The Amazing Marriage, Complete

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

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'Kit Ines was left sleeping in the house?'

'Snoring, I dare say: He don't drink on duty.'

'He must be kept on duty.'

'Drink or that kind of duty, it's a poor choice.'

'You'll take him in charge, Madge.'

'I've got a mistress to look after.'

'You've warmed to her.'

'That's not new; Mr. Woodseer. I do trust you, and you his friend. But
you are the minister's son, and any man not a great nobleman must have
some heart for her. You'll learn. He kills her so because she's fond of
him--loves him, however he strikes. No, not like a dog, as men say of us.
She'd die for him this night, need were. Live with her, you won't find
many men match her for brave; and she's good. My Sally calls her a Bible
saint. I could tell you stories of her goodness, short the time though
she's been down our way. And better there for her than at that inn he
left her at to pine and watch the Royal Sovereign come swing come smirk
in sailor blue and star to meet the rain--would make anybody disrespect
Royalty or else go mad! He's a great nobleman, he can't buy what she's
ready to give; and if he thinks he breaks her will now, it's because she
thinks she's obeying a higher than him, or no lord alive and Kit Ines to
back him 'd hold her. Women want a priest to speak to men certain times.
I wish I dared; we have to bite our tongues. He's master now, but, as I
believe God's above, if he plays her false, he's the one to be brought to
shame. I talk.'

'Talk on, Madge,' said Gower, to whom the girl's short-syllabled run of
the lips was a mountain rill compared with London park waters.

'You won't let him hurry her off where she'll eat her heart for never
seeing him again? She prays to be near him, if she's not to see him.'

'She speaks in that way?'

'I get it by bits. I'm with her so, it's as good as if I was inside her.
She can't obey when it goes the wrong way of her heart to him.'

'Love and wisdom won't pull together, and they part company for good at
the church door,' said Gower. 'This matrimony's a bad business.'

Madge hummed a moan of assent. 'And my poor Sally 'll have to marry. I
can't leave my mistress while she wants me, and Sally can't be alone. It
seems we take a step and harm's done, though it's the right step we
take.'

'It seems to me you've engaged yourself to follow Sally's lead, Madge.'

'Girls' minds turn corners, Mr. Woodseer.'

He passed the remark. What it was that girls' minds occasionally or
habitually did, or whether they had minds to turn, or whether they took
their whims for minds, were untroubled questions with a young man
studying abstract and adoring surface nature too exclusively to be aware
of the manifestation of her spirit in the flesh, as it is not revealed so
much by men. However, she had a voice and a face that led him to be
thoughtful over her devotedness to her mistress, after nearly losing her
character for the prize-fighter, and he had to thank her for invigorating
him. His disposition was to muse and fall slack, helpless to a friend.
Here walked a creature exactly the contrary. He listened to the steps of
the dissimilar pair on the detonating pavement, and eyed a church clock
shining to the sun.

She was sure of the direction: 'Out Camden way, where the murder was.'

They walked at a brisk pace, conversing or not.

'Tired? You must be,' he said.

'Not when I'm hot to do a thing.'

'There's the word of the thoroughbred!'

'You don't tire, sir,' said she. 'Sally and I see you stalking out for
the open country in the still of the morning. She thinks you look pale
for want of food, and ought to have some one put a biscuit into your
pocket overnight.'

'Who'd have guessed I was under motherly observation!'

'You shouldn't go so long empty, if you listen to trainers.'

'Capital doctors, no doubt. But I get a fine appetite.'

'You may grind the edge too sharp.'

He was about to be astonished, and reflected that she had grounds for her
sagacity. His next thought plunged him into contempt for Kit Ines, on
account of the fellow's lapses to sottishness. But there would be no
contempt of Kit Ines in a tussle with him. Nor could one funk the tussle
and play cur, if Kit's engaged young woman were looking on. We get to our
courage or the show of it by queer screws.

