It may appear to some people that Hamilton was taking a prodigious
amount of trouble to reach by a roundabout way a conclusion at least
as presumptively attainable by direct means as by sinuous; and, in
this connection, Montrose’s quatrain may possibly occur to them--
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desert is small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.
Without, however, stopping to defend or disallow the moral
applicability of these lines to our case in point, it may be offered
to such objectors that, generally speaking, the rewards most hardly
won are the rewards most highly prized by men, that five-sixths of the
satisfaction of success lie in the difficulties surmounted to achieve
it (the thing may be be-adaged to infinity), and that if there was a
scamp in this world alive to that truism, it was your Restoration
scamp, with his plethora of experience in the ways of facile conquest.
Who, indeed, could for ever take joy or credit of shooting the sitting
pheasant, of hunting the fox or the hare if his quarry, the moment it
were pursued, squatted down to be trodden on? Rather, would it be his
object to scare away, with a view to stalking and circumventing, the
affrighted game, than, by coming to straight conclusions with it, to
miss all the excitement of the chase.
Now, I do not say that, in this particular scoundrelism he was bent
on, Hamilton went deliberately about it to complicate an issue he
ardently desired; only, intrigue in such matters being the recognized
process, it never occurred to him, perhaps, that satisfactory
conclusions could be reached without. It was a superstition of his
time that beef to be tender must be first baited; and certainly the
sport added a zest of its own to the subsequent feast. Moreover, the
relish in the sport itself owed much of its savour, as always with
sport, to the fact that the winner’s gains involved the loser’s
losses. To the account of his triumph, if triumph it should be, must
be put, not only the corruption of the wife but the fooling of the
husband. The humour of that result were enough to vindicate in itself
the most tortuous of courses; and the fact that the husband happened
to be his connection and confidential friend only added in his eyes a
touch of exquisite drollery to the situation. In the process of
engineering that situation he tasted all the thrilling delectation of
the spy, who, conscious of his sole possession of momentous secrets,
plays the apparent tool to this side and the other, himself the master
of both and the real arbiter of their destinies.
He was walking one afternoon near the Ring in Hyde Park, watching the
solemn circumambulation of the coaches about that damned and dusty
arena, when a voice hailed him, and he saw Chesterfield’s glum visage
protruded from the window of a chariot which had drawn up hard by.
“Prithee come in, coz,” said the Earl, “and help a poor foundered
wretch to forget himself in livelier company than that of his own
thoughts.”
Hamilton, with a laugh, acceded, and the two rolled on together.
“Is your mood so lugubrious?” asked the rogue. “Why, what a
weathercock it is, now pointing hot, now chill, without a devil of a
reason that I can see in this temperate climate! But the last time I
met you you were all for sultry, and now, to mark your face! I’ve seen
a gargoyle, with an icicle hung to its nose, look less dismally
frosty.”
“Pish!” exclaimed the other testily. “If ’tis to the Corisande you
allude, my fire that night was but a flash-in-the-pan.”
“A touch of the real sulphur in it, nevertheless, I believe.”
“A touch-and-go it was, then. The skit can dance and sing to make a
man’s pulses leap--I admit it; but herself soon serves to kill that
transitory glamour. She’s her own corrective.”
“Well, I say the more the pity.”
“Why do you say it? I don’t understand.”
He glanced at his companion, a sudden wrath of suspicion in his eyes.
“What don’t you understand?” asked Hamilton, bridling, though with an
appearance of extreme urbanity, to the other’s tone.
“That you should deplore my not burning my fingers in the fire I play
with. Did you design that I should when you recommended that hussy to
me?”
“H’m! In a measure--yes,” drawled Hamilton.
“For what reason? Curse it, I say, for what reason?”
“For what reason?”
“Do you repeat me to gain time, groping for an excuse? Do you, I say?”
“You are full of questions. Will you have me answer them in one, or
one by one? Zounds, man, behave less like a pea dancing on a drum.”
“Now, by God, George----!” He set his teeth, hissed in his breath,
shook his fists at nothing at all, and fell suddenly calm. “I’ll be
reasonable,” he said, apostrophizing space--“quite temperate and
reasonable. Is it reasonable to suppose that one, a family connection
and my friend, in my close confidence, could make such an admission
without some motive designed to serve me--unless, indeed, it pointed
to a treachery on his part so black as to constitute a devilry
unthinkable?”
Hamilton’s brow corrugated. By a curious psychological perversity he
felt as much incensed over the insinuation as if there had actually
been no warrant for it. Such is often the case with your wrongdoer; he
will justify himself to himself, while remaining perfectly firm on the
question of abstract morality.
