The stronghold of her security lay in the fact that her household so
stood in awe of her, and that this room, which was one of the richest and
most beautiful, though not the largest, in the mansion, all her servitors
had learned to regard as a sort of sacred place in which none dared to
set foot unless invited or commanded to enter. Within its four walls she
read and wrote in the morning hours, no servant entering unless summoned
by her; and the apartment seeming, as it were, a citadel, none approached
without previous parley. In the afternoon the doors were thrown open,
and she entertained there such visitors as came with less formality than
statelier assemblages demanded. When she went out of it this morning to
go to her chamber that her habit might be changed and her toilette made,
she glanced about her with a steady countenance.
"Until the babblers flock in to chatter of the modes and playhouses," she
said, "all will be as quiet as the grave. Then I must stand near, and
plan well, and be in such beauty and spirit that they will see naught but
me."
In the afternoon 'twas the fashion for those who had naught more serious
in their hands than the killing of time to pay visits to each other's
houses, and drinking dishes of tea, to dispose of their neighbours'
characters, discuss the playhouses, the latest fashions in furbelows or
commodes, and make love either lightly or with serious intent. One may
be sure that at my Lady Dunstanwolde's many dishes of Bohea were drunk,
and many ogling glances and much witticism exchanged. There was in these
days even a greater following about her than ever. A triumphant beauty
on the verge of becoming a great duchess is not like to be neglected by
her acquaintance, and thus her ladyship held assemblies both gay and
brilliantly varied, which were the delight of the fashionable triflers of
the day.
This afternoon they flocked in greater numbers than usual. The episode
of the breaking of Devil, the unexpected return of his Grace of Osmonde,
the preparations for the union, had given an extra stimulant to that
interest in her ladyship which was ever great enough to need none.
Thereunto was added the piquancy of the stories of the noticeable
demeanour of Sir John Oxon, of what had seemed to be so plain a rebellion
against his fate, and also of my lady's open and cold displeasure at the
manner of his bearing himself as a disappointed man who presumed to show
anger against that to which he should gallantly have been resigned, as
one who is conquered by the chance of war. Those who had beheld the two
ride homeward together in the morning, were full of curiousness, and one
and another, mentioning the matter, exchanged glances, speaking plainly
of desire to know more of what had passed, and of hope that chance might
throw the two together again in public, where more of interest might be
gathered. It seemed indeed not unlikely that Sir John might appear among
the tea-bibbers, and perchance 'twas for this lively reason that my
lady's room was this afternoon more than usually full of gay spirits and
gossip-loving ones.
They found, however, only her ladyship's self and her sister, Mistress
Anne, who, of truth, did not often join her tea-parties, finding them so
given up to fashionable chatter and worldly witticisms that she felt
herself somewhat out of place. The world knew Mistress Anne but as a
dull, plain gentlewoman, whom her more brilliant and fortunate sister
gave gracious protection to, and none missed her when she was absent, or
observed her greatly when she appeared upon the scene. To-day she was
perchance more observed than usual, because her pallor was so great a
contrast to her ladyship's splendour of beauty and colour. The contrast
between them was ever a great one; but this afternoon Mistress Anne's
always pale countenance seemed almost livid, there were rings of pain or
illness round her eyes, and her features looked drawn and pinched. My
Lady Dunstanwolde, clad in a great rich petticoat of crimson flowered
satin, with wondrous yellow Mechlin for her ruffles, and with her
glorious hair dressed like a tower, looked taller, more goddess-like and
full of splendid fire than ever she had been before beheld, or so her
visitors said to her and to each other; though, to tell the truth, this
was no new story, she being one of those women having the curious power
of inspiring the beholder with the feeling each time he encountered them
that he had never before seen them in such beauty and bloom.
When she had come down the staircase from her chamber, Anne, who had been
standing at the foot, had indeed started somewhat at the sight of her
rich dress and brilliant hues.
