HOW SIR MILES RENEWED HIS OFFER.
Thus did I get rid of one suitor, knowing that there were still two
more in the field, and anxious about my lord's absence, which, I
doubted not, was concerned in some way with me. Heavens! if he should
find out the secret! If the Doctor should communicate to him the thing
which I desired to tell at my own time and place.
The Evil One, at this juncture, suggested a temptation of his own.
Suppose a message, which my lord could trust, were to reach him,
stating that there would be no attempt to follow up the so-called
marriage in the Rules, that he could go his own way, unmolested; that
the very certificate and the leaf of the register containing the proof
of the marriage would be restored to him--how would that be?
Yet, what sort of happiness could a wife expect who every day had to
fear the chance of detection and exposure? Some time or other he would
learn that I was the niece of the man who had dealt him this blow; some
day he would learn the whole story. Why, there was not only the Doctor,
but his man Roger, the villain with the pale face, the scarred cheeks,
and the red nose. If the Doctor were dead, what would prevent such a
man from telling the story abroad and proclaiming it to all comers?
For poor Kitty there was only one course open; she must work her way
to happiness through shame and confession. Yet with all the shame and
confession there was no certainty that the happiness would follow.
A man vehemently loves and desires a woman, but a woman vehemently
desires the love and desire of a man. I desired, with all my strength
and with all my might, the affections of my lord. His image, his idea,
were with me always. For me there was no other man in the world.
But first I had to deal with my present suitors.
Solomon dismissed, and made happy with praises and guineas (a poet is a
creature whose vanity seems always to outweigh all other qualities), I
had next to reckon with Sir Miles, who was more reasonable and yet more
persistent.
I knew that he had come to Epsom on purpose to seek me out. That was
borne in upon me with a force not to be resisted. He always did me
the honour of showing me a preference when we lived under the same
roof, and when he would lie in wait for me at the foot of the sanded
stairs. And, of course, I liked him. He was good-natured, he had the
_air noble_; he would not, certainly, beat his wife or treat her
unkindly, although he would probably spend all the money in drink and
play. And whether he was rich or poor, in the Rules or in the Prison,
or wandering free, he would still be the same easy, careless creature,
happy in the sunshine, happier by candlelight over a bowl of punch.
On the Terrace, where we met him in the afternoon, he was the same,
save that his clothes were newer, as when, just as he lounged now
beneath the trees, he had then lounged among the bulkheads and stalls
of the market, till evening came with the joys of the day. Always with
the carriage of a gentleman. Most of the beaux of Epsom were such
gentlemen as claim the title of Esquire by right of their profession as
attorneys, barristers, officers, nabobs, rich merchants, and the like.
As for their manners, they were easy so long as they were natural, and
then they were somewhat barbarous; when they endeavoured to assume the
manners of such as Lord Chudleigh, they were awkward. As for the young
fellows from the country estates, they were always clowns; they came
clowns to the Wells; they put on fine clothes; laughed and grimaced;
lost their money at horse-racing and lansquenet, and went home clowns.
But Sir Miles was always, even when drunk, a gentleman.
I suppose he had the impudence, at first, to suppose that I was going
to seek him out and distinguish him before all the company with my
particular regard. When he discovered that it was difficult to get
speech with the Queen of the Wells unless you joined her court, he came
along with the rest, and was speedily as ready with his compliment,
his innuendo, his jest, and his anecdote. He was more ready than most,
because he had seen the great world in his youth, and had caught their
manner. The general run of gallants were, it seemed to me, afraid of
him. To be sure, he was a big, strong man, could have crunched two
or three of the slender beaux between his arms; yet he was the most
kind-hearted fellow in the world.
Three days after his arrival, Lord Chudleigh having then been away for
a week, and I beginning to wonder what business kept him so long from
the apron strings of Kitty, he invited me to go with him to the Downs
to see a match. I would go with him, though well I knew what he meant;
and, of course, when we got to the Downs, the match was over and the
people going home.
