Gerald loves it with his whole soul. I think he loves it as well, and
almost in such manner as he will some day love her who is his Duchess.
Know you that he and I walked together in the noted Long Gallery, on
the day I told him the story of your birth?"
My lady turned with sudden involuntary movement and met my lord Duke's
eyes (curiously seldom their eyes met, as curiously seldom as if each
pair avoided the other). Some strange emotion was in her countenance
and rich colour mounted her cheek.
"How was that, my lord?" she asked. "'Twas a strange story, as I have
heard it--and a sad one."
"He was but fourteen," said Dunstanwolde, "yet its cruelty set his
youthful blood on fire. Never shall I forget how his eyes flashed and
he bit his boyish lip, crying out against the hardness of it. 'Is there
justice,' he said, 'that a human thing can be cast into the world and
so left alone?'"
"Your Grace spoke so," said her ladyship to Osmonde, "while you were
yet so young?" and the velvet of her eyes seemed to grow darker.
"It was a bitter thing," said Osmonde. "There was no justice in it."
"Nay, that there was not," my lady said, very low.
"'Twas ordained that you two should be kinsman and kinswoman," said
Dunstanwolde. "He was moved by stories of your house when he was yet a
child, and he was ever anxious to hear of your ladyship's first years,
and later, when I longed for a confidant, though he knew it not, I
talked to him often, feeling that he alone of all I knew could
understand you."
Her ladyship stood erect and still, her eyes downcast, as she slowly
stripped a flower of its petals one by one. My lord Duke watched her
until the last flame-coloured fragment fell, when she looked up and
gazed into his face with a strange, tragic searching.
"Then you have known me long, your Grace?" she said.
He bowed his head, not wishing that his voice should at that moment be
heard.
"Since your ladyship was born," said her lord, happy that these two he
loved so well should feel they were not strangers. "Together we both
saw you in the hunting-field--when you were but ten years old."
Her eyes were still upon his--he felt that his own gazed into strange
depths of her. The crimson had fallen away from her beauteous cheeks
and she faintly, faintly smiled--almost, he thought, as if she mocked
at somewhat, woefully.
"Then--then you might have been one of those," she said, slow and soft,
"who came to the birthnight feast and--and saw my life begin."
And she bent down as if she scarce knew what she did, and slowly
gathered up one by one the torn petals she had broken from her flower.
"Then you will ask us to come to visit you at Camylott, Gerald?" said
my lord later after they had talked further, he speaking of the
beauties of the place and the loveliness of the country about it.
"It will be my joy and honour to be your host," Osmonde answered.
"Since my parents' death I have not entertained guests, but had
already thought of doing so this year, and could have no better reason
for hospitality than my wish to place my house at your ladyship's
service," with a bow, "and make you free of it--as of every other roof
of mine."
_CHAPTER XX_
_At Camylott_
A month later the flag floated from Camylott Tower and the village was
all alive with rustic excitement, much ale being drunk at the Plough
Horse and much eager gossip going on between the women, who had been
running in and out of each other's cottages for three days to talk over
each item of news as it reached them. Since the new Duke had taken
possession of his inheritance there had been no rejoicing or company at
the Tower, all the entertaining rooms having been kept closed, and the
great house seeming grievously quiet even when his Grace came down to
spend a few weeks in it. To himself the silence had been a sorrowful
thing, but he had no desire to break it by filling the room with
guests, and had indeed resolved in private thought not to throw open
its doors until he brought to it a mistress. The lovely presence of the
last mistress it had known had been so brightly illuminating a thing,
filling its rooms and galleries and the very park and terraces and
gardens themselves with sunshine and joyousness. In those happy days no
apartment had seemed huge and empty, no space too great to warm and
light with homely pleasure. But this fair torch extinguished,
apartments large enough for royal banquets, labyrinths of corridors and
galleries leading to chambers enough to serve a garrison, seemed all
the more desolate for their size and splendour, and in them their owner
had suffered a sort of homesickness. 'Twas a strange thing to pass
through the beautiful familiar places now that they were all thrown
open and adorned for the coming guests, reflecting that the gala air
was worn for her who should, Fate willing, have made her first visit as
mistress, and realising that Fate had not been willing and that she
came but as a guest and Countess of Dunstanwolde. Oh, it was a bitter,
relentless thing; and why should it have been--for what wise purpose or
what cruel one? And with a maddening clutch about his heart he saw
again the tragic searching in her eyes when she had said, "Then you
have known me long, your Grace," and afterwards, so soft and strangely
slow, "Then you might have been one of those who came to my birthnight
feast, and saw my life begin."
