and relates the returning of his Grace of Osmonde from France
There were in this strange nature, depths so awful and profound that it
was not to be sounded or to be judged as others were. But one thing
could have melted or caused the unconquerable spirit to bend, and this
was the overwhelming passion of love--not a slight, tender feeling, but a
great and powerful one, such as could be awakened but by a being of as
strong and deep a nature as itself, one who was in all things its peer.
"I have been lonely--lonely all my life," my Lady Dunstanwolde had once
said to her sister, and she had indeed spoken a truth.
Even in her childhood she had felt in some strange way she stood apart
from the world about her. Before she had been old enough to reason she
had been conscious that she was stronger and had greater power and
endurance than any human being about her. Her strength she used in these
days in wilful tyranny, and indeed it was so used for many a day when she
was older. The time had never been when an eye lighted on her with
indifference, or when she could not rule and punish as she willed. As an
infant she had browbeaten the women-servants and the stable-boys and
grooms; but because of her quick wit and clever tongue, and also because
no humour ever made her aught but a creature well worth looking at, they
had taken her bullying in good-humour and loved her in their coarse way.
She had tyrannised over her father and his companions, and they had
adored and boasted of her; but there had not been one among them whom she
could have turned to if a softer moment had come upon her and she had
felt the need of a friend, nor indeed one whom she did not regard
privately with contempt.
A god or goddess forced upon earth and surrounded by mere human beings
would surely feel a desolateness beyond the power of common words to
express, and a human being endowed with powers and physical gifts so rare
as to be out of all keeping with those of its fellows of ordinary build
and mental stature must needs be lonely too.
She had had no companion, because she had found none like herself, and
none with whom she could have aught in common. Anne she had pitied,
being struck by some sense of the unfairness of her lot as compared with
her own. John Oxon had moved her, bringing to her her first knowledge of
buoyant, ardent youth, and blooming strength and beauty; for Dunstanwolde
she had felt gratitude and affection; but than these there had been no
others who even distantly had touched her heart.
The night she had given her promise to Dunstanwolde, and had made her
obeisance before his kinsman as she had met his deep and leonine eye, she
had known that 'twas the only man's eye before which her own would fall
and which held the power to rule her very soul.
She did not think this as a romantic girl would have thought it; it was
revealed to her by a sudden tempestuous leap of her heart, and by a shock
like terror. Here was the man who was of her own build, whose thews and
sinews of mind and body was as powerful as her own--here was he who, had
she met him one short year before, would have revolutionised her world.
In the days of her wifehood when she had read in his noble face something
of that which he endeavoured to command and which to no other was
apparent, the dignity of his self-restraint had but filled her with
tenderness more passionate and grateful.
"Had he been a villain and a coward," was her thought, "he would have
made my life a bitter battle; but 'tis me he loves, not himself only, and
as I honour him so does he honour me."
Now she beheld the same passion in his eyes, but no more held in leash:
his look met hers, hiding from her nothing of what his high soul burned
with; and she was free--free to answer when he spoke, and only feeling
one bitterness in her heart--if he had but come in time--God! why had he
not been sent in time?
But, late or early, he had come; and what they had to give each other
should not be mocked at and lost. The night she had ended by going to
Anne's chamber, she had paced her room saying this again and again, all
the strength of her being rising in revolt. She had been then a caged
tigress of a verity; she had wrung her hands; she had held her palm hard
against her leaping heart; she had walked madly to and fro, battling in
thought with what seemed awful fate; she had flung herself upon her knees
and wept bitter scalding tears.
"He is so noble," she had cried--"he is so noble--and I so worship his
nobleness--and I have been so base!"
And in her suffering her woman's nerves had for a moment betrayed her.
Heretofore she had known no weakness of her sex, but the woman soul in
her so being moved, she had been broken and conquered for a space, and
had gone to Anne's chamber, scarcely knowing what refuge she so sought.
It had been a feminine act, and she had realised all it signified when
Anne sank weeping by her. Women who wept and prated together at midnight
in their chambers ended by telling their secrets. So it was that it fell
out that Anne saw not again the changed face to the sight of which she
had that night awakened. It seemed as if my lady from that time made
plans which should never for a moment leave her alone. The next day she
was busied arranging a brilliant rout, the next a rich banquet, the next
a great assembly; she drove in the Mall in her stateliest equipages; she
walked upon its promenade, surrounded by her crowd of courtiers, smiling
upon them, and answering them with shafts of graceful wit--the charm of
her gaiety had never been so remarked upon, her air never so enchanting.
