“It is too late,” he said sadly. “Miss Kitty, you see in me the most wretched of mortals, who might, I would sometimes venture to think, have become the most happy.”
“You wretched, Lord Chudleigh?” – oh, beating heart! – “you wretched? Of all men you should be the most happy.”
“I have tried,” he said, “to escape from the consequences of a folly – nay, a crime. But it is impossible. I am fast bound and tied.” He took my hand and held it, while he added: “I may not say what I would: I may not even think, or hope, or dream of what might have been.”
“Might have been, my lord?”
“Which cannot, now, ever be. Kitty, I thought after I discovered that it was impossible that I would not return any more to Epsom Wells; in the country, or away on foreign travel, I might in time forget your face, your voice, your eyes – the virtues and graces which sit so well in a form so charming – the elevated soul – ”
“My lord! my lord!” I cried, “spare me – Yet,” I added, “tell me all that is in your mind. If I cannot rid you of your burden, at least I may soothe your sorrow.”
“The matter,” he replied, “lies in a few words, Kitty. I love you, and I may not ask you to be my wife.”
I was silent for a while. He stood before me, his face bent over mine.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I have been a fool – nay, worse than a fool, a knave; because I am tied by bonds which I cannot break: and I am unworthy of so much goodness and virtue.”
“Oh!” I cried, “you know not. How can you know? I am none of the things which you imagine in me. I am a poor and weak girl; if you knew me you would surely think so too. I cannot bear that you should think me other than what I am.”
“Why, my angel, your very modesty and your tears are the proof that you are all I think, and more.”
“No,” I cried. “If I told you all: if I could lay bare my very soul to you, I think that you could” – I was going to add, “love me no longer,” but I caught myself up in time – “that you could no longer think of me as better, but rather as worse, than other girls.”
“You know,” he said, “that I love you, Kitty. You have known that for some time – have you not?”
“Yes, my lord,” I replied humbly; “I have known it, and have felt my own unworthiness. Oh, so unworthy, so unworthy am I that I have wept tears of shame.”
“Nay – nay,” he said. “It is I who am unworthy. My dear, there is nothing you could tell me which would make me love you less.”
I shook my head. There was one thing which I had to tell. Could any man be found to forgive that?
“I came back here resolved to tell you all. If I could not ask for your love, Kitty, I might, at the very least, win your pity.”
“What have you to tell me, my lord?”
It was well that the night was so dark that my face could not be seen. Oh, telltale cheeks, aglow with fear and joy!
“What have you to tell me?” I repeated.
“It is a story which I trust to your eyes alone,” he said. “I have written it down. Before we part to-night I will give it to you. Come” – he took my hand again, but his was cold – “come, we must not stay longer. Let me lead you from this slippery and dangerous place.”
“One moment” – I would have lingered there all night to listen to the accents of his dear voice. “If you, my lord, have a secret to tell to me, I also have one to tell you.”
“Nay,” he replied. “I can hear none of your pretty secrets. My peace is already destroyed. Besides,” he added desperately, “when you have read what I have written you will see that it would be idle to waste another thought upon me.”
“I will read it,” I said, “to-night. But, my lord, on one promise.”
“And that is?”
“That you will not leave Epsom without my knowledge. Let me speak with you once more after I have read it, if it is only to weep with you and to say farewell.”
“I promise.”
“And – oh, my lord! if I may say it – since your lordship may not marry me, then I, for your sake, will never marry any other man.”
“Kitty!”
“That is my promise, my lord. And perhaps – sometimes – you will give a thought to your poor – fond Kitty.”
He caught me in his arms and showered kisses upon my cheeks and lips, calling me his angel and a thousand other names, until I gently pushed him from me and begged him to take me back to the company. He knelt at my feet and took my hand in his, holding it in silence. I knew that he was praying for the blessing of Heaven upon my unworthy head.
Then he led me back to the circle of lights, when the first person we met was Miss Peggy Baker.
“Why, here,” she cried, looking sharply from one to the other, “are my lord and Miss Pleydell. Strange that the two people we have most missed should be found at the same time – and together, which is stranger still.”
Nancy left her swains and ran to greet me.
“My dear,” she whispered, “you have been crying. Is all well?”
“I am the happiest woman and the most unhappy in the world,” I said. “I wish I were in my bed alone and crying on my pillow;” and she squeezed my hand and ran back to her lovers.
My lord himself walked home with us. We left before the party broke up. At parting he placed in my hand a roll of paper.
“Remember,” I whispered; “you have promised.”
