Chapter VI: I Am “pinned Out”

The festivities were to celebrate the majority of the Viscount Salted, only son to Hardrough, fourth Earl of Herring, Baron Rowe of Shole and Wellcot-Herring, Warden of the Cinque Ports, and official Verderer of the Forest of Down. The Lady Sophia Rowe, aunt to the young gentleman, had driven over from Wellcot--her estate in tail female, and distant from Shole by road seven miles--to lend her saintly countenance to the gathering, and it was she whom Father Pope, steering his course erroneously for Shole instead of Wellcot-Herring, had fortuitously encountered culling wild flowers in her brother’s lordlier demesne.

The Lady Sophia was, unlike her orthodox kinsman, a convert to the Catholic from the Established Church, and within her limits, and because of them, a zealous fanatic. In her one saw acutely demonstrated the denaturalising power of creed. Gentle as a dove by temperament, there was no crime but self-destruction which she would not have gloried in to justify hers. She would have thought the world well lost to save her own soul, colourless as that dear little article was. Though she was modesty incarnate, her self-importance in this respect was amazing. She schemed through all the virtues for the apotheosis of Lady Sophia, and she called her scheming the vindication of truth, which she held to be a Romish monopoly. She would have made me a nun, as part of it, and taken all the credit with Heaven. I can hardly regret that she was foiled. I love truth as well as any woman, only, being a woman, _à contre-cœur_, and not a saint, for me it must be coloured, and in the newest shades. To ask me to love it for its own sake is to ask me to be a dowd; and, for all my respect for Lady Sophia, I have never fancied a heaven of dowds.

When we alighted on her, she was by great good chance withdrawn from her company, and communing with Nature for relaxation. Flowers, to her, were sanctified of the altar, so bringing her faith and her inclinations into line. She was terribly agitated over her encounter with Father Pope, whom she knew, and over his peril, which she exaggerated. The shock of intolerance was hardly extended to Shole; but she had heard, by private despatch, of her Dulwich kinsfolk’s flight, and of the chaplain’s eccentric desertion, and all the day had tormented herself with fears of the fate which he had invited to befall him. Now, while they were engaged in earnest discussion, eschewing for the moment all thought of me, I was driven by curiosity to steal down the lane, till, through a gap in the hedge, I was able to observe at close hand the lively scene that was enacting on the green below.

It had certainly looked prettier from the hill. I saw links of red-faced oafs sway roaring across the turf, and whip themselves in mere drunken impulse about any mock-bashful hoyden who stood, feigning unconsciousness, in their path. I saw blowzed, over-fed women, dragging squalling babies, struggle vainly to be included in the amorous capture, and when they failed or were ignored, vindicate their outraged respectability in coarse recriminations. I saw farmers, seated under trees, weep fuddled tears because they could hold no more, and stuffed children, crying for nothing so much as breath. I had been drawn, as was natural to me, by the bait of gaiety and life, and this was my reward. The ground between the booths was strewed with trampled fragments of bread and meat, and sodden with rejected ale. It was a fair, with all the licence of a day gathered into an hour.

I don’t know how long I had been standing, absorbed in contemplation of this Gehenna, and of the stately mansion across the green, on whose terraces a gay company, gathered to see the beasts feed, was clearly distinguishable, when a sound of hoofs coming up the lane behind me brought me to myself; and almost immediately three horsemen, with very flushed faces, rode into view, and, perceiving me, halted. One was a fox-featured gentleman, in fulvous cloth; one, good-humoured and quiet, wore a grey coat; and the third was resplendent all over, and as drunk as Chloe. He, at the first sight of me, tumbled rather than dismounted from his horse, and, forsaking the reins, which the grey gentleman caught, came staggering upon me.

“Hey, my vitals!” he lisped, “whom the devil have we here?”

He was quite young, and like a pretty toy, with a spangled coat in the Maccaroni Club style, a great bow at his neck, and ribbons to his knees. But he frightened me with the stare in his glazed eyes; and as he advanced, I backed into the hedge.

“I was only looking,” I fluttered. “I didn’t mean any harm. Please let me go.”

“Harm!” he exclaimed, with a tipsy crow. “O, but you’re trespassing, missy, and must give an hic-count of yourself. Come ’long, now, before my lord.”

I saw the eldest of the three regarding us from his saddle with a sort of mordant humour, and the sudden recognition of his state made my heart leap. Red, and lank-jawed, and vicious, he sat watching us as a fox might watch his cub negotiating the helpless struggles of a lamb. He always had a fine appetite for such occasions, and could sin very sweetly by proxy, could Hardrough.

“Wounds, my lord!” cried the boy, “is this a larsh surprise for me you’ve ’ranged? Besh preshent of all the day. Come cock-horse, child, and we’ll kiss a-riding.”

