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MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

and the Question of
Socialism in India

V. Geetha
 Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Series Editors
Marcello Musto, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique
of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for
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 V. Geetha

Bhimrao Ramji
Ambedkar
and the Question
of Socialism in India
V. Geetha
Chennai, India

ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
ISBN 978-3-030-80374-2 ISBN 978-3-030-80375-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80375-9

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For my parents
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 Acknowledgements

I don’t quite know where to start, by way of expressing my gratitude

to all those that have been with me on this journey into Ambedkar’s
world. First, Marcello Musto for prodding me to write this book, and
ensuring that I did. Thanks to the rigorous approach to thinking and
writing that K. Manoharan (also known as S. V. Rajadurai), my co-author
for many book projects, instilled in me, I began to read Ambedkar system-
atically three decades ago. I owe him thanks for that, and for hours of
conversation on Marx, Ambedkar, socialism…
I would also like to thank two people from whom I have learned a
lot, especially about Ambedkar and the larger context of left and liberal
thought and politics in his native Maharashtra: the late Sharmila Rege of
the Women’s Studies Department, Savitribai Phule University, Pune; and
Umesh Bagde, of the Department of History, Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar
Marathwada University, Aurangabad, who is an inexhaustible source of
knowledge, an erudite public intellectual and a dear friend.
Since 2015, I have been part of a project that I coordinate, called ‘Let’s
Read Ambedkar’ which comprises lectures and discussions on Ambedkar’s
key texts and contexts. These extramural teaching camps have attracted
students, journalists, writers and political activists, and enriched my under-
standing of Ambedkar’s ideas, and more important, brought me in touch
with Dalit life worlds that breathe a culture of hope, resilience and uncon-
ditional fraternity. I must thank each and every one of those who helped
arrange these camps and all those that were part of them, starting with

xv
xvi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

my friend and comrade, Prema Revathi who has stayed with me through
this process; comrades Ramamurthi, Siva Satya, Geeta Elangovan and
Elangovan, Arivazhagan, Paranthaman, Sait, Samuel Raj, Gautam Ganap-
athy, Thanigai, Uday and his students from the Madras Christian College,
Shanmuganandan, Bhagat Singh, Nataraj, Sheelu, Father Arul Raja and
the Jesuit fraternity, all from Tamil Nadu; my feminist comrades from
Forum Against Oppression of Women, and the Gandhian Rajini Bakshi,
from Mumbai; the Women’s Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, especially Lata and Tarang; the organizers of the
Certificate Course on ‘Reading Ambedkar’ at Babasaheb Dr. Ambedkar
Marathwada University, Aurangabad; the Women’s Studies Department,
Savirtibai Phule University, Pune, in particular Anagha, Swati, Sneha and
Deepa; Karthik and other friends from the Ambedkar-King Study Circle in
California; the Prabuddha Collective, Pune, particularly, Vaibhav, Anushka
and Zameer.
I would not have been able to write this book, if not for the
work of that redoubtable scholar of anti-caste and feminist histories,
the late Gail Omvedt with whom I had the good fortune to converse
for long hours during a time that we travelled together in the United
States; feminist historian and film-maker, Uma Chakravarti whose writ-
ings on ancient India and Buddhism have helped me retain a consis-
tent feminist perspective on matters to do with caste, the household
and family; and the late K. Balagopal to who I owe many intellec-
tual and other debts. For both intermittent and sustained conversa-
tions over the years on anti-caste political traditions and thought, Dalit
histories, literature and culture many thanks to the late Ajit Muricken,
Gopal Guru, Anand Teltumbde, Valerian Rodrigues, Balmurli Natrajan,
Dilip Menon, Anupama Rao, Santosh Suradhkar, Praveen Chavan, Dilip
Chavan, Prakash Sirsat, Wandana Sonalkar, Deepa Dhanraj, A. Suneeta,
Kalpana Kannabiran, Sandana Mary, Burnad Fatima, Bama, Punitha
Pandian, Ponnuchamy, Raj Gauthaman, Madivannan, Stalin Rajangam,
Raghupathy and Aadavan Dheetchanya.
Many thanks to Senthilnathan and Amutarasan for suggesting and
supporting the Social Justice events since 2014, which helped to take
forward conversations on Ambedkar’s life and work. For reading parts
of the manuscript thank you, Mano, Helmut, Revathi, Senthil Babu and
Bhavani and for helping with sourcing texts, Srikant Talwalkar, Devkumar
Ahire, Minal, Scott Stroud, Babu, Karuna Dietrich-Wielenga and Anusha.
Thanks also to my colleagues at Tara Books for letting me keep my own
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xvii

time at work, which made my writing schedule less onerous. As always,

my feminist friends have been part of this endeavour in ways that I cannot
even begin to explain: thanks to all of you, here in Tamil Nadu and
elsewhere. Without you, my world would not be what it is.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 ‘A Part Apart’: The Life and Times of Dr. Ambedkar 11
3 Pax Britannica: Conceptualizing Colonial Rule
and State 59
4 A New Time: Arguing with History
and Imagining Utopia 109
5 Graded Inequality and Untouchability: Towards
the Annihilation of Caste 147
6 The Pre-requisites of Communism: Rethinking
Revolution 191
7 What Path to Salvation? The Conundrum of Social
Reproduction 235
8 Buddha or Karl Marx: Fraternal Ethics and Economic
Justice 273

Bibliography 317
Index 331

xix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1 A Haunting
Across India, diverse rural and urban neighbourhoods host a statue
that is hard to miss: bespectacled, and in a suit, with a book in
hand, and right forefinger pointing into the distance. Small, large, grey,
painted, garlanded, of mud and stone, these images are of Bhimrao
Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), one of modern India’s most original
thinkers. A symbol of a living history of resistance to the hierarchical and
unequal caste order, and its supplement, untouchability, he is remem-
bered, revered and loved by all those who continue to fight for dignity
and equality in a violent and unequal society.
The general Indian public has been content to view him as the
architect of the Constitution of India, and as a leader of the Dalits
(former untouchables). But to those who are part of various political
and social movements inspired by him, and who constitute resilient anti-
caste counter-publics, he is a revolutionary thinker, radical democrat and
republican, and for some, an unusual socialist. Dalit movements and intel-
lectuals who are active in these various publics have pushed scholars
in India and elsewhere to engage with his work, as is evident from
the number of research projects and publications that have come to be
undertaken over the last three decades and more.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
V. Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question
of Socialism in India, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80375-9_1
2 V. GEETHA

