Mistress Clorinda shines on her birthday night
Uncivilised and almost savage as her girlish life was, and unregulated by
any outward training as was her mind, there were none who came in contact
with her who could be blind to a certain strong, clear wit, and
unconquerableness of purpose, for which she was remarkable. She ever
knew full well what she desired to gain or to avoid, and once having
fixed her mind upon any object, she showed an adroitness and brilliancy
of resource, a control of herself and others, the which there was no
circumventing. She never made a blunder because she could not control
the expression of her emotions; and when she gave way to a passion, 'twas
because she chose to do so, having naught to lose, and in the midst of
all their riotous jesting with her the boon companions of Sir Jeoffry
knew this.
"Had she a secret to keep, child though she is," said Eldershawe, "there
is none--man or woman--who could scare or surprise it from her; and 'tis
a strange quality to note so early in a female creature."
She spent her days with her father and his dissolute friends, treated
half like a boy, half a fantastical queen, until she was fourteen. She
hunted and coursed, shot birds, leaped hedges and ditches, reigned at the
riotous feastings, and coquetted with these mature, and in some cases
elderly, men, as if she looked forward to doing naught else all her life.
But one day, after she had gone out hunting with her father, riding Rake,
who had been given to her, and wearing her scarlet coat, breeches, and
top-boots, one of the few remaining members of her mother's family sent
his chaplain to remonstrate and advise her father to command her to
forbear from appearing in such impudent attire.
There was, indeed, a stirring scene when this message was delivered by
its bearer. The chaplain was an awkward, timid creature, who had heard
stories enough of Wildairs Hall and its master to undertake his mission
with a quaking soul. To have refused to obey any behest of his patron
would have cost him his living, and knowing this beyond a doubt, he was
forced to gird up his loins and gather together all the little courage he
could muster to beard the lion in his den.
The first thing he beheld on entering the big hall was a beautiful tall
youth wearing his own rich black hair, and dressed in scarlet coat for
hunting. He was playing with a dog, making it leap over his crop, and
both laughing and swearing at its clumsiness. He glanced at the chaplain
with a laughing, brilliant eye, returning the poor man's humble bow with
a slight nod as he plainly hearkened to what he said as he explained his
errand.
"I come from my Lord Twemlow, who is your master's kinsman," the chaplain
faltered; "I am bidden to see and speak to him if it be possible, and his
lordship much desires that Sir Jeoffry will allow it to be so. My Lord
Twemlow--"
The beautiful youth left his playing with the dog and came forward with
all the air of the young master of the house.
"My Lord Twemlow sends you?" he said. "'Tis long since his lordship
favoured us with messages. Where is Sir Jeoffry, Lovatt?"
"In the dining-hall," answered the servant. "He went there but a moment
past, Mistress."
The chaplain gave such a start as made him drop his shovel hat.
"Mistress!" And this was she--this fine young creature who was tall and
grandly enough built and knit to seem a radiant being even when clad in
masculine attire. He picked up his hat and bowed so low that it almost
swept the floor in his obeisance. He was not used to female beauty which
deigned to cast great smiling eyes upon him, for at my Lord Twemlow's
table he sat so far below the salt that women looked not his way.
This beauty looked at him as if she was amused at the thought of
something in her own mind. He wondered tremblingly if she guessed what
he came for and knew how her father would receive it.
"Come with me," she said; "I will take you to him. He would not see you
if I did not. He does not love his lordship tenderly enough."
She led the way, holding her head jauntily and high, while he cast down
his eyes lest his gaze should be led to wander in a way unseemly in one
of his cloth. Such a foot and such--! He felt it more becoming and
safer to lift his eyes to the ceiling and keep them there, which gave him
somewhat the aspect of one praying.
Sir Jeoffry stood at the buffet with a flagon of ale in his hand, taking
his stirrup cup. At the sight of a stranger and one attired in the garb
of a chaplain, he scowled surprisedly.
"What's this?" quoth he. "What dost want, Clo? I have no leisure for a
sermon."
Mistress Clorinda went to the buffet and filled a tankard for herself and
carried it back to the table, on the edge of which she half sat, with one
leg bent, one foot resting on the floor.
"Time thou wilt have to take, Dad," she said, with an arch grin, showing
two rows of gleaming pearls. "This gentleman is my Lord Twemlow's
chaplain, whom he sends to exhort you, requesting you to have the
civility to hear him."
"Exhort be damned, and Twemlow be damned too!" cried Sir Jeoffry, who had
a great quarrel with his lordship and hated him bitterly. "What does the
canting fool mean?"
