In a fair tower whose windows looked out upon spreading woods, and rich
lovely plains stretching to the freshness of the sea, Mistress Anne had
her abode which her duchess sister had given to her for her own living in
as she would. There she dwelt and prayed and looked on the new life
which so beauteously unfolded itself before her day by day, as the leaves
of a great tree unfold from buds and become noble branches, housing birds
and their nests, shading the earth and those sheltering beneath them,
braving centuries of storms.
To this simile her simple mind oft reverted, for indeed it seemed to her
that naught more perfect and more noble in its high likeness to pure
Nature and the fulfilling of God's will than the passing days of these
two lives could be.
"As the first two lived--Adam and Eve in their garden of Eden--they seem
to me," she used to say to her own heart; "but the Tree of Knowledge was
not forbidden them, and it has taught them naught ignoble."
As she had been wont to watch her sister from behind the ivy of her
chamber windows, so she often watched her now, though there was no fear
in her hiding, only tenderness, it being a pleasure to her full of wonder
and reverence to see this beautiful and stately pair go lovingly and in
high and gentle converse side by side, up and down the terrace, through
the paths, among the beds of flowers, under the thick branched trees and
over the sward's softness.
"It is as if I saw Love's self, and dwelt with it--the love God's nature
made," she said, with gentle sighs.
For if these two had been great and beauteous before, it seemed in these
days as if life and love glowed within them, and shone through their mere
bodies as a radiant light shines through alabaster lamps. The strength
of each was so the being of the other that no thought could take form in
the brain of one without the other's stirring with it.
"Neither of us dare be ignoble," Osmonde said, "for 'twould make poor and
base the one who was not so in truth."
"'Twas not the way of my Lady Dunstanwolde to make a man feel that he
stood in church," a frivolous court wit once said, "but in sooth her
Grace of Osmonde has a look in her lustrous eyes which accords not with
scandalous stories and playhouse jests."
And true it was that when they went to town they carried with them the
illumining of the pure fire which burned within their souls, and bore it
all unknowing in the midst of the trivial or designing world, which knew
not what it was that glowed about them, making things bright which had
seemed dull, and revealing darkness where there had been brilliant glare.
They returned not to the house which had been my Lord of Dunstanwolde's,
but went to the duke's own great mansion, and there lived splendidly and
in hospitable state. Royalty honoured them, and all the wits came there,
some of those gentlemen who writ verses and dedications being by no means
averse to meeting noble lords and ladies, and finding in their loves and
graces material which might be useful. 'Twas not only Mr. Addison and
Mr. Steele, Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope, who were made welcome in the stately
rooms, but others who were more humble, not yet having won their spurs,
and how these worshipped her Grace for the generous kindness which was
not the fashion, until she set it, among great ladies, their odes and
verses could scarce express.
"They are so poor," she said to her husband. "They are so poor, and yet
in their starved souls there is a thing which can less bear flouting than
the dull content which rules in others. I know not whether 'tis a curse
or a boon to be born so. 'Tis a bitter thing when the bird that flutters
in them has only little wings. All the more should those who are strong
protect and comfort them."
She comforted so many creatures. In strange parts of the town, where no
other lady would have dared to go to give alms, it was rumoured that she
went and did noble things privately. In dark kennels, where thieves hid
and vagrants huddled, she carried her beauty and her stateliness, the
which when they shone on the poor rogues and victims housed there seemed
like the beams of the warm and golden sun.
Once in a filthy hovel in a black alley she came upon a poor girl dying
of a loathsome ill, and as she stood by her bed of rags she heard in her
delirium the uttering of one man's name again and again, and when she
questioned those about she found that the sufferer had been a little
country wench enticed to town by this man for a plaything, and in a few
weeks cast off to give birth to a child in the almshouse, and then go
down to the depths of vice in the kennel.
"What is the name she says?" her Grace asked the hag nearest to her, and
least maudlin with liquor. "I would be sure I heard it aright."
"'Tis the name of a gentleman, your ladyship may be sure," the beldam
answered; "'tis always the name of a gentleman. And this is one I know
well, for I have heard more than one poor soul mumbling it and raving at
him in her last hours. One there was, and I knew her, a pretty rosy
thing in her country days, not sixteen, and distraught with love for him,
and lay in the street by his door praying him to take her back when he
threw her off, until the watch drove her away. And she was so mad with
love and grief she killed her girl child when 'twas born i' the kennel,
sobbing and crying that it should not live to be like her and bear
others. And she was condemned to death, and swung for it on Tyburn Tree.
