across the moors the shortest road to Camylott, he felt suddenly that
his body was slightly trembling. He looked down at his hands and saw
they were unsteady, and a strange look--as of a man slowly awakening
from a dream--- came over his face. 'Twas this he felt--as if the last
two hours he had lived in a dream or had been another man than himself,
perhaps some bloody de Mertoun, who had for ages been dry, light dust.
The devils which had been awake in him had been devils so awful as he
well knew--not devils to possess and tear a man in the days of good
Queen Anne, but such as, in times long past, possessed those who slew,
and hacked, and tortured, and felt an enemy a prey to be put to _peine
forte et dure_. He drew his glove across his brow and found it damp.
This dream had taken hold upon him three hours before, when, standing
by chance near a group about John Oxon, he had heard him sneer as the
old Earl went by with his lady upon his arm. From that moment his brain
had held but one thought--this man should not go away until he had
taught him a thing. He would teach him, proving to him that there was a
power which he might well fear, and which would show no mercy, not even
the mercy mere death would show, but would hold over his vile soul a
greater awfulness. But he had danced his minuets and gavottes with my
Lady Dunstanwolde as well as with other fair ones, and the country
gentry had looked on and applauded him in their talk, telling each
other of his fortunes, and of how he had had a wound at Blenheim,
distinguished himself elsewhere, and set the world wondering because
after his home-coming he took no Duchess instead of choosing one, as
all expected. While they had so talked and he had danced he had made
his plan, and his devils had roused themselves and risen. And then he
had made his excuses to his party and watched the coaches drive away,
and had gone back to seek John Oxon. Now he rode back over the
moorland, and the day was awake and he was awake too. He rode swiftly
through the gorse and heather, scattering the dewdrops as he went,
thousands of dewdrops there were, myriads of pinkish purple
heath-bells, and some pure white ones, and yellow gorse blossoms which
smelt of honey, and birds that trilled, and such a morning fragrance in
the air as made his heart ache for vague longing. Ah, if all had been
but as it might have been, for there were the fair grey towers of
Camylott rising before him, and he was riding homeward--and, oh, God,
if he had been riding home to the arms of the most heaven-sweet woman
in the world--heaven-sweet not for her mere loveliness' sake, but
because she was to him as Eve had been to Adam--the one woman God had
made.
His heart swelled and throbbed with thinking it as he rode up the
avenue, and its throbbing almost stopped when he approached the garden
and saw a tall white figure standing alone by a fountain and looking
down. He sprang from his horse and turned it loose to reach its stable,
and went forward feeling as if a dream had begun again, but this time a
strange, sweet one.
Her long white draperies hung loose about her, so that she looked like
some statue; her hands were crossed on her chest and her chin fell upon
them, while her eyes looked straight before into the water. She was
pale as he had never seen her look before, her lip had a weary curve
and droop, and under her eyes were shadows. How young she was--what a
girl, for all her height and bearing! and though he knew her years so
well he had never thought on her youth before. Would God he might have
swept her to his breast, crushing her in his arms and plunging into her
eyes, for as she turned and raised them to him he saw tears.
"Your ladyship," he exclaimed.
"My lord has been ill," she said. "He asked for you, and when he fell
asleep I came to get the morning air, hoping your Grace might come. I
must go back to him. Come, your Grace, with me."
_CHAPTER XXII_
_My Lady Dunstanwolde is Widowed_
There was a lady came back to town with the Earl and Countess, on their
return from Dunstan's Wolde, to which place they had gone after his
lordship's illness at Camylott. This lady was one of the two elder
sisters of her ladyship of Dunstanwolde, and 'twas said was her
favourite and treated with great tenderness by her. She was but a thin,
humble little woman--Mistress Anne Wildairs--and singularly plain and
timid to be the sister and chosen companion of one so brilliant and
full of fire. She was a pale creature with dull-hued heavy hair and
soft dull eyes, which followed her ladyship adoringly whensoever it
chanced they were in a room together.
"How can two beings so unlike be of the same blood?" people said; "and
what finds my lady in her that she does not lose patience at her
plainness and poor spirit?"
What she discovered in her, none knew as she herself did; but my Lord
Dunstanwolde understood the tie between them, and so his Grace of
Osmonde did, since an occasion when he had had speech with her ladyship
upon the subject.
"I love her," she said, with one of her strange, almost passionate,
looks. "'Tis thought I can love neither man nor woman. But that I can
do, and without change; but I must love a thing not slight nor common.
