The Chaplain of the Fleet

CHAPTER XIII

HOW LORD CHUDLEIGH WOKE OUT OF SLEEP

Alas! there was small pride in that thought. What joy of being Lady Chudleigh, when I had to pick my way home through the dirty and crowded market, thinking of the pain and grief this wicked thing would cause my ladies when they learned it, of the shame with which my father’s soul would have been filled had he known it, and the wrath of Lady Levett when she should hear it! “Oh, Kitty!” I thought, “how miserably art thou changed in four short months! In the happy fields at home, everything (save when the rustics swore at their cattle) breathed of religion and virtue; in this dreadful place, everything leads to profligacy and crime. And what a crime! And the poor young gentleman! Did ever any one hear the like, that a young girl, not yet quite seventeen, should thus consent to marry a man whom she had never seen! Oh, shame and disgrace! And that young man, so handsome and so gallant, albeit so tipsy that he could scarcely stand. Who would have thought, four months ago, that Kitty would be that wicked creature?” Afterwards, I thought of the dreadful wickedness of marrying while still in mourning for a father not yet six months dead. But I confess that at first, so confused was I, that this thought did not oppress me. Indeed, there was almost too much to think about. Suppose I was, by a careless word, to reveal the secret! Suppose the rascal Roger were to tell it abroad in the market! Suppose the young man (whose name I did not dare to pronounce) were to see me, and find my name! Suppose the Doctor were at once to reveal to my – husband, I suppose I ought to call him – who and what I was! All these thoughts, I say, crowded into my mind together, and filled me with repentant terrors.

I went straight home, because there was no other place to go to. Mrs. Deborah reminded me, when I had taken off my hood, that we were still engaged upon the long-outstanding account between Richard Roe, gentleman, and Robert Doe, draper. It was one of the problems of the Book-keeping Treatise, how rightly to state this account to the satisfaction both of Doe (who wanted all he could get), and of Roe (who wanted to pay as little as possible). I remember that Richard Roe had not only bought extraordinary things (for a gentleman), such as ladies’ hoops and paniers, but had bought them in immense quantities, to be explained, perhaps, by the supposition that he was a benefactor to the female sex, or perhaps that he was shipping things to Madagascar, where I believe a sarsnet pinner, if in scarlet, is considered worth a diamond as big as a pigeon’s egg; and a few bottles of eau de Chypre are thought a bargain, if purchased by a ruby weighing a pound or so.

We had been engaged for a month upon a statement of the account showing the exact liabilities of Richard Roe (who used to pay in odd sums, with pence and farthings, at unexpected times); we never got it right, and then we began again. Fortunately, it costs nothing to clean a slate.

I sat down to this task with listless brain. What girl, after being so suddenly hurled into matrimony, with the possession of so great a secret, could take any interest in the debts of Richard Roe? The figures got mixed; presently, I was fain to lay the slate aside, and to declare that I could do no more that day.

Nor, indeed, could I do anything – not even hear what was said, so that my ladies thought I was sickening for some fever; which was not improbable, fever being rife at this time, owing to the smell from the vegetables, and one of the little Dunquerques in our own house down with it. Ah! could they only have guessed the truth, what sorrow and pity would have been theirs, with what righteous wrath at the sin.

When I was gone, the Doctor called back Roger, and they carried the unhappy bridegroom again to the bedroom, where they laid him on the bed and then left him to himself.

“He will sleep,” said the Doctor, experienced in these cases, “until the afternoon. Have a cup of mutton-broth for him when he wakes, with a pint of small ale.”

Then he returned, and the ordinary business of the day began. The couples came in – half-a-dozen of them. One pair gave him five guineas. They were an Irishman, who thought he was marrying a rich widow; and a woman head over ears in debt, who thought she was marrying a wealthy squire. A week afterwards the unhappy bridegroom came to the Doctor to undo the match, which was impossible. He escaped his wife’s creditors, however, and took to the road, where, after many gallant exploits, he was caught, tried, and hanged at Tyburn, making a gallant and edifying end, and ruffling it bravely to the very foot of the ladder. The day, therefore, was profitable to the Doctor.

“Well begun, Roger,” he said, “is well done. The morning’s work is worth ten guineas. I would rest this afternoon; wherefore, bring no more couples. Yet one would fain not disappoint the poor creatures. Let them come, then, Roger. We may not weary in well-doing. And, hark ye, take this guinea to Mistress Dunquerque – not the captain, mind – and bid her spend it for the children; and inquire whether Mr. Stallabras hath paid his rent lately; if not, pay it; and buy me, on Ludgate Hill, a hat and feathers for Miss Kitty; and, varlet! if thou so much as breathe of what was done here this morning – I threaten not, but I know the history of thy life. Think of the past; think of Newgate, close by; and be silent as the grave.”

