The Chaplain of the Fleet

When the race was finished the visitors ran backward and forwards, congratulating or condoling with each other. Many a long face was pulled as the bets were paid: many a jolly face broadened and became more jolly as the money went into pocket. And then I saw what is meant by the old saying about money made over the devil’s back. For those who lost, lost outright, which cannot be denied: but those who won immediately took their friends to the booths where beer and wine and rum were sold, and straightway got rid of a portion of their winnings. No doubt the rest went in the course of the day in debauchery. So that the money won upon the race benefited no one except the people who sold drink. And they, to my mind, are the last persons whom one would wish to benefit, considering what a dreadful thing in this country is the curse of drink.

If Will looked a gallant rider on horseback, he cut but a sorry figure among the gentlemen when he came forth from the paddock, having taken off his jacket and put on again his wig, coat, and waistcoat. For he walked heavily, rolling in his gait (as a ploughboy not a sailor), and his clothes were muddy and disordered, while his wig was awry. Lady Levett beckoned to him, and he came towards us sheepishly bold, as is the way with rustic gentlemen.

“So, Will,” shouted his father heartily, “thou hast won the match. Well rode, my boy!”

“Well rode!” cried all. “Well rode!”

He received our congratulations with a grin of satisfaction, saluting the company with a grin, and his knuckles to his forehead like a jockey. On recovering, he examined us all leisurely.

“Ay,” he said. “There you are, Harry, talking to the women about books and poetry and stuff. What good is that when a race is on? Might as well have stayed at Cambridge. Well, Nancy – oh! I warrant you, so fine as no one in the country would know you. Fine feathers make fine birds, and – ” here he saw me, and stared hard with his mouth open. “Gad so! – it’s Kitty! Hoop! Hollo!” Upon this he put both hands to his mouth and raised such a shout that we all stopped our ears, and the dogs barked and ran about furiously, as if in search of a fox. “Found again! Kitty, I am right glad to see thee. Did I ride well? Were you proud to see me coming in by a neck? Thinks I, ‘I don’t care who’s looking on, but I’ll show them Will Levett knows how to ride.’ If I’d known it was you I would have landed the stakes by three clear lengths, I would. Let me look at thee, Kitty. Now, gentlemen, by your leave.” He shoved aside Lord Chudleigh, and Harry, and pushed between them. “Let me look at thee well – ay! more fine feathers – but” – here he swore great oaths – “there never was anything beneath them but the finest of birds ever hatched.”

“Thank you, Will, for the compliment,” I began.

“Why, if any one should compliment you, Kitty, who but I?”

I thought of the broken sixpence and trembled.

“A most pretty speech indeed,” said Peggy Baker. “Another of Miss Pleydell’s swains, I suppose?”

“My brother,” said Nancy, “has been Kitty’s swain since he was old enough to walk; that is, about the time when Kitty was born. He is as old a swain as Mr. Temple here.”

“I don’t know naught about swains,” said Will, “but I’m Kitty’s sweetheart. And if any man says nay to that, why let him step to the front, and we’ll have that business settled on the grass, and no time wasted.”

“Brother,” cried Nancy, greatly incensed by a remark of such low breeding, “remember that you are here among gentlemen, who do not fight with cudgels and fists for the favours of ladies.”

“Nay, dear Miss Levett,” said Peggy, laughing; “I find Mr. William vastly amusing. No doubt we might have a contest, a tournament after the manner of the ancients, with Miss Pleydell as the Queen of Beauty, to give her favours to the conquering knight. I believe we can often witness a battle with swords and pistols, if we get up early enough, in Hyde Park; but a duel with fists and cudgels would be much more entertaining.”

“Thank you, miss,” said Will. “I should like to see the man who would stand up against me.”

“I think,” Lord Chudleigh interposed, “that as no one is likely to gratify this gentleman’s strange invitation, we may return to the town. Miss Pleydell, we wait your orders.”

Will was about to say something rude, when his sister seized him by the arm and whispered in his ear.

“O Lord! a lord!” he cried. “I beg your lordship’s pardon. There, that is just like you, Nancy, not to tell me at the beginning. Well, Kitty, I am going to look after the horse. Then I will come to see thee.”

“Your admirer is a bucolic of an order not often found among the sons of such country gentlemen as Sir Robert Levett,” said Lord Chudleigh presently.

“He is addicted to horses and dogs, and he seems to consider that he may claim – or show – some sort of equal attachment to me,” I answered.

