceful in the furnace of the trial. She 
 wore through the critic ordeal his burning sensitive- 
 ness to grace and delicacy cast about a woman, and 
 was rather better than not withered by it.
 
 280 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 On the borders between maidenly and wifely, she, a 
 thing of flesh like other daughters of earth, had 
 impressed her sceptical lord, inclining to contempt of 
 her and detestation of his bargain, as a flitting hue, 
 ethereal, a transfiguration of earthliness in the core of 
 the earthly furnace. And how ? — but that it must 
 have been the naked shining forth of her character, 
 startled to show itself : — "it is my husband " : — it 
 must have been love. 
 
 The love that they versify, and strum on guitars, 
 and go crazy over, and end by roaring at as the delu- 
 sion; this common bloom of the ripeness of a season; 
 this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to 
 vanquish him in his mastery, snare him in her sur- 
 render. It must have been the veritable passion: a 
 flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the yew-wood 
 of the forest of Old Eomance ; planted only in the 
 breasts of very favourite maidens. Lov^ had eyes, 
 love had a voice that night, — love was the explicable 
 magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she 
 had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. 
 Henrietta, illumined with such a love, would outdo 
 all legends, all dreams of the tale of love. Would 
 she? For credulous men she would be golden coin of 
 the currency. She would not have a particular wild 
 flavour: charm as of the running doe that has taken 
 a dart and rolls an eye to burst the hunter's heart 
 with pity.
 
 A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 281 
 
 Fleetwood went his way to Lady Arpington almost 
 complacently, having fought and laid his wilder self. 
 He might be likened to the doctor's patient entering the 
 chemist's shop, with a prescription for a drug of heal- 
 ing virtue, upon which the palate is as little consulted 
 as a robustious lollypoxD boy in the household of cere- 
 monial parents, who have rung for the troop of their 
 orderly domestics to sit in a row and hearken the in- 
 tonation of good words. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXII 
 
 A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 
 
 The bow, the welcome, and the introductory remarks 
 passed rapidly as the pull on two sides of a curtain open- 
 ing on a scene that stiffens courtliness to hard attention. 
 
 After the names of Admiral Baldwin and ^the Mr. 
 Woodseer,' the name of Whitechapel was mentioned by 
 Lady Arpington. It might have been the name of any 
 other place. 
 
 " Ah, so far, then, I have to instruct you," she said, 
 observing the young earl. " I drove down there yes- 
 terday. I saw the lady calling herself Countess of 
 Fleetwood. By right ? She was a Miss Kirby." 
 
 ^'She has the right," Fleetwood said, standing well 
 up out of a discharge of musketry.
 
 282 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 " Marriage not contested. You knew of her being in 
 that place ? — I can't describe it." 
 
 " Your ladyship will pardon me ? " 
 
 London's frontier of barbarism was named for him 
 again, and in a tone to penetrate. 
 
 He refrained from putting the question of how she 
 had come there. 
 
 As iron as he looked, he said : " She stays there by 
 choice. " 
 
 The great lady tapped her foot on the floor. 
 
 " You are not acquainted with the district." 
 
 " One of my men comes out of it." 
 
 "The coming out of it! . . . However, I under- 
 stand her story, that she travelled from a village inn, 
 where she had been left — without resources. She 
 waited weeks; I forget how many. She has a de- 
 scription of maid in attendance on her. She came 
 to London to find her husband. You were at the 
 mines, we heard. Her one desire is to meet her 
 husband. But, goodness ! Fleetwood, why do you 
 frown? You acknowledge the marriage, she has the 
 name of the church; she was married out of that 
 old Lord Levellier's house. You drove her — I won't 
 repeat the flighty business. You left her, and she 
 did her best to follow you. Will the young men, of 
 our time not learn that life is no longer a game when 
 they have a woman for partner in the match! You 
 don't complain of her flavour of a foreign manner ? She
 
 A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 283 
 
 can't be so very . . . Admiral Baldwin's daughter has 
 married her brother ; and he is a military officer. She 
 has germs of breeding, wants only a little rub of the 
 world to smooth her. Speak to the point : — do you 
 meet her here ? Do you refuse ? " 
 
 " At present ? I do." 
 
 " Something has to be done." 
 
 " She was bound to stay where I left her." 
 
 " You are bound to provide for her becomingly." 
 
 " Provision shall be made, of course." 
 
 "The story will . . . unless — and quickly, too." 
 
 " I know, I know ! " 
 
 Fleetwood had the clang of all the bells of London 
 chiming Whitechapel at him in his head, and he be- 
 trayed the irritated tyrant ready to decree fire and 
 sword, for the defence or solace of his tender sensi- 
 bilities. 
 
 The black flash flew. 
 
 "It's a thing to mend, as well as one can," Lady 
 Arpington said. " I am not inquisitive : you had your 
 reasons or chose to act without any. Get her away 
 from that place. She won't come to me unless it's to 
 meet her husband. Ah, well, temper does not solve 
 your problem; husband you are, if you married her. 
 We'll leave the husband undiscussed : with this re- 
 serve, that it seems to me men are now beginning to 
 play the misunderstood." 
 
 "I hope they know themselves better," said Fleet-
 
 284 THE AMAZING MAREIAGE 
 
 wood; and he begged for the name and number of the 
 house in the Whitechapel street, where she who was 
 discernibly his enemy, and the deadliest of enemies, 
 had now her dwelling. 
 
 Her immediate rush to that place, the fixing of her- 
 self there for an assault on him, was a move worthy 
 the daughter of the rascal Old Buccaneer ; it compelled 
 to urgent measures. He, as he felt horribly in pencil- 
 ling her address, acted under compulsion ; and a woman 
 prodded the goad. Her mask of ingenuousness was 
 flung away for a look of craft, which could be power; 
 and with her changed aspect his tolerance changed to 
 hatred. 
 
 "A shop," Lady Arpington explained for his better 
 direction : '' potatoes, vegetable stuff. Honest people, I 
 am to believe. She is indifferent to her food, she says. 
 She works, helping one of their ministers — one of their 
 denominations : heaven knows what they call them- 
 selves ! Anything to escape from the Church ! She's 
 likely to become a Methodist. With Lord Feltre pros- 
 elytizing for his Papist creed. Lord Pitscrew a declared 
 Mohammedan, we shall have a pretty English aristoc- 
 racy in time. Well, she may claim to belong to it 
 now. She would not be persuaded against visitations to 
 pestiferous hovels. What else is there to do in such 
 a place ! She goes about catching diseases to avoid 
 bilious melancholy in the dark back room of a small 
 greengrocer's shop in Whitechapel. There you have
 
 A RIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 285 
 
 the word for tlie Countess of Fleetwood's present 
 address." 
 