He made no answer, but stooped and kissed my fingers.
CHAPTER XIV
HOW MY LORD MADE HIS CONFESSION
It was not a long manuscript. I kissed the dear handwriting before I began.
“To the Queen of my Heart,” it began.
“Dearest Girl, – Since I first had the happiness of worshipping at your shrine I have learned from watching your movements, listening to your voice, and looking at your face, something of what that heavenly beauty must have been like which, we are told, captivated and drove mad the ancients, even by mere meditation and thought upon it.”
Did ever girl read more beautiful language?
“And by conversations with you, even in the gay assembly or on the crowded Terrace, I have learned to admire and to love that goodness of heart which God hath bestowed upon the most virtuous among women. I say this in no flattery or desire to pay an empty compliment, but sincerely, and out of the respect and admiration, as well as the love, which I have conceived for one who is, I dare maintain, all goodness.”
O Kitty, Kitty! to read this with blushing cheeks and biting conscience! Surely it must make people good to be believed good; so that, by a little faith, we might raise and purify all mankind!
“It is my purpose to-night, if I find an opportunity, to tell you that I am the most wretched man in the world, because by a fatal accident, of which I must presently force myself to speak, I am for ever shut out from the happiness which it was, I believe, the intention of a merciful Providence to confer upon me. Yet am I also fortunate, and esteem myself happy in this respect, that I have for once in my life been in the presence of as much female beauty and virtue as was ever, I believe, found together in one human soul. To tell you these things, to speak of my love, is an alleviation of suffering. To tell the cause of this unhappiness is worse than to plunge a knife into my heart. Yet must it be told to your ear alone.
“Last year, about the early summer, a rumour began to run through the coffee-houses that there was a man of extraordinary wit, genius, and humour to be met with in the Liberties, or Rules, of the Fleet Prison. These Rules, of which you know nothing” – oh, Kitty! nothing! – “are houses, or lodgings, lying in certain streets adjacent to the Fleet Market, where prisoners for debt are allowed, on payment of certain fees, and on finding security, to reside outside the prison. In fact they are free, and yet being, in the eyes of the law, still prisoners, they cannot any more be arrested for debt. Among these prisoners of the Rules was a certain Reverend Gregory Shovel, a man of great learning, and a Doctor of Divinity of Cambridge, a divine of eloquence and repute, once a fashionable preacher, who, being of extravagant and luxurious habits, which brought him into expenditure above his means, at last found himself a prisoner in the Fleet; and presently, through the influence of friends, was placed in the enjoyment of the Rules.
“Here, whether because he had exhausted the generosity of his friends, or because he craved for action, or for the baser purposes of gain, he became that most unworthy thing, a Fleet parson – one of a most pestilent crew who go through the form of marriage for all comers, and illegally bind together for life those whom Heaven, in mercy and knowledge, had designed to be kept asunder.
“I believe that, by his extraordinary ability and impudence, coupled with the fact that he really was, what his rivals chiefly pretended to be, a clergyman of the Established Church of England and Ireland, he has managed to secure the principal part of this nefarious trade to himself, and has become what he has named himself, ‘the Chaplain of the Fleet.’
“This person attracted to himself, little by little, a great gathering of followers, admirers, or friends. No one, I suppose, could be the friend of one who had so fallen; therefore the men who thronged to his lodgings, nearly every night in the week, were drawn thither by the fashion of running after a man who talked, sang, told stories, and kept open house in so desperate a quarter as the Fleet Market, and who yet had the manners of a gentleman, the learning of a scholar, and the experience of a traveller.
“It was for this reason, solely for curiosity, that on one fatal evening last year I entreated Sir Miles Lackington, a former friend of my father’s and myself, to present me to the Doctor. You have made the acquaintance of Sir Miles. He was once, though perhaps the fact has not been made known to you by him, also a prisoner of the Rules. To this had he been brought by his inordinate love of gambling, by which he had stripped himself, in six months, of as fine an estate as ever fell to the lot of an English gentleman, and brought himself to a debtor’s prison. Sir Miles, who, when he could no longer gamble, showed signs of possessing virtues hitherto unsuspected in him, offered, on the occasion of borrowing a few guineas of me, to conduct me, if I wished to spend an evening with the Doctor, as he is called, to the house which this Doctor either owns or frequents.
