I had sate here so long this very morning, and thought but of this
thing--and in the midst of my thinking came this woman, and she is from
Gloucestershire, and told me of her ladyship of Dunstanwolde--whose
chariot passed her on the road, and she goes up to town, and rode
radiant and blooming in rich colours, having cast her weeds aside and
looking, so the woman said, like a beauteous creature new born, with
all of life to come."
_CHAPTER XXIV_
_Sir John Oxon Returns Also_
When his Grace of Osmonde returned to town he found but one topic of
conversation, and this was of such interest and gave such a fillip to
gossip and chatter that fierce Sarah of Marlborough's encounters with
Mrs. Masham, and her quarrels with Majesty itself, were for the time
actually neglected. Her Grace had engaged in battles royal for so long
a time and with such activity that the Court and the world were a
little wearied and glad of something new. And here was a most promising
event which might be discussed from a thousand points and bring forth
pretty stories of past and present, as well as prophecies for the
future.
The incomparable and amazing Clorinda, Countess of Dunstanwolde, having
mourned in stately retirement for near upon two years (when Fashion
demanded but one) and having paid such reverence to her old lord's
memory as had seemed almost the building of a monument to his virtues,
had cast her sables, left the country, and come up to town to reign
again at Dunstanwolde House, which had been swept and garnished.
At Court, and in all the modish houses in the town, one may be sure
that the whole story of her strange life was told and retold with a
score of imaginative touches. Her baby oaths were resworn, her childish
wickedness depicted in colours which glowed, the biographies of the
rough old country rakes who had trained her were related, in free
translation, so to speak, over many a dish of chocolate and tea, and,
these points dwelt on, what more dramatic than to turn upon the
singular fortune of her marriage, the wealth, rank, and reputation of
the man who had so worshipped her, and the unexpectedness of her grace
and decorum the while she bore his name and shared his home with him.
"Had she come up to town," 'twas remarked, "and once having caught him,
played the vixen and the shrew, turned his house into a bear-garden,
behaved unseemly and put him to shame, none would have been
surprised----"
"Many would have been all agog with joy," interrupted old Lady Storms
who heard. "She was a woeful disappointment to many a gossiping woman,
and a lesson to all the shifty fools who sell themselves to a man, and
then trick him out of the price he paid."
At the clubs and coffee-houses the men talked also, though men's
tongues do not run as fast as the tongues of womenkind, and their
gossip was of a masculine order. She was a finer creature than ever,
and at present was the richest widow in England. A man might well lose
his wits over her mere self if she had naught but the gown she stood
in, but he who got her would get all else beside. The new beaux and the
old ones began to buy modish habits and periwigs, adorn themselves with
new sword and shoulder knots, and trifle over the latest essences
offered in the toyshops.
"Split me," said one splendid fop, "but since my lady returned to town
the price of ambergris and bergamot and civet powders has mounted
perilously, and the mercers are all too busy to be civil. When I sent
my rascal this morning to buy the Secret White Water to Curl
Gentlemen's Hair, on my life he was told he must wait for it, since new
must be made, as all had been engaged."
One man at that time appeared at the Cocoa Tree and Cribb's with a new
richness of garb and a look in his face such as had not been seen there
for many a day. In truth, for some time the coffee-houses had seen but
little of him, and it had sometimes been said that he had fled the
country to escape his creditors, or might be spending his days in a
debtors' prison, since he had no acquaintances who would care to look
for him if he were missing, and he might escape to France, or be seized
and rot in gaol, and none be the wiser.
But on a night even a little before the throwing open of Dunstanwolde
House, he sauntered into the Cocoa Tree and, having become so uncommon
a sight, several turned to glance at him.
"Egad!" one cried low to another, "'tis Jack Oxon back again. Where
doth the fellow spring from?"
His good looks it had been hard for him to lose, they being such as
were built of delicately cut features, graceful limbs, and an elegant
air, but during the past year he had often enough looked haggard,
vicious, and of desperate ill-humour, besides out of fashion, if not
out at elbow. Now his look had singularly changed, his face was
fresher, his eye brighter, though a little feverish in its light, and
he wore a new sword and velvet scabbard, a rich lace steenkirk, and a
modish coat of pale violet brocade.
"Where hast come from, Jack?" someone asked him. "Hast been into a
nunnery?"
"Yes," he answered, "doing penance for _thy_ sins, having none of my
own."
"Hast got credit again, I swear," cried the other, "or thou wouldst not
look such a dandy."
Sir John sate down and called for refreshment, which a drawer brought
him.
"A man can always get credit," he said, with an ironic, cool little
smile, "when his fortunes take a turn."