He put an arm about me. For all my distress, the musky contact of him, so precious after my long degradation, seemed half to drug me from resistance. I struggled feebly to push him away.

“Get on with your gallophic,” said he, addressing his companions knowingly. “I’ll follerer by-m-by.”

“Come, Salted,” cried the grey gentleman suddenly, in a laughing, half-vexed way. “Remember what’s due to your guests, child, now and to be. Come along and ride yourself sober, as you engaged.”

“Shober, nunky! shober, you cake!” sputtered the fool. “Shober ’nough yourself to wa’t me go on and break my neck--hey, my lord?”

He leered tipsily to the earl his father, who grinned, and blinked his red eyes.

“Let him be, George,” said the nobleman. “Damme, the boy’s not fit to ride a broomstick. You’re precious anxious for the gipsy, brother. I’d as lief you was concerned for your nephew.”

“And so I am,” says the other hotly. “’Tis foul so to take advantage of a stranger and a child. Call your cub off, sir,” says he, “if I’m not to take a whip to him.”

He gathered his reins in, and twitched his heels. He was bronzed and comely, a man of thirty or so, younger by ten years than the earl. He, the latter, had turned quite white. A frost seemed to have pinched his cheeks. In another moment, I believe, he would have drawn his riding-switch across the handsome face, but in that moment I was aware of a lady hurrying up, and I broke from my captor, and fled to meet her.

“Help me!” I cried. “Don’t let him hurt me!”

She received me very kindly. She was a tall and colourless figure, gentle in mien but with a bad complexion--the lady, in short, in whose company I had left Father Pope.

“Hardwick! George!” she whispered, in an outraged voice.

The earl pushed up to her, with a snigger.

“There, Sophy,” said he. “What are you doin’ here? But I’m glad you’ve come. Is this here your protégée? Well, take the little baggage away, that was near bringing us to words about her.”

“Words!” she said. “This child!”

“O,” he exclaimed, “that’s all one! Come, boy!”

She detained him some minutes, murmuring to him as he bent down. At the end he rose, grinning at me.

“What!” says he--“the sly old crow! Be sure the little sweep wasn’t fathered by a black cassock before you adopt her.”

She started back, flushing scarlet.

“Hardrough!” she said; “I ask you to go on.”

“Well, I will,” said he, with a little breathless laugh, “and carry your secret, sister, safe in my keepin’.”

He half wheeled, and in an ironic voice summoned the young viscount. The boy got to his horse as sulky as sin. In another minute the three gentlemen were ridden out of sight.

The moment they had disappeared the lady turned to me.

“Why didn’t you keep by your friend?” she asked, rather sharply. “From what he tells me, you are in need of one.”

I hung my head and broke into sobs. She was softened immediately.

“There,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be harsh; but discretion was so necessary. Will you come with me--I am the Lady Sophia Rowe--and we can discuss your case in safety at home? But every instant means peril, and we must hasten.”

I suffered her to hurry me up the lane. Her gait took no grace from urgency, being awkward as with most over-tall women, and the worse to view because she was reckless how she raised her skirts. In a little we came round a curve that swept beyond the limits of the green; and here, under some trees, we found her coach, which had been ordered round earlier, with the priest and his great folio ensconced glowering in it. In a moment we were in, and rolling along quiet country roads. The noise of the fairing died behind us. The world of new peace and beatitude lay before. For seven miles we sped soberly on, deeper and deeper into the pleasant hush, that was broken only by the incessant confidential murmuring of my companions.

At last, taking a road high above a little village bowered in trees, we turned between beautiful scrolled gates into a drive that seemed to me to pierce gardens as enchanting as the hanging ones of Babylon. There were soft lawns and placid groves of timber, with lofty rookeries. There were vivid parterres, and terraces stooping to blue depths, wheredown a little silver brook bubbled through mists of foliage. There were rose bowers, and great jars, like Plenty’s horn, brimming petunias. There was a mossy fountain, with lilies and goldfish, and a baby Triton in the midst spurting a jet to heaven. There were grassy walks, and beyond their vistas the eternal solace of distance. And, dominating all, there was the house.

At least it seemed less to command than to partake of the serenity of which it was the habitable nucleus--the human nest in the garden. It stood before us, not suddenly, but in quiet revelation, a simple old structure of red brick, unlaboured with ornament, unweighted of stone, a pleasant home for happiness set on a wide level platform of grass and gravel. My eyes had hardly accepted it before my heart.

We alighted into a fragrant hall, and madam led me at once into a large low room with windows bent upon a heavenly prospect of woods and meadows; and there, bidding me await her until she could come and talk with me, shut me in, and withdrew.