Contemplative over these matters, the philosopher transformed to man of
action heard Madge say she read directions in London by churches, and
presently exclaiming disdainfully, and yet relieved, 'Spooner Villas,'
she turned down a row of small detached houses facing a brickfield, that
had just contributed to the erection of them, and threatened the big city
with further defacements.

Madge pointed to the marks of her jump, deep in flower-bed earth under an
open window.

Gower measured the height with sensational shanks.

She smote at the door. Carinthia nodded from her window. Close upon that,
Kit Ines came bounding to the parlour window; he spied and stared. Gower
was known to him as the earl's paymaster; so he went to the passage and
flung the door open, blocking the way.

'Any commands, your honour?'

'You bring the countess to my lord immediately,' said Gower.

Kit swallowed his mouthful of surprise in a second look at Madge and the
ploughed garden-bed beneath the chamber window.

'Are the orders written, sir?'

'To me?--for me to deliver to you?--for you to do my lord's bidding?
Where's your head?'

Kit's finger-nails travelled up to it. Madge pushed past him. She and her
mistress, and Kit's mate, and the old woman receiving the word for a cup
of tea, were soon in the passage. Kit's mate had a ready obedience for
his pay, nothing else,--no counsel at all, not a suggestion to a head
knocked to a pudding by Madge's jump and my lord's paymaster here upon
the scene.

'My lady was to go down Wales way, sir.'

'That may be ordered after.'

'I 'm to take my lady to my lord?' and, 'Does it mean my lady wants a
fly?' Kit asked, and harked back on whether Madge had seen my lord.

'At five in the morning?--don't sham donkey with me,' said Gower.

The business looked inclined to be leaky, but which the way for proving
himself other than a donkey puzzled Kit: so much so, that a shove made
him partly grateful. Madge's clever countermove had stunned his
judgement. He was besides acting subordinate to his patron's paymaster;
and by the luck of it, no voice of woman interposed. The countess and her
maid stood by like a disinterested couple. Why be suspicious, if he was
to keep the countess, in sight? She was a nice lady, and he preferred her
good opinion. She was brave, and he did her homage. It might be, my lord
had got himself round to the idea of thanking her for saving his nob that
night, and his way was to send and have her up, to tell her he forgave
her, after the style of lords. Gower pricked into him by saying aside:
'Mad, I suppose, in case of a noise?' And he could not answer quite
manfully, lost his eyes and coloured. Neighbours might have required an
explanation of shrieks, he confessed. Men have sometimes to do nasty work
for their patrons.

They were afoot, walking at Carinthia's pace before half-past seven. She
would not hear of any conveyance. She was cheerful, and, as it was
pitiful to see, enjoyed her walk. Hearing of her brother's departure for
the Austrian capital, she sparkled. Her snatches of speech were short
flights out of the meditation possessing her. Gower noticed her easier
English, that came home to the perpetual student he was. She made use of
some of his father's words, and had assimilated them mentally besides
appropriating them: the verbalizing of 'purpose,' then peculiar to his
father, for example. She said, in reply to a hint from him: 'If my lord
will allow me an interview, I purpose to be obedient.' No one could
imagine of her that she spoke broken-spiritedly. Her obedience was to a
higher than a mortal lord: and Gower was touched to the quick through the
use of the word.

Contrasting her with Countess Livia and her cousin, the earl might think
her inferior on the one small, square compartment called by them the
world; but she carried the promise of growth, a character in expansion,
and she had at least natural grace, a deerlike step. Although her
picturesqueness did not swarm on him with images illuminating night,
subduing day, like the Countess Livia's, it was marked, it could tower
and intermittently eclipse; and it was of the uplifting and healing kind
by comparison, not a delicious balefulness.

The bigger houses, larger shops, austere streets of private residences,
were observed by the recent inhabitant of Whitechapel.

'My lord lives in a square,' she said.

'We shall soon be there now,' he encouraged her, doubtful though the
issue appeared.

