at Camylott--riding together, taking long sauntering walks, reading old
books and new ones, and in these days conversing on maturer subjects.
There was indeed much to talk of at this closing of a reign which had
been full of struggles with problems affecting not only England but all
the European powers. What the Peace of Ryswick had effected, what the
death of Charles of Spain would bring, whether Louis would play fairly,
how long King William's broken frame would last, what the power of the
Marlboroughs would be when the Princess Anne came to the throne--all
these things they discussed together, and in their arguments my Lord
Dunstanwolde was often roused to the wonder other ripe minds had felt
in coming in contact with the activity and daring of this younger one.
"'Tis not possible to hide a handsome young nobleman under a bushel,"
the Earl said after but a few days had passed. "The neighbours will
have you to dine, and dance, and hunt with them, whether it is your
will or not. A strapping young fellow must do his duty by the world."
Roxholm performed his duty with propriety and spirit when it was not to
be evaded gracefully. He dined with country gentlemen, and listened to
their songs and stories until most of them drank themselves under the
table, as was the spirited fashion of the time. He answered the
questionings of their wives on subjects pertaining to Court fashions
and behaviour and,--perhaps somewhat gravely,--danced attendance on the
daughters, who most of them, it is true, were used to less courtly
manners and voted him in private far too grave and majestic for such a
beauty.
"He hath a way of bowing that would give one a fright, were his eyes
not so handsome and his smile so sweet," said one lovely ardent hoyden.
"Lord! just to watch him standing near with that noble grave look on
his face, and not giving one a thought, makes one's heart go pit-a-pat.
A man hath no right to be such a beauty--and to be so, and to be a
Duke's son, too, is a burning shame. 'Tis wicked that one man should
have so much to give to one woman."
'Twas but a week before Roxholm left his kinsman's house, that they
spent a day together hunting with a noted pack over the borders of
Gloucestershire. The sport was in a neighbourhood where the gentry were
hunting-mad, and chased foxes as many days of the week as fortune and
weather favoured them.
"'Tis a rough country," said my Lord Dunstanwolde, as they rode forth,
"and some of those who hunt are wild livers and no credit to their
rank, but there is fine old blood among them, and some of the hardest
riders and boldest leapers England knows." Suddenly he seemed to
remember something and turned with an exclamation. "Upon my soul!" he
said, "till this moment I had forgot. I am too sober an old fogy to
hunt with them when I have no young blood near to spur me. Sir Jeoffry
Wildairs will be with them--if he has not yet broke his neck."
The country they hunted over proved indeed rough, and the sport
exciting. Roxholm had never seen wilder riding and more daring leaps,
and it had also happened that he had not yet gone a-hunting with so
boisterous and rollicking a body of gentlemen. Their knowledge of dogs,
foxes, and horseflesh was plainly absolute, but they had no Court
manners, being of that clan of country gentry of which London saw but
little. Nearly all the sportsmen were big men and fine ones, with
dare-devil bearing, loud voices, and a tendency to loose and profane
language. They roared friendly oaths at each other, had brandy flasks
on their persons on which they pulled freely, and, their spirits being
heightened thereby, exchanged jokes and allusions not too seemly.
Before the fox was found, Roxholm had marked this and observed also
that half a dozen more of the best mounted men were the roughest on the
field, being no young scapegraces and frolickers, but men past forty,
who wore the aspect of reprobate livers and hard drinkers, and who were
plainly boon companions and more intimate with each other than with
those not of their party.
They seemed to form a band of themselves, which those not of it had an
air of avoiding, and 'twas to be seen that their company was looked at
askance, and that in the bearing of each member of the group there was
a defiance of the general opinion. Roxholm sat on his horse somewhat
apart from this group watching it, his kinsman and a certain Lord
Twemlow, who was their host for the day, conversing near him.
My Lord Twemlow, who took no note of them, but by the involuntary
casting on them of an occasional glance, when some wild outburst
attracted his attention, wore a grave and almost affronted look.
"'Tis the Wildairs cronies," Roxholm heard him say to his Lordship of
Dunstanwolde. "I hunt but seldom, purely through disgust of their
unseemliness."
"Wildairs!" exclaimed my Lord Dunstanwolde.