"Egad, Miss Kitty," he said, "there is always such a plaguy crowd
after your ladyship's heels, that a man gets never a chance of a word
with you, save edgeways with the pretty little beaux. Well, I have
told Solomon to go to the house and take care of Mrs. Esther. There
they are, cheek by jowl, and her handkerchief up to her eyes over his
sentimental poetry. You and I can have a talk to ourselves. It is only
a quarter of a mile from here to your lodging, but, if you like to come
with me by way of the old well and Banstead, we can make it half a
mile."
"Thank you, Sir Miles," I said; "I am not anxious to double that
quarter of a mile. Consider, if you please, that I have to get home,
dine, and dress for the day."
"Very good. Have it your own way. That, to be sure, you always will
have. I think, for my part, that you never looked so nice as when
you wore your hair in curls, and a holland frock. Miss Kitty, do you
remember a certain day when a baronet, out at elbows, offered you his
hand--with nothing in it?"
"I remember it perfectly." I laughed at the recollection. "And oh, Sir
Miles, to think of how you looked when you made that condescending
proposal. It was after a most disgraceful evening--you best know where.
You had been brought home singing. Your neck-ribbon was untied, your
wig awry, your hand shaky, your cheeks red, and in your left hand a
brown mug full of old October. What a suitor!"
"Yes," he replied, laughing, without the least appearance of being
offended by my picture. "When in the Rules, I behaved according to the
custom of the place. I am no longer in the Rules, but at the Wells. I
remember that tankard. Considering that the day is sultry, I wish I had
one in my hand this very moment."
"I am sure, Sir Miles, that your conduct under these happier
circumstances will reflect greater credit upon you."
"Happier circumstances?" he said. "Well, I suppose so. In the Fleet I
could borrow of my cousins a guinea a week or thereabout; yet borrowing
is uncertain and undignified: the manner of living was cheap, but
it was rude. Drink there was--more than one had a right to expect;
drink was plentiful, but only the Doctor got good punch; no morals
were expected of a Fleet Rules Christian. I know not that things are
happier now than then. However, you might think so. Girls never have
any philosophy. I have come into a small estate of six hundred pounds a
year. It is not so much, by five times six hundred, as what I started
with; still, with six hundred a year, one can live. Do you not think
so?"
"It seems to me a very handsome provision," I replied, thinking that
Mrs. Esther had about the same.
"Yes, it will do."
He fanned his face with his hat, and begged me to sit down on the grass
and listen to him for a moment. Men, even the most careless, like Sir
Miles, have a way of becoming suddenly solemn when they ask a woman
to become their wife. I know not whether their gravity springs from
a sense of their own great worth, or from a feeling of unworthiness;
whether it is a compliment to the woman they woo, or to themselves. Or
it may be a confession of the holiness of the state of matrimony, which
one would fain hope to be the case.
Sir Miles then, blushing and confused, offered me, for the second time,
his hand.
"You see," he said, "the right hand doth no longer shake, nor doth the
left hand hold a pot of October. I no longer am carried home at night."
He sighed, as if the reminiscence of past times was pleasing but
saddening. "I am not any more the man that once I was. Will you, sweet
Kitty--will you be Lady Lackington?"
"I cannot," I said.
"There is an income of six hundred pounds a year," he went on.
"I believe there is a small house somewhere; we could live in it
rent-free. You were always fond of hens and pigs, and milk, flowers,
apples, and all these things. I will keep two hundred pounds for
myself, and give you four. With two hundred I shall have to manage,
once a week or so, a little hazard, or a trifling lansquenet."
"What?" I asked. "Marry a gamester?"
"What matter as to that, when he will settle his money on his wife?
Think of it, Kitty. I am a baronet, though a poor one, and of as good a
family as any in Norfolk. Why the Lackingtons, as everybody knows, were
on their lands before the Conqueror."
