Chapter XXI

ISLINGTON CHURCH EARLY ONE MARCH MORNING.

Harry Fane was convinced of all that he had said—to the extremity of the situation which appeared to justify a violent alternative as the only refuge from their trouble. Naturally he succeeded in persuading Lady Bell, while he was not even guilty of deliberately playing upon her feelings. He was tortured with having the cup snatched from his lips—with doubt and dread, and he groaned out his torture audibly, until Lady Bell was brought to enter but a faltering futile objection to his desperate project.

“How can we get married so soon, nobody knowing, your cousin away, and not a preparation made?”

Nothing more easy, as the records of the generation showed, and as Lady Bell’s own recollection might have told her.

Even when a public marriage would be attended with difficulties, a private marriage could be resorted to, and had been resorted to, more than once already by officers hastily bound for America. These private marriages were, according to convenience, announced shortly after the event, or allowed gradually to filter out in suspicious rumours, till the secret was no secret, by the time it was finally disclosed.

Certainly Lady Bab Yelverton, the only child of the Earl of Suffolk, whose runaway match had been much talked of this season, had brought private marriages somewhat into disgrace.

But then Lady Bab, by the way a mere chit of a girl, two years younger than Lady Bell, had defied parental authority in the most daring and glaring manner; Lady Bab had gone off from her father and mother’s house with Lieutenant Gould, just returned from being wounded in America, to be worse wounded by Cupid or Plutus at home. Lord Suffolk had threatened his daughter with his curse, and the cutting her off with a shilling.

Lady Bab’s gross filial undutifulness was regarded as even more reprehensible than the Duchess of Leinster’s disregard for maternal obligations. The duchess, who was the widowed mother of seventeen children, as well as “the proudest, most expensive woman in town,” had thought fit to marry her eldest son’s tutor.

But Lady Bell had no father to curse her, and cut her off with a shilling, and in place of seventeen chicks did not possess one whose interest could be affected by the acquisition of a stepfather. If Lady Bell chose to be very imprudent, she was still at liberty to please herself. There was only her friend, Mrs. Sundon, whom Lady Bell was bound to consult, and, fortunately or unfortunately, Mrs. Sundon was too far away in the emergency to be consulted in time.

Captain Fane was his own master, save when he was with his squadron. He had fewer surviving relatives than Lady Bell owned.

Why then should there be any privacy thought of in the matter?

Because, although there were no near relations, there were many friends, if there was no fortune on either side to be thrown away, there were sufficient prospects to be sacrificed, and penalties to be incurred. Lady Bell had been so much the rage, been believed to have the refusing of such excellent offers, that a host of influential people, if they knew the reckless step which she proposed to take, would rush in—all the faster, that it was no particular business of theirs—to try if they could not prevent the shocking disaster of an attractive young woman of rank committing an unequal love marriage.

Even the Sundons, who had looked on and promoted the intimacy between the pair, would, as Captain Fane foresaw, take blame to themselves when it was too late to oppose the grand conclusion of the intimacy.

Lady Bell for herself, and Captain Fane for her, had a natural dislike to the exclamations, the expostulations, and the nine days’ wonder which they must provoke.

Lady Bell would have to sustain the scorn, to support much that was painful in her new position, all alone, as if she were still a widow, should she marry Captain Fane publicly, and should he join his ship immediately and sail on a long voyage with sea-fights in the distance.

On the other hand, Lady Bell and Captain Fane might marry as many of their compeers married, secretly, keep their own counsel, and none be any the wiser, till the gentleman returned to make known the marriage and claim his wife.

No doubt that was the line of argument followed and found satisfactory long ago by men and women, honourable otherwise, who allowed themselves to become involved in the compromises, the concealments, the double dealings, and the acted lies of private marriages, for which the principals were not condemned by their contemporaries.

In justice alike to our progenitors and to ourselves, we crave leave to remember, that just as our grandfathers and grandmothers managed to combine in their portly and stately persons, along with a foreground of magnificence and elegance, a background of slipshodness and sluttishness, so, even where their virtues were admirable, still their manly morals were laxer, and their womanly manners less delicate, than the morals and manners of the present generation.

There was one obstacle to a private marriage in Lady Bell’s case, which nearly compelled the couple to brave public clamour and indignation. Lady Bell was a minor. Captain Fane, in despair at this difficulty, hurried like a madman, braving all imputations, to the most notorious gaming-houses in town where Squire Godwin’s whereabouts might be discovered.

The gallant Captain proposed, failing every other resource, to make a forlorn appeal to Lady Bell’s nearest relations.

