Transcribed from the 1896 Frederick Warne & Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
A LADY OF QUALITY
Being a most curious, hitherto unknown
history, as related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff
but not presented to the World of
Fashion through the pages of
The Tatler, and now for the
first time written down
by
Francis Hodgson Burnett
Were Nature just to Man from his first hour, he need not ask for
Mercy; then 'tis for us--the toys of Nature--to be both just and
merciful, for so only can the wrongs she does be undone.
CHAPTER I--The twenty-fourth day of November 1690
On a wintry morning at the close of 1690, the sun shining faint and red
through a light fog, there was a great noise of baying dogs, loud voices,
and trampling of horses in the courtyard at Wildairs Hall; Sir Jeoffry
being about to go forth a-hunting, and being a man with a choleric temper
and big, loud voice, and given to oaths and noise even when in
good-humour, his riding forth with his friends at any time was attended
with boisterous commotion. This morning it was more so than usual, for
he had guests with him who had come to his house the day before, and had
supped late and drunk deeply, whereby the day found them, some with
headaches, some with a nausea at their stomachs, and some only in an evil
humour which made them curse at their horses when they were restless, and
break into loud surly laughs when a coarse joke was made. There were
many such jokes, Sir Jeoffry and his boon companions being renowned
throughout the county for the freedom of their conversation as for the
scandal of their pastimes, and this day 'twas well indeed, as their loud-
voiced, oath-besprinkled jests rang out on the cold air, that there were
no ladies about to ride forth with them.
'Twas Sir Jeoffry who was louder than any other, he having drunk even
deeper than the rest, and though 'twas his boast that he could carry a
bottle more than any man, and see all his guests under the table, his
last night's bout had left him in ill-humour and boisterous. He strode
about, casting oaths at the dogs and rating the servants, and when he
mounted his big black horse 'twas amid such a clamour of voices and
baying hounds that the place was like Pandemonium.
He was a large man of florid good looks, black eyes, and full habit of
body, and had been much renowned in his youth for his great strength,
which was indeed almost that of a giant, and for his deeds of prowess in
the saddle and at the table when the bottle went round. There were many
evil stories of his roysterings, but it was not his way to think of them
as evil, but rather to his credit as a man of the world, for, when he
heard that they were gossiped about, he greeted the information with a
loud triumphant laugh. He had married, when she was fifteen, the
blooming toast of the county, for whom his passion had long died out,
having indeed departed with the honeymoon, which had been of the
briefest, and afterwards he having borne her a grudge for what he chose
to consider her undutiful conduct. This grudge was founded on the fact
that, though she had presented him each year since their marriage with a
child, after nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was
bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his
offspring an ill turn done him.
He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle
creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her
lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another
sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce
remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was
certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view,
and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was shortening a stirrup and
being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by accident cast his eye upward to
a chamber window peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he
saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look down upon him as if
searching for him with a purpose.
He uttered an exclamation of anger.
"Damnation! Mother Posset again," he said. "What does she there, old
frump?"
The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an
unheard-of thing happened--among the servants in the hall, the same old
woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she
descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on
his black horse.
"The Devil!" he exclaimed--"what are you here for? 'Tis not time for
another wench upstairs, surely?"
"'Tis not time," answered the old nurse acidly, taking her tone from his
own. "But there is one, but an hour old, and my lady--"
"Be damned to her!" quoth Sir Jeoffry savagely. "A ninth one--and 'tis
nine too many. 'Tis more than man can bear. She does it but to spite
me."
"'Tis ill treatment for a gentleman who wants an heir," the old woman
answered, as disrespectful of his spouse as he was, being a time-serving
crone, and knowing that it paid but poorly to coddle women who did not as
their husbands would have them in the way of offspring. "It should have
been a fine boy, but it is not, and my lady--"
"Damn her puling tricks!" said Sir Jeoffry again, pulling at his horse's
bit until the beast reared.
"She would not let me rest until I came to you," said the nurse
resentfully. "She would have you told that she felt strangely, and
before you went forth would have a word with you."
"I cannot come, and am not in the mood for it if I could," was his
answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time she
hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she--but nine is
more than I have patience for."
"She is light-headed, mayhap," said the nurse. "She lieth huddled in a
heap, staring and muttering, and she would leave me no peace till I
promised to say to you, 'For the sake of poor little Daphne, whom you
will sure remember.' She pinched my hand and said it again and again."
Sir Jeoffry dragged at his horse's mouth and swore again.
"She was fifteen then, and had not given me nine yellow-faced wenches,"
he said. "Tell her I had gone a-hunting and you were too late;" and he
struck his big black beast with the whip, and it bounded away with him,
hounds and huntsmen and fellow-roysterers galloping after, his guests,
who had caught at the reason of his wrath, grinning as they rode.
* * * * *
In a huge chamber hung with tattered tapestries and barely set forth with
cumbersome pieces of furnishing, my lady lay in a gloomy, canopied bed,
with her new-born child at her side, but not looking at or touching it,
seeming rather to have withdrawn herself from the pillow on which it lay
in its swaddling-clothes.
She was but a little lady, and now, as she lay in the large bed, her face
and form shrunken and drawn with suffering, she looked scarce bigger than
a child. In the brief days of her happiness those who toasted her had
called her Titania for her fairy slightness and delicate beauty, but then
her fair wavy locks had been of a length that touched the ground when her
woman unbound them, and she had had the colour of a wild rose and the
eyes of a tender little fawn. Sir Jeoffry for a month or so had paid
tempestuous court to her, and had so won her heart with his dashing way
of love-making and the daringness of his reputation, that she had thought
herself--being child enough to think so--the luckiest young lady in the
world that his black eye should have fallen upon her with favour. Each
year since, with the bearing of each child, she had lost some of her
beauty. With each one her lovely hair fell out still more, her wild-rose
colour faded, and her shape was spoiled. She grew thin and yellow, only
a scant covering of the fair hair was left her, and her eyes were big and
sunken. Her marriage having displeased her family, and Sir Jeoffry
having a distaste for the ceremonies of visiting and entertainment, save
where his own cronies were concerned, she had no friends, and grew
lonelier and lonelier as the sad years went by. She being so without
hope and her life so dreary, her children were neither strong nor
beautiful, and died quickly, each one bringing her only the anguish of
birth and death. This wintry morning her ninth lay slumbering by her
side; the noise of baying dogs and boisterous men had died away with the
last sound of the horses' hoofs; the little light which came into the
room through the ivied window was a faint yellowish red; she was cold,
because the fire in the chimney was but a scant, failing one; she was
alone--and she knew that the time had come for her death. This she knew
full well.
She was alone, because, being so disrespected and deserted by her lord,
and being of a timid and gentle nature, she could not command her
insufficient retinue of servants, and none served her as was their duty.
The old woman Sir Jeoffry had dubbed Mother Posset had been her sole
attendant at such times as these for the past five years, because she
would come to her for a less fee than a better woman, and Sir Jeoffry had
sworn he would not pay for wenches being brought into the world. She was
a slovenly, guzzling old crone, who drank caudle from morning till night,
and demanded good living as a support during the performance of her
trying duties; but these last she contrived to make wondrous light,
knowing that there was none to reprove her.
"A fine night I have had," she had grumbled when she brought back Sir
Jeoffry's answer to her lady's message. "My old bones are like to break,
and my back will not straighten itself. I will go to the kitchen to get
victuals and somewhat to warm me; your ladyship's own woman shall sit
with you."
Her ladyship's "own woman" was also the sole attendant of the two little
girls, Barbara and Anne, whose nursery was in another wing of the house,
and my lady knew full well she would not come if she were told, and that
there would be no message sent to her.
She knew, too, that the fire was going out, but, though she shivered
under the bed-clothes, she was too weak to call the woman back when she
saw her depart without putting fresh fuel upon it.
So she lay alone, poor lady, and there was no sound about her, and her
thin little mouth began to feebly quiver, and her great eyes, which
stared at the hangings, to fill with slow cold tears, for in sooth they
were not warm, but seemed to chill her poor cheeks as they rolled slowly
down them, leaving a wet streak behind them which she was too far gone in
weakness to attempt to lift her hand to wipe away.
"Nine times like this," she panted faintly, "and 'tis for naught but
oaths and hard words that blame me. I was but a child myself and he
loved me. When 'twas 'My Daphne,' and 'My beauteous little Daphne,' he
loved me in his own man's way. But now--" she faintly rolled her head
from side to side. "Women are poor things"--a chill salt tear sliding
past her lips so that she tasted its bitterness--"only to be kissed for
an hour, and then like this--only for this and nothing else. I would
that this one had been dead."
Her breath came slower and more pantingly, and her eyes stared more
widely.
"I was but a child," she whispered--"a child--as--as this will be--if she
lives fifteen years."
Despite her weakness, and it was great and woefully increasing with each
panting breath, she slowly laboured to turn herself towards the pillow on
which her offspring lay, and, this done, she lay staring at the child and
gasping, her thin chest rising and falling convulsively. Ah, how she
panted, and how she stared, the glaze of death stealing slowly over her
wide-opened eyes; and yet, dimming as they were, they saw in the sleeping
infant a strange and troublous thing--though it was but a few hours old
'twas not as red and crumple visaged as new-born infants usually are, its
little head was covered with thick black silk, and its small features
were of singular definiteness. She dragged herself nearer to gaze.
"She looks not like the others," she said. "They had no beauty--and are
safe. She--she will be like--Jeoffry--and like _me_."
The dying fire fell lower with a shuddering sound.
"If she is--beautiful, and has but her father, and no mother!" she
whispered, the words dragged forth slowly, "only evil can come to her.
From her first hour--she will know naught else, poor heart, poor heart!"
There was a rattling in her throat as she breathed, but in her glazing
eyes a gleam like passion leaped, and gasping, she dragged nearer.
"'Tis not fair," she cried. "If I--if I could lay my hand upon thy
mouth--and stop thy breathing--thou poor thing, 'twould be fairer--but--I
have no strength."
She gathered all her dying will and brought her hand up to the infant's
mouth. A wild look was on her poor, small face, she panted and fell
forward on its breast, the rattle in her throat growing louder. The
child awakened, opening great black eyes, and with her dying weakness its
new-born life struggled. Her cold hand lay upon its mouth, and her
head upon its body, for she was too far gone to move if she had willed to
do so. But the tiny creature's strength was marvellous. It gasped, it
fought, its little limbs struggled beneath her, it writhed until the cold
hand fell away, and then, its baby mouth set free, it fell a-shrieking.
Its cries were not like those of a new-born thing, but fierce and shrill,
and even held the sound of infant passion. 'Twas not a thing to let its
life go easily, 'twas of those born to do battle.
Its lusty screaming pierced her ear perhaps--she drew a long, slow
breath, and then another, and another still--the last one trembled and
stopped short, and the last cinder fell dead from the fire.
* * * * *
When the nurse came bustling and fretting back, the chamber was cold as
the grave's self--there were only dead embers on the hearth, the new-born
child's cries filled all the desolate air, and my lady was lying stone
dead, her poor head resting on her offspring's feet, the while her open
glazed eyes seemed to stare at it as if in asking Fate some awful
question.