 It drenched him with ridicule. 
 
 " I am indebted to your ladyship for the information," 
 he said, and maintained his rigidity. 
 
 The great lady stiffened. 
 
 "I am obliged to ask you whether you intend to act 
 on it at once. The admiral has gone; I am in some 
 sort deputed as a guardian to her, and I warn you — 
 very well, very well. In your o^ti interests, it will be. 
 If she is left there another two or three days, the name 
 of the place will stick to her." 
 
 " She has baptized herself with it already, I imagine," 
 said Fleetwood. " She will have Esslemont to live in." 
 
 "There will be more than one to speak as to that. 
 You should know her." 
 
 "I do not know her." 
 
 "You married her." 
 
 "The circumstances are admitted." 
 
 " If I may hazard a guess, she is imlikely to come to 
 terms without a previous interview. She is bent on 
 meeting you." 
 
 "I am to be subjected to further annoyance, or she 
 will take the name of the place she at present inhabits, 
 and bombard me mth it. Those are the terms." 
 
 " She has a brother living, I remind you." 
 
 " State the deduction, if you please, my lady." 
 
 " She is not of a totally inferior family."
 
 286 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 ^^She had a father famous over England as the Old 
 Buccaneer, and is a diligent reader of his book of 
 Maxims for Men." 
 
 "Dear me ! Then Kirby — Captain Kirby ! I remem- 
 ber. That's her origin, is it?" the great lady cried, 
 illumined. "My mother used to talk of the Cressett 
 scandal. Old Lady Arpington, too. At any rate, it 
 ended in their union — the formalities were properly 
 respected, as soon as they could be." 
 
 "I am unaware." 
 
 " I detest such a tone of speaking. Speaking as you 
 do now — married to the daughter ? You are not your- 
 self. Lord Fleetwood." 
 
 " Quite, ma' am, let me assure you. Otherwise the 
 Kirby-Cressetts would be dictating to me from the 
 muzzle of one of the old rapscallion's Maxims. They 
 will learn that I am myself." 
 
 "You don't improve as you proceed. I tell you this, 
 you'll not have me for a friend. You have your troops 
 of satellites ; but take it as equal to a prophecy, you 
 won't have London with you ; and you'll hear of Lord 
 Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess till your ears 
 ache." 
 
 The preluding box on them reddened him. 
 
 " She will have the offer of Esslemont." 
 
 " Undertake to persuade her in person." 
 
 " I have spoken on that head." 
 
 "Well, I may be mistaken, — I fancied it before I
 
 A BIGHT-MINDED GREAT LADY 287 
 
 knew of tlie pair she springs from: you won't get her 
 consent to anj^thing without your consenting to meet her. 
 Surely it's the manlier way. It might be settled for 
 to-morrow, here, in this room. She prays to meet you.'^ 
 
 With an indicated gesture of "Save me from it," 
 Fleetwood bowed. 
 
 He left no friend thinking over the riddle of his con- 
 duct. She was a loud-voiced lady, given to strike out 
 phrases. The 'Whitechapel Countess' of the wealthi- 
 est nobleman of his day was heard by her on London's 
 wagging tongue. She considered also that he ought at 
 least to have propitiated her; he was in the position 
 requiring of him to do something of the kind, and he 
 had shown instead the dogged pride which calls for a 
 whip. Fool as he must have been to go and commit 
 himself to marriage with a girl of whom he knew noth- 
 ing or little, the assumption of pride belonged to the 
 order of impudent disguises intolerable to behold and 
 not, in a modern manner, castigate. 
 
 Notwithstanding a dislike of the Dowager Countess 
 of Fleetwood, Lady Arpington paid Livia an afternoon 
 visit ; and added thereby to the stock of her knowledge 
 and the grounds of her disapprobation. 
 
 Down in Whitechapel, it Avas known to the Winch 
 girls and the Woodseers, that Captain Kirby and his 
 wife had spent the bitterest of hours in vainly striving 
 to break their immovable sister's will to remain there. 
 
 At the tea-time of simple people, who make it a meal,
 
 288 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Gower's appetite for the home-made bread of Mary Jones 
 was checked by the bearer of a short note from Lord 
 Fleetwood. The half-dozen lines were cordial, breath- 
 ing of their walk in the Austrian highlands, and naming 
 a renowned city hotel for dinner that day, the hour 
 seven, the reply yes or no by messenger. 
 
 " But we are man to man, so there's no ' No ' between 
 us two," the note said, reviving a scene of rosy crag and 
 pine forest, where there had been philosophical fun over 
 the appropriate sexes of those our most important fight- 
 ing — ultimately, we will hope, to be united — syllables, 
 and the when for men, the when for women, to select the 
 one of them as their weapon. 
 
 Under the circumstances, Gower thought such a piece 
 of writing to him magnanimous. 
 
 " It may be the solution," his father remarked. 
 
 Both had the desire ; and Gower's reply was the yes, 
 our brave male word, supposed to be not so compromis- 
 ing to men in the employment of it as a form of acqui- 
 escence rather than insistent pressure. 
 
 CHAPTEB XXIII 
 
 IN DAME gossip's VEIN 
 
 Right soon the London pot began to bubble. There 
 was a marriage. 
 
 There are marriages by the thousand every day of the
 
 IN DAME gossip's VEIN 289 
 
 year that is not consecrated to prayer for the forgiveness 
 of our sins, the Old Buccaneer, writing it with simple 
 intent, says, by way of preface to a series of Maxims 
 for men who contemplate acceptance of the yoke. 
 
 This was a marriage high as the firmament over 
 common occurrences, black as Erebus to confound; it 
 involved the wreck of expectations, disastrous eclipse 
 of a sovereign luminary in the splendour of his rise, 
 Phaethon's descent to the Shades through a smoking 
 and a crackling world. Asserted here, verified there, 
 the rumour gathered volume, and from a serpent of 
 vapour resolved to sturdy concrete before it was tan- 
 gible. Contradiction retired into corners, only to be 
 swept out of them. For this marriage, abominable to 
 hear of, was of so wonderful a sort, that the story 
 filled the mind, and the discrediting of the story 
 threatened the great world's cranium with a vacuity 
 yet more monstrously abominable. 
 
