HOW LORD CHUDLEIGH WENT TO LONDON.
Without telling any one of his intention, Lord Chudleigh posted one
morning to town. I was acquainted with this news by Miss Peggy Baker,
who informed me of it in her kindest manner.
"Dear Miss Pleydell," she said, after morning service, as we were
coming out of church, "have you heard the dreadful news?"
"I have heard no news," I replied.
"We have lost the chief ornament of the company. Yes; you may well turn
pale"--I am sure I did nothing of the kind--"Lord Chudleigh has left
Epsom--some say for the season: some say on account of some distaste
he has conceived for the place: some say on account of previous
engagements."
"What kind of engagements?"
"I thought you would ask that. It is rumoured that he is shortly to be
married to a young lady of good birth and with a fortune equal to his
own. It is certain that he will not return."
"Really!" said Nancy, who had now come to my aid, "how shall you be
able to exist, dear Miss Peggy, without him?"
"I? Oh, indeed, I am not concerned with Lord Chudleigh."
"I mean, how can you exist when the principal subject for scandalous
talk, and the chief cause of anonymous letters, is removed?"
She blushed and bit her lips.
"I think, Miss Levett," she gasped, "that you allow your tongue greater
liberties than are consistent with good-breeding."
"Better the tongue than the pen, dear Miss Baker," replied Nancy.
"Come, Kitty, we will go weep the absence of this truant lord."
"The Temple still remains--he! he!" said Miss Baker.
This was a conversation at which I could laugh, spiteful though it was.
I knew not that my lord was gone away, nor why. But one thing I knew
very well. He was not gone to marry any one. If that can be called ease
which was mostly shame, I felt easy, because ordinary jealousy was not
possible with me. He _could not marry, if he wished_. Poor lad! his
fate was sealed with mine.
Yet, thinking over what might happen, I resolved that night upon a
thing which would perhaps incense my uncle, the Doctor, beyond all
measure. I resolved that should that thing happen which most I dreaded,
that my lord should fall in love with another woman, I would myself,
without his ever knowing who had done it, release him from his ties.
I knew where the Doctor kept his registers: I would subtract the leaf
which certified our union, and would send it to my lord; or should the
Doctor, as was possible, propose any legal action, I would refuse to
appear or to act. Now without me the Doctor was powerless.
Lord Chudleigh went to town, in fact, to see the Doctor. He drove to
his town house in St. James's Square, and in the morning he sallied
forth and walked to the Fleet Market.
The Reverend Doctor Shovel was doing a great and splendid business.
Already there were rumours of the intention of Government to bring in a
bill for the suppression of these lawless Fleet marriages. Therefore,
in order to stimulate the lagging, he had sent his messengers, touters,
and runners abroad in every part of the city, calling on all those who
wished to be married secretly, or to avoid wedding expenses, feasts,
and junketings, and to be securely married, to make haste, while there
was yet time. Therefore there was a throng every day from seven in
the morning, of prentices with their masters' daughters, old men with
their cooks, tradesmen who would avoid the feasting, sailors home for
a few weeks, as eager to marry a wife as if they were to be home for
the whole of their natural lives, officers who wanted to secure an
heiress, and many honest folk who saw in a Fleet wedding the easiest
way of avoiding the expenses of their friends' congratulations, with
the foolish charges of music, bells, dancing, and rejoicing which often
cripple a young married couple for years. Why, the parents connived
with the girls, and when these ran away early in the morning, and came
home falling upon their knees to confess the truth, the play had been
arranged and rehearsed beforehand, and the forgiveness took the form of
money for furniture instead of for feasting. But still the parents went
about holding up their hands and calling Heaven to witness that they
could not have believed their daughter so sly and deceitful a puss.
Hither came Lord Chudleigh, heavy of heart.
The Doctor at eleven in the morning was in the full swing of his
work. Two couples of the lower class were being married in the house.
Outside, the place was beset with wedding parties, couples coming
shyly and timidly, and couples coming openly and without shame. The
touters and runners of the rival Fleet parsons were fighting, swearing,
cajoling and inviting people to stop with them, holding out offers of
cheapness, safe marriage, expedition, secrecy, and rum punch. Strangers
to London, who had never heard of Doctor Shovel's greatness, were led
away to those pretenders whose canonical orders were so doubtful. I
believe the world at large entertains contempt for all Fleet parsons as
a body (happily no longer existent), but, for my own part, while I hold
the memory of the Doctor in mingled shame and respect, I despise the
rest because he himself held them in such low esteem.
Roger, the touter, recognised his lordship, as he made his way slowly
through the mob along the side of the market.
"Good morning, my lord," he said--his face was bloody and bruised, his
tie-wig was awry, his coat was torn, so fierce had been the struggle
of the morning--"good-morning, my lord. We have not seen your lordship
this long while. Would your lordship like speech with the Doctor? He is
busy now, and six couples wait him. Warm work it is now! But I think
he will see your lordship. We should be glad to drink your lordship's
health."
The fellow made his way through the crowd, and presently returned,
saying that the Doctor was very near the benediction, after which he
would give his lordship ten minutes, but no longer, and should lose a
guinea for every minute.
The Doctor, in fact, was dismissing a pair of couples with a few words
of advice. They were respectable young city people, getting the secret
marriage for the reasons which I have already described.
"You are now," he said, "married according to the rites of holy Mother
Church. You are tied to each other for life. I hope you will thank and
continually bless my name for tying the knot this morning. Remember
what the Church charges her children in the words of the service. Go:
be honest in your dealings, thrifty in your habits, cautious in your
trusts, careful of small gains; so shall you prosper. Let the husband
avoid the tavern in the morning, and the conventicle on the Sunday; let
the wife study plain, roast, and boiled, make her own dresses, pretend
not to be a fine madam, and have no words with gallants from the west
of Temple Bar.
