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.