Customers were at the counter of the shop, and these rational figures,
together with the piles of cabbages, the sacks of potatoes, the pale
small oranges here and there, the dominant smell of red herrings, denied
the lurking of an angelical presence behind them.
Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter. Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers
into a corner knocked off the shop and called a room. Below the top
bars of a wizened grate was a chilly fire. London’s light came piecemeal
through a smut-streaked window. If the wonderful was to occur, this was
the place to heighten it.
‘My son may be an intruder,’ Mr. Woodseer said. ‘He is acquainted with a
Lord Fleetwood...’
‘Madge will know, sir,’ replied Sarah, and she sent up a shrill cry for
Madge from the foot of the stairs.
The girl ran down swiftly. She entered listening to Sarah, looking at
Gower; to whom, after a bob and pained smile where reverence was
owing, she said, ‘Can you tell me, sir, please, where we can find Lord
Fleetwood now?’
Gower was unable to tell. Madge turned to Mr. Woodseer, saying soon
after: ‘Oh, she won’t mind; she’ll be glad, if he knows Lord Fleetwood.
I’ll fetch her.’
The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common
sense lectured the wildest of hearts for expecting such a possibility as
the presence of his lofty lady here.
And, of course, common sense proved to be right: the lady was quite
another. But she struck on a sleeping day of his travels. Her face was
not one to be forgotten, and to judge by her tremble of a smile, she
remembered him instantly.
They were soon conversing, each helping to paint the scene of the place
where they had met.
‘Lord Fleetwood has married me,’ she said.
Gower bent his head; all stood silent.
‘May I?’ said Madge to her. ‘It is Lord Fleetwood’s wedded wife, sir.
He drove her from her uncle’s, on her wedding day, the day of a
prize-fight, where I was; he told me to wait on his lady at an inn
there, as I ‘ve done and will. He drove away that evening, and he
hasn’t’--the girl’s black eyebrows worked: ‘I’ve not seen him since.
He’s a great nobleman, yes. He left his lady at the inn, expenses paid.
He left her with no money. She stayed on till her heart was breaking.
She has come to London to find him. She had to walk part of the way. She
has only a change of linen we brought in a parcel. She’s a stranger to
England: she knows nobody in London. She had no place to come to but
this poor hole of ours she ‘s so good as let welcome her. We can’t do
better, and it ‘s no use to be ashamed. She ‘s not a lady to scorn poor
people.’
The girl’s voice hummed through Gower.
He said: ‘Lord Fleetwood may not be in London,’ and chafed at himself
for such a quaver.
‘It’s his house we want, sir, he has not been at his house in Kent. We
want his London house.’
‘My dear lady,’ said Mr. Woodseer; ‘it might be as well to communicate
the state of things to your family without delay. My son will call at
any address you name; or if it is a country address, I can write the
items, with my assurances of your safety under my charge, in my house,
which I beg you to make your home. My housekeeper is known to Sarah and
Madge for an excellent Christian woman.’
Carinthia replied: ‘You are kind to me, sir. I am grateful. I have an
uncle; I would not disturb my uncle; he is inventing guns and he wishes
peace. It is my husband I have come to find. He did not leave me in
anger.’
She coloured. With a dimple of tenderness at one cheek, looking from
Sarah to Madge, she said: ‘I would not leave my friends; they are
sisters to me.’ Sarah, at these words, caught up her apron. Madge did no
more than breathe deep and fast.
An unoccupied cold parlour in Mr. Woodseer’s house that would be heated
for a guest, urged him to repeat his invitation, but he took the check
from Gower, who suggested the doubt of Mary Jones being so good an
attendant upon Lady Fleetwood as Madge. ‘And Madge has to help in the
shop at times.’
Madge nodded, looked into the eyes of her mistress, which sanctioned her
saying: ‘She will like it best here, she is my lady and I understand
her best. My lady gives no trouble: she is hardy, she’s not like other
ladies. I and Sarah sleep together in the room next. I can hear anything
she wants. She takes us as if she was used to it.’
Sarah had to go to serve a customer. Madge made pretence of pricking her
ears and followed into the shop.
‘Your first visit to London is in ugly weather, Lady Fleetwood,’ said
Gower.
‘It is my first,’ she answered.
How the marriage came about, how the separation, could not be asked and
was not related.
‘Our district is not all London, my dear lady,’ said Mr. Woodseer. ‘Good
hearts are here, as elsewhere, and as many, if one looks behind the
dirt. I have found it since I laboured amongst them, now twenty years.
Unwashed human nature, though it is natural to us to wash, is the most
human, we find.’
Gower questioned the naturalness of human nature’s desire to wash; and
they wrangled good-humouredly, Carinthia’s eyes dwelling on them each in
turn; until Mr. Woodseer, pursuing the theme started by him to interest
her, spoke of consolations derived from his labours here, in exchange
for the loss of his mountains. Her face lightened.