Then I told him the story of the broken sixpence, and how I became engaged, without knowing it, to both Harry Temple and Will Levett on the same day.

My lord laughed, and then became grave.

“I do not wonder,” he said, “that all classes of men have fallen in love with the sweetest and most charming of her sex. That does not surprise me. Still, though we have disposed of Mr. Temple, who is, I am bound to say, a gentleman open to reason, there may be more trouble with this headstrong country lad, who is evidently in sober earnest, as I saw from his eyes. What shall we do, Kitty?”

“My lord,” I whispered, “let me advise for your safety. Withdraw yourself for a while from Epsom. Give up Durdans and go to London. I could not bear to see you embroiled with this rude and boisterous clown. Oh, how could such a woman as Lady Levett have such a son? Leave me to deal with him as best I can.”

But he laughed at this. To be sure, fear had no part in the composition of this noble, this incomparable man.

“Should I run away because a rustic says he loves my Kitty?” But then his forehead clouded again. “Yet, alas! for my folly and my crime, I may not call her my Kitty.”

“Oh yes, my lord! Call me always thine. Indeed, I am all thine own, if only I could think myself worthy.”

We were walking together, the others a little distance behind us, and he could do no more than touch my fingers with his own. Alas! the very touch of his fingers caused a delightful tremor to run through my veins – so helplessly, so deeply was I in love with him.

Thus we walked, not hand-in-hand, yet from time to time our hands met: and thus we talked, not as betrothed lovers, yet as lovers: thus my lord spoke to me, confiding to me his most secret affairs, his projects, and his ambitions, as no man can tell them save to a woman he loves. Truly, it was a sweet and delicious time. I fondly turn to it now, after so many years, not, Heaven knows! with regret, any more than September, rich in golden harvest and laden orchards, regrets the sweet and tender April, when all the gardens were white and pink with the blossoms of plum and pear and apple, and the fields were green with the springing barley, oats, and wheat. Yet a dear, delightful time, only spoiled by that skeleton in the cupboard, that consciousness that the only person who stood between my lord and his happiness was – the woman he loved. Heard man ever so strange, so pitiful a case?

At the foot of the hill Lord Chudleigh left us, and turned in the direction of Durdans, where he remained all that day, coming not to the Assembly in the evening. Mrs. Esther and I went home together to dinner, and I know not who was the better pleased with the sport and the gaiety of the morning, my kind madam or Cicely, the maid, who had been upon the Downs and had her fortune told by the gipsies, and it was a good one.

“But, my dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “it is strange indeed that so loutish and countrified a bumpkin should be the son of parents so well-bred as Sir Robert and Lady Levett.”

“Yet,” I said, “the loutish bumpkin would have me marry him. Dear lady, would you wish your Kitty to be the wife of a man who loves the stable first, the kennel next, and his wife after his horses and his dogs?”

After dinner, as I expected, Will Levett called in person. He had been drinking strong ale with his dinner, and his speech was thick.

“Your servant, madam,” he said to Mrs. Esther. “I want speech, if I may have it, with Miss Kitty, alone by herself, for all she sits with her finger in her mouth yonder, as if she was not jumping with joy to see me again.”

“Sir!” I cried.

“Oh! I know your ways and tricks. No use pretending with me. Yet I like them to be skittish. It is their nature to. For all your fine frocks, you’re none of you any better than Molly the blacksmith’s girl, or Sukey at the Mill. Never mind, my girl. Be as fresh and frolic as you please. I like you the better for it – before we are married.”

“Kitty dear,” cried Mrs. Esther in alarm, “what does this gentleman mean?”

“I do not know, dear madam. Pray, Will, if you can, explain what you mean?”

“Explain? explain? Why – ” here he swore again, but I will not write down his profane and wicked language. Suffice it to say that he called heaven and earth to witness his astonishment. “Why, you mean to look me in the face and tell me you don’t know?”

“We are old friends, Will,” I said, “and I should like, for Nancy’s sake, and because Lady Levett has been almost a mother to me, out of her extreme kindness, that we should remain friends. But when a gentleman salutes me before a company of gentlemen and ladies as his sweetheart, when he talks of fighting other gentlemen – like a rustic on a village green – ”

“Wouldst have me fight with swords and likely as not get killed, then?” he asked.

“When he assumes these rights over me, I can ask, I think, for an explanation.”

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Esther. “We are grieved, sir, to have even a moment’s disagreement with the son of so honourable a gentleman and so gracious a lady as your respected father and worthy mother, but you will acknowledge that your behaviour on the Downs was startling to a young woman of such strict propriety as my dear Kitty.”