This book joins these efforts. It is about Bhimrao Ambedkar’s engage-

ment with ‘the question of socialism’ in India. At one level, it seems rather
contrarian to write on this subject, since Ambedkar did not consider
himself a socialist, and was a resolute critic of Indian communism and
communists. On the other hand, socialism remained a spectral presence
in his thought world, and he did not conjure it away. I seek to understand
the nature of this haunting, by viewing it in the context of Ambed-
kar’s conceptual universe, rich, layered and straddling several domains
of thought and practice. Rather than mark his interest, or disinterest
in socialism, in terms of a lack or limit, I have chosen to understand
his engagement with it, through what he achieved, his formidable and
challenging critique of the “Hindu social order”.1
I present this critique in and through a mapping of Ambedkar’s
thought world: I plot and connect the various conceptual nodes that hold
this latter in place, and the lines of argument that flow from them.2 It
seems to me that these various and intersecting approaches were at once
epistemic, political and ethical and, in their unity, they made for a histori-
cally consequential project that looked to elucidate as well as “annihilate”
the order of caste and untouchability.

1 Ambedkar’s socialism has been the subject of the following books: Gail Omvedt’s,
Dalits and the Democratic Revolution, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994, examines the
socialist aspects of Ambedkar’s politics. She suggests that he advocated a radical politics of
labour in the 1930s and partially in the 1940s, but not thereafter. Anand Teltumbde—in
his long introduction to a collection of Ambedkar’s writings titled, India and Commu-
nism, New Delhi: Leftword Books, 2018—points to the Indian left’s sins of omission, with
regard to the caste question and their unfortunate and tragic misreading of Ambedkar’s
politics and also draws attention to Ambedkar’s engagement with communist literature,
including Marx’s writings. Anupama Rao has sought to think through Ambedkar’s rela-
tionship with socialism in tandem with his theorization of the subaltern in a distinctive
sort of way (see her ‘Ambedkar’s Dalit and the Problem of Caste Subalternity’ in The
Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections, edited by Suraj Yengde and Anand Teltumbde,
Gurgaon: Penguin India, 2018, pp. 340–358). See also Cosimo Zene (editor), The Polit-
ical Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B.R. Ambedkar: Itineraries of the Subaltern,
London: Routledge 2013, which features essays that read Ambedkar through a Gramscian
lens.
2 For a synoptic and rich overview of his writings, see Valerian Rodrigues (editor), The
Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

2 A “Politically Unimaginable” Politics

Ambedkar worked with different sets of conceptual tools and arguments
but refused to be bound by the protocols of reasoning which defined
each of them. He drew on dissenting traditions, associated with devo-
tionalism, debates in the public sphere in his native Maharashtra, to do
with history and religion, French and American republican and English
constitutional thought, British socialist literature, American Progressive
ideas, historical studies of the African-American predicament, ethnological
studies of British administrator-scholars and their Indian peers, specific
texts of Marx and Lenin, aspects of Indian rational and materialist philos-
ophy, Buddhist canonical texts, theories of ameliorative economic justice
and working-class histories from across the world. Each of these yielded
him ideas that he reworked to his purpose.
In effect, he ‘vernacularized’ political concepts, terms of analysis and
argument, and even descriptions, by bringing them within the ambit of
experiences and histories which defamiliarized them and demanded their
reconstitution. Given ways of thinking about democratic representation,
minority rights, race, class consciousness, proletarian unity, the republic
and the socialist state, as well as social ethics, social suffering and spiritual
liberation were dislocated from their originary contexts and rethought,
in themselves, and in relation to each other, and from the perspective of
those who had been placed beyond the Indian social pale, the so-called
untouchables.3 Ambedkar thus sought to imagine what historian Minkah
Makalani has described as the “politically unimaginable”, and which seeks

3 The displacement of ideas and events from their discursive and historical contexts and
their refiguration was undertaken with deliberative intent. For instance, Ambedkar drew
on the history of American abolitionism, including the work undertaken by white people
of conscience, to point to how the horrors of slavery were mitigated by such efforts. His
point was not to produce the ‘truth’ about abolitionism, but to point to the absence
of such parallel efforts in India, with regard to untouchability (Babasaheb Ambedkar:
Writings and Speeches, The Education Department, Government of Maharashtra [BAWS],
Volume 5, 1989, pp. 80–88, 97–99). He was aware of the complexities of the issues
at stake in Abolitionism and the civil war, and knew Henry Aptheker’s work, which he
cited in his famous polemic, What Congress and Gandhi have Done to the Untouchables
(in BAWS, Volume 9, 1991, pp. 173–176); he also noted that the Gettysburg address
notwithstanding, President Lincoln’s intent was not to end slavery, but save the Union.
In this instance, he compared Gandhi to Lincoln and noted that likewise Gandhi wanted
freedom from the British, but did not wish to restructure the unequal Hindu social order
(in BAWS, Volume 9, 1991, pp. 270–271).
4 V. GEETHA

to conceptualize what it hopes to bring into existence.4 This book grap-

ples with this paradox, of naming and thinking what must be, even as it is
shaped and restrained by the vocabularies of what is, which it constantly
seeks to remake, if not subvert.

3 Chapters
The book comprises seven chapters: the second is in the nature of a
short political biography and contextualizes Ambedkar’s life and work, by
embedding them within multiple histories, of anti-caste movements and
thought that existed in his native Maharashtra in western India; Indian
nationalism and communism, and the colonial state, in their relationship
to each other; caste worlds; and local and global intellectual traditions.
I bring Ambedkar’s politics and his thought into conversation with what
were coeval with either, and point to what he shared with his contempo-
raries and where he stood apart, as he pursued and conceptualized what
often appeared ‘unthinkable’.
The ‘apartness’ which marked the place of the untouchable in Indian
society was not only a sociological and existential condition, but an
ontological one as well. Ambedkar’s acute and critical awareness of the
ontological wounding, at once structural and corporeal, that he and his
fellow untouchables were subject to, mediated his responses to nation-
alism and communism. Tragically neither nationalists nor the communists
grasped the ethical significance of this critique. In this context it would
be useful to recall what W. E. Du Bois wrote of the American socialists in
1913: that the “average modern Socialist can scarcely grasp” the “bitter
reactionary hatred of the Negro” and a culture in which “murder and
torture of human beings holds a prominent place” and which considers
“the defilement of colored women … [a] joke, and justice toward colored
men will not be listened to”.5
Chapter 3 examines Ambedkar’s understanding of colonial rule and the
colonial state, of what he ironically called “Pax Britannica”. It contrasts
and compares his views with those of nationalists and communists and

4 Minkah Makalani, ‘The Politically Unimaginable in Black Marxist Thought’, Small

Axe, Volume 22:2, July 2018, pp. 18–34.
5 W. E. Du Bois, Socialism and the Negro Problem (originally published in The New
Review: A Weekly Review of International Socialism, 1 February 1913), http://www.web
dubois.org/dbSocialism&NProb.html; accessed on February 20, 2021.
Visit https://ebookmass.com today to explore
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Exploring the Variety of Random
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“Good luck to you for a fool!” laughs Jack, putting spurs and going
on to tell this news to the others.