"Why do you jump as if I were a ghost, Anne?" she asked. "Do I look like
one? My looking-glass did not tell me so."
"No," said Anne; "you--are so--so crimson and splendid--and I--"
Her ladyship came swiftly down the stairs to her.
"You are not crimson and splendid," she said. "'Tis you who are a ghost.
What is it?"
Anne let her soft, dull eyes rest upon her for a moment helplessly, and
when she replied her voice sounded weak.
"I think--I am ill, sister," she said. "I seem to tremble and feel
faint."
"Go then to bed and see the physician. You must be cared for," said her
ladyship. "In sooth, you look ill indeed."
"Nay," said Anne; "I beg you, sister, this afternoon let me be with you;
it will sustain me. You are so strong--let me--"
She put out her hand as if to touch her, but it dropped at her side as
though its strength was gone.
"But there will be many babbling people," said her sister, with a curious
look. "You do not like company, and these days my rooms are full. 'Twill
irk and tire you."
"I care not for the people--I would be with you," Anne said, in strange
imploring. "I have a sick fancy that I am afraid to sit alone in my
chamber. 'Tis but weakness. Let me this afternoon be with you."
"Go then and change your robe," said Clorinda, "and put some red upon
your cheeks. You may come if you will. You are a strange creature,
Anne."
And thus saying, she passed into her apartment. As there are blows and
pain which end in insensibility or delirium, so there are catastrophes
and perils which are so great as to produce something near akin to these.
As she had stood before her mirror in her chamber watching her
reflection, while her woman attired her in her crimson flowered satin and
builded up her stately head-dress, this other woman had felt that the
hour when she could have shrieked and raved and betrayed herself had
passed by, and left a deadness like a calm behind, as though horror had
stunned all pain and yet left her senses clear. She forgot not the thing
which lay staring upward blankly at the under part of the couch which hid
it--the look of its fixed eyes, its outspread locks, and the purple
indentation on the temple she saw as clearly as she had seen them in that
first mad moment when she had stood staring downward at the thing itself;
but the coursing of her blood was stilled, the gallop of her pulses, and
that wild hysteric leaping of her heart into her throat, choking her and
forcing her to gasp and pant in that way which in women must ever end in
shrieks and cries and sobbing beatings of the air. But for the feminine
softness to which her nature had given way for the first time, since the
power of love had mastered her, there was no thing of earth could have
happened to her which would have brought this rolling ball to her throat,
this tremor to her body--since the hour of her birth she had never been
attacked by such a female folly, as she would indeed have regarded it
once; but now 'twas different--for a while she had been a woman--a woman
who had flung herself upon the bosom of him who was her soul's lord, and
resting there, her old rigid strength had been relaxed.
But 'twas not this woman who had known tender yielding who returned to
take her place in the Panelled Parlour, knowing of the companion who
waited near her unseen--for it was as her companion she thought of him,
as she had thought of him when he followed her in the Mall, forced
himself into her box at the play, or stood by her shoulder at assemblies;
he had placed himself by her side again, and would stay there until she
could rid herself of him.
"After to-night he will be gone, if I act well my part," she said, "and
then may I live a freed woman."
'Twas always upon the divan she took her place when she received her
visitors, who were accustomed to finding her enthroned there. This
afternoon when she came into the room she paused for a space, and stood
beside it, the parlour being yet empty. She felt her face grow a little
cold, as if it paled, and her under-lip drew itself tight across her
teeth.
"In a graveyard," she said, "I have sat upon the stone ledge of a tomb,
and beneath there was--worse than this, could I but have seen it. This
is no more."
When the Sir Humphreys and Lord Charleses, Lady Bettys and Mistress
Lovelys were announced in flocks, fluttering and chattering, she rose
from her old place to meet them, and was brilliant graciousness itself.