‘You love the mountains?’
‘I am a son of the mountains.’
‘Ah, I love them! Father called me a daughter of the mountains. I was
born in the mountains. I was leaving my mountains on the day, I think it
yesterday, when I met this gentleman who is your son.’
‘A glorious day it was!’ Gower exclaimed.
‘It was a day of great glory for me,’ said Carinthia. ‘Your foot did not
pain you for long?’
‘The length of two pipes. You were with your brother.’
‘With my brother. My brother has married a most beautiful lady. He is
now travelling his happy time--my Chillon!’
There came a radiance on her under-eyelids. There was no weeping.
Struck by the contrast between the two simultaneous honeymoons, and a
vision of the high-spirited mountain girl, seen in this place a young
bride seeking her husband, Gower Woodseer could have performed that
unphilosophical part. He had to shake himself. She seemed really a
soaring bird brought down by the fowler.
Lord Fleetwood’s manner of abandoning her was the mystery.
Gower stood waiting for her initiative, when the minister interposed:
‘There are books, books of our titled people-the Peers, books of the
Peerage. They would supply the address. My son will discover where to
examine them. He will find the address. Most of the great noblemen have
a London house.’
‘My husband has a house in London,’ Carinthia said.
‘I know him, to some degree,’ said Gower.
She remarked: ‘I have heard that you do.’
Her lips were shut, as to any hint at his treatment of her.
Gower went into the shop to speak with Madge. The girl was talking in
the business tone to customers; she finished her commission hurriedly
and joined him on the pavement by the doorstep. Her voice was like the
change for the swing of a door from street to temple.
‘You’ve seen how brave she is, sir. She has things to bear. Never cries,
never frets. Her marriage day--leastways... I can’t, no girl can tell. A
great nobleman, yes. She waited, believing in him; she does. She hasn’t
spoken to me of what she’s had to bear. I don’t know; I guess; I’m sure
I’m right--and him a man! Girls learn to know men, call them gentlemen
or sweeps. She thinks she has only to meet him to persuade him she ‘s
fit to be loved by him. She thinks of love. Would he--our tongues are
tied except among ourselves to a sister. Leaves her by herself, with
only me, after--it knocks me dumb! Many a man commits a murder wouldn’t
do that. She could force him to--no, it isn’t a house she wants, she
wants him. He’s her husband, Mr. Woodseer. You will do what you can to
help; I judge by your father. I and Sarah ‘ll slave for her to be as
comfortable--as we--can make her; we can’t give her what she ‘s used to.
I shall count the hours.’
‘You sold me apples when your head was just above the counter,’ said
Gower.
‘Did I?--you won’t lose time, sir?’ she rejoined. ‘Her box is down at
the beastly inn in Kent. Kind people, I dare say; their bill was paid
any extent, they said. And he might do as he liked in it--enter it like
a thief, if it pleased him, and off like one, and they no wiser.
She walked to his big house Esslemont for news of him. And I’m not a
snivelling wench either; but she speaks of him a way to make a girl
drink her tears, if they ain’t to be let fall.’
‘But you had a victory down there,’ Gower hinted congratulations.
‘Ah,’ said she.
‘Christopher Ines is all right now?’
‘I’ve as good as lost my good name for Kit Ines, Mr. Woodseer.’
‘Not with my dad, Madge.’
‘The minister reads us at the heart. Shall we hear the street of his
house in London before night?’
‘I may be late.’
‘I’ll be up, any hour, for a rap at the shutters. I want to take her to
the house early next morning. She won’t mind the distance. She lies
in bed, her eyes shut or open, never sleeping, hears any mouse. It
shouldn’t go on, if we can do a thing to help.’
‘I’m off,’ said Gower, unwontedly vexed at his empty pocket, that could
not offer the means for conveyance to a couple of young women.
The dark-browed girl sent her straight eyes at him. They pushed him to
hasten. On second thoughts, he stopped and hailed her; he was moved to
confirm an impression of this girl’s features.
His mind was directed to the business burning behind them, honestly
enough, as soon as he had them in sight again.
‘I ought to have the address of some of her people, in case,’ he said.
‘She won’t go to her uncle, I ‘m sure of that,’ said Madge. ‘He ‘s a
lord and can’t be worried. It ‘s her husband to find first.’
‘If he’s to be found!--he’s a lord, too. Has she no other relatives or
friends?’
‘She loves her brother. He’s an officer. He’s away on honeymoon. There
‘s an admiral down Hampshire way, a place I’ve been near and seen. I’d
not have you go to any of them, sir, without trying all we can do to
find Lord Fleetwood. It’s Admiral Fakenham she speaks of; she’s fond of
him. She’s not minded to bother any of her friends about herself.’
‘I shall see you to-night,’ said Gower, and set his face Westward,
remembering that his father had named Caermarthen as her mother’s
birthplace.
