The gla.s.s of the window dropped. The head of a man emerged. It was the head of one of the bargefaced men of the British Isles, broad, and battered flattish, with sentinel eyes.
In an instant the heavy-headed but not ill-looking fellow was nimble and jumped from the coach.
"Napping, my lord," he said.
Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were light; they flipped a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the ground. Perhaps they were allowed to go with their instinct for the dance, that his master should have a sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and stood to take orders; clad in a flat blue cap, a brown overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the temporary bustle of his legs had revealed.
Fleet-wood heard the young lady say: "I would choose, if you please, to sit beside you."
He gave a nod of enforced a.s.sent, glancing at the vacated box.
The man inquired: "A knee and a back for the lady to mount up, my lord?"
"In!" was the smart command to him; and he popped in with the agility of his popping out.
Then Carinthia made reverence to the grey lean figure of her uncle and kissed Mrs. Carthew. She needed no help to mount the coach. Fleetwood"s arm was rigidly extended, and he did not visibly wince when this foreign girl sprang to the first hand-grip on the coach and said: "No, my husband, I can do it"; unaided," was implied.
Her stride from the axle of the wheel to the step higher would have been a graceful spectacle on Alpine crags.
Fleetwood swallowed that, too, though it conjured up a mocking recollection of the Baden woods, and an astonished wild donkey preparing himself for his harness. A sour relish of the irony in his present position sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of loathing: on the principle that if we find ourselves consigned to the nether halls, we do well to dance drunkenly. He had cried for Romance--here it was!
He raised his hat to Mrs. Carthew and to Lord Levellier. Previous to the ceremony, the two n.o.blemen had interchanged the short speech of mannered duellists punctiliously courteous in the opening act. Their civility was maintained at the termination of the deadly work. The old lord"s bosom thanked the young one for not requiring entertainment and a repast; the young lord"s thanked the old one for a strict military demeanour at an execution and the abstaining from any nonsensical talk over the affair.
A couple of liveried grooms at the horses" heads ran and sprang to the hinder seats as soon as their master had taken the reins. He sounded the whip caressingly: off those pretty trotters went.
Mrs. Carthew watched them, waving to the bride. She was on the present occasion less than usually an acute or a reflective observer, owing to her admiration of lordly state and masculine commandership; and her thought was: "She has indeed made a brilliant marriage!"
The lady thought it, notwithstanding an eccentricity in the wedding ceremony, such as could not but be noticeable. But very wealthy n.o.blemen were commonly, perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved themselves egregious, which the world expected them to be.
Lord Levellier sounded loud eulogies of the ill.u.s.trious driver"s team.
His meditation, as he subsequently stated to Chillon, was upon his vanquished antagonist"s dexterity, in so conducting matters, that he had to be taken at once, with naught of the customary preface and apology for taking to himself the young lady, of which a handsome settlement, is the memorial.
We have to suppose, that the curious occupant of the coach inside aroused no curiosity in the pair of absorbed observers.
Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain followed the coach until it sank and the backs of the two liveried grooms closed the chapter of the wedding, introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven miles distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts. It was out of sight that the coach turned to the left, Northwestward.
CHAPTER XV. OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON
A famous maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, treating of PRECAUTION, as "The brave man"s clean conscience," with sound counsel to the adventurous, has it:--
"Then you sail away into the tornado, happy as a sealed bottle of ripe wine."
It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of hurricanes are found to have cheerful hearts in them when they know they have done their best. But, touching the picture of happiness, conceive the bounteous Bacchic spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, and you find comparison neighbour closely between the sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is being driven by her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage morn.
Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut mouth, in a strange land, travelling cloud-like, rushing like the shower-cloud to the vale, this Carinthia, suddenly wedded, pa.s.sionately grateful for humbleness exalted, virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, resembled the inanimate and most inspiring, was mindless and inexpressive, past memory, beyond the hopes, a thing of the thrilled blood and skylark air, since she laid her hand in this young man"s. His not speaking to her was accepted. Her blood rather than recollection revived their exchanges during the dance at Baden, for a.s.surance that their likings were one, their aims rapturously one; that he was she, she he, the two hearts making one soul.
Could she give as much as he? It was hardly asked. If we feel we can give our breath of life, the strength of the feeling fully answers. It bubbles perpetually from the depth like a well-spring in tumult. Two hearts that make one soul do not separately count their gifts.
For the rest, her hunger to admire disposed her to an absorbing sentience of his acts; the trifles, gestures, manner of this and that; which were seized as they flew, and swiftly a.s.similated to stamp his personality. Driving was the piece of skill she could not do. Her husband"s mastery of the reins endowed him with the beauty of those harmonious trotters he guided and kept to their pace; and the humming rush of the pace, the smooth torrent of the brown heath-knolls and reddish pits and hedge-lines and gra.s.s-flats and copses pouring the counter-way of her advance, belonged to his wizardry. The bearing of her onward was her abandonment to him. Delicious as mountain air, the wind sang; it had a song of many voices. Quite as much as on the mountains, there was the keen, the blissful, nerve-knotting catch of the presence of danger in the steep descents, taken as if swallowed, without swerve or check. She was in her husband"s hands. At times, at the pitch of a rapid shelving, that was like a fall, her heart went down; and at the next throb exalted before it rose, not reasoning why;--her confidence was in him; she was his comrade whatever chanced. Up over the mountain-peaks she had known edged moments, little heeded in their pa.s.sage, when life is poised as a crystal pitcher on the head, in peril of a step. Then she had been dependent on herself. Now she had the joy of trusting to her husband.
