“Miss Kitty,” he began, turning very red, “some time ago I was penniless, almost starving, and detained in the (absurdly called) Liberties of the Fleet for the amount of forty pounds sixteen shillings and eightpence – a sum so small that it made me blush to confess it, most of my friends in the same place being incarcerated for substantial sums of hundreds and even thousands. In this difficult position, which required the philosophy of a Stoic to endure with resignation, I had the temerity to offer my hand to the most beautiful woman in the world. I have often, since, wondered at my own audacity and her gentleness while she refused so presumptuous a proposal.”
“Indeed, Mr. Stallabras,” I said, “you conferred great honour upon me.”
He bowed.
“The position of affairs,” he went on, “is now changed. The poet’s brows are crowned with bays by the hand of a lady as skilled in poets as she is in pug-dogs; his pockets are lined with guineas; as for the Fleet Rules – I whistle the memory of the place to the winds. Phew! it is gone, never to return: I see before me a long and great future, when booksellers will compete for the honour of publishing me, and the greatest lords and ladies in the land will rush to subscribe for copies. Like Shakespeare, I shall amass a fortune: like Prior, I shall receive offers of embassies: like Addison and Chaucer, I shall be placed in posts of honour and profit.”
“I hope, Mr. Stallabras,” I said, “that such will indeed be your future.”
“Do you really hope so, Miss Kitty?” His face flushed again, and I was quite sorry for him, knowing the pain I was about to inflict upon him. “Do you hope so? Then that emboldens me to say – Fairest of your sex, divine nymph, accept the homage of a poet: be celebrated for ever in his immortal verse. Be my Laura! Let me be thy Petrarch!”
“I will,” I replied. “I accept that offer joyfully. I will be to you what Laura was to Petrarch, if that will content you.”
I gave him my hand, which he seized with rapture.
“Oh, beautiful Kitty!” he cried, with such joy in his eyes that I repented having said so much, “fortune has now bestowed upon me all I ask. When, goddess, wilt thou crown my happiness!”
“It is already crowned,” I replied. “I have given you, Mr. Stallabras, all you asked for. Let me remind you that you yourself told me the story of Petrarch’s love. I will be your Laura, but I must have the liberty of doing what Laura did – namely, the right to marry some one else.”
His face fell.
“Oh!” he murmured. “Why did I not say Heloïse?”
“Because she was shut up in a convent. Come, Mr. Stallabras, let us remain friends, which is far better for both of us, and less trying to the temper than being lovers. And I will help you with your subscription-book. As for being married, you would tire of me in a week.”
Upon this he fell to protesting that it was impossible for any man to tire of such a paragon among women, and I dare say the poor deluded creature really meant what he said, because men in love are blind. When this failed to move me, he lamented his ill-fortune in having placed his hopes upon the heart of a beautiful statue as cold as Dian. Nor was it until he had prophesied death to himself and prayed for ruin and loss of his fame, both of which, he said, were now useless, or comparatively useless to him, that I succeeded in making him, to a certain extent, reasonable, and calming his anger. He really had thought that so grand an offer of marriage with a poet, whom he placed on about the same level with Homer, would tempt any woman. According to some detractors of the fair sex, every woman believes that every man must fall in love with her: but I am sure that there is no man who does not believe that he is irresistible when once he begins to show a preference or an inclination.
I then persuaded him, with honeyed words, to believe in my sorrow that I was not able to accept his proposals; and I added that as he had by this time sufficiently admired the beauties of the landscape, we might return to the town, when I should have the honour of presenting him to some of the better sort among the visitors.
He came down the hill with me, sighing after the manner of poets in love, and panting a little, because he was fat and short of breath, and I walked fast.
We found the Terrace crowded with people congregated for the morning talk; the breakfasts being all eaten, the tea-drinking over, morning prayers finished, and the music playing merrily.