"Ay," answered Twemlow, turning his horse slightly and averting his
eyes; "and there cometh my reputable kinsman, Sir Jeoffry, even as we
speak."
Roxholm turned to look with some stir of feeling in his breast, since
this was the man who had so early roused in him an emotion of anger and
rebellion. Across the field came pounding a great black horse, a fine
big-boned brute; on him rode a tall, heavy man who must once have been
of the handsomest, since even yet, in spite of years, bloated face, and
careless attire, he retained a sort of dissolute beauty. He was of huge
frame and had black eyes, a red mouth, and wore his own thick and
curling though grizzled black hair.
He rode with a dare-devil grace, and his cronies greeted him with a
shout.
"He has the look of it," thought Roxholm, remembering the old stories;
but the next instant he gave a start. Across the field beyond, another
rider followed galloping, and at this moment came over the high hedge
like a swallow, and, making the leap, gave forth a laughing shout.
Roxholm sat and stared at the creature. 'Twas indeed a youthful figure,
brilliant and curious to behold in this field of slovenly clad
sportsmen. 'Twas a boy of twelve or thereabouts riding a splendid young
devil of a hunter, with a skin like black satin and a lovely, dangerous
eye. The lad was in scarlet, and no youngster of the Court was more
finely clad or fitted, and not one had Roxholm ever set eyes upon whose
youthful body and limbs were as splendid in line and symmetry; in
truth, the beauty and fire of him were things to make a man lose his
breath. He rode as if he had been born upon his horse's back and had
never sat elsewhere from his first hour, his flowing-black hair was
almost too rich and long for a boy, he had a haughty mouth for a child,
though it was a crimson bow and pouting, his complexion matched it, and
his black eyes, which were extraordinary big and flashing, had the
devil in them.
"_Pardi!_" the young Marquess cried between his teeth. "What does such
a young one in such company?" Never had he beheld a thing which moved
him with such strange suddenness of emotion. He could not have
explained the reason of his feeling, which was an actual excitement,
and caused him to turn in his saddle to watch the boy's every movement
as he galloped forward to join the reprobate group.
As they had greeted Sir Jeoffry with a shout of welcome, so they
greeted the young newcomer, but in his reception there was more
enthusiasm and laughter, as if there were some special cause for gayety
in the mere sight of him.
When he drew up in their midst their voices broke forth into a tumult
of noisy, frolicsome greeting, to which the lad gave back impudent,
laughing answer. In a moment's time he was the centre figure of
interest among them, and seemed to dominate them all as if he had been
some young potentate instead of a mere handsome lad of twelve.
"If they were a band of barbarians and he their boy chief they could
pay him no more court nor joy in him more," Roxholm reflected. "Is it
his beauty or--what means it?"
He could not withdraw his eyes from the boy, who sat his fretting
hunter among them, sometimes scarcely able to restrain the animal's
fiery temper or keep him from lashing out his heels orbiting at the
beasts nearest to him. Now he trotted from one man to the other as the
group scattered somewhat; now he sat half turned back, his hand on his
steed's hind quarters, flinging words and laughter to the outside man.
"Thou'lt have to use scissors again on thy periwig, ecod!" one man
cried, banteringly.
"Damme, yes," the youngster rapped out, and he caught a rich lock of
his hair and drew it forward to look at it, frowning. "What's a man to
do when his hair grows like a girl's?"
The answer was greeted with a shout of laughter, and the boy burst
forth with a laugh likewise, showing two rows of ivory teeth. Somehow
there was an imperial deviltry about him, an impudent wild spirit which
had plainly made him conqueror, favourite, and plaything of the whole
disreputable crew.
Men were not fastidious talkers in those times; the cleanest mouthed of
them giving themselves plenty of license when they were in spirits.
Roxholm had heard broad talk enough at the University, where the young
gentlemen indulged in conversation no more restrained than was that of
their elders and betters; he had heard the jokes and profanity of both
camp and Court since he had left Oxford, and had learned that
squeamishness was far from being the fashion. But never had he heard
such oath-sprinkled talk or such open obscenity of joking as fell upon
his ears this morning in but a brief space. Hearing it in spite of
himself, his blood grew hot and his horse began to paw the earth, he,
in his irritation, having unknowingly fretted its mouth. And then one
of the company, an elderly sportsman with a watery eye, began a story.
