“We know her,” said the old boon companions of her childhood, as they talked of her over their bottles. “She knew her price and would bargain for it when she was not eight years old, and would give us songs and kisses but when she was paid for them with sweet things and knickknacks from the toy-shops. She will marry no man who cannot make her at least a countess, and she would take him but because there was not a duke at hand. We know her, and her beauty’s ways.”
But they did not know her; none knew her, save herself.
In the west wing, which grew more bare and ill-furnished as things wore out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler. She was so thin in two months’ time, that her soft, dull eyes looked twice their natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people. One day, indeed, as she sat at work in her sister’s room, Clorinda being there at the time, the beauty, turning and beholding her face suddenly, uttered a violent exclamation.
“Why look you at me so?” she said. “Your eyes stand out of your head like a new-hatched, unfeathered bird’s. They irk me with their strange asking look. Why do you stare at me?”
“I do not know,” Anne faltered. “I could not tell you, sister. My eyes seem to stare so because of my thinness. I have seen them in my mirror.”
“Why do you grow thin?” quoth Clorinda harshly. “You are not ill.”
“I—I do not know,” again Anne faltered. “Naught ails me. I do not know. For—forgive me!”
Clorinda laughed.
“Soft little fool,” she said, “why should you ask me to forgive you? I might as fairly ask you to forgive me, that I keep my shape and show no wasting.”
Anne rose from her chair and hurried to her sister’s side, sinking upon her knees there to kiss her hand.
“Sister,” she said, “one could never dream that you could need pardon. I love you so—that all you do, it seems to me must be right—whatsoever it might be.”
Clorinda drew her fair hands away and clasped them on the top of her head, proudly, as if she crowned herself thereby, her great and splendid eyes setting themselves upon her sister’s face.
“All that I do,” she said slowly, and with the steadfast high arrogance of an empress’ self—“All that I do is right—for me. I make it so by doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women crouch and whine before, because they dare not break them, though they long to do so? I am my own law—and the law of some others.”
It was by this time the first month of the summer, and to-night there was again a birth-night ball, at which the beauty was to dazzle all eyes; but ’twas of greater import than the one she had graced previously, it being to celebrate the majority of the heir to an old name and estate, who had been orphaned early, and was highly connected, counting, indeed, among the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the first time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again.
He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late. But there was one who had seen him early, though no human soul had known of the event.
In the rambling, ill-cared for grounds of Wildairs Hall there was an old rose-garden, which had once been the pride and pleasure of some lady of the house, though this had been long ago; and now it was but a lonely wilderness where roses only grew because the dead Lady Wildairs had loved them, and Barbara and Anne had tended them, and with their own hands planted and pruned during their childhood and young maiden days. But of late years even they had seemed to have forgotten it, having become discouraged, perchance, having no gardeners to do the rougher work, and the weeds and brambles so running riot. There were high hedges and winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and it was a beauteous place deserted.
In the centre was an ancient broken sun-dial, which was in these days in the midst of a sort of thicket, where a bold tangle of the finest red roses clambered, and, defying neglect, flaunted their rich colour in the sun.
And though the place had been so long forgotten, and it was not the custom for it to be visited, about this garlanded broken sun-dial the grass was a little trodden, and on the morning of the young heir’s coming of age some one stood there in the glowing sunlight as if waiting.
This was no less than Mistress Clorinda herself. She was clad in a morning gown of white, which seemed to make of her more than ever a tall, transcendent creature, less a woman than a conquering goddess; and she had piled the dial with scarlet red roses, which she was choosing to weave into a massive wreath or crown, for some purpose best known to herself. Her head seemed haughtier and more splendidly held on high even than was its common wont, but upon these roses her lustrous eyes were downcast and were curiously smiling, as also was her ripe, arching lip, whose scarlet the blossoms vied with but poorly. It was a smile like this, perhaps, which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for ’twas not a tender smile nor a melting one. If she was waiting, she did not wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had been kept by any daring laggard. This was not her way.
’Twas not a laggard who came soon, stepping hurriedly with light feet upon the grass, as though he feared the sound which might be made if he had trodden upon the gravel. It was Sir John Oxon who came towards her in his riding costume.
He came and stood before her on the other side of the dial, and made her a bow so low that a quick eye might have thought ’twas almost mocking. His feather, sweeping the ground, caught a fallen rose, which clung to it. His beauty, when he stood upright, seemed to defy the very morning’s self and all the morning world; but Mistress Clorinda did not lift her eyes, but kept them upon her roses, and went on weaving.
“Why did you choose to come?” she asked.
“Why did you choose to keep the tryst in answer to my message?” he replied to her.
At this she lifted her great shining eyes and fixed them full upon him.
“I wished,” she said, “to hear what you would say—but more to see you than to hear.”
“And I,” he began—“I came—”
She held up her white hand with a long-stemmed rose in it—as though a queen should lift a sceptre.
“You came,” she answered, “more to see me than to hear. You made that blunder.”
“You choose to bear yourself like a goddess, and disdain me from Olympian heights,” he said. “I had the wit to guess it would be so.”
She shook her royal head, faintly and most strangely smiling.
“That you had not,” was her clear-worded answer. “That is a later thought sprung up since you have seen my face. ’Twas quick—for you—but not quick enough.” And the smile in her eyes was maddening. “You thought to see a woman crushed and weeping, her beauty bent before you, her locks dishevelled, her streaming eyes lifted to Heaven—and you—with prayers, swearing that not Heaven could help her so much as your deigning magnanimity. You have seen women do this before, you would have seen me do it—at your feet—crying out that I was lost—lost for ever. That you expected! ’Tis not here.”
Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or conscience—for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of rakes and fashionable villains—well as he thought he knew all women and their ways, betraying or betrayed—this creature taught him a new thing, a new mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like a thunderbolt.
“Gods!” he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back apace, “Damnation! you are not a woman!”
She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes should loose themselves from hers.
“But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights,” she said; “I am not one—I am a woman who would show other women how to bear themselves in hours like these. Because I am a woman why should I kneel, and weep, and rave? What have I lost—in losing you? I should have lost the same had I been twice your wife. What is it women weep and beat their breasts for—because they love a man—because they lose his love. They never have them.”
She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it. What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so—a heavy, sumptuous thing—in her white hands, her head thrown backward.
“You marry soon,” she asked—“if the match is not broken?”
“Yes,” he answered, watching her—a flame growing in his eyes and in his soul in his own despite.
“It cannot be too soon,” she said. And she turned and faced him, holding the wreath high in her two hands poised like a crown above her head—the brilliant sun embracing her, her lips curling, her face uplifted as if she turned to defy the light, the crimson of her cheek. ’Twas as if from foot to brow the woman’s whole person was a flame, rising and burning triumphant high above him. Thus for one second’s space she stood, dazzling his very eyesight with her strange, dauntless splendour; and then she set the great rose-wreath upon her head, so crowning it.
