worn and sometimes abstracted. He was most kind and affectionate, and
there was in his manner a paternal tenderness and sympathy which the
young man was deeply touched by. If it had been possible for him to
have spoken to any living being of the singular mental disturbance he
had felt beginning in him of late, he could have confessed it to Lord
Dunstanwolde. But nature had created in him a tendency to silence and
reserve where his own feelings were concerned. As to most human beings
there is a consolation in pouring forth the innermost secret thoughts
at times, to him there was support in the knowledge that he held all
within his own breast and could reflect upon his problems in sacred
privacy. At this period, indeed, his feelings were such as he could
scarcely have described to any one. He was merely conscious of a sort
of unrest and of being far from comprehending his own emotions. They
were, indeed, scarcely definite enough to be called emotions, but only
seemed shadows hovering about him and causing him vaguely to wonder at
their existence. He was neither elated nor depressed, but found himself
confronting fancies he had not confronted before, and at times
regarding the course of events with something of the feeling of a
fatalist. There was a thing it seemed from which he could not escape,
yet in his deepest being was aware that he would have preferred to
avoid it. No man wishes to encounter unhappiness; he was conscious
remotely that this preference for avoidance arose from a vaguely
defined knowledge that in one direction there lay possibilities of
harsh suffering and pain.
"'Tis a strange thing," he said to himself, "how I seem forbid by Fate
to avoid the path of this strange wild creature. My Lord Marlborough
brings her up to me at his quarters, I leave them; and going to my own,
meet with Tantillion and his letter; I enter a coffee-house and hear
wild talk of her; I go to my own house and my mother paints a picture
of her which stirs my very depths; I walk in the streets of London and
am dragged aside to find myself gazing at her portrait; I leave it,
and meet my Lord Dunstanwolde, who prays me to go to Warwickshire,
where I shall be within a few miles of her and may encounter her any
hour. What will come next?"
That which came next was not unlike what had gone before. On their
journey to Warwickshire my Lord Dunstanwolde did not speak of the
lovely hoyden, whereat Roxholm somewhat wondered, as his lordship had
but lately left her neighbourhood and her doings seemed the county's
scandal; but 'tis true that on their journey he conversed little and
seemed full of thought.
"Do not think me dull, Gerald," he said; "'tis only that of late I have
begun to feel that I am an older man than I thought--perhaps too old to
be a fit companion for youth. An old fellow should not give way to
fancies. I--I have been giving way."
"Nay, nay, my dear lord," said Roxholm with warm feeling, "'tis to
fancy you _should_ give way--and 'tis such as you who are youths' best
companions, since you bring to those of fewer years ripeness which is
not age, maturity which is not decay. What man is there of twenty-eight
with whom I could ride to the country with such pleasure as I feel
to-day. You have lived too much alone of late. 'Tis well I came to
Warwickshire."
This same evening after they had reached their journey's end, on
descending to the saloon before dinner, his guest found my lord
standing before the portrait of his lost wife and gazing at it with a
strange tender intentness, his hands behind his back. He turned at
Roxholm's entrance, and there were shadows in his eyes.
"Such an one as she," he said, "would forgive a man--even if he seemed
false--and would understand. But none could be false to her--or
forget." And so speaking walked away, the portrait seeming to follow
him with its young flower-blue eyes.
'Twas the same evening Lord Twemlow rode over from his estate to spend
the night with them, and they were no sooner left with their wine than
he broke forth into confidence and fretting.
"I wanted to talk to thee, Edward," he said to Dunstanwolde (they had
been boys together). "I am so crossed these days that I can scarce bear
my own company. 'Tis that young jade again, and I would invent some
measures to be taken."
"Ay, 'tis she again, I swear," had passed through Roxholm's mind as he
looked at his wineglass, and that instant his lordship turned on him
almost testily to explain.
"I speak of a kinswoman who is the bane and disgrace of my life, as she
would be the bane and disgrace of any gentleman who was of her
family," he said. "A pretty fool and baby who was my cousin married a
reprobate, Jeof Wildairs, and this is his daughter and is a shameless
baggage. Egad! you must have seen her on the hunting-field when you
were with us--riding in coat and breeches and with her mane of hair
looped under her hat."
"I saw her," Roxholm answered--and it seemed to him that as he spoke he
beheld again the scarlet figure fly over the hedge on its young devil
of a horse--and felt his heart leap as the horse did.