At three o’clock in the afternoon, when the Doctor, after his dinner, sat over a cool pipe of Virginia, Lord Chudleigh came downstairs. He was dressed and in his right mind, although somewhat flushed of cheek and his hand shaky.

“Doctor Shovel,” he said, “I thank you for your hospitality, and am sorry that I have abused it. I am ashamed to have fallen into so drunken and helpless a condition.”

“Your lordship,” said the Doctor, rising and bowing, “is welcome to such hospitality as this poor house of a prisoner in the Liberties of the Fleet can show a nobleman of your rank. I am the more bound to show this welcome to your lordship, because, for such as is my condition, I am beholden to the late Lord Chudleigh.”

This was a speech which might have more than one meaning. His lordship made no answer, staring in some perplexity, and fearful that the punch might still be in his head.

“It was in this room,” he said presently, “that we drank last night. I remember your chair, and these walls; but I remember little more. Fie, Doctor! your way of treating guests is too generous. Yet I have had a curious and uneasy dream. Those books” – he pointed to the Register and the Prayer-book – “were those upon the table last night? They were in my dream – a very vivid and real dream. I thought I was standing here. Your man was beside me. Opposite to me was a girl, or woman, her face and figure covered with a hood, so that I knew not what she was like. Then you read the marriage-service, drew the ring from off my finger, and placed it upon hers. And you pronounced us man and wife. A strange and interesting dream!”

“What was the ring, my lord?”

“A diamond ring, set round with seven pearls; within, the crest of my house, and my initials.”

“Let me see the ring, my lord.”

He changed colour.

“I cannot find it.”

“My lord, I know where is that ring.”

The Doctor spoke gravely, bending his great eyebrows. Lord Chudleigh was a man of fine presence, being at least five feet ten inches in height, without counting the heels of his boots and the foretop of his wig. Yet the Doctor, whose heels were thicker and his toupee higher, was six feet two without those advantages. Therefore he towered over his guest as he repeated —

“I know where to find that ring!”

“You cannot mean, Doctor – ” cried Lord Chudleigh, all the blood flying to his face.

“I mean, my lord, simply this, that at eight o’clock this morning, or thereabouts, you rose, came downstairs, met a young lady who was waiting for you, and were by me, in presence of trustworthy witnesses, duly and properly married.”

“But it was a dream!” he cried, catching at the table.

“No dream at all, my lord. A fact, which you will find it difficult to contradict. Your marriage is entered in my Register; I have the lines on a five-shilling stamp. I am an ordained minister of the Church of England; the hours were canonical. It is true that I may be fined a hundred pounds for consenting to perform the ceremony; but it will be hard to collect that money. Meanwhile, those who would inflict the fine would be the last to maintain that sacerdotal powers, conferred upon me at ordination, can suffer any loss by residence in the Rules of the Fleet. Ponder this, my lord.”

“Married!” cried Lord Chudleigh. “Married? It is impossible.”

“Your dream, my lord, was no dream at all, but sober truth, believe me.”

“Married?” he repeated.

“Married,” said Doctor Shovel. “I fear that your state of mind, during the performance of the ceremony, was not such as a clergyman could altogether wish to see. Still who am I, to decide when a gentleman is too drunk to marry?”

“Married! Oh, this is some dreadful dream! Where is my bride? Show me my wife!”

“She is gone, Lord Chudleigh.”

“Gone! Where is she gone?”

The Doctor shook his head for an answer.

“Who is she? What is her name? How came she here?”

“I am sorry that I cannot answer your lordship in these particulars. She came – she was married – she went away! In her own good time she will doubtless appear again.”

“But who is she?” he repeated. “What is she like? Why did she marry me?”

“Why did your lordship marry her? That, methinks, would be the proper question.”

“Show me your Register, man!” Lord Chudleigh was sober enough now, and brought his fist down upon the table in peremptory fashion. “Show me your Register and your certificate!”

“Ta! ta! ta!” cried the Doctor. “Softly, young man, softly! We are not used to threats in this chapel-of-ease, where I am archbishop, bishop, and chaplain, all in one. For the Register, it is securely locked up; for the certificate, it is perhaps in the hands of Lady Chudleigh.”

“Lady Chudleigh!”

“Perhaps her ladyship hath consigned it to my keeping. In either case, you shall not see it.”

“This is a conspiracy,” cried Lord Chudleigh. “I have been deceived by rogues and knaves! This is no true marriage.”

“You would say that I am lying. Say so, but, at your peril, think so. You are as truly married as if you had been united in your own parish church, by your own bishop. Believe that, for your own safety, if you believe nothing else. At the right time, her ladyship will be revealed to you. And remember, my lord” – here the Doctor, towering over him, shook his great forefinger in warning or menace – “should you attempt another marriage in the lifetime of your present wife, you shall be brought to your trial for bigamy as sure as my name is Gregory Shovel. Laws, in this country, are not altogether made for the punishment of the poor, and even a peer may not marry more than one woman.”