 For he, the planet Croesus of his time, recently, scarce 
 later than last night, a glorious object of the mid-heavens 
 above the market, has been enveloped, caught, gobbled 
 up by one of the nameless little witches riding after 
 dusk the way of the wind on broomsticks — by one of 
 them! She caught him like a fly in the hand off a 
 pane of glass, gobbled him with the customary facility 
 of a pecking pullet. 
 
 But was the planet Croesus of his time a young man 
 to be so caught, so gobbled ? 
 u
 
 290 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 There is tlie mystery of it. On his coming of age, 
 that young man gave sign of his having a city head. 
 He put his guardians deliberately aside, had his 
 lawyers and bailiffs and stewards thoroughly under 
 control: managed a particularly difficult step-mother; 
 escaped the snares of her lovely cousin; and drove 
 his team of sycophants exactly the road he chose to 
 go and no other. He had a will. 
 
 The world accounted him wildish ? 
 
 Always from his own offset, to his own ends. 
 Never for another's dictation or beg-uilement. Never 
 for a woman. He was born with a suspicion of the 
 sex. (Poetry decorated women, he said, to lime and 
 drag men in the foulest ruts of proseK 
 
 We are to believe he has been effectively captured? 
 
 It is positively a marriage; he admits it. 
 
 Where celebrated ? 
 
 There we are at hoodman-blind for the moment. 
 Three counties claim the church; two ends of London. 
 
 She is not a person of society, lineage? 
 
 Nor of beauty. She is a witch; ordinarily petti- 
 coated and not squeaking like a shrew-mouse in her 
 flights, but not a whit less a moon-shade witch. The 
 kind is famous. Fairy tales and terrible romances tell 
 of her ; she is just as much at home in life, and springs 
 usually from the mire to enthral our knightliest. Is it 
 a popular hero? She has him, sooner or later. A 
 planet Croesus? He falls to her.
 
 IN DAME gossip's VEIN 291 
 
 That is, if his people fail to attach him in legal bonds 
 to a damsel of a corresponding birth on the day when 
 he is breeched. 
 
 Small is her need to be young — especially if it is 
 the man who is very young. She is the created among 
 women armed with the deadly instinct for the motive 
 force in men, and shameless to attract it. Self-respect- 
 ing women treat men as their tamed housemates. She 
 blows the horn of the wild old forest, irresistible to the 
 animal. the droop of the eyelids, the curve of a 
 lip, the rustle of silks, the much heart, the neat ankle ; 
 and the sparkling agreement, the reserve — the motherly 
 feminine petition that she may retain her own small 
 petted babe of an opinion, legitimate or not, by per- 
 mission of superior authority ! — proof at once of her 
 intelligence and her appreciativeness. Her infinitesimal 
 spells are seen; yet, despite experience, the magnetism 
 in their repulsive display is barely apprehended by 
 sedate observers until the astounding capture is pro- 
 claimed. It is visible enough then : — and men ! 
 morals! If she can but trick the smallest bit in 
 stooping, she has the pick of men. 
 
 Our present sample shows her to be young: she is 
 young and a foreigner. Mr. Chumley Potts vouches 
 for it. Speaks foreign English. He thinks her more 
 ninny than knave: she is the tool of a wily plotter, 
 picked up off the highway road by Lord Fleetwood as 
 soon as he had her in his eye. Sir Meeson Corby wrings
 
 292 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 his frilled hands to depict the horror of the hands of 
 that tramp the young lord had her from. They afflict 
 him malariously still. The man, he says, the man as 
 well was an infatuation, because he talks like a Diction- 
 ary Cheap Jack, and may have had an education and 
 dropped into vagrancy, owing to indiscretions. Lord 
 Fleetwood ran about in Germany repeating his remarks. 
 But the man is really an accomplished violinist, we hear. 
 She dances the tambourine business. A sister of the 
 man, perhaps, if we must be charitable. They are, 
 some say, a couple of Hungarian gypsies Lord F. found 
 at a show and brought over to England, and soon had 
 it on his conscience that he ought to marry her, like 
 the Quixote of honour that he is; which is equal to 
 saying crazy, as there is no doubt his mother was. 
 
 The marriage is no longer disputable ; poor Lady 
 Fleetwood, whatever her faults as a stepmother, does 
 no longer delay the celebration of a marriage; though 
 she might reasonably discredit any such story if he, 
 on the evening of the date of the wedding day, was 
 at a ball, seen by her at the supper-table; and the 
 next day he sat among the Peers and voted against 
 the Government, and then went down to his estates in 
 Wales, being an excellent holder of the reins, whether 
 on the coach box or over the cash box. 
 
 More and more wonderful, we hear that he drove 
 his bride straight from the church to the field of a 
 prize-fight, arranged for her special delectation. She
 
 IN DAME gossip's VEIN 293 
 
 dotes on seeing blood-slied and drinking champagne. 
 Young Mr. Mallard is our authority ; and he says, she 
 enjoyed it, and cheered the victor for being her hus- 
 band's man. And after the shocking exhibition, good- 
 bye ; the Countess of Fleetwood was left sole occupant 
 of a wayside inn, and may have learnt in her sol- 
 itude that she would have been wise to feign disgust; 
 for men to the smallest degree cultivated are unable 
 to pardon a want of delicacy in the woman who has 
 chosen them, as they are taught to think by their 
 having chosen her. 
 
 So talked, so twittered, piped, and croaked the Lon- 
 don world ever the early rumours of the marriage, this 
 Amazing Marriage; which it got to be called, from 
 the number of items flocking to swell the wonder. 
 