And, Lord! how she cried his name as she jolted on her coffin to the
gallows, and when the hangman put the rope round her shuddering little
fair neck. 'Oh, John,' screams she, 'John Oxon, God forgive thee! Nay,
'tis God should be forgiven for letting thee to live and me to die like
this.' Aye, 'twas a bitter sight! She was so little and so young, and
so affrighted. The hangman could scarce hold her. I was i' the midst o'
the crowd and cried to her to strive to stand still, 'twould be the
sooner over. But that she could not. 'Oh, John,' she screams, 'John
Oxon, God forgive thee! Nay, 'tis God should be forgiven for letting
thee to live and me to die like this!'"
Till the last hour of the poor creature who lay before her when she heard
this thing, her Grace of Osmonde saw that she was tended, took her from
her filthy hovel, putting her in a decent house and going to her day by
day, until she received her last breath, holding her hand while the poor
wench lay staring up at her beauteous face and her great deep eyes, whose
lustrousness held such power to sustain, protect, and comfort.
"Be not afraid, poor soul," she said, "be not afraid. I will stay near
thee. Soon all will end in sleep, and if thou wakest, sure there will be
Christ who died, and wipes all tears away. Hear me say it to thee for a
prayer," and she bent low and said it soft and clear into the deadening
ear, "He wipes all tears away--He wipes all tears away."
The great strength she had used in the old days to conquer and subdue, to
win her will and to defend her way, seemed now a power but to protect the
suffering and uphold the weak, and this she did, not alone in hovels but
in the brilliant court and world of fashion, for there she found
suffering and weakness also, all the more bitter and sorrowful since it
dared not cry aloud. The grandeur of her beauty, the elevation of her
rank, the splendour of her wealth would have made her a protector of
great strength, but that which upheld all those who turned to her was
that which dwelt within the high soul of her, the courage and power of
love for all things human which bore upon itself, as if upon an eagle's
outspread wings, the woes dragging themselves broken and halting upon
earth. The starving beggar in the kennel felt it, and, not knowing
wherefore, drew a longer, deeper breath, as if of purer, more exalted
air; the poor poet in his garret was fed by it, and having stood near or
spoken to her, went back to his lair with lightening eyes and soul warmed
to believe that the words his Muse might speak the world might stay to
hear.
From the hour she stayed the last moments of John Oxon's victim she set
herself a work to do. None knew it but herself at first, and later Anne,
for 'twas done privately. From the hag who had told her of the poor
girl's hanging upon Tyburn Tree, she learned things by close questioning,
which to the old woman's dull wit seemed but the curiousness of a great
lady, and from others who stood too deep in awe of her to think of her as
a mere human being, she gathered clues which led her far in the tracing
of the evils following one wicked, heartless life. Where she could hear
of man, woman, or child on whom John Oxon's sins had fallen, or who had
suffered wrong by him, there she went to help, to give light, to give
comfort and encouragement. Strangely, as it seemed to them, and as if
done by the hand of Heaven, the poor tradesmen he had robbed were paid
their dues, youth he had led into evil ways was checked mysteriously and
set in better paths; women he had dragged downward were given aid and
chance of peace or happiness; children he had cast upon the world,
unfathered, and with no prospect but the education of the gutter, and a
life of crime, were cared for by a powerful unseen hand. The pretty
country girl saved by his death, protected by her Grace, and living
innocently at Dunstanwolde, memory being merciful to youth, forgot him,
gained back her young roses, and learned to smile and hope as though he
had been but a name.
"Since 'twas I who killed him," said her Grace to her inward soul, "'tis
I must live his life which I took from him, and making it better I may be
forgiven--if there is One who dares to say to the poor thing He made, 'I
will not forgive.'"