'It is a summer morning for the Ortler, the Gross-Glockner, the
Venediger,--all our Alps, Mr. Woodseer.'

'If we could fly!'

'We love them.'

'Why, then we beat a wing--yes.'

'For I have them when I want them to sight. It is the feet are so
desirous. I feel them so this morning, after prisonership. I could not
have been driven to my lord.'

'I know the feeling,' said Gower; 'any movement of us not our own
impulse, hurries the body and deadens the mind. And by the way, my dear
lady, I spoke of the earl's commands to this man behind us walking with
your Madge. My father would accuse me of Jesuitry. Ines mentioned
commands, and I took advantage of it.'

'I feared,' said Carinthia. 'I go for my chance.'

Gower had a thought of the smaller creature, greater by position, to whom
she was going for her chance. He alluded to his experience of the earl's
kindness in relation to himself, from a belief in his 'honesty'; dotted
outlines of her husband's complex character, or unmixed and violently
opposing elements.

She remarked: 'I will try and learn.'

The name of the street of beautiful shops woke a happy smile on her
mouth. 'Father talked of it; my mother, too. He has it written down in
his Book of Maxims. When I was a girl, I dreamed of one day walking up
Bond Street.'

They stepped from the pavement and crossed the roadway for a side-street
leading to the square. With the swift variation of her aspect at times,
her tone changed.

'We are near. My lord will not be troubled by me. He has only to meet me.
There has been misunderstanding. I have vexed him; I could not help it. I
will go where he pleases after I have heard him give orders. He thinks me
a frightful woman. I am peaceful.'

Gower muttered her word 'misunderstanding.' They were at the earl's house
door. One tap at it, and the two applicants for admission would probably
be shot as far away from Lord Fleetwood as when they were on the Styrian
heights last autumn. He delivered the tap, amused by the idea. It was
like a summons to a genie of doubtful service.

My lord was out riding in the park.

Only the footman appeared at that early hour, and his countenance was
blank whitewash as he stood rigid against the wall for the lady to pass.
Madge followed into the morning room; Ines remained in the hall, where he
could have the opening speech with his patron, and where he soon had
communication with the butler.

This official entered presently to Gower, presenting a loaded forehead. A
note addressed to Mrs. Kirby-Levellier at the Countess Livia's house hard
by was handed to him for instant despatch. He signified a deferential
wish to speak.

'You can speak in the presence of the Countess of Fleetwood, Mr. Waytes,'
Gower said.

Waytes checked a bend of his shoulders. He had not a word, and he turned
to send the note. He was compelled to think that he saw a well-grown
young woman in the Whitechapel Countess.

Gower's note reached Henrietta on her descent to the breakfast-table. She
was, alone, and thrown into a torture of perplexity: for she wanted
advice as to the advice to be given to Janey, and Livia was an utterly
unprofitable person to consult in the case. She thought of Lady
Arpington, not many doors distant. Drinking one hasty cup of tea, she
sent for her bonnet, and hastened away to the great lady, whom she found
rising from breakfast with the marquis.

Lady Arpington read Gower's note. She unburdened herself: 'Oh! So it 's
no longer a bachelor's household!'

Henrietta heaved the biggest of sighs. 'I fear the poor dear may have
made matters worse.'

To which Lady Arpington said: 'Worse or better, my child!' and shrugged;
for the present situation strained to snapping.

She proposed to go forthwith, and give what support she could to the
Countess of Fleetwood.

They descended the steps of the house to the garden and the Green Park's
gravel walk up to Piccadilly. There they had view of Lord Fleetwood on
horseback leisurely turning out of the main way's tide. They saw him
alight at the mews. As they entered the square, he was met some doors
from the south corner by his good or evil genius, whose influence with
him came next after the marriage in the amazement it caused, and was
perhaps to be explained by it; for the wealthiest of young noblemen
bestowing his name on an unknown girl, would be the one to make an absurd
adventurer his intimate. Lord Fleetwood bent a listening head while Mr.
Gower Woodseer, apparently a good genius for the moment, spoke at his
ear.