“I am not a lover of that low humour and those coarse scenes depicted by Mr. Fielding and Dr. Smollet. I do not delight in seeing drunken men sprawl in the gutter, nor women fight upon Fleet Bridge, nor bears baited, nor pickpockets and rogues pilloried or flogged. But I was promised something very different from these scenes. I was to meet, Sir Miles told me, a remarkable man, who could narrate, declaim, preach, or sing a drinking song, just as he was in the vein.
“I accepted the invitation, the strangeness of which affected my curiosity rather than excited my hopes. I was to witness, I thought, the spectacle of a degraded wretch who lived by breaking the law, for each offence being liable to a penalty of not less than a hundred pounds. It would be, I expected, such a sight as that which the drunken Helot once presented to the virtuous Spartan youth.
“We made our way through a mean and filthy neighbourhood, by the side of a market heaped with cabbage-stalks, past houses where, through the common panes of green glass set in leaden frames, one might see a rushlight or a tallow candle feebly glimmering, for a crew of drunken men to shout songs and drink beside.
“The room into which I was led opened off the street, and was of fair proportions, but low. In it was a table, at the head of which, in a vast wooden chair, sat a man who looked, though perhaps he was not, the biggest man I had ever seen. Some tall men have small hands, or narrow shoulders, or small heads; Doctor Shovel is great all over, with a large and red face, a silk cassock, a full and flowing wig, clean bands, and a flowered morning-gown very large and comfortable.
“He seemed struck with some astonishment on hearing my name, but presently recovered, and invited me to sit at his right hand. Sir Miles sat at his left. The room was pretty full, and we found that the evening had already begun by the exhaustion of the first bowl of punch. The guests consisted of gentlemen who came, like myself, to see and converse with the famous Doctor: and of prisoners who, like Sir Miles, were living in the Rules.
“As the punch went round, the talk grew more jovial. That is to say, the talk of the Doctor, because no one else said anything. He talked continuously; he talked of everything. He seemed to know everything, and to have been everywhere. When he was not talking he was singing. At intervals he smoked a pipe of tobacco, which did not interrupt his talk; and he never ceased sending round the punch. I found that the visitors were expected to provide this part of the entertainment.
“I am sure that the kindest-hearted of women will believe me when I tell her that I am no drunkard. Yet there are times when, owing to the foolish custom of calling for toasts, no heeltaps, and a brimming glass, the most careful head may be affected. Nor can I plead inexperience in the dangers of the bottle, after three years at St. John’s, Cambridge, where the Fellows of the Society, and the noblemen and gentlemen commoners on the Foundation, drank freely at every college feast of the college port and the punch sent up from the butteries. I had been like other young men, but I trust that your imagination will not picture Lord Chudleigh carried away from the combination-room and put to bed by a couple of the college gyps. Yet, worse still, I have to present that spectacle before your eyes, not at a grave and reverend college feast, but in the dissolute Liberties of the Fleet.
“The atmosphere of the room was close and hot, with the smell of the tobacco and the fumes of the punch bowl. Presently I found that my eyes were beginning to swim and my head to reel. I half rose to go, but the Doctor, laying his hand upon me, cried, with a great oath, that we should not part yet.
“By this time Sir Miles was lying with his head on the table. Some of the guests were lying on the floor; some were singing, some crying; some kissing each other. It was, in short, one of those scenes of debauchery which may be witnessed whenever a party of men meet together to drink. I sat down; it was plain that I could not escape from these hogs without myself becoming a hog. I sat still, therefore, while the Doctor still talked, still laughed, still waved his monstrous great hand in the air as he talked, and the punch still went briskly round among the few who sat upright.
“In the morning I was awakened by no other than my host of the preceding evening, in whose bed I had spent the rest of the night unconscious.
“He stood over me with grave face, and, in reproachful accents, asked me how I fared, and for what purpose I had come to him? I was still half-drunk; I could not remember for what purpose. He assisted me to dress; and then, because I could not stand, he gave me a mug of small ale with which to clear my brain.
“Being thus partly restored to my senses, I listened while he answered his own question, and told me why I had come to him.
“’You came,’ he said, ‘to be married.’
“I stared. He repeated the words —
“’You came to be married.’
“It seems incredible that a man should hear a statement so utterly false and not cry out upon the liar. Yet I did not. My brain was confused, that is my excuse. Also, this great man seemed to hold me like a wizard, while he held up his forefinger and, with wrinkled brow, shook it in my face.
“’You came to be married.’
“Good heavens! What did this mean? I was drunk, horribly drunk the night before – I could not remember – so drunk was I – how I came to the house, with whom, with what intent.
“’She waits below,’ he told me.
“She? Who?