At every notable gathering in the World of Fashion she was to be seen.
Being bidden to the Court, which was at Hampton, her brilliant beauty and
spirit so enlivened the royal dulness that 'twas said the Queen herself
was scarce resigned to part with her, and that the ladies and gentlemen
in waiting all suffered from the spleen when she withdrew. She bought at
this time the fiercest but most beautiful beast of a horse she had ever
mounted. The creature was superbly handsome, but apparently so
unconquerable and so savage that her grooms were afraid to approach it,
and indeed it could not be saddled and bitted unless she herself stood
near. Even the horse-dealer, rogue though he was, had sold it to her
with some approach to a qualm of conscience, having confessed to her that
it had killed two grooms, and been sentenced to be shot by its first
owner, and was still living only because its great beauty had led him to
hesitate for a few days. It was by chance that during these few days
Lady Dunstanwolde heard of it, and going to see it, desired and bought it
at once.
"It is the very beast I want," she said, with a gleam in her eye. "It
will please me to teach it that there is one stronger than itself."
She had much use for her loaded riding-whip; and indeed, not finding it
heavy enough, ordered one made which was heavier. When she rode the
beast in Hyde Park, her first battles with him were the town talk; and
there were those who bribed her footmen to inform them beforehand, when
my lady was to take out Devil, that they might know in time to be in the
Park to see her. Fops and hunting-men laid wagers as to whether her
ladyship would kill the horse or be killed by him, and followed her
training of the creature with an excitement and delight quite wild.
"Well may the beast's name be Devil," said more than one looker-on; "for
he is not so much horse as demon. And when he plunges and rears and
shows his teeth, there is a look in his eye which flames like her own,
and 'tis as if a male and female demon fought together, for surely such a
woman never lived before. She will not let him conquer her, God knows;
and it would seem that he was swearing in horse fashion that she should
not conquer him."
When he was first bought and brought home, Mistress Anne turned ashy at
the sight of him, and in her heart of hearts grieved bitterly that it had
so fallen out that his Grace of Osmonde had been called away from town by
high and important matters; for she knew full well, that if he had been
in the neighbourhood, he would have said some discreet and tender word of
warning to which her ladyship would have listened, though she would have
treated with disdain the caution of any other man or woman. When she
herself ventured to speak, Clorinda looked only stern.
"I have ridden only ill-tempered beasts all my life, and that for the
mere pleasure of subduing them," she said. "I have no liking for a horse
like a bell-wether; and if this one should break my neck, I need battle
with neither men nor horses again, and I shall die at the high tide of
life and power; and those who think of me afterwards will only remember
that they loved me--that they loved me."
But the horse did not kill her, nor she it. Day after day she stood by
while it was taken from its stall, many a time dealing with it herself,
because no groom dare approach; and then she would ride it forth, and in
Hyde Park force it to obey her; the wondrous strength of her will, her
wrist of steel, and the fierce, pitiless punishment she inflicted,
actually daunting the devilish creature's courage. She would ride from
the encounter, through two lines of people who had been watching her--and
some of them found themselves following after her, even to the Park
gate--almost awed as they looked at her, sitting erect and splendid on
the fretted, anguished beast, whose shining skin was covered with lather,
whose mouth tossed blood-flecked foam, and whose great eye was so
strangely like her own, but that hers glowed with the light of triumph,
and his burned with the agonised protest of the vanquished. At such
times there was somewhat of fear in the glances that followed her beauty,
which almost seemed to blaze--her colour was so rich, the curve of her
red mouth so imperial, the poise of her head, with its loosening coils of
velvet black hair, so high.
"It is good for me that I do this," she said to Anne, with a short laugh,
one day. "I was growing too soft--and I have need now for all my power.
To fight with the demon in this beast, rouses all in me that I have held
in check since I became my poor lord's wife. That the creature should
have set his will against all others, and should resist me with such
strength and devilishness, rouses in me the passion of the days when I
cursed and raved and struck at those who angered me. 'Tis fury that
possesses me, and I could curse and shriek at him as I flog him, if
'twould be seemly. As it would not be so, I shut my teeth hard, and
shriek and curse within them, and none can hear."
