The question hardly needs be put.
Rose Mackrell or his humour answered it in unfaltering terms.
London heard, with the variety of feelings which are indistinguishable under a flooding amazement, that the beautiful new fruit and flower shop had been purchased and stocked by the fabulously wealthy young Earl of Fleetwood, to give his Whitechapel Countess a taste for business, an occupation, and an honourable means of livelihood.
There was, Dame Gossip thumps to say, a general belief in this report.
Crowds were on the pavement, peering through the shop-windows. Carriages driving by stopped to look. My lord himself had been visible, displaying his array of provisions to friends. Nor was credulity damped appreciably when over the shop, in gold letters, appeared the name of Sarah Winch.
It might be the countess"s maiden name, if she really was a married countess.
But, in truth, the better informed of the town, having begun to think its Croesus capable of any eccentricity, chose to believe. They were at the pitch of excitement which demands and will swallow a succession of wilder extravagances. To accelerate the delirium of the fun, nothing was too much, because any absurdity was antic.i.p.ated. And the earl"s readiness to be complimented on the shop"s particular merits, his gratified air at an allusion to it, whirled the fun faster. He seemed entirely unconscious that each step he now took wakened peals.
For such is the fate of a man who has come to be dogged by the humourist for the provision he furnishes; and, as it happens, he is the more laughable if not in himself a laughable object. The earl"s handsome figure, fine style, and contrasting sobriety heightened the burlesque of his call to admiration of a shop where Whitechapel would sit in state-according to the fiction so closely under the lee of fact that they were not strictly divisible. Moreover, Sarah Winch, whom Chumley Potts drew into conversation, said, he vowed, she came up West from Whitechapel. She said it a little nervously, but without blushing.
Always on the side of the joke, he could ask: "Who can doubt?" Indeed, scepticism poisoned the sport.
The Old Buccaneer has written: Friends may laugh; I am not roused. My enemy"s laugh is a bugle blown in the night.
Our enemy"s laugh at us rouses to wariness, he would say. He can barely mean, that a condition of drowsihead is other than providently warned by laughter of friends. An old warrior"s tough fibre would, perhaps, be insensible to that small crackle. In civil life, however, the friend"s laugh at us is the loudest of the danger signals to stop our course: and the very wealthy n.o.bleman, who is known for not a fool, is kept from hearing it. Unless he does hear it, he can have no suspicion of its being about him: he cannot imagine such "lese-majeste" in the subservient courtiers too prudent to betray a sign. So Fleetwood was unwarned; and his child-like unconsciousness of the boiling sentiments around, seasoned, p.r.i.c.ked, and maddened his parasites under compression to invent, for a faint relief. He had his t.i.tle for them, they their tales of him.
Dame Gossip would recount the tales. She is of the order of persons inclining to suspect the t.i.ttle of truth in prodigies of scandal. She is rustling and bustling to us of "Carinthia Jane"s run up to London to see Sarah Winch"s grand new shop," an eclipse of all existing grand London western shops; and of Rose Mackrell"s account of her dance of proud delight in the shop, ending with a "lovely cheese" just as my lord enters; and then a scene, wild beyond any conceivable "for pathos and humour"--her pet pair of the dissimilar twins, both banging at us for tear-drops by different roads, through a common aperture:--and the earl has the Whitechapel baby boy plumped into his arms; and the countess fetches him a splendid bob-dip and rises out of a second cheese to twirl and fandango it; and, all serious on a sudden, request, whimperingly beseech, his thanks to her for the crowing successor she has presented him with: my lord ultimately, but carefully, depositing the infant on a basket of the last oranges of the season, fresh from the Azores, by delivery off my lord"s own schooner-yacht in Southampton water; and escaping, leaving his gold-headed stick behind him--a trophy for the countess? a weapon, it may be.
Quick she tucks up her skirts, she is after him. Dame Gossip speaks amusingly enough of the chase, and many eye-witnesses to the earl"s flight at top speed down the right side of the way along by the Green Park; and of a Prince of the Blood, a portly Royal Duke on foot, b.u.mped by one or the other of them, she cannot precisely say which, but "thinks it to have been Carinthia Jane," because the exalted personage, his shock of surprise abating, turned and watched the chase, in much merriment. And it was called, we are informed, "The Piccadilly Hare and Hound" from that day.
Some tradition of an extenuated n.o.bleman pursued by a light-footed lady amid great excitement, there is; the Dame attaches importance also to verses of one of the ballads beginning to gain currency at the time (issuing ostensibly from London"s poetic centre, the Seven Dials, which had, we are to conjecture, got the story by discolouring filtration through footmen retailing in public-houses the stock of anecdotes they gathered when stationed behind Rose Mackrell"s chair, or Captain Abrane"s, or Chumley "Potts"s), and would have the whole of it quoted:--
""Tho" fair I be a powdered peruke, And once was a gaping silly, Your Whitechapel Countess will prove, Lord Duke, She"s a regular tiger-lily.
She"ll fight you with cold steel or she"ll run you off your legs Down the length of Piccadilly!"
That will satisfy; and perhaps indicate the hand.
"Popular sympathy, of course, was all on the side of the Fair, as ever in those days when women had not forfeited it by stepping from their sanctuary seclusion."
The Dame shall expose her confusions. She really would seem to fancy that the ballad verifies the main lines of the story, which is an impossible one. Carinthia had not the means to travel: she was moneyless. Every bill of her establishment was paid without stint by Mr.
Howell Edwards, the earl"s manager of mines; but she had not even the means for a journey to the Gowerland rocks she longed to see. She had none since she forced her brother to take the half of her share of their inheritance, L1400, and sent him the remainder.
