"A little girl at the greengrocer"s hard by? She sold me apples; rather pretty," said Gower.
"A fine grown girl now--Madge Winch; a comely wench she is. It breaks her sister Sarah"s heart. They both manage the little shop; they make it prosper in a small way; enough, and what need they more? Then Christopher Ines has on one of his matches. Madge drives her cart out, if it "s near town. She"s off down into Kent to-day by coach, Sarah tells me. A great n.o.bleman patronizes Christopher; a Lord Fleetwood, a lord of wealth. And he must be thoughtful for these people: he sent Sarah word that Christopher should not touch drink. You may remember a butcher Ines in the street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad, always at "best man" with every boy he met: went to sea--ran away. He returned a pugilist. The girl will be nursing him now. I have spoken to her of him; and I trust to her; but I mourn her attachment to the man who drinks."
"The lord"s name?" said Gower.
"Lord Fleetwood, Sarah named him. And so it pleases him to spend his money!"
"He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. He promises to be a patron of Literature as well. His mother was a South Wales woman."
"Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?" Mr.
Woodseer said at once.
"No man more likely."
"If you see him, suggest it."
"Very little chance of my meeting him again. But those Triads! They"re in our blood. They spring to tie knots in the head. They push me to condense my thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive times: but they--or the trick of the mind engendered by them--trip my steps along the lines of composition. I produce pellets instead of flowing sheets. It"ll come right. At present I "m so bent to pick and perfect, polish my phrase, that I lose my survey. As a consequence, my vocabulary falters."
"Ah," Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. "This Literature is to be your profession for the means of living?"
"Nothing else. And I"m so low down in the market way of it, that I could not count on twenty pounds per annum. Fifty would give me standing, an independent fifty."
"To whom are you crying, Gower?"
"Not to gamble, you may be sure."
"You have a home."
"Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. I"ve too much of you in me for a comfortable pensioner."
"Or is it not, that you have been living the gentleman out there, with just a holiday t.i.tle to it?"
Gower was. .h.i.t by his father"s thrust. "I shall feel myself a pieman"s chuckpenny as long as I"m unproductive, now I "ve come back and have to own to a home," he said.
Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather brightened him until he considered that the enlivenment was due to a purchase by money, of which he was incapable, and he rejected it, like an honourable man.
Simultaneously, the state of depression threw critic shades on a prized sentence or two among his recent confections. It was rejected for the best of reasons and the most discomforting: because it racked our English; signifying, that he had not yet learnt the right use of his weapons.
He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for several days, hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit"s victory, and hearing of Sarah Winch"s anxiety on account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of joy or grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, with Baden"s Madonna for sole illumination of his darkness. To her, to the illimitable gold-mist of perspective and the innumerable images the thought of her painted for him, he owed the lift which withdrew him from contemplation of himself in a very disturbing stagnant pool of the wastes; wherein often will strenuous youth, grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll inscribed Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied into that pool, and have seen the face. His glorious lady would not let it haunt him.
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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 a.s.surances 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 pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.sion, 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 s.m.u.t-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 n.o.bleman, 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.surances 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."