My Lord Dunstanwolde looked grave and pushed his glass back and forth
on the mahogany. Glancing at him Roxholm thought his cheek had flushed,
as if he did not like the subject. But Twemlow went on, growing hotter.
"One day in the field," he said, "it broke from its loop--her hair--and
fell about her like a black mantle, streaming over her horse's back,
and a sight it was--and damn it, so was she; and every man in the field
shouting with pleasure or laughter. And she snatched her hat off with
an oath and sat there as straight as a dart, but in a fury and winding
her coils up, with her cheeks as scarlet as her coat and cursing like a
young vagabond stable-boy between her teeth."
Dunstanwolde moved suddenly and almost overset his glass, but Roxholm
took his up and drained it with an unmoved countenance.
But he could see her sitting in her black hair, and could see, too, the
splendid scarlet on her angry cheek, and her eyes flashing wickedly.
"Tis not decent," cried Lord Twemlow, striking the table with his hand.
"If the baggage were not what she is, it would be bad enough, but there
is not a woman in England built so. 'Tis well Charles Stuart is not on
the throne, or she would outdo any Castlemaine that ever ruled him. And
'tis well that Louis is in France and that Maintenon keeps him sober.
She might retrieve her house's fortunes and rule at Court a Duchess;
but what decent man will look at her with her Billingsgate and her
breeches? A nice lady she would make for a gentleman! Any modest
snub-nosed girl would be better. There is scarce a week passes she does
not set the country by the ears with some fury or frolic. One time 'tis
clouting a Chaplain till his nose bleeds; next 'tis frightening some
virtuous woman of fashion into hysteric swooning with her impudent
flaming tongue. The women hate her, and she pays them out as _she_ only
can. Lady Maddon had fits for an hour, after an encounter with her, in
their meeting by chance one day at a mercer's in the county town. She
has the wit of a young she-devil and the temper of a tigress, and is so
tall, and towers so that she frightens them out of their senses."
My lord Marquess looked at him across the table.
"She is young," he said, "she is beautiful. Is there no man who loves
her who can win her from her mad ways?"
"Man!" cried Twemlow, raging, "every scoundrel and bumpkin in the shire
is mad after her, but she knows none who are not as bad as she--and
they tell me she laughs her wild, scornful laugh at each of them and
looks at him--standing with her hands in her breeches pockets and her
legs astride, and mocks as if she were some goddess instead of a mere
strapping, handsome vixen. 'There is not one of ye,' she says, 'not one
among ye who is man and big enough!' Such impudence was never yet in
woman born! And the worst on't is, she is right--damn her!--she's
right."
"Yes," said my Lord Dunstanwolde with a clouded face. "'Tis a Man who
would win her--young and beautiful and strong--strong!"
"She needs a master!" cried Twemlow.
"Nay," said Roxholm--"a mate."
"Mate, good Lord!" cried Twemlow, again turning to stare at him. "A
master, say I."
"'Tis a barbaric fancy," said Roxholm thoughtfully as he turned the
stem of his glass, keeping his eyes fixed on it as though solving a
problem for himself. "A barbaric fancy that a woman needs a master. She
who is strong enough is her own conqueror--as a man should be master
of himself."
"No gentleman will take her if she does not mend her ways," Lord
Twemlow said, hotly; "and with all these country rakes about her she
will slip--as more decently bred girls have. All eyes are set upon her,
waiting for it. She has so drawn every gaze upon her, that her scandal
will set ablaze a light that will flame like a beacon-fire from a
hill-top. She will repent her bitterly enough then. None will spare
her. She will be like a hare let loose with every pack in the county
set upon her to hunt her to her death."
"Ah!"--the exclamation broke forth as if involuntarily from my Lord
Dunstanwolde, and Roxholm, turning with a start, saw that he had
suddenly grown pale.
"You are ill!" he cried. "You have lost colour!"
"No! No!" his lordship answered hurriedly, and faintly smiling. "'Tis
over! 'Twas but a stab of pain." And he refilled his glass with wine
and drank it.
"You live too studious a life, Ned," said Twemlow. "You have looked but
poorly this month or two."
"Do not let us speak of it," Lord Dunstanwolde answered, a little
hurried, as before. "What--what is it you think to do--or have you yet
no plan?"