Accepted by Chillon John as a loan, says Dame Gossip, and no sooner received than consumed by the pressing necessities of a husband with the Rose Beauty of England to support in the comforts and luxuries he deemed befitting.
Still the Dame leans to her opinion that "Carinthia Jane" may have been seen about London: for "where we have much smoke there must be fire."
And the countess never denying an imputation not brought against her in her hearing, the ballad was unchallenged and London"s wags had it their own way. Among the reasons why they so persistently hunted the earl, his air of a smart correctness shadowed by this new absurdity invited them, as when a spot of mud on the trimmest of countenances arrests observation: Humour plucked at him the more for the good faith of his handsome look under the prolific little disfigurement. Besides, a wealthy despot, with no conception of any hum around him, will have the wags in his track as surely as the flexibles in front: they avenge his exactions.
Fleetwood was honestly unaware of ridicule in the condition of inventive mania at his heels. Scheming, and hesitating to do, one-half of his mind was absorbed with the problem of how now to treat the mother of his boy. Her behaviour in becoming a mother was acknowledged to be good: the production of a boy was good--considerate, he almost thought. He grew so far reconciled to her as to have intimations of a softness coming on; a wish to hear her speak of the trifling kindness done to the sister of Madge in reward of kindness done to her; wishes for looks he remembered, secret to him, more his own than any possessions. Dozens of men had wealth, some had beautiful wives; none could claim as his own that face of the look of sharp steel melting into the bridal flower, when she sprang from her bed to defend herself and recognized the intruder at her window; stood smitten:--"It is my, husband." Moonlight gave the variation of her features.
And that did not appease the resentment tearing him from her, so justifiable then, as he forced himself to think, now hideous. Glimpses of the pictures his deeds painted of him since his first meeting with this woman had to be shunned. He threw them off; they were set down to the mystery men are. The degrading, utterly different, back view of them teaches that Life is an irony. If the teaching is not accepted, and we are to take the blame, can we bear to live? Therefore, either way the irony of Life is proved. Young men straining at thought, in the grip of their sensations, reach this logical conclusion. They will not begin by examining the ground they stand on, and questioning whether they have consciences at peace with the steps to rearward.
Having established Life as the coldly malignant element, which induces to what it chastises, a loathing of womanhood, the deputed Mother of Life, ensues, by natural sequence. And if there be one among women who disturbs the serenity we choose to think our due, she wears for us the sinister aspect of a confidential messenger between Nemesis and the Parcae. Fleetwood was thus compelled to regard Carinthia as both originally and successively the cause of his internal as well as his exterior discomfort; otherwise those glimpses would have burnt into perpetual stigmas. He had also to get his mind away from her. They pleaded against him volubly with the rising of her image into it.
His manager at the mines had sent word of ominous discontent down there.
His presence might be required. Obviously, then, the threatened place was unfitting for the Countess of Fleetwood. He despatched a kind of order through Mr. Howell Edwards, that she should remove to Esslemont to escape annoyances. Esslemont was the preferable residence. She could there entertain her friends, could spend a pleasanter time there.
He waited for the reply; Edwards deferred it.
Were they to be in a struggle with her obstinate will once more?
Henrietta was preparing to leave London for her dismal, narrow, and, after an absence, desired love-nest. The earl called to say farewell, cool as a loyal wife could wish him to be, admiring perforce. Marriage and maternity withdrew nothing--added to the fair young woman"s bloom.
She had gone to her room to pack and dress. Livia received him. In the midst of the casual commonplaces her memory was enlightened.
"Oh," said she, and idly drew a letter out of a blottingpad, "we have heard from Wales." She handed it to him.
Before he knew the thing he did, he was reading:
"There is no rest foamy brother, and I cannot help; I am kept so poor I have not the smallest of sums. I do not wish to leave Wales--the people begin to love me; and can one be mistaken? I know if I am loved or hated. But if my lord will give me an allowance of money of some hundreds, I will do his bidding; I will leave England or I will go to Esslemont; I could say--to Mr. Woodseer, in that part of London. He would not permit. He thinks me blacked by it, like a sweepboy coming from a chimney; and that I have done injury to his t.i.tle. No, Riette, to be a true sister, I must bargain with my lord before I submit. He has not cared to come and see his little son. His boy has not offended him.
There may be some of me in this dear. I know whose features will soon show to defend the mother"s good name. He is early my champion. He is not christened yet, and I hear it accuse me, and I am not to blame,--I still wait my lord"s answer."
"Don"t be bothered to read the whole," Livia had said, with her hand out, when his eyes were halfway down the page.
Fleetwood turned it, to read the signature: "Janey."
She seemed servile enough to some of her friends. "Carinthia" would have had--a pleasanter sound. He folded the letter.
"Why give me this? Take it,"--said he.
She laid it on the open pad.
Henrietta entered and had it restored to her, Livia remarking: "I found it in the blotter after all."
She left them together, having to dress for the drive to the coach office with Henrietta.
"Poor amus.e.m.e.nt for you this time." Fleetwood bowed, gently smiling.
"Oh!" cried Henrietta, "b.a.l.l.s, routs, dinners, music--as much music as I could desire, even I! What more could be asked? I am eternally grateful."
"The world says, you are more beautiful than ever."
"Happiness does it, then,--happiness owing to you, Lord Fleetwood."
"Columelli pleases you?"
"His voice is heavenly! He carries me away from earth."
"He is a gentleman, too-rare with those fellows."
"A pretty manner. He will speak his compliments in his English."
"You are seasoned to endure them in all languages. Pity another of your wounded: Brailstone has been hard hit at the tables.
"I cannot pity gamblers.--May I venture?--half a word?"
"Tomes! But just a little compa.s.sion for the devoted. He wouldn"t play so madly--if, well, say a tenth dilution of the rapt hearing Columelli gets."