He looked from one to the other as if in a dream.

Then he put his hand into his pocket and dragged out the half sixpence.

“What’s that?” he asked me furiously.

“A broken sixpence, Will,” I replied.

“Where is the other half?”

“Perhaps where it was left, on the table in the parlour of the Vicarage.”

“What!” he cried; “do you mean to say that you didn’t break the sixpence with me?”

“Do you mean to say, Will, that I did? As for you breaking it, I do not deny that: I remember that you snapped it between your fingers without asking me anything about it; but to say that I broke it, or assented to your breaking it, or carried away the other half – Fie, Will, fie!”

“This wench,” he said, “is enough to drive a man mad. Yet, for all your fine clothes and your paint and powder, Mistress Kitty, I’ve promised to marry you. And marry you I will. Put that in your pipe, now.”

“Marry me against my consent, Will? That can hardly be.”

“Is it possible,” cried Mrs. Esther, seriously displeased, “that we have in this rude and discourteous person a son of Sir Robert Levett?”

“I never was crossed by woman or man or puppy yet,” cried Will doggedly, and taking no notice whatever of Mrs. Esther’s rebuke; “and I never will be! Why, for a whole year and more I’ve been making preparations for it. I’ve broke in the colt out of Rosamund by Samson and called him Kit, for you to ride. I’ve told the people round, so as anybody knows there’s no pride in me, that I’m going to marry a parson’s girl, without a farden, thof a baronet to be – ”

Will easily dropped into rustic language, where I do not always follow him.

“Oh, thank you, Will. That is kind indeed. But I would rather see you show the pride due to your rank and birth. You ought to refuse to marry a parson’s girl. Or, if you are resolved to cast away your pride, there’s many a farmer’s girl – there’s Jenny of the Mill, or the blacksmith’s Sue: more proper persons for you, I am sure, and more congenial to your tastes than the parson’s girl.”

“I don’t mind your sneering – not a whit, I don’t,” he replied. “Wait till we’re married, and I warrant you shall see who’s got the upper hand! There’ll be mighty little sneering then, I promise you.”

This brutal and barbarous speech made me angry.

“Now, Will,” I said, “get up and go away. We have had enough of your rustic insolence. Why, sir, it is a disgrace that a gentleman should be such a clown. Go away from Epsom: leave a company for which your rudeness and ill-temper do not fit you: go back to your mug-house, your pipe, your stables, and your kennels. If you think of marrying, wed with one of your own rank. Do you hear, sir? one of your own rank! Gentle born though you are, clown and churl is your nature. As for me, I was never promised to you; and if I had been, the spectacle of this amazing insolence would break a thousand promises.”

He answered by an oath. But his eyes were full of dogged determination which I knew of old; and I was terrified, wondering what he would do.

“I remember, when you were a boy, your self-will and heedlessness of your sister and myself. But we are grown up now, sir, as well as yourself, and you shall find that we are no longer your servants. What! am I to marry this clown – ”

“You shall pay for this!” said Will. “Wait a bit; you shall pay!”

“Am I to obey the command of this rude barbarian, and become his wife; not to cross him, but to obey him in all his moods, because he wills it? Are you, pray, the Great Bashaw?”

“Mr. Levett,” said Mrs. Esther, “I think you had better go. The Kitty you knew was a young and tender child; she is now a grown woman, with, I am happy to say, a resolution of her own. Nor is she the penniless girl that you suppose, but my heiress; though not a Pimpernel by blood, yet a member of as good and honourable a house as yourself.”

He swore again in his clumsy country fashion that he never yet was baulked by woman, and would yet have his way; whereas, so far as he was a prophet (I am translating his rustic language into polite English) those who attempted to say him nay would in the long-run find reason to repent with bitterness their own mistaken action. All his friends, he said, knew Will Levett. No white-handed, slobbering, tea-drinking hanger-on to petticoats was he; not so: he was very well known to entertain that contempt for women which is due to a man who values his self-respect and scorns lies, finery, and make-believe fine speeches. And it was also very well known to all the country-side that, give him but a fleer and a flout, he was ready with a cuff side o’ the head; and if more was wanted, with a yard of tough ash, or a fist that weighed more than most. As for drink, he could toss it off with the best, and carry as much; as for racing, we had seen what he could do and how gallant a rider he was; and for hunting, shooting, badger-baiting, bull-baiting, dog-fighting, and cocking, there was not, he was ready to assure us, his match in all the country. Why, then, should a man, of whom his country was proud – no mealy-mouthed, Frenchified, fine gentleman, of whom he would fight a dozen at once, so great was his courage – be sent about his business by a couple of women? He would let us know! He pitied our want of discernment, and was sorry for the sufferings which it would bring upon one of us, meaning Kitty; of which sufferings he was himself to be the instrument.