He might have been, Heaven knew. Good God, why had he not? Why had he
gone back to Flanders? Now it seemed to his mind the folly of a madman,
and yet at the time he had felt his duty to his house commanded that he
should not give way to the rising tempest of his passion, but should
at least wait a space that time might prove that he could justly trust
the honour of his name and the fortune of his peoples into this wild,
lovely being's hands. Had he been free from all responsibilities, free
enough to feel that he risked no happiness but his own, and by his act
could wrong none other than himself, he would not have waited to see
what time wrought but have staked his future life upon this die. He had
denied himself and waited, and here he stood in the Long Gallery, and
'twas thrown open and adorned for the coming of my Lady Dunstanwolde.
"I meant an honest thing," he said, gazing out over his fair domain
through a dark mist, it seemed to him. "All my life I have meant
honestly. Why should a man's life go wrong because he himself would act
right?"
The flag fluttered and floated from the battlements of the tower, the
house was beautiful in its air of decorated order and stateliness,
glowing masses of flowers lighted every corner, and tall exotic plants
stood guard about; the faces of lord and lady, dame and knight, in the
pictures seemed to look downward with a waiting gaze. Outside, terraces
and parterres were wonders of late summer brilliancy of bloom, and the
sunshine glowed over all. On the high road from town at this hour the
cavalcades of approaching guests must ride in coach or chariot or on
horseback. When the equipage of the Earl and his Countess passed
through Camylott village, old Rowe would ring a welcoming peal. But my
lord Duke stood still at the window of the Long Gallery where he had
said his tender farewell to his beloved mother before she had left her
home. He was thinking of a grave thing and feeling that the violet eyes
rested upon him again in a soft passion of pity. The thing he thought
of was that which, when his eyes met my Lady Dunstanwolde's, made the
blood pulse through his veins; 'twas that he had known he should some
day see in some woman's eyes, and had told himself would be answer to
the question his being asked; 'twas that he had prayed God he might
see, ay, and had believed and sworn to himself he should see--in this
woman's when he came back to stand face to face with her as lover, if
she would. Well, he had come and seen it, and 'twas in the eyes and
soul of her who was to be his kinsman's wife. And never since he had
been man born had he beheld the faintest glimmering of its glow in any
woman's eyes, though they had been like pools of love or stars of
Heaven, never yet! Moreover, he knew well that he never should again
behold it in any hour to come. Before its fire his soul shook and his
body trembled; 'twas a thing which drew him with a power no human being
could explain the strength of or describe; had he been weak or evil,
and she evil, too, it would have dragged him to her side through crime
and hell; he could not have withstood it.
He saw again the sudden pallor of his mother's sweet face, the sudden
foreboding in her eyes.
"If you loved her 'twould drive you mad and make you forget what you
must be."
"Yes," he cried, putting his hand suddenly to his brow, feeling it
damp, "it has driven me mad, I think--mad. I am not the same man! The
torture is too great. I could--I could--nay! nay!" with half a shudder.
"Let me not forget, mother; let me not forget."
Through this visit he must be a gracious host; a score of other guests
would aid him by sharing his attentions; her ladyship, as new wedded
bride, would be the central figure of the company. Her lord's love for
him and unconsciousness of any suspicion of the truth would put him to
the test many a time, but he would keep his word to himself, the vow he
made to avoid nearness to her when 'twas to be done with any
graciousness, and her eyes he would not meet in more than passing gaze
if he could be master of his own.
"If I look straightly at her my own gaze will speak, and she, who is so
shrewd of wit and has seen such worship in men's faces, will read and
understand, and disdain me, or--disdain me not. God knows which would
be worse."
