Her name on the earl"s lips drew a keen shot of the eye from Mr. Wythan, and he read the signification of the spoken name. "You know what every Cambrian living thinks of her, my lord."
"She shall not have one friend the less for me."
Fleetwood"s hand was out for a good-bye, and the hand was grasped by one who looked happy in doing it. He understood and trusted the man after that, warmed in thinking how politic his impulses could be.
His intention of riding up to Croridge at noon to request his interview with Mr. Kirby-Levellier was then stated.
"The key of the position, as you said," Mr. Wythan remarked, not proffering an opinion of it more than was expressed by a hearty, rosy countenance, that had to win its way with the earl before excuse was found for the venturesome repet.i.tion of his phrase.
Cantering back to that home of the loves of Gower Woodseer and Madge Winch, the thought of his first act of penance done, without his feeling the poorer for it, reconciled Fleetwood to the aspect of the hollow place.
He could not stay beneath the roof. His task of breakfasting done, he was off before the morning"s delivery of letters, riding round the country under Croridge, soon up there again. And Henrietta might be at home, he was reminded by hearing band-music as he followed the directions to the house named Stoneridge. The band consisted of eight wind instruments; they played astonishingly well for itinerant musicians. By curious chance, they were playing a selection from the Pirata; presently he heard the notes to "il mio tradito amor." They had hit upon Henrietta"s favourite piece!
At the close of it he dismounted, flung the reins to his groom, and, addressing a compliment to the leader, was deferentially saluted with a "my lord." Henrietta stood at the window, a servant held the door open for him to enter; he went in, and the beautiful young woman welcomed him: "Oh, my dear lord, you have given me such true delight! How very generous of you!" He protested ignorance. She had seen him speak to the conductor and receive the patron"s homage; and who but he knew her adored of operas, or would have had the benevolent impulse to think of solacing her exile from music in the manner so sure of her taste! She was at her loveliest: her features were one sweet bloom, as of the sunny flower garden; and, touched to the heart by the music and the kindness, she looked the look that kisses; innocently, he felt, feeling himself on the same good ground while he could own he admired the honey creature, much as an amateur may admire one of the pictures belonging to the nation.
"And you have come...?" she said. "We are to believe in happy endings?"
He shrugged, as the modest man should, who says:
"If it depends on me"; but the words were firmly spoken and could be credited.
"Janey is with her brother down at Lekkatts. Things are at a deadlock.
A spice of danger, enough to relieve the dulness; and where there is danger Janey"s at home." Henrietta mimicked her Janey. "Parades with her brother at night; old military cap on her head; firearms primed; sings her Austrian mountain songs or the Light Cavalry call, till it rings all day in my ears--she has a thrilling contralto. You are not to think her wild, my lord. She"s for adventure or domesticity, "whichever the Fates decree." She really is coming to the perfect tone."
"Speak of her," said the earl. "She can"t yet overlook...?"
"It"s in the family. She will overlook anything her brother excuses."
"I"m here to see him."
"I heard it from Mr. Wythan."
""Owain," I believe?"
Henrietta sketched apologies, with a sidled head, soft pout, wavy hand. "He belongs to the order of primitive people. His wife--the same pattern, one supposes--pledged them to their Christian names. The man is a simpleton, but a gentleman; and Janey holds his dying wife"s wish sacred. We are all indebted to him."
"Whatever she thinks right!" said Fleetwood.
The fair young woman"s warm nature flew out to him on a sparkle of grateful tenderness in return for his magnanimity, oblivious of the inflamer it was: and her heart thanked him more warmly, without the perilous show of emotion, when she found herself secure.
She was beautiful, she was tempting, and probably the weakest of players in the ancient game of two; and clearly she was not disposed to the outlaw game; was only a creature of ardour. That he could see, seeing the misinterpretation a fellow like Brailstone would put upon a temporary flush of the feminine, and the advantage he would take of it, perhaps not unsuccessfully--the dog! He committed the absurdity of casting a mental imprecation at the cunning tricksters of emotional women, and yelled at himself in the worn old surplice of the converted rake. But letting his mind run this way, the tradito amor of the band outside the lady"s window was instantly traced to Lord Brailstone; so convincingly, that he now became a very counsel for an injured husband in denunciation of the seductive compliment.
Henrietta prepared to conduct him to Lekkatts; her bonnet was brought.
She drew forth a letter from a silken work-bag, and raised it,--Livia"s handwriting. "I "ve written my opinion," he said.
"Not too severe, pray."
"Posted."
"Livia wanted a protector."
"And chose--what on earth are you saying!"
Livia and her boyish lord were abandoned on the spot, though Henrietta could have affirmed stoutly that there was much to be pleaded, if a female advocate dared it, and a man would but hear.
His fingers were at the leaves of a Spanish dictionary.
"Oh yes, and here we have a book of Travels in Spain," she said.
"Everything Spanish for Janey now. You are aware?--no?"
He was unaware and desired to be told.