 Eavens ravening by night, poised peregrines by 
 day, provision-merchants for the dispensing of dainty 
 scraps to tickle the ears, to arm the tongues, to explode 
 reputations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor, Eld- 
 ritch, and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged 
 and scourged both innocence and naughtiness; inno- 
 cence, on the whole, the least, when their withering 
 suspicion of it had hunted the unhappy thing to the 
 bank of Ophelia's ditch. Mallard and Chumley Potts, 
 Captain Abrane, Sir Meeson Corby, Lord Brailstone, 
 were plucked at and rattled, put to the blush, by a 
 pursuit of inquiries conducted with beaks. High-nosed 
 dames will surpass eminent judges in their temerity
 
 294 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 on the border-line where Ahem sounds the warning 
 note to curtained decency. The courtly M. de St. 
 Ombre had to stand confused. He, however, gave an- 
 other version of Captain Abrane's 'fiddler/ and precip- 
 itated the great ladies into the reflection, that French 
 gentlemen, since the execrable French Eevolution, have 
 lost their proper sense of the distinctions of Class. 
 Homme d^esprit, applied to a roving adventurer, a 
 scarce other than vagabond, was either an undiscrimi- 
 nating epithet or else a further example of the French 
 deficiency in humour. 
 
 Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry 
 has it from Sir Meeson Corby, who had it from the 
 poor dowager, that Lord Fleetwood has installed the 
 man in his house and sits him at the opposite end of 
 his table ; fished him up from Whitechapel, where the 
 countess is left serving oranges at a small fruit-shop. 
 With her own eyes. Lady Arpington saw her there; 
 and she can't be got to leave the place unless her hus- 
 band drives his coach down to fetch her. That he de- 
 clines to do ; so she remains the Whitechapel Countess, 
 all on her hind heels against the offer of a shilling of 
 her husband's money, if she's not to bring him to his 
 knees; and goes about at night with a low Methodist 
 singing hymns along those dreadful streets, while Lord 
 Fleetwood gives gorgeous entertainments. One signal 
 from the man he has hired, and he stops drinking; 
 he will stop speaking as soon as the man's mouth is
 
 295 
 
 open. He is under a complete fascination, attributable, 
 some say, to passes of the hands, which the man won't 
 wash lest he should weaken their influence. 
 
 For it cannot be simply his violin playing. They 
 say he was a pupil of a master of the dark art in 
 Germany, and can practise on us to make us think 
 his commonest utterances extraordinarily acute and 
 precious. Lord Fleetwood runs round quoting him 
 to everybody, quite ridiculously. But the man's in- 
 fluence is sufficient to induce his patron to drive down 
 and fetch the Whitechapel Countess home in state, as 
 she insists — if the man wishes it. Depend upon it 
 he is the key of the mystery. 
 
 Totally the contrary. Lady Arpington declares ! — 
 the man is a learned man, formerly a Professor of 
 English Literature in a German University, and no 
 connection of the Whitechapel Countess whatever, a 
 chance acquaintance, at the most. He operates on 
 Lord Fleetwood with doses of German philosophy ; 
 otherwise, a harmless creature ; and has consented to 
 wash and dress. It is my lord who has had the 
 chief influence. And the Countess Livia now backs 
 him in maintaining that there is nowhere a more 
 honest young man to be found. She may have her 
 reasons. 
 
 As for the Wliitechapel Countess . . . the whole 
 story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny was 
 retold, and it formed a terrific halo, presage of rains
 
 296 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl 
 had incomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two 
 had a son and a daughter born abroad : — in wedlock, 
 we trust. The girl may be as wild a one as the 
 mother. She has a will as determined as her husband's. 
 She is offered Esslemont, the earl's Kentish mansion, 
 for a residence, and she will none of it until she has 
 him down in the east of London on his knees to 
 entreat her. The injury was deep on one side or the 
 other. It may be almost surely prophesied that the 
 two will never come together. Will either of them 
 deal the stroke for freedom ? And which is the 
 likelier ? 
 
 Meanwhile Lord Fleetwood and his Whitechapel 
 Countess composed the laugh of London. Straightway 
 Invention, the violent propagator, sprang from his 
 shades at a call of the great world's appetite for more, 
 and rushing upon stationary Fact, supplied the required. 
 Marvel upon marvel was recounted. The mixed origin 
 of the singular issue could not be examined, where all 
 was increasingly funny. 
 
 Always the shout for more produced it. She and her 
 band of Whitechapel boys were about in ambush to way- 
 lay the earl wherever he went. She stood knocking at 
 his door through a whole night. He dared not lug her 
 before a magistrate for fear of exposure. Once, riding 
 in the park with a troop of friends he had a young 
 woman pointed out to him, and her finger was levelled,
 
 Ilf DAME gossip's VEIN 297 
 
 and she cried: "There is the English nobleman who 
 marries a girl and leaves her to go selling cabbages ! " 
 
 He left town for the Island, and beheld his yacht 
 sailing the Solent: — my lady the countess was on board! 
 A pair of Tyrolese minstrels in the square kindled his 
 enthusiasm at one of his dinners ; he sent them a sov- 
 ereign; their humble, hearty thanks were returned to 
 him in the name of Die Grdjin von Fleetwood. 
 
 The Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry sifted their 
 best. They let pass incredible stories : among others, 
 that she had sent cards to the nobility and gentry of the 
 West End of London, offering to deliver sacks of pota- 
 toes by newly established donkey-cart at the doors of 
 their residences, at so much per sack, bills quarterly; 
 with the postscript, Vive V aristocratie ! Their inform- 
 ant had seen a card, and the stamp of the Fleetwood 
 dragon-crest was on it. 
 
 He has enemies, was variously said of the persecuted 
 nobleman. But it was nothing worse than the parasite 
 that he had. This was the parasite's gentle treason. 
 He found it an easy road to humour; it pricked the 
 slug fancy in him to stir and curl ; gave him occasion to 
 bundle and bustle his patron kindly. Abrane, Potts, 
 Mallard, and Sir Meeson Corby were personages during 
 the town's excitement, besought for having something to 
 say. Petrels of the sea of tattle, they were buoyed by 
 the hubbub they created, and felt the tipsy happiness of 
 being certain to rouse the laugh wherever they alighted.
 
 298 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Sir Meeson Corby, important to himself in an eminent 
 degree, enjoyed the novel sense of his importance with 
 his fellows. They crowded round the bore who had 
 scattered them. 
 
