Without telling any one of his intention, Lord Chudleigh posted one morning to town. I was acquainted with this news by Miss Peggy Baker, who informed me of it in her kindest manner.

“Dear Miss Pleydell,” she said, after morning service, as we were coming out of church, “have you heard the dreadful news?”

“I have heard no news,” I replied.

“We have lost the chief ornament of the company. Yes; you may well turn pale”—I am sure I did nothing of the kind—“Lord Chudleigh has left Epsom—some say for the season: some say on account of some distaste he has conceived for the place: some say on account of previous engagements.”

“What kind of engagements?”

“I thought you would ask that. It is rumoured that he is shortly to be married to a young lady of good birth and with a fortune equal to his own. It is certain that he will not return.”

“Really!” said Nancy, who had now come to my aid, “how shall you be able to exist, dear Miss Peggy, without him?”

“I? Oh, indeed, I am not concerned with Lord Chudleigh.”

“I mean, how can you exist when the principal subject for scandalous talk, and the chief cause of anonymous letters, is removed?”

She blushed and bit her lips.

“I think, Miss Levett,” she gasped, “that you allow your tongue greater liberties than are consistent with good-breeding.”

“Better the tongue than the pen, dear Miss Baker,” replied Nancy. “Come, Kitty, we will go weep the absence of this truant lord.”

“The Temple still remains—he! he!” said Miss Baker.

This was a conversation at which I could laugh, spiteful though it was. I knew not that my lord was gone away, nor why. But one thing I knew very well. He was not gone to marry any one. If that can be called ease which was mostly shame, I felt easy, because ordinary jealousy was not possible with me. He could not marry, if he wished. Poor lad! his fate was sealed with mine.

Yet, thinking over what might happen, I resolved that night upon a thing which would perhaps incense my uncle, the Doctor, beyond all measure. I resolved that should that thing happen which most I dreaded, that my lord should fall in love with another woman, I would myself, without his ever knowing who had done it, release him from his ties. I knew where the Doctor kept his registers: I would subtract the leaf which certified our union, and would send it to my lord; or should the Doctor, as was possible, propose any legal action, I would refuse to appear or to act. Now without me the Doctor was powerless.

Lord Chudleigh went to town, in fact, to see the Doctor. He drove to his town house in St. James’s Square, and in the morning he sallied forth and walked to the Fleet Market.

The Reverend Doctor Shovel was doing a great and splendid business. Already there were rumours of the intention of Government to bring in a bill for the suppression of these lawless Fleet marriages. Therefore, in order to stimulate the lagging, he had sent his messengers, touters, and runners abroad in every part of the city, calling on all those who wished to be married secretly, or to avoid wedding expenses, feasts, and junketings, and to be securely married, to make haste, while there was yet time. Therefore there was a throng every day from seven in the morning, of prentices with their masters’ daughters, old men with their cooks, tradesmen who would avoid the feasting, sailors home for a few weeks, as eager to marry a wife as if they were to be home for the whole of their natural lives, officers who wanted to secure an heiress, and many honest folk who saw in a Fleet wedding the easiest way of avoiding the expenses of their friends’ congratulations, with the foolish charges of music, bells, dancing, and rejoicing which often cripple a young married couple for years. Why, the parents connived with the girls, and when these ran away early in the morning, and came home falling upon their knees to confess the truth, the play had been arranged and rehearsed beforehand, and the forgiveness took the form of money for furniture instead of for feasting. But still the parents went about holding up their hands and calling Heaven to witness that they could not have believed their daughter so sly and deceitful a puss.

Hither came Lord Chudleigh, heavy of heart.

The Doctor at eleven in the morning was in the full swing of his work. Two couples of the lower class were being married in the house. Outside, the place was beset with wedding parties, couples coming shyly and timidly, and couples coming openly and without shame. The touters and runners of the rival Fleet parsons were fighting, swearing, cajoling and inviting people to stop with them, holding out offers of cheapness, safe marriage, expedition, secrecy, and rum punch. Strangers to London, who had never heard of Doctor Shovel’s greatness, were led away to those pretenders whose canonical orders were so doubtful. I believe the world at large entertains contempt for all Fleet parsons as a body (happily no longer existent), but, for my own part, while I hold the memory of the Doctor in mingled shame and respect, I despise the rest because he himself held them in such low esteem.

Roger, the touter, recognised his lordship, as he made his way slowly through the mob along the side of the market.

“Good morning, my lord,” he said—his face was bloody and bruised, his tie-wig was awry, his coat was torn, so fierce had been the struggle of the morning—“good-morning, my lord. We have not seen your lordship this long while. Would your lordship like speech with the Doctor? He is busy now, and six couples wait him. Warm work it is now! But I think he will see your lordship. We should be glad to drink your lordship’s health.”

The fellow made his way through the crowd, and presently returned, saying that the Doctor was very near the benediction, after which he would give his lordship ten minutes, but no longer, and should lose a guinea for every minute.

The Doctor, in fact, was dismissing a pair of couples with a few words of advice. They were respectable young city people, getting the secret marriage for the reasons which I have already described.

“You are now,” he said, “married according to the rites of holy Mother Church. You are tied to each other for life. I hope you will thank and continually bless my name for tying the knot this morning. Remember what the Church charges her children in the words of the service. Go: be honest in your dealings, thrifty in your habits, cautious in your trusts, careful of small gains; so shall you prosper. Let the husband avoid the tavern in the morning, and the conventicle on the Sunday; let the wife study plain, roast, and boiled, make her own dresses, pretend not to be a fine madam, and have no words with gallants from the west of Temple Bar.