The instant that Lady Peggy felt herself in the highwayman’s saddle,
she knew from long acquaintance with every colt Bickers had bred,
raised, or broke, since she was six, that her wrists had met their
match. Before she had time to utter a word, turn her head, or think,
she felt the warm flesh under her quiver with that recovering
impulse which horsemen know so well; that streak of untamed and
untamable nature which lies, however deep-hidden, in every four-
foot that breathes, and which never fails to spurt to the front when it
gets exactly the right chance.
Peggy’s light, nay, by this, weak hand, now gave the big black its
chance, and with a snort, a toss of its head, and a vicious swell of its
sides, it laid back its ears, took the bit between its teeth as if it had
been a mess of oats, and reared a length on its forelegs: when,
finding its rider still on, it started on a run which Her Ladyship had
not the slightest power to check. All she could do was to keep her
seat.
Like a flash, out of the forest on to the width of the heath, plume
waving, sword flapping, laces rippling, curls flying; the mare’s mane
slapping in her face; legs and arms and will all at work to stop the
beast or bring it into some sort of subjection. To no purpose. The
black head now low, as if picking up a scent from the turf it tore;
now up, as though snuffing its goal from afar, the mare skirted the
heath, gained the meadows; over hedges where the birds rose in
flocks behind its heels; ditches, where the muddy waters splashed
over Her Ladyship’s satin clothes: here a bolt into an orchard,
leaving a ribbon a-hanging on a limb; over the wall like a rocket,
and, at breakneck gait, through a hamlet, rousing the people out of
their beds to peep at pane, and wonder. Slap-dash into a pasture,
scattering ewes and lambs like wool before the wind, taking a five-
bar into a common, thence to highway; scampering a footbridge to
leave it shivered behind them, and all Peg’s thought just a brave
prayer to be kept alive, so that she might not fail of foiling Sir
Robin’s men Sunday night!
Where she was going, she knew not. Where she was, she had no
smallest idea when, as the sun looked over the long low line of
horizon before her, she with a shudder beheld a gibbet outlined
against the morning sky. The black gave a lunge that knocked her
feet out of the stirrups (quick in again), reared, whinnied like a devil,
and, nose to ground, now made her rider understand that up to the
present she had done nothing much in the way of speed, or of
efforts at emptying the saddle.
Yet Her Ladyship stuck on, with flying colors, too, and no loss of
either wig, hat, weapon or will, and with grateful heart she now
found herself being spun across a magnificent park, where the deer
fled before her, it is true, but at the upper end of which she saw
looming the turrets and towers of a fine castle.
 XI
Wherein Lady Peggy is condemned to be
hanged, and sets forth, attended by the
clergy, for the gallows.

