Chapter XI: Chartley I T would be easy from the records of the Devil's liturgies to produce an accurate picture of the further mummeries that went to the confirmation of Frances Howard as the faithful disciple of Father Forman. Incredible as her future story may sound to modern ears, those whose business it is to study the criminal practices of quacks and blackmailers know that there is no extravagance of faith too abject to satisfy a simple soul in distress, and they will understand the grip in which these scoundrels held the girl, and judge her resulting conduct in the light of that knowledge. From the night of her initiation Frances Howard became the slave and tool of Forman and Mrs. Turner. Her subjection and slavish obedience to the magician are, indeed, pitiable, but not without precedent in the records of roguery and crime. For the present there was a further delay of the journey into Staffordshire. The girl was permitted stolen interviews with her lover at Mrs. Turner's house in Paternoster Row. She received letters from him, beautiful letters, invented by the rascal, Overbury, and sonnets from his poet's brain, carefully penned and copied by Rochester, who was wholly incapable of their authorship. How far her Uncle Howard was a party to this villainy no one can say, but it brought about the result he sought. By the early summer the girl had so committed herself by her conduct and in her writings to her "sweet father" and Rochester that Simon Forman could at any moment betray her shame to the world and destroy her future. It was then that he issued his orders to her that she should accompany her husband to Chartley. We may imagine her expostulations and appeals. But her taskmaster was firm. The crafty magician persuaded Frances that though she was to go with her husband she was not to be his for ever. She travelled with magic powders and potions which she could put in his sauces and bewitch him and destroy in his nature all thoughts of love to herself. In his den of iniquity Simon Forman showed the wretched girl wax images of herself and Rochester which were to be joined together and blessed by subtle spells, so that in her absence her lover would remain true to her and wait for her return. And all these lurid blasphemies seemed to her worthy of belief when, in her prison house of Chartley, she received Rochester's love letters, cunningly modelled by his tutor, Overbury, to which she replied with her own simple ardent appeals. The law has to be obeyed. The bargain has been made. Even the great magician, Simon Forman, cannot, as yet, charm the seal from the bond of matrimony, though he promises the girl mighty miracles in the future. So it comes about that one fine May morning the doughty Essex carries off his weeping bride in the old family coach with sturdy cart-horses to drag it along through the ruts of the great North Road. The young Earl rides by her side with his retinue. They rest at inns and the houses of friends. Outwardly before the world she is a demure, obedient wife. But alone the girl will have no word with him and retires with her maid, Alice, a girl Mrs. Turner had found for her, and leaves her husband to himself. In this strange way they reach Staffordshire and the big grey ancestral home of Chartley. The coach rolls up to the entrance hall. The beautiful bride alights, and, giving her hand to her husband, is led through the rows of admiring servants to her apartments. Here she curtsies low to her lord and master, and then pushes the door in his face and is seen no more, to the scandal and chagrin of the Earl's household. For though it was the pleasantest time of summer, the young wife shut herself up in her chamber, not suffering a beam of light to |