"Good God!" Roxholm broke forth to the man nearest to him, one not of
the party, but evidently one who found it diverting; "good God! Can
they not restrain themselves before a child? Let them be decent for his
mere youth's sake! The lad is not thirteen."
The man started and stared at him a moment with open mouth, and then
burst into a loud guffaw of laughter.
"The lad!" he cried, roaring and slapping his thigh in his mirth. "'Tis
no lad. Didst take it for one? Lord! 'tis Jeoff Wildair's youngest
wench. 'Tis Clo--'tis Clo, man. All the county knows the vixen!"
And at that very instant the hounds sprang forth, giving tongue, and
the field sprang forward with them, and all was wild excitement: cries
of "Tally ho!" ringing, horses plunging, red coats seeming to fly
through the air; and my lord Marquess went with the field, his cheek
hot, his heart suddenly thumping in his breast with a sense of he knew
not what, as his eye, following a slender, scarlet-coated figure, saw
it lift its horse for a huge leap over a five-barred gate, take it like
a bird, and lead the whole scurrying, galloping multitude.
"Yes," said my Lord Dunstanwolde, as they rode homeward slowly in the
evening gray, "'tis the girl infant who was found struggling and
shrieking beneath the dead body of her mother, and till to-day I never
saw her. Good Heavens! the beauty of the creature--the childish
deviltry and fire!"
Each turned and looked into the eyes of the other with a question in
his thought, and each man's was the same, though one had lived beyond
sixty years and one but twenty-four. A female creature of such beauty,
of such temper, bred in such manner, among such companions, by such
parents--what fate could be before her? Roxholm averted his eyes.
"Tossed to the wolves," he said; "tossed to the pack--to harry and to
slaver over! God's mercy!"
As they rode he heard the story, Lord Twemlow having related such
incidents as he naturally knew to my Lord Dunstanwolde. 'Twas a bitter
history to Twemlow, whose kinsman the late Lady Wildairs had been, and
who was a discreetly sober and God-fearing gentleman, to whom irregular
habits and the reckless squandering of fortune were loathly things. And
this was the substance of the relation, which was so far out of the
common as to be almost monstrous: His disgust at the birth of this
ninth girl infant had so inflamed Sir Jeoffry that he had refused even
to behold it and had left it to its fate as if it had been an ill-made,
blind puppy. But two of her Ladyship's other children had survived
their infancy, and of these two their father knew nothing whatever but
that they had been called Barbara and Anne, that they showed no promise
of beauty, and lived their bare little lives in the Hall's otherwise
deserted west wing, having as their sole companion and instructress a
certain Mistress Margery Wimpole--a timorous poor relation, who had
taken the position in the wretched household to save herself from
starvation, and because she was fitted for no other; her education
being so poor and her understanding so limited, that no reputable or
careful family would have accepted her as governess or companion. Her
two poor little charges learned the few things she could teach them,
and their meek spiritedness gave her but little trouble. Their dead
mother's suffering and their father's rough contempt on the rare
occasions when he had chanced to behold them had chastened them to
humbleness from their babyhood. There was none who wanted them, none
who served or noticed them, and there was no circumstance which could
not restrain them, no person who was not their ruler if 'twas his will.
"But the ninth one was not like them," said my Lord. "The blood of the
fierce devils who were the chiefs of her house centuries ago woke in
her veins at her birth. 'Tis strange indeed, Gerald, how such things
break forth--or slumber--in a race. Should you trace Wildairs, as you
trace Mertoun through the past, her nature would be made clear enough.
They have been splendid devils, some of them--devils who fought,
shrieking with ferocious laughter in the face of certain horrible
death; devils whose spirit no torture of rack or flame could conquer;
beings who could endure in silence horrors almost supernatural; who
could bear more, revel more, suffer more, defy more than any other
human thing."
"And this child is one of them!" said Roxholm.
