Carinthia’s eyes were on the great lady’s. Their meaning was, ‘You hit my chief thought.’ They were read as her farthest thought. For the hint of Henrietta’s weakness deadened her feelings with a reminder of warm and continued solicitations rebutted; the beautiful creature’s tortures at the idea of her exile from England. An outwearied hopelessness expressed a passive sentiment very like indifference in the clear wide gaze. She replied: ‘I have. My proposal to her was Cadiz, with both our young ones. She will not.’
And there is an end to that part of the question! Lady Arpington interpreted it, by the gaze more than the words, under subjection of the young woman’s character. Nevertheless, she bore away Carinthia’s consent to a final meeting with the earl at her house in London, as soon as things were settled at Croridge. Chillon, whom she saw, was just as hard, unforgiving, careless of his country’s dearest interests; brother and sister were one heart of their one blood. She mentioned the general impression in town, that the countess and only she could save the earl from Rome. A flash of polite laughter was Chillon’s response. But after her inspection of the elegant athlete, she did fancy it possible for a young wife, even for Henrietta, to bear his name proudly in his absence—if that was worth a moment’s consideration beside the serious issues involved in her appeal to the countess; especially when the suggestion regarding young wives left unprotected, delicately conveyed to the husband, had failed of its purpose. The handsome husband’s brows fluttered an interrogation, as if her clear-obscure should be further lighted; and it could not be done. He weighed the wife by the measure of the sister, perhaps; or his military head had no room for either. His callousness to the danger of his country’s disintegration, from the incessant, becoming overt, attacks of a foreign priesthood might—an indignant great lady’s precipitation to prophecy said would—bring chastisement on him. She said it, and she liked Henrietta, vowing to defeat her forecast as well as she could in a land seeming forsaken by stable principles; its nobles breaking up its national church, going over to Rome, embracing the faith of the impostor Mahomet.
Gossip fed to the starvation bone of Lady Arpington’s report, until one late afternoon, memorable for the breeding heat in the van of elemental artillery, newsboys waved damp sheets of fresh print through the streets, and society’s guardians were brought to confess, in shame and gladness, that they had been growing sceptical of the active assistance of Providence. At first the ‘Terrible explosion of gunpowder at Croridge’ alarmed them lest the timely Power should have done too much. A day later the general agitation was pacified; Lady Arpington circulated the word ‘safe,’ and the world knew the disaster had not engulphed Lady Fleetwood’s valuable life. She had the news by word of mouth from the lovely Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, sister-in-law to the countess. We are convinced we have proof of Providence intervening when some terrific event of the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and no more than the thing desired. Pitiful though it may seem for a miserly old lord to be blown up in his bed, it is necessarily a subject of congratulation if the life, or poor remnant of a life, sacrificed was an impediment to our righteous wishes. But this is a theme for the Dame, who would full surely have committed another breach of the treaty, had there not been allusion to her sisterhood’s view of the government of human affairs.
On the day preceding the catastrophe, Chillon’s men returned to work. He and Carinthia and Mr. Wythan lunched with Henrietta at Stoneridge. Walking down to Lekkatts, they were astounded to see the figure of the spectral old lord on the plank to the powder store, clad in his long black cloak, erect. He was crossing, he told them, to count his barrels; a dream had disturbed him. Chillon fell to rapid talk upon various points of business, and dispersed Lord Levellier’s memory relating to his errand. Leaning on Carinthia’s arm, he went back to the house, where he was put to bed in peace of mind. His resuscitated physical vigour blocked all speculation for the young people assembled at Stoneridge that night. They hardly spoke; they strangled thoughts forming as larvae of wishes. Henrietta would be away to Lady Arpington’s next day, Mr. Wythan to Wales. The two voyagers were sadder by sympathy than the two whom they were leaving to the clock’s round of desert sameness. About ten at night Chillon and Mr. Wythan escorted Carinthia, for the night’s watch beside her uncle, down to Lekkatts. It was midway that the knocks on air, as of a muffled mallet at a door and at farther doors of caverns, smote their ears and shook the ground.
After an instant of the silence following a shock, Carinthia touched her brother’s arm; and Chillon said:
‘Not my powder!’
They ran till they had Lekkatts in sight. A half moon showed the house; it stood. Fifty paces below, a column of opal smoke had begun to wreathe and stretch a languid flag. The ‘rouse’ promised to Lord Levellier by Daniel Charner’s humorous mates had hit beyond its aim. Intended to give him a start—or ‘One-er in return,’ it surpassed his angry shot at the body of them in effect.
Carinthia entered his room and saw that he was lying stretched restfully. She whispered of this to Chillon, and began upon her watch, reading her Spanish phrasebook; and she could have wept, if she had been a woman for tears. Her duty to stay in England with Chillon’s fair wife crossed the beckoning pages like a black smoke. Her passion to go and share her brother’s dangers left the question of its righteousness at each fall of the big breath.
Her uncle’s grey head on his pillow was like a flintstone in chalk under her look by light of dawn; the chin had dropped.