Although Sir Percy had cheerfully foretold for Kennaston the roseate
picture of Lady Diana’s “Yes” crowning the young poet’s somewhat
diffident suit with untold happiness, the fact was quite other. Her
Ladyship, on the day of Mr. Brummell’s party to Ivy Dene, having
overheard the Honorable Dolly Tarleton, in the library, laying six to
four to Lady Biddy O’Toole, that their host’s daughter was “only
waiting for the beautiful young poet’s asking, to jump into his arms
immediately,” did, with such sudden change of demeanor from
sweets to sours, languishing eyes to averted looks, smiles to pouts,
corner chats to open flouts, put her lover into a state of mind, the
like of which he presently described, as only he could, in a copy of
verses, which the next night at White’s were pronounced to be,
indeed, “the masterpiece of one whose heart pants, whose whole
being’s but at the beck and call of her who wears a smocked
petticoat, ogles with a witching eye, and should be vain that so
much genius lays itself at her feet, to wit, Lady D——a W——n.”
For, taking immediate fright at his Lady’s coldness, Kennaston had
ordered a post-chaise from the Brookwood Arms, and without a
word of farewell to Lady Diana, save that embodied in an ode, “To
Chloe When Unkind,” which her woman found pinned to Her
Ladyship’s cloak when she was putting it on her shoulders the
following morning, had gone to town, and just in time at the White
Horse to be haled into Mr. Brummell’s party for breakfast, and to
learn of the adventure with Tom Kidde, the valor of Sir Robin McTart,
and the absence of that young gentleman, as also Sir Percy, from
the board.
When Lady Diana’s woman hooked her mistress’s cloak about her
’twas at five o’clock in the morning, and of the party at the Castle
every lady’s woman was performing the same office, adding hood
over curls and puffs, and sticking the finest of cambric pocket-
napkins into their mistress’ hands by the half dozens; for ’twas easily
seen that such early rising could be for no other cause than to go
forth to bathe their Ladyships’ faces in the May-dew; the which,
when gathered from little copses and shadowy nooks before the sun
had yet shone upon’t, was warranted to enhance that beauty which
was already evident, and to create those charms which, alas! are
occasionally lacking.
Lady Diana spelled out her lover’s verses as best she could, tripping
from door to door, and calling her young companions from their
mirrors; sending a footman and a page to summon the gallants who
were to accompany them in their expedition, and laughing heartily
as she made out more from a footman than from Kennaston’s muse
that he had betaken himself to town rather than longer incur her
displeasure and her frowns.
“Bless me, but my suitor’s in a fine pickle! Lud! though, I’m not
disposed to have these hussies a-laying six to four on my bein’ ready
to jump at his offer; still, I’d rather he’d stopped over, or else that
some one most amusin’ were here; for instance Sir Robin McTart,
which is not to be!”
Then a-rapping at the doors, and laughter from girlish lips; pattering
of heels down the hall and stair-case; out to meet the gentlemen,
bowing and complimenting on the terrace; over the lawns, and
through the flower-gardens, and past the offices and stables, where
Lord Brookwood, even thus early, was sunning himself in the yard,
and talking over county matters with Mr. Biggs, J.P.
“Where to? Where to?” sings out His Lordship cheerily with hat in
hand, and Mr. Biggs down to the ground before so much beauty,
fashion and rank.
“Off to the copse, father,” calls back Diana, “to gather the May-dew
and wash our faces; when we come back you must tell us all how
much more beautiful we are to-day than we were yesterday!”
With which lively sally Lady Diana and the rest of ’em are crossing
the hill and laughing as they pass out of sight on their two miles’
away walk to Armsleigh Copse.
Lord Brookwood is about to resume his conversation with Biggs,
while the half-dozen grinning stable boys, behind His Lordship’s
back, are rubbing their fists in the wet turf of a paddock, and
smearing their red faces with the dew, the head-groom touching
them up with a lash; when a whinny, that sets every animal in the
stalls and out of ’em a-replying, sets all the cocks crowing, hens
cackling, chicks peeping, dogs barking, geese squawking, smites
their startled ears, and yonder, hilly-o-ho! Sirs; in a cloud of
upturned soil, in a shower of splash from the river, with a thud on
the wooden bridge, a bound over the stone wall of the kitchen
garden; comes a black with nigh every tooth in its mouth bared,
foaming, smoking, bloody; rider bent double to saddle’s bow,
clinging with legs and arms.
“Homing Nell and the highwayman! Tom Kidde! Tom Kidde!”
“Homing Nell!” the shout goes up from every throat there, from His
Lordship to the ’ostlers and boys.
“Tom Kidde! Tom Kidde!”
“By Gad! Sir,” cries the Earl. “I knew Nell’d come back sooner or
later! Surround him. Bag him!”
Peggy hears the shouts as the ungovernable steed lunges, lurches,
rears beneath her spurs and still tightly gripped reins; she takes in
the situation, but not to its full import, until she now hears the voice
of Biggs uplifted.
“Lord Brookwood! Lord Brookwood! mind her heels, My Lord, mind
her heels! Leave the takin’ of the damned cut-purse to me and the
boys!”
At the word “Brookwood,” Her Ladyship realizes that she is on the
domains of Lady Diana’s father! and being mistaken for a Knight of
the Road!
The latter she felt she could easily abide, and as easily refute; but
the former was more than even her spent spirit could stand. So, as
Biggs, His Lordship, the grooms, the stable-boys and ’ostlers and
helpers all formed into a ring with whips, canes, stones and halloos
to take her prisoner, she plucked up courage from the depths, and,
raising herself in her saddle and her head in the air, with one
superhuman tug at the bridle and prick with the steels, she made to
get off! and away! But Her Ladyship’s nerve was not the equal of
Homing Nell’s, nor yet to be pitted with success against the waving
arms and jumping legs of a dozen stout men. With the final crack of
the head-groom’s lash about her heels, with the pop in the air above
her hat of Mr. Biggs’s blunderbuss, caught from the hand of one of
the lads, “Homing Nell” was brought to a quivering stand-still, and
My Lady Peggy to bay in the stable-yard of Brookwood Castle!
“Ha!” cries the Earl, “my pretty fellow, you’re trapped at last! The
night you stole the black mare from me I shouted after you, as well
as the gag at my mouth would permit, that she’d bring you no luck,
and that muscles of iron wouldn’t hold her the day she made up her
mind to get home.”
Peggy, glad of the use of her lungs once more, and now nigh
bursting with laughter at being so glibly mistook for one of the most
reckless fellows in all England, took off her hat, bowed low, and
said:
“My Lord Brookwood, ’tis, I believe, I have the honor of addressing?”
“Ho! ho! ho!” Mr. Biggs, from a survey of the saddle-bow now bursts
out in triumphant joyfulness.
“’Od’s blood, My Lord! but here’s luck, here’s justice, here’s what
comes of my bein’ here when I am!” and Mr. Biggs now holds aloft
upon the point of his stick the black mask of Master Tom Kidde,
which the rogue had dropped when he was hit, and which had
caught and hung by its riband from that moment to this, unseen by
Lady Peg.
“Highwayman! highwayman! highwayman!” yells every lung in the
place, while the whole dozen, including His Lordship and the Justice,