 He traced the miserable catastrophe in the earl's 
 fortunes to the cunning of the rascal now sponging on 
 Fleetwood and trying to dress like a gentleman : a con- 
 victed tramp, elevated by the caprice of the young noble- 
 man he was plotting to ruin. Sir Meeson quoted Cap- 
 tain Abrane's latest effort to hit the dirty object's name, 
 by calling him "Fleetwood's Mr. Woodlouse." And 
 was the rascal a sorcerer ? Sir Meeson spoke of him in 
 the hearing of the Countess Livia, and she, previously 
 echoing his disgust, corrected him sharply, and said: 
 "I begin to be of E-ussett's opinion, that his fault is 
 his honesty." The rascal had won or partly won the 
 empress of her sex ! This Lady Livia, haughtiest and 
 most fastidious of our younger great dames, had become 
 the indulgent critic of the tramp's borrowed plumes! 
 Nay, she would not listen to a depreciatory word on him 
 from her cousin Henrietta Kirby-Levellier. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, of all places for an encounter 
 between the Earl of Fleetwood and the countess, those 
 vulgar Gardens across the water, long since abandoned 
 by the Fashion, were the most suitable. Thither one 
 fair June night, for the sake of showing the dowager 
 countess and her beautiful cousin, the French nobleman. 
 Sir Meeson Corby, and others, what were the pleasures of
 
 tlie London lower orders, my lord had the whim to con- 
 duct them, — merely a parade of observation once round; 
 — the ladies veiled, the gentlemen with sticks, and two 
 servants following, one of whom, dressed in quiet black, 
 like the peacefullest of parsons, was my lord's pugilist, 
 Christopher Ines. 
 
 Now, here we come to history: though you will 
 remember what History is. 
 
 The party walked round the Gardens unmolested: 
 nor have we grounds for supposing they assumed 
 airs of state in the style of a previous generation. 
 Only, as it happened, a gentleman of the party was 
 a wag ; no less than the famous, well-seasoned John 
 Rose Mackrell, bent on amusing Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, 
 to hear her lovely laughter; and his wit and his 
 anecdotes, both inexhaustible, proved that, as he 
 said, "a dried fish is no stale fish, and a smoky 
 flavour to an old chimney story will often render 
 it more piquant to the taste than one jumping 
 fresh off the incident." His exact meaning in 'smoky 
 flavour ' we are not to know ; but Avhether that M. de St. 
 Ombre should witness the effect of English humour 
 upon them, or that the ladies could permit themselves 
 to laugh, their voices accompanied the gentlemen in 
 silver volleys. There had been ' Mackrell ' at Fleet- 
 wood's dinner-table; which was then a way of saying 
 that dry throats made no count of the quantity of 
 champagne imbibed, owing to the fits Rose Mackrell
 
 300 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 caused. However, there was loud laughter as tliey 
 strolled, and it was noticed; and Fleetwood crying 
 out, ^^ Mackrell ! Mackrell ! " in delighted repudiation 
 of the wag's last sally, the cry of " Hooray, Mackrell ! " 
 was caught up by the crowd. They were not the 
 primary offenders, for loud laughter in an isolated 
 party is bad breeding; but they had not the plea 
 of a copious dinner. 
 
 So this affair began; inoffensively at the start, for 
 my lord was good-hiunoured about it. 
 
 Kit Ines, of the mercurial legs, must now give 
 impromptu display of his dancing. He seized a 
 partner, in the manner of a Eoman the Sabine, sure 
 of pleasing his patron; and the maid, passing from 
 surprise to merriment, entered the quadi-ille perforce, 
 all giggles, not without emulation, for she likewise 
 had the passion for the dance. Whereby it befell 
 that the pair footed in a way to gather observant 
 spectators; and if it had not been that the man 
 from whom the maid was willy-nilly snatched, con- 
 ceived resentment, things might have passed comfort- 
 ably ; for Kit's quips and cuts and high capers, and 
 the Sunday gravity of the barge face while the legs 
 were at their impish trickery, double motion to the 
 music, won the crowd to cheer. They conjectured 
 him to be a British sailor. But the destituted man 
 said, sailor or no sailor, — bos'en be hanged ! he should 
 pay for his whistle.
 
 IN DAME gossip's VEIN 301 
 
 Honourably at the close of the quadrille, Kit brought 
 her back; none the worse for it, he boldly affirmed, 
 and he thanked the man for the short loan of her. 
 The man had an itch to strike. Choosing rather to 
 be struck first, he vented nasty remarks. My lord 
 spoke to Kit and moved on. At the moment of the 
 step. Rose Mackrell uttered something, a waggery of 
 some sort, heard to be forgotten, but of such instanta- 
 neous effect, that the prompt and immoderate laugh suc- 
 ceeding it might reasonably be taken for a fling of scorn 
 at himself, by an injured man. They were a party; 
 he therefore proceeded to make one, appealing to 
 English sentiment and right feeling. The blameless 
 and repentant maid plucked at his coat to keep him 
 from dogging the heels of the gentlemen. Fun was 
 promised ; consequently the crowd waxed. 
 
 "My lord," had been let fall by Kit Ines. Con- 
 joined to "Mackrell," it rang finely, and a trumpeting 
 of "Lord Mackrell" resounded. Lord Mackrell was 
 asked for "more capers and not so much sauce." Va- 
 rious fish took part in his title of nobility. The wag 
 Mackrell continuing to be discreetly silent, and Kit 
 Ines acting as a pacific rearguard, the crowd fell in 
 love with their display of English humour, disposed 
 to the surly satisfaction of a big street dog that has 
 been appeased by a smaller one's total cessation of 
 growls. 
 
 All might have gone well but for the sudden ap-
 
 302 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 pearance of two figures of young women on the scene. 
 They fronted the advance of the procession. They 
 wanted to have a word with Lord Mackrell. Not a 
 bit of it — he won't listen, turns away; and one of 
 the pair slips round him. It's regular imploring : 
 " my lord ! my lord ! " 
 
 you naughty Surrey melodram villain of a Lord 
 Mackrell! Listen to the young woman, you Mackrell, 
 or you'll get Billingsgate ! Here's Mr. Jig-and-Eeel 
 behind here, says she's done him ! By Gosh ! What's 
 up now? 
 
 One of the young ladies of the party ahead had 
 rushed up to the young woman dodging to stand in 
 Lord Mackrell's way. The crowd pressed to see. Kit 
 Ines and his mate shouldered them off. They per- 
 formed an envelopment of the gentlemen and ladies, 
 including the two young women. Kit left his mate 
 and ran to the young woman hitherto the quieter of 
 the two. He rattled at her. But she had a tongue of 
 her own and she rattled it at him. ^Vhat did she 
 say? 
 