How do we understand laughter at such a communication as he must be
hearing from the man? Signs of a sharp laugh indicated either his cruel
levity or that his presumptuous favourite trifled--and the man's talk
could be droll, Lady Arpington knew: it had, she recollected angrily,
diverted her, and softened her to tolerate the intruder into regions from
which her class and her periods excluded the lowly born, except at the
dinner-tables of stale politics and tattered scandal. Nevertheless, Lord
Fleetwood mounted the steps to his house door, still listening. His
'Asmodeus,' on the tongue of the world, might be doing the part of Mentor
really. The house door stood open.

Fleetwood said something to Gower; he swung round, beheld the ladies and
advanced to them, saluting. 'My dear Lady Arpington! quite so, you arrive
opportunely. When the enemy occupies the citadel, it's proper to
surrender. Say, I beg, she can have the house, if she prefers it. I will
fall back on Esslemont. Arrangements for her convenience will be made. I
thank you, by anticipation.'

His bow included Henrietta loosely. Lady Arpington had exclaimed: 'Enemy,
Fleetwood?' and Gower, in his ignorance of the smoothness of aristocratic
manners, expected a remonstrance; but Fleetwood was allowed to go on,
with his air of steely geniality and a decision, that his friend imagined
he could have broken down like an old partition board under the kick of a
sarcasm sharpening an appeal.

'Lord Fleetwood was on the point of going in,' he assured the great lady.

'Lord Fleetwood may regret his change of mind,' said she. 'The Countess
of Fleetwood will have my advice to keep her footing in this house.'

She and Henrietta sat alone with Carinthia for an hour. Coming forth,
Lady Arpington ejaculated to herself: 'Villany somewhere!--You will do
well, Henrietta, to take up your quarters with her a day or two. She can
hold her position a month. Longer is past possibility.'

A shudder of the repulsion from men crept over the younger lady. But she
was a warrior's daughter, and observed: 'My husband, her brother, will be
back before the month ends.'

'No need for hostilities to lighten our darkness,' Lady Arpington
rejoined. 'You know her? trust her?'

'One cannot doubt her face. She is my husband's sister. Yes, I do trust
her. I nail my flag to her cause.'

The flag was crimson, as it appeared on her cheeks; and that intimated a
further tale, though not of so dramatic an import as the cognizant short
survey of Carinthia had been.

These young women, with the new complications obtruded by them, irritated
a benevolent great governing lady, who had married off her daughters and
embraced her grandchildren, comfortably finishing that chapter; and
beheld now the apparition of the sex's ancient tripping foe, when
circumstances in themselves were quite enough to contend against on their
behalf. It seemed to say, that nature's most burdened weaker must always
be beaten. Despite Henrietta's advocacy and Carinthia's clear face, it
raised a spectral form of a suspicion, the more effective by reason of
the much required justification it fetched from the shades to plead
apologies for Lord Fleetwood's erratic, if not mad, and in any case ugly,
conduct. What otherwise could be his excuse? Such was his need of one,
that the wife he crushed had to be proposed for sacrifice, in the mind of
a lady tending strongly to side with her and condemn her husband.

Lady Arpington had counselled Carinthia to stay where she was, the Fates
having brought her there. Henrietta was too generous to hesitate in her
choice between her husband's sister and the earl. She removed from
Livia's house to Lord Fleetwood's. My lord was at Esslemont two days;
then established his quarters at Scrope's hotel, five minutes' walk from
the wedded lady to whom the right to bear his title was granted, an
interview with him refused. Such a squaring for the battle of spouses had
never--or not in mighty London--been seen since that old fight began.

