every minute,” said the excellent Roger.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Gambit, “the man is stark mad – staring mad!”
“Sir,” I faltered – “there is, I fear, some mistake.”
He waved both of his hands with a gesture reassuring and grand.
“No mistake, madam, at all. I am that Dr. Shovel before whom the smaller pretenders in these Liberties give place and hide diminished heads. If by any unlucky accident your lover has fallen a prey to some of those (self-styled) clerical gentry, who are in fact impostors and sharpers, we will speedily rescue him from their talons. Describe the gentleman, madam, and my messenger shall go and seek him at the Pen and Hand, or at some other notorious place.”
The clerk, meanwhile, had placed himself beside his master, and now produced a greasy Prayer-book, with the aid of which, I suppose, he meant to give the responses of the Church. At the mention of the word “mistake” a look of doubt and anxiety crossed his face.
“There is, indeed, some mistake, sir,” I repeated. “My errand here is not of the kind you think.”
“Then, madam, your business with me must be strange indeed. Sirrah!” he addressed his clerk, in a voice of thunder, “hast thou been playing the fool? What was it this young lady sought of you?”
“Oh, sir! this good person is not to blame, perhaps. Are you indeed the Rev. Gregory Shovel, Doctor of Divinity?”
“No other, madam.” He spread out both his arms, proudly lifting his gown, so that he really seemed to cover the whole of the end of the room. “No other: I assure you I am Dr. Gregory Shovel, known and beloved by many a happy pair.”
“And the brother-in-law of the late Reverend Lawrence Pleydell, late vicar of – ”
He interrupted me. “Late vicar? Is, then, my brother-in-law dead? or have they, which is a thing incredible, conferred preferment upon sheer piety?”
“Alas! sir,” I cried, with tears, “my father is dead.”
“Thy father, child!”
“Yes, sir; I am Kitty Pleydell, at your service.”
“Kitty Pleydell!” He bent over me across the table, and looked into my face not unkindly. “My sister’s child! then how – ” He turned upon his clerk, who now stood with staring eyes and open mouth, chapfallen and terrified. “Fool!“ he thundered. “Get thee packing, lest I do thee a mischief!”
CHAPTER V
HOW KITTY WITNESSED A FLEET WEDDING
Then I pulled out my father’s letter, and gave it to him to read.
He took it, read it carefully, nodding gravely over each sentence, and then returned it to me.
“Lawrence, then,” he said softly, “Lawrence is dead! Lawrence Pleydell is dead! And I am living. Lawrence! He hath, without reasonable doubt, passed away in full assurance. He hath exchanged this world for a better. He hath gone to happiness. Nay, if such as he die not in faith, what hope remains for such sinners as ourselves? Then would it be better for those who dwell in the Liberties of the Fleet if they had never been born. So. My sister’s child. Hold up thy face, my dear.” He kissed me as he spoke, and held his hand under my chin so that he could look at me well. “There is more Pleydell than Shovel here. That is well, because the Pleydells are of gentle blood. And the daughter doth ever favour the father more than the mother. Favour him in thy life, child, as well as in thy features.
“Lawrence is dead!” he went on. “The gentlest soul, the most pious and religious creature that the world has ever seen. He, for one, could think upon his Maker without the terror of a rebellious and prodigal son. The world and the flesh had no temptations for him. A good man, indeed. It is long since I saw him, and he knew not where I live, nor how. Yet he, who knew me when I was young, trusted still in me – whom no one else will trust. This it is to start in life with goodly promise of virtue, scholarship, and religion.”
He cleared his throat, and was silent awhile.
“Thy father did well, child. I will treat thee as my own daughter. Yet I know not, indeed, where to bestow thee, for this house is not fit for girls, and I have none other. Still, I would fain take thy father’s place, so far as in me lies. He, good man, lived in the country, where virtue, like fresh butter and new-laid eggs, flourishes easily and at the cost of a little husbandry in the way of prayer and meditation. As for us who live in great cities, and especially in the Rules or Liberties of the Fleet, we may say with the Psalmist, having examples to the contrary continually before us, with temptations such as dwellers in the fields wot not of, ‘He that keepeth the Law, happy is he!’ I have neither wife nor child to greet thee, Kitty. I must bestow thee somewhere. What shall we do?”
He paused to think.
“I might find a lodging – but no, that would not do. Or in – but the house is full of men. There is the clerk of St. Sepulchre’s, whose wife would take thee; but the rector bears me a heavy grudge. Ho! ho!” he laughed low down in his chest. “There is not a parish round London, from Limehouse to Westminster, and from Southwark to Highgate, where the niece of Dr. Shovel would not find herself flouted, out of the singular hatred which the clergy bear to me. For I undersell them all. And if they pass an Act to prevent my marrying, then will I bury for nothing and undersell them still. Well, I must take order in this matter. And who are you, my good woman?” He asked this of Mrs. Gambit.
“Jane Gambit, sir,” she replied, “at your service, and the wife of Samuel Gambit, foreman of works. And my charge is not to leave Miss Kitty until she is safe in your reverence’s hands. There are the hands, to be sure; but as for safety – ”
She paused, and sniffed violently, looking round the room with a meaning air.
“Why, woman, you would not think the child in danger with me?”
“I know not, sir. But Miss Kitty has been brought up among gentlefolk, and the room is not one to which she has been accustomed to live in, or to eat in, or to sleep in, either at the Vicarage or the Hall. Tobacco and the smell of rum may be very well – in their place, which, I humbly submit, is in a tavern, not a gentlewoman’s parlour.”
“The woman speaks reason,” he growled, laying his great hand upon the table. “See, my dear, my brother-in-law thought me holding a rich benefice in the Church. Those get rich benefices who have rich friends and patrons. I had none; therefore I hold no benefice. And as for my residence, why, truly, I have little choice except between this place and the Fleet Prison, or perhaps the King’s Bench. Else might I welcome thee in a better and more convenient lodging. Know, therefore, Kitty, without any concealment, that I live here secluded in the Liberties of the Fleet in order that my creditors, of whom I have as many as most men and more importunate, may no longer molest me when I take my walks abroad; that I am in this place outside the authority of the bishop; and that my occupation is to marry, with all safety and despatch without license, or asking of banns, or any of the usual delays, those good people who wish to be married secretly and quickly, and can afford at least one guinea fee for the ceremony.”
I stared in amazement. To be sure, every clergyman can marry, but for a clergyman to do naught else seemed strange indeed.
He saw my amazement; and, drawing his tall and burly figure upright, he began to deliver an oration – I call it an oration, because he so puffed his cheeks, rolled his sentences, and swelled himself out while he spoke, that it was more like a sermon or oration than