"Sir," faltered the poor message-bearer, "his lordship hath--hath been
concerned--having heard--"
The handsome creature balanced against the table took the tankard from
her lips and laughed.
"Having heard thy daughter rides to field in breeches, and is an unseemly-
behaving wench," she cried, "his lordship sends his chaplain to deliver a
discourse thereon--not choosing to come himself. Is not that thy errand,
reverend sir?"
The chaplain, poor man, turned pale, having caught, as she spoke, a
glimpse of Sir Jeoffry's reddening visage.
"Madam," he faltered, bowing--"Madam, I ask pardon of you most humbly! If
it were your pleasure to deign to--to--allow me--"
She set the tankard on the table with a rollicking smack, and thrust her
hands in her breeches-pockets, swaying with laughter; and, indeed, 'twas
ringing music, her rich great laugh, which, when she grew of riper years,
was much lauded and written verses on by her numerous swains.
"If 'twere my pleasure to go away and allow you to speak, free from the
awkwardness of a young lady's presence," she said. "But 'tis not, as it
happens, and if I stay here, I shall be a protection."
In truth, he required one. Sir Jeoffry broke into a torrent of
blasphemy. He damned both kinsman and chaplain, and raged at the
impudence of both in daring to approach him, swearing to horsewhip my
lord if they ever met, and to have the chaplain kicked out of the house,
and beyond the park gates themselves. But Mistress Clorinda chose to
make it her whim to take it in better humour, and as a joke with a fine
point to it. She laughed at her father's storming, and while the
chaplain quailed before it with pallid countenance and fairly hang-dog
look, she seemed to find it but a cause for outbursts of merriment.
"Hold thy tongue a bit, Dad," she cried, when he had reached his loudest,
"and let his reverence tell us what his message is. We have not even
heard it."
"Want not to hear it!" shouted Sir Jeoffry. "Dost think I'll stand his
impudence? Not I!"
"What was your message?" demanded the young lady of the chaplain. "You
cannot return without delivering it. Tell it to me. _I_ choose it shall
be told."
The chaplain clutched and fumbled with his hat, pale, and dropping his
eyes upon the floor, for very fear.
"Pluck up thy courage, man," said Clorinda. "I will uphold thee. The
message?"
"Your pardon, Madam--'twas this," the chaplain faltered. "My lord
commanded me to warn your honoured father--that if he did not beg you to
leave off wearing--wearing--"
"Breeches," said Mistress Clorinda, slapping her knee.
The chaplain blushed with modesty, though he was a man of sallow
countenance.
"No gentleman," he went on, going more lamely at each
word--"notwithstanding your great beauty--no gentleman--"
"Would marry me?" the young lady ended for him, with merciful
good-humour.
"For if you--if a young lady be permitted to bear herself in such a
manner as will cause her to be held lightly, she can make no match that
will not be a dishonour to her family--and--and--"
"And may do worse!" quoth Mistress Clo, and laughed until the room rang.
Sir Jeoffry's rage was such as made him like to burst; but she restrained
him when he would have flung his tankard at the chaplain's head, and amid
his storm of curses bundled the poor man out of the room, picking up his
hat which in his hurry and fright he let fall, and thrusting it into his
hand.
"Tell his lordship," she said, laughing still as she spoke the final
words, "that I say he is right--and I will see to it that no disgrace
befalls him."
"Forsooth, Dad," she said, returning, "perhaps the old son of
a--"--something unmannerly--"is not so great a fool. As for me, I mean
to make a fine marriage and be a great lady, and I know of none
hereabouts to suit me but the old Earl of Dunstanwolde, and 'tis said he
rates at all but modest women, and, in faith, he might not find breeches
mannerly. I will not hunt in them again."
She did not, though once or twice when she was in a wild mood, and her
father entertained at dinner those of his companions whom she was the
most inclined to, she swaggered in among them in her daintiest suits of
male attire, and caused their wine-shot eyes to gloat over her boyish-
maiden charms and jaunty airs and graces.
On the night of her fifteenth birthday Sir Jeoffry gave a great dinner to
his boon companions and hers. She had herself commanded that there
should be no ladies at the feast; for she chose to announce that she
should appear at no more such, having the wit to see that she was too
tall a young lady for childish follies, and that she had now arrived at
an age when her market must be made.
"I shall have women enough henceforth to be dull with," she said. "Thou
art but a poor match-maker, Dad, or wouldst have thought of it for me.
But not once has it come into thy pate that I have no mother to angle in
my cause and teach me how to cast sheep's eyes at bachelors. Long-tailed
petticoats from this time for me, and hoops and patches, and ogling over
fans--until at last, if I play my cards well, some great lord will look
my way and be taken by my shape and my manners."