threaten Lady Peggy with their cudgels, lashes and stones.
“I pray ye, My Lord, Gentlemen, and good fellows!” cries she,
remembering now the entire history of the animal she bestrides, as
rehearsed some six hours earlier by Beau Brummell and Mr. Vane. “I
am no highwayman.”
A groan of derision greets this announcement.
“Nay, but the rather am I the victim of Tom Kidde, than he himself!
Together with a party of my friends, being at mid-night last, on the
return from a visit to Mr. Brummell’s seat, Ivy Dene, we were set
upon by the rogues in the midst of Epstowe Forest; I had the luck,
both good and bad, to put a ball into Tom, to get my horse shot
under me, and to mount the scoundrel’s steed, the which has
brought me to Your Lordship’s door, and the mare, herself, to where
she belongs, it seems!”
“A damned fine story, ’fore George!” exclaims Biggs, laughing
triumphantly, now holding up two watches, three rings, a diamond
snuff-box, a seal, two magnificent pins, and a most splendid jeweled
stomacher, high above his head in the tip of the sunshine.
“’Sdeath!” cried Lord Brookwood, seizing one of the trinkets and
examining it with his spy-glass. “What’s this? ‘Percy de Bohun,
Christmas from his aff. mother,’” reads His Lordship. Then another,
“‘Wyatt Lovell souvenir of Italy!’ Gad, Biggs,” looking Her Ladyship
over, where she still sits atop of the steaming black, “we’ve got the
cursed blackguard this time! What else in his saddle pockets?
aught?”
These Biggs, assisted by the head-groom, is energetically emptying
of a miscellaneous collection of valuables, while Lady Peggy looks on
in amazement as yet only flavored with amusement, and one more
vain regret for her abandoned petticoats.
“Yes, My Lord, these thousands of pounds’ worth,” replied the
Justice, holding aloft his treasure trove; “and it’ll be a short shrift for
the devil, I can say that.”
“Hark ye,” now says Her Ladyship, as she recalls with a not
unnatural tremor the death-warrant she had heard was lying to hand
in Mr. Biggs’s pocket. “Lord Brookwood, I am no highwayman; my
story is true; I am”—the words stuck in Peggy’s throat; she coughed,
the stable boys tittered; then the head-groom tilted the saddle and
spilled her out of it to the ground; at a word from Biggs, a couple of
the men tied her, hand and foot, with a stout rope, and a pair of
farming reins about her middle.
“Now who do you call yourself, my fine fellow?” says His Lordship.
“Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent!” cries Peggy, glad to be able
to answer without the lie direct. “And I demand instant freedom and
immunity,” cries she, tortured and quivering beneath the rude hands
and ruder gibes of the grooms and ’ostlers.
“Demand away! my pretty buck-skin, with your jeweled hilt!” returns
Biggs, stripping the weapon from her thigh. “Your satin breeches
and gold-laced waistcoat! ’Tain’t no use denyin’ you your speech,
and your will to palaver on whatever matter you will, for before the
clock strikes eight, you’ll be home with your father in hell.”
“Tut, tut, Mr. Biggs,” says His Lordship. “Call Mr. Frewen, the Curate,
he’s at his studies in the library, we havin’ sat late over our cards last
night; and let him have his prayer-book to hand, open at the page
for malefactors after condemnation.”
“Go, you, Michael,” this to one of the now awestruck lads hanging,
staring at Peg over the paddock paling. “Ask Mr. Frewen to come
quickly.”
“But this is monstrous, Sir!” cries Her Ladyship, now thoroughly
alarmed, and near to losing her wits betwixt her endeavors to keep
up her man’s estate, her contempt of her own frowardness, her
shame at being thus at the mercy of her rival’s parent, and her
actual terror of her position.
“I do beseech you, I am an honest person, my tale is true. Is it not
but the justice due to any subject of His Majesty’s, however humble,
that he should not be condemned before he is tried, or even his
identity proven?”
“I’ll be sworn, My Lord,” exclaims Biggs, “’tis a voice and air to
wheedle fine ladies out of their stomachers and chains, but not to
tempt the law. Sirrah!” he continues, addressing himself to Her
Ladyship, who is by this firmly tied to a post like a colt about to be
broken to harness. “’Tain’t no use for you to be imaginin’ as justice
and His Majesty ain’t a-doing their best for you. Here have you been
a terror to all God-fearing, law-abiding Englishmen any time these
half-dozen of years. A-poundin’ every heath in England, Hornslow,
Bagshott, and all the commons, Wimbledon, Wandsworth, Finchley;
a-hulking in Epstowe with your mates, and making the lives of
travelers a burden most horrible; ain’t you secreted uncountable
pounds’ worth of plunder in your devilish caves and dens? Haven’t
you left the earth strewed with corpses in your ugly path? Answer
me, Sir!” and Mr. Biggs stamps his foot on the ground.
“No, Sir!” shouts Peg, “I ain’t and haven’t, and I’m not! ’Slife, My
Lord Brookwood,” cries she in a terrible way, twisting her tied hands
together. “For God’s sake, send up to town post-haste, and find out
Mr. Brummell, Mr. Vane, Mr. Chalmers, Lord Escombe, Sir Lovell
Wyatt!”
But His Lordship has turned up the path toward the Castle and met
Mr. Frewen, to whom he is explaining the necessities of the situation.
’Tis such a fair May day, with bud and blossom, bough and bird;
fowls, men, beasts, all free of tether, and My Lady is like to weep;
cry out her sex, her very name and estate, as she feels the gall upon
her wrists and ankles, and knows what fate awaits her.
She even, for one weak moment, thinks she will implore Lord
Brookwood to send up to London for her rival, his own daughter,
Lady Diana, and let her come down and tell him who is Sir Robin
McTart—for Lady Peggy believes Lady Di to be in town and has no
knowledge to the contrary.
Yet, there in the stable-yard, with imprisonment as she supposes,
and even death dangling for her at no great loss of time, with her
liberty gone; her word no better than a thief’s; with no earthly hand
upraised to sustain her, My Lady Peggy’s stout heart does not flutter
to dismay. For that one brief instant ’tis, without doubt, in her mind
to confess and fling herself upon the mercy of the Earl and the
Curate, who now draw nigh; but when she reflects upon the
monstrous tissue of her deceits, and the unutterable shame of the
exposure of the cause of them, ’tis then she is like to whimper, but
for naught else.
Mr. Frewen approaches; ’tis a young man of a pale cadaverous
countenance, whose first bow to a highwayman is indeed, though he
find him in durance vile, a timid one.
The supposed Tom Kidde gives the man of the cloth eye for eye, so
that this one quails and stumbles in his speech; and finally, leaving
in the rear all his preconceived plans for a hasty reformation, he
promptly remarks, opening his prayer-book to the riband:
“You know your doom, Mr. Kidde; shall I pray for you here?”
“Faith!” says Lady Peggy, plucking up heart, once her resolution is
taken not to reveal her secret, come what may. “I do not know my
doom, Sir! It seems sufficient ‘doom’ for an honest English
gentleman, who has met with a mishap, to be brought to a
nobleman’s threshold and get foul treatment rather than welcome.
Pray for me, Sir, an you will, there’s none so much deserves or needs
it. Pray on!”
“Frewen!” beckons His Lordship, as he watches the ’ostlers rubbing
down the restored Homing Nell, and confers with Mr. Biggs as to the
plunder and the meting out of justice. “Frewen, gain the wretch’s
confidence an you can, the whereabouts of all the gold and jewels