“You came to see me,” she said, the spark in her eyes growing to the size of a star; “I bid you look at me—and see how grief has faded me these past months, and how I am bowed down by it. Look well—that you may remember.”
“I look,” he said, almost panting.
“Then,” she said, her fine-cut nostril pinching itself with her breath, as she pointed down the path before her—“go!—back to your kennel!”
* * * * *
That night she appeared at the birth-night ball with the wreath of roses on her head. No other ladies wore such things, ’twas a fashion of her own; but she wore it in such beauty and with such state that it became a crown again even as it had been the first moment that she had put it on. All gazed at her as she entered, and a murmur followed her as she moved with her father up the broad oak staircase which was known through all the country for its width and massive beauty. In the hall below guests were crowded, and there were indeed few of them who did not watch her as she mounted by Sir Jeoffry’s side. In the upper hall there were guests also, some walking to and fro, some standing talking, many looking down at the arrivals as they came up.
“’Tis Mistress Wildairs,” these murmured as they saw her. “Clorinda, by God!” said one of the older men to his crony who stood near him. “And crowned with roses! The vixen makes them look as if they were built of rubies in every leaf.”
At the top of the great staircase there stood a gentleman, who had indeed paused a moment, spellbound, as he saw her coming. He was a man of unusual height and of a majestic mien; he wore a fair periwig, which added to his tallness; his laces and embroiderings were marvels of art and richness, and his breast blazed with orders. Strangely, she did not seem to see him; but when she reached the landing, and her face was turned so that he beheld the full blaze of its beauty, ’twas so great a wonder and revelation to him that he gave a start. The next moment almost, one of the red roses of her crown broke loose from its fastenings and fell at his very feet. His countenance changed so that it seemed almost, for a second, to lose some of its colour. He stooped and picked the rose up and held it in his hand. But Mistress Clorinda was looking at my Lord of Dunstanwolde, who was moving through the crowd to greet her. She gave him a brilliant smile, and from her lustrous eyes surely there passed something which lit a fire of hope in his.
After she had made her obeisance to her entertainers, and her birthday greetings to the young heir, he contrived to draw closely to her side and speak a few words in a tone those near her could not hear.
“To-night, madam,” he said, with melting fervour, “you deign to bring me my answer as you promised.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Take me where we may be a few moments alone.”
He led her to an antechamber, where they were sheltered from the gaze of the passers-by, though all was moving gaiety about them. He fell upon his knee and bowed to kiss her fair hand. Despite the sobriety of his years, he was as eager and tender as a boy.
“Be gracious to me, madam,” he implored. “I am not young enough to wait. Too many months have been thrown away.”
“You need wait no longer, my lord,” she said—“not one single hour.”
And while he, poor gentleman, knelt, kissing her hand with adoring humbleness, she, under the splendour of her crown of roses, gazed down at his grey-sprinkled head with her great steady shining orbs, as if gazing at some almost uncomprehended piteous wonder.
In less than an hour the whole assemblage knew of the event and talked of it. Young men looked daggers at Dunstanwolde and at each other; and older men wore glum or envious faces. Women told each other ’twas as they had known it would be, or ’twas a wonder that at last it had come about. Upon the arm of her lord that was to be, Mistress Clorinda passed from room to room like a royal bride.
As she made her first turn of the ballroom, all eyes upon her, her beauty blazing at its highest, Sir John Oxon entered and stood at the door. He wore his gallant air, and smiled as ever; and when she drew near him he bowed low, and she stopped, and bent lower in a curtsey sweeping the ground.
’Twas but in the next room her lord led her to a gentleman who stood with a sort of court about him. It was the tall stranger, with the fair periwig, and the orders glittering on his breast—the one who had started at sight of her as she had reached the landing of the stairs. He held still in his hand a broken red rose, and when his eye fell on her crown the colour mounted to his cheek.
“My honoured kinsman, his Grace the Duke of Osmonde,” said her affianced lord. “Your Grace—it is this lady who is to do me the great honour of becoming my Lady Dunstanwolde.”
And as the deep, tawny brown eye of the man bending before her flashed into her own, for the first time in her life Mistress Clorinda’s lids fell, and as she swept her curtsey of stately obeisance her heart struck like a hammer against her side.
CHAPTER IX—“I give to him the thing he craves with all his soul—myself”
In a month she was the Countess of Dunstanwolde, and reigned in her lord’s great town house with a retinue of servants, her powdered lackeys among the tallest, her liveries and equipages the richest the world of fashion knew. She was presented at the Court, blazing with the Dunstanwolde jewels, and even with others her bridegroom had bought in his passionate desire to heap upon her the magnificence which became her so well. From the hour she knelt to kiss the hand of royalty she set the town on fire. It seemed to have been ordained by Fate that her passage through this world should be always the triumphant passage of a conqueror. As when a baby she had ruled the servants’ hall, the kennel, and the grooms’ quarters, later her father and his boisterous friends, and from her fifteenth birthday the whole hunting shire she lived in, so she held her sway in the great world, as did no other lady of her rank or any higher. Those of her age seemed but girls yet by her side, whether married or unmarried, and howsoever trained to modish ways. She was but scarce eighteen at her marriage, but she was no girl, nor did she look one, glowing as was the early splendour of her bloom. Her height was far beyond the ordinary for a woman; but her shape so faultless and her carriage so regal, that though there were men upon whom she was tall enough to look down with ease, the beholder but felt that her tallness was an added grace and beauty with which all women should have been endowed, and which, as they were not, caused them to appear but insignificant. What a throat her diamonds blazed on, what shoulders and bosom her laces framed, on what a brow her coronet sat and glittered. Her lord lived as ’twere upon his knees in enraptured adoration. Since his first wife’s death in his youth, he had dwelt almost entirely in the country at his house there, which was fine and stately, but had been kept gloomily half closed for a decade. His town establishment had, in truth, never been opened since his bereavement; and now—an elderly man—he returned to the gay world he had almost forgotten, with a bride whose youth and beauty set it aflame. What wonder that his head almost reeled at times and that he lost his breath before the sum of his strange late bliss, and the new lease of brilliant life which seemed to have been given to him.
In the days when, while in the country, he had heard such rumours of the lawless days of Sir Jeoffry Wildairs’ daughter, when he had heard of her dauntless boldness, her shrewish temper, and her violent passions, he had been awed at the thought of what a wife such a woman would make for a gentleman accustomed to a quiet life, and he had indeed striven hard to restrain the desperate admiration he was forced to admit she had inspired in him even at her first ball.
The effort had, in sooth, been in vain, and he had passed many a sleepless night; and when, as time went on, he beheld her again and again, and saw with his own eyes, as well as heard from others, of the great change which seemed to have taken place in her manners and character, he began devoutly to thank Heaven for the alteration, as for a merciful boon vouchsafed to him. He had been wise enough to know that even a stronger man than himself could never conquer or rule her; and when she seemed to begin to rule herself and bear herself as befitted her birth and beauty, he had dared to allow himself to dream of what perchance might be if he had great good fortune.
In these days of her union with him, he was, indeed, almost humbly amazed at the grace and kindness she showed him every hour they passed in each other’s company. He knew that there were men, younger and handsomer than himself, who, being wedded to beauties far less triumphant than she, found that their wives had but little time to spare them from the world, which knelt at their feet, and that in some fashion they themselves seemed to fall into the background. But ’twas not so with this woman, powerful and worshipped though she might be. She bore herself with the high dignity of her rank, but rendered to him the gracious respect and deference due both to his position and his merit. She stood by his side and not before him, and her smiles and wit were bestowed upon him as generously as to others. If she had once been a vixen, she was surely so no longer, for he never heard a sharp or harsh word pass her lips, though it is true her manner was always somewhat imperial, and her lacqueys and waiting women stood in greatest awe of her. There was that in her presence and in her eye before which all commoner or weaker creatures quailed. The men of the world who flocked to pay their court to her, and the popinjays who followed them, all knew this look, and a tone in her rich voice which could cut like a knife when she chose that it should do so. But to my Lord of Dunstanwolde she was all that a worshipped lady could be.
“Your ladyship has made of me a happier man than I ever dared to dream of being, even when I was but thirty,” he would say to her, with reverent devotion. “I know not what I have done to deserve this late summer which hath been given me.”
“When I consented to be your wife,” she answered once, “I swore to myself that I would make one for you;” and she crossed the hearth to where he sat—she was attired in all her splendour for a Court ball, and starred with jewels—bent over his chair and placed a kiss upon his grizzled hair.
Upon the night before her wedding with him, her sister, Mistress Anne, had stolen to her chamber at a late hour. When she had knocked upon the door, and had been commanded to enter, she had come in, and closing the door behind her, had stood leaning against it, looking before her, with her eyes wide with agitation and her poor face almost grey.
All the tapers for which places could be found had been gathered together, and the room was a blaze of light. In the midst of it, before her mirror, Clorinda stood attired in her bridal splendour of white satin and flowing rich lace, a diamond crescent on her head, sparks of light flaming from every point of her raiment. When she caught sight of Anne’s reflection in the glass before her, she turned and stood staring at her in wonder.
“What—nay, what is this?” she cried. “What do you come for? On my soul, you come for something—or you have gone mad.”
Anne started forward, trembling, her hands clasped upon her breast, and fell at her feet with sobs.
“Yes, yes,” she gasped, “I came—for something—to speak—to pray you—! Sister—Clorinda, have patience with me—till my courage comes again!” and she clutched her robe.
Something which came nigh to being a shudder passed through Mistress Clorinda’s frame; but it was gone in a second, and she touched Anne—though not ungently—with her foot, withdrawing her robe.
“Do not stain it with your tears,” she said, “’twould be a bad omen.”
Anne buried her face in her hands and knelt so before her.
“’Tis not too late!” she said—“’tis not too late yet.”
“For what?” Clorinda asked. “For what, I pray you tell me, if you can find your wits. You go beyond my patience with your folly.”
“Too late to stop,” said Anne—“to draw back and repent.”
“What?” commanded Clorinda—“what then should I repent me?”
“This marriage,” trembled Mistress Anne, taking her poor hands from her face to wring them. “It should not be.”
“Fool!” quoth Clorinda. “Get up and cease your grovelling. Did you come to tell me it was not too late to draw back and refuse to be the Countess of Dunstanwolde?” and she laughed bitterly.
“But it should not be—it must not!” Anne panted. “I—I know, sister, I know—”
Clorinda bent deliberately and laid her strong, jewelled hand on her shoulder with a grasp like a vice. There was no hurry in her movement or in her air, but by sheer, slow strength she forced her head backward so that the terrified woman was staring in her face.
“Look at me,” she said. “I would see you well, and be squarely looked at, that my eyes may keep you from going mad. You have pondered over this marriage until you have a frenzy. Women who live alone are sometimes so, and your brain was always weak. What is it that you know. Look—in my eyes—and tell me.”
It seemed as if her gaze stabbed through Anne’s eyes to the very centre of her brain. Anne tried to bear it, and shrunk and withered; she would have fallen upon the floor at her feet a helpless, sobbing heap, but the white hand would not let her go.
“Find your courage—if you have lost it—and speak plain words,” Clorinda commanded. Anne tried to writhe away, but could not again, and burst into passionate, hopeless weeping.
“I cannot—I dare not!” she gasped. “I am afraid. You are right; my brain is weak, and I—but that—that gentleman—who so loved you—”
“Which?” said Clorinda, with a brief scornful laugh.
“The one who was so handsome—with the fair locks and the gallant air—”
“The one you fell in love with and stared at through the window,” said Clorinda, with her brief laugh again. “John Oxon! He has victims enough, forsooth, to have spared such an one as you are.”
“But he loved you!” cried Anne piteously, “and it must have been that you—you too, sister—or—or else—” She choked again with sobs, and Clorinda released her grasp upon her shoulder and stood upright.
“He wants none of me—nor I of him,” she said, with strange sternness. “We have done with one another. Get up upon your feet if you would not have me thrust you out into the corridor.”
She turned from her, and walking back to her dressing-table, stood there steadying the diadem on her hair, which had loosed a fastening when Anne tried to writhe away from her. Anne half sat, half knelt upon the floor, staring at her with wet, wild eyes of misery and fear.
“Leave your kneeling,” commanded her sister again, “and come here.”
Anne staggered to her feet and obeyed her behest. In the glass she could see the resplendent reflection; but Clorinda did not deign to turn towards her while she addressed her, changing the while the brilliants in her hair.
“Hark you, sister Anne,” she said. “I read you better than you think. You are a poor thing, but you love me and—in my fashion—I think I love you somewhat too. You think I should not marry a gentleman whom you fancy I do not love as I might a younger, handsomer man. You are full of love, and spinster dreams of it which make you flighty. I love my Lord of Dunstanwolde as well as any other man, and better than some, for I do not hate him. He has a fine estate, and is a gentleman—and worships me. Since I have been promised to him, I own I have for a moment seen another gentleman who might—but ’twas but for a moment, and ’tis done with. ’Twas too late then. If we had met two years agone ’twould not have been so. My Lord Dunstanwolde gives to me wealth, and rank, and life at Court. I give to him the thing he craves with all his soul—myself. It is an honest bargain, and I shall bear my part of it with honesty. I have no virtues—where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women’s virtues; but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man’s. ’Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when ’tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. ’Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly, and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will not cheat him as weaker women do their husbands; for he pays—poor gentleman—he pays.”
And then, still looking at the glass, she pointed to the doorway through which her sister had come, and in obedience to her gesture of command, Mistress Anne stole silently away.
CHAPTER X—“Yes—I have marked him”
Through the brilliant, happy year succeeding to his marriage my Lord of Dunstanwolde lived like a man who dreams a blissful dream and knows it is one.
“I feel,” he said to his lady, “as if ’twere too great rapture to last, and yet what end could come, unless you ceased to be kind to me; and, in truth, I feel that you are too noble above all other women to change, unless I were more unworthy than I could ever be since you are mine.”
Both in the town and in the country, which last place heard many things of his condition and estate through rumour, he was the man most wondered at and envied of his time—envied because of his strange happiness; wondered at because having, when long past youth, borne off this arrogant beauty from all other aspirants she showed no arrogance to him, and was as perfect a wife as could have been some woman without gifts whom he had lifted from low estate and endowed with rank and fortune. She seemed both to respect himself and her position as his lady and spouse. Her manner of reigning in his household was among his many delights the greatest. It was a great house, and an old one, built long before by a Dunstanwolde whose lavish feasts and riotous banquets had been the notable feature of his life. It was curiously rambling in its structure. The rooms of entertainment were large and splendid, the halls and staircases stately; below stairs there was space for an army of servants to be disposed of; and its network of cellars and wine-vaults was so beyond all need that more than one long arched stone passage was shut up as being without use, and but letting cold, damp air into corridors leading to the servants’ quarters. It was, indeed, my Lady Dunstanwolde who had ordered the closing of this part when it had been her pleasure to be shown her domain by her housekeeper, the which had greatly awed and impressed her household as signifying that, exalted lady as she was, her wit was practical as well as brilliant, and that her eyes being open to her surroundings, she meant not that her lacqueys should rob her and her scullions filch, thinking that she was so high that she was ignorant of common things and blind.
“You will be well housed and fed and paid your dues,” she said to them; “but the first man or woman who does a task ill or dishonestly will be turned from his place that hour. I deal justice—not mercy.”
“Such a mistress they have never had before,” said my lord when she related this to him. “Nay, they have never dreamed of such a lady—one who can be at once so severe and so kind. But there is none other such, my dearest one. They will fear and worship you.”
She gave him one of her sweet, splendid smiles. It was the sweetness she at rare times gave her splendid smile which was her marvellous power.
“I would not be too grand a lady to be a good housewife,” she said. “I may not order your dinners, my dear lord, or sweep your corridors, but they shall know I rule your household and would rule it well.”
“You are a goddess!” he cried, kneeling to her, enraptured. “And you have given yourself to a poor mortal man, who can but worship you.”
“You give me all I have,” she said, “and you love me nobly, and I am grateful.”
Her assemblies were the most brilliant in the town, and the most to be desired entrance to. Wits and beauties planned and intrigued that they might be bidden to her house; beaux and fine ladies fell into the spleen if she neglected them. Her lord’s kinsman the Duke of Osmonde, who had been present when she first knelt to Royalty, had scarce removed his eyes from her so long as he could gaze. He went to Dunstanwolde afterwards and congratulated him with stately courtesy upon his great good fortune and happiness, speaking almost with fire of her beauty and majesty, and thanking his kinsman that through him such perfections had been given to their name and house. From that time, at all special assemblies given by his kinsman he was present, the observed of all observers. He was a man of whom ’twas said that he was the most magnificent gentleman in Europe; that there was none to compare with him in the combination of gifts given both by Nature and Fortune. His beauty both of feature and carriage was of the greatest, his mind was of the highest, and his education far beyond that of the age he lived in. It was not the fashion of the day that men of his rank should devote themselves to the cultivation of their intellects instead of to a life of pleasure; but this he had done from his earliest youth, and now, in his perfect though early maturity, he had no equal in polished knowledge and charm of bearing. He was the patron of literature and art; men of genius were not kept waiting in his antechamber, but were received by him with courtesy and honour. At the Court ’twas well known there was no man who stood so near the throne in favour, and that there was no union so exalted that he might not have made his suit as rather that of a superior than an equal. The Queen both loved and honoured him, and condescended to avow as much with gracious frankness. She knew no other man, she deigned to say, who was so worthy of honour and affection, and that he had not married must be because there was no woman who could meet him on ground that was equal. If there were no scandals about him—and there were none—’twas not because he was cold of heart or imagination. No man or woman could look into his deep eye and not know that when love came to him ’twould be a burning passion, and an evil fate if it went ill instead of happily.
“Being past his callow, youthful days, ’tis time he made some woman a duchess,” Dunstanwolde said reflectively once to his wife. “’Twould be more fitting that he should; and it is his way to honour his house in all things, and bear himself without fault as the head of it. Methinks it strange he makes no move to do it.”
“No, ’tis not strange,” said my lady, looking under her black-fringed lids at the glow of the fire, as though reflecting also. “There is no strangeness in it.”
“Why not?” her lord asked.
“There is no mate for him,” she answered slowly. “A man like him must mate as well as marry, or he will break his heart with silent raging at the weakness of the thing he is tied to. He is too strong and splendid for a common woman. If he married one, ’twould be as if a lion had taken to himself for mate a jackal or a sheep. Ah!” with a long drawn breath—“he would go mad—mad with misery;” and her hands, which lay upon her knee, wrung themselves hard together, though none could see it.
“He should have a goddess, were they not so rare,” said Dunstanwolde, gently smiling. “He should hold a bitter grudge against me, that I, his unworthy kinsman, have been given the only one.”
“Yes, he should have a goddess,” said my lady slowly again; “and there are but women, naught but women.”
“You have marked him well,” said her lord, admiring her wisdom. “Methinks that you—though you have spoken to him but little, and have but of late become his kinswoman—have marked and read him better than the rest of us.”
“Yes—I have marked him,” was her answer.
“He is a man to mark, and I have a keen eye.” She rose up as she spoke, and stood before the fire, lifted by some strong feeling to her fullest height, and towering there, splendid in the shadow—for ’twas by twilight they talked. “He is a Man,” she said—“he is a Man! Nay, he is as God meant man should be. And if men were so, there would be women great enough for them to mate with and to give the world men like them.” And but that she stood in the shadow, her lord would have seen the crimson torrent rush up her cheek and brow, and overspread her long round throat itself.
If none other had known of it, there was one man who knew that she had marked him, though she had borne herself towards him always with her stateliest grace. This man was his Grace the Duke himself. From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her wreath at his feet, and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he had seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that had he not come but just too late, she would have been his own. Each time he had beheld her since that night he had felt this burn more deeply in his soul. He was too high and fine in all his thoughts to say to himself that in her he saw for the first time the woman who was his peer; but this was very truth—or might have been, if Fate had set her youth elsewhere, and a lady who was noble and her own mother had trained and guarded her. When he saw her at the Court surrounded, as she ever was, by a court of her own; when he saw her reigning in her lord’s house, receiving and doing gracious honour to his guests and hers; when she passed him in her coach, drawing every eye by the majesty of her presence, as she drove through the town, he felt a deep pang, which was all the greater that his honour bade him conquer it. He had no ignoble thought of her, he would have scorned to sully his soul with any light passion; to him she was the woman who might have been his beloved wife and duchess, who would have upheld with him the honour and traditions of his house, whose strength and power and beauty would have been handed down to his children, who so would have been born endowed with gifts befitting the state to which Heaven had called them. It was of this he thought when he saw her, and of naught less like to do her honour. And as he had marked her so, he saw in her eyes, despite her dignity and grace, she had marked him. He did not know how closely, or that she gave him the attention he could not restrain himself from bestowing upon her. But when he bowed before her, and she greeted him with all courtesy, he saw in her great, splendid eye that had Fate willed it so, she would have understood all his thoughts, shared all his ambitions, and aided him to uphold his high ideals. Nay, he knew she understood him even now, and was stirred by what stirred him also, even though they met but rarely, and when they encountered each other, spoke but as kinsman and kinswoman who would show each other all gracious respect and honour. It was because of this pang which struck his great heart at times that he was not a frequent visitor at my Lord Dunstanwolde’s mansion, but appeared there only at such assemblies as were matters of ceremony, his absence from which would have been a noted thing. His kinsman was fond of him, and though himself of so much riper age, honoured him greatly. At times he strove to lure him into visits of greater familiarity; but though his kindness was never met coldly or repulsed, a further intimacy was in some gracious way avoided.
“My lady must beguile you to be less formal with us,” said Dunstanwolde. And later her ladyship spoke as her husband had privately desired: “My lord would be made greatly happy if your Grace would honour our house oftener,” she said one night, when at the end of a great ball he was bidding her adieu.
Osmonde’s deep eye met hers gently and held it. “My Lord Dunstanwolde is always gracious and warm of heart to his kinsman,” he replied. “Do not let him think me discourteous or ungrateful. In truth, your ladyship, I am neither the one nor the other.”
The eyes of each gazed into the other’s steadfastly and gravely. The Duke of Osmonde thought of Juno’s as he looked at hers; they were of such velvet, and held such fathomless deeps.
“Your Grace is not so free as lesser men,” Clorinda said. “You cannot come and go as you would.”
“No,” he answered gravely, “I cannot, as I would.”
And this was all.
It having been known by all the world that, despite her beauty and her conquests, Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had not smiled with great favour upon Sir John Oxon in the country, it was not wondered at or made any matter of gossip that the Countess of Dunstanwolde was but little familiar with him and saw him but rarely at her house in town.
Once or twice he had appeared there, it is true, at my Lord Dunstanwolde’s instance, but my lady herself scarce seemed to see him after her first courtesies as hostess were over.
“You never smiled on him, my love,” Dunstanwolde said to his wife. “You bore yourself towards him but cavalierly, as was your ladyship’s way—with all but one poor servant,” tenderly; “but he was one of the many who followed in your train, and if these gay young fellows stay away, ’twill be said that I keep them at a distance because I am afraid of their youth and gallantry. I would not have it fancied that I was so ungrateful as to presume upon your goodness and not leave to you your freedom.”
“Nor would I, my lord,” she answered. “But he will not come often; I do not love him well enough.”
His marriage with the heiress who had wealth in the West Indies was broken off, or rather ’twas said had come to naught. All the town knew it, and wondered, and talked, because it had been believed at first that the young lady was much enamoured of him, and that he would soon lead her to the altar, the which his creditors had greatly rejoiced over as promising them some hope that her fortune would pay their bills of which they had been in despair. Later, however, gossip said that the heiress had not been so tender as was thought; that, indeed, she had been found to be in love with another man, and that even had she not, she had heard such stories of Sir John as promised but little nuptial happiness for any woman that took him to husband.
When my Lord Dunstanwolde brought his bride to town, and she soared at once to splendid triumph and renown, inflaming every heart, and setting every tongue at work, clamouring her praises, Sir John Oxon saw her from afar in all the scenes of brilliant fashion she frequented and reigned queen of. ’Twas from afar, it might be said, he saw her only, though he was often near her, because she bore herself as if she did not observe him, or as though he were a thing which did not exist. The first time that she deigned to address him was upon an occasion when she found herself standing so near him at an assembly that in the crowd she brushed him with her robe. His blue eyes were fixed burningly upon her, and as she brushed him he drew in a hard breath, which she hearing, turned slowly and let her own eyes fall upon his face.
“You did not marry,” she said.
“No, I did not marry,” he answered, in a low, bitter voice. “’Twas your ladyship who did that.”
She faintly, slowly smiled.
“I should not have been like to do otherwise,” she said; “’tis an honourable condition. I would advise you to enter it.”
CHAPTER XI—Wherein a noble life comes to an end
When the earl and his countess went to their house in the country, there fell to Mistress Anne a great and curious piece of good fortune. In her wildest dreams she had never dared to hope that such a thing might be.
My Lady Dunstanwolde, on her first visit home, bore her sister back with her to the manor, and there established her. She gave her a suite of rooms and a waiting woman of her own, and even provided her with a suitable wardrobe. This last she had chosen herself with a taste and fitness which only such wit as her own could have devised.
“They are not great rooms I give thee, Anne,” she said, “but quiet and small ones, which you can make home-like in such ways as I know your taste lies. My lord has aided me to choose romances for your shelves, he knowing more of books than I do. And I shall not dress thee out like a peacock with gay colours and great farthingales. They would frighten thee, poor woman, and be a burden with their weight. I have chosen such things as are not too splendid, but will suit thy pale face and shot partridge eyes.”
Anne stood in the middle of her room and looked about at its comforts, wondering.
“Sister,” she said, “why are you so good to me? What have I done to serve you? Why is it Anne instead of Barbara you are so gracious to?”
“Perchance because I am a vain woman and would be worshipped as you worship me.”
“But you are always worshipped,” Anne faltered.
“Ay, by men!” said Clorinda, mocking; “but not by women. And it may be that my pride is so high that I must be worshipped by a woman too. You would always love me, sister Anne. If you saw me break the law—if you saw me stab the man I hated to the heart, you would think it must be pardoned to me.”
She laughed, and yet her voice was such that Anne lost her breath and caught at it again.
“Ay, I should love you, sister!” she cried. “Even then I could not but love you. I should know you could not strike so an innocent creature, and that to be so hated he must have been worthy of hate. You—are not like other women, sister Clorinda; but you could not be base—for you have a great heart.”
Clorinda put her hand to her side and laughed again, but with less mocking in her laughter.
“What do you know of my heart, Anne?” she said. “Till late I did not know it beat, myself. My lord says ’tis a great one and noble, but I know ’tis his own that is so. Have I done honestly by him, Anne, as I told you I would? Have I been fair in my bargain—as fair as an honest man, and not a puling, slippery woman?”
“You have been a great lady,” Anne answered, her great dull, soft eyes filling with slow tears as she gazed at her. “He says that you have given to him a year of Heaven, and that you seem to him like some archangel—for the lower angels seem not high enough to set beside you.”
“’Tis as I said—’tis his heart that is noble,” said Clorinda. “But I vowed it should be so. He paid—he paid!”
The country saw her lord’s happiness as the town had done, and wondered at it no less. The manor was thrown open, and guests came down from town; great dinners and balls being given, at which all the country saw the mistress reign at her consort’s side with such a grace as no lady ever had worn before. Sir Jeoffry, appearing at these assemblies, was so amazed that he forgot to muddle himself with drink, in gazing at his daughter and following her in all her movements.
“Look at her!” he said to his old boon companions and hers, who were as much awed as he. “Lord! who would think she was the strapping, handsome shrew that swore, and sang men’s songs to us, and rode to the hunt in breeches.”
He was awed at the thought of paying fatherly visits to her house, and would have kept away, but that she was kind to him in the way he was best able to understand.
“I am country-bred, and have not the manners of your town men, my lady,” he said to her, as he sat with her alone on one of the first mornings he spent with her in her private apartment. “I am used to rap out an oath or an ill-mannered word when it comes to me. Dunstanwolde has weaned you of hearing such things—and I am too old a dog to change.”
“Wouldst have thought I was too old to change,” answered she, “but I was not. Did I not tell thee I would be a great lady? There is naught a man or woman cannot learn who hath the wit.”
“Thou hadst it, Clo,” said Sir Jeoffry, gazing at her with a sort of slow wonder. “Thou hadst it. If thou hadst not—!” He paused, and shook his head, and there was a rough emotion in his coarse face. “I was not the man to have made aught but a baggage of thee, Clo. I taught thee naught decent, and thou never heard or saw aught to teach thee. Damn me!” almost with moisture in his eyes, “if I know what kept thee from going to ruin before thou wert fifteen.”
She sat and watched him steadily.
“Nor I,” quoth she, in answer. “Nor I—but here thou seest me, Dad—an earl’s lady, sitting before thee.”
“’Twas thy wit,” said he, still moved, and fairly maudlin. “’Twas thy wit and thy devil’s will!”
“Ay,” she answered, “’twas they—my wit and my devil’s will!”
She rode to the hunt with him as she had been wont to do, but she wore the latest fashion in hunting habit and coat; and though ’twould not have been possible for her to sit her horse better than of old, or to take hedges and ditches with greater daring and spirit, yet in some way every man who rode with her felt that ’twas a great lady who led the field. The horse she rode was a fierce, beauteous devil of a beast which Sir Jeoffry himself would scarce have mounted even in his younger days; but she carried her loaded whip, and she sat upon the brute as if she scarcely felt its temper, and held it with a wrist of steel.
My Lord Dunstanwolde did not hunt this season. He had never been greatly fond of the sport, and at this time was a little ailing, but he would not let his lady give up her pleasure because he could not join it.
“Nay,” he said, “’tis not for the queen of the hunting-field to stay at home to nurse an old man’s aches. My pride would not let it be so. Your father will attend you. Go—and lead them all, my dear.”
In the field appeared Sir John Oxon, who for a brief visit was at Eldershawe. He rode close to my lady, though she had naught to say to him after her first greetings of civility. He looked not as fresh and glowing with youth as had been his wont only a year ago. His reckless wildness of life and his town debaucheries had at last touched his bloom, perhaps. He had a haggard look at moments when his countenance was not lighted by excitement. ’Twas whispered that he was deep enough in debt to be greatly straitened, and that his marriage having come to naught his creditors were besetting him without mercy. This and more than this, no one knew so well as my Lady Dunstanwolde; but of a certainty she had little pity for his evil case, if one might judge by her face, when in the course of the running he took a hedge behind her, and pressing his horse, came up by her side and spoke.
“Clorinda,” he began breathlessly, through set teeth.
She could have left him and not answered, but she chose to restrain the pace of her wild beast for a moment and look at him.
“‘Your ladyship!’” she corrected his audacity. “Or—‘my Lady Dunstanwolde.’”
“There was a time”—he said.
“This morning,” she said, “I found a letter in a casket in my closet. I do not know the mad villain who wrote it. I never knew him.”
“You did not,” he cried, with an oath, and then laughed scornfully.
“The letter lies in ashes on the hearth,” she said. “’Twas burned unopened. Do not ride so close, Sir John, and do not play the madman and the beast with the wife of my Lord Dunstanwolde.”
“‘The wife!’” he answered. “‘My lord!’ ’Tis a new game this, and well played, by God!”
She did not so much as waver in her look, and her wide eyes smiled.
“Quite new,” she answered him—“quite new. And could I not have played it well and fairly, I would not have touched the cards. Keep your horse off, Sir John. Mine is restive, and likes not another beast near him;” and she touched the creature with her whip, and he was gone like a thunderbolt.
The next day, being in her room, Anne saw her come from her dressing-table with a sealed letter in her hand. She went to the bell and rang it.
“Anne,” she said, “I am going to rate my woman and turn her from my service. I shall not beat or swear at her as I was wont to do with my women in time past. You will be afraid, perhaps; but you must stay with me.”
She was standing by the fire with the letter held almost at arm’s length in her finger-tips, when the woman entered, who, seeing her face, turned pale, and casting her eyes upon the letter, paler still, and began to shake.
“You have attended mistresses of other ways than mine,” her lady said in her slow, clear voice, which seemed to cut as knives do. “Some fool and madman has bribed you to serve him. You cannot serve me also. Come hither and put this in the fire. If ’twere to be done I would make you hold it in the live coals with your hand.”
The woman came shuddering, looking as if she thought she might be struck dead. She took the letter and kneeled, ashen pale, to burn it. When ’twas done, her mistress pointed to the door.
“Go and gather your goods and chattels together, and leave within this hour,” she said. “I will be my own tirewoman till I can find one who comes to me honest.”
When she was gone, Anne sat gazing at the ashes on the hearth. She was pale also.
“Sister,” she said, “do you—”
“Yes,” answered my lady. “’Tis a man who loved me, a cur and a knave. He thought for an hour he was cured of his passion. I could have told him ’twould spring up and burn more fierce than ever when he saw another man possess me. ’Tis so with knaves and curs; and ’tis so with him. He hath gone mad again.”
“Ay, mad!” cried Anne—“mad, and base, and wicked!”
Clorinda gazed at the ashes, her lips curling.
“He was ever base,” she said—“as he was at first, so he is now. ’Tis thy favourite, Anne,” lightly, and she delicately spurned the blackened tinder with her foot—“thy favourite, John Oxon.”
Mistress Anne crouched in her seat and hid her face in her thin hands.
“Oh, my lady!” she cried, not feeling that she could say “sister,” “if he be base, and ever was so, pity him, pity him! The base need pity more than all.”
For she had loved him madly, all unknowing her own passion, not presuming even to look up in his beautiful face, thinking of him only as the slave of her sister, and in dead secrecy knowing strange things—strange things! And when she had seen the letter she had known the handwriting, and the beating of her simple heart had well-nigh strangled her—for she had seen words writ by him before.
* * * * *
When Dunstanwolde and his lady went back to their house in town, Mistress Anne went with them. Clorinda willed that it should be so. She made her there as peaceful and retired a nest of her own as she had given to her at Dunstanwolde. By strange good fortune Barbara had been wedded to a plain gentleman, who, being a widower with children, needed a help-meet in his modest household, and through a distant relationship to Mistress Wimpole, encountered her charge, and saw in her meekness of spirit the thing which might fall into the supplying of his needs. A beauty or a fine lady would not have suited him; he wanted but a housewife and a mother for his orphaned children, and this, a young woman who had lived straitly, and been forced to many contrivances for mere decency of apparel and ordinary comfort, might be trained to become.
So it fell that Mistress Anne could go to London without pangs of conscience at leaving her sister in the country and alone. The stateliness of the town mansion, my Lady Dunstanwolde’s retinue of lacqueys and serving-women, her little black page, who waited on her and took her pug dogs to walk, her wardrobe, and jewels, and equipages, were each and all marvels to her, but seemed to her mind so far befitting that she remembered, wondering, the days when she had darned the tattered tapestry in her chamber, and changed the ribbands and fashions of her gowns. Being now attired fittingly, though soberly as became her, she was not in these days—at least, as far as outward seeming went—an awkward blot upon the scene when she appeared among her sister’s company; but at heart she was as timid and shrinking as ever, and never mingled with the guests in the great rooms when she could avoid so doing. Once or twice she went forth with Clorinda in her coach and six, and saw the glittering world, while she drew back into her corner of the equipage and gazed with all a country-bred woman’s timorous admiration.
“’Twas grand and like a beautiful show!” she said, when she came home the first time. “But do not take me often, sister; I am too plain and shy, and feel that I am naught in it.”
But though she kept as much apart from the great World of Fashion as she could, she contrived to know of all her sister’s triumphs; to see her when she went forth in her bravery, though ’twere but to drive in the Mall; to be in her closet with her on great nights when her tirewomen were decking her in brocades and jewels, that she might show her highest beauty at some assembly or ball of State. And at all these times, as also at all others, she knew that she but shared her own love and dazzled admiration with my Lord Dunstanwolde, whose tenderness, being so fed by his lady’s unfailing graciousness of bearing and kindly looks and words, grew with every hour that passed.
They held one night a splendid assembly at which a member of the Royal House was present. That night Clorinda bade her sister appear.
“Sometimes—I do not command it always—but sometimes you must show yourself to our guests. My lord will not be pleased else. He says it is not fitting that his wife’s sister should remain unseen as if we hid her away through ungraciousness. Your woman will prepare for you all things needful. I myself will see that your dress becomes you. I have commanded it already, and given much thought to its shape and colour. I would have you very comely, Anne.” And she kissed her lightly on her cheek—almost as gently as she sometimes kissed her lord’s grey hair. In truth, though she was still a proud lady and stately in her ways, there had come upon her some strange subtle change Anne could not understand.
On the day on which the assembly was held, Mistress Anne’s woman brought to her a beautiful robe. ’Twas flowered satin of the sheen and softness of a dove’s breast, and the lace adorning it was like a spider’s web for gossamer fineness. The robe was sweetly fashioned, fitting her shape wondrously; and when she was attired in it at night a little colour came into her cheeks to see herself so far beyond all comeliness she had ever known before. When she found herself in the midst of the dazzling scene in the rooms of entertainment, she was glad when at last she could feel herself lost among the crowd of guests. Her only pleasure in such scenes was to withdraw to some hidden corner and look on as at a pageant or a play. To-night she placed herself in the shadow of a screen, from which retreat she could see Clorinda and Dunstanwolde as they received their guests. Thus she found enjoyment enough; for, in truth, her love and almost abject passion of adoration for her sister had grown as his lordship’s had, with every hour. For a season there had rested upon her a black shadow beneath which she wept and trembled, bewildered and lost; though even at its darkest the object of her humble love had been a star whose brightness was not dimmed, because it could not be so whatsoever passed before it. This cloud, however, being it seemed dispelled, the star had shone but more brilliant in its high place, and she the more passionately worshipped it. To sit apart and see her idol’s radiance, to mark her as she reigned and seemed the more royal when she bent the knee to royalty itself, to see the shimmer of her jewels crowning her midnight hair and crashing the warm whiteness of her noble neck, to observe the admiration in all eyes as they dwelt upon her—this was, indeed, enough of happiness.
“She is, as ever,” she murmured, “not so much a woman as a proud lovely goddess who has deigned to descend to earth. But my lord does not look like himself. He seems shrunk in the face and old, and his eyes have rings about them. I like not that. He is so kind a gentleman and so happy that his body should not fail him. I have marked that he has looked colourless for days, and Clorinda questioned him kindly on it, but he said he suffered naught.”
’Twas but a little later than she had thought this, that she remarked a gentleman step aside and stand quite near without observing her. Feeling that she had no testimony to her fancifulness, she found herself thinking in a vague fashion that he, too, had come there because he chose to be unobserved. ’Twould not have been so easy for him to retire as it had been for her smallness and insignificance to do so; and, indeed, she did not fancy that he meant to conceal himself, but merely to stand for a quiet moment a little apart from the crowd.
And as she looked up at him, wondering why this should be, she saw he was the noblest and most stately gentleman she had ever beheld.
She had never seen him before; he must either be a stranger or a rare visitor. As Clorinda was beyond a woman’s height, he was beyond a man’s.
He carried himself as kingly as she did nobly; he had a countenance of strong, manly beauty, and a deep tawny eye, thick-fringed and full of fire; orders glittered upon his breast, and he wore a fair periwig, which became him wondrously, and seemed to make his eye more deep and burning by its contrast.
Beside his strength and majesty of bearing the stripling beauty of John Oxon would have seemed slight and paltry, a thing for flippant women to trifle with.
Mistress Anne looked at him with an admiration somewhat like reverence, and as she did so a sudden thought rose to her mind, and even as it rose, she marked what his gaze rested on, and how it dwelt upon it, and knew that he had stepped apart to stand and gaze as she did—only with a man’s hid fervour—at her sister’s self.
’Twas as if suddenly a strange secret had been told her. She read it in his face, because he thought himself unobserved, and for a space had cast his mask aside. He stood and gazed as a man who, starving at soul, fed himself through his eyes, having no hope of other sustenance, or as a man weary with long carrying of a burden, for a space laid it down for rest and to gather power to go on. She heard him draw a deep sigh almost stifled in its birth, and there was that in his face which she felt it was unseemly that a stranger like herself should behold, himself unknowing of her near presence.
She gently rose from her corner, wondering if she could retire from her retreat without attracting his observation; but as she did so, chance caused him to withdraw himself a little farther within the shadow of the screen, and doing so, he beheld her.
Then his face changed; the mask of noble calmness, for a moment fallen, resumed itself, and he bowed before her with the reverence of a courtly gentleman, undisturbed by the unexpectedness of his recognition of her neighbourhood.
“Madam,” he said, “pardon my unconsciousness that you were near me. You would pass?” And he made way for her.
She curtseyed, asking his pardon with her dull, soft eyes.
“Sir,” she answered, “I but retired here for a moment’s rest from the throng and gaiety, to which I am unaccustomed. But chiefly I sat in retirement that I might watch—my sister.”
“Your sister, madam?” he said, as if the questioning echo were almost involuntary, and he bowed again in some apology.
“My Lady Dunstanwolde,” she replied. “I take such pleasure in her loveliness and in all that pertains to her, it is a happiness to me to but look on.”
Whatsoever the thing was in her loving mood which touched him and found echo in his own, he was so far moved that he answered to her with something less of ceremoniousness; remembering also, in truth, that she was a lady he had heard of, and recalling her relationship and name.
“It is then Mistress Anne Wildairs I am honoured by having speech with,” he said. “My Lady Dunstanwolde has spoken of you in my presence. I am my lord’s kinsman the Duke of Osmonde;” again bowing, and Anne curtseyed low once more.
Despite his greatness, she felt a kindness and grace in him which was not condescension, and which almost dispelled the timidity which, being part of her nature, so unduly beset her at all times when she addressed or was addressed by a stranger. John Oxon, bowing his bright curls, and seeming ever to mock with his smiles, had caused her to be overcome with shy awkwardness and blushes; but this man, who seemed as far above him in person and rank and mind as a god is above a graceful painted puppet, even appeared to give of his own noble strength to her poor weakness. He bore himself towards her with a courtly respect such as no human being had ever shown to her before. He besought her again to be seated in her nook, and stood before her conversing with such delicate sympathy with her mood as seemed to raise her to the pedestal on which stood less humble women. All those who passed before them he knew and could speak easily of. The high deeds of those who were statesmen, or men honoured at Court or in the field, he was familiar with; and of those who were beauties or notable gentlewomen he had always something courtly to say.
Her own worship of her sister she knew full well he understood, though he spoke of her but little.
“Well may you gaze at her,” he said. “So does all the world, and honours and adores.”
He proffered her at last his arm, and she, having strangely taken courage, let him lead her through the rooms and persuade her to some refreshment. Seeing her so wondrously emerge from her chrysalis, and under the protection of so distinguished a companion, all looked at her as she passed with curious amazement, and indeed Mistress Anne was all but overpowered by the reverence shown them as they made their way.
As they came again into the apartment wherein the host and hostess received their guests, Anne felt her escort pause, and looked up at him to see the meaning of his sudden hesitation. He was gazing intently, not at Clorinda, but at the Earl of Dunstanwolde.
“Madam,” he said, “pardon me that I seem to detain you, but—but I look at my kinsman. Madam,” with a sudden fear in his voice, “he is ailing—he sways as he stands. Let us go to him. Quickly! He falls!”
And, in sooth, at that very moment there arose a dismayed cry from the guests about them, and there was a surging movement; and as they pressed forward themselves through the throng, Anne saw Dunstanwolde no more above the people, for he had indeed fallen and lay outstretched and deathly on the floor.
’Twas but a few seconds before she and Osmonde were close enough to him to mark his fallen face and ghastly pallor, and a strange dew starting out upon his brow.
But ’twas his wife who knelt beside his prostrate body, waving all else aside with a great majestic gesture of her arm.
“Back! back!” she cried. “Air! air! and water! My lord! My dear lord!”
But he did not answer, or even stir, though she bent close to him and thrust her hand within his breast. And then the frightened guests beheld a strange but beautiful and loving thing, such as might have moved any heart to tenderness and wonder. This great beauty, this worshipped creature, put her arms beneath and about the helpless, awful body—for so its pallor and stillness indeed made it—and lifted it in their powerful whiteness as if it had been the body of a child, and so bore it to a couch near and laid it down, kneeling beside it.
Anne and Osmonde were beside her. Osmonde pale himself, but gently calm and strong. He had despatched for a physician the instant he saw the fall.
“My lady,” he said, bending over her, “permit me to approach. I have some knowledge of these seizures. Your pardon!”
He knelt also and took the moveless hand, feeling the pulse; he, too, thrust his hand within the breast and held it there, looking at the sunken face.
“My dear lord,” her ladyship was saying, as if to the prostrate man’s ear alone, knowing that her tender voice must reach him if aught would—as indeed was truth. “Edward! My dear—dear lord!”
Osmonde held his hand steadily over the heart. The guests shrunk back, stricken with terror.
There was that in this corner of the splendid room which turned faces pale.
Osmonde slowly withdrew his hand, and turning to the kneeling woman—with a pallor like that of marble, but with a noble tenderness and pity in his eyes—
“My lady,” he said, “you are a brave woman. Your great courage must sustain you. The heart beats no more. A noble life is finished.”
* * * * *
The guests heard, and drew still farther back, a woman or two faintly whimpering; a hurrying lacquey parted the crowd, and so, way being made for him, the physician came quickly forward.
Anne put her shaking hands up to cover her gaze. Osmonde stood still, looking down. My Lady Dunstanwolde knelt by the couch and hid her beautiful face upon the dead man’s breast.