not half the size of you--no higher than your pocket, if you come
to look. I can’t think at all what you’ve been doing with yourself
all that time.”
“Don’t think--ever,” he said. “I’ve done nothing worth a moment’s
thought but miss you.”
“Have you missed me then, truly?” she whispered. “Oh, it’s from
farther than Cork I’d come to hear you say that; I’d come from
Heaven itself, may the Saints there forgive me. Say it again,
quick!”
“I’ve missed you since the day I drew breath,” he told her, and his
voice shook. “Every day that I’ve lived has been black and bare
and cold without you--blackest because I never knew I’d find you.
Biddy, is it true? Things don’t happen like this, do they? No one
out of a dream ever had such hair--no one out of a fairy tale such
eyes! Biddy, would you laugh like that if it were a dream?”
“I would that,” she remarked with decision. “It’s a fine dream and
a grand fairy tale and the truest truth you ever heard in your
life. I knew ’twas you even when you were scowlin’, but those
lights were in my eyes, so I couldn’t be sure till you smiled.”
“Biddy, how did you know?”
She pushed the scarf back from those golden bubbles with a gay
gesture of impatience.
“Well, why wouldn’t I know? That’s a queer way to talk to a bright
girl! Didn’t my own Aunt Dasheen, she that was all the family
I had till I ran off and took London for one, tell me that I’d
be the grandest dancer that ever leapt, and marry the finest
gentleman that ever walked, as big as a giant and black as a devil
and handsome as a king? And she ought to know, surely, what with
reading in tea and clear water as quick as you and me in the Good
Book. It was the wicked, cunning old thing she was, God rest her
soul.”
“Is she dead?”
“She is that,” replied Aunt Dasheen’s niece cheerfully. “Or I’d
never be here to tell it. She kept tight hold of me as if I were
a bit of gold, for all that she sorrowed and sang how I was more
trouble to her than any monkey from Egypt. If Tim Murphy and his
brothers hadn’t been coming to show the Londoners how to juggle
glass balls and brought me along to hold the things, I’d be in
the wee room tending the fire and the kitten this minute, instead
of standing under a light in a silver dress with my heart in my
hands.”
“I wish I could thank her,” said the duke.
“It’s little enough you have to thank her for,” replied his Biddy
blithely. “She was crosser than most and cooler than any, God help
her. ’Twas that spotted kitten she loved; if she hadn’t seen the
bit about me in the tea, she’d have dropped me straight out of the
window. But there was my grand gentleman and the rest of it to give
her patience. ‘Wed at seventeen, dead at----’” She caught back the
words as deftly as Tim Murphy’s glass balls, with a triumphant
shake of her curls. “‘Death to your dancing,’ she’d keep saying.
You could thank her for that, maybe--or perhaps ’twas because I
danced you stopped scowling, and you’ll not want me to leave off?”
“Biddy, it’s true then--you’re only seventeen?” His voice was
touched with a strange pain and wonder.
“Hear him, now--only, indeed! I’m seventeen the day.”
“And I past forty-two!”
“Are you no more than that?” she asked softly. “However in all the
world could you get so great and grand and fine in that little
while?”
“Oh,” he cried. “Does laughter take the sting from all that’s ugly?
Laugh again then; there’s worse still. Lord help us, darling--I’m a
duke!”
“Is that all?” she inquired regretfully. “I’d have thought a king
at the least. Well, come, there’s no helping it--’tis not all of us
get our deserts in this wicked world.”
“Biddy,” he begged. “Laugh at this, too, will you? Try, try, dear,
before it hurts us. I have three sons, Biddy. I’ve been married
before.”
She put her other hand to her heart at that, but she kept her lips
curved.
“It’s small wonder,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you have been? I’m the
shameless one to say it, but if I’d been ten girls instead of one,
it’s ten times you’d have been married.”
He put his arms about her then, and something broke in his
heart--something cold and hard and bitter. He wanted to tell her
that, but he could find no words, because he was only a duke, and
not a very articulate one at that. But the small shining creature
in his arms had words enough for two.
“Were you thinking of wedding again, maybe?”
“Oh, Biddy,” he cried, “let’s hurry!”
“If you’re asking _me_,” she said, “I’d say we were hurrying fast
and free. I can hear the air whistlin’ in my ears, I can that. Was
she a fine lady, darling?”
“Who?” he asked--and remembered--and forgot her for all time. “Oh,
she was a very fine lady, and good, and gentle, too. She died long
ago.”
“Did she, poor thing?” whispered the future Duchess of Bolingham
softly, the cloud in the blue, blue eyes gone for ever. “And me no
good at all. I wonder at you! Are they little young things, your
sons?”