“He gave me his arm to support me down the stairs. I descended, curious and agitated. I remember a figure with a hood. While I looked, this Chaplain of the Devil began the marriage service, his eyes still fixed on me while he recited, and seemed to read.
“When he had finished, I was married.
“After we had signed a book, he gave me another great mug of ale, which I drank to the bottom.
“Then, I suppose, I rolled over, and was carried upstairs, for I remember nothing more until the evening, when I was again awakened by this rogue and common cheat, who, sitting by my bedside, congratulated me calmly on the day’s work.
“I will not go on to tell you all the things he said. I discovered that in some way, I know not how, but can guess, my father had once done this man an injury. This conspiracy was his revenge.
“Who was my wife?
“He would not tell me.
“What was her position, her birth, her name? Was she some wretched creature who could be bought off to keep silence while she lived, although she was a thing to be ashamed of and to hide? Was she some person who would trade on her title, parade her infamy, and declare herself to the world as Lady Chudleigh by her lord’s marriage in the Fleet? A hundred things I asked. He gave me no reply.
“Her name? I had forgotten it. The register? it had been put away. I seemed to know the name, somehow; yet it escaped me. In the night it came back to me in a dream; yet in the morning it was gone again. Once, after my first evening with you, the name came to me once more in a dream; yet it was gone when I awoke, and could remember no other name than yours. It is nearly a year ago. I know not yet whom I married. She hath made no sign. Yet I know full well that the day will come when she will confess herself and demand acknowledgment.
“One hope remains: that the marriage is not valid. It is a slender hope, for the man is an ordained clergyman of the Established Church. I am going to London to see him, to implore his pity, to humble myself if necessary.
“It is of no avail. I have gone. I have humbled myself, and then, flying into the opposite extreme, I have cursed him. He enjoyed both the wrath and the humility.
“I have no longer any hope; I have taken the advice of my lawyers, who tell me that an Act of Parliament alone can set me free; this Act – how can it be got when I do not know the name of the woman?
“Even if there were any reasonable chance that so dreadful a place could produce a woman of virtue and honour, which there is not, I could never look upon that woman with any but feelings of loathing and horror. For not only is her idea black beyond compare, but my heart is full, and will remain for ever full of Kitty Pleydell.
“Strange to say, as I wrote the words, it seemed as if I had touched at last the chord of memory. The name was on my lips. No – it was an illusion; I have forgotten it again, and can only murmur Kitty Pleydell, sweet Kitty, divine Kitty, on whom may all the blessings of Heaven rest for ever!”
CHAPTER XV
HOW NANCY HAD A QUICK TONGUE
This was at once a sad and yet most joyful confession. For while the girl who read it was full of shame and terror in thinking of his righteous wrath and loathing, yet the tender love which filled the pages and fired her soul with wonder and rejoicing forbade her to believe that love was not stronger than wrath. She was so ignorant and inexperienced, the girl who joined in this treacherous deed; she was so dominated by the will of that masterful man, her uncle; she was so taken by surprise – surely, when he learned these things, he would forgive the past.
But should she tell him at once?
It would be better to tell him than that he should find it out. There were many ways in which he could find it out. Oh, the shame of being found out, the meanness of taking all his secrets and giving none! Roger, the Doctor’s man, might for a bribe, were the bribe heavy enough to outweigh his fear of the Doctor, tell the name of the bride; the Doctor might think the time had come when he should step forward and reveal the secret; even there was danger that his lordship might remember the name which he had seen but once, and ask me sternly if there were upon the earth two Kitty Pleydells, of the same age, the same height, and the same face. And what should I say then?
Stimulated by this thought, as by the touch of a sharp spur, I procured an inkstand and paper, and began to write a letter of confession.
“My Lord,”
What to say next?
“My Lord,”
In what words to clothe a most shameful story?
We cheat ourselves; we do one thing and call it another; we stop the voice of conscience by misrepresenting our actions; and whereas we ought to be weighed down by the burden of our sins, we carry ourselves confidently, with light hearts, as if we had done nothing to be ashamed of. It is only when our crimes are set forth in plain English that we know them for the shameful things they are. What was I to tell my lord?
A girl, brought up in the fear of God and His commandments, can be so weak as to obey a man who ordered her to do a wicked thing. Could she be, afterwards, so cowardly as not to tell the man whom she had thus injured, even when she knew that he loved her? A wicked crime and a course of deceit! How could I frame the words so as to disarm that righteous wrath!