CHAPTER XXVI

AFTER SOME FENCING THE DAME PASSES OUR GUARD

Dame Gossip at this present pass bursts to give us a review of the social
world siding for the earl or for his countess; and her parrot cry of
'John Rose Mackrell!' with her head's loose shake over the smack of her
lap, to convey the contemporaneous tipsy relish of the rich good things
he said on the subject of the contest, indicates the kind of intervention
it would be.

To save the story from having its vein tied, we may accept the reminder,
that he was the countess's voluble advocate at a period when her friends
were shy to speak of her. After relating the Vauxhall Gardens episode in
burlesque Homeric during the freshness of the scandal, Rose Mackrell's
enthusiasm for the heroine of his humour set in. He tracked her to her
parentage, which was new breath blown into the sunken tradition of some
Old Buccaneer and his Countess Fanny: and, a turn of great good luck
helping him to a copy of the book of the MAXIMS FOR MEN, he would quote
certain of the racier ones, passages of Captain John Peter Kirby's
personal adveres in various lands and waters illustrating the text, to
prove that the old warrior acted by the rule of his recommendations. They
had the repulsive attraction proper to rusty lumber swords and truncehons
that have tasted brains. They wove no mild sort of halo for the head of a
shillelagh-flourishing Whitechapel Countess descended from the writer and
doer.

People were willing to believe in her jump of thirty feet or more off a
suburban house-top to escape durance, and her midnight storming of her
lord's town house, and ousting of him to go find his quarters at Scrope's
hotel. He, too, had his band of pugilists, as it was known; and he might
have heightened a rageing scandal. The nobleman forbore. A woman's blow
gracefully taken adds a score of inches to our stature, floor us as it
may: we win the world's after-thoughts. Rose Mackrell sketched the
earl;--always alert, smart, quick to meet a combination and protect a
dignity never obtruded, and in spite of himself the laugh of the town.
His humour flickered wildly round the ridiculous position of a prominent
young nobleman, whose bearing and character were foreign to a position of
ridicule.

Nevertheless, the earl's figure continuing to be classic sculpture, it
allied him with the aristocracy of martyrs, that burn and do not wince.
He propitiated none, and as he could not but suffer shrewdly, he gained
esteem enough to shine through the woman's pitiless drenching of him.
During his term at Scrope's hotel, the carousals there were quite
old-century and matter of discourse. He had proved his return to sound
sense in the dismissal of 'the fiddler,' notoriously the woman's
lieutenant, or more; and nightly the revelry closed at the great gaming
tables of St. James's Street, while Whitechapel held the coroneted
square, well on her way to the Law courts, as Abrane and Potts reported;
and positively so, 'clear case.' That was the coming development and
finale of the Marriage. London waited for it.

A rich man's easy smile over losses at play, merely taught his emulous
troop to feel themselves poor devils in the pocket. But Fleetwood's
contempt of Sleep was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of an
inferior vigour, hard for young men to admit by the example. He never
went to bed. Issuing from Fortune's hall-doors in the bright, lively,
summer morning, he mounted horse and was away to the hills. Or he took
the arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, and walked with him
from the green tables and the establishment's renowned dry still Sillery
to a Papist chapel. As it was not known that he had given his word to
abjure his religion, the pious gamblers did no worse than spread an alarm
and quiet it, by the citation of his character for having a try at
everything.

Henrietta despatched at this period the following letter to Chillon:

'I am with Livia to-morrow. Janey starts for Wales to-morrow morning, a
voluntary exile. She pleaded to go back to that place where you had to
leave her, promising she would not come Westward; but was persuaded. Lady
Arpington approves. The situation was getting too terribly strained. We
met and passed my lord in the park.

'He was walking his horse-elegant cavalier that he is: would not look on
his wife. A woman pulled by her collar should be passive; if she pulls
her way, she is treated as a dog. I see nothing else in the intention of
poor Janey's last offence to him. There is an opposite counsel, and he
can be eloquent, and he will be heard on her side. How could she manage
the most wayward when she has not an idea of ordinary men! But, my
husband, they have our tie between them; it may move him. It subdues
her--and nothing else would have done that. If she had been in England a
year before the marriage, she would, I think, have understood better how
to guide her steps and her tongue for his good pleasure. She learns
daily, very quickly: observes, assimilates; she reads and has her
comments--would have shot far ahead of your Riette, with my advantages.