She hearkened to their gossipings, and though 'twas not her way to join
in them, she was this day witty in such way as robbed them of the dulness
in which sometimes gossip ends. It was a varied company which gathered
about her; but to each she gave his or her moment, and in that moment
said that which they would afterwards remember. With those of the Court
she talked royalty, the humours of her Majesty, the severities of her
Grace of Marlborough; with statesmen she spoke with such intellect and
discretion that they went away pondering on the good fortune which had
befallen one man when it seemed that it was of such proportions as might
have satisfied a dozen, for it seemed not fair to them that his Grace of
Osmonde, having already rank, wealth, and fame, should have added to them
a gift of such magnificence as this beauteous woman would bring; with
beaux and wits she made dazzling jests; and to the beauties who desired
their flatteries she gave praise so adroit that they were stimulated to
plume their feathers afresh and cease to fear the rivalry of her
loveliness.
And yet while she so bore herself, never once did she cease to feel the
presence of that which, lying near, seemed to her racked soul as one who
lay and listened with staring eyes which mocked; for there was a thought
which would not leave her, which was, that it could hear, that it could
see through the glazing on its blue orbs, and that knowing itself bound
by the moveless irons of death and dumbness it impotently raged and
cursed that it could not burst them and shriek out its vengeance, rolling
forth among her worshippers at their feet and hers.
"But he _can_ not," she said, within her clenched teeth, again and
again--"_that_ he cannot."
Once as she said this to herself she caught Anne's eyes fixed helplessly
upon her, it seeming to be as the poor woman had said, that her weakness
caused her to desire to abide near her sister's strength and draw support
from it; for she had remained at my lady's side closely since she had
descended to the room, and now seemed to implore some protection for
which she was too timid to openly make request.
"You are too weak to stay, Anne," her ladyship said. "'Twould be better
that you should retire."
"I am weak," the poor thing answered, in low tones--"but not too weak to
stay. I am always weak. Would that I were of your strength and courage.
Let me sit down--sister--here." She touched the divan's cushions with a
shaking hand, gazing upward wearily--perchance remembering that this
place seemed ever a sort of throne none other than the hostess queen
herself presumed to encroach upon.
"You are too meek, poor sister," quoth Clorinda. "'Tis not a chair of
coronation or the woolsack of a judge. Sit! sit!--and let me call for
wine!"
She spoke to a lacquey and bade him bring the drink, for even as she sank
into her place Anne's cheeks grew whiter.
When 'twas brought, her ladyship poured it forth and gave it to her
sister with her own hand, obliging her to drink enough to bring her
colour back. Having seen to this, she addressed the servant who had
obeyed her order.
"Hath Jenfry returned from Sir John Oxon?" she demanded, in that clear,
ringing voice of hers, whose music ever arrested those surrounding her,
whether they were concerned in her speech or no; but now all felt
sufficient interest to prick up ears and hearken to what was said.
"No, my lady," the lacquey answered. "He said that you had bidden him to
wait."
"But not all day, poor fool," she said, setting down Anne's empty glass
upon the salver. "Did he think I bade him stand about the door all
night? Bring me his message when he comes."
"'Tis ever thus with these dull serving folk," she said to those nearest
her. "One cannot pay for wit with wages and livery. They can but obey
the literal word. Sir John, leaving me in haste this morning, I forgot a
question I would have asked, and sent a lacquey to recall him."
Anne sat upright.
"Sister--I pray you--another glass of wine."
My lady gave it to her at once, and she drained it eagerly.
"Was he overtaken?" said a curious matron, who wished not to see the
subject closed.
"No," quoth her ladyship, with a light laugh--"though he must have been
in haste, for the man was sent after him in but a moment's time. 'Twas
then I told the fellow to go later to his lodgings and deliver my message
into Sir John's own hand, whence it seems that he thinks that he must
await him till he comes."
