be a joyous man indeed."
Together they conversed on this one subject until their journey was
over. When they had passed through the hall and stood at length in the
light of the apartment in which it was their custom to sit, Osmonde
beheld in my lord's face the freshness and glow he had marked on his
arrival, increased tenfold, and now he well understood. In truth, the
renewal of his life was a moving thing to see. He stood by the mantel,
his arm resting upon it, his forehead in his hand, for a little space
in silence and as if lost in thought.
"She is a goddess," he said, "and because she is so, can be humble. Had
you but seen her, Gerald, when she spoke. ''Tis not I who give,' she
saith. 'You are a great Earl, I am a poor beauty--a shrew--a hoyden. I
give naught but this!' and flung her fair arms apart with a great
lovely gesture and stood before me stately, her beauty glowing like the
sun."
He drew a deep sigh of tenderness and looked up with a faint start.
"'Tis not fair I should fatigue you with my ecstasy," he said. "You
look pale, Gerald. You are generous to listen with such patience."
"I need no patience," answered my lord Duke with noble warmth, "to aid
me to listen to the kinsman I have loved from childhood when he speaks
of his happiness with the fairest woman in the world. Having seen her
to-night, I do not wonder she is called so by her worshippers."
"The fairest and the noblest," said my Lord. "Great Heaven, how often
have I sate alone in this very room calling myself a madman in my
despair! And now 'tis past! Sure it cannot be true?"
"'Tis true, my dear Lord," said Osmonde, "for I beheld it."
"Had you been in my place," his lordship said with his grave, kindly
look, "you need not have wondered at your fortune. If you had lived in
Warwickshire instead of winning laurels in campaign you might have been
my rival if you would--and I a hopeless man--and she a Duchess. But you
two never met."
My lord Duke held out his hand and grasped his kinsman's with friendly
sympathy.
"Until to-night we never met," he said. "'Twas Fate ordained it so--and
I would not be your rival, for we have loved each other too long. I
must wait to find another lady, and she will be Countess of
Dunstanwolde."
He bore himself composedly until they had exchanged the final
courtesies and parted for the night, and having mounted the stairs had
passed through the long gallery which led him to his apartments. When
he opened the door it seemed to his fancy that the wax tapers burned
but dimly amid the shadows of the great room, and that the pictured
faces hanging on the walls looked white and gazed as if aghast.
The veins were swollen in his temples and throbbed hard, his blood
coursed hot and cold alternately, there were drops starting out upon
his brow. He had not known his passions were so tempestuous and that he
could be prey to such pangs of anguish and of rage. Hitherto he had
held himself in check, but now 'twas as if he had lost his hold on the
reins which controlled galloping steeds. The blood of men who had been
splendid savages centuries ago ran wild within him. His life for thirty
years had been noble and just and calm. Being endowed with all gifts by
Nature and his path made broad by Fortune, he had dealt in high honour
with all bestowed upon him. But now for this night he knew he was a
different man, and that his hour had come.
He stood in the centre of the chamber and tossed up his hands, laughing
a mad, low, harsh laugh.
"Not as Hugh de Mertoun came back," he said. "Good God! no, no!"
The rage of him, body and soul, made him sick and suffocated him.
"Could a man go mad in such case?" he cried. "I am not sane! I cannot
reason! I would not have believed it."
His arteries so throbbed that he tore open the lace at his throat and
flung back his head. "I cannot reason!" he said. "I know now how men
_kill_. And yet he is as sweet a soul as Heaven ever made." He paced
the great length of the chamber to and fro.
"'Tis not Nature," he said. "It cannot be borne--he to hold her to his
breast, and _I--I_ to stand aside. Her eyes--her lovely, melting,
woman's eyes!"
Men have been mad before for less of the same torment, and he whose
nature was fire, and whose imagination had the power to torture him by
picturing all he had lost and all another man had won, was only saved
because he knew his frenzy.
"To this place itself she will be brought," he thought. "In these rooms
she will move, wife and queen and mistress. He will so worship her that
she cannot but melt to him. At the mere thought of it my brain reels."
He knew that his thoughts were half delirium, his words half raving,
yet he could not control them, and thanked chance that his apartment
was near none other which was occupied, and that he could stride about
and stamp his foot upon the floor, and yet no sound be heard beyond the
massive walls and doors. Outside such walls, in the face of the world,
he must utter no word, show no sign by any quiver of a muscle; and
'twas the realisation of the silence he must keep, the poignard stabs
he must endure without movement, which at this hour drove him to
madness.
"This is but the beginning," he groaned. "Since I am his kinsman and we
have been friends, I am bound as a man upon the rack is bound while he
is torn limb from limb. I must see it all--there will be no escape. At
their marriage I must attend them. God save me--taking my fit place as
the chief of my house at the nuptials of a well beloved kinsman, I must
share in the rejoicings, and be taunted by his rapture and her eyes.
Nay, nay, she cannot gaze at him as she would have gazed at me--she
cannot! Yet how shall I endure!"
For hours he walked to and fro, the mere sense of restless movement
being an aid to his mood. Sometimes again he flung himself into a seat
and sat with hidden eyes. But he could not shut out the pictures his
fevered fancy painted for him. A man of strong imagination, and who is
possessed by a growing passion, cannot fail to depict to himself, and
live in, vivid dreams of that future of his hopes which is his chiefest
joy. So he had dreamed, sometimes almost with the wild fervour of a
boy, smiling while he did it, at his own pleasure in the mere detail
his fancy presented to him. In these day-dreams his wealth, the beauty
and dignity of his estates, the brilliant social atmosphere his rank
assured him, had gained a value he had never recognised before. He
remembered now, with torturing distinctness, the happy day when it had
first entered his mind, that those things which had been his daily
surroundings from his childhood would all be new pleasures to her, all
in strong contrast to the atmosphere of her past years. His heart
actually leapt at the thought of the smilingness of fortune which had
lavished upon him so much, that 'twould be rapture to him to lay at her
feet. He had remembered tenderly the stately beauty of his beloved
Camylott, the bosky dells at Marlowell Dane, the quaint dignity of the
Elizabethan manor at Paulyn Dorlocke, the soft hills near Mertounhurst,
where myriads of harebells grew and swayed in the summer breeze as it
swept them; and the clear lake in the park at Roxholm, where the deer
came to drink, and as a boy he had lain in his boat and rocked among
the lily-pads in the early morning, when the great white water-flowers
spread their wax cups broad and seemed to hold the gold of the sun. His
life had been so full of beauty and fair things; wheresoever his lot
had fallen at any time he had had fair days, fair nights, and earth's
loveliness to behold. And all he had loved and joyed in, he had known
she would love and joy in, too. What a chatelaine she would make, he
had thought; how the simple rustic folk would worship her! What a fit
setting for her beauty would seem the grand saloons of Osmonde House!
What a fit and queen-like wearer she would be for the marvellous jewels
which had crowned fair heads and clasped fair throats and arms for
centuries! There were diamonds all England had heard rumour of, and he
had even lost himself in a lover's fancy of an hour when he himself
would clasp a certain dazzling collar round the column of her throat,
and never yet had he given himself to the fancy but in his vision he
had laid his lips on the warm whiteness when 'twas done, and lost
himself in a passionate kiss--and she had turned and smiled a heavenly
answering bridal smile.
This he remembered now, clinching his hands until he drove the nails
into his palms.
"I have been madder than I thought," he said. "Yes, 'twas madness--but
'twas Nature, too! Good God!" his forehead dropping in his hand and he
panting. "I feel as if she had been a year my wife, and another man had
torn her from my breast. And yet she has not been mine an hour--nor
ever will be--and she is Dunstanwolde's, who, while I wake in torment,
dreams in bliss, as is his honest, heavenly right." Even to the torment
he had no claim, but in being torn by it seemed but robbing another
man. What a night of impotent rage it was, of unreasoning, hopeless
hatred of himself, of his fate, and even of the man who was his rival,
though at his worst he reviled his frenzy, which could be so base as to
rend unjustly a being without blame.
'Twas not himself who hated, but the madness in his blood which for
this space ran riot.
