She thought our Island all the darker because Henrietta had induced her to talk on the boat of her mountain home and her last morning there for the walk away with Chillon John. Soon it was to appear supernaturally bright, a very magician’s cave for brilliancy.
Now, this had happened—and comment on it to yourselves, remembering always, that Chillon John was a lover, and a lover has his excuses, though they will not obviate the penalties he may incur; and dreadful they were. After reading Henrietta’s letter to him, he rode out of his Canterbury quarters across the country to the borders of Sussex, where his uncle Lord Levellier lived, on the ridge of ironstone, near the wild land of a forest, Croridge the name of the place. Now, Chillon John knew his uncle was miserly, and dreaded the prospect of having to support a niece in the wretched establishment at Lekkatts, or, as it was popularly called, Leancats; you can understand why. But he managed to assure himself he must in duty consult with the senior and chief member of his family on a subject of such importance as the proposal of marriage to his lordship’s niece.
The consultation was short: ‘You will leave it to me,’ his uncle said: and we hear of business affairs between them, involving payment of moneys due to the young man; and how, whenever he touched on them, his uncle immediately fell back on the honour of the family and Carinthia Jane’s reputation, her good name to be vindicated, and especially that there must be no delays, together with as close a reckoning as he could make of the value of Lord Fleetwood’s estates in Kent and in Staffordshire and South Wales, and his house property in London.
‘He will have means to support her,’ said the old lord, shrugging as if at his own incapacity for that burden.
The two then went to the workshops beside a large pond, where there was an island bordered with birch trees and workmen’s cottages near the main building; and that was an arsenal containing every kind of sword and lance and musket, rifle and fowling-piece and pistol, and more gunpowder than was, I believe, allowed by law. For they were engaged in inventing a new powder for howitzer shells, of tremendous explosive power.
Nothing further did either of them say, concerning the marriage. Nor did Carinthia Jane hear any mention of Lord Fleetwood from her brother on the landing-place at Dover. She was taken to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham’s house in Hampshire; and there she remained, the delight of his life, during two months, patiently expecting and rebuking the unmaidenliness of her expectations, as honest young women in her position used to do. So did they sometimes wait for years; they have waited until they withered into their graves, like the vapours of a brief winter’s day: a moving picture of a sex restrained by modesty in those purer times from the taking of one step forward unless inquired for.
Two months she waited in our ‘dark land.’ January arrived, and her brother. Henrietta communicated the news:
‘My Janey, you are asked by Lord Fleetwood whether it is your wish that he should marry you.’
Now, usually a well-born young woman’s answer, if a willing one, is an example of weak translation. Here it was the heart’s native tongue, without any roundabout, simple but direct.
‘Oh, I will, I am ready, tell him.’