I had not stood many minutes, in a silent dream of wonder and expectation, when the door opened softly again, and a little girl stole in. She was about my own age, or somewhat older, and very dark and pretty, but with foolish large eyes like a dog’s. For some moments she stared at me, wondering, without a smile, then came and touched my hand.

“Madam sent me,” she said. “I live here. I am her adoption child. Are you come to stay?”

I shook my head, bewildered.

“O,” she whispered, “I hope so. I have no little friend at all, and you are so pretty.”

“I have golden hair,” I said. “We can’t all be the same. But yours at least is very curly. What is your name?”

“Patience Grant,” she said. “My mother died in the convent, and I have no father. I am not allowed to play with the village children. What is _your_ name?”

I told her “Diana Please.”

“It is a nice name,” she said. “Did _your_ mother too die in the convent? I am very happy here, but I shall be happier if you come.”

Lady Sophia had entered softly while she spoke.

“Hush, Patty!” said she, with a smile. “And run away now.”

The child went, looking wistfully back. _Ah, mignonnette, ma petite à jamais mémorable, toi que j’aime sans discontinuer!_ How wert thou to me from the first the most attached of little dogs!

Madam drew me into a window, and looked earnestly into my eyes. As she held me, Father Pope entered and stood near, my morose and baleful inquisitor.

“Do you like my home?” she said, in her level, toneless voice. The labour of lifting it seemed always constitutionally beyond her.

I clasped my hands. “O, madam,” I said, “I could be a very good Catholic here!”

She smiled, in a surprised way, then looked grave. I waited in a fever of expectation for her to speak again. I had already decided that I would wish to be adopted like Patience, in whom I seemed to foresee a little adoring vassal, so welcome after my own long slavery, and that I must be adroit to gain my point. Brighthelmston, with its questionable potentialities, had darkened in contrast with this paradise. I felt even that it would not be good for me to return there; that I was destined for a virtuous, if not a devout life. It is no contradiction that I had not thought so an hour before. Our moral development is intermittent. Its phases of growth are inspirations of adaptation to circumstance. A fever made of Francis of Assisi a saint out of a profligate. These high lawns had revealed to me the pit from which I had escaped.

Lady Sophia looked very sweet and grave.

“Or anywhere, I hope,” she said. “Faith is not a question of surroundings.”

I was not so sure of that; but I held my tongue, hanging my head.

“Let me see your face,” she insisted, and put her thin hand under my chin.

“It is a pretty and an innocent one,” she declared. “How came you, child, in the position in which Father Pope found you?”

I told her how I had been stolen by the sweep, and had escaped from him rather than seem to concur in the violence offered to my religion.

“It was an ingenious and a courageous act,” she said, gently kindling; “was it not, Father?”

The bear snorted, dissent or commendation--it was all one.

“Ask her about her mother,” he growled.

“True,” said the lady, with a gesture of involuntary repulsion, for which she the moment after atoned with a caress.

“She had been a Sister in the Hospital of St. Magdalen, Father Pope tells me,” she said very low. “She had returned there to expiate her--her”--

“No,” I broke in.

“You told me so,” roared the priest.

“I didn’t,” I said, half crying. “You were looking at your book all the time I confessed.”

Madame Sophia could not restrain a smile.

“Fie, Father!” she said. “I admit it does not sound the least probable part of the child’s experiences.”

But she sobered again in a moment.

“She did not return?” she asked. “Then”--

“She is dead,” I whispered.

After all, I believed it was true; that she could not have survived the wreck of all things which my abduction must have meant to her. The gentlewoman gave a gasp of pity and self-rebuke, and enfolded me in her arms.

“Forgive me!” she cried. “O, I was cruel! The poor lost lamb! So white, so helpless, so delivered to the wolves! But”--she bethought herself--“where was this?-- And your unhappy father?”

“He had taken me to Brighthelmston,” I stammered; “he was not of our religion--of any. He made me dance before the pretty prince, and would have given me to him, but that the sweep whom he fought stole me out of revenge first.”

The priest and the lady exchanged looks.

“Am I justified?” she asked. “The peril, the iniquity! O, surely, Father--surely!”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Write to the Magdalens first,” said he, “and verify it.”

She thought a little, then addressed me again.

“And if I do, would you like to make your home here in the meantime, Diana?”

The strain had been very severe. I fell on my knees before her, weeping. I knew, from what my governess had once told me, that les Madelonnettes must confirm the worst of my story.

“O, madam,” I cried, “if you would train me in goodness and piety!”

She kissed me, then looked up, her immobile face quite transfigured.

“Perhaps,” she thrilled, “some day, perhaps some day to fill the place and vindicate the vows of the poor weak apostate who gave you life!”

“Write to the Magdalens,” growled Father Pope.