The visit over, he would visit other of his estates, engage himself
with friends to be their guests in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, at
their châteaux in France or Spain--everywhere. When he was not thus
absorbed he would give himself to a statesman's work at the settling of
great questions--the more involved and difficult the better; party
enmity would be good for him, the unravelling of webs of intrigue, the
baffling of cabals would keep his thoughts in action, and leave him no
time for dreams. Yes, to mark out his days thus clearly would help him
to stand steady upon his feet--in time might aid in deadening the
burning of the wound which would not close. Above all, to Warwickshire
he would not go--Dunstan's Wolde must see him no more, and Dunstanwolde
House in town he would gradually visit less and less often, until his
kinsman ceased to expect the old familiarity, believing his many duties
kept him away. In his happiness he would have but little time to miss
him seriously, perhaps even to remember that his presence had been once
so much less rare a thing.
"'Son,' he once loved to call me," he thought, with a sharp pang. "He
is an old man, 'tis true, but Heaven may give him a son of his own."
Even as the thought crossed his mind--as a flame of lightning crosses a
black sky--he heard old Rowe begin to ring his peal, and soon--or it
seemed soon to him--the first party of arrivals wound through the park,
now and then its colours gleaming through an opening in the trees.
There were mounted and safely armed servitors riding in attendance to
guard the big travelling-coach with its six strong, finely bred horses.
In this the Earl and his Countess sate, the lady a little pale, from
the fatigue of her journey, perhaps; following them came another
vehicle, substantial but less splendid than their own equipage, in it,
my lady's two Abigails and the gentleman of his lordship carrying the
iron jewel-box secreted in a special hiding-place beneath the seat, for
the baffling of highwaymen, if any such were bold enough to attack a
party so well attended by sturdy strength and shining arms. When she
had stepped forth across the threshold of her town house, attended by
subservient lacqueys bowing in line on either side, the Countess had
faintly smiled, and when they had entered their coach and the door been
closed upon them, she had turned this smile with a sweet archness upon
her lord.
"I smile, my Lord," she said, "to think what a great lady your goodness
has made of me, and how in these days I ride forth, and how in the
past, when I was but Clo Wildairs our old chariot lumbered like a house
on wheels, and its leather hung in flaps, and the farm horses pulled it
lurching from side to side, and old Bartlemy had grown too portly for
his livery and cursed when it split as he rolled in his seat." And her
laugh rang out as if it were a chime of bells, and her lord, laughing
with her--but for joy in her arch gayety--adored her.
"If any had told the county then that I would one day ride forth like
this," says she, "from Dunstanwolde House to pay visit to a Duke at
Camylott, who could have believed it? I would not myself. And 'tis you
who have given me all, my dear lord," laying her soft hand in his.
"You, Edward, and I am full of gratefulness."
What wonder that he was a happy man, he who had hoped for so little and
had found so much, since she did not think--as a slighter woman
might--that her youth and beauty paid for and outweighed his richest
gifts, but was heavenly kind and dutiful and tender, giving him of her
brightest humours and prettiest playfulness and gentlest womanly
thought, and receiving his offerings, not as her mere right, but as
signals of his generousness and tender love for her.
"Look, my lady!" he cried, as they drove up the avenue, "see what a
noble house it is; there is no other, in all England, of its size and
beauty. And Gerald waits to receive us with no Duchess at his side."
Her ladyship leaned forward to look, and gazed a moment in silence.
"There should be one," she cried, "to reign over such a place, and to
be happy in it."
The village saw gayety enough to turn its head in the two weeks that
followed. The flag floated from the tower every day, coaches rolled
past the village green laden with the county gentry who came to pay
their respects, gay cavalcades rode down the avenue and through the big
gates to gallop over the country with joyous laughter and talk; at the
Plough Horse, Mr. Mount, who had grown too old for service, but had
been pensioned and was more fond of fine stories than ever, added to
his importance as a gentleman of quality by describing the banquets at
the Towers, the richness of the food, the endless courses, the
massiveness of the gold plate, the rareness of the wines, and the
magnificence of the costumes of the guests.