"If she begins her fifteenth year as she has lived the one just past,"
said my lord, ruffling his periwig in his annoyance, "I shall send my
Chaplain to her father to give him warning. We are at such odds that if
I went myself we should come to blows, and I have no mind either to be
run through or to drive steel through his thick body. He would have her
marry, I would swear, and counts on her making as good a match as she
can make without going to Court, where he cannot afford to take her. I
shall lay command on Twichell to put the case clear before him--that no
gentleman will pay her honourable court while he so plays the fool as
to let her be the scandal of Gloucestershire--aye, and of
Worcestershire and Warwickshire to boot. That may stir his
liquor-sodden brain and set him thinking."
"How--will _she_ bear it?" asked his Lordship of Dunstanwolde. "Will
not her spirit take fire that she should be so reproved?"
"'Twill take fire enough, doubtless--and be damned to it!" replied my
Lord Twemlow, hotly. "She will rage and rap out oaths like a trooper,
but if Jeof Wildairs is the man he used to be, he will make her obey
him, if he chooses--or he will break her back."
"'Twould be an awful battle," said Roxholm, "between a will like hers
and such a brute as he, should her choice not be his."
"Ay, he is a great blackguard," commented Twemlow, coolly enough.
"England scarcely holds a bigger than Jeoffry Wildairs, and he has had
the building of her, body and soul."
'Twas not alone my Lord Twemlow who talked of her, but almost every
other person, so it seemed. Oftenest she was railed at and condemned,
the more especially if there were women in the party discussing her;
but 'twas to be marked that at such times as men were congregated and
talked of her faults and beauties, more was said of her charms than her
sins. They fell into relating their stories of her, even the soberest
of them, as if with a sense of humour in them, as indeed the point of
such anecdotes was generally humorous because of a certain piquant
boldness and lawless wild spirit shown in them. The story of the
Chaplain, Roxholm heard again, and many others as fantastic. The
retorts of this young female Ishmael upon her detractors and assailers,
on such rare occasions as she encountered them, were full of a wit so
biting and so keen that they were more than any dared to face when it
could be avoided. But she was so bold and ingenious, and so ready with
devices, that few could escape her. Her companionship with her father's
cronies had given her a curious knowledge of the adventures which took
place in three counties, at least, and her brain was so alert and her
memory so unusual that she was enabled to confront an enemy with such
adroitly arranged circumstantial evidence that more than one poor
beauty would far rather have faced a loaded cannon than found herself
within the immediate neighbourhood of the mocking and flashing eyes.
Her meeting in the mercer's shop with the fair "Willow Wand," Lady
Maddon, had been so full of spirited and pungent truth as to drive her
ladyship back to London after her two hours' fainting fits were over.
"Look you, my lady," she had ended, in her clear, rich girl-voice--and
to every word she uttered the mercer and his shopmen and boys had stood
listening behind their counters or hid round bales of goods, all
grinning as they listened--"I know all your secrets as I know the
secrets of other fine ladies. I know and laugh at them because they
show you to be such fools. They are but fine jokes to me. My morals do
not teach me to pray for you or blame you. Your tricks are your own
business, not another woman's, and I would have told none of them--not
one--if you had not lied about me. I am not a woman in two things: I
wear breeches and I know how to keep my mouth shut as well as if 'twere
padlocked; but you lied about me when you told the story of young
Lockett and me. 'Twas a damned lie, my lady. Had it been true none
would have known of it, and he must have been a finer man--with more
beauty and more wit. But as for the thing I tell you of Sir James--and
your meeting at----"
But here the fragile "Willow Wand" shrieked and fell into her first
fit, not having strength to support herself under the prospect of
hearing the story again with further and more special detail.
"I hear too much of her," Roxholm said to himself at last. "She is in
the air a man breathes, and seems to get into his veins and fly to his
brain." He suddenly laughed a short laugh, which even to himself had a
harsh sound. "'Tis time I should go back to Flanders," he said, "and
rejoin his Grace of Marlborough."
He had been striding over the hillsides all morning with his gun over
his shoulder, and had just before he spoke thrown himself down to rest.
He had gone out alone, his mood pleasing itself best with solitude, and
had lost his way and found himself crossing strange land. Being wearied
and somewhat out of sorts, he had flung himself down among the heather
and bracken, where he was well out of sight, and could lie and look up
at the gray of the sky, his hands clasped beneath his head.
"Yes, 'twill be as well that I go back to Flanders," he said again,
somewhat gloomily; and as he spoke he heard voices on the fall of the
hill below him, and glancing down through the gorse bushes, saw
approaching his resting-place four sportsmen who looked as fatigued as
himself.