Among those who made it their custom to miss no day when she went forth
on Devil that they might stand near and behold her, there was one man
ever present, and 'twas Sir John Oxon. He would stand as near as might
be and watch the battle, a stealthy fire in his eye, and a look as if the
outcome of the fray had deadly meaning to him. He would gnaw his lip
until at times the blood started; his face would by turns flush scarlet
and turn deadly pale; he would move suddenly and restlessly, and break
forth under breath into oaths of exclamation. One day a man close by him
saw him suddenly lay his hand upon his sword, and having so done, still
keep it there, though 'twas plain he quickly remembered where he was.
As for the horse's rider, my Lady Dunstanwolde, whose way it had been to
avoid this man and to thrust him from her path by whatsoever adroit means
she could use, on these occasions made no effort to evade him and his
glances; in sooth, he knew, though none other did so, that when she
fought with her horse she did it with a fierce joy in that he beheld her.
'Twas as though the battle was between themselves; and knowing this in
the depths of such soul as he possessed, there were times when the man
would have exulted to see the brute rise and fall upon her, crushing her
out of life, or dash her to the earth and set his hoof upon her dazzling
upturned face. Her scorn and deadly defiance of him, her beauty and
maddening charm, which seemed but to increase with every hour that flew
by, had roused his love to fury. Despite his youth, he was a villain, as
he had ever been; even in his first freshness there had been older
men--and hardened ones--who had wondered at the selfish mercilessness and
blackness of the heart that was but that of a boy. They had said among
themselves that at his years they had never known a creature who could be
so gaily a dastard, one who could plan with such light remorselessness,
and using all the gifts given him by Nature solely for his own ends,
would take so much and give so little. In truth, as time had gone on,
men who had been his companions, and had indeed small consciences to
boast of, had begun to draw off a little from him, and frequent his
company less. He chose to tell himself that this was because he had
squandered his fortune and was less good company, being pursued by
creditors and haunted by debts; but though there was somewhat in this,
perchance 'twas not the entire truth.
"By Gad!" said one over his cups, "there are things even a rake-hell
fellow like me cannot do; but he does them, and seems not to know that
they are to his discredit."
There had been a time when without this woman's beauty he might have
lived--indeed, he had left it of his own free vicious will; but in these
days, when his fortunes had changed and she represented all that he stood
most desperately in need of, her beauty drove him mad. In his haunting
of her, as he followed her from place to place, his passion grew day by
day, and all the more gained strength and fierceness because it was so
mixed with hate. He tossed upon his bed at night and cursed her; he
remembered the wild past, and the memory all but drove him to delirium.
He knew of what stern stuff she was made, and that even if her love had
died, she would have held to her compact like grim death, even while
loathing him. And he had cast all this aside in one mad moment of boyish
cupidity and folly; and now that she was so radiant and entrancing a
thing, and wealth, and splendour, and rank, and luxury lay in the hollow
of her hand, she fixed her beauteous devil's eyes upon him with a scorn
in their black depths which seemed to burn like fires of hell.
The great brute who dashed, and plunged, and pranced beneath her seemed
to have sworn to conquer her as he had sworn himself; but let him plunge
and kick as he would, there was no quailing in her eye, she sat like a
creature who was superhuman, and her hand was iron, her wrist was steel.
She held him so that he could not do his worst without such pain as would
drive him mad; she lashed him, and rained on him such blows as almost
made him blind. Once at the very worst, Devil dancing near him, she
looked down from his back into John Oxon's face, and he cursed aloud, her
eye so told him his own story and hers. In those days their souls met in
such combat as it seemed must end in murder itself.
"You will not conquer him," he said to her one morning, forcing himself
near enough to speak.
"I will, unless he kills me," she answered, "and that methinks he will
find it hard to do."
"He will kill you," he said. "I would, were I in his four shoes."
"You would if you could," were her words; "but you could not with his bit
in your mouth and my hand on the snaffle. And if he killed me, still
'twould be he, not I, was beaten; since he could only kill what any
bloody villain could with any knife. He is a brute beast, and I am that
which was given dominion over such. Look on till I have done with him."
And thus, with other beholders, though in a different mood from theirs,
he did, until a day when even the most sceptical saw that the brute came
to the fray with less of courage, as if there had at last come into his
brain the dawning of a fear of that which rid him, and all his madness
could not displace from its throne upon his back.
"By God!" cried more than one of the bystanders, seeing this, despite the
animal's fury, "the beast gives way! He gives way! She has him!" And
John Oxon, shutting his teeth, cut short an oath and turned pale as
death.
From that moment her victory was a thing assured. The duel of strength
became less desperate, and having once begun to learn his lesson, the
brute was made to learn it well. His bearing was a thing superb to
behold; once taught obedience, there would scarce be a horse like him in
the whole of England. And day by day this he learned from her, and being
mastered, was put through his paces, and led to answer to the rein, so
that he trotted, cantered, galloped, and leaped as a bird flies. Then as
the town had come to see him fight for freedom, it came to see him adorn
the victory of the being who had conquered him, and over their dishes of
tea in the afternoon beaux and beauties of fashion gossiped of the
interesting and exciting event; and there were vapourish ladies who vowed
they could not have beaten a brute so, and that surely my Lady
Dunstanwolde must have looked hot and blowzy while she did it, and have
had the air of a great rough man; and there were some pretty tiffs and
even quarrels when the men swore that never had she looked so magnificent
a beauty and so inflamed the hearts of all beholding her.
On the first day after her ladyship's last battle with her horse, the one
which ended in such victory to her that she rode him home hard through
the streets without an outbreak, he white with lather, and marked with
stripes, but his large eye holding in its velvet a look which seemed
almost like a human thought--on that day after there occurred a thing
which gave the town new matter to talk of.
His Grace of Osmonde had been in France, called there by business of the
State, and during his absence the gossip concerning the horse Devil had
taken the place of that which had before touched on himself. 'Twas not
announced that he was to return to England, and indeed there were those
who, speaking with authority, said that for two weeks at least his
affairs abroad would not be brought to a close; and yet on this morning,
as my Lady Dunstanwolde rode 'neath the trees, holding Devil well in
hand, and watching him with eagle keenness of eye, many looking on in
wait for the moment when the brute might break forth suddenly again, a
horseman was seen approaching at a pace so rapid that 'twas on the verge
of a gallop, and the first man who beheld him looked amazed and lifted
his hat, and the next, seeing him, spoke to another, who bowed with him,
and all along the line of loungers hats were removed, and people wore the
air of seeing a man unexpectedly, and hearing a name spoken in
exclamation by his side, Sir John Oxon looked round and beheld ride by my
lord Duke of Osmonde. The sun was shining brilliantly, and all the Park
was gay with bright warmth and greenness of turf and trees. Clorinda
felt the glow of the summer morning permeate her being. She kept her
watch upon her beast; but he was going well, and in her soul she knew
that he was beaten, and that her victory had been beheld by the one man
who knew that it meant to her that which it seemed to mean also to
himself. And filled with this thought and the joy of it, she rode
beneath the trees, and so was riding with splendid spirit when she heard
a horse behind her, and looked up as it drew near, and the rich crimson
swept over her in a sweet flood, so that it seemed to her she felt it
warm on her very shoulders, 'neath her habit, for 'twas Osmonde's self
who had followed and reached her, and uncovered, keeping pace by her
side.
Ah, what a face he had, and how his eyes burned as they rested on her. It
was such a look she met, that for a moment she could not find speech, and
he himself spoke as a man who, through some deep emotion, has almost lost
his breath.
"My Lady Dunstanwolde," he began; and then with a sudden passion,
"Clorinda, my beloved!" The time had come when he could not keep
silence, and with great leapings of her heart she knew. Yet not one word
said she, for she could not; but her beauty, glowing and quivering under
his eyes' great fire, answered enough.
"Were it not that I fear for your sake the beast you ride," he said, "I
would lay my hand upon his bridle, that I might crush your hand in mine.
At post-haste I have come from France, hearing this thing--that you
endangered every day that which I love so madly. My God! beloved, cruel,
cruel woman--sure you must know!"
She answered with a breathless wild surrender. "Yes, yes!" she gasped,
"I know."
"And yet you braved this danger, knowing that you might leave me a
widowed man for life."
"But," she said, with a smile whose melting radiance seemed akin to
tears--"but see how I have beaten him--and all is passed."
"Yes, yes," he said, "as you have conquered all--as you have conquered
me--and did from the first hour. But God forbid that you should make me
suffer so again."
"Your Grace," she said, faltering, "I--I will not!"
"Forgive me for the tempest of my passion," he said. "'Twas not thus I
had thought to come to make my suit. 'Tis scarcely fitting that it
should be so; but I was almost mad when I first heard this rumour,
knowing my duty would not loose me to come to you at once--and knowing
you so well, that only if your heart had melted to the one who besought
you, you would give up."
"I--give up," she answered; "I give up."
"I worship you," he said; "I worship you." And their meeting eyes were
drowned in each other's tenderness.