he has stolen; my watch. And also, if he have wife or child, it might
not be amiss, eh, Biggs? to inquire if he have any message for
them?”
“Aye, My Lord” puts in the pompous Biggs, up-looking from his
perusal of a long, sealed, important-appearing parchment, unrolled
before his eyes. “By ascertaining their whereabouts, we should
perhaps get the clue to all the bloody rascal’s pelf.”
A combination of Christian charity and official shrewdness, which
commended itself highly to His Lordship, as he sent the Curate back
to the comforting of the malefactor across the yard.
“Hark ye, Mr. Kidde,” says Mr. Frewen, lowering his voice, and, for
the credit of his soul, with gentleness at his heartstrings.
“I’m not Mr. Kidde, I tell you, I swear’t!” says Her Ladyship firmly.
“Well, well,” says the man of the Church, “mayhap that’s an assumed
name; but surely, now, Sir, with not two hours of life left you, to me,
me alone, Sir, it were wiser drop all disguises. Surely now you are
not Sir Robin McTart?” in a soothing and sorrowful tone.
Peggy winces.
“Go seek and ask all the noblemen and gentlemen I’ve named, Sir,
they’ll quickly set me to rights in your eyes, I pledge you. Oh, Sir, for
the love of God!” cries she, whispering very low. “I speak the truth! I
am no highwayman.”
“I am used to quibbles, Mr. Kidde; I know that now you are no
robber, but merely a prisoner under sentence of death.”
“What!” cries she. “’Tis not possible that a man is taken, tried,
disallowed to prove himself, and put out of the world, betwixt
sunrise and breakfast, in the reign of His Majesty George the Third!”
“’Tis so,” answers the Curate, pulling the rope and leathers, and
pushing Her Ladyship around a bit toward the east, as he points
what he considers a salutary finger. “Yonder’s the gibbet, Mr. Kidde,
and from it you must hang by eight. I implore of you now—”
Lady Peggy’s eyes are fastened upon the arms and cross-beams of
the gallows, which are outlined clearly against the deep blue sky,
and full in the shine of the spring sun.
“Well,” says she to herself, all in a flash, as thoughts can travel three
abreast ofttimes, and twelve times quicker than the scrivener can set
’em down—“I’ve been a very accursedly wicked girl; but, thank God!
my pride ain’t all gone yet. I’ll hang! but I’ll never give up my secret!
When I’m gone, if they find it out—I won’t be here to be a-hearin’ of
the taunts and jeers and sympathies; and of my mother’s and
father’s sorrows!” At this point Peggy is very near to tears, when the
Curate says, interrupting their possible flow:
“Now, Mr. Kidde, if you have any message for—your wife—perhaps?”
he ejaculates hesitatingly, and with good knowledge that the
marriage ceremony was one usually omitted from the code of
gentlemen of the road.
“I have no wife!” cries Her Ladyship, in a heat betwixt her remorse
for her parents and the unconscious ridiculousness of Mr. Frewen’s
question.
“Or it might be,” suggests this one with a sigh, “you have a little
child, Mr. Kidde—?”
“No, Sir,” says My Lady very low and quick. “That I haven’t.”
“A dear friend and comrade?” pursues the Curate.
“Yes, I have,” answers she, for during all this hour just past, a
thousand thoughts have come to Peggy about Sir Percy.
“Ah,” responds Frewen joyously. “Now tell me where he’s to be
found, and entrust me with the message, and be assured all will be
carried out to your wishes.”
“Thank you,” says Peggy. “Free my right hand if you will; give me
something to write with, and the leaf out of your prayer-book, and
I’ll ask you the favor.”
The Curate, under the strict superintendence of Biggs, who has all
this while been dispatching boys on horses, hither and yon, to notify
the quality and the country side both, that Tom Kidde’s been taken
and will hang at eight from the gibbet a-top of Armsleigh Hill,
loosens Her Ladyship’s arm of the thong, and gives her a leaf and a
pencil with the top of the post for a support.
“To Sir Percy de Bohun, Charlotte Street, London,” writes she. “plese
An you lov God And The Kinge goe not evar Again toe walke onne
The dove peere at The Bottomme of littel Boye yarde Their isse onne
swares Toe Kille you & you doe This isse writ bye onne now noe
more.”
Her Ladyship folds the scrap of paper over and over; hands back the
pencil to Mr. Frewen; and then she says:
“Sir, will you promise me on that Book you’re holding in your hand,
you’ll not look at this or send it until I’m dead?”
“I will,” answers the young man, more touched than he cares to
admit, even to himself.
“And further,” says she, “will you pledge me your word it shall reach
him it’s intended for before this time Sunday?”
“I will,” is the reply, “unless it be in the depths of Epstowe and
inaccessible to my horse or myself.”
“’Tis in London, Sir, and quite accessible. ’Tis a warning for life and
death, and I’ll count you fail me not, nor him whose life you’d be the
means of saving.”
“I pledge my word, Mr. Kidde,” replies the Curate, backing away to
make room for Justice Biggs, and with the very laudable sensation in
his mind that he is to be the instrument of preserving some
unknown from the clutches of the doubtless repentant outlaw’s own
men.
In less than five minutes after, Biggs had marshaled his cavalcade
and rode forth of the stable-yard of Brookwood Castle; his white cob
at the head, a-holding in his left hand the duly signed warrant for
the execution of one Thomas Kidde. Following him, strode the
hastily summoned Master William Lambe, the butcher, who was to
do duty as hangman (sooth to say, hangings were rare in this
county, and there was no one appointed by law to the office, it being
thus left to the discretion of the Justice).
The Earl, mounted, rode next with a dozen of his servants, and in
the midst of these My Lady Peggy, astride of the black once more,
but with face to tail, hands tied together, and no hat to her head; Mr.
Frewen at her side walking; a motley crowd growing and gathering
at every step, about her, of gaping, wondering, jubilant and curious
persons of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
Never a whimper out of My Lord, the Earl of Exham’s only daughter.
A set rigid look about the drawn lips, and an unearthly pallor shining
through all the dark stains Her Ladyship had been a-using of late.
Not a word did she say, save to ask Mr. Frewen to read the
Declaration of Absolution or Remission of Sins out of his prayer-book
as they went; which he did under his breath, and much jolted by the
rough highway, which now the procession had gained; and likewise
laying much unction to his soul that, in so short a space of time, his
comfortable ministrations had produced so seeming abundant godly
results!
When he had finished Her Ladyship said, “Amen,” and thereafter
held up her head with that courage which is born of one of two
things, conscious innocence or a profound repentance for sins,
which, while to others they may appear puerile, to the offender are
worthy of the wrath of the Creator and the condemnation of man.
She noted the hawthorn in the hedges, the dew upon the turf; the
tall mawkin swaying in the wind in the middle of a newly sown field;
and, as her lids raised, the mustering crowds, all with steps bent,
and greedy eyes fixed, yonder to the hill-top where the gibbet stood,
and where the new rope dangled for her neck.
Yet she made no sign.
Not even when she heard the rabble laying their groats and
sixpences, that Kidde would, or wouldn’t “die game.”
 XII
Rehearseth how, in the very nick o’ time,
Her Ladyship’s neck is saved from
the noose by Sir Percy.