 Merely to hear, for no other reason, a peace-loving 
 crowd of clerks, and tradesmen, workmen and their 
 girls, young aspirants to the professions, night-larks 
 of different classes, both sexes, there in that place for 
 simple entertainment, animated simply by the spirit 
 of English humour, contracted, so closing upon the 
 Mackrell party as to seem threatening to the most
 
 EN- DAME gossip's VEIN 303 
 
 orderly and apprehensive member of it, who was the 
 baronet, Sir Meeson Corby. 
 
 He was a man for the constables in town emer- 
 gencies, and he shouted. " Cock Eobin crowing " pro- 
 voked a jolly round of barking chaff. The noise in a 
 dense ring drew Fleetwood's temper. He gave the 
 word to Kit Ines, and immediately two men dropped ; 
 a dozen staggered unhit. The fists worked right and 
 left; such a clearing of ground was never seen for 
 sickle or scythe. And it was taken respectfully; for 
 Science proclaimed her venerable self in the style 
 and the perfect sufficiency of the strokes. A bruiser 
 delivered them. No shame to back away before a 
 bruiser. There was rather an admiring envy of the 
 party claiming the nimble champion on their side, 
 until the very moderate lot of the Mackrells went 
 stepping forward along the strewn -psiih with sticks 
 pointed. 
 
 If the}^ had walked it like gentlemen, they would 
 have been allowed to get through. An aggressive mi- 
 nority, and with Cock Robin squealing for constables 
 in the midst, is that insolent upstart tiring which 
 howls to have a lesson. The sticks were fallen on; 
 bump came the mass. Kit Ines had to fight liis way 
 back to his mate, and the couple scoured a clearish 
 ring, but the gentlemen were at short thrusts, affable 
 in tone, to cheer the spirits of the ladies : — ''All 
 right, my friend, you're a trifle mistaken, it's my
 
 304 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 stick, not yours." Therewith the wrestle for the 
 stick. 
 
 The one stick not pointed was wrenched from the 
 grasp of Sir Meeson Corby ; and by a woman, the 
 young woman who had accosted my lord; not a com- 
 mon young woman either, as she appeared when be- 
 seeching him. Her stature rose to battle heights : she 
 made play with Sir Meeson Corby's ebony stick, using 
 it in one hand as a dwarf quarterstaff to flail the 
 sconces, then to dash the point at faces ; and she 
 being a woman, a girl, perhaps a lady, her cool war- 
 rior method of cleaving way, without so much as 
 tightening her lips, was found notable; and to this 
 degree (vouched for by Eose Mackrell, who heard it), 
 that a fellow, rubbing his head, cried : " Damn it all, 
 she's clever, though!" She took her station beside 
 Lord Fleetwood. 
 
 He had been as cool as she, or almost. Now he was 
 maddened; she defended him, she warded and thrust 
 for him, only for him, to save him a touch; unasked, 
 undesired, detested for the box on his ears of to-morrow's 
 public mockery, as she would be, overwhelming him with 
 ridicule. Have you seen the kick and tug at the straps 
 of the mettled pony in stables that betrays the mishand- 
 ling of him by his groom ? Something so did Fleetwood 
 plunge and dart to be free of her, and his desperate soul 
 cried out on her sticking to him like a plaster ! 
 
 Welcome were the constables. His guineas winked at
 
 IN DAME gossip's VEIN 305 
 
 their chief, as fair women convey their meanings, with 
 no motion of eyelids ; and the officers of the law knew 
 the voice habituated to command, and answered two 
 words of his: "Eight, my lord," smelling my lord in 
 the unerring manner of those days. My lord's party 
 were escorted to the gates, not a little jeered; though 
 they by no means had the worst of the tussle. But the 
 puffing indignation of Sir Meeson Corby over his bat- 
 tered hat and torn frill and buttons plucked from his 
 coat, and his threat of the magistrates, excited the 
 crowd to derisive yells. 
 
 My lord spoke something to his man, handing his 
 purse. 
 
 The ladies were spared the hearing of bad language. 
 They, according to the joint testimony of M. de St. 
 Ombre and Mr. Eose Mackrell, comported themselves 
 throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race. 
 Both gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown 
 Britomart who had done such gallant service with Sir 
 Meeson's ebon}^ wand. He was beginning to fuss vocif- 
 erously about the loss of the stick — a family stick, gold- 
 headed, the family crest on it, priceless to the family — 
 when Mrs. Kirby-Levellier handed it to him inside the 
 coach. 
 
 " But where is she ? " M. de St. Ombre said, and took 
 the hint of Livia's touch on his arm in the dark. 
 
 At the silence following the question, Mr. Eose Mack- 
 rell murmured, " Ah ! "
 
 306 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 He and the French gentleman understood that there 
 had been a manifestation of the notorious Whitechapel 
 Countess. 
 
 They were two ; and a slower- witted third was travel- 
 ling to his ideas on the subject. Three men, witnesses 
 of a remarkable incident in connection with a boiling 
 topic of current scandal, — glaringly illustrative of it, 
 moreover, — were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if 
 they had been sworn to secresy. Fleetwood knew it, 
 and he scorned to solicit them ; an exaction of their idle 
 vows would be merely the humiliation of himself. So 
 he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as the ultra- 
 convivial give the last wink of reason to the wine-cup. 
 Persecuted as he was, nothing remained for him but the 
 nether-sublime of a statuesque desperation. 
 