At dawn, when the first glimmer of light began to pale the skies, he
found himself sitting by the wide-thrown casement still in the attire
he had worn the night before. For the first time since he had been born
his splendid normal strength had failed him and he was heavy with
unnatural fatigue. He sate looking out until the pale tint had deepened
to primrose and the primrose into sunrise gold; birds wakened in the
trees' broad branches and twittered and flew forth; the sward and
flowers were drenched with summer dews, and as the sun changed the
drops to diamonds he gazed upon the lovely peace and breathed in the
fresh fragrance of the early morn with a deep sigh, knowing his frenzy
past but feeling that it had left him a changed man.
"Yes," he said, "I have been given too beauteous and smooth a life.
Till now Fate has denied me nothing, and I have gone on my way
unknowing it has been so, and fancying that if misfortune came I should
bear it better than another man. 'Twas but human vanity to believe in
powers which never had been tried. Self-command I have preached to
myself, calmness and courage; for years I have believed I possessed
them all and was Gerald Mertoun's master, and yet at the first blow I
spend hours of the night in madness and railing against Fate. But one
thing I can comfort myself with--that I wore a calm face and could
speak like a man--until I was alone. Thank God for that."
As he sate he laid his plans for the future, knowing that he must lay
out for himself such plans and be well aware of what he meant to do,
that he might at no time betray himself to his kinsman and by so doing
cast a shadow on his joy.
"Should he guess that it has been paid for by my despair," he said,
"'twould be so marred for his kind heart that I know not how he would
bear the thought. 'Twould be to him as if he had found himself the
rival of the son he loved. He has loved me, Heaven knows, and I have
loved him. Tis an affection which must last."
My Lord Dunstanwolde had slept peacefully and risen early. He was full
of the reflections natural to a man to whom happiness has come and the
whole tenor of whose future life must be changed in its domestic
aspect, whose very household must wear a brighter face, and whose
entire method of existence will wear new and more youthful form. He
walked forth upon his domain, glad of its beauty and the heavenly
brightness of the day which showed it fair. He had spent an hour out of
doors, and returning to the terrace fronting the house, where already
the peacocks had begun to walk daintily, spreading or trailing their
gorgeous iridescent plumes, he looked up at his kinsman's casement and
gave a start. My lord Duke sate there still in his gala apparel of
white and gold brocade, his breast striped by the broad blue ribbon of
the Garter, jewelled stars shining on his coat.
"Gerald," he called to him in alarm, "you are still dressed! Are you
ill, my dear boy!"
Osmonde rose to his feet with a quickness of movement which allayed his
momentary fear; he waved his hand with a greeting smile.
"'Tis nothing," he answered, "I was a little ailing, and after 'twas
past I fell asleep in my chair. The morning air has but just awaked
me."
_CHAPTER XIX_
"_Then you might have been one of those----_"
When the Earl and Countess of Dunstanwolde arrived in town and took up
their abode at Dunstanwolde House, which being already one of the
finest mansions, was made still more stately by its happy owner's
command, the world of fashion was filled with delighted furore. Those
who had heard of the Gloucestershire beauty by report were stirred to
open excitement, and such as had not already heard rumours of her were
speedily informed of all her past by those previously enlightened. The
young lady who had so high a spirit as to have at times awakened
somewhat of terror in those who were her adversaries; the young lady
who had made such a fine show in male attire, and of whom it had been
said that she could outleap, outfence, and outswear any man her size,
had made a fine match indeed, marrying an elderly nobleman and widower,
who for years had lived the life of a recluse, at last becoming
hopelessly enamoured of one who might well be his youngest child.
"What will she do with him?" said a flippant modish lady to his Grace
of Osmonde one morning. "How will she know how to bear herself like a
woman of quality?"
"Should you once behold her, madam," said his Grace, "you will know how
she would bear herself were she made Queen."
"Faith!" exclaimed the lady, "with what a grave, respectful air you say
it. I thought the young creature but a joke."
"She is no joke," Osmonde answered, with a faint, cold smile.
"'Tis plain enough 'tis true what is said--the men all lose their
hearts to her. We thought your Grace was adamant"--with simpering
roguishness.
"The last two years I have spent with the army in Flanders," said my
lord Duke, "and her Ladyship of Dunstanwolde is the wife of my
favourite kinsman."
'Twas this last fact which was the bitterest thing of all, and which
made his fate most hard to bear with patience. What he had dreaded had
proven itself true, and more. Had my Lord Dunstanwolde been a stranger
to him or a mere acquaintance he could have escaped all, or at least
the greater part, of what he now must endure. As the chief of his house
his share in the festivities attendant upon the nuptials had been
greater than that of any other man. As one who seemed through their
long affection to occupy almost the place of a son to the bridegroom,
it had been but natural that he should do him all affectionate service,
show the tenderest courtesy to his bride, and behold all it most
tortured him to see. His gifts had been the most magnificent, his words
of friendly gratulation the warmest. When they were for a few moments,
on the wedding-day, alone, his Lordship had spoken to him of the joy
which made him pale.
"Gerald," he said, "I could speak to none other of it. Your great heart
will understand. 'Tis almost too sacred for words. Shall I waken from a
dream? Surely, 'tis too heavenly sweet to last."
Would it last? his kinsman asked himself in secret, could it? Could
one, like her, and who had lived her life, feel an affection for a
consort so separated from her youth and bloom by years? She was so
young, and all the dazzling of the world was new. What beauteous,
high-spirited, country-bred creature of eighteen would not find its
dazzle blind her eyes so that she could scarce see aright? He asked
himself the questions with a pang. To expect that she should not even
swerve with the intoxication of it, was to expect that she should be
nigh superhuman, and yet if she should fail, and step down from the
high shrine in which his passion had placed her, this would be the
fiercest anguish of all.
"Were she mine," he cried, inwardly, "I could hold and guide her with
love's hand. We should be lost in love, and follies and Courts would
have no power. Love would be her shield and mine. Poor gentleman,"
remembering the tender worship in my Lord's kind face; "how can she
love him as _he_ loves _her_? But oh, she should--she _should_!"
If in the arrogance of her youth and power she could deal with him
lightly or unkindly, he knew that even his own passion could find no
pardon for her--yet if he had but once beheld her eyes answer her
lord's as a woman's eyes must answer those of him she loves, it would
have driven him mad. And so it came about that to see that she was
tender and noble he watched her, and to be sure that she was no more
than this he knew he watched her too, calling himself ignoble that
Nature so prompted him.
There was a thing she had said to him but a week after the marriage
which had sunk deep into his soul and given him comfort.
"From my lord I shall learn new virtues," she said, with a singular
smile, which somehow to his mind hid somewhat of pathos. "'New
virtues,' say I; all are new to me. At Wildairs we concerned ourselves
little with such matters." She lifted her eyes and let them rest upon
him with proud gravity. "He is the first good man," she said, "whom I
have ever known."
'Twas not as this man observed her life that the world looked on at it,
but in a different manner and with a different motive, and yet both the
world and his Grace of Osmonde beheld the same thing, which was that my
Lord Dunstanwolde's happiness was a thing which grew greater and deeper
as time passed, instead of failing him. When she went to Court and set
the town on fire with her beauty and her bearing, had her lord been a
man of youth and charm matching her own, the grace and sweetness of her
manner to him could not have made him a more envied man. The wit and
spirit with which she had ruled her father and his cronies stood her in
as good stead as ever in the great World of Fashion, as young beaux and
old ones who paid court to her might have told; but of her pungency of
speech and pride of bearing when she would punish or reprove, my lord
knew nothing, he but knew tones of her voice which were tender, looks
which were her loveliest, and most womanly, warm, and sweet.
They were so sweet at times that Osmonde turned his gaze away that he
might not see them, and when his Lordship, as was natural, would have
talked of her dearness and beauties, he used all his powers to gently
draw him from the subject without seeming to lack sympathy. But when a
man is the idolatrous slave of happy love and, being of mature years,
has few, nay, but one friend young enough to tell his joy to with the
feeling that he is within reach of the comprehension of it, 'tis
inevitable that to this man he will speak often of that which fills his
being.
His Lordship's revealings of himself and his tenderness were
involuntary things. There was no incident of his life of which one
being was not the central figure, no emotion which had not its birth in
her. He was not diffuse or fond to weakness, but full of faithful love
and noble carefulness.
"I would not weary her with my worship, Gerald," he said one day,
having come to Osmonde House to spend an hour in talk with him. "Let me
open my heart to you, which is sometimes too full."
On this morning he gave unconscious explanation of many an incident of
the past few years. He spoke of the time when he had found himself
wakening to this dream of a new life, yet had not dared to let his
thoughts dwell upon it. He had known suffering--remorse that he should
be faithless to the memory of his youth, in some hours almost horror of
himself, and yet had struggled and approached himself in vain. The
night of Lord Twemlow's first visit, when my lord Duke (then my lord
Marquis) had been at Dunstanwolde, the occasion upon which Twemlow had
so fretted at his fair kinswoman and told the story of the falling of
her hair in the hunting-field, he had been disturbed indeed, fearing
that his countenance would betray him.
"I was afraid, Gerald; afraid," he said, "thinking it unseemly that a
man of my years should be so shaken with love--while your strong youth
had gone unscathed. Did I not seem ill at ease?"
"I thought that your lordship disliked the subject," Osmonde answered,
remembering well. "Once I thought you pale."
"Yes, yes," said my lord. "I felt my colour change at the cruel picture
my Lord Twemlow painted--of her hunted helplessness if harm befell
her."
"She would not be helpless," said Osmonde. "Nothing would make her so."
Her lord looked up at him with brightened eye.
"True--true!" he said. "At times, Gerald, I think perhaps you know her
better than I. More than once your chance speech of her has shown so
clear a knowledge. 'Tis because your spirit is like to her own."
Osmonde arose and went to a cabinet, which he unlocked.
"I have hid here," he said, "somewhat which I must show you. It should
be yours--or hers--and has a story."
As his eyes fell upon that his kinsman brought forth his lordship
uttered an exclamation. 'Twas the picture of his lady, stolen before
her marriage by the drunken painter.
"It is herself," he exclaimed, "herself, though so roughly done."
My lord Duke stood a little apart out of the range of his vision and
related the history of the canvas. He had long planned that he would do
the thing, and therefore did it. All the plans he had made for his
future conduct he had carried out without flinching. There had been
hours when he had been like a man who held his hand in a brazier, but
he had shown no sign. The canvas had been his companion so long that to
send it from him would be almost as though he thrust forth herself
while she held her deep eyes fixed upon him. But he told the story of
the garret and the drunken painter, in well-chosen words.
"'Twas but like you, Gerald," my lord said with gratitude. "Few other
men would have shown such noble carefulness for a wild beauty they
scarce knew. I--will leave it with you."
"You--will leave it!" answered my lord Duke his pulse quickening. "I
did not hope for such generosity."
His lordship smiled affectionately. "Yes, 'tis generous," he returned.
"I would be so generous with no other man. Kneller paints her for me
now, full length, in her Court bravery and with all her diamonds
blazing on her. 'Twill be a splendid canvas. And lest you should think
me too ready to give this away, I will tell you that I feel the story
of the rascal painter would displease her. She hath too high a spirit
not to be fretted at the thought of being the unconscious tool of a
drunken vagabond."
"Yes, it will anger her," Osmonde said, and ended with a sudden
smiling. "Yet I could not keep hidden the beauties of my kinsman's
lady, and must tell him."
So the matter ended with friendly smiles and kindliness, and the
picture was laid back within the cabinet until such time as it should
be framed and hung.
"Surely you have learned to love it somewhat in your wanderings?" said
the older man with trusting nobleness, standing looking at it, his hand
on the other's arm. "You could not help it."
"No, I could not help it," answered Osmonde, and to himself he said,
"He will drive me mad, generous soul; he will drive me mad."
His one hope and effort was so to bear himself that the unhappy truth
should not be suspected, and so well he played his part that he made it
harder for himself to endure. It was not only that he had not betrayed
himself either in the past or present by word or deed, but that he had
been able to so control himself at worst that he had met his kinsman's
eye with a clear glance, and chosen such words of response and
sympathy, when circumstances so demanded of him, as were generous and
gracious and unconcerned.
"There has risen no faintest shadow in his mind," was his thought. "He
loves me, he trusts me, he believes I share his happiness. Heaven give
me strength."
But there was a time when it was scarce to be avoided that they should
be bidden as guests to Camylott, inasmuch as at this splendid and
renowned house my Lord of Dunstanwolde had spent some of his happiest
hours, and loved it dearly, never ceasing to speak of its stateliness
and beauty to his lady.