He said but little as they rode onward and he listened. There was
within him a certain distaste for what seemed to him the unnatural
tumult of his feelings. A girl child of twelve rollicking in boys'
clothes was not a pleasing picture, but in one sense a tragic one, and
certainly not such as should set a man's heart beating and his cheek to
flame when he heard stories of her fantastic life and character. On
this occasion he did not understand himself; if he had been a
sanctimonious youngster he would have reproved his own seeming levity,
but he was not so, and frankly felt himself restless and ill at ease.
The name given to her had been Clorinda, and from her babyhood she had
been as tempestuous as her sisters were mild. None could manage her.
Her baby training left wholly to neglected and loose-living servants,
she had spent her first years in kitchens, garrets, and stables. The
stables and the stable-boys, the kennels and their keepers, were loved
better than aught else. She learned to lisp the language of grooms' and
helpers, she cursed and swore as they did, she heard their songs and
stories, and was as familiar with profanity and obscene language as
other children are with nursery rhymes. Until she was five years old
Sir Jeoffry never set eyes upon her. Then a strange chance threw her in
his way and sealed her fate.
Straying through the house, having escaped from her woman, the child
had reached the big hall, and sate upon the floor playing with a
powder-flask she had found. 'Twas Sir Jeoffry's, and he, coming upon
her, not knowing her for his own offspring (not that such a knowledge
would have calmed his passion), he sprang upon her with curses and
soundly trounced her. Either of her sisters Anne or Barbara would have
been convulsed with terror, but this one was only roused to a fury as
much greater for her size than Sir Jeoffry was bigger than herself. She
flew at him and poured forth oaths, she shrieked at him and beat his
legs with his own crop, which she caught up from the floor where it lay
within reach, she tore at him with tooth and nail, and with such
strength and infant fearlessness as arrested him in his frenzy and
caused him to burst forth laughing as if he had gone mad.
"From that hour she was a doomed creature," my Lord ended. "What else
can a man call the poor beauteous, helpless thing. She is his companion
and playmate, and the toy and jest of his comrades. It is the scandal
of the county. At twelve she is as near a woman as other girls of
fourteen. At fifteen--!" and he stopped speaking.
"'Twould have been safer for her to have died beneath her dead mother's
body," said Roxholm, almost fiercely.
"Yes, safer!" said his Lordship. "Yet what a woman!--What a
woman!"--and here he broke off speech again.
_CHAPTER VIII_
_In which my Lady Betty Tantillion writes of a Scandal_
Scarce two years later, King William riding in the park at Hampton
Court was thrown from his horse--the animal stumbling over a
mole-hill--and his collar-bone broken. A mole-hill seems but a small
heap of earth to send a King to moulder beneath a heap of earth
himself, but the fall proved fatal to a system which had long been
weakening, and a few days later his Majesty died, commending my Lord
Marlborough to the Princess Anne as the guide and counsellor on whose
wisdom and power she might most safely rely. Three days after the
accession his Lordship was made Captain-General of the English army,
and intrusted with power over all warlike matters both at home and
abroad. 'Twas a moment of tremendous import--the Alliance shaken by
King William's death, Holland panic-stricken lest England should
withdraw her protection, King Louis boasting that "henceforth there
were no Pyrenees," Whigs and Tories uncertain whether or not to sheath
weapons in England, small sovereigns and great ones ready to spring at
each other's throats on the Continent. Boldness was demanded, and such
executive ability as only a brilliantly daring mind could supply.
Without hesitation all power was given into the hands of the man who
seemed able to command the Fates themselves. My Lord Marlborough could
soothe the fretted vanity of a petty German Prince, he could confront
with composure the stupid rancour of those who could not comprehend
him, in the most wooden of heavy Dutchmen he could awaken a slow
understanding, the most testy royal temper he knew how to appease, and,
through all, wear an air of dignity and grace, sometimes even of
sweetness.
"What matter the means if a man gains his end," he said. "He can afford
to appear worsted and poor spirited, if through all he sees that which
he aims at placing itself within his reach."
"The King of Prussia," said Dunstanwolde as they talked of the hero
once, "has given more trouble than any of the allies. He is ever ready
to contest a point, or to imagine some slight to his dignity and rank.