"There are fine women there," he would say, removing his long
churchwarden's pipe from his mouth and waving it to give emphasis. "In
my day I have seen King Charles at Hampton Court--my Lady Castlemaine,
and Mistress Frances Stewart, who married a Duke and had her eyes put
out by smallpox and her face spoiled forever, poor soul; and De
Querouaille--the one you will call Carwell, which is not her name, but
a French one--and Mazarin--and all could see Nell Gwynne who could pay
for a seat in the play-house--so I may well be a judge of women--and
have lived gayly myself about the Court. But there is _one_--this
moment at Camylott Towers--there is one," describing a great circle
with his pipe as if he writ her name, "and may the devil seize and
smite me, if there was ever a lady with such a body and face on earth
before."
"Tis the tall one with the flashing black eyes," cried out Will Bush
the first night that he said it. "Me and my dame saw her through the
glass of the coach the day they drove over the green with all their
servants come to follow them from Lunnon town with pistols and hangers.
And what think you? says I to Joan, 'Ecod,' says I, 'there's the woman
for our own Duke, and matches him for size and beauty!' And says Joan,
staring: 'Lord a mercy, so she is and does!'"
"Village folk," said Mr. Mount with decorum, "are not the ones to take
upon themselves the liberty to say who will suit a Duke or who will not
suit him. But this I will say to you, that for once you were not so far
wrong; I having said the same thing myself. And his Grace is a single
man, whom they say loves no woman--and my lady has a husband near
seventy years of age. So things go!"
To her husband and lord, this lady seemed for all her powers, the
sweetest, frank creature in the world, and indeed in all matters which
concerned their united life she was candour itself. But there was a
thing in her mind--and 'twas in her thought every day--of which, though
she was within his sight almost every waking hour and her head lay upon
the pillow by his own, when she slept, he knew nothing. In gaining
grace of manner and bearing she had not lost her old quickness of sight
and alertness of mind; if any felt that her eyes were less keen, her
perception less acute, their error was a grave one. Beneath the majesty
of her Ladyship of Dunstanwolde lay all the fire and flaming spirit,
the swiftness to deduce and act, which had set Clo Wildairs apart from
lesser women. So it was that she had not been three hours at Camylott
before she knew that, with regard to herself, my Lord Duke of Osmonde
had made some strong resolve. No other than herself could have
detected, she knew, but on her first glance at his face she beheld it
written there. There are human beings, it is sure, whose natures are so
attuned that the thoughts, the griefs, the passions of each are
reflected upon the brain of the other; and 'twas thus with these two
whom life thrust so far apart from one another and yet forced so near.
At their first meeting on the threshold and in the midst of his warm
and gracious welcome she read what none other could read, and felt a
pang which yet was gladness. 'Twas better so--her strength should aid
his own, his greatness should support her. There was no question in
her mind, no argument, only a sudden recognition of the truth that up
to this time she had scarcely allowed herself mere thought in
connection with him, that--after the first hour--when thought had risen
she had thrust it back, forbidden its being, denied its presence.
"Thought will not help," she had said once, when, as she had sate
alone, she had felt hot, passionate tears start to her eyes, and she
had flung down her book, risen from her chair, and left the room ten
minutes later, riding forth from the court followed by her groom and
making for the country roads.
From the earliest days of her marriage she had herself avoided often
meeting his gaze. Glances would not help either, but would do harm and
betray--between those who are drawn together as by some force of
Nature, glances are mad things. They may begin calmly, they may swear
that they will so continue, but looks entangle one day and catch fire,
and, once alight, the flame cannot extinguish itself, even when it
would.
At Camylott each was gracious to the other, he gracious host, she
gracious guest and kinswoman, and those who looked on praised each one
and honoured, speaking often of their charm and courtly friendliness,
which indeed made them seem almost like brother and sister.