Anne was the first creature to teach me what love meant. Before, I had
never seen it. She was afraid of me and often thought I mocked at her,
but I was learning from her pureness--from her pureness," she added,
saying the words the second time in a lower voice and almost as if to
herself. And then the splendid sweet of her smile shone forth. "She is
so white--good Anne," she said. "She is a saint and does not know I
pray to her to intercede for me, and that I live my life hoping that
some day I may make it as fair as hers. She does not know, and I dare
not tell her, for she would be made afraid."
To Mistress Anne she seemed in truth a goddess. Until taken under her
protection, the poor woman had lived a lonely life, starved of all
pleasures and affections. At first--'twas in the days when she had been
but Clo Wildairs--her ladyship had begun to befriend her through a mere
fanciful caprice, being half-amused, half-touched, to find her, by
sheer chance, one day, stolen into her chambers to gaze in delighted
terror at some ball finery spread upon a bed. To Mistress Clorinda the
frightened creature had seemed a strange thing in her shy fearfulness,
and she had for an hour amused herself and then suddenly been vaguely
moved, and from that time had been friends with her.
"Perhaps I had no heart then, or 'twas not awake," said her ladyship.
"I was but a fierce, selfish thing, like a young she-wolf. Is a young
she-wolf honest?" with a half-laugh. "I was that, and feared nothing. I
ate and drank and sang and hunted poor beasts for my pleasure, and was
as wild as one of them myself. When I look back!"--she flung up a white
hand in a strange gesture--"When I look back!"
"Look forward!" said my lord Duke; "'tis the nobler thing."
"Yes," she repeated after him, fixing her great eyes gravely on his
face and speaking slowly. "'Tis sure the nobler thing."
And then he heard from her how, day by day, poor Anne had revealed to
her things strange--unselfishness, humble and tender love, and sweet
patience.
"At first I but wondered," she said, "and sate and would stare at her
while she talked. And then I pitied her who was so meek, and then I was
angered at Fortune, which had been so careless of her, and being a
rebel I began to defy Fate for her and swear I would set its cruelty at
naught and make her happy. Always," with quick leap of light in her
eyes, "I have hated that they call Fate, and defied it. There is a
thing in me," her closed hand on her breast, "which will not be beat
down! It _will_ not. If 'tis evil, Heaven help me--for it will not. But
Anne"--and she smiled again, her face changing as it always did when
she spoke her sister's name--"Anne I began to love and could not help
it, and she was the first."
This gentlewoman my lord Duke did not for some time see but on rare
occasions, at a distance. In her ladyship's great gilt coach he saw her
once or twice--a small, shrinking figure seated by her sister's side,
the modest pale brown of her lutestring robe a curious contrast to my
lady's velvets and brocades; at the play-house he saw her seated in the
Countess' box, at which a score of glasses were levelled, her face
lighted with wonder and pleasure at the brighter moments of the
tragedy, her soft eyes full of tears when the curtain fell upon the
corpse-strewn stage. If Mistress Anne had known that so great a
gentleman looked at her gentle face and with an actual tenderness near
to love itself, she would indeed have been a startled woman, yet 'twas
with a feeling like to this his Grace regarded her, thinking of her in
time as a sort of guardian angel. The sweetest words he had ever heard
from the lips of her he worshipped with such sad and hopeless passion,
were words spoken of Mistress Anne; the sweetest strange smile he had
ever seen her wear was worn when she spoke of this meek sister; the
sweetest womanly deeds he knew of her performing were thoughtful
gentlenesses done for the cherishing and protection of Anne. "Anne was
the first creature to teach me what love meant," she said.
"I could have taught you, Heart," was his secret thought; "I could have
taught you, but since I might not, God's blessing on this dear soul
whose tender humbleness was your first lesson." Yet Mistress Anne he
did not encounter in person until the occurring of the sad event which
changed for him the whole face of the universe itself, and which took
place a year or more after his kinsman's marriage. The resolution his
Grace had made the day he waited at Camylott for his guests' arrival,
he had kept to the letter, and this often to the wonder of his lordship
of Dunstanwolde, who found cause for regret at the rareness of his
visits to his lady and himself under their own roof. Other visits my
lord Duke had made, as he had planned, passing from one great house to
another in Great Britain, or making stay at the estates of his friends
upon the continent of Europe. Sometimes he was in Scotland, sometimes
in Ireland or Wales, hunting, salmon-fishing, the chief guest at great
reunions, everywhere discussed and envied his freedom from any love
affair, entanglement, or connection with scandal, always a thing which
awakened curiosity.