It has been almost impossible to manage him. How think you my Lord
Marlborough won him over? By doing that which no other man--diplomat or
soldier--would have had the wit to see the implied flattery of, or the
composure to perform without loss of dignity. At a state banquet his
testy Majesty dropped his napkin and required another. No attendant
was immediately at hand. My Lord Marlborough--the most talked of man in
Europe, and some say, at this juncture, as powerful as half a dozen
Kings--rose and handed his Majesty the piece of linen as simply as if
it were but becoming that he should serve as lackey a royalty so
important--and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who
seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with
comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest
general so serves him, the little potentate feels his importance
properly valued."
"But if one who knows his Lordship had looked straight in his eyes,"
said Roxholm, "he could have seen the irony within them--held like a
spark of light. I have seen it."
When my Lord Marlborough went to the Hague to take command of the Dutch
and English forces, and to draw the German power within the
confederacy, he took with him more than one young officer notable for
his rank and brilliant place in the world, it having become at this
period the fashion to go to the wars in the hope that a young
Marlborough might lurk beneath any smart brocade and pair of fine
shoulders. Among others, his Lordship was attended on his triumphal way
by the already much remarked young Marquess of Roxholm, and it was
realized that this fortunate young man went not quite as others did,
but as one on whom the chief had fixed his attention, and for whom he
had a liking.
In truth, he had marked in him certain powers and qualities, which were
both agreeable to his tastes and promised usefulness. He had not
employed his own powers and charms, physical and mental, from his
fifteenth year upward, without having learned the actual weight and
measure of their potency, as a man knows the weight and size of a thing
he can put into scales and measure with a yardstick. He remembered well
hours, when the fact that he was of a beauteous shape and height, and
gazed at others with a superb appealing eye, had made that difference
which lies between failure and success; he had never forgot one of the
occasions upon which the power of keeping silence under provocation or
temptation, the ability to control each feature and compel it to calm
sweetness, had served him as well as a regiment of soldiers might have
served him. Each such experience he had retained mentally for future
reference. Roxholm possessed this power to restrain himself, and to
keep silent, reflecting, and judging meanwhile, and was taller than he,
of greater grace, and unconscious state of bearing; his beauty of
countenance had but increased as he grew to manhood.
"I was the handsomest lad at Court in the year '65," his Grace of
Marlborough said once (he had been made Duke by this time). "The year
you were born I was the handsomest man in the army, they used to
say--but I was no such beauty and giant as you, Marquess. The gods were
_en veine_ when they planned you."
"When I was younger," said Roxholm, "it angered me to hear my looks
praised so much; I was boy enough to feel I must be unmanly. But
now--'tis but as it should be, that a man should have straight limbs
and a great body, and a clean-cut countenance. It should be nature--not
a thing to be remarked; it should be mere nature--and the other an
unnatural thing. 'Tis cruel that either man or woman should be weak or
uncomely. All should be as perfect parts of the great universe as are
the mountains and the sun."
"'Tis not so yet," remarked my Lord Marlborough, with his inscrutable
smile. "'Tis not so yet."
"Not yet," said Roxholm. "But let each creature live to make it so--men
that they may be clean and joyous and strong; women that they may be
mates for them. They should be as strong as we, and have as great
courage."
His Lordship smiled again. They were at the Hague at this time and in
his quarters, where he was pleased occasionally to receive the young
officer with a gracious familiarity. For reasons of his own, he wished
to know him well and understand the strengths and weaknesses of his
character. Therefore he led him into talk, and was pleased to find that
he frequently said things worth hearing, though they were often new and
somewhat daring things to be said by one of his age at this period,
when 'twas not the custom for a man to think for himself, but either to
follow the licentious follies of his fellows or accept without question
such statements as his Chaplain made concerning a somewhat unreasoning
Deity, His inflexible laws, and man's duty towards Him. That a handsome
youth, for example, should, in a serious voice and with a thoughtful
face, announce that beauty should be but nature, and ugliness regarded
as a disease, instead of humbly submitted to as the will of God, was,
indeed, a startling heresy and might have been regarded as impious,
even though so gravely said. Therefore it was my Lord Marlborough
smiled.
"I spoke to you of marriage once before," he remarked. "You bring it
back to me. Do you care for women?" bluntly.
Roxholm met his eye with his own straight, cool gaze.
"Yes, my Lord," he answered with some grimness, and said no more.