"And if it is not enough to be a gamester, you are also--O Sir Miles!
the shame of it----"
"We gentlemen of Norfolk," he replied, without any appearance of
shame, "are honest topers all. I deny it not. Yet what matters such a
trifle in the habits of a man? Did any gentlemen in the county drink
harder than my father? Yet he was hale and tough at sixty, and would
have lived to eighty but for a fall he got riding home one night after
dinner, having a cask, or thereabouts, of port inside him, by reason of
which he mistook an open quarry for the lane which should have led him
home, and therefore broke his neck."
"So that, if his wife loved him, as no doubt she did, it was the drink
that robbed her of a husband. Your tale hath a useful moral, Sir Miles."
"Come, pretty Puritan, look at me. I am twenty-nine--in my thirtieth
year; strong and hearty, if I do get drunk of an evening. What then? Do
you want to talk to your husband all night? Better know that he is safe
asleep, and likely to remain asleep till the drink is gone out of his
head."
"Oh, the delights of wedlock! To have your husband brought home every
night by four stout fellows!"
"Evening drink hurts no man. Have I a bottle nose? Do my hands shake?
Are my cheeks fat and pale? Look at me, Kitty." He held out his arms
and laughed.
"Yes, Sir Miles," I replied; "I think you are a very lusty fellow, and,
in a wrestling-bout, I should think few could stand against you. But as
a husband, for the reasons I have stated, I say--No!"
"Take the four hundred, Kitty, and make me happy. I love thee, my girl,
with all my heart."
"Sir Miles, I cannot do it honestly. Perhaps I wish I could."
"You won't?" He looked me full in the face. "I see you won't. You have
such a telltale, straightforward face, Kitty, that it proclaims the
truth always. I believe you are truth itself. They pulled you out of
a well, down in your country place, in a bucket, and then went about
saying you had been born."
"Thank you, Sir Miles."
"Am I, therefore, to go hang myself in my garters, or yours, if you
will give them to me?"
"If you do, I shall be the first to run and cut you down."
"Sweet it were," he murmured, "to be even cut down by your fair hand.
If one was sure that you would come in time----"
"You will be reasonable, dear sir, and you will neither say nor do
anything silly."
"I do not suppose I shall pine away in despair; nor shall I hang my
head; nor shall I go about saying that there are as good fish in the
sea as ever came out of it, because, when we fished you, we fished
the best. And I swear. Kitty"--here he did swear after men's profane
way, but he needed not to have sworn so loudly or so long--"that truly,
sweet Kitty, thou art the fairest, the loveliest, and the best fish
that ever came out of any sea--a bewitching mermaid! I wish thee a good
husband.
"On Stella's lap he laid his head,
And, looking in her eyes,
He cried, 'Remember, when I'm dead,
That I deserved the prize.'"
"Thank you, Sir Miles. A shorter and a less profane oath would surely
have better graced the subject."
"It cannot be graced too much," he said, as if to swear lustily was to
confer honour upon the woman he thought to love. "For your sake, Kitty,
I would ever forswear punch, tobacco, and strong waters; drink nothing
but October; and never get drunk save on Saturday nights: for your sake
would I go live in the country among the cocks and the hens, the ducks
and the pigs; for you would I go religiously to church every Sunday
at forenoon, and expect the parson for the beef and pudding after the
sermon; for your sake would I gamble no more, save once in a way when
quarter-day brought in the rents."
"That would be a mighty reformation indeed, Sir Miles."
"Now, however, since you will not have me, I shall play with four
hundred a year out of the six. But I will be careful, all the same: I
shall punt low, and never lose more than a guinea a night."
Thus I was rid of my second suitor. Sir Miles ceased to attend the
count of followers who attended on the Terrace, but sat all day in the
card-room, playing. From time to time he met and saluted me.
"Be not afraid," he would say, "on my behalf. The card-tables are
more pleasant than the air under the trees, and I think the players
are better company than your priggish popinjays. As for my habits,
fair Kitty, pattern of virtue, they have become virtuous. I am never
drunk--well, not often--and you have brought me luck. I have won five
hundred guineas from a nabob. Think of the joy, when he pays me, of
losing it all again!"