"The world will have you married, Gerald," said Dunstanwolde. "And 'tis
no wonder! My lady and I would find you a Duchess. I think she looks
for one for you, but finds none to please her taste. She would have a
wondrous consort for you. You do wrong to roam so. You should come to
Dunstan's Wolde that she may have you beneath her eye."
But to Dunstan's Wolde he did not go--not even when, in obedience to
her lord's commands, the Countess herself besought him with gracious
hospitality.
To their town house he went but seldom, pleading as reason, affairs
which occupied his time, journeys which removed him to other parts. But
to refuse to cross the threshold was impossible; accordingly there were
times when he must make visits of ceremony, and on one such occasion he
found her ladyship alone, and she conveyed to him her husband's message
and his desire that she herself should press his invitation.
'Twas upon a winter afternoon, and when my lord Duke was announced he
entered the saloon, to behold my lady sitting by the firelight in a
carven gilded chair, her eyes upon the glowing coals, her thoughts
plainly preoccupied. On hearing his name she slightly started, and on
his entry rose and gave him her soft warm hand, which he did not kiss
because its velvet so wooed him that he feared to touch it with his
lips. 'Twas not a hand which he could touch with simple courtesy, but
must long to kiss passionately, and over and over again, and hold close
with whispered words.
"My lord has but just left me," she said. "He will be almost angry at
the chance which led him to go before your coming. The last hour of our
talk was all of your Grace;" and she sat upright against the high back
of her chair. And why was it that, while she sat so straight and still,
he felt that she held herself as one who needs support? "The last hour
of our talk was all of you," she said again, and oh, the velvet of her
eyes was asking him for some aid, some mercy; and his soul leaped in
anguish as he saw it. "He says I must beguile you to be less formal
with us. Before our marriage, he tells me, your Grace came often to
Dunstan's Wolde, and now you seem to desert us."
"No, no!" exclaimed my lord Duke, as if involuntarily, and rose from
his seat and stood looking down into the fire.
"I told him you would exclaim so!" said my lady, and her low-pitched
voice was a thing to make a man tremble. "I know your Grace loves
him--I think any heart must love him----"
My lord Duke turned and looked at her. Their eyes rested on each other
and spoke.
"I thank your Ladyship," he said, "that you so understood. I pray you
let him not think I could at any time feel less tender of his
goodness."
But what his whole being impelled him to, was to throw himself upon his
knees before her like a boy, to lay his face upon her little hands
which rested open upon her lap, and to cry to her that there were hours
when he could bear no more. And could it have been that if he had so
done she would have bent her dear head and wept--for her voice, when
she answered him, had surely tears in it.
"I will not let him think so," she said. "A heart as full of gentleness
and warmth as his must not be chilled. I will use all my power. Your
Grace has much to do about the Queen at this time of disturbance and
cabal. Her Grace of Marlborough's angers, the intrigues of Harley and
St. John, the quarrels of Mrs. Masham, make such a turmoil that you,
whom her Majesty loves, must be preoccupied." She laid a hand softly
upon her breast. "He will believe all that I say," she said. "His
kindness is so great to me."
"He loves you," said my lord Duke, his voice low and grave. "You are so
generous and noble a lady to him."
"He is so generous and noble a husband," my Lady Dunstanwolde
answered. "He thinks I need but ask a favour to find it granted. 'Twas
because he thinks so that he begged me to myself speak with you, to ask
you to come to Warwickshire next week when we go there. I--have asked
you."
"With most sweet graciousness," my lord Duke answered her. "That I
myself will tell him." And then he stepped to her side and lifted the
fair hand and kissed it very reverently, and without either speaking
another word he turned and went away.
"But I do no wrong," he groaned to himself as he walked in a private
room of his own house afterwards. "I do no wrong if I go not near
her--if I have no speech with her that is not formal courtesy--if I
only look on her when she does not know that I am near. And in seeing
her, in the mere beholding of her dear face, there is a poor comfort
which may hold a man from madness--as a prisoner shut in a dungeon to
perish of thirst, might save himself from death if he found somewhere
in the blackness a rare falling drop and could catch it as it fell."
So it befel that many a time he saw her when she was in nowise aware of
his nearness. All her incomings and outgoings he found a way to learn,
when she left town for the country, and when she returned, what fêtes
and assemblies she would attend, at what Court gathering she would
shine, at which places it would be possible that he might mingle with
the crowd and seem to be but where 'twas natural he should appear, if
his presence was observed. To behold her sweep by in her chariot, to
feel the heart leap which announced her coming, to catch a view of her
crimson cheek, a fleeting glance and bow as she passed by, was at least
to feel her in the same world with himself, to know that her pulse was
beating still, her deep eyes still alight, her voice still music, and
she a creature of love, though not for himself.