"With thy shape, Clo, God knows every man will," laughed Sir Jeoffry,
"but I fear me not with thy manners. Thou hast the manners of a baggage,
and they are second nature to thee."
"They are what I was born with," answered Mistress Clorinda. "They came
from him that begot me, and he has not since improved them. But
now"--making a great sweeping curtsey, her impudent bright beauty almost
dazzling his eyes--"now, after my birth-night, they will be bettered; but
this one night I will have my last fling."
When the men trooped into the black oak wainscotted dining-hall on the
eventful night, they found their audacious young hostess awaiting them in
greater and more daring beauty than they had ever before beheld. She
wore knee-breeches of white satin, a pink satin coat embroidered with
silver roses, white silk stockings, and shoes with great buckles of
brilliants, revealing a leg so round and strong and delicately moulded,
and a foot so arched and slender, as surely never before, they swore one
and all, woman had had to display. She met them standing jauntily
astride upon the hearth, her back to the fire, and she greeted each one
as he came with some pretty impudence. Her hair was tied back and
powdered, her black eyes were like lodestars, drawing all men, and her
colour was that of a ripe pomegranate. She had a fine, haughty little
Roman nose, a mouth like a scarlet bow, a wonderful long throat, and
round cleft chin. A dazzling mien indeed she possessed, and ready enough
she was to shine before them. Sir Jeoffry was now elderly, having been a
man of forty when united to his conjugal companion. Most of his friends
were of his own age, so that it had not been with unripe youth Mistress
Clorinda had been in the habit of consorting. But upon this night a
newcomer was among the guests. He was a young relation of one of the
older men, and having come to his kinsman's house upon a visit, and
having proved himself, in spite of his youth, to be a young fellow of
humour, high courage in the hunting-field, and by no means averse either
to entering upon or discussing intrigue and gallant adventure, had made
himself something of a favourite. His youthful beauty for a man almost
equalled that of Mistress Clorinda herself. He had an elegant, fine
shape, of great strength and vigour, his countenance was delicately ruddy
and handsomely featured, his curling fair hair flowed loose upon his
shoulders, and, though masculine in mould, his ankle was as slender and
his buckled shoe as arched as her own.
He was, it is true, twenty-four years of age and a man, while she was but
fifteen and a woman, but being so tall and built with such unusual vigour
of symmetry, she was a beauteous match for him, and both being attired in
fashionable masculine habit, these two pretty young fellows standing
smiling saucily at each other were a charming, though singular,
spectacle.
This young man was already well known in the modish world of town for his
beauty and adventurous spirit. He was indeed already a beau and
conqueror of female hearts. It was suspected that he cherished a private
ambition to set the modes in beauties and embroidered waistcoats himself
in time, and be as renowned abroad and as much the town talk as certain
other celebrated beaux had been before him. The art of ogling tenderly
and of uttering soft nothings he had learned during his first season in
town, and as he had a great melting blue eye, the figure of an Adonis,
and a white and shapely hand for a ring, he was well equipped for
conquest. He had darted many an inflaming glance at Mistress Clorinda
before the first meats were removed. Even in London he had heard a vague
rumour of this handsome young woman, bred among her father's dogs,
horses, and boon companions, and ripening into a beauty likely to make
town faces pale. He had almost fallen into the spleen on hearing that
she had left her boy's clothes and vowed she would wear them no more, as
above all things he had desired to see how she carried them and what
charms they revealed. On hearing from his host and kinsman that she had
said that on her birth-night she would bid them farewell for ever by
donning them for the last time, he was consumed with eagerness to obtain
an invitation. This his kinsman besought for him, and, behold! the first
glance the beauty shot at him pierced his inflammable bosom like a dart.
Never before had it been his fortune to behold female charms so dazzling
and eyes of such lustre and young majesty. The lovely baggage had a
saucy way of standing with her white jewelled hands in her pockets like a
pretty fop, and throwing up her little head like a modish beauty who was
of royal blood; and these two tricks alone, he felt, might have set on
fire the heart of a man years older and colder than himself.