 That was his feeling; and his way of cloaking it 
 under light sallies at Sir Meeson and easy chat with 
 Henrietta made it visible to her, from its being the con- 
 trary of what the world might expect a proud young 
 nobleman to exhibit. She pitied him : she had done him 
 some wrong. She read into him, too, as none else could. 
 Seeing the solitary tortures behind the pleasant social 
 mask, she was drawn to partake of them ; and the mask 
 seemed pathetic. She longed to speak a word in sym- 
 pathy or relieve her bosom of tears. Carinthia had 
 sunk herself, was unpardonable, hardly mentionable. 
 Any of the tales told of her might be credited after 
 this ! The incorrigible cause of humiliation for every-
 
 A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 307 
 
 body connected with her pictured, at a word of her 
 name, the crowd pressing and the London world acting 
 audience. Livia spoke the name when they had reached 
 their house and were alone. Henrietta responded with 
 the imperceptible shrug which is more eloquent than 
 a cry to tell of the most monstrous of loads. My lord, 
 it was thought by the ladies, had directed his man to 
 convey her safely to her chosen home, whence she might 
 be expected very soon to be issuing and striking the 
 gong of London again. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV 
 
 A KIDNAPPIXG AND NO GREAT HARM 
 
 Ladies who have the pride of delicate breeding are 
 not more than rather violently hurled back on the 
 fortress it is when one or other of the gross mishaps 
 of circumstance may subject them to a shock : and this 
 happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sus- 
 tained by the within and the without to keep a smooth 
 countenance, however severe their affliction. Men of 
 heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake 
 them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the mon- 
 strous grotesque of the scene at the Gardens, Livia 
 and Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any 
 signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only,
 
 308 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 the fair cousins were unable to perceive a comic ele- 
 ment in the scene : and if the world was for laughing, 
 as their instant apprehension foresaw it, the world was 
 an ignoble beast. They did not discuss Carinthia's 
 latest craziness at night, hardly alluded to it, while 
 they were in the inter jectory state. 
 
 Henrietta was Livia's guest, her husband having hur- 
 ried away to Vienna : " To get money ! money ! " her 
 angry bluntness explained his absence, and dealt its 
 blow at the sudden astounding poverty into which they 
 had fallen. She was compelled to practise an exces- 
 sive, an incredible economy : — " think of the smallest 
 trifles ! " so that her Chillon travelled unaccompanied, 
 they were separated. Her iterations upon money were 
 the vile constraint of an awakened interest and wonder- 
 ment at its powers. She, the romantic Eiette, banner 
 of chivalry, reader of poetry, struck a line between poor 
 and rich in her talk of people, and classed herself with 
 the fallen and pinched; she harped on her slender 
 means, on the enforced calculations preceding pur- 
 chases, on the living in lodgings ; and that miserly 
 Lord Levellier's indebtedness to Chillon — large sums! 
 and Chillon^s praiseworthy resolve to pay the creditors 
 of her father's estate ; and of how he travelled like a 
 common man, in consequence of the money he had 
 given Janey — weakly, for her obstinacy was past en- 
 durance ; but her brother would not leave her penniless, 
 and penniless she had been for weeks, because of her
 
 A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HAEM 309 
 
 stubborn resistance to the earl — quite unreasonably, 
 whether right or wrong — in the foul retreat she had 
 chosen ; apparently with a notion that the horror of it 
 was her vantage ground against him: and though a 
 single sign of submission would place the richest purse 
 in England at her disposal. ^^She refuses Esslemont! 
 She insists on his meeting her! iSTo child could be 
 so witless. Let him be the one chiefly or entirely to 
 blame, she might show a little tact — for her brother's 
 sake ! She loves her brother ? 'No : deaf to him, to me, 
 to every consideration except her blind will." 
 
 Here was the skeleton of the love match, earlier than 
 Livia had expected. 
 
 It refreshed a phlegmatic lady's disposition for proph- 
 esy. Lovers abruptly tossed between wind and wave 
 may still be lovers, she knew: but they are, or the 
 weaker of the two is, hard upon any third person who 
 tugs at them for subsistence or existence. The con- 
 dition, if they are much beaten about, prepares true 
 lovers, through their mutual tenderness, to be bitterly 
 misanthropical. 
 
 Livia supposed the novel economic pinches to be the 
 cause of Henrietta's unwonted harsh judgment of her 
 sister-in-law's misconduct, or the crude expression of it. 
 She could not guess that Carinthia's unhappiness in 
 marriage was a spectre over the married happiness of 
 the pair fretted by the conscience which told them the}* 
 had come together by doing much to bring it to pass.
 
 310 THE AJVIAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 Henrietta could seem to herself less the culprit when 
 she blamed Carinthia in another's hearing. 
 
 After some repose, the cousins treated their horrible 
 misadventure as a piece of history. Livia was cool ; 
 she had not a husband involved in it, as Henrietta 
 had; and London's hoarse laugh surely coming on 
 them, spared her the dread Henrietta suffered, that 
 Chillon would hear ; the most sensitive of men on any 
 matter touching his family. 
 
 " And now a sister added to the list ! Will there 
 be names, Livia ? " 
 
 " The newspapers ! " Livia's shoulders rose. 
 
 " We ought to have sworn the gentlemen to silence." 
 
 "M. de St. Ombre is a tomb until he writes his 
 Memoirs. ^ hold Sir Meeson under lock. But a 
 spiced incident, ^- a notorious couple, — an anecdotal 
 witness to - the scene, — could you expect Mr. Eose 
 Mackrell to contain it? The sacredest of oaths, my 
 dear ! " 
 
 That relentless force impelling an anecdotist to 
 slaughter families for the amusement of dinner-tables, 
 was brought home to Henrietta by her prospect of 
 being a. victim; and Livia reminding her of the exces- 
 sive laughter at Eose Mackrell's anecdotes overnight, 
 she bemoaned her having consented to go to those 
 Gardens in mourning. 
 
 "How could Janey possibly have heard of the 
 project to go?'/
 
 A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 311 
 
 "You went to please Russett, he to please you, and 
 that wild-cat to please herself," said Livia. " She 
 haunts his door, I suppose, and follows him, like a 
 running footman. Every step she takes widens the 
 breach. He keeps his temper, yes, keeps his temper 
 as he keeps his word, and one morning it breaks 
 loose, and all that's done has to be undone. It will 
 be — must. That extravaganza, as she is called, is 
 fatal, dogs him with burlesque : — of all men ! " 
 
 "Why not consent to meet her once, Chillon asks." 
 
 "You are asking Russett to yield an inch on de- 
 mand, and to a woman." 
 
 "My husband would yield to a woman what he 
 would refuse to all the men in Europe and America," 
 said Henrietta; and she enjoyed her thrill of allegiance 
 to her chivalrous lord and courtier. 
 
 "No very extraordinary specimen of a newly married 
 man, who has won the Beauty of England and America 
 for his wife — at some cost to som®- people," Livia 
 rejoined. 
 