"They are a strange pair, those two fine creatures," said the old
Dowager Storms one day to her favourite crony, an elderly matron to
whom she could safely talk gossip. "But look at them." (They were with
the whole party at racquets in the court, and my lord Duke, having made
a splendid stroke, glowing and laughing bowed in response to a round of
applause.) "Is there a husband at Court--though he were not
thirty-five--who has reason to feel as safe as the old Earl
Dunstanwolde may--when his wife is guest to such a pretty fellow as
he?" nodding her head towards his Grace. "Never in my days saw I a
thing so out of nature! 'Tis as though they were not flesh and blood,
but--but of some stuff _we_ are not made of. 'Tis but human he should
make sly love to her, and her eyes wander after him despite herself
wheresoever he goes. All know how a woman's eyes will follow a man, and
his hers, but when these look at each other 'tis steadfast honesty that
looks out of them--and 'tis scarce to be understood."
_CHAPTER XXI_
_Upon the Moor_
Throughout the festivities which followed each other, day by day, my
Lady Dunstanwolde was queen of every revel. 'Twas she who led the
adventurous party who visited the gipsy encampment in the glen by
moonlight, and so won the heart of the old gipsy queen that she took
her to her tent and instructed her in the mysteries of spells and
potions. She walked among them as though she had been bred and born one
of their tribe, and came forth from one tent carrying in her arms a
brown infant, and showed it to the company, laughing like a girl and
making pretty sounds at the child when it stared at her with great
black eyes like her own, and shook at it all her rings, which she
stripped from her fingers, holding them in the closed palm of her hand
to make a rattle of. She stirred the stew hanging to cook over the
camp-fire, and begged a plate of it for each of the company, and ate
her own with such gay appetite as recalled to Osmonde the day he had
watched her on the moor; and the gipsy women stood by showing their
white teeth in their pleasure, and the gipsy men hung about with black
shining eyes fixed on her in stealthy admiration. She stood by the fire
in the light of the flame, having fantastically wound a scarlet scarf
about her head, and 'twas as though she might have been a gipsy queen
herself.
"And indeed," she said, as they rode home, "I have often enough thought
I should like to be one of them; and when I was a child, and was in a
passion, more than once planned to stain my face and run away to the
nearest camp I could come upon. Indeed, I think I was always a rebel
and loved wild, lawless ways."
When she said it my lord Duke, who was riding near, looked straight
before him, with face which had belied his laugh, had any seen it. He
was thinking that he could well imagine what a life a man might lead
with her, wandering about the thick green woods and white roads and
purple moors, tramping, side by side, in the sweet wind and bright
sunshine, and even the soft falling rain, each owner of a splendid body
which defied the weather and laughed at fatigue. To carry their simple
meal with them and stop to eat it joyously together under a hedge, to
lie under the shade of a broad branched tree to rest when the sun was
hot and hear the skylarks singing in the blue sky, and then at
night-time to sit at the door of a tent and watch the stars and tell
each other fanciful stories of them, while the red camp-fire danced
and glowed in the dark. Of no other woman could he have had such a wild
fancy--the others were too frail and delicate to be a man's comrades
out of doors; but she, who stood so straight and strong, who moved like
a young deer, who could swing along across the moors for a day without
fatigue, who had the eye of a hawk and a spirit so gay and untiring--a
man might range the world with her and know joy every moment. 'Twas
ordained that all she did or said should seem a call to him and should
bring visions to him, and there was many an hour when he thanked Heaven
she seemed so free from fault, since if she had had one he could not
have seen it, or if he had seen, might have loved it for her sake. But
she had none, it seemed, and despite all her strange past was surely
more noble than any other woman. She was so true--he told himself--so
loyal and so high in her honour of the old man who loved her. Had she
even been innocently light in her bearing among the men who flocked
about her, she might have given her lord many a bitter hour, and seemed
regardless of his dignity; but she could rule and restrain all,
howsoever near they were to the brink of folly. As for himself, Osmonde
thought, all his days he had striven to be master of himself, and felt
he must remain so or die; but he could have worshipped her upon his
knees in gratitude that no woman's vanity tempted her to use her
powers and loveliness to shake him in his hard won calmness and lure
him to her feet. He was but man and human, and vaunted himself upon
being no more.