Just in that tone of hers do Welshwomen talk of their country; of its
history, when at home, of its mountains, when exiled: and in a language
like hers, bare of superlatives to signify an ardour conveyed by the
fire of the breath. Her quick devotion to a lady exciting enthusiasm
through admiring pity for the grace of a much-tried quiet sweetness,
was explained; apart from other reasons, feminine or hidden, which might
exist. Only a Welsh girl would be so quick and all in it, with a voice
intimating a heated cauldron under her mouth. None but a Welsh-blooded
girl, risking her good name to follow and nurse the man she considered
a hero, would carry her head to look virgin eyes as she did. One could
swear to them, Gower thought. Contact with her spirited him out of his
mooniness.
He had the Cymric and Celtic respect of character; which puts aside the
person’s environments to face the soul. He was also an impressionable
fellow among his fellows, a philosopher only at his leisure, in his
courted solitudes. Getting away some strides from this girl of the
drilling voice,--the shudder-voice, he phrased it,--the lady for whom
she pleaded came clearer into his view and gradually absorbed him;
though it was an emulation with the girl Madge, of which he was a trifle
conscious, that drove him to do his work of service in the directest
manner. He then fancied the girl had caught something of the tone of her
lady: the savage intensity or sincerity; and he brooded on Carinthia’s
position, the mixture of the astounding and the woful in her
misadventure. One could almost laugh at our human fate, to think of a
drop off the radiant mountain heights upon a Whitechapel greengrocer’s
shop, gathering the title of countess midway.
But nothing of the ludicrous touched her; no, and if we bring reason to
scan our laugh at pure humanity, it is we who are in the place of
the ridiculous, for doing what reason disavows. Had he not named her,
Carinthia, Saint and Martyr, from a first perusal of her face? And
Lord Fleetwood had read and repeated it. Lord Fleetwood had become the
instrument to martyrize her? That might be; there was a hoard of bad
stuff in his composition besides the precious: and this was a nobleman
owning enormous wealth, who could vitiate himself by disposing of a
multitude of men and women to serve his will, a shifty will. Wealth
creates the magician, and may breed the fiend within him. In the hands
of a young man, wealth is an invitation to devilry. Gower’s idea of the
story of Carinthia inclined to charge Lord Fleetwood with every possible
false dealing. He then quashed the charge, and decided to wait for
information.
At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London’s West, into which
he stepped like an easy member, the hall-porter did not examine his
clothing from German hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood’s town
address. He could tell Madge at night by the door of the shuttered shop,
that Lord Fleetwood had gone down to Wales.
‘It means her having to wait,’ she said. ‘The minister has been to the
coach-office, to order up her box from that inn. He did it in his name;
they can’t refuse; no money’s owing. She must have a change. Sally has
fifteen pounds locked up in case of need.’
Sally’s capacity and economy fetched the penniless philosopher a slap.
‘You’ve taken to this lady,’ he said.
‘She held my hand, while Kit Ines was at his work; and I was new to
her, and a prize-fighter’s lass, they call me:--upon the top of that
nobleman’s coach, where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight;
and she his wedded lady that morning. A queer groom. He may keep Kit
Ines from drink, he’s one of you men, and rides over anything in his
way. I can’t speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from what
I know. Those Rundles at that inn don’t hear anything it suits him to
do. All the people down in those parts are slaves to him. And I thought
he was a real St. George before,--yes, ready I was to kiss the ground
his feet crossed. If you could, it’s Chinningfold near where Admiral
Fakenham lives, down Hampshire way. Her friends ought to hear what’s
happened to her. They’ll find her in a queer place. She might go to the
minister’s. I believe she’s happier with us girls.’
Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold early as the light next
day. He liked the girl the better, in an amicable fashion, now that
his nerves had got free of the transient spell of her kettle tone--the
hardly varied one note of a heart boiling with sisterly devotion to
a misused stranger of her sex;--and, after the way of his race,
imagination sprang up in him, at the heels of the quieted senses,
releasing him from the personal and physical to grasp the general
situation and place the protagonist foremost.
He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. Some wrong had been
done, or some violation of the right, to guess from the girl Madge’s
molten words in avoidance of the very words. It implied--though it
might be but one of Love’s shrewder discords--such suspected traitorous
dealing of a man with their sister woman as makes the world of women all
woman toward her. They can be that, and their being so illuminates their
hidden sentiments in relation to the mastering male, whom they uphold.
But our uninformed philosopher was merely picking up scraps of sheddings
outside the dark wood of the mystery they were to him, and playing
imagination upon them. This primary element of his nature soon enthroned
his chosen lady above their tangled obscurities. Beneath her tranquil
beams, with the rapture of the knowledge that her name on earth was
Livia, he threaded East London’s thoroughfares,--on a morning when day
and night were made one by fog, to journey down to Chinningfold, by
coach, in the service of the younger Countess of Fleetwood, whose right
to the title he did not doubt, though it directed surprise movements at
his understanding from time to time.