 There came a moisture on the eyelashes of the 
 emotional young woman, from a touch of compassion 
 for the man who had wished to call her wife, and 
 was condemned by her rejection of him to call an6ther 
 woman wife, to be wifeless in wedding her. 
 
 "She thinks he loves her; it is pitiable, but she 
 thinks it — after the treatment she has had. She begs 
 to see him once."
 
 312 THE AMAZING MAEETAGE 
 
 "And subdue him with a fit of weeping," Livia 
 was moved to say by sight of the tear she hated. ^- It 
 would harden Russett — on other eyes, too ! Salt- 
 water drops are like the forced agony scenes in a 
 play : they bring down the curtain, they don't win 
 the critics. I heard her ' my husband' and saw his face." 
 
 "You didn't hear a whimper with it," Henrietta 
 said. "She's a mountain girl, not your city madam 
 on the boards. Chillon and I had her by each hand, 
 implored her to leave that impossible Whitechapel, 
 and she trembled, not a drop was shed by her. I can 
 almost fancy privation and squalor have no terrors 
 for Janey. She sings to the people down there, 
 nurses them. She might be occupying Esslemont — 
 our dream of an English home ! She is the destruc- 
 tion of the idea of romantic in connection with the 
 name of marriage. I talk like a simpleton. Janey 
 upsets us all. My lord was only a little queer before 
 Jie knew her. His Mr. Woodseer may be encouraging 
 her. You tell me the creature has a salary from him 
 equal to your jointure." 
 
 "Be civil to the man while it lasts," Livia said, 
 attentive to a degradation of tone in her cousin, for- 
 merly of supreme self-containment. 
 
 The beautiful young woman was reminded of her 
 holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that 
 it was, and the meanness of the satisfaction, darkened 
 her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer,
 
 A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 313 
 
 on her husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for 
 being reproved. So she plucked resolution to enjoy 
 her holiday and forget the contrasts of life — palaces 
 running profusion, lodgings hammered by duns ; the 
 pinch of poverty distracting every simple look inside 
 or out. There was no end to it, for her husband's 
 chivalrous honour forced him to undertake the pay- 
 ment of her father's heavy debts. He was right and 
 admirable, it could not be contested; but the prospect 
 for them was a grinding gloom, an unrelieved drag, 
 as of a coach at night on an interminable uphill flinty 
 road. 
 
 These were her sensations, and she found it divert- 
 ing to be admired; admired by many while she knew 
 herself to be absorbed in the possession of her by one. 
 It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. 
 She felt she was really, had rapidly become, the 
 young woman of the world, armed with a husband: 
 to take the flatteries of men for the needed diversion 
 they brought. None moved her ; none could come near 
 to touching the happy insensibility of a wife who 
 adored her husband, wrote to him daily, thought of 
 him by the minute. Her former worshippers were 
 numerous at Livia's receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord 
 Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to reflect on — they were 
 the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman 
 fallen upon poverty, ignoble poverty! She could not 
 discard her wealth. She wrote amusingly of them.
 
 314 THE AMAZING IMARETAGE 
 
 and fully, vivacious descriptions, to CMllon; hardly so 
 much writing to him as entering her heart's barred 
 citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everything 
 that befell about her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleet- 
 wood's kindness in providing entertainments, her ob- 
 ject was to mollify Chillon's anger to some degree. 
 She was doing her utmost to gratify him, " for the 
 purpose of paving a way to plead Janey's case." She 
 was almost persuading herself she was enjoying the 
 remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not, 
 Livia's worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, " who does as he wills 
 with my lord; directs his charities, his pleasures, his 
 opinions, all because he is believed to have wonderful 
 ideas and be wonderfully honest." 
 
 Henrietta wrote : " Situation unchanged. Janey still 
 at that place"; and before the letter was posted, she 
 and Livia had heard from Gower Woodseer of the 
 reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood 
 and her maid. Gower' s father had walked up from 
 Whitechapel, bearing news of it to the earl, he said. 
 
 "And the earl is much disturbed?" was Livia's inquiry. 
 
 "He has driven down with my father," Gower said 
 carelessly, ambiguously in the sound. 
 
 Troubled enough to desire the show of a corre- 
 sponding trouble, Henrietta read at their faces. 
 
 " May it not be — down there — a real danger ? " 
 
 The drama, he could inform her, was only too 
 naked down there for disappearances to be common.
 
 A KIDNAPPING AND NO GREAT HARM 315 
 
 " Will it be published that she is missing ? " 
 
 "She has her maid with her, a stout-hearted girl. 
 Both have courage. I don't think we need take meas- 
 ures just yet." 
 
 "jSTot before it is public property?" 
 
 Henrietta could have bitten her tongue for laying 
 her open to the censure implied in his muteness. 
 Janey perverted her. 
 
 AVomen were an illegible manuscript, and ladies a 
 closed book of the binding, to this raw philosopher, or 
 he would not so coldly have judged the young wife, anx- 
 ious on her husband's account, that they might escape 
 another scorching. He carried away his impression. 
 
 Livia listened to a remark on his want of manners. 
 
 "Eussett puts it to the credit of his honesty," she 
 said. " Honesty is everything with us at present. The 
 man has made his honesty an excellent speculation. 
 He puts a piece on zero and the bank hands him a 
 sackful. We may think we have won him to serve 
 us, up comes his honesty. That's how we have Lady 
 Arpington mixed in it — too long a tale. But be guided 
 by me ; condescend a little." 
 
 " My dear ! my whole mind is upon that unhappy girl. 
 It would break Chillon's heart." 
 
 Livia pished. "There are letters we read before we 
 crack the seal. She is out of that ditch, and it suits 
 Kussett that she should be. He's not often so patient. 
 A woman foot to foot against his will — I see him
 
 316 THE AMAZING MARRIAGE 
 
 throwing high stakes. Tyrants are brutal; and really 
 she provokes him enough. You needn't be alarmed 
 about the treatment she'll meet. He won't let her beat 
 him, be sure." 
 
 Neither Livia nor Gower wondered at the clearing 
 of the mystery, before it went to swell the scandal. 
 A young nobleman of ready power, quick temper, few 
 scruples, and a taxed forbearance, was not likely to 
 stand thwarted and goaded — and by a woman. Lord 
 Fleetwood acted his part, inscrutable as the blank of 
 a locked door. He could not conceal that he was 
 behind the door.