They galloped side by side, and the watchers looked on, exchanging words
and glances, seeing in her beauteous, glowing face, in his joyous one,
the final answer to the question they had so often asked each other.
'Twas his Grace of Osmonde who was the happy man, he and no other. That
was a thing plain indeed to be seen, for they were too high above the
common world to feel that they must play the paltry part of outward
trifling to deceive it; and as the sun pierces through clouds and is
stronger than they, so their love shone like the light of day itself
through poor conventions. They did not know the people gazed and
whispered, and if they had known it, the thing would have counted for
naught with them.
"See!" said my lady, patting her Devil's neck--"see, he knows that you
have come, and frets no more."
They rode homeward together, the great beauty and the great duke, and all
the town beheld; and after they had passed him where he stood, John Oxon
mounted his own horse and galloped away, white-lipped and with mad eyes.
"Let me escort you home," the duke had said, "that I may kneel to you
there, and pour forth my heart as I have so dreamed of doing. To-morrow
I must go back to France, because I left my errand incomplete. I stole
from duty the time to come to you, and I must return as quickly as I
came." So he took her home; and as they entered the wide hall together,
side by side, the attendant lacqueys bowed to the ground in deep,
welcoming obeisance, knowing it was their future lord and master they
received.
Together they went to her own sitting-room, called the Panelled Parlour,
a beautiful great room hung with rare pictures, warm with floods of the
bright summer sunshine, and perfumed with bowls of summer flowers; and as
the lacquey departed, bowing, and closed the door behind him, they turned
and were enfolded close in each other's arms, and stood so, with their
hearts beating as surely it seemed to them human hearts had never beat
before.
"Oh! my dear love, my heavenly love!" he cried. "It has been so long--I
have lived in prison and in fetters--and it has been so long!"
Even as my Lord Dunstanwolde had found cause to wonder at her gentle
ways, so was this man amazed at her great sweetness, now that he might
cross the threshold of her heart. She gave of herself as an empress
might give of her store of imperial jewels, with sumptuous lavishness,
knowing that the store could not fail. In truth, it seemed that it must
be a dream that she so stood before him in all her great, rich
loveliness, leaning against his heaving breast, her arms as tender as his
own, her regal head thrown backward that they might gaze into the depths
of each other's eyes.
"From that first hour that I looked up at you," she said, "I knew you
were my lord--my lord! And a fierce pain stabbed my heart, knowing you
had come too late by but one hour; for had it not been that Dunstanwolde
had led me to you, I knew--ah! how well I knew--that our hearts would
have beaten together not as two hearts but as one."
"As they do now," he cried.
"As they do now," she answered--"as they do now!"
"And from the moment that your rose fell at my feet and I raised it in my
hand," he said, "I knew I held some rapture which was my own. And when
you stood before me at Dunstanwolde's side and our eyes met, I could not
understand--nay, I could scarce believe that it had been taken from me."
There, in her arms, among the flowers and in the sweetness of the sun, he
lived again the past, telling her of the days when, knowing his danger,
he had held himself aloof, declining to come to her lord's house with the
familiarity of a kinsman, because the pang of seeing her often was too
great to bear; and relating to her also the story of the hours when he
had watched her and she had not known his nearness or guessed his pain,
when she had passed in her equipage, not seeing him, or giving him but a
gracious smile. He had walked outside her window at midnight sometimes,
too, coming because he was a despairing man, and could not sleep, and
returning homeward, having found no rest, but only increase of anguish.
"Sometimes," he said, "I dared not look into your eyes, fearing my own
would betray me; but now I can gaze into your soul itself, for the
midnight is over--and joy cometh with the morning."
As he had spoken, he had caressed softly with his hand her cheek and her
crown of hair, and such was his great gentleness that 'twas as if he
touched lovingly a child; for into her face there had come that look
which it would seem that in the arms of the man she loves every true
woman wears--a look which is somehow like a child's in its trusting,
sweet surrender and appeal, whatsoever may be her stateliness and the
splendour of her beauty.
Yet as he touched her cheek so and her eyes so dwelt on him, suddenly her
head fell heavily upon his breast, hiding her face, even while her
unwreathing arms held more closely.
"Oh! those mad days before!" she cried--"Oh! those mad, mad days before!"
"Nay, they are long passed, sweet," he said, in his deep, noble voice,
thinking that she spoke of the wildness of her girlish years--"and all
our days of joy are yet to come."
"Yes, yes," she cried, clinging closer, yet with shuddering, "they were
_before_--the joy--the joy is all to come."