"Thou look'st as if thine had turned," said his companion. "Purple and
silver, and thy ringlets brushed and perfumed like a girl's. In thy
eyes 'tis a finer mop than any other man's French periwig, all know."
Sir John looked down on his shoulders at his soft rich fall of curls
and smiled. "'Tis finer," he said. "'Tis as fine for a man as a certain
beauty's, we once talked of, was for a woman."
The man who talked with him laughed with a half-sneer.
"Thou canst not forget her hair, Jack," he said, "but the lock stayed
on her head despite thee. Art going to try again, now she is a widow?"
Sir John looked up from his drink and in his eye there leapt up a devil
in spite of himself, for he had meant--if he could--to keep cool.
"Ay," he said, "by God! I am."
So when men talked of Lady Dunstanwolde 'twas not unnatural that, this
story having been bruited about, they should talk also of Jack Oxon,
and since they talked to each other, the rumour reached feminine ears
which pricked themselves at once; and when my lord Duke of Osmonde came
to town and went into the world, he also heard discussions of Sir John
Oxon. This gentleman who had been missing in the World of Fashion had
reappeared, and 'twas believed had returned to life to try his fortunes
with my Lady Dunstanwolde. And 'twas well known indeed that he had
been the first lover she had known, for the elderly country roisterers
had been naught but her playmates and her father's boon companions, and
Sir John had appeared at the famous birthnight supper and had been the
only town man who had ever seen her in her male attire, and was among
those who toasted her when she returned to the banquet-room splendid in
crimson and gold, and ordered all to fall upon their knees before her;
and Sir John--(he was then in the heyday of his beauty and success) had
gone mad with love for her, and 'twas believed that she had returned
his passion, as any girl well might, though she was so proud-spirited a
creature that none could be quite sure. At least 'twas known that he
had laid seige to her, and for near two years had gone often to the
country, and many had seen him gaze at her in company when his passion
was writ plain in his blue eyes. Suddenly, on his reappearance, since
he for some unknown reason wore the look of a man whose fortunes might
have changed for the better, there were those among whom the tide took
a turn somewhat in Sir John's favour. 'Twas even suggested by a woman
of fashion, given somewhat to romance, that perhaps the poor man had
fallen into evil ways and lost his good looks and elegant air through
thwarted passion, and 'twas thought indeed a touching thing that at
the first gleam of hope he should emerge from his retirement almost
restored in spirit and bloom.
The occupants of coaches and chairs passing before the entrance to
Osmonde House, which was a great mansion situated in a garden, noted
but a few days after the world had heard her ladyship was in town, that
his Grace had returned also. Lacqueys stood about the entrance, and the
Osmonde liveries were to be seen going to and fro in the streets, the
Duke was observed to drive to Kensington and back, and to St. James's,
and the House of Parliament, and it was known was given audience by the
Queen upon certain secret matters of State. 'Twas indeed at this time
that the changes were taking place in her Majesty's councils, and his
anticipation of a ministerial revolution had so emboldened King Louis
that he had ventured to make private overtures to the royal lady's
confidential advisers. "What we lose in Flanders we shall gain in
England," Marlborough's French enemy, Torcy, had said. And between the
anger and murmurs of a people who had turned to rend a whilom idol, the
intrigues and cabals about the throne, the quarrels of her counsellors
and ladies of the bedchamber, and the passionate reproaches of the
strongest and most indomitable of female tyrants, 'twas small wonder a
dull, ease-loving woman, feeling the burden of her royalty all too
wearisome and heavy, should turn with almost pathetic insistence to a
man young enough to be her son, attractive enough to be a favourite,
high enough to be impeccable, and of such clear wit, strength of will
and resource, and power over herself and others as seemed to set him
apart from all the rest of those who gathered to clamour about her. In
truth, my lord Duke's value to her Majesty was founded greatly upon
that which had drawn his Grace of Marlborough to him. He wanted
nothing; all the others had some desire to gain, secret or avowed. The
woman who had so longed for unregal feminine intimacy and companionship
that with her favoured attendant she had played a comedy of private
life--doffing her queenship and becoming simple "Mrs. Morley," that
with "Mrs. Freeman," at least, she might forget she was a Queen--was
not formed by Nature to combat with State intrigues and Court
duplicities.
"I am given no quiet," the poor august lady said. "These people who
resign places and demand them, who call meetings and create a ferment,
these ladies who vituperate and clamour like deserted lovers, weary me.
Your Grace's strength brings me repose!"
And as the father had felt sympathy and pity for poor Catherine of
Braganza in Charles the Second's day, so the son felt pity and gave
what support he could to poor bullied and bewildered Queen Anne. To
him her queenship was truly the lesser thing, her helpless, somewhