forehead fell heavily upon his palm and rested there. He felt as if a
blow had been struck upon his head, which he moved slowly, seeing
nothing before him.
"Both! Both!" he murmured. "The happiest woman in England! Have you
been happy? I would hear you say it again--before I leave you! Ay,"
shaking his head, "_that_ was why the poor fool said, 'Your Grace.'"
_CHAPTER XIV_
"_For all her youth--there is no other woman like her_"
They were brought back in state from Italy and borne to their beloved
Camylott, to sleep in peace there, side by side; and the bells in the
church-tower tolled long and mournfully, and in the five villages in
different shires there was not a heart which did not ache--nor one
which having faith did not know that somewhere their happy love lived
again and was more full of joy than it had been before. And my lord
Marquess was my lord Duke; but for many months none beheld him but Lord
Dunstanwolde, who came to Camylott with many great people to attend the
funeral obsequies; but when all the rest went away he stayed, and
through the first strange black weeks the two were nearly always
together, and often, through hours, walked in company from one end of
the Long Gallery to the other.
Over such periods of sorrow and bereavement it is well to pass gently,
since they must come to all, and have so come through all the ages
past, to every human being who has lived to maturity; and yet, at the
same time, there is none can speak truly for another than himself of
what the suffering has been or how it has been borne. None but the one
who bears it can know what hours of anguish the endurance cost and how
'twas reached.
My lord Duke looked pale in his mourning garments, and for many months
his countenance seemed sharper cut, his eyes looking deeper set and
larger, having faint shadows round them, but even Lord Dunstanwolde
knew but few of his inmost thoughts, and to others he never spoke of
his bereavement.
The taking possession of a great estate, and the first assuming of the
responsibilities attached to it, are no small events, and bring upon
the man left sole heir numberless new duties, therefore the new Duke
had many occupations to attend to--much counselling with his legal
advisers, many interviews with stewards, bailiffs, and holders of his
lands, visits to one estate after another, and converse with the
reverend gentlemen who were the spiritual directors of his people. Such
duties gave him less time for brooding than he would have had upon his
hands had he been a man more thoughtless of what his responsibilities
implied, and, consequently, more willing to permit them to devolve upon
those in his employ.
"A man should himself know all things pertaining to his belongings,"
the new Duke said to Lord Dunstanwolde, "and all those who serve him
should be aware that he knows, and that he will no more allow his
dependents to cheat or slight him than he himself will stoop to
carelessness or dishonesty in his dealings with themselves. To govern
well, a man must be ruler as well as friend."
And this he was to every man in his five villages, and those who had
worshipped him as their master's heir loved and revered him as their
master.
The great Marlborough wrote a friendly letter expressing his sympathy
for him in the calamity by which he had been overtaken, and also his
regret at the loss of his services and companionship, he having at once
resigned his commission in the army on the occurrence of his
bereavement, not only feeling desirous of remaining in England, but
finding it necessary to do so.
He spent part of the year upon his various estates in the country, but
quarrels of Whigs and Tories, changes in the Cabinet, and the bitter
feeling against the march into Germany and the struggles which promised
to result, gave him work to do in London and opportunities for the
development of those abilities his Grace of Marlborough had marked in
him. The air on all sides was heavy with storm--at Court the enemies of
Duchess Sarah (and they were many, whether they confessed themselves or
not) were prognosticating her fall from her high post of ruler of the
Queen of England, and her lord from his pinnacle of fame; there were
high Tories and Jacobites who did not fear to speak of the scaffold as
the last stage likely to be reached by the greatest military commander
the country had ever known in case his march into Germany ended in
disaster. There were indeed questions so momentous to be pondered over
that for long months my lord Duke had but little time for reflection
upon those incidents which had disturbed him by appearing to result
from the workings of persistent Fate.
But in a locked cabinet in his private closet there lay a picture which
sometimes, as it were, despite himself, he took from its hiding-place
to look upon; and when he found himself gazing at the wondrous face of
storm, with its great stag's eyes, he knew that the mere sight waked in
him the old tumult and that it did not lose its first strange,
unexplained power. And once sitting studying the picture, his thought
uttered itself aloud, his voice curiously breaking upon the stillness
of the room.
"It is," he said, "as if that first hour a deep chord of music had been
struck--a stormy minor chord--and each time I hear of her or see her
the same chord is struck loud again, and never varies by a note. I
swear there is a question in her eyes--and I--I could answer it. Yet,
for my soul's sake, I must keep away."
He knew honour itself demanded this of him, for the stories which came
to his ears were each wilder and more fantastic than the other, and
sometimes spoke strange evil of her--of her violent temper, of her
wicked tongue, of her outraging of all customs and decencies, but,
almost incredible as it seemed, none had yet proved that her high
spirit and proud heart had been subjugated and she made victim by a
conqueror. 'Twas this which was talked of at the clubs and
coffee-houses, where her name was known by those frequenting them.
"She would be like a hare let loose to be hounded to her death by every
pack in the county," my Lord Twemlow had said the night he talked of
her at Dunstan's Wolde, and every man agreed with him and waited for
the outburst of a scandal, and made bets as to when it would break
forth. There were those among the successful heart-breakers whose
vanity was piqued by the existence of so invincible and fantastical a
female creature, and though my lord Duke did not hear of it, their
worlds being far apart, the male beauty and rake, Sir John Oxon, was
among them, his fretted pride being so well known among his
fellow-beaux that 'twas their habit to make a joke of it and taunt him
with their witticisms.
"She is too big a devil," they said, "to care a fig for any man. She
would laugh in the face of the mightiest lady-killer in London, and
flout him as if he were a mercer's apprentice or a plough-boy. He does
not live who could trap her."
With most of them, the noble sport of chasing women was their most
exalted pastime. They were like hunters on the chase of birds, the man
who brought down the rarest creature of the wildest spirit and the
brightest plumage was the man who was a hero for a day at least.
The winter my lord Duke of Marlborough spent at Hanover, Berlin,
Vienna, and the Hague, engaged in negotiations and preparations for his
campaign, and at Vienna his Grace of Osmonde joined him that they might
talk face to face, even the great warrior's composure being shaken by
the disappointment of the year. But a fortnight before his leaving
England there came to Osmonde's ear rumours of a story from
Gloucestershire--'twas of a nature more fantastic than any other, and
far more unexpected. The story was imperfectly told and without detail,
and detail no man or woman seemed able to acquire, and baffled
curiosity ran wild, no story having so whetted it as this last.
"But we shall hear later," said one, "for 'tis said Jack Oxon was
there, being on a visit to his kinsman, Lord Eldershawe, who has been
the young lady's playmate from her childhood. Jack will come back
primed and will strut about for a week and boast of his fortunes
whether he can prove them or not."
But this Osmonde did not hear, having already left town for a few days
at Camylott, where my Lord Dunstanwolde accompanied him, and at the
week's end they went together to Warwickshire, and as on the occasion
of Osmonde's other visit, the first evening they were at the Wolde came
my Lord Twemlow, more excited than ever before, and he knew and told
the whole story.
"Things have gone from bad to worse," he said, "and at last I sent my
Chaplain as I had planned, and the man came back frightened out of his
wits, having reached the hall-door in a panic and there found himself
confronted by what he took to be a fine lad in hunting-dress making his
dog practise jumping tricks. And 'twas no lad, of course, but my fine
mistress in her boy's clothes, and she takes him to her father and
makes a saucy jest of the whole matter, tossing off a tankard of ale as
she sits on the table laughing at him and keeping Sir Jeoffry from
breaking his head in a rage. And in the end she sends an impudent
message to me--but says I am right, the shrewd young jade, and that she
will see that no disgrace befalls me. But for all that, the Chaplain
came home in a cold sweat, poor fool, and knows not what to say when he
speaks of her."
"And then?" said my Lord Dunstanwolde, somewhat anxiously, "is it
true--that which we heard rumoured in town----"
Lord Twemlow shook his head ruefully. "Heaven knows how it will end,"
he said, "or if it is but a new impudent prank--or what she will do
next--but the whole country is agog with the story. She bade her father
invite his rapscallion crew to her birthnight supper, and says 'tis
that they may see her in breeches for the last time, for she will wear
them no more, but begin to live a sober, godly, and virtuous life and
keep a Chaplain of her own. And on the twenty-fourth night of November,
she turning fifteen, they gather prepared for sport, and find her
attired like a young prince, in pink satin coat and lace ruffles and
diamond buckles and powder; more impudent and handsome than since she
was born. And when the drinking sets in heavily, upon her chair she
springs and stands laughing at the company of them.
"'Look your last on my fine shape,' she cries, 'for after to-night
you'll see no more of it. From this I am a fine lady,' and sings a song
and drinks a toast and breaks her glass on the floor and runs away."
At a certain period of my Lord Twemlow's first story, the night he told
it, both his Lordship of Dunstanwolde and the then Marquess of Roxholm
had made unconscious movements as they heard--this had happened when
had been described the falling of the mantle of black hair and the
little oaths with which Mistress Clorinda had sat on her hunter binding
it up--and at this point--at this other picture of the audacious beauty
and her broken glass each man almost started again--my Lord
Dunstanwolde indeed suddenly rising and taking a step across the
hearth.
"What a story," he said. "On my soul!"
"And 'tis not the end!" cried Lord Twemlow. "An hour she leaves them
talking of her, wondering what she plans to do, and then the door is
flung wide open and there she stands--splendid in crimson and silver
and jewels, with a diadem on her head, and servants holding lights
flaming above her."
My Lord Dunstanwolde turned about and looked at him as if the movement
was involuntary, and Lord Twemlow ended with a blow upon the table, his
elderly face aflame with appreciation of the dramatic thing he told.
"And makes them a great Court courtesy," he cried, his voice growing
almost shrill, "and calls on them all to fall upon their knees, by God!
'for so,' she says, 'from this night all men shall kneel--all men on
whom I deign to cast my eyes.'"
His Grace the Duke of Osmonde had listened silently, and throughout
with an impenetrable face, but at this moment he put up his hand and
slightly swept his brow with his fingers, as if he felt it damp.
"And now what does it mean?" my Lord Twemlow asked them, with an
anxious face. "And how will it end? A fortnight later she appeared at
church dressed like a lady of the Court, and attended by her sisters
and their governess, as if she had never appeared unattended in her
life, and prayed, good Lord, with such a majestic seriousness, and
listened to the sermon with such a face as made the parson forget his
text and fumble about for his notes in dire confusion. 'Twas thought
she might be going to play some trick to cause him to break down in the
midst of his discourse. But she did not, and sailed out of church as if
she had never missed a sermon since she was born."
"Perhaps," said my Lord Dunstanwolde, "perhaps her mind has changed and
'tis true she intends to live more gravely."
"Nay," answered Lord Twemlow, with a troubled countenance. "No such
good fortune. She doth not intend to keep it up--and how could she if
she would? A girl who hath lived as she hath, seeing no decent company
and with not a woman about her--though for that matter they say she
has the eye of a hawk and the wit of a dozen women, and the will to do
aught she chooses. But surely she could not keep it up!"
"Another woman could not," said Osmonde. "A woman who had not a clear,
strong brain and a wondrous determination--a woman who was weak or a
fool, or even as other women, could not. But surely--for all her
youth--there is no other woman like her."
_CHAPTER XV_
"_And 'twas the town rake and beauty--Sir John Oxon_"
That night he lay almost till 'twas morning, his eyes open upon the
darkness, since he could not sleep, finding it impossible to control
the thoughts which filled his mind. 'Twas a night whose still long
hours he never could forget in the years that followed, and 'twas not a
memory which was a happy one. He passed through many a curious phase of
thought, and more than once felt a pang of sorrow that he was now alone
as he had never thought of being, and that if suffering came, his
silent endurance of it must be a new thing. To be silent because one
does not wish to speak is a different matter from being silent because
one knows no creature dear and near enough to hear the story of one's
trouble. He realised now that the tender violet eyes which death had
closed would have wooed from his reserve many a thing it might have
been good to utter in words.
"She would always have understood," he thought. "She understood when
she cried out, 'It might have been!'"
He clasped his hands behind his head and lay so, smiling with mingled
bitterness and joy.
"It has begun!" he said. "I have heard them tell of it--of how one
woman's face came back again and again, of how one pair of eyes would
look into a man's and would not leave him, nor let him rest. It has
begun for me, too. For good or evil, it has begun."
Until this night he had told himself, and believed himself in the
telling, that he had been strangely haunted by thoughts of a strange
creature, because the circumstances by which she was encompassed were
so unusual and romantic as would have lingered in the mind of any man
whether old or young; and this he had been led to feel the more
confident of, since he was but one of a dozen men, and indeed each one
who knew of her existence appeared to regard her as the heroine of a
play, though so far it was to them but a rattling comedy. But from this
night he knew a different thing, and realised that he was face to face
with that mystery which all men do not encounter, some only meeting
with the mere fleeting image of it and never knowing what the reality
is--that mystery which may be man's damnation or his heaven, his
torture and heart-sickening, or his life and strength and bliss. What
his would bring to him, or bring him to, he knew not in the least, and
had at times a pang at thought of it, but sometimes such a surge of joy
as made him feel himself twice man instead of once.
When he went forth to ride the next day it was with a purpose clear in
his mind. Hitherto all he had seen or heard had been by chance, but if
he saw aught this morning 'twould be because he had hoped for and gone
to meet it.
"Before I cross the sea," was his thought, "I would see her once again
if chance so favors me. I would see if there seems any new thing in her
face, and if there is--if this is no wild jest and comedy, but means
that she has wakened to knowing herself a woman--I shall know when I
see her eyes and can carry my thought away with me. Then when I come
back--'twill be but a few months at the most--I will ride into
Gloucestershire the first week I am on English soil, and I will go to
her and ask that I may be her servant until she learns what manner of
man I am and can tell me to go--or stay."
If Sir Jeoffry and his crew had dreamed that such a thought worked in
the mind of one of the richest young noblemen in England--he a Duke and
handsome enough to set any woman's heart beating--as he rode through
the Gloucestershire lanes; if they had dreamed that such a thing was
within the bounds of human possibility, what a tumult would have been
roused among them; how they would have stared at each other, with
mouths open, uttering exclamatory oaths of wild amazement and ecstatic
triumph; how they would have exulted and drunk each other's healths
and their wild playmate's and her splendid fortunes. But, in truth,
that such a thing could be, would have seemed to them as likely as that
Queen Anne herself should cast a gracious eye upon a poor, fox-hunting,
country baronet who was one of her rustic subjects. The riot of
Wildairs and its company was a far cry indeed from Camylott and St.
James.
If my Lord Twemlow had guessed at the possibility of the strange thing,
and had found himself confronting a solution of his carking problem
which would flood its past with brilliance and illuminate all its
future with refulgent light, casting a glow of splendour even over his
own plain country gentleman's existence, how he would have started and
flushed with bewildered pride and rubbed his periwig awry in his
delighted excitement. If my Lord Dunstanwolde, sitting at that hour in
his silent library, a great book open before him, his forehead on his
slender veined hand, his thoughts wandering far away, if he had been
given by Fate an inkling of the truth which none knew or suspected, or
had reason for suspecting, perhaps he would have been the most startled
and struck dumb of all--the most troubled and amazed and shocked.
But of such a thing no one dreamed, as, indeed, why should they, and my
lord Duke of Osmonde rode over the border into Gloucestershire on his
fine beast, and, trotting-up the roads and down the lanes, wore a look
upon his face which showed him deep in thought.
'Twas a grey day, unbrightened by any sun. For almost a week there had
been rain, and the roads were heavy and the lanes muddy and full of
pools of miry water.
It was the intention of my lord Duke to let his horse carry him over
such roads and lands as would be in the near neighbourhood of Wildairs,
and while he recognised the similarity of his action to that of a
school-boy in love, who paces the street before his sweetheart's
dwelling, there was no smile at himself, either on his countenance or
in his mind.
"I may see her," he said quietly to himself. "I am more like to catch
sight of her on these roads than on any other, and, school-boy trick or
not, 'twill serve, and if she passes will have won me what I long
for--for it is _longing_, this. I know it now, and own it to myself."
And see her he did, but as is ever the case when a man has planned a
thing, it befell as he had not thought of its happening--and 'twas over
in a flash.
Down one of the wet lanes he had turned and was riding slowly when he
heard suddenly behind him a horse coming at such a sharp gallop that
he wheeled his own beast aside, the way being dangerously narrow, that
so tempestuous a rider might tear by in safety. And as he turned and
was half screened by the bushes, the rider swept past him splashing
through the mire and rain-pools so that the muddy water flew up beneath
the horses' hoofs--and 'twas the object of his thoughts herself!
She rode her tall young horse and was not clad as he had before beheld
her, but in rich riding-coat and hat and sweeping feather. No maid of
honour of her Majesty Queen Anne's rode attired more fittingly, none
certainly with such a seat and spirit, and none, Heaven knew, looked
like her.
These things he marked in a flash, not knowing he had marked them until
afterwards, so strong and moving was his sudden feeling that in her
nature at that moment there worked some strange new thing--some mood
new to herself and angering her. Her brows were bent, her eyes were set
and black with shadow. She bit her full lip as she rode, and her horse
went like the wind. For but a moment she was through the lane and
clattering on the road.
My lord Duke was breathing fast and bit his own lip, but the next
second broke into a laugh, turning his horse, whose bridle he had
caught up with a sudden gesture.
"Nay," he said, "a man cannot gallop after a lady without ceremony, and
command her to stand and deliver as if he were a highwayman. Yet I was
within an ace of doing it--within an ace. I have beheld her! I had best
ride back to Dunstan's Wolde."
And so he did, at a hot pace; but if he had chanced to turn on the top
of the hill he might have seen below him in a lane to the right that
two rode together, and one was she whom he had but just seen, her
companion a horseman who had leapt a gate in a field and joined her,
with flushed cheeks and wooing eyes, though she had frowned--and 'twas
the town rake and beauty, Sir John Oxon.
_CHAPTER XVI_
_A Rumour_
Through the passing of two years Osmonde's foot did not press English
soil again, and his existence during that period was more vivid and
changeful than it had ever been before. He saw Ramillies follow
Blenheim, great Marlborough attain the height of renown, and French
Louis's arrogant ambitions end in downfall and defeat. Life in both
camp and Court he knew at its highest tension, brilliant scenes he
beheld, strange ones, wicked ones, and lived a life so eventful and
full of motion and excitement that there were few men who through its
picturesque adventures would have been like to hold in mind one image
and one thought. Yet this he did, telling himself that 'twas the
thought which held him, not he the thought, it having been proven in
the past 'twas one which would not have released him from its dominion
even had he been inclined to withdraw himself from it. And this he was
not. Nature had so built him, that on the day when he had found himself
saying, "In two years' time I will come back to Gloucestershire and see
what time has wrought," he had reached a point from which there was no
retreating. Through many an hour in time past there had been turmoil in
his mind, but in a measure, at least, this ended the uncertainties, and
was no rash outburst but a resolve. It had not been made lightly, but
had been like a plant which had grown from a seed, long hidden in dark
earth and slowly fructifying till at last summer rain and warming sun
had caused it to burst forth from its prison, a thing promising full
fruit and flower. For long he had not even known the seed was in the
soil; he had felt its stirrings before he had believed in its
existence, and then one day the earth had broke and he had seen its
life and known what its strength might be. 'Twould be of wondrous
strength, he knew, and of wondrous beauty if no frost should blight nor
storm uproot it.