If she had been of the order of soft-natured charmers, they would have
fallen into each other's eyes before the wine was changed; but this
Mistress Clorinda was not. She did not fear to meet the full battery of
his enamoured glances, but she did not choose to return them. She played
her part of the pretty young fellow who was a high-spirited beauty, with
more of wit and fire than she had ever played it before. The rollicking
hunting-squires, who had been her play-fellows so long, devoured her with
their delighted glances and roared with laughter at her sallies. Their
jokes and flatteries were not of the most seemly, but she had not been
bred to seemliness and modesty, and was no more ignorant than if she had
been, in sooth, some gay young springald of a lad. To her it was part of
the entertainment that upon this last night they conducted themselves as
beseemed her boyish masquerading. Though country-bred, she had lived
among companions who were men of the world and lived without restraints,
and she had so far learned from them that at fifteen years old she was as
worldly and as familiar with the devices of intrigue as she would be at
forty. So far she had not been pushed to practising them, her singular
life having thrown her among few of her own age, and those had chanced to
be of a sort she disdainfully counted as country bumpkins.
But the young gallant introduced to-night into the world she lived in was
no bumpkin, and was a dandy of the town. His name was Sir John Oxon, and
he had just come into his title and a pretty property. His hands were as
white and bejewelled as her own, his habit was of the latest fashionable
cut, and his fair flowing locks scattered a delicate French perfume she
did not even know the name of.
But though she observed all these attractions and found them powerful,
young Sir John remarked, with a slight sinking qualm, that her great eye
did not fall before his amorous glances, but met them with high smiling
readiness, and her colour never blanched or heightened a whit for all
their masterly skilfulness. But he had sworn to himself that he would
approach close enough to her to fire off some fine speech before the
night was ended, and he endeavoured to bear himself with at least an
outward air of patience until he beheld his opportunity.
When the last dish was removed and bottles and bumpers stood upon the
board, she sprang up on her chair and stood before them all, smiling down
the long table with eyes like flashing jewels. Her hands were thrust in
her pockets--with her pretty young fop's air, and she drew herself to her
full comely height, her beauteous lithe limbs and slender feet set
smartly together. Twenty pairs of masculine eyes were turned upon her
beauty, but none so ardently as the young one's across the table.
"Look your last on my fine shape," she proclaimed in her high, rich
voice. "You will see but little of the lower part of it when it is hid
in farthingales and petticoats. Look your last before I go to don my
fine lady's furbelows."
And when they filled their glasses and lifted them and shouted admiring
jests to her, she broke into one of her stable-boy songs, and sang it in
the voice of a skylark.
No man among them was used to showing her the courtesies of polite
breeding. She had been too long a boy to them for that to have entered
any mind, and when she finished her song, sprang down, and made for the
door, Sir John beheld his long-looked-for chance, and was there before
her to open it with a great bow, made with his hand upon his heart and
his fair locks falling.
"You rob us of the rapture of beholding great beauties, Madam," he said
in a low, impassioned voice. "But there should be indeed but _one_ happy
man whose bliss it is to gaze upon such perfections."
"I am fifteen years old to-night," she answered; "and as yet I have not
set eyes upon him."
"How do you know that, madam?" he said, bowing lower still.
She laughed her great rich laugh.
"Forsooth, I do not know," she retorted. "He may be here this very night
among this company; and as it might be so, I go to don my modesty."
And she bestowed on him a parting shot in the shape of one of her
prettiest young fop waves of the hand, and was gone from him.
* * * * *
When the door closed behind her and Sir John Oxon returned to the table,
for a while a sort of dulness fell upon the party. Not being of quick
minds or sentiments, these country roisterers failed to understand the
heavy cloud of spleen and lack of spirit they experienced, and as they
filled their glasses and tossed off one bumper after another to cure it,
they soon began again to laugh and fell into boisterous joking.
They talked mostly, indeed, of their young playfellow, of whom they felt,
in some indistinct manner, they were to be bereft; they rallied Sir
Jeoffry, told stories of her childhood and made pictures of her budding
beauties, comparing them with those of young ladies who were celebrated
toasts.
"She will sail among them like a royal frigate," said one; "and they will
pale before her lustre as a tallow dip does before an illumination."
The clock struck twelve before she returned to them. Just as the last
stroke sounded the door was thrown open, and there she stood, a woman on
each side of her, holding a large silver candelabra bright with wax
tapers high above her, so that she was in a flood of light.
She was attired in rich brocade of crimson and silver, and wore a great
hooped petticoat, which showed off her grandeur, her waist of no more
bigness than a man's hands could clasp, set in its midst like the stem of
a flower; her black hair was rolled high and circled with jewels, her
fair long throat blazed with a collar of diamonds, and the majesty of her
eye and lip and brow made up a mien so dazzling that every man sprang to
his feet beholding her.
She made a sweeping obeisance and then stood up before them, her head
thrown back and her lips curving in the triumphant mocking smile of a
great beauty looking upon them all as vassals.
"Down upon your knees," she cried, "and drink to me kneeling. From this
night all men must bend so--all men on whom I deign to cast my eyes."