He did not choose to move, thinking they would pass him, and as they
came nearer he recognised them one by one, having by this time been
long enough in the neighbourhood to have learned both names and faces.
They were of the Wildairs crew, and one man's face enlightened him as
to whose estate he trespassed upon, the owner of the countenance being
a certain Sir Christopher Crowell, a jolly drunken dog whose land he
had heard was somewhere in the neighbourhood. The other two men were a
Lord Eldershawe and Sir Jeoffry Wildairs himself, while the tall
stripling with them 'twas easy to give a name to, though she strode
over the heather with her gun on her shoulder and as full a game-bag as
if she had been a man--it being Mistress Clorinda, in corduroy and with
her looped hair threatening to break loose and hanging in disorder
about her glowing face. They were plainly in gay humour, though
wearied, and talked and laughed noisily as they came.
"We have tramped enough," cried Sir Jeoffry, "and bagged birds enough
for one morning. 'Tis time we rested our bones and put meat and drink
in our bellies."
He flung himself down upon the heather and the other men followed his
example. Mistress Clo, however, remaining standing, at first leaning
upon her gun.
My lord Marquess gazed down at her from his ledge and shut his teeth in
anger at the mounting of the blood to his cheek and its unseemly
burning there.
"I will stay where I am and look at her, at least," he said. "To be
looked at does no woman harm, and to look at one can harm no man--if he
be going to Flanders."
That which disturbed him most was his realising that he always thought
of her as a woman--and also that she _was_ a woman and no child. 'Twas
almost impossible to believe she was no older than was said, when one
beheld her height and youthful splendour of body and bearing. He knew
no woman of twenty as tall as she and shaped with such strength and
fineness. Her head was set so on her long throat and her eyes so looked
out from under her thick jet lashes, that in merely standing erect she
seemed to command and somewhat disdain; but when she laughed, her red
lips curling, her little strong teeth gleaming, and her eyes opening
and flashing mirth, she was the archest, most boldly joyous creature a
man had ever beheld. Her morning's work on the moors had made her look
like young Nature's self, her cheek was burnt rich-brown and crimson,
her disordered hair twined in big rough rings about her forehead, her
movements were as light, alert, and perfect as if she had been a deer
or any wild thing of the woods or fields. There was that about her that
made Roxholm feel that she must exhale in breath and hair and garments
the scent of gorse and heather and fern and summer rains.
As one man gazed at her so did the others, though they were his elders
and saw her often, while he was but twenty-eight and had beheld her but
once before.
Each man of the party took from his pouch a small but well-filled
packet of food and a flask, and fell to upon their contents
voraciously, talking as they worked their jaws and joking with Mistress
Clo. She also brought forth her own package, which held bread and meat,
and a big russet apple, upon she set with a fine appetite. 'Twas good
even to see her eat, she did it with such healthy pleasure, as a young
horse might have taken his oats or a young setter his supper after a
day in the cover.
"_Thou_'rt not tired, Clo!" cries Eldershawe, laughing, as she fell
upon her russet apple, biting into it crisply, and plainly with the
pleasure of a hungry child.
"Not I, good Lord!" she answered. "Could shoot over as many miles
again."
"When thou'rt fifty years old, wilt not be so limber and have such
muscles," said Sir Jeoffry.
"She hath not so long to wait," said the third man, grinning. "Wast not
fourteen in November, Clo? Wilt soon be a woman."
She bit deep into her fruit and stared out over the moors below.
"Am not going to be a woman," she said. "I hate them."
"They hate thee," said Eldershawe, with a chuckle, "and will hate thee
worse when thou wearest brocades and a farthingale."
"I have watched them," proceeded Mistress Clo. "They cannot keep their
mouths shut. If they have a secret they must tell it, whether 'tis
their own or another's. They clack, they tell lies, they cry and scream
out if they are hurt; but they will hurt anything which cannot hurt
them back. They run and weep to each other when they are in love and a
man slights them. They have no spirit and no decency." She said it with
such an earnest solemness that her companions shouted with laughter.
"She sits in her breeches--the unruliest baggage in Gloucestershire,"
cried Eldershawe, "and complains that fine ladies are not decent. What
would they say if they heard thee?"