“I will have this wickedness exposed,” cried his lordship hotly.

“Alas! my lord,” said the Doctor, “the name of Gregory Shovel is already well known. I am but what your father caused me to be.”

“My father! Then there is revenge… The benefits which my father conferred upon you – ”

“They were greater than any I can confer upon you. He kept me with him as his private jester. I found him wit: he fed me upon promises. He turned me forth, to be flung into a debtor’s prison. That, however, was nothing. Your lordship will own” – here the Doctor laughed, but without merriment – “that I have returned good for evil; for, whereas your father robbed me of a wife, I have presented you with one.”

“O villain!” cried my lord. “To revenge the wrongs of the father upon the son – and this wretch continues to wear the gown of a clergyman!”

“Say what you please. So rejoiced am I with this day’s work that I allow you to cast at me what names come readiest to your tongue. But remember that curses sometimes come home.”

“Where is my wife, then?” he demanded furiously.

“I shall not tell you. Meantime, choose. Either let this matter be known to all the world, or let it remain, for the present, a secret between you and me. As for the lady, she will be silent. As for the rogue, my clerk, if he so much as breathes the secret to the cabbage-stalks, I have that which will hang him.”

“I want to see the woman who calls herself my wife,” he persisted.

“That shall you not. But perhaps, my lord, you would like to go home to St. James’s Square with such a wedding-party as we could provide for you: a dozen of Fleet parsons fuddled; the bride’s friends, who might be called from their stalls in the market; the music of the butchers, with salt-boxes, marrow-bones, and cleavers; the bride herself. Look out of the window, my lord. Which of the ragged baggages and trollops among the market-women most takes your lordship’s fancy?”

Lord Chudleigh looked and shuddered.

“Go your way,” the Doctor went on, “and always remember you have a spouse. Some day, for the better glorifying of your noble name, I will produce her. But not yet. Be under no immediate apprehension. Not yet. At some future time, when you are happy in the applause of a nation and the honours of a sovereign, when your way is clear before you and your conscience gives you the sweet balm of approbation, when you have forgotten this morning, we shall come, your wife and I, with ‘Room for my Lady Chudleigh! Way there for her ladyship and Doctor Gregory Shovel from the Rules of the Fleet!’”

“Man,” replied Lord Chudleigh, “I believe you are a devil. Do what you will; do your worst. Yet know that the woman may proclaim her infamy and your own; as for me, I will not speak to her, nor listen to her, nor own her.”

“Good!” said the Doctor, rubbing his hands. “We talk in vain. I now bid farewell to your lordship. Those convivial evenings which you desired to witness will still continue. Let me hope to welcome your lordship again on the scene of your unexpected triumphs. Many, indeed, is the man who hath come to this house single and gone out of it double; but none for whom awaits a future of such golden promise. My most hearty congratulations on this auspicious and joyful event! What can come out of this place but youth, beauty, birth, and virtue? And yet, my lord, there is one singularity in the case. One moment, I pray” – for Lord Chudleigh was already outside the door – “you are the only man I ever knew who spent his honeymoon – alone!”

CHAPTER XIV

HOW MRS. DEBORAH WAS RELEASED

No one would be interested to read more of my shame and repentance at that time; nor does it help to tell how the Doctor was asked by my ladies if I was subject to any kind of illness for which I might be sickening. The reply of the Doctor to them, and his private admonitions to myself, may be partly passed over; it was true, no doubt, as he said while I trembled before him, that a young girl, ignorant and untaught, would do well to trust her conscience into the spiritual direction of a regularly-ordained clergyman of the Church of England like himself. As for the marriage, I was to remember that it was done and could not be undone. He hung round my neck by a black ribbon the diamond ring, my wedding-ring, by which to keep my condition ever before myself; to be sure it was not likely that I should forget it, without the glitter and sparkle of the brilliants, which I used to look at night and morning in secret. What did he think of me, this husband of mine, the young man with the handsome face, the white hands, and the fixed, strange eyes? Did he, night and morning, every day curse his unknown wife?

“Let him curse,” said the Doctor. “Words break no bones; curses go home again; deeds cannot be undone. Patience, Kitty! before long thou shalt be confessed by all the world, the Lady Chudleigh. Come, cheer up, child!” he concluded kindly. “As for what is done, it is done. Partly I did it to clear off an old score, whereof I may perhaps tell thee at another time, and partly for thy honour and glory. Thy father, Kitty, was proud of his name and family, though he married my sister, the daughter of a tenant farmer; but never a Pleydell yet has been lifted up so high as thou shalt be: while as to the Shovels, I am myself the only great man they have yet sent into the world, and they are not likely to go beyond the Chaplain of the Fleet.”

Then he held up his great forefinger, as long and thick as a school ruler, bent his shaggy eyebrows, and pushed out his lips.

“Remember, child, silence! And go no more moping and sorrowful, because thou shalt soon sit in thine own coach, with the world at thy feet, singing the praises of the beautiful Lady Chudleigh. Such a girl as my Kitty for Sir Miles Lackington? Why, he hath eyes for the beauty of a glass of Bordeaux – he hath sense to rejoice over a bowl of punch; but from Helen of Troy or Cleopatra of Egypt he would turn away for a bottle of port. Or Stallabras, now – should such a creature as he presume to think of such a woman? Let poets sing of women at a distance – the farther off the better they sing – that is right. Why, child, such curls as thine, such roses of red and white, such brown eyes, such lips and cheek and chin, such a figure as thou canst show to dazzle the eyes of foolish boys – Lord Chudleigh should go on his knees before me in gratitude and transport. And, believe me, some day he will.”

We are all alike, we women. Call us beautiful, and you please us. It was almost the first time that any one had called me beautiful save Sir Miles Lackington when in his cups, or Solomon Stallabras in his poetic way. Yet every pretty girl knows that she is pretty. There are a thousand things to tell her: the whispers of the women, the sidelong looks of the folk in the streets, the envy of envious girls, the praise of kindly girls, her glass, the deference paid by men of all classes and all ages to beauty, the warnings of teachers, nurses, governesses, and matrons that beauty is but skin-deep, virtue is better than looks, handsome is as handsome does, ’tis better to be good than pretty, comeliness lasts but a year, while goodness lasts for ever, and so on – all these things make a girl on whom heaven has bestowed this most excellent gift of beauty know quite as well as other people what she possesses, though she knows not yet the power of the gift.

“You are pretty, child,” said Mrs. Esther to me on the very same day as the Doctor. “You will be a beautiful woman.”

“Which is no good to a girl in the Rules,” said Mrs. Deborah, “but rather a snare and a danger.”

“Nay, sister,” said Mrs. Esther, “it is a consolation to be beautiful. You, dear, when we were thirty years younger, were beautiful enough to melt the heart even of the monster Bambridge.”

“A beautiful face and person,” Mrs. Deborah added with a smile on her poor face as she thought of the past, “should belong to a good and virtuous soul. In the better world I have no doubt that the spirits of the just will arise in such beauty of face and form as shall be unto themselves and their friends an abiding joy.”

Let us think so: when I die it may be a consolation to me that a return to the beauty of my youth is nigh at hand. I am but a woman, and there is nothing in the world – except the love of my husband and my children – that I think more precious than my past beauty.

Soothed, then, by my uncle’s flatteries, comforted by his promises, and terrified by his admonitions, I fell in a very few days into the dreams by which youth beguiles the cares of the present. My husband, Lord Chudleigh, would go his own way and never ask after me; I should go mine as if he did not exist; some time or other we should leave the Liberties of the Fleet, and go to live near Lady Levett and my dear Nancy. As for the coronet and the rank, I was too ignorant to think much about them. They were so high above me, I knew so little what they meant, that I no more thought of getting them than of getting David’s harp and crown. I waited, therefore, being a wife and yet no wife, married and yet never seen by my husband; sacrificed to the wrath of the Doctor, as that poor Greek maiden in the story told me by my father, murdered at Aulis to appease the wrath of a goddess.

Two events happened which, between them, quite drove the marriage out of my mind, and for awhile made me forget it altogether.

The first of these was the illness of Mrs. Deborah.

There was fever about the market, as I have said; one of the little girls of Mrs. Dunquerque, in our house, was laid down with it. In autumn there was always fever in the place, caused, my ladies said, by the chill and fog of the season, by the stench of the vegetables and fruit of the market, and perhaps by the proximity of Newgate, where gaol fever was always cheating the gallows. One day, therefore, Mrs. Deborah lay down, and said she would rather not get up again any more. She would not eat, nor would she have any medicine except a little tar-water which seemed to do her no good. When she got very ill indeed, she consented to see an apothecary; he prescribed blood-letting, which, contrary to expectation, made her only weaker. Then we went to the old woman who kept a herb shop at the other end of Fleet Lane, and was more skilful than any physician. She gave us feverfew, camomile, and dandelion, of which we made hot drinks. As the patient grew worse instead of better, she made an infusion of shepherd’s-purse, pennycress, and pepperwort, to stimulate the system; she brought a tansy-pudding, which poor Mrs. Deborah refused to eat; and when gentian water failed, the old woman could do no more.