His Grace of Marlborough, returning to England after Malplaquet,
himself worn with the fierce strain of war, tossed on the changing
waves of public feeling, one hour the people's idol the next doubted
and reproached, was in such mood as made him keen of perception and of
feeling.
"Years mark changes in a man, my lord Duke," he said when first they
talked alone, "even before they line his face or pale his bloom of
health. Since we met you have seen some hours you had not seen when I
beheld you last. And yet"--with ironic bitterness--"you are not
battling with intrigues of Court and State, with the ingratitude of a
nation and the malice of ladies of the royal bedchamber. 'Tis only the
man who has won England's greatest victories for her who must contend
with such things as these."
"Mrs. Masham has no enmity against me," said Osmonde. "I have no power
she would take from me."
"And no wife she would displace about the throne," his Grace added. "The
world waits to behold your Duchess still?"
"'Tis I who wait," said Osmonde, gravely.
There was a pause, and while it lasted, Marlborough gazed at him with a
thought dawning in his eye.
"You have seen her," he said at last, in a low voice.
Osmonde remained silent. A moment before he had risen, and so stood.
The man who regarded him experienced at the moment a singular thing,
feeling that it was singular, and vaguely asking himself why. It was a
sudden new realisation of his physical perfection. His tall, great body
was so complete in grace and strength, each line and muscle of it so
fine a thing. In the workings of such a physical being there could be
no flaw. There was such beauty in his countenance, such strength and
faithful sweetness in his firm, full mouth, such pure, strong passion
in the deeps of his large, kind, human eye. The handsomest and the
tallest man in England he might be, but he was something more--a
complete noble human thing, to whom it surely seemed that nature should
be kind, since he had so honoured and done reverence to the gifts she
had bestowed upon him. 'Twas this his illustrious companion saw and was
moved by.
"You have seen her," he said, "but--since you wear that look which I
can read--something has come between. Had you two bared hearts to each
other for but one hour, as 'twas ordained you should, you would stand
before me so happy a man that none could pass you by and not turn to
behold again the glow of the flame of joy burning within your soul."
My Lord Duke of Osmonde drew a long, deep breath as he listened,
looking down upon the ground.
"Yes," he said, "'twould have been so."
But he spoke no further on the subject, nor did his Grace of
Marlborough, for suddenly there came to him a certain memory--which was
that he had heard that the beautiful wild creature who had set
Gloucestershire on fire had made a great marriage, her bridegroom being
the Earl of Dunstanwolde, who was the Duke of Osmonde's kinsman. And it
was she he himself had felt was born to mate with this man, and had
spoke of it in Flanders, finding my lord Duke had seen her at a
distance but had not encountered her in any company. And at last it
seemed that they had met, but not until she had given herself to
another.
That night as he drove homeward after an interview with the Queen at
Kensington his coach rolled through a street where was a great house
standing alone in a square garden. 'Twas a house well known for its
size and massive beauty, and he leaned forward to glance at it, for no
other reason than his remembrance that it was the home of his lordship
of Dunstanwolde, that fact, in connection with the incident of the
morning, wakening in him a vague interest.
"'Tis there she reigns Queen," he said, "with her old lord worshipping
at her feet as old lords will at the feet of young wives and beauties.
Poor gentleman--though she is kind to him, they say. But if 'twere the
other man--Good God!" As he uttered the exclamation he drew back within
the coach. 'Twas long past midnight and the lights of Dunstanwolde
House were extinguished, but in the dark on the opposite side of the
street there walked a tall figure wrapped in a long cloak.
"There is no other gentleman of such inches and so straight," his Grace
said. "Good Lord! how a man can suffer in such case, and how we are all
alike--schoolboys, scullions, or Dukes--and must writhe and yearn and
feel we are driven mad, and can find no help but only to follow and
look at her, yards away, or crush to one's lips a rag of ribband or a
flower, or pace the night away before her darkened house while she lies
asleep. He is the finest man-thing I have ever known--and yet there is
no other way for him--and he will walk there half the night, his throat
full of mad sobs, which he does not know for sobs, because he is not
woman but tortured man."