When he had finished this harangue he banged out of the room furiously, and we heard him swearing on the stairs and in the passage, insomuch that Cicely and her mother came up from the kitchen, and the former threatened to bring up her mop if he did not instantly withdraw or cease from terrifying the ladies by such dreadful words.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Esther, “we have heard, alas! so many oaths that we do not greatly fear them. Yet this young man is violent, and I will to Lady Levett, there to complain about her son.”

She put on her hat, and instantly walked to Sir Robert’s lodgings, when before the baronet, Lady Levett, and Nancy she laid her tale.

“I know not,” said Lady Levett, weeping, “what hath made our son so self-willed and so rustical. From a child he has chosen the kennel rather than the hall, and stable-boys for companions rather than gentlemen.”

“Will is rough,” said his father, “but I cannot believe that he would do any hurt to Kitty, whom he hath known (and perhaps in his way loved) for so long.”

“Will is obstinate,” said Nancy, “and he is proud and revengeful. He has told all his friends that he was about to marry Kitty. When he goes home again he will have to confess that he has been sent away.”

“Yet it would be a great match for Kitty,” said Will’s mother.

“No, madam, with submission,” said Mrs. Esther. “The disparity of rank is not so great, as your ladyship will own, and Kitty will have all my money. The real disparity is incompatibility of sentiment.”

“Father,” said Nancy, “you must talk to Will. And, Mrs. Pimpernel, take care that Kitty be well guarded.”

Sir Robert remonstrated with his son. He pointed out, in plain terms, that the language he had used and the threats he had made were such as to show him to be entirely unfitted to be the husband of any gentlewoman: that Kitty was, he had reason to believe, promised to another man: that it was absurd of him to suppose that a claim could be founded on words addressed to a child overcome with grief at the death of her father. He spoke gravely and seriously, but he might have preached to the pigs for all the good he did.

Will replied that he meant to marry Kitty, and he would marry her: that he would brain any man who stood in his way: that he never yet was crossed by a woman, and he never would; with more to the same effect, forgetting the respect due to his father.

Sir Robert, not losing his patience, as he would have been perfectly justified in doing, went on to remonstrate with his son upon the position which he was born to illustrate, and the duties which that involved. Foremost among these, he said, were respect and deference to the weaker sex. Savages and barbarous men, he reminded him, use women with as little consideration as they use slaves; indeed, because women are weak, they are, among wild tribes, slaves by birth. “But,” he said, “for a gentleman in this age of politeness to speak of forcing a lady to marry him against her will is a thing unheard of.”

“Why, lad,” he continued, “when I was at thy years, I would have scorned to think of a woman whose affections were otherwise bestowed. It would have been a thing due to my own dignity, if not to the laws of society, to leave her and look elsewhere. And what hath poor Kitty done, I pray? Mistaken an offer of marriage (being then a mere child and chit of sixteen) for an offer of friendship. Will, Will, turn thy heart to a better mood.”

Will said that it was no use talking, because his mind was made up: that he was a true Kentishman, and a British bull-dog. Holdfast was his name: when he made up his mind that he was going to get anything, that thing he would have: that, as for Kitty, he could no more show himself back upon the village-green, or in the village inn, or at any cock-fighting, bull-baiting, badger-drawing, or horse-race in the country-side, unless he had brought home Kitty as his wife. Wherefore, he wanted no more ado, but let the girl come to her right mind, and follow to heel, when she would find him (give him his own way, and no cursed contrariness) the best husband in the world. But, if not —

Then Sir Robert spoke to other purpose. If, he told his son, he molested Kitty in any way whatever, he would, in his capacity as justice of the peace, have him instantly turned out of the town; if he offered her any insult, or showed the least violence to her friends, he promised him, upon his honour, to disinherit him.

“You may drink and smoke tobacco with your grooms and stable-boys at home,” he said. “I have long been resigned to that. But if you disgrace your name in this place, as sure as you bear that name, you shall no longer be heir to aught but a barren title.”

Will answered not, but walked away with dogged looks.