I presented the poet to Lady Levett as an ingenious gentleman whose verses, known all over town, were doubtless already well known to her ladyship. She had not the hardness of heart to deny knowledge of the poet, and gave him a kindly welcome to Epsom, where, she said, she had no doubt whatever but that he would meet with the reception due to qualities of such distinction.
Then I ventured to suggest that Mr. Stallabras was receiving names for a subscription edition of his new poems. Lady Levett added hers, and begged the poet to visit her at her lodging, where she would discharge her debt.
In the course of an hour I presented Stallabras to young Lord Eardesley, Harry Temple, and half the gentlemen at the Wells, asking of each a subscription to the poems, so that the fortunate poet found himself some fifty guineas the richer by his morning’s work.
“Miss Kitty,” he said humbly, “I knew not, indeed, that you were so great a lady. The ‘Queen of the Wells,’ I am told. Not but all who know your worth and kindness must rejoice at this signal triumph. I now plainly see why I must be content with the lot of Petrarch.”
Once launched in society, the poet became quickly a kind of celebrity. Just as, in some years, a watering-place would boast of having among its visitors such famous men as Dr. Johnson, Mr. Garrick, or Mr. Richardson, so now it pointed to Mr. Stallabras, and said to strangers, “See! The great Mr. Stallabras! The illustrious poet!”
He, like all men born in London, was equal to the opportunity, and rose on the wave of fashion; his subscription-list kept mounting up; he sent his poems to the press; he received proofs and read them beneath the portico, which he compared to the columns where the Roman poets had been accustomed to read their compositions. We gathered round and listened; we cried, with our handkerchiefs to our eyes: “O Mr. Stallabras, how fine! how wondrous pathetic! how just!” Then would he bow and twist, and wave his hand, and wag his head.
He became an oracle, and, like all oracles in the matter of taste, he quickly learned to give the law. He affected to understand pictures, and talked about the “brio” of one painter, and the “three-lights” rule of another; he was very sarcastic in the matter of poetry, and would allow but two good poets in the century – himself and Mr. Alexander Pope; in the region of romance he would allow little credit to Fielding, but claimed immortality for Richardson.
“Oh, sir, pardon me,” he said to one who attributed the greater merit to the former writer. “Pardon me. The characters and the situations of Fielding are so wretchedly low and dirty that I cannot imagine any one being interested in them. There is, I admit, some strength of humour in him, but he hath over-written himself. I doubt he is a strong hulking sort of man.”
“But, sir,” said Lady Levett, “we ladies like men to be strong and hearty as becomes a man. You surely do not mean that every big man must have low tastes.”
“The mind and the body are united,” said the little poet, “they influence one another. Thus, in a weak frame we find delicacy, and in a strong frame, bluntness. Softness and tenderness of mind are often remarkable in a body possessed of the same qualities. Tom Jones could get drunk on the night of his uncle’s recovery – no doubt Mr. Fielding would manifest his joy in the same manner.”
He went on to assure us that Lady Bellaston was an intimate friend of Mr. Fielding’s; that Booth was himself; Tom Jones, again, himself; Amelia his first wife; his brawls, gaols, sponging-houses, and quarrels all drawn from his own personal experience.
“He who associates with low companions, ladies,” concluded the ex-prisoner of the Fleet, “must needs himself be low. Taste consorts only with tasteful persons.”
“Should not a lady be beautiful, Mr. Stallabras?” asked a bystander. “I always supposed so, but since a man is not to be strong, perhaps I was wrong.”
“Sir!” Mr. Stallabras drew himself up to his fall height, and his fingers closed upon the roll of proof-sheets as if it had been a sword-hilt. “Sir! all ladies – who have taste – are beautiful. I am ready to be the champion of the sex. Some are more beautiful than others,” – here he raised his eyes to me and sighed. “Some flowers are more beautiful than others. The man of taste loves to let his eyes rest on such a pleasing object,” – here two young gentlemen winked at each other – “she is a credit to her sex. When goodness is joined to such beauty, as is the case with – ” Here he looked at me and hesitated.
“Oh!” cried Nancy, “say with me, Mr. Stallabras, or Miss Peggy Baker.”
“May I say Miss Pleydell?” he asked, with a comprehensive smile. “There, indeed, is all Clarissa, and the heart of sensibility, in contemplating her perfections, reverts to the scenes of our divine Richardson.”
CHAPTER XI
HOW SIR MILES RENEWED HIS OFFER
Thus did I get rid of one suitor, knowing that there were still two more in the field, and anxious about my lord’s absence, which, I doubted not, was concerned in some way with me. Heavens! if he should find out the secret! If the Doctor should communicate to him the thing which I desired to tell at my own time and place.
The Evil One, at this juncture, suggested a temptation of his own.
Suppose a message, which my lord could trust, were to reach him, stating that there would be no attempt to follow up the so-called marriage in the Rules, that he could go his own way, unmolested; that the very certificate and the leaf of the register containing the proof of the marriage would be restored to him – how would that be?
Yet, what sort of happiness could a wife expect who every day had to fear the chance of detection and exposure? Some time or other he would learn that I was the niece of the man who had dealt him this blow; some day he would learn the whole story. Why, there was not only the Doctor, but his man Roger, the villain with the pale face, the scarred cheeks, and the red nose. If the Doctor were dead, what would prevent such a man from telling the story abroad and proclaiming it to all comers?
For poor Kitty there was only one course open; she must work her way to happiness through shame and confession. Yet with all the shame and confession there was no certainty that the happiness would follow. A man vehemently loves and desires a woman, but a woman vehemently desires the love and desire of a man. I desired, with all my strength and with all my might, the affections of my lord. His image, his idea, were with me always. For me there was no other man in the world.
But first I had to deal with my present suitors.
Solomon dismissed, and made happy with praises and guineas (a poet is a creature whose vanity seems always to outweigh all other qualities), I had next to reckon with Sir Miles, who was more reasonable and yet more persistent.
I knew that he had come to Epsom on purpose to seek me out. That was borne in upon me with a force not to be resisted. He always did me the honour of showing me a preference when we lived under the same roof, and when he would lie in wait for me at the foot of the sanded stairs. And, of course, I liked him. He was good-natured, he had the air noble; he would not, certainly, beat his wife or treat her unkindly, although he would probably spend all the money in drink and play. And whether he was rich or poor, in the Rules or in the Prison, or wandering free, he would still be the same easy, careless creature, happy in the sunshine, happier by candlelight over a bowl of punch.
On the Terrace, where we met him in the afternoon, he was the same, save that his clothes were newer, as when, just as he lounged now beneath the trees, he had then lounged among the bulkheads and stalls of the market, till evening came with the joys of the day. Always with the carriage of a gentleman. Most of the beaux of Epsom were such gentlemen as claim the title of Esquire by right of their profession as attorneys, barristers, officers, nabobs, rich merchants, and the like. As for their manners, they were easy so long as they were natural, and then they were somewhat barbarous; when they endeavoured to assume the manners of such as Lord Chudleigh, they were awkward. As for the young fellows from the country estates, they were always clowns; they came clowns to the Wells; they put on fine clothes; laughed and grimaced; lost their money at horse-racing and lansquenet, and went home clowns. But Sir Miles was always, even when drunk, a gentleman.
I suppose he had the impudence, at first, to suppose that I was going to seek him out and distinguish him before all the company with my particular regard. When he discovered that it was difficult to get speech with the Queen of the Wells unless you joined her court, he came along with the rest, and was speedily as ready with his compliment, his innuendo, his jest, and his anecdote. He was more ready than most, because he had seen the great world in his youth, and had caught their manner. The general run of gallants were, it seemed to me, afraid of him. To be sure, he was a big, strong man, could have crunched two or three of the slender beaux between his arms; yet he was the most kind-hearted fellow in the world.
Three days after his arrival, Lord Chudleigh having then been away for a week, and I beginning to wonder what business kept him so long from the apron strings of Kitty, he invited me to go with him to the Downs to see a match. I would go with him, though well I knew what he meant; and, of course, when we got to the Downs, the match was over and the people going home.