“My Lord, – It has been for a long time upon my conscience to tell you a thing which you ought to know before you waste one more thought upon the unworthy person to whom you addressed a confession. That confession, indeed, depicted your lordship with such fidelity as to make me the more ashamed to unburden my conscience. Know, then, that – ”
Here I stopped, with trembling fingers, which refused to move.
“Know that” – what? That I was his wicked and unworthy wife, the creature whom most of all he must hate and despise.
I could not tell him – not then. No; it must be told by word of mouth, with such extenuating phrases and softening of details as might present themselves to my troubled mind.
I tore the letter into a thousand fragments. Was girl ever so bested? That sacred bond of union which brings happy lovers together, the crown of courtship, the end of wooing, the marriage service itself, was the thing which kept us asunder.
I would tell him – later on. There would come an opportunity. I would make the opportunity, somewhere, at some time. Yes; the best way would be to wait till we were alone; and it should be in the evening, when my face and his would be partly veiled by the night; then I could whisper the story, and ask his forgiveness.
But that opportunity never came, as will be presently seen.
After morning prayers, that day, we walked upon the Terrace, where the company were, as usual, assembled, and all talking together below the trees. I held in my hand the manuscript of my lord’s confession. Presently we saw him slowly advancing to meet us, wearing a grave and melancholy look. But then he was never one of those who think that the duties of life are to be met with a reckless laugh.
“Even in laughter,” said the Wise Man, “the heart is sorrowful: and the end of that mirth is heaviness.”
“Dear Miss Pleydell,” whispered Peggy Baker, as he appeared, “can his lordship have repented already of what he said beneath the trees last night? The poor young gentleman wears a heavy countenance this morning.”
It was best to make no answer to this raillery. Let her say what she would; I cared nothing, and was too heavy myself to made reply. I would neither help nor hinder. Then, leaving Mrs. Esther with the party, I advanced boldly and met my lord, returning him his manuscripts before the eyes of all.
Everybody stared, wondering what could be in the packet I placed in his hands; he, however, received it with a low bow, and accompanied me to my party, saying nothing for the moment.
The music was playing its loudest, and as we walked, my lord beside me, and Mrs. Esther with Lady Levett – Nancy remaining behind to exchange insinuations and pert speeches (in which the saucy damsel took great delight) with Peggy Baker. I looked back and saw their heads wagging, while the bystanders smiled, and presently Peggy fanned herself, with agitation in her face, by which it was easy to conclude that Nancy had said something more than usually biting, to which her opponent had, for the moment, no reply ready.
“You have read these papers?” asked my lord, and that in as careless a tone as if they contained nothing of importance.
“Yes,” I said, “I have read the sad story. But I pity the poor woman who was persuaded to do your lordship this grievous wrong.”
“I think she needs and deserves little of our pity,” he replied. “And as for persuasion, it could have wanted but little with a woman so designing as to join in such a plot.”
A designing woman! Poor Kitty!
Then I tried, beating about the bush, to bring his mind round to see the possibility of a more charitable view.
“Remember, my lord, two things. This Doctor Shovel could not have known of your coming. The plot, therefore, was swiftly conceived, and as quickly carried into execution. You have told me in your paper – I entreat you, my lord, burn it with all speed – that this man’s influence over you was so great as to coerce you (because your brain was not in its natural clearness) into doing and suffering what, at ordinary times, you would have rejected with scorn. Bethink you, then, with charity, that this Doctor Shovel, this so-called Chaplain of the Fleet, may have found some poor girl, over whom he had authority, and in like manner coerced and forced her to join with him in this most wicked plot.”
“You would make excuses,” he said, “for the greatest of sinners. I doubt not that. But this story is too improbable. I cannot think that any woman could be so coerced against her will.”
I sighed.
“My lord, I beg you to remember your promise to me. You will not leave Epsom without first telling me: you will not seek out this man, this Doctor Shovel, or quarrel with him, or do aught to increase his malice. Meantime, I am feeble, being only a woman, and bound in obedience and duty to my guardian and protectress. Yet I bethink me of an old fable. The lion was one day caught in the coils of a net, and released by the teeth of a – ”
He started.
“What does this mean! O Kitty! what can you do?”
“I do not know. Yet, perhaps I may be able to release you from the coils of this net. Have patience, my lord.”
“Kitty!”
“Let us speak no more about it for the moment,” I replied. “Perhaps, my lord, if my inquiries lead to the result you desire – it is Christian to forgive your enemies – ”
“I cannot understand you,” he replied. “How should you – how should any one – release me? Truly, if deliverance came, forgiveness were a small thing to give.”