Upon a table near there lay the loaded whip; for she had felt it bolder
to let it lie there as if forgotten, because her pulse had sprung so at
first sight of it when she came down, and she had so quailed before the
desire to thrust it away, to hide it from her sight. "And that I quail
before," she had said, "I must have the will to face--or I am lost." So
she had let it stay.
A languishing beauty, with melting blue eyes and a pretty fashion of ever
keeping before the world of her admirers her waxen delicacy, lifted the
heavy thing in her frail white hand.
"How can your ladyship wield it?" she said. "It is so heavy for a
woman--but your ladyship is--is not--"
"Not quite a woman," said the beautiful creature, standing at her full
great height, and smiling down at this blue and white piece of frailty
with the flashing splendour of her eyes.
"Not quite a woman," cried two wits at once. "A goddess rather--an
Olympian goddess."
The languisher could not endure comparisons which so seemed to disparage
her ethereal charms. She lifted the weapon with a great effort, which
showed the slimness of her delicate fair wrist and the sweet tracery of
blue veins upon it.
"Nay," she said lispingly, "it needs the muscle of a great man to lift
it. I could not hold it--much less beat with it a horse." And to show
how coarse a strength was needed and how far her femininity lacked such
vigour, she dropped it upon the floor--and it rolled beneath the edge of
the divan.
"Now," the thought shot through my lady's brain, as a bolt shoots from
the sky--"now--he _laughs_!"
She had no time to stir--there were upon their knees three beaux at once,
and each would sure have thrust his arm below the seat and rummaged, had
not God saved her! Yes, 'twas of God she thought in that terrible mad
second--God!--and only a mind that is not human could have told why.
For Anne--poor Mistress Anne--white-faced and shaking, was before them
all, and with a strange adroitness stooped,--and thrust her hand below,
and drawing the thing forth, held it up to view.
"'Tis here," she said, "and in sooth, sister, I wonder not at its
falling--its weight is so great."
Clorinda took it from her hand.
"I shall break no more beasts like Devil," she said, "and for quieter
ones it weighs too much; I shall lay it by."
She crossed the room and laid it upon a shelf.
"It was ever heavy--but for Devil. 'Tis done with," she said; and there
came back to her face--which for a second had lost hue--a flood of
crimson so glowing, and a smile so strange, that those who looked and
heard, said to themselves that 'twas the thought of Osmonde who had so
changed her, which made her blush. But a few moments later they beheld
the same glow mount again. A lacquey entered, bearing a salver on which
lay two letters. One was a large one, sealed with a ducal coronet, and
this she saw first, and took in her hand even before the man had time to
speak.
"His Grace's courier has arrived from France," he said; "the package was
ordered to be delivered at once."
"It must be that his Grace returns earlier than we had hoped," she said,
and then the other missive caught her eye.
"'Tis your ladyship's own," the lacquey explained somewhat anxiously.
"'Twas brought back, Sir John not having yet come home, and Jenfry having
waited three hours."
"'Twas long enough," quoth her ladyship. "'Twill do to-morrow."
She did not lay Osmonde's letter aside, but kept it in her hand, and
seeing that she waited for their retirement to read it, her guests began
to make their farewells. One by one or in groups of twos and threes they
left her, the men bowing low, and going away fretted by the memory of the
picture she made--a tall and regal figure in her flowered crimson, her
stateliness seeming relaxed and softened by the mere holding of the
sealed missive in her hand. But the women were vaguely envious, not of
Osmonde, but of her before whom there lay outspread as far as life's
horizon reached, a future of such perfect love and joy; for Gerald
Mertoun had been marked by feminine eyes since his earliest youth, and
had seemed to embody all that woman's dreams or woman's ambitions or her
love could desire.