Surely it was said there had never been lives so beautiful and noble as
those the Duke of Osmonde and his lady lived as time went by. The Tower
of Camylott, where they had spent the first months of their wedded life,
they loved better than any other of their seats, and there they spent as
much time as their duties of Court and State allowed them. It was indeed
a splendid and beautiful estate, the stately tower being built upon an
eminence, and there rolling out before it the most lovely land in
England, moorland and hills, thick woods and broad meadows, the edge of
the heather dipping to show the soft silver of the sea.
Here was this beauteous woman chatelaine and queen, wife of her husband
as never before, he thought, had wife blessed and glorified the existence
of mortal man. All her great beauty she gave to him in tender, joyous
tribute; all her great gifts of mind and wit and grace it seemed she
valued but as they were joys to him; in his stately households in town
and country she reigned a lovely empress, adored and obeyed with
reverence by every man or woman who served her and her lord. Among the
people on his various estates she came and went a tender goddess of
benevolence. When she appeared amid them in the first months of her
wedded life, the humble souls regarded her with awe not unmixed with
fear, having heard such wild stories of her youth at her father's house,
and of her proud state and bitter wit in the great London world when she
had been my Lady Dunstanwolde; but when she came among them all else was
forgotten in their wonder at her graciousness and noble way.
"To see her come into a poor body's cottage, so tall and grand a lady,
and with such a carriage as she hath," they said, hobnobbing together in
their talk of her, "looking as if a crown of gold should sit on her high
black head, and then to hear her gentle speech and see the look in her
eyes as if she was but a simple new-married girl, full of her joy, and
her heart big with the wish that all other women should be as happy as
herself, it is, forsooth, a beauteous sight to see."
"Ay, and no hovel too poor for her, and no man or woman too sinful," was
said again.
"Heard ye how she found that poor wench of Haylits lying sobbing among
the fern in the Tower woods, and stayed and knelt beside her to hear her
trouble? The poor soul has gone to ruin at fourteen, and her father,
finding her out, beat her and thrust her from his door, and her Grace
coming through the wood at sunset--it being her way to walk about for
mere pleasure as though she had no coach to ride in--the girl says she
came through the golden glow as if she had been one of God's angels--and
she kneeled and took the poor wench in her arms--as strong as a man,
Betty says, but as soft as a young mother--and she said to her things
surely no mortal lady ever said before--that she knew naught of a surety
of what God's true will might be, or if His laws were those that have
been made by man concerning marriage by priests saying common words, but
that she surely knew of a man whose name was Christ, and He had taught
love and helpfulness and pity, and for His sake, He having earned our
trust in Him, whether He was God or man, because He hung and died in
awful torture on the Cross--for His sake all of us must love and help and
pity--'I you, poor Betty,' were her very words, 'and you me.' And then
she went to the girl's father and mother, and so talked to them that she
brought them to weeping, and begging Betty to come home; and also she
went to her sweetheart, Tom Beck, and made so tender a story to him of
the poor pretty wench whose love for him had brought her to such trouble,
that she stirred him up to falling in love again, which is not man's way
at such times, and in a week's time he and Betty went to church together,
her Grace setting them up in a cottage on the estate."
"I used all my wit and all my tenderest words to make a picture that
would fire and touch him, Gerald," her Grace said, sitting at her
husband's side, in a great window, from which they often watched the
sunset in the valley spread below; "and that with which I am so strong
sometimes--I know not what to call it, but 'tis a power people bend to,
that I know--that I used upon him to waken his dull soul and brain. Whose
fault is it that they are dull? Poor lout, he was born so, as I was born
strong and passionate, and as you were born noble and pure and high. I
led his mind back to the past, when he had been made happy by the sight
of Betty's little smiling, blushing face, and when he had kissed her and
made love in the hayfields. And this I said--though 'twas not a thing I
have learned from any chaplain--that when 'twas said he should make an
honest woman of her, it was _my_ thought that she had been honest from
the first, being too honest to know that the world was not so, and that
even the man a woman loved with all her soul, might be a rogue, and have
no honesty in him. And at last--'twas when I talked to him about the
child--and that I put my whole soul's strength in--he burst out a-crying
like a schoolboy, and said indeed she was a fond little thing and had
loved him, and he had loved her, and 'twas a shame he had so done by her,
and he had not meant it at the first, but she was so simple, and he had
been a villain, but if he married her now, he would be called a fool, and
laughed at for his pains. Then was I angry, Gerald, and felt my eyes
flash, and I stood up tall and spoke fiercely: 'Let them dare,' I
said--'let any man or woman dare, and then will they see what his Grace
will say.'"
Osmonde drew her to his breast, laughing into her lovely eyes.
"Nay, 'tis not his Grace who need be called on," he said; "'tis her Grace
they love and fear, and will obey; though 'tis the sweetest, womanish
thing that you should call on me when you are power itself, and can so
rule all creatures you come near."
"Nay," she said, with softly pleading face, "let me not rule. Rule for
me, or but help me; I so long to say your name that they may know I speak
but as your wife."
"Who is myself," he answered--"my very self."
"Ay," she said, with a little nod of her head, "that I know--that I am
yourself; and 'tis because of this that one of us cannot be proud with
the other, for there is no other, there is only one. And I am wrong to
say, 'Let me not rule,' for 'tis as if I said, 'You must not rule.' I
meant surely, 'God give me strength to be as noble in ruling as our love
should make me.' But just as one tree is a beech and one an oak, just as
the grass stirs when the summer wind blows over it, so a woman is a
woman, and 'tis her nature to find her joy in saying such words to the
man who loves her, when she loves as I do. Her heart is so full that she
must joy to say her husband's name as that of one she cannot think
without--who is her life as is her blood and her pulses beating. 'Tis a
joy to say your name, Gerald, as it will be a joy"--and she looked far
out across the sun-goldened valley and plains, with a strange, heavenly
sweet smile--"as it will be a joy to say our child's--and put his little
mouth to my full breast."
"Sweet love," he cried, drawing her by the hand that he might meet the
radiance of her look--"heart's dearest!"
She did not withhold her lovely eyes from him, but withdrew them from the
sunset's mist of gold, and the clouds piled as it were at the gates of
heaven, and they seemed to bring back some of the far-off glory with
them. Indeed, neither her smile nor she seemed at that moment to be
things of earth. She held out her fair, noble arms, and he sprang to
her, and so they stood, side beating against side.
"Yes, love," she said--"yes, love--and I have prayed, my Gerald, that I
may give you sons who shall be men like you. But when I give you women
children, I shall pray with all my soul for them--that they may be just
and strong and noble, and life begin for them as it began not for me."
* * * * *
In the morning of a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and
May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the
grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling
all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower. Children
stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn;
good gossips ran out of their cottage door, wiping their arms dry, from
their tubs and scrubbing-buckets, their honest red faces broadening into
maternal grins.
"Ay, 'tis well over, that means surely," one said to the other; "and a
happy day has begun for the poor lady--though God knows she bore herself
queenly to the very last, as if she could have carried her burden for
another year, and blenched not a bit as other women do. Bless mother and
child, say I."
"And 'tis an heir," said another. "She promised us that we should know
almost as quick as she did, and commanded old Rowe to ring a peal, and
then strike one bell loud between if 'twere a boy, and two if 'twere a
girl child. 'Tis a boy, heard you, and 'twas like her wit to invent such
a way to tell us."
In four other villages the chimes rang just as loud and merrily, and the
women talked, and blessed her Grace and her young child, and casks of ale
were broached, and oxen roasted, and work stopped, and dancers footed it
upon the green.
"Surely the new-born thing comes here to happiness," 'twas said
everywhere, "for never yet was woman loved as is his mother."
In her stately bed her Grace the duchess lay, with the face of the Mother
Mary, and her man-child drinking from her breast. The duke walked softly
up and down, so full of joy that he could not sit still. When he had
entered first, it was his wife's self who had sate upright in her bed,
and herself laid his son within his arms.
"None other shall lay him there," she said, "I have given him to you. He
is a great child, but he has not taken from me my strength."
He was indeed a great child, even at his first hour, of limbs and
countenance so noble that nurses and physicians regarded him amazed. He
was the offspring of a great love, of noble bodies and great souls. Did
such powers alone create human beings, the earth would be peopled with a
race of giants.
Amid the veiled spring sunshine and the flower-scented silence, broken
only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft
asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and
her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and
now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf
hand and the lace frill of his mother's night-rail. She dared not
further disturb them.
"Sure God forgives," she breathed--"for Christ's sake. He would not give
this little tender thing a punishment to bear."