"If, on the other hand," he went on, knitting his brows, "the husband
spends his money in clubs, among the freemasons, and in taverns; if he
do not stick to business, if he cheat in his transactions; or if the
wife go finely dressed, and talk with pretty fellows when she ought to
be cleaning the furniture; if they both go not to church regularly and
obey the instruction of their rector, vicar, or curate--then, I say,
the fate of that couple shall be a signal example. For the husband
shall be hanged at Tyburn Tree, and the wife be flogged at Bridewell.
Go."
They bowed, being overwhelmed with the terrors of this parting
advice, and departed. Outside, they were greeted with a roar of rough
congratulation, and were followed by the shouts of the market till they
reached Fleet Bridge, where they were quickly lost in the crowd.
Then the Doctor turned to Lord Chudleigh.
"Your lordship has come, I suppose," he asked, "to inquire after the
health of her ladyship?"
"I come, Doctor Shovel," replied my lord gravely, "to know from
your own lips, before I commit the affair to counsel, how far I am
compromised by the disgraceful trick you played upon me about a year
ago."
"Your lordship is married," said the Doctor simply. "So far are you
compromised, and no further. Nay, we seek no further complication in
this business."
He sat down in his wooden arm-chair, and, with his elbow on the table,
knitted his bushy eyebrows, frowned and shook his great forefinger in
his visitor's face.
"Your lordship is married," he repeated. "Of that have no doubt; no
doubt whatever is possible. Tell your lawyer all; refer him to me."
"The story," said Lord Chudleigh, "is this. I come here, out of
curiosity, to see you--a man of whom I had heard much, though little
to your credit. I am received by you with courtesy and hospitality.
There is much drinking, and I (for which I have no defence to offer)
drink too much. I awake in the morning still half unconscious. I am
taken downstairs by you, and married, while in that condition, to some
woman I had never before seen. After this I am again put to bed. When I
awake, I am informed by you what has taken place."
"That is a story neatly told," said the Doctor. "If I had to tell it,
however, the details would assume another complexion. What brought
your lordship to spend the night in such a place as the Liberties of
the Fleet? A common parson of the Fleet? Nay, that is improbable; my
modesty forbids me to believe so incredible a circumstance. But we may
suppose an appointment for the morning; an appointment made and kept; a
secret marriage----"
"Would you dare to tell such a story as that?" Lord Chudleigh
interrupted the Doctor with vehemence. "Would you dare, sir, to hint
that I, Lord Chudleigh, had designed a Fleet marriage?"
"My lord, where a member of your family, where your father's son is
concerned, I dare a great deal, I assure you."
"And the woman--who is she? Produce me this wretch, this creature who
became an accomplice in the plot."
"All in good time. Be assured, my lord, that we shall produce her in
good time--at the right time. Also, be resigned to the inevitable.
Nothing can unmarry you now."
"I think," said his lordship, "that thou art the greatest villain in
England."
"Ta, ta, ta!" The Doctor lay back in his chair with his arms extended
and a genial laugh. "Your lordship is not complimentary. Still, I
make allowances. I cannot fight you, because I am a clergyman; you
can therefore say what you please. And I own that it certainly is a
vexatious thing for a gentleman of your rank and position to have a
wife and yet to have no wife: not to know her name and parentage.
Why, she may be in the soap-suds over the family linen in the Fleet
Liberties, or selling hot furmety on Fleet Bridge, or keeping a
farthing sausage-stall in the Fleet Market, or making the rooms for
the gentlemen in the Fleet Prison, or frying beefsteaks in Butcher
Row; or she may be picking pockets in St. Paul's Churchyard, or she
may be beating hemp in Bridewell, or she may be under the Alderman's
rod in Newgate. Nay, my lord, do not swear in this place, which is,
as one may say, a chapel-of-ease. Then her parents: your lordship's
father and mother-in-law. Roger, my touter--say--may be her parent;
or she may come of a dishonest stock in Turnmill Lane; or she may be
ignorant of father and mother, and may belong to the numerous family
of those who sleep in the baskets of Covent Garden and the ashes of
the glass-houses. I repeat, my lord, that to swear in such a place,
and before such a man, a reverend divine, is impious. Avoid the habit
of swearing altogether; but, if you must swear, let it be outside this
house."
"You will not, then, even tell me where she is, this wife of mine?"
"I will not, my lord."
"You will not even let me know the depth of my degradation?"
"My lord, I will tell you nothing. As for her ladyship, I will say not
a word. But as I have shown you the possibilities on one side, so I
would show them to you on the other. She may be the wretched creature
you fear. She may also be a gentlewoman by birth, young, beautiful,
accomplished; fit, my lord, to bear your name and to be your wife."
"No," he cried; "that is impossible. What gentlewoman would consent to
such a marriage?"
The Doctor laughed.
"There are many things in this world," he said, "that even Lord
Chudleigh cannot understand. Now, my lord, if you have nothing more to
say, you may leave me. There are already half a dozen expectant brides
upon the threshold. One would not, sure, keep the poor things waiting.
I am generally at home, my lord, in the evening, and should you feel
inclined for another social night with punch, and a song over the bowl,
your lordship will be welcome, in spite of hard words."
Lord Chudleigh answered not a word, but walked away.
Small comfort had he got from the Doctor.
Now was he in a sad plight indeed; for his heart was altogether filled
with the image of Kitty Pleydell. Yet how hope to win her? And how
stand by and let her be won by another man?
To be married in such a way, not to know who or what your wife might
be, is, surely, a thing quite beyond any history ever told.