'Your uncle--but he will bear any charge on his conscience as long as he
can get the burden off his shoulders. Do not fret, my own! Reperuse the
above--you will see we have grounds for hope.

'He should have looked down on her! No tears from her eyes, but her eyes
were tears. She does not rank among beautiful women. She has her moments
for outshining them--the loveliest of spectres! She caught at my heart. I
cannot forget her face looking up for him to look down. A great painter
would have reproduced it, a great poet have rendered the impression.
Nothing short of the greatest. That is odd to say of one so simple as
she. But when accidents call up her reserves, you see mountain heights
where mists were--she is actually glorified. Her friend--I do believe a
friend--the Mr. Woodseer you are to remember meeting somewhere--a
sprained ankle--has a dozen similes ready for what she is when pain or
happiness vivify her. Or, it may be, tender charity. She says, that if
she feels for suffering people, it is because she is the child of
Chillon's mother. In like manner Chillon is the son of Janey's father.

'Mr. Woodseer came every other evening. Our only enlivenment. Livia
followed her policy, in refusing to call. We lived luxuriously; no money,
not enough for a box at the opera, though we yearned--you can imagine.
Chapters of philosophy read out and expounded instead. Janey likes them.
He sets lessons to her queer maid--reading, writing, pronunciation of
English. An inferior language to Welsh, for poetical purposes, we are
informed. So Janey--determining to apply herself to Welsh, and a
chameleon Riette dreading that she will be taking a contrary view of the
honest souls--as she feels them to be--when again under Livia's shadow.

'The message from Janey to Scrope's hotel was despatched half-an-hour
after we had driven in from the park; fruit of a brown meditation. I
wrote it--third person--a single sentence. Arrangements are made for her
to travel comfortably. It is funny--the shops for her purchases of
clothes, necessaries, etc., are specified; she may order to any extent.
Not a shilling of money for her poor purse. What can be the secret of
that? He does nothing without an object. To me, uniformly civil, no
irony, few compliments. Livia writes, that I am commended for keeping
Janey company. What can be the secret of a man scrupulously just with one
hand, and at the same time cruel with the other? Mr. Woodseer says, his
wealth:--"More money than is required for their needs, men go into
harness to Plutus,"--if that is clever.

'I have written my husband--as Janey ceases to call her own; and it was
pretty and touching to hear her "my husband."--Oh! a dull letter. But he
is my husband though he keeps absent--to be longed for--he is my husband
still, my husband always. Chillon is Henrietta's husband, the world cries
out, and when she is flattered she does the like, for then it is not too
presumptuous that she should name Henrietta Chillon's wife. In my ears,
husband has the sweeter sound. It brings an angel from overhead. Will it
bring him one-half hour sooner? My love! My dear! If it did, I should be
lisping "husband, husband, husband" from cock-crow to owl's cry. Livia
thinks the word foolish, if not detestable. She and I have our different
opinions. She is for luxury. I choose poverty and my husband. Poverty has
its beauty, if my husband is the sun of it. Elle radote. She would not
have written so dull a letter to her husband if she had been at the opera
last night, or listened to a distant street-band. No more--the next line
would be bleeding. He should have her blood too, if that were her
husband's--it would never be; but if it were for his good in the smallest
way. Chillon's wish is to give his blood for them he loves. Never did
woman try more to write worthily to her absent lord and fall so miserably
into the state of dripping babe from bath on nurse's knee. Cover me, my
lord; and love, my cause for--no, my excuse, my refuge from myself. We
are one? Oh! we are one!--and we have been separated eight and twenty
days.

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