As yet, in the depths of Armsleigh Copse, no news of the supposed

highwayman’s capture had penetrated, although the Earl, with
commendable foresight in behalf of the entertainment of his young
daughter and her companions, had sent a messenger to impart the
sight shortly to be had; the messenger, having a sweetheart in the
other direction, must needs go apprise her first! So the gay Ladies
and their cavaliers sat on fallen logs, strolled hither and yon, knelt to
sop their bits of linen in the dewy hollows, laughed, chatted, dabbed
their faces, now lacking any coat of crimson, save that which Nature
might have vouchsafed, and made great show of a fine rural
simplicity.
“La!” cried the Honorable Dolly. “Water hasn’t touched my face
before since know I not when!” pecking at her cheeks with the
corner of her pocket-napkin. “But it has a monstrous refreshing
sensation!”
“Oh, Doll, ’tis not thus and so you must apply it, as ’twere some
French essence worth its weight in guineas; but look!” cried Lady
Diana, flopping down and burying her face in a bath of the dew-
drops, and laughing as she looks up dripping.
“That’s the way, faith,” coincides Lady Biddy, scrubbing her own
round cheeks with her wrung out linen, then both fists into her blue
eyes to dry off the winkers.
“’Slife, Ladies!” exclaims one of the gentlemen, “but you almost
tempt us to follow your example.”
“Hither, ye gossoon,” answers Lady Biddy, “an’ I’ll be afther makin’
your countenance shine. Hark! Hoofs!”
“Hoofs! Hoofs!” cry all these fair ones, a-darting this way and that,
stuffing their napkins into their bodices, as a courteous voice, with a
—
“By your leave, Ladies and Sirs!” greets them, and none other than
Sir Percy, self and horse spent in his fruitless search for the
supposed Sir Robin, emerges from the bridle-path across the
common, at the edge of the copse.
“The top of the morning to you, Sir Percy de Bohun,” laughs Lady
Biddy.
“Percy!” exclaims Lady Diana, “prithee, what are you doing out of
doors at this hour?”
“Seeking May-dew! mayhap,” suggests the Honorable Dolly.
“But nay, Your Ladyships,” returns he. “I am seeking Sir Robin
McTart.”
And forthwith Sir Percy proceeds to give them a history of the
adventures of the night, omitting no smallest detail of the prowess
of Sir Robin. He has just concluded his recital amid a burst of
tumultuous “Ohs! ahs! Luds!” and a vast deal of commiserating
sympathy, and a monstrous collection of pretty oaths and curses for
Tom Kidde, when into the center of this colloquy jumps Lord
Brookwood’s messenger, nudging his sweetheart behind a tree, to
tell as best he can his errand. To bid all the company at once to see
the sight, it now not lacking more than the quarter to the hour when
Mr. Lambe will adjust the noose, and send one of the boldest and
most courtly young outlaws of his day a-swinging to his deserts.
This information, it may be imagined, was received with acclaim of
all, and by Sir Percy with positive joy; his only regret, as,
dismounting and leading his jaded horse, he walked at Lady Diana’s
side, being that Sir Robin had so contrived to give them the slip, and
not even to have the happiness of witnessing justice done the rogue
who had so near deprived him of existence.
“Here’s to drive off the vapors an any one had ’em!” cried the lively
Lady Biddy, swinging her hat by its ribands. “And sure’n it’s not
believed I’ll be, when I get home to County Cork and tell ’em I saw a
highwayman strung up!”
“Faith, Di,” says Sir Percy, “’twas a lucky chance for the whole
country when the rascal made off with your father’s famous black!”
“That was it!” answered she. “The time always comes when no
man’s muscle on earth can hold Homing Nell; and ’twas a fine
fortune, by my life! when Tom Kidde essayed to ride her. ’Twas a
wonder he didn’t jump and run for his life, though,” adds she
thoughtfully.
“Zounds! there’s a sort of devil-may-care humor in the composition
of those fellows that keeps ’em sticking in any saddle they leap into,
until the beast’s bestridden that can throw them out of it. They’re so
used to taking chances, I doubt if they ever dream of danger until
it’s too late!”
“When’ll we see the gibbet?” asks the Honorable Dolly, panting with
her quick pace.
“Soon,” answers Lady Di.
“Ochone, an’ I hope we’ll not be afther bein’ too late to see it all!”
chimes in Lady Biddy short-breathed too.
“Percy,” says Diana, “up in your saddle and spy, for I’d not have us
miss so fine a sight for a hundred pounds!”
“No sooner said than done!” answers Sir Percy de Bohun, from atop
of his horse, where he shades his eyes with his hand and gazes off
to the hill where the gibbet stands.
“Good God!” cries he, clapping spurs that send spurts of blood into
the eyes of one of the gentlemen, and a shower of sand all over the
whole party, and away with him! Tearing up the turf as he goes; into
the midst of the strings of gaping, jostling, hurrying folk; scattering
’em right and left, leaving ’em in his wake dumfounded, picking each
other up. Through the high street of Brook-Armsleigh Village, clatter!
dash! plunge! with prick and urge, and goad of thigh and lash! and
straining, starting eyes fixed on the face he sees outlined against the
fair blue morning sky; the brave undaunted face, dark, under its
yellow hair, bearing the strange likeness to His Lady—His Lady! nay,
this is His Lady’s lord and love, for whom he rides,—and with noose
about his neck now, and man-of-cloth and man-of-blood both at
hand; this one with book, that one with cap, the sea of open faces
seething breathless all around.
“On! on!” whispers Percy bending to the bow, and whispering
hoarsely to the long roan, his very soul in tremor, his lips parched,
his forehead and lip dripping sweat.
Into the midst of ’em; nearly throwing Lord Brookwood from his
seat; off his beast like a thunderbolt, and with a long leap up on the
boards beside Lambe, the butcher, and Biggs, the Justice, and
Frewen, the Curate.
“By God! Sirs,” cries he, “what’s this ye’re doing? This gentleman’s
Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent!” tearing the hemp from Her
Ladyship’s throat, from her wrists; pushing away the three of ’em,
and half lifting the supposed Baronet in his lusty arms, he drags,
carries, swings Peg down to the ground, and up into his own saddle.
And then the explanations! the astonishments; the monstrous
wonder of it. The humility, the subjection, the apologies; the
supplications of all these Lords, Gentlemen, Ladies, worthies,