“Egad, Miss Kitty,” he said, “there is always such a plaguy crowd after your ladyship’s heels, that a man gets never a chance of a word with you, save edgeways with the pretty little beaux. Well, I have told Solomon to go to the house and take care of Mrs. Esther. There they are, cheek by jowl, and her handkerchief up to her eyes over his sentimental poetry. You and I can have a talk to ourselves. It is only a quarter of a mile from here to your lodging, but, if you like to come with me by way of the old well and Banstead, we can make it half a mile.”
“Thank you, Sir Miles,” I said; “I am not anxious to double that quarter of a mile. Consider, if you please, that I have to get home, dine, and dress for the day.”
“Very good. Have it your own way. That, to be sure, you always will have. I think, for my part, that you never looked so nice as when you wore your hair in curls, and a holland frock. Miss Kitty, do you remember a certain day when a baronet, out at elbows, offered you his hand – with nothing in it?”
“I remember it perfectly.” I laughed at the recollection. “And oh, Sir Miles, to think of how you looked when you made that condescending proposal. It was after a most disgraceful evening – you best know where. You had been brought home singing. Your neck-ribbon was untied, your wig awry, your hand shaky, your cheeks red, and in your left hand a brown mug full of old October. What a suitor!”
“Yes,” he replied, laughing, without the least appearance of being offended by my picture. “When in the Rules, I behaved according to the custom of the place. I am no longer in the Rules, but at the Wells. I remember that tankard. Considering that the day is sultry, I wish I had one in my hand this very moment.”
“I am sure, Sir Miles, that your conduct under these happier circumstances will reflect greater credit upon you.”
“Happier circumstances?” he said. “Well, I suppose so. In the Fleet I could borrow of my cousins a guinea a week or thereabout; yet borrowing is uncertain and undignified: the manner of living was cheap, but it was rude. Drink there was – more than one had a right to expect; drink was plentiful, but only the Doctor got good punch; no morals were expected of a Fleet Rules Christian. I know not that things are happier now than then. However, you might think so. Girls never have any philosophy. I have come into a small estate of six hundred pounds a year. It is not so much, by five times six hundred, as what I started with; still, with six hundred a year, one can live. Do you not think so?”
“It seems to me a very handsome provision,” I replied, thinking that Mrs. Esther had about the same.
“Yes, it will do.”
He fanned his face with his hat, and begged me to sit down on the grass and listen to him for a moment. Men, even the most careless, like Sir Miles, have a way of becoming suddenly solemn when they ask a woman to become their wife. I know not whether their gravity springs from a sense of their own great worth, or from a feeling of unworthiness; whether it is a compliment to the woman they woo, or to themselves. Or it may be a confession of the holiness of the state of matrimony, which one would fain hope to be the case.
Sir Miles then, blushing and confused, offered me, for the second time, his hand.
“You see,” he said, “the right hand doth no longer shake, nor doth the left hand hold a pot of October. I no longer am carried home at night.” He sighed, as if the reminiscence of past times was pleasing but saddening. “I am not any more the man that once I was. Will you, sweet Kitty – will you be Lady Lackington?”
“I cannot,” I said.
“There is an income of six hundred pounds a year,” he went on. “I believe there is a small house somewhere; we could live in it rent-free. You were always fond of hens and pigs, and milk, flowers, apples, and all these things. I will keep two hundred pounds for myself, and give you four. With two hundred I shall have to manage, once a week or so, a little hazard, or a trifling lansquenet.”
“What?” I asked. “Marry a gamester?”
“What matter as to that, when he will settle his money on his wife? Think of it, Kitty. I am a baronet, though a poor one, and of as good a family as any in Norfolk. Why the Lackingtons, as everybody knows, were on their lands before the Conqueror.”
“And if it is not enough to be a gamester, you are also – O Sir Miles! the shame of it – ”
“We gentlemen of Norfolk,” he replied, without any appearance of shame, “are honest topers all. I deny it not. Yet what matters such a trifle in the habits of a man? Did any gentlemen in the county drink harder than my father? Yet he was hale and tough at sixty, and would have lived to eighty but for a fall he got riding home one night after dinner, having a cask, or thereabouts, of port inside him, by reason of which he mistook an open quarry for the lane which should have led him home, and therefore broke his neck.”
“So that, if his wife loved him, as no doubt she did, it was the drink that robbed her of a husband. Your tale hath a useful moral, Sir Miles.”
“Come, pretty Puritan, look at me. I am twenty-nine – in my thirtieth year; strong and hearty, if I do get drunk of an evening. What then? Do you want to talk to your husband all night? Better know that he is safe asleep, and likely to remain asleep till the drink is gone out of his head.”
“Oh, the delights of wedlock! To have your husband brought home every night by four stout fellows!”
“Evening drink hurts no man. Have I a bottle nose? Do my hands shake? Are my cheeks fat and pale? Look at me, Kitty.” He held out his arms and laughed.
“Yes, Sir Miles,” I replied; “I think you are a very lusty fellow, and, in a wrestling-bout, I should think few could stand against you. But as a husband, for the reasons I have stated, I say – No!”
“Take the four hundred, Kitty, and make me happy. I love thee, my girl, with all my heart.”
“Sir Miles, I cannot do it honestly. Perhaps I wish I could.”
“You won’t?” He looked me full in the face. “I see you won’t. You have such a telltale, straightforward face, Kitty, that it proclaims the truth always. I believe you are truth itself. They pulled you out of a well, down in your country place, in a bucket, and then went about saying you had been born.”
“Thank you, Sir Miles.”
“Am I, therefore, to go hang myself in my garters, or yours, if you will give them to me?”
“If you do, I shall be the first to run and cut you down.”
“Sweet it were,” he murmured, “to be even cut down by your fair hand. If one was sure that you would come in time – ”
“You will be reasonable, dear sir, and you will neither say nor do anything silly.”
“I do not suppose I shall pine away in despair; nor shall I hang my head; nor shall I go about saying that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, because, when we fished you, we fished the best. And I swear. Kitty” – here he did swear after men’s profane way, but he needed not to have sworn so loudly or so long – “that truly, sweet Kitty, thou art the fairest, the loveliest, and the best fish that ever came out of any sea – a bewitching mermaid! I wish thee a good husband.
“On Stella’s lap he laid his head,
And, looking in her eyes,
He cried, ‘Remember, when I’m dead,
That I deserved the prize.’”
“Thank you, Sir Miles. A shorter and a less profane oath would surely have better graced the subject.”
“It cannot be graced too much,” he said, as if to swear lustily was to confer honour upon the woman he thought to love. “For your sake, Kitty, I would ever forswear punch, tobacco, and strong waters; drink nothing but October; and never get drunk save on Saturday nights: for your sake would I go live in the country among the cocks and the hens, the ducks and the pigs; for you would I go religiously to church every Sunday at forenoon, and expect the parson for the beef and pudding after the sermon; for your sake would I gamble no more, save once in a way when quarter-day brought in the rents.”
“That would be a mighty reformation indeed, Sir Miles.”
“Now, however, since you will not have me, I shall play with four hundred a year out of the six. But I will be careful, all the same: I shall punt low, and never lose more than a guinea a night.”
Thus I was rid of my second suitor. Sir Miles ceased to attend the count of followers who attended on the Terrace, but sat all day in the card-room, playing. From time to time he met and saluted me.
“Be not afraid,” he would say, “on my behalf. The card-tables are more pleasant than the air under the trees, and I think the players are better company than your priggish popinjays. As for my habits, fair Kitty, pattern of virtue, they have become virtuous. I am never drunk – well, not often – and you have brought me luck. I have won five hundred guineas from a nabob. Think of the joy, when he pays me, of losing it all again!”