"Janey"s latest idea; only she would have conceived the notion. You solve our puzzle, my lord."
She renewed the thanks she persisted in offering for the military music now just ceasing: vexatiously, considering that it was bad policy for him to be unmasking Brailstone to her. At the same time, the blindness which rendered her unconscious of Brailstone"s hand in sending members of a military band to play selections from the favourite opera they had jointly drunk of to ecstasy, was creditable; touching, when one thought of the pursuer"s many devices, not omitting some treason on the part of her present friend.
"Tell me--I solve?" he said....
Henrietta spied the donkey-basket bearing the two little ones.
"Yes, I hope so--on our way down," she made answer. "I want you to see the pair of love-birds in a nest."
The boy and girl were seen lying side by side, both fast asleep; fair-haired girl, dark-haired boy, faced to one another.
"Temper?" said Fleetwood, when he had taken observation of them.
"Very imperious--Mr. Boy!" she replied, straightening her back under a pretty frown, to convey the humour of the infant tyrant.
The father"s mind ran swiftly on a comparison of the destinies of the two children, from his estimate of their parents; many of Gower Woodseer"s dicta converging to reawaken thoughts upon Nature"s laws, which a knowledge of his own nature blackened. He had to persuade himself that this child of his was issue of a loving union; he had to do it violently, conjuring a vivid picture of the mother in bud, and his recognition of her young charm; the pain of keeping to his resolve to quit her, lest she should subjugate him and despoil him of his wrath; the fatalism in his coming and going; the romantic freak it had been,--a situation then so clearly wrought, now blurred past comprehension. But there must have been love, or some love on his part. Otherwise he was bound to pray for the mother to predominate in the child, all but excluding its father.
Carinthia"s image, as a result, ascended sovereignty, and he hung to it.
For if we are human creatures with consciences, nothing is more certain than that we make our taskmasters of those to whom we have done a wrong, the philosopher says. Between Lord Feltre and Gower Woodseer, influenced pretty equally by each of them, this young n.o.bleman was wakening to the claims of others--Youth"s infant conscience. Fleetwood now conceived the verbal supplication for his wife"s forgiveness involved in the act of penance; and verbal meant abject; with him, going so far, it would mean naked, precise, no slurring. That he knew, and a tremor went over him.
Women, then, are really the half of the world in power as much as in their number, if men pretend to a step above the savage. Or, well, his wife was a power.
He had forgotten the puzzle spoken of by Henrietta, when she used the word again and expressed her happiness in the prospect before them--caused by his presence, of course.
"You are aware, my dear lord, Janey worships her brother. He was defeated, by some dastardly contrivance, in a wager to do wonderful feats--for money! money! money! a large stake. How we come off our high horses! I hadn"t an idea of money before I was married. I think of little else. My husband has notions of honour; he engaged himself to pay a legacy of debts; his uncle would not pay debts long due to him. He was reduced to the shift of wagering on his great strength and skill. He could have done it. His enemy managed--enemy there was! He had to sell out of the army in consequence. I shall never have Janey"s face of suffering away from my sight. He is a soldier above all things. It seems hard on me, but I cannot blame him for s.n.a.t.c.hing at an opportunity to win military distinction. He is in treaty for the post of aide to the Colonel--the General of the English contingent bound for Spain, for the cause of the Queen. My husband will undertake to be at the orders of his chief as soon as he can leave this place. Janey goes with him, according to present arrangements."
Pa.s.sing through a turnstile, that led from the road across a meadow-slope to the broken land below, Henrietta had view of the earl"s hard white face, and she hastened to say: "You have altered that, my lord. She is devoted to her brother; and her brother running dangers...
and danger in itself is an attraction to her. But her husband will have the first claim. She has her good sense. She will never insist on going, if you oppose. She will be ready to fill her station. It will be-her pride and her pleasure."
Henrietta continued in the vein of these a.s.surances; and Carinthia"s character was shooting lightnings through him, withering that of the woman who referred to his wife"s good sense and her station; and certainly would not have betrayed herself by such drawlings if she had been very positive that Carinthia"s disposition toward wealth and luxury resembled hers. She knew the reverse; or so his contemptuously generous effort to frame an apology for the stuff he was hearing considered it.
His wife was lost to him. That fact smote on his breast the moment he heard of her desire to go with her brother.
Wildest of enterprises! But a criminal saw himself guilty of a large part in the disaster the two heroical souls were striving desperately to repair. If her Chillon went, Carinthia would go--sure as flame is drawn to air. The exceeding splendour in the character of a young woman, injured as she had been, soft to love, as he knew her, and giving her husband no other rival than a beloved brother, no ground of complaint save her devotion to her brother, pervaded him, without illuminating or lifting; rather with an indication of a foul contrast, that prostrated him.
Half of our funny heathen lives we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away! was one of the numbers of apposite sayings that hummed about him, for a chorus of the world"s old wisdom in derision, when he descended the heathy path and had sight of Carinthia beside her Chillon.