worships, vagabonds and multitudes.
Woman-like, as she sits there for a few moments, dazed, so sudden
fetched from death to life, she has but the thought that ’tis to him
she loves she owes deliverance.
But none of their hospitality or amends will she have, or even listen
to; no tarrying at Brookwood Castle; no smallest glance back for all
the wheedles and coaxes of Lady Diana, Lady Biddy, the Honorable
Dolly and the rest. All she asks, and gets, is her scrawl from Mr.
Frewen.
Courtly acceptance of Lord Brookwood’s abject attempts at amends;
gracious bows, hands, words, laughter at last; and My Lady in a
hastily procured post-chaise bids the gibbet at Brook-Armsleigh
Village farewell, and starts for London, where she swears she’s due
and must not fail of being, for to-morrow, Sunday.
Sir Percy, too, affirms, he must up to town without delay, to have the
honor and pleasure of himself rehearsing at Will’s the splendid
courage of Sir Robin, and his almost miraculous escape from a
horrible and ignominious death.
In truth Percy longed, after the excitements of the past four-and-
twenty hours, to be alone; to seek, as was his wont of late, in some
unfrequented, obscure part of the town, such as the desolate
neighborhood of the Dove Pier, an opportunity to ponder upon Lady
Peggy; to guess fruitlessly of her whereabouts; to curse himself, and
Sir Robin who had, with a good cause, he generously allowed, so
known how to win her from him; to marvel how, at ev’ry turn, this
same Baronet appeared to become entangled in his own matters; to
question if Peggy were indeed now the lawful wedded wife of this
gentleman from Kent. In brief, to pester Fate with queries and
surmises far too numerous and intricate to set down.
Thus upon reflection, he purposely absented himself, after his first
visit to Will’s on reaching London, from either of the chocolate or
coffee-houses, which he was accustomed to patronize, knowing full
well that the most pressing and absorbing things he should hear
would all have Sir Robin McTart for text. He did not even repair to
Mr. Brummell’s house to give an account of the rescue of the Beau’s
protégé from the hangman, feeling unwilling to recount his own part
in the affair and but too certain that long since the whole matter
would have traveled to Peter’s Court and into every other precinct of
the town. Having, also, learned from Lady Diana that Kennaston had
quitted Brookwood Castle in a dense of a melancholy humor, he did
not either go to Lark Lane, (not finding Peg’s twin at the house in
Charlotte Street), but moped the Sunday through, thankful that his
uncle was gone down into the country; listening to the church-bells;
thumbing a prayer-book Lady Peggy had given him one Easter-day,
now five years since; finally flinging it from him; pacing up and down
the hall; side-curls awry, waistcoat unbuttoned; ruffles tumbled;
breeches wrinkled; mind distract, and altogether as valiant a young
gentleman as ever made a wager or a toast, unsheathed a blade, or
mounted a horse, rendered all of a-muddle by not knowing which
way to turn to find the whereabouts and wherefores of a certain fair
lady; which has been a state of affairs not uncommon to young
gentlemen before this one’s day, and like to occur until the species is
extinct.
Yet, ’tis quite true, too, that Sir Percy’s case was a bit out of the
usual, inasmuch as the mystery of Lady Peggy’s present abiding
place remained as deep to-day as ’twas a fortnight ago.
“Well, Grigson,” asked his master, as his man appeared
unsummoned, “what is it?”
“Asking Your Honor’s pardon,” replies this one, “but I made bold
during Your Honor’s absence from town to go down to Kennaston
Castle.”
“Well, well?” cries Sir Percy excitedly, “what news?”
“With submission, Sir,” replies the man, sadly. “None.”
“’Od’s blood! you fool!” exclaimed the master. “Why do you seek me
with your ‘none’! Is Her Ladyship still from home?”
Grigson bows.
“And her mother still in York?”
Grigson bows.
“And the Earl still believing his daughter to be in that damned Kent
with her godmother?”
Grigson bows for the third time.
“And that cursed Abigail still affirming that her mistress is up in
London?”
Grigson bows for the fourth time.
“Asking your pardon, Sir Percy,” he adds, noting with a keen and
generous sympathy, which not infrequently exists in the hearts of
serving-men for their masters, the deepening pallor of the young
gentleman’s countenance, and his most disheveled appearance.
“Asking your pardon, Sir, but whiles I might be doing your wig,
which is most uncommon tousled, I’d make bold to tell you, Sir, that
Mistress Jane Chockey, Lady Peggy’s own woman, Sir, is in an awful
way, Sir!”
“My wig may go to the devil, you idiot!” cries Percy. “What’s the
blabbing jade’s tantrums to me! Get out of my sight.”
“With submission, Sir Percy, but Chockey does nothing at all but cry
out her eyes from morning till night, and went on her knees a-
beseechin’ me to find Her Ladyship, which all I could coax out of her
by my best endeavors at wheedlin’ the seck, Sir, was that she last
saw Her Ladyship standin’—”
“Where! where?” gasps Sir Percy, seizing Mr. Grigson by the arm
with a grip of steel.
“Before the door of Lord Kennaston’s lodgin’s, Sir, in Lark Lane—a—”
“Yes? yes? go on!” with glaring, gazing eyes fixed on his man’s ruddy
visage.
“A-talkin’, Sir, to some one a-sittin’ inside of a most elegant chair!”
“Did she see the man’s face?” he asks tensely.
“No, Sir Percy; but Her Ladyship bade Chockey go home and not
tarry for her, and make such excuse to His Lordship as you have
learned before. And, asking your pardon humbly, Sir, Mistress
Chockey is of the opinion that her young Lady got into that chair and
was carried off, a willin’ wictim, Sir, to the h’altar, and married to the
contents of the chair, Sir, afore that wery noon.”
“Damn Chockey and her opinions!” mutters Sir Percy, under his
breath, picking up his hat from the table and rushing into the street,
nigh to choking with his emotions and his despair.
He turned the corner, almost knocking over a couple of link-boys in
his path, tossed them some pennies for their tumble, and into
Piccadilly.
“Fare, Sir? fare, Your Honor? fare, Your Lordship?” cry a half-dozen
of ’em, and he jumps into a hackney chaise purposeless.
“Where to, My Lord?” asks the man.
“To the devil!” replies the passenger, “or anywhere else, only drive
fast and let me down within walk of the river.”
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