“If, on the other hand,” he went on, knitting his brows, “the husband spends his money in clubs, among the freemasons, and in taverns; if he do not stick to business, if he cheat in his transactions; or if the wife go finely dressed, and talk with pretty fellows when she ought to be cleaning the furniture; if they both go not to church regularly and obey the instruction of their rector, vicar, or curate—then, I say, the fate of that couple shall be a signal example. For the husband shall be hanged at Tyburn Tree, and the wife be flogged at Bridewell. Go.”

They bowed, being overwhelmed with the terrors of this parting advice, and departed. Outside, they were greeted with a roar of rough congratulation, and were followed by the shouts of the market till they reached Fleet Bridge, where they were quickly lost in the crowd.

Then the Doctor turned to Lord Chudleigh.

“Your lordship has come, I suppose,” he asked, “to inquire after the health of her ladyship?”

“I come, Doctor Shovel,” replied my lord gravely, “to know from your own lips, before I commit the affair to counsel, how far I am compromised by the disgraceful trick you played upon me about a year ago.”

“Your lordship is married,” said the Doctor simply. “So far are you compromised, and no further. Nay, we seek no further complication in this business.”

He sat down in his wooden arm-chair, and, with his elbow on the table, knitted his bushy eyebrows, frowned and shook his great forefinger in his visitor’s face.

“Your lordship is married,” he repeated. “Of that have no doubt; no doubt whatever is possible. Tell your lawyer all; refer him to me.”

“The story,” said Lord Chudleigh, “is this. I come here, out of curiosity, to see you—a man of whom I had heard much, though little to your credit. I am received by you with courtesy and hospitality. There is much drinking, and I (for which I have no defence to offer) drink too much. I awake in the morning still half unconscious. I am taken downstairs by you, and married, while in that condition, to some woman I had never before seen. After this I am again put to bed. When I awake, I am informed by you what has taken place.”

“That is a story neatly told,” said the Doctor. “If I had to tell it, however, the details would assume another complexion. What brought your lordship to spend the night in such a place as the Liberties of the Fleet? A common parson of the Fleet? Nay, that is improbable; my modesty forbids me to believe so incredible a circumstance. But we may suppose an appointment for the morning; an appointment made and kept; a secret marriage——”

“Would you dare to tell such a story as that?” Lord Chudleigh interrupted the Doctor with vehemence. “Would you dare, sir, to hint that I, Lord Chudleigh, had designed a Fleet marriage?”

“My lord, where a member of your family, where your father’s son is concerned, I dare a great deal, I assure you.”

“And the woman—who is she? Produce me this wretch, this creature who became an accomplice in the plot.”

“All in good time. Be assured, my lord, that we shall produce her in good time—at the right time. Also, be resigned to the inevitable. Nothing can unmarry you now.”

“I think,” said his lordship, “that thou art the greatest villain in England.”

“Ta, ta, ta!” The Doctor lay back in his chair with his arms extended and a genial laugh. “Your lordship is not complimentary. Still, I make allowances. I cannot fight you, because I am a clergyman; you can therefore say what you please. And I own that it certainly is a vexatious thing for a gentleman of your rank and position to have a wife and yet to have no wife: not to know her name and parentage. Why, she may be in the soap-suds over the family linen in the Fleet Liberties, or selling hot furmety on Fleet Bridge, or keeping a farthing sausage-stall in the Fleet Market, or making the rooms for the gentlemen in the Fleet Prison, or frying beefsteaks in Butcher Row; or she may be picking pockets in St. Paul’s Churchyard, or she may be beating hemp in Bridewell, or she may be under the Alderman’s rod in Newgate. Nay, my lord, do not swear in this place, which is, as one may say, a chapel-of-ease. Then her parents: your lordship’s father and mother-in-law. Roger, my touter—say—may be her parent; or she may come of a dishonest stock in Turnmill Lane; or she may be ignorant of father and mother, and may belong to the numerous family of those who sleep in the baskets of Covent Garden and the ashes of the glass-houses. I repeat, my lord, that to swear in such a place, and before such a man, a reverend divine, is impious. Avoid the habit of swearing altogether; but, if you must swear, let it be outside this house.”

“You will not, then, even tell me where she is, this wife of mine?”

“I will not, my lord.”

“You will not even let me know the depth of my degradation?”

“My lord, I will tell you nothing. As for her ladyship, I will say not a word. But as I have shown you the possibilities on one side, so I would show them to you on the other. She may be the wretched creature you fear. She may also be a gentlewoman by birth, young, beautiful, accomplished; fit, my lord, to bear your name and to be your wife.”

“No,” he cried; “that is impossible. What gentlewoman would consent to such a marriage?”

The Doctor laughed.

“There are many things in this world,” he said, “that even Lord Chudleigh cannot understand. Now, my lord, if you have nothing more to say, you may leave me. There are already half a dozen expectant brides upon the threshold. One would not, sure, keep the poor things waiting. I am generally at home, my lord, in the evening, and should you feel inclined for another social night with punch, and a song over the bowl, your lordship will be welcome, in spite of hard words.”

Lord Chudleigh answered not a word, but walked away.

Small comfort had he got from the Doctor.

Now was he in a sad plight indeed; for his heart was altogether filled with the image of Kitty Pleydell. Yet how hope to win her? And how stand by and let her be won by another man?

To be married in such a way, not to know who or what your wife might be, is, surely, a thing quite beyond any history ever told.