The gentleman was luckier than he deserved, he stumbled on the very man he sought, who was in London unknown to Lady Bell, and unencountered by her.

Captain Fane and Squire Godwin had an interview, during which the former succeeded in coming to an arrangement with the latter, but by what representation and inducement, by what descent to lower depths on the part of the ruined gentleman, and by what ill-bestowal of a portion of Harry Fane’s last prize-money, never transpired. The transaction was not likely to be reported by Mr. Godwin, neither was it one on which Harry Fane would care to look back.

Captain Fane, however, took the precaution of introducing Squire Godwin for a few moments to the Sundons’ house in Cleveland Court.

Lady Bell met her uncle for the first time since her marriage to Squire Trevor. She could not help regarding Squire Godwin as a bird of evil omen. His appearance on the scene, like a malignant spectre at the critical juncture, was a shock to Lady Bell, and smote her, while it lasted, with blank confusion and consternation.

But Mr. Godwin’s stay was short, since the master of the house was kept in the dark as to the origin of a visit which he did not relish, and for bringing about which he did not thank Captain Fane.

Sir Peter was ready to shake himself up and put a stop to the intrusion, while he prevented any attempt which it might imply of the resumption of authority by Squire Godwin over his niece, Lady Bell Trevor, Sir Peter’s honoured guest.

Mr. Godwin did not wait to be dismissed, he took his leave, giving Lady Bell, in her agitation, a dim impression that while his air was as distinguished as ever, in the studied carelessness—of which the study was so perfect, that it became invisible—and his dress as irreproachable, every line in his handsome person was drawn more deeply and sharply. Crows’ toes and furrows had multiplied incalculably, till the wrinkles of premature old age were shrivelling and wizening his face. The once noble field was all covered over with cramped, contracted, ugly hand-writing.

Lady Bell could not so much as rally breath and courage to inquire for her Aunt Die. She was so simple and ignorant, that she did not even guess what had brought her lover into strange contact and alliance with Squire Godwin, or how the latter came by the knowledge, the merest whisper of which was sufficient to cause her to leap from her chair, for Mr. Godwin contrived in his brief greetings to say one or two pertinent words aside to her.

The Squire addressed Lady Bell Trevor with a little more consideration than he had been wont to bestow on Lady Bell Etheredge, but there remained the echo of the old contempt in the tone of his speech.

“So you think to contract a second marriage, madam; well, matrimony is honourable, though I have not tried it on my own account. I am sorry that I cannot say much for the wisdom of the step in this instance, but I do not presume to advise, far less to interfere. It says much for the happiness of the last knot (eh! my Lady Bell?) that you are so keen to tie another.”

The one difficulty overcome, the remainder of the scheme was even exceptionally practicable, and circumstances like cards played themselves, as it were, in Captain Fane’s and Lady Bell’s hand.

A letter arrived from Lady Sundon to inform Sir Peter in particular and “all friends who were interested,” that her boy was in a fair way of recovery, but still called for not less than a month’s nursing from her and Lyddy.

In the delay, Sir Peter, who was miserable, left in town with only Nancy of all his family, and who had got all that he could expect from the opinion of the medical men, resolved to break up his establishment in London for the season, return to Sundon Green, and await his wife there.

Thus the best pretext was afforded gratis to Lady Bell for sincerely assuring Sir Peter, with grateful mention of his hospitality, that he need not have any hesitation on her account. Her visit had already extended beyond its proposed limits. Mrs. Sundon was anxious for Lady Bell’s return. Lady Bell herself was beginning to long to be out of the racket which had made a fine change, but which she did not affect for a continuance, and to be at home again and settled down quietly at Summerhill.

But first Lady Bell had to spend a few days at the village of Islington, with her old nurse at Lady Lucie Penruddock’s.

The nurse’s accommodation was so scanty, that Lady Bell could not take her maid. Lady Bell would come back to Cleveland Court to fetch the servant, when Sir Peter kindly arranged to send his old coachman to be their escort to Lumley, before the Sundons themselves went into the country.

Nothing could be more proper and obliging. In the meantime, Captain Fane had taken leave of his friends in town, and started for Portsmouth, but he journeyed by a roundabout road, and halted on the way.

Lady Bell did think that fate had been against her, when she was constrained to accomplish a second marriage, shorn like the first of all state and splendour. But there was no help for it.

In the parish church of Islington, attended by her nurse, and given away by a friend of the nurse’s, with the clerk and the pew-opener to serve as additional witnesses, early one stormy March morning, Lady Bell was lawfully married to Harry Fane.