When the last was gone, Clorinda turned, tore her letter open, and held
it hard to her lips. Before she read a word she kissed it passionately a
score of times, paying no heed that Anne sate gazing at her; and having
kissed it so, she fell to reading it, her cheeks warm with the glow of a
sweet and splendid passion, her bosom rising and falling in a tempest of
tender, fluttering breaths--and 'twas these words her eyes devoured:
"If I should head this page I write to you 'Goddess and Queen, and
Empress of my deepest soul,' what more should I be saying than 'My
Love' and 'My Clorinda,' since these express all the soul of man could
crave for or his body desire. The body and soul of me so long for
thee, sweetheart, and sweetest beautiful woman that the hand of Nature
ever fashioned for the joy of mortals, that I have had need to pray
Heaven's help to aid me to endure the passing of the days that lie
between me and the hour which will make me the most strangely,
rapturously, happy man, not in England, not in the world, but in all
God's universe. I must pray Heaven again, and indeed do and will, for
humbleness which shall teach me to remember that I am not deity, but
mere man--mere man--though I shall hold a goddess to my breast and
gaze into eyes which are like deep pools of Paradise, and yet answer
mine with the marvel of such love as none but such a soul could make a
woman's, and so fit to mate with man's. In the heavy days when I was
wont to gaze at you from afar with burning heart, my unceasing anguish
was that even high honour itself could not subdue and conquer the
thoughts which leaped within me even as my pulse leaped, and even as
my pulse could not be stilled unless by death. And one that for ever
haunted--aye, and taunted--me was the image of how your tall, beauteous
body would yield itself to a strong man's arm, and your noble head
with its heavy tower of hair resting upon his shoulder--the centres of
his very being would be thrilled and shaken by the uplifting of such
melting eyes as surely man ne'er gazed within on earth before, and the
ripe and scarlet bow of a mouth so beauteous and so sweet with
womanhood. This beset me day and night, and with such torture that I
feared betimes my brain might reel and I become a lost and ruined
madman. And now--it is no more forbidden me to dwell upon it--nay, I
lie waking at night, wooing the picture to me, and at times I rise
from my dreams to kneel by my bedside and thank God that He hath given
me at last what surely is my own!--for so it seems to me, my love, that
each of us is but a part of the other, and that such forces of Nature
rush to meet together in us, that Nature herself would cry out were we
rent apart. If there were aught to rise like a ghost between us, if
there were aught that could sunder us--noble soul, let us but swear
that it shall weld us but the closer together, and that locked in each
other's arms its blows shall not even make our united strength to
sway. Sweetest lady, your lovely lip will curve in smiles, and you
will say, 'He is mad with his joy--my Gerald' (for never till my heart
stops at its last beat and leaves me still, a dead man, cold upon my
bed, can I forget the music of your speech when you spoke those words,
'My Gerald! My Gerald.') And indeed I crave your pardon, for a man
so filled with rapture cannot be quite sane, and sometimes I wonder if
I walk through the palace gardens like one who is drunk, so does my
brain reel. But soon, my heavenly, noble love, my exile will be over,
and this is in truth what my letter is to tell you, that in four days
your lacqueys will throw open your doors to me and I shall enter, and
being led to you, shall kneel at your feet and kiss the hem of your
robe, and then rise standing to fold her who will so soon be my very
wife to my throbbing breast."
Back to her face had come all the softness which had been lost, the hard
lines were gone, the tender curves had returned, her lashes looked as if
they were moist. Anne, sitting rigidly and gazing at her, was afraid to
speak, knowing that she was not for the time on earth, but that the sound
of a voice would bring her back to it, and that 'twas well she should be
away as long as she might.
She read the letter, not once, but thrice, dwelling upon every word,
'twas plain; and when she had reached the last one, turning back the
pages and beginning again. When she looked up at last, 'twas with an
almost wild little smile, for she had indeed for that one moment
forgotten.
"Locked in each other's arms," she said--"locked in each other's arms. My
Gerald! My Gerald! 'What surely is my own--my own'!"
Anne rose and came to her, laying her hand on her arm. She spoke in a
voice low, hushed, and strained.
"Come away, sister," she said, "for a little while--come away."