"They may hear me when they will," said Mistress Clo, springing to her
feet with a light jump and sending the last of her apple whizzing into
space with a boyish throw. "'Tis I who am the modest woman--for all my
breeches and manners. I do not see indecency where there is none--for
the mere pleasure of ogling and bridling and calling attention to my
simpering. I should have seen no reason for airs and graces if I had
been among those on the bank when the fine young Marquess we heard of
saved the boat-load on the river and gave orders for the reviving of
the drowned man--in his wet skin. When 'tis spoke of--for 'tis a
favourite story--that little beast Tantillion hides her face behind her
fan and cries, 'Oh, Lud! thank Heaven I was not near. I should have
swooned away at the very sight.'"
She imitated the affected simper of a girl in such a manner that the
three sportsmen yelled with delight, and Roxholm himself gnawed his lip
to check an involuntary break into laughter.
"What didst say to her the day she bridled over it at Knepton, when the
young heir was there?" said Crowell, grinning. "I was told thou
disgraced thyself, Clo. What saidst thou?"
She was standing her full straight height among them and turned, with
her hands in her pockets and a grave face.
"My blood was hot," she answered. "I said, 'Damn thee for a lying
little fool!' _That_ thou wouldst not!"
And the men who lay on the ground roared till they rolled there, and
Roxholm gnawed his lip again, though not all from mirth, for there was
in his mind another thing. She did not laugh but stood in the same
position, but now looking out across the country spread below.
"I shall love no man who will scorn me," she continued in her mellow
voice; "but if I did I would be burned alive at the stake before I
would open my lips about it. And I would be burned alive at the stake
before I would play tricks with my word or break my promise when 'twas
given. Women think they can swear a thing and unswear it, to save or
please themselves. They give themselves to a man and then repent it and
are slippery. If I had given myself, and found I had been a fool, I
would keep faith. I would play no tricks--even though I learned to hate
him. No, I will not be a woman."
And she picked up her gun and strode away, and seeing this they rose
all three by one accord, as if she were their chieftain, and followed
her.
After they were gone my lord Marquess did not move for some time, but
lay still among the gorse and bracken at his full length, his hands
clasped behind his head. He gazed up into the grey sky with the look of
a man whose thoughts are deep and strange. But at last he rose, and
picking up his gun, shouldered it and strode forth on his way back to
Dunstan's Wolde, which was miles away.
"Yes," he said, speaking aloud to himself, "I will go back and follow
his Grace of Marlborough for a while on his campaign--but in two years'
time I will come back--to Gloucestershire--and see what time has
wrought."
But to Flanders he did not go, nor did my Lord Duke of Marlborough see
him for many a day, for Fate, which had so long steadily driven him,
had ordained it otherwise. When he reached Dunstan's Wolde, on crossing
the threshold, something in the faces of the lacqueys about the
entrance curiously attracted his attention. He thought each man he
glanced at or spoke to looked agitated and as if there were that on his
mind which so scattered his wits that he scarce knew how to choose his
speech. The younger ones stammered and, trying to avoid his eye, seemed
to step out of his view as hastily as possible. Those of maturer years
wore grave and sorrowful faces, and when, on passing through the great
hall upon which opened the library and drawing-rooms he encountered the
head butler, the man started back and actually turned pale.
"What has happened?" his lordship demanded, his wonder verging in
alarm. "Something has come about, surely. What is it, man? Tell me! My
Lord Dunstanwolde--"
The man was not one whose brain worked quickly. 'Twas plain he lost
his wits, being distressed for some reason beyond measure. He stepped
to the door of the library and threw it open.
"My--my lord awaits your--your lordship--Grace," and then in an
uncertain and low voice he announced him in the following strange
manner:
"His--lordship--his Grace--has returned, my lord," he said.
And Roxholm, suddenly turning cold and pale himself, and seized upon by
a horror of he knew not what, saw as in a dream my lord Dunstanwolde
advancing towards him, his face ashen with woe, tears on his cheeks,
his shaking hands outstretched as if in awful pity.
"My poor Gerald," he broke forth, one hand grasping his, one laid on
his shoulder. "My poor lad--God help me--that I am no more fit to break
to you this awful news."
"For God's sake!" cried Gerald, and sank into the chair my lord drew
him to, where he sat himself down beside him, the tears rolling down
his lined cheeks.
"Both--_both_ your parents!" he cried. "God give me words! Both--both!
At Pisa where they had stopped--a malignant fever. Your mother
first--and within twelve hours your father! Praise Heaven they were not
parted. Gerald, my boy!"