His hard leftward eye had view of her askant, if he cared to see how she bore the trial; and so relentlessly did he take the slopes, that the man inside pushed out an inquiring pate, the two grooms tightened arms across their chests. Her face was calmly set, wakeful, but unwrinkled: the creature did not count among timid girls--or among civilized. She had got what she wanted from her madman--mad in his impulses, mad in his reading of honour. She was the sister of Henrietta"s husband. Henrietta bore the name she had quitted. Could madness go beyond the marrying of the creature? He chafed at her containment, at her courage, her silence, her withholding the brazen or the fawnish look-up, either of which he would have hated.
He, however, was dragged to look down. Neither Gorgon nor Venus, nor a mingling of them, she had the chasm of the face, recalling the face of his bondage, seen first that night at Baden. It recalled and it was not the face; it was the skull of the face, or the flesh of the spirit.
Occasionally she looked, for a twinkle or two, the creature or vision she had been, as if to mock by reminding him. She was the abhorred delusion, who captured him by his nerves, ensnared his word--the doing of a foul witch. How had it leapt from his mouth? She must have worked for it. The word spoken--she must have known it--he was bound, or the detested Henrietta would have said: Not even true to his word!
To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his name, for a slip of his tongue, despite the warning sent her through her uncle, had that face much as a leaden winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant in colour. She belonged to the order of the variable animals--a woman indeed!--womanish enough in that. There are men who love women--the idea of woman. Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He loved freedom, loathed the subjection of a partnership; could undergo it only in adoration of an ineffable splendour. He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep to her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that subdued him. Seen by light of day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without her spells; that is, the skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among horrors and ironies. Let her have the credit of doing her work thoroughly before the exposure. She had done it.
She might have helped--such was the stipulation of his mad freak in consenting to the bondage--yes, she might have helped to soften the sting of his wound. She was beside him bearing his name, for the perpetual pouring of an acid on the wound that vile Henrietta--poisoned honey of a girl!--had dealt.
He glanced down at his possession:--heaven and the yawning pit were the contrast! Poisoned honey is after all honey while you eat it. Here there was nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness. And who was she? She was the sister of Henrietta"s husband. He was expected to embrace the sister of Henrietta"s husband. Those two were on their bridal tour.
This creature was also the daughter of an ancient impostor and desperado called the Old Buccaneer; a distinguished member of the family of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly acquitted, men said, on a trial for murder. An eminent alliance! Society considered the Earl of Fleetwood wildish, though he could manage his affairs. He and his lawyers had them under strict control. How of himself? The prize of the English marriage market had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride the daughter of the Old Buccaneer. He was to mix his blood with the blood of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying pallid under the hesitating acquittal of a divided jury.
How had he come to this pa.s.s, which swung him round to think almost regretfully of the scorned mult.i.tude of fair besiegers in the market, some of whom had their unpoetic charms?
He was renowned and unrivalled as the man of stainless honour: the one living man of his word. He had never broken it--never would. There was his distinction among the herd. In that, a man is princely above princes. The n.o.bility of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, surpa.s.sed the n.o.bility of common n.o.bles. But, by all that is holy, he pays for his distinction.
The creature beside him is a franked issue of her old pirate of a father in one respect--nothing frightens her. There she sits; not a screw of her brows or her lips; and the coach rocked, they were sharp on a spill midway of the last descent. It rocks again. She thinks it scarce worth while to look up to rea.s.sure him. She is looking over the country.
"Have you been used to driving?" he said.
She replied: "No, it is new to me on a coach."
Carinthia felt at once how wild the wish or half expectation that he would resume the glowing communion of the night which had plighted them.
She did not this time say "my husband," still it flicked a whip at his ears.
She had made it more offensive, by so richly toning the official t.i.tle just won from him as to ring it on the nerves; one had to block it or be invaded. An antic.i.p.ation that it would certainly recur haunted every opening of her mouth.
Now that it did not, he felt the gap, relieved, and yet p.r.i.c.ked to imagine a mimicry of her tones, for the odd foreignness of the word and the sound. She had a voice of her own besides her courage. At the altar, her responses had their music. No wonder: the day was hers. "My husband"
was a manner of saying "my fish."
He, spoke very civilly. "Oblige me by telling me what name you are accustomed to answer to."
She seemed unaware of an Arctic husband, and replied: "My father called me Carin--short for Carinthia. My mother called me Janey; my second name is Jane. My brother Chillon says both. Henrietta calls me Janey."
The creature appeared dead flesh to goads. But the name of her sister-in-law on her lips returned the stroke neatly. She spared him one whip, to cut him with another.
"You have not informed me which of these names you prefer."
"Oh, my husband, it is as you shall please."
Fleetwood smartened the trot of his team, and there was a to-do with the rakish leaders.
Fairies of a malignant humour in former days used to punish the unhappiest of the naughty men who were not favourites, by suddenly planting a hump on their backs. Off the bedevilled wretches pranced, and they kicked, they snorted, whinnied, rolled, galloped, outflying the wind, but not the dismal rider. Marriage is our incubus now. No explanation is offered of why we are afflicted; we have simply offended, or some one absent has offended, and we are handy. The spiteful hag of power ties a wife to us; perhaps for the reason, that we behaved in the spirit of a better time by being chivalrously honourable. Wives are just as inexplicable curses, just as ineradicable and astonishing as humps imposed on shapely backs.
Fleetwood lashed his horses until Carinthia"s low cry of entreaty rose to surprise. That stung him.