The Amazing Marriage | Page 7

She thinks we don't know
when we've tippled enough. We drink, and of never a man are we
jealous, And never a man against us will he speak For who can be hard
on a set of poor fellows Who only see Saturday once a week!
You chorus the last two lines.
That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined
in singing before he went out to face his end for the woman he loved.
He believed in her virtue to the very last.

'The ravished wife of my bosom,' he calls her all through the latter half
of the play. It is a real tragedy. The songs of that day have lost their
effect now, I suppose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and to hear
the poor coachman William Martin invoking the name of his dear
stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, so tearfully, while he joins the song
of Saturday, was a most moving thing. You saw nothing but
handkerchiefs out all over the theatre. What it is that has gone from our
drama, I cannot tell: I am never affected now as I was then; and people
in a low station of life could affect me then, without being flung at me,
for I dislike an entire dish of them, I own. We were simpler in our
habits and ways of thinking. Elizabeth Martin, according to report, was
a woman to make better men than Ralph Thorkill act evilly--as to good
looks, I mean. She was not entirely guiltless, I am afraid; though in the
last scene, Mrs. Kempson, who played the part (as, alas, she could do to
the very life!), so threw herself into the pathos of it that there were few
to hold out against her, and we felt that Elizabeth had been misled. So
much for morality in those days!
And now for the elopement.

CHAPTER II
MISTRESS GOSSIP TELLS OF THE ELOPEMENT OF THE
COUNTESS OF CRESSETT WITH THE OLD BUCCANEER, AND
OF CHARLES DUMP THE POSTILLION CONDUCTING THEM,
AND OF A GREAT COUNTY FAMILY
The twenty-first of June was the day appointed by Captain Kirby to
carry off Countess Fanny, and the time midnight: and ten minutes to
the stroke of twelve, Countess Fanny, as if she scorned to conceal that
she was in a conspiracy with her grey-haired lover, notwithstanding
that she was watched and guarded, left the Marchioness of Arpington's
ball-room and was escorted downstairs by her brother Lord Levellier,
sworn to baffle Kirby. Present with him in the street and witness to the
shutting of the carriage-door on Countess Fanny, were brother officers
of his, General Abrane, Colonel Jack Potts, and Sir Upton Tomber.

The door fast shut, Countess Fanny kissed her hand to them and drew
up the window, seeming merry, and as they had expected indignation
and perhaps resistance, for she could be a spitfire in a temper and had
no fear whatever of firearms, they were glad to have her safe on such
good terms; and so General Abrane jumped up on the box beside the
coachman, Jack Potts jumped up between the footmen, and Sir Upton
Tomber and the one-armed lord, as soon as the carriage was disengaged
from the ruck two deep, walked on each side of it in the road all the
way to Lord Cressett's town house. No one thought of asking where
that silly young man was--probably under some table.
Their numbers were swelled by quite a host going along, for heavy bets
were on the affair, dozens having backed Kirby; and it must have
appeared serious to them, with the lady in custody, and constables on
the look- out, and Kirby and his men nowhere in sight. They expected
an onslaught at some point of the procession, and it may be believed
they wished it, if only that they might see something for their money. A
beautiful bright moonlight night it happened to be. Arm in arm among
them were Lord Pitscrew and Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, a great friend
of Kirby's; for it was a device of the Old Buccaneer's that helped the
earl to win the great Welsh heiress who made him, even before he took
to hoarding and buying,--one of the wealthiest noblemen in England;
but she was crazed by her marriage or the wild scenes leading to it; she
never presented herself in society. She would sit on the top of
Estlemont towers--as they formerly spelt it--all day and half the night
in midwinter, often, looking for the mountains down in her native West
country, covered with an old white flannel cloak, and on her head a tall
hat of her Welsh women-folk; and she died of it, leaving a son in her
likeness, of whom you will hear. Lord