The Amazing Marriage, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Amazing Marriage, Complete

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The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him clean out of a
neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the 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 visible; 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 curiosity,
which was in the youthful philosopher a form of admiration. For his
father, like all Welshmen, loved the mountains. Yet here he lived,
exhorting, ministering, 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 Fleetwood to lodge with her.'

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 greengrocer's shop; at her request, according to Madge.
Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness that deepened
and made shipwreck of philosophy. Was it the very Countess of Fleetwood
penitent for her dalliance 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
greengrocer's shop, and Mr. Woodseer undisturbedly said:

'Here is the place.' The small stuffed shop appeared to grow portentously
cavernous and waveringly illumined.

CHAPTER 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.

'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.

CHAPTER 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 proposed 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. Without it, he would have
been useless in this case of need. The philosopher could starve with
equanimity, 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 Fakenham'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 suspicious 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 recollections; the
scenes and incidents she had smothered under her love of the comfortable
stood forth appallingly. The messenger, the butler said, was no
gentleman. 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
nondescript; he looked indifferent, he spoke sympathetically; and he was
frank as soon as the butler was out of hearing. In return for the
compliment, she invited him to her sitting-room. The story of the young
countess, whom she had seen driven away by her husband from the church in
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,
bankrupts and the abandoned; set her asking for the first time, who was
the man with dreadful countenance inside the coach? A previously
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 prizefight?'

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!--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?'

'Red-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with threads 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.'

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 prizefight 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, signifying 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 judgement. 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 and a dripping stillness. How we go, was the question among his
problems:--if we are to go! his youthful frame insistingly added.

The fog down 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 rebelliously, 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
Whitechapel 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 serviceable of her friends.

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