“You are a master of reason, Phil, we know,” said he, with a sneer;
“the which, if I doubted, would not your proviso convince me? So, I
have openly confessed my hand--to beguile you to an infatuation that
should leave the coast clear for me--_me_--to play the villain?”
“I never said so.”
“O! did you not?”
“I said specifically the thing was unthinkable.”
“Showing you had thought of it.”
“George, don’t torture me. You said, you know, it was a pity I was not
more really touched.”
“I say it again.”
“Why, in God’s name?”
“So your attitude would be more convincing. As it is, the hollow
pretence of it would not deceive a child.”
“Is that all you meant? Forgive my words to you--I am so torn and
harassed--and you are my only friend, I think. I’ll try to be more
natural with the wretch; more--more convincing, damn her! Yet I drove
it home with Kate the other night; you saw how she left the room?”
“There you are! because for the moment you were really what you had
pretended to be--under the spell. Could you ask a better proof?”
“No, that’s true. But it’s hard to feign the fire you do not feel.”
Hamilton laughed indulgently.
“You take things too seriously. Convince yourself you do not care
whatever happens, and Fortune will be kind to you. It is the jade’s
way, being a woman. Indifference to her is the only thing she cannot
resist. And it isn’t as if the fruit you were asked to handle were
rotten medlers. Here’s a sweet country nectarine for which a very
epicure might envy you.”
“A country crab, I think, as biting as she’s little. Well?”
“Well, is this to forget yourself in livelier company? Marry, Phil, if
you can laugh at nothing else, laugh at yourself--always the best fool
in a man’s household. But, come, I’ll give you distraction. Here’s a
story just on the town of two rogue apothecaries, partners, which
might point the moral of an Æsop’s fable. Have you heard it?”
Chesterfield, his eyes perfectly lacklustre, muttered some incoherent
response. The other proceeded, undaunted--
“Nixon and Carter were they called, and both attended, among others,
on a certain ailing miserly old widow, waiving their fees in hope of
some rich bequest half promised to them for their devotion. The day
before she died she sent them two old shabby worn-out cloaks, one
cloth, one velvet, in reward of their long services to her, and of
these garments, Nixon, as the elder, was to choose which he would, the
other going to his partner. They were well mad, I can promise you,
but, making the best of it, Nixon chose the cloth, as being the more
serviceable, and after, in derision, offered to part with it to Carter
for a shilling. Which, promptly agreeing to, and securing his bargain,
Carter, the more astute knave, discovered each of its twelve buttons
to be a gold Carolus hidden under cloth. And so they were at it, Nixon
demanding back his goods and Carter resisting, till from quarrelling
they came to blows and Nixon killed Carter, for which Nixon is to be
hanged. And now comes in the lovely moral; for it seems they were both
Fifth Monarchist men, owing their lives to the Act of Indemnity, yet
who would have cut off their right hands rather than help the King to
a tester of his own coin. And the end is these twelve gold pounds are
forfeit to the Crown. What think you of that for a rare combination of
law and justice?”
Receiving no answer, he looked at his companion, and perceived him
patently oblivious to every word he was saying. He exclaimed, and laid
his hand on the door.
“What now?” said Chesterfield, waking up.
The other cursed him fairly. “A pox on your insensibility! Here have I
been pouring my precious wine of eloquence into thy cracked measure of
a head that hath retained not one drop. I’ll up and begone.”
“No, don’t. Have you been talking in truth?”
“O, listen to him! _Have_ I been talking! No, sir; I’ve been thinking
aloud; and if my thoughts ran on jackasses in their relation to the
creature called a mute, you have only to speak without braying to
prove yourself not half the donkey you seem.”
“Don’t be offensive, George. Why do you apply such a word to me?”
“Are you not a donkey, to go brooding on thistles when I offer you
grapes?”
“I cannot help but brood. Have patience with me, coz. There’s a
thought in my mind I cannot rid it of.”
“A thought? What thought?”
“This cursed Kit.”
“Kit?”
“The Kit her friend is for ever alluding to.”
“O! that.”
“There’s some purposed innuendo, I’m convinced, in the hussy’s
mockery--perhaps to some former flame of my wife’s known to both. I
believe, before God, it is that. You should have heard my lady before
you came that night. On my soul, she had almost confessed bare-faced
that she used this Kit to console herself for my neglect.”
“The devil she did!”
It was a new and surprising suggestion for Hamilton himself. It seemed
to open out a wholly unexpected vista of mortifying possibilities.
Could there be anything in it? Little signs--an odd look, a queer
inflection of the voice, unsuspected of any significance at the
time--occurred to him now in the connection of his cousin’s
confidences. Was she really playing a double game with all of them,
this little artless-seeming Thais? No! she was altogether too
unsophisticated; he could not believe it. Besides, of course, he was
actually forgetting that she and Mrs. Moll were but recent
acquaintances. They could not have a knowledge of that name in common,
unless----
“Did she specifically say ‘_him_’?” he asked Chesterfield.
“What do you mean?” demanded the Earl.
“You know Mrs. Davis would not admit Kit’s sex when I rallied her.”
Chesterfield shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
“Pooh! The merest subterfuge, to mislead and torment me. The dog’s a
male dog; there’s no question whatever about it.”
Hamilton sat frowning a while. It was true that that fact of the
women’s unacquaintance counted for little. Moll, the prying and
mischievous, might easily have made a discovery; or, again, granted
the alternative of Kate’s double-dealing, the two might be in a
naughty confederacy to punish the master of the house. Truly, if it
were no worse than that, he could forgive them, though their
understanding meant a certain treachery to himself. But at least it
would ease his mind of a qualm which had suddenly overtaken it.
He meditated, on the whole ill at ease. He must find some opportunity,
of that he was decided, to question Mrs. Moll more particularly about
this Kit, and, though he foresaw well enough an evasive response, he
believed he would be able to extract from her some indication of the
truth sufficiently illuminating to guide him in his further actions.
He turned to his companion with the suggestion--
“Leave the matter to me, Phil, for the moment. I’ll question the slut,
and, like the persuasive, artful dog I am, worm the truth out of her.”
“Will you, George? Zounds, if my suspicions should be verified, and
there’s secret meetings between them! Though he be a Kit of nine
lives, I’ll skewer them every one on my rapier like slivers of dog’s
meat. When will you come?”
“When is it safe?”
“My lady rides abroad each day at noon.”
“To-morrow, then.” He put an impressive warning hand on the other’s
sleeve. “This must not affect your behaviour to the visitor. Never,
whatever you do, relax your attentions there, but rather emphasize
them.”
“O! why?”
“Why--why?” He spoke with some impatient irritability. “Are you really
so dense? Why, because--if you must be instructed--any slackness on
your part might rouse your wife’s suspicions. We want, if it’s to be a
question of taking her off her guard, to lull her into a sense of
false security; and the more infatuated you appear, the more careless
of precaution will she become. Strange that I should have to teach
_you_ sexual strategy.”
He would not dismiss the whole suggestion at once, you see, as
incredible and preposterous; he was too well versed in the thousand
duplicities of which woman is capable ever to accept her innocence at
more than its face value. Nor is mere youth a guarantee with her of
harmlessness. The little two-inch viper can bite to poisonous effect
the moment it is hatched from the egg. No, it was judicious, for the
sake of all concerned, to attempt to establish the identity of this
hermaphroditic individual. And he thought he could do it.
He went to essay the experiment the next day. A little to his
confusion he learned that his cousin, whom he had calculated upon
finding out, was not yet departed, but was strolling, pending her
horse’s arrival, in the garden. After a moment’s hesitation, he went
to seek her there, and encountered her loitering about the paths which
led down, among ordered parterres and hedged alleys, to the
river-side. She looked very pretty in her scarlet riding habit _à la
mode_, with the long-skirted coat, fashioned after a man’s, which was
just then come into vogue, and the little plumed hat tilted over one
ear; and the picture she made went straight down through his eyes to
his heart. _Her_ eyes opened a shade as she turned to recognize him.
“Are you coming to offer to ride with me?” she said. “Because, if you
are----”
“Yes?” he asked.
She tossed her head suddenly, with a little shrug.
“O! no matter. What the world can see the world will not suspect.
Come, if you wish it.”
“Meaning by the world, I suppose, your husband. Then you have thought
better of my suggestion?”
“What suggestion?”
“That you should use me to stimulate his jealousy.”
“I have thought of you as my kinsman and his friend.”
“Is that a reproof, Kate Chesterfield?”
She ruffled a box border with her little pointed toe, looking down the
while.
“Why should you think it so, cousin? You are a man of honour, are you
not? And I have your own word for it your offer was a quite
disinterested one.”
“That may be; but to turn it to no better account than riding
innocently in company is not the way to make it effective.”
She did not reply for a moment, then looked him straight in the eyes.
“What would you have us do?”
“I could answer for one thing,” he said. His gaze was on a knot of
rosebuds fastened in her bosom. “These walls are argus-eyed. Grant me
a token from that sweet nest.”
“And earn,” she said, “a credit I do not deserve. Why should I go out
of my way so to damn myself?”
“_He’ll_ hear of it.”
“The only one of all that would not care.” A sudden flush came to her
face. She leaned forward a little, and spoke three words: “_Who is
Kit?_”
It fairly took him aback. He was so startled that for a moment he
could not answer.
“Kit!” he stammered then.
“You are my husband’s friend,” she said--“in his confidence; you know
and have shared, no doubt, the secrets of his past. Was it not enough
to force upon me the daily insult of this Davis creature’s presence,
but he must make a jest through her lips of other infamies in which it
seems they were both implicated? Who is this Kit, I say?”
Now, one thing, in his astonishment, was made clear to Hamilton. Kate
was as innocent of Kit as Kit of Kate. That reassurance was consoling,
though it left him more confounded than ever as to the identity of the
strange being.
“On my honour, cousin,” he said, “I have no idea.”
“You have not?”
“Not a shadow of one. But, whoever she is, if she she is, what reason
have you to connect Phil with her?”
She made a sound of scorn.
“What reason? Am I deaf and blind to all hints and innuendoes--to
their conspiracy to mock me with veiled references to the part she has
played in his life? O, reason, indeed!”
“I think, on my soul, you are letting your imagination master you. Has
he ever really confessed to this Kit?”
“You did not hear him? No, it was before you came. He did as much,
referring to her as the substance of happiness for which he had
exchanged its shadow--the shadow--the wife--O, I am in truth a shadow
of a wife!”
“Then, I say, if that be so, he deserves no mercy.”
“I intend to show him none.”
“Give me the rose, then.”
“Why do you want it? In reward of your disinterestedness?”
“Just that.”
She gazed at him a moment--a fathomless look; then--O, woman,
microcosm of all incomprehensibilities!--detached a bud from the group
and held it out to him. He received it in rapture, and dared to put it
to his lips. But at that she flushed pink, and turned from him.
“I will ride alone,” she murmured. “Nay, do not press me further.”
He forbore to. It suited his plans to remain behind, and he let her go
without protest. And the moment he was sure of her departure he went
to seek Mrs. Davis. His veins were hot; there was a glaze over his
eyes. “She hath put foot within the magic circle,” he thought, “and I
have her.”
He went to find a servant, and to dispatch him in quest of Mrs. Moll.
The baggage came down to him presently into the great room, and, when
they were left alone together, danced gleefully up to him and dropped
a curtsey.
“Is not that to the manner?” she said. “Or is it the bong tong to
offer you my cheek?”
“Come,” he said, with a shadow of impatience. “I want to have a
serious talk with you.”
“Lud! What mischief have I been up to?”
“Not mischief enough--that is my complaint.”
“Well, that’s easy remedied.”
“Is it? I’m beginning to doubt.”
“Ah! You don’t know me.”
“You are enjoying yourself here, are you not?”
“Passably. ’Tis dull sometimes--too much confinement, and not enough
fresh air.”
“You’d like to be released, perhaps, from your duties?”
“Should I? What makes you think so?”
“It has occurred to me. Supposing I were to tell you you might go?”
“Supposing? Well, I shouldn’t go, that’s all.”
“You wouldn’t? Do you mean to say you’d defy me?”
“Yes, I do mean to say it.” She came close before him, put her little
fists behind her back, and tilted her chin at him. “What’s all this
about? Aren’t I wanted any more, or have you changed your mind? That
’ud be a pity, because I’m not the sort, you know, to be taken or left
just as it suits a man’s convenience.” She laughed--not pleasantly.
“Has it never occurred to you, George, that you happen to be just a
little bit in my power?”
“The devil I am!”
“So am I--on occasion. You might find that out if you provoked me.”
“Why, what could you do?”
“I could blab, couldn’t I--make havoc of your little plot?”
He was a trifle staggered. Here was something overlooked in his
calculations. He had only designed, in fact, to stimulate her efforts;
this threatened rebellion revealed some mistake in his methods.
“And lose for ever your chance of promotion,” said he. “Well, if you
wish to make me your enemy----”
She nodded her head once or twice.
“I don’t. But I’d lose twenty kings sooner than sit quiet under a
dirty trick like that.”
“Do you propose staying on, then, till this imposture is discovered,
as every day makes more probable? As well betray me at once.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that. But I like the fun and I like the life,
and I see no more risk of discovery now than when I came. Why do you
want me to go?”
“I never said I did. I don’t, as a matter of fact, if you will only
not like these things so well as half to forget your purpose in them.”
“My purpose? That’s to make the lord creature in love with me. Well,
haven’t I?”
“I miss the conclusive evidence--the proof of the pudding that’s in
the eating.”
“That wasn’t in the bargain. Be fair, George. I’m doing all that was
asked of me, and doing it faithful.”
She was, in fact; yet he had actually hoped for more. She was so
excessively alluring that he could not believe Chesterfield capable,
in spite of his apparent insensibility, of ultimately resisting her
charms, were she fully resolved he should not.
“And is that,” he said, “suggesting the little piece too much? You’ve
grown very fastidious of a sudden. I told you I was beginning to
doubt.”
She looked at him queerly a moment.
“Isn’t it going as well with you as you expected?” she asked.
“Your finishing him could do my cause no harm, at least,” said he, and
bit his lip.
“Well, I vow I’m sometimes a’most sorry for her,” she said. “She’s but
my own age, and--and the man’s in love with her all the time, and at a
word she’d be with him. Don’t I know that? What a brace of blackguards
we are, George!”
“Speak for yourself, Mrs. Moll,” said Hamilton, a little hotly. “Love
absolves all sinners. It knows no villainy but incompetence.”
“Sure, you must be a saint, then. But betwixt this and that, and your
doubt’s despite, it wasn’t in the bargain and I won’t do it.”
“Then that settles it, and we must manage without.”
“As you like.” She brought her hands to the front, and, linking them
in the most decorous of love-knots, stiffened her neck and tossed her
head backwards and a little askew. “Besides,” she said, “you seem to
forget that I’ve got a husband myself.”
He burst into a laugh, vexed but uncontrollable, and immediately
checked himself.
“I had forgot--I confess it,” he said. “Kit, is it not?”
“Kit!” she ejaculated, in deep scorn. And then she, too, laughed
derisively.
“Not Kit?” said he.
“If you knew Kit you wouldn’t ask such a silly question,” she
answered.
“Well, why shouldn’t I know Kit? He seems an attractive person.”
“O! Kit’s attractive.”
“I see, I see. Pardon my stupidity.”
“What do you see?”
“Kit’s a--hem!--friend of yours.”
“Indeed, Kit is--the best, a’hem, friend of mine that ever hemmed a
hem.”
“What! a woman?”
“Either that or a tailor.”
“Damn it! Not a tailor?”
“Damn it, why not? Though it takes nine tailors to make a man, one
woman can make a tailor.”
“Come, Moll, thou art goosing me.”
“A tailor’s goose, maybe.”
“Tell me, who is this friend of yours?”
“I wonder.”
“Frankly, is it man or woman?”
“Frankly, I’ve never asked.”
“Ah! you won’t tell me. Are we not good comrades now, and as such
should have no secrets from one another?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What is Kit?”
“Sometimes this, sometimes that. We all have our moods.”
“I believe he has no existence but in your imagination. Who is he?
Tell me.”
“Will you kiss me, George, if I tell?”
“That I will.”
He suited the action to the word, putting his lips to hers, while she
submitted quietly.
“Now,” said he.
“But I haven’t told,” she protested.
He could have boxed her pink ear; and he did fling from her with some
roughness.
“P’sha!” he said. “I am wasting time.”
“And that is not all,” said she.
He saw a warning flush in her cheek, and forced his vexation under.
“Well,” he said, with a propitiatory laugh, “if you tell me nothing,
I’ve got the kiss for nothing; and so mine is the best of the bargain.
But I count you a little unkind, Mollinda.”
“I don’t mean to be that, George,” she answered, somewhat penitent.
“But I shouldn’t tell secrets not my own; now should I?”
That only served to restimulate his doubts and perplexity; but he said
no more on the subject, feeling it wiser to desist.
“Never mind,” he said. “You have your own good reasons for silence, of
course, and it’s no business of mine to press them. What is more to
the point is this question of your scruples regarding his lordship. So
you won’t go to extremes? Then, what is to be the course? With all
deference, Mrs. Moll, you can’t surely be planning to stay on here
indefinitely.”
“Well, I’ll work up to any conclusion you like, short of that.”
“You will?”
“Sure.”
“Even if it were to an appearance--of that?”
“Why not? ’Twould be enough for me to know my own innocence, since I’m
the only one that ever believes in it.”
He pondered, musing on her. “I’ll think it out, faith. We’ll arrange
some trick between us--some _coup de grâce_ for her ladyship. Shall
we?”
“O, go to grass yourself!” she said. “Speak English.”