Many a night the same figure had walked there in the darkness. As his
great friend had said, there was no other way. His pain had grown no
less, but only more as the months passed by, for it was not the common
pain of a man like others. As he was taller, stronger, and had more
brain and heart than most, he had greater and keener pangs to do battle
with, and in the world he must at intervals be thrown across her path
and she across his, and as he had been haunted by talk and rumours of
her in the years before he was haunted now. 'Twas but natural all
should praise to him his kinsman's wife, sure that he would feel
pleasure when he heard her lauded.
Women, especially such as are great ladies, have not at their command,
if they hide pain in secret, even the refuges and poor comforts
possessed by men. They may not feed their hungry souls by gazing at a
distance upon the beloved object of their heavy thoughts; they cannot
pace the night through before a dwelling, looking up as they pass at
the darkened windows behind which sleeps--or wakes--the creature their
hearts cry to in their pain; tears leave traces; faces from which
smiles are absent, eyes from which light has fled, arouse query and
comment. My lord has a certain privacy and license to be dull or
gloomy, but my lady cannot well be either without explaining herself,
either by calling in a physician or wearing mourning, or allowing the
world to gain some hint of domestic trouble or misfortune.
Her ladyship of Dunstanwolde was surely a happy woman. Having known
neither gayety nor luxury in her girlhood, it seemed now that she could
give her lord no greater pleasure than to allow him to surround her
with both.
"She is more dazzling than they said," my Lord Marlborough thought,
watching her at the tragedy one night, "but she carries with her a
thought of something she would forget in the gayeties of the world."
The Duke of Osmonde sate in his own box that night and in the course of
the play went to his kinsman's for a few moments and paid his respects
to her ladyship, who received him graciously. This his Grace of
Marlborough beheld but did not mark her soft quick aside to him.
"May I ask your Grace's aid?" she said. "Look at my lord. His kindness
to me will not let him own that he is ailing. He will not remain at
home from these festivities because he knows I would remain with him. I
beg you persuade him that he is wrong and but makes me unhappy. Your
Grace will do this?"
"Your Ladyship may trust me," was his answer. 'Twas then that his Grace
of Marlborough saw him turn from her with a bow and go to sit by her
husband, who, 'twas indeed true, looked this night older than his
years, and was of an ivory pallor and worn. 'Twas at this time the Duke
marked that there stood upon the stage among the company of men of
fashion, idlers, and young fops sitting and lounging there, a man
attired in peach-coloured velvet, whose delicacy of bloom, combining
itself with the fair curls which fell upon his shoulders, made him look
pale and haggard. He was a young man and a handsome one, but had the
look of an ill liver, and as he stood in a careless, insolent attitude
he gazed steadfastly and with burning eyes at my Lady Dunstanwolde.
"There is somewhat devilish in his air," his Grace thought. "It is some
dissolute dandy in love with her and raging against her in his soul.
Heaven's grace! how she sits and gazes past his impudent face with her
great eyes as if he were not a living thing! She will not see him, and
he cannot force her to it, she so holds herself in hand."
My Lord Dunstanwolde gave heed to his kinsman's affectionate appeals
and counsellings with the look of a man tenderly moved.
"Has my dear lady asked you to talk with me?" he said. "'Tis but like
her generous observance of me. She has cautioned me most tenderly
herself, and begs me to leave the gayeties of town and go with her to
the country, where she says we will be happy together and she will be
my nurse."
"She will be happier with you at Dunstan's Wolde than she can be here,
where she is concerned about your health," returned Osmonde. "That I
can see plainly. The whirl of town festivities but torments her when
she sees you worn and pale."
"Yes," answered my lord with a very tender smile, "I am sure it is
true, and there is one lovely young lady with the world at her feet who
is heavenly sweet enough to give her youth and bloom willingly to the
care of an old husband."
"'Tis to the care of noble tenderness and love she is willing to give
herself," said Osmonde. "She is a Woman--a Woman!"
His lordship of Dunstanwolde turned and looked at him with a curious
interest.
"Gerald," he said, "'tis singular that you should speak so, though you
say so true a thing. Only a few weeks since he and I spoke of yourself,
and her own words of you were those: 'He is a Man--he is a Man. Nay, he
is as God meant Man should be.' And she added that if men were so,
there would be women great enough to be their mates and give the world
men like them. And now--you are both right, Gerald; both right.
Sometimes I think--" He broke his sentence with a sigh and began quick
again. "I will obey you," he said; "after the assembly we hold next
week we will go to Dunstan's Wolde. You will be with us that last
night, Gerald?"