“The smallest’s big enough to put you in his pocket,” he said.
“Biddy, let’s hurry. I know an Archbishop that we could have fix
it to-night--I know two, if it comes to that. One of ’em was my
godfather.”
“Well, you could know six, and ’twould be all the good it would do
you,” commented his Biddy serenely. “I know one old priest, and
his name’s Father Leary, and ’twill be a bitter grief to him, but
he may do it, since he’s one of the Saints themselves and terrible
fond of a bad girl. Archbishop, indeed!”
“Let’s find him, then, and tell him. I’ll----”
“We’ll not, then. He’s a poor old man that needs his sleep, and
we’re two mad things that should know better. See the stars,
darlin’; they’re the cool little things. We must do nothing in
haste, except leave this door, maybe. The whole lot of them will be
out on us like a lot of ravening wolves any minute. Wherever can we
go?”
“We can go and get married,” said the Duke of Bolingham, who was a
simple and determined individual. “I’ll get----”
“You might get a hansom----” Biddy danced in rapture on the tips
of her toes. “You might get that one there, and we could ride a
hundred miles or so, and watch how cool the stars are. I never
was long enough in one in my life to get over feeling sad that
soon it would stop, an’ I’d have to be off and out. Would you get
one--would you?”
The duke raised his hand to the hansom, and it crawled toward
them dubiously. The small dancing creature on the pavement looked
frankly incredible, both to the horse and the driver, but the large
black one looked as though it knew its mind. The two of them got in
quickly, and the small one tilted back her shining head against the
great one’s shoulder, sighing rapturously, while the black cloak
fell open, and her skirts frothed about her in a manner scandalous
to behold.
“Where to?” inquired the cabby with severity.
“Oh, what matter at all where to?” cried the incredible small one.
“A hundred miles or so any way at all, just so we can see those
stars go out; they’re that cool and calm it’s an aggravation.”
“Drive straight ahead--a hundred miles,” said the great one in so
terrifying a tone that the cabby gave one sharp pant and started on
his pilgrimage. Roaring drunk or plain barmy, the large occupant of
the cab was all too plainly one to be humoured.
“Would a hundred miles bring us to dawn?” inquired the smaller
lunatic. “Oh, I’d rather a dawn than a parade any day there is,
though sleeping’s a grand thing, too.”
“_When will you marry me?_” demanded the duke.
“We must be that wise and cool we’ll put the stars to shame,” she
said dreamily. “How many days would there be in a year? I’ve no
head for figures at all.”
“A year?” protested the stricken duke fiercely. “Three hundred and
sixty-five days? You couldn’t--you couldn’t----”
Biddy raised her hand to the silver laces above her heart with the
strangest little look of wonder.
“Three hundred and sixty-five?” she whispered. “No more than that?
No more than that--for sure?”
“No more?” he cried. “Why, it’s a lifetime--it’s eternity----”
“Ah, and so it is,” said his Biddy. “Well, then, let’s be wise as
the stars--and wait till morning. Father Leary, he’s an old man,
and he wakes at dawn; ’tis himself that says so. He’ll marry us
then if I have to do penance for the rest of my days. Three hundred
and sixty-five, you say? You’re right--oh, you’re right. ’Tis a
lifetime!”
And so at dawn Biddy O’Rourke became the Duchess of Bolingham, and
the greatest scandal of the century broke over a waking city.
Things like that don’t happen, you say--no, things like that don’t
happen, except in real life or in fairy tales. But if you had asked
the duke or his duchess, they could have told you that this was
real life--and a fairy tale.
They drove down to Gray Courts behind a pair of bright bays
called Castor and Pollux that same day, in a high trap of black
and scarlet, with fawn-coloured cushions. The duke drove, and the
duchess sat perched beside him in a great red postillion’s coat
from Redfern with a ruby ring as big as the Pope’s on her finger
and a hat no larger than a poppy tilted over one eye. It had a
little red feather in it that wagged violently every time the bays
lifted a foot, and Her Grace’s tongue wagged more violently than
the feather.
“Is it a castle you live in, darlin’?”
“It’ll be a castle once you’re in it. Who ever heard of a Princess
that didn’t live in a castle?”
“Is it terrible big and black and grand, like you?”
“Terrible--you couldn’t tell us apart.”
“Do your great sons live there all by themselves?”
“Oh, rather not. They live there with two tutors and a trainer and
an old nurse and four aunts, besides all the hounds and horses
and grooms and jockeys and farriers that they can wedge into the
stables.”
“The Saints keep us!” invoked Biddy with heartfelt piety. “Was it
four aunts you said?”
“Oh, God forgive me, I clean forgot ’em!” The duke’s cry was quite
as heartfelt, but it lacked piety. “No, I swear that’s the truth.
I sent a messenger down this morning with a letter for Noll, but
not one of the lot of them entered my head--Biddy, Biddy, if I’d
remembered, I’d have taken you somewhere else.”
“Ah, well, it can’t be helped, darlin’. It’s glad news and golden
that I’ve driven the thought of four grand ladies clear out of your
head, and it’s small fault of yours that so much as a whisper of
the word aunt makes the soles of my feet grow cold and the hairs of
my head rise up on end. If you’d known my father’s sister Dasheen
you’d never wonder! Maybe the four of these are nice old bodies?”
“And maybe they’re not!” remarked the duke. “Gad, but I’d give a
thousand pound to have them hear you calling them nice old bodies.
Clarissa, now----”
He gave such a shout of laughter that the off bay swerved and Biddy
had to clutch at his sleeve to keep from falling.
“Are they just young aunts then?” she inquired hopefully.
The duke let the bays fend for themselves while he kissed the
ridiculous hand and the dancing feather and both of the small
corners of her smile.
“Beautiful, wait till you see them! They’re not aunts at all,
Heaven help us--they’re sisters! One of their noses would make four
of yours, and every last one of them is more like Queen Elizabeth
in her prime than any one going around England these days. They
have fine bones and high heads and eyes like ripe hearts of icicles
and tongues like serpents’ tails dipped in vinegar.”
“Have they now!” remarked Her Grace pensively. “Well, ’twill not be
dull at Gray Courts, I can tell that from here. Was Elizabeth the
cross heathen that snipped the head off the pretty light one home
from France?”
“I wish I’d had your history teacher,” said the duke with emphasis.
“I spent years on end learning less about the ladies that you’ve
put in a dozen words. I shouldn’t wonder if cross heathens
described the lot as well as anything else. I was a cross heathen
myself till half-past nine last night.”
“Never say it!” cried his Biddy. “You’ve a heart of gold and a
tongue of silver, and I’m the girl that knows. ’Tis likely they’ll
love me no better than the cross one loved the pretty one, then?”
“’Tis likely they’ll love you less,” prophesied the duke
accurately, “since they can’t snip off your head!”
Biddy’s laughter was a flight of silver birds.
“Then since it’s sorrow we’re goin’ to,” she begged, “let’s go
easy. Make the horses step soft and slow, darlin’; ’tis the
prettiest evening in all the world, and I’m that high up I can see
clear over the great green hedges into the wee green gardens. I
doubt if it’ll smell any better in Heaven!”
“I doubt if it’ll smell half as sweet,” he said. “If we go slow
we’ll miss our dinner.”
“Ah, let’s miss our dinner!” she begged. “Did we not eat all
those little fat quail and those great fat peaches for our lunch?
I’d rather sup on the lights that’ll be coming out behind the
window-panes while we pass, and the stars that’ll slip through the
sky while we’re not looking, and the smell of gilly-flowers and
lavender warm against the walls. Maybe if we go slow, we might have
a slip of new moon for dessert--maybe if we go slower than that,
the horses will know what it’s all about, and let you hold one of
my hands.”
And so the horses did, and so he did, and it was long past dinner
when the duke and his duchess drove through the gates of Gray
Courts, and swept proudly up the long alley with its great beech
trees to the door where grooms and butlers and housekeepers and
maids and men enough to start a republic came running sedately to
greet them. The duke stood them off with a gesture and held out
both his hands to help his duchess down from her throne, and she
laid her finger-tips in his and reached the threshold high on her
toes.
“This,” said the duke with a pride that made his former arrogance
seem humility, “is Her Grace.”
He swung her through the carved doors before the most skillful of
them could do more than gape or sketch a curtsey--in the great
stone hall with the flagged floor and the two fireplaces built
by giants to burn oak trees she looked smaller than a child and
brighter than a candle. She stood smiling as warmly at the cold
and hollow suits of armour, with their chilled gleam of steel and
gold and silver and the jaded plumes drooping in their helmets, as
though they were her brothers, and the dun-coloured hound lying
with his nose on his paws blinked twice, and rose slowly, in his
huge grace, and strolled to where she stood gleaming, thrusting his
great head beneath her hand.
“Oh, the wonder he is!” she cried. “What will I call him?”
“His name’s Merlin,” the duke told her, and he put his arm about
her in full sight of the stunned household. “He knows a witch as
well as the one he was named for. Layton, where are my sisters?”
“Their Ladyships have retired to their rooms, Your Grace.”
“Good!” replied His Grace distinctly. “Where are my sons?”
“Their Lordships drove over late this afternoon for a dinner and
theatricals at the Marquis of Dene’s, Your Grace.”
“Better!” said His Grace. “Then shall we go to our room, Biddy?
We’ve not eaten; send some claret and fruit and cold fowl--what
else, Biddy?”
“Some little cakes stuffed full with raisins, if there’re any
about,” suggested Her Grace hopefully.
“Cakes,” commanded the Duke of Bolingham in a voice that would have
raised cakes from the stone flags. “Will you have a maid, Biddy?”
“Whatever for?” inquired Biddy with candid interest. “I’ve still
the use of all ten of my fingers, and you’d be there to help if I
broke one, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” said the duke, his arm closing faster about her, his voice
shaken. “No maid. Is the room ready, Layton?”
“Quite ready, Your Grace.” Layton seized the great black
dressing-case with the gold locks and the little snakeskin jewel
case that Biddy had pounced on in Bond Street that morning, and
James swung up the huge pigskin bags of His Grace, and Potter
appeared from somewhere with fruit and wine, and Durkin from
nowhere with a silver basket of small cakes, and a very young
gentleman called Tunbridge appeared with candles that were larger
than he. The duke and the duchess followed this procession up the
dark splendour of the stairs, with Merlin padding superbly behind
his witch. When they reached the landing the procession swung to
the right.
“Here!” called Bolingham. “Which room?”
“The Damask Room, Your Grace.”
“No,” said His Grace. “No.” He did not raise his voice, but his
fingers crushed down desperately on the light ones lying in his.
“We’ll use the Blue Room.”
The agitated voice of the housekeeper cried, “Oh, Your Grace, it’s
not ready!”
“Make it ready--flowers, candles, linen. Be quick.”
They were quick. Feet ran, hands flew, while the duke and his
duchess stood waiting in the room in which a king had slept and a
prince had died, and which for a hundred years had stood empty of
life, save when some awed visitor tiptoed across the threshold,
marvelling at its more than royal beauty--its walls stretched
with velvet blue and deep as night, its painted beams, its hooded
fireplace, its great bed around which the velvet curtains swept,
brave with their golden Tudor roses; quick hands now brought other
roses, wine-red in silver bowls, to sweeten the air, and sticks
of wood to light a fire to warm it, for even August turned chilly
in that magnificence; they spread a gay feast before the flames
and fine linen on the bed; they brought high candelabra wrought of
silver, more of them and more of them, until the shadows wavered
and danced, and the new duchess clapped her hands and danced, too.
“That enough?” the duke asked her.
“Oh, ’tis enough to light the way from here to the pole! I’d not
have said there were so many candles in all the world.”
“Right,” said the duke to his servitors briefly. “That’s all, then.
Good-night.”
And the quick hands and the quick feet were gone, and the duke was
left alone with his duchess.
“It’s not too cold?” he asked.
“No, no!” she said. “It’s fine and warm.”
“It’s not too dark?”
“No, no--it’s fine and bright!”
“My little heart, you don’t hate it? You’re not afraid?”
“Afraid?” cried his heart, alight with laughter. “Afraid with you
by me? Am I mad?”
He knelt at that and put his arms about her. Even kneeling his
black head was higher than her bright one.
“It’s I who am afraid. Biddy, what if I made you stop smiling?
Biddy, Biddy, don’t ever stop smiling!”
“Never fear!” she cried. “Never fear, my dear love. I’ll never in
this world stop smiling----” She caught her breath, and shook her
curls, and laid her laughing lips gayly and bravely against his.
“Nor in the next one, either!” said Her Grace.
She kept her word. That shining mischief of hers never
wavered--nothing touched it, not the frozen hatred of the four
outraged ladies or the surly insolence of the three dark boys, or
the indifferent disdain of the county neighbours, or the blank
indignation of the court. He watched over her with terror and rage
in his heart; they, they to scorn his miracle!
That first dinner, with the ladies Pamela, Clarissa, Maude, and
Charlotte, looking down their high noses at the radiant intruder,
pouring out venom, poison, and vinegar as freely as wine----
“Say the word,” he told her through his teeth, safe in the
sanctuary of their dark and beautiful room, “and the four of them
shall walk to London!”
“Well, if they crawled there, ’twould be no more than they
deserve!” said Her Grace with decision. “The cross faces they
have, and the mean tongues! They’d wear the patience out of a
Saint.”
“They can start packing now!” he cried, and made for the door.
“No, no!” Her laughter checked him like a hand. “What does it
matter at all, since I’m no Saint? I’ll not need patience; all I’ll
need is grace to keep a straight face and a civil tongue. Let them
be, darlin’; ’tis a thousand pities my Aunt Dasheen died without
laying eyes on them. They’re like her own sisters. Did no one ever
give that fine Roddy of yours a good cuff?”
“I’ll give him two and a strapping,” said the duke. “The glowering
young cub!”
“You’d never steal such pleasure for yourself,” she implored. “In
no time at all they’ll be gone to their schools and colleges, and
I’ll set what mind I have to growing tall enough to reach their
ears if I stand on my toes. Would you like me better if I reached
up higher?”
Their world was in that room--its four blue walls held all their
heaven and earth. From its windows they saw dawns break and nights
fall; when they crossed its threshold they stepped under a spell
that held them safe from all disaster. No one had ever loved any
one as he loved his little golden duchess; sometimes he smiled
gravely and indulgently when he thought of the poor travesties
that passed in the world for adoration. Dante and the girl that
crossed the bridge in her wine-coloured gown--tragic and absurd
to call that love, which was not strong enough to win a kiss!
Paolo and Francesca stealing hot glances over a closed book in
a garden--blasphemous to think that love could come clothed in
secrecy and guilt. And those frantic, desperate children of the
Capulets and Montagues--was love, then, something shot with blood
and tears? No, no, love was shot with beauty and with mirth--love
was his Biddy, dancing through darkness to his arms.
When some unshirkable duty called him from her to the London that
they had forgotten he would possess his soul with what patience he
might until the doors of Gray Courts opened once more, and before
the doors had swung to behind his voice would ring out--
“Where is Her Grace?”
They never had need to tell him; before the words were off his lips
he would hear her light feet, running to reach him across the long
halls, the dark stairs.
When winter hung the world in silver frost they piled the fire
higher and drew the curtains closer and sat wrapped warm in
dreaming happiness while the winds roared and lashed over the
world.
“Shall I take you to London?” he asked her.
“London?” she cried in wonder. “Oh, whatever for?”
“You’re not dull here? You’re not lonely?”
“Dull? With you? Lonely--lonely with you?”
After awhile she lifted her head and locked her fingers fast in
his, and asked,
“When is your birthday?”
“In July--the twenty-fifth. Why?”
“I’ll have a grand present for you,” said Her Grace. “A baby. A
baby that’ll have a yellow head and a twinkle in both his eyes. A
baby that’ll grow tall enough to thrash the wickedness out of his
black brothers and have sense enough to laugh instead of doing it.”
He bowed his head over the linked fingers.
“Biddy, what more will you give me, you who have given me all the
world?”
“’Tis a small thing,” she whispered. “July. That will be a year
since you came to see me dance?”
“A year, my heart.”
“How many days are there in a year, did you say?”
“Three hundred and sixty-five.”
“A day--a day is a poor short thing,” said Her Grace. “If I had
a wish, I’d wish them longer. ’Tis cold in here, with the wind
roaring down the chimney. Hold me closer--hold me fast.”
And with spring her wish was granted, and the days were longer; not
long enough to hold the joy they poured into them--but filled to
the brim with pale sunlight and primroses and hawthorn hedges. And
it was June, and they were longer still, flooded with golden warmth
and the smell of yellow roses and life and magic, and the taste
of honey. And it was July, and it was his birthday--and the world
stood still.
Her Grace gave him the yellow-headed baby for a birthday present.
When they brought him his son he looked at him with strange eyes
and turned his face away and asked them in a voice that none would
have known,
“How is she now?”
The great doctors who had come hurrying from London shook their
heads, and were grave and pompous and learned.
“Bad. Her heart was in a shocking condition--she had not told you?”
No--no, she had not told him.
“Well, we must hope; we must hope.”
But soon they could no longer hope; soon hope was gone. For all
their dignity, for all their learning, they could only give her
drugs to make it easier to die; they could only prop her up
against the pillows in the great Tudor bed, and smooth the dark
coverlet, and tiptoe from the room, leaving her to her duke. She
sat there still and small, her hands on his black head where
he knelt beside her, with so little breath left to tell him of
her love that she sought the shortest words, she who had been a
spendthrift of them.
“Darlin’.” He did not stir, even at that. “Never grieve. I’ve known
it a great while; they told me in London before you came that
’twould be no more than a year. And my Aunt Dasheen, she was wise
before they. ‘Wed at seventeen, dead at eighteen’----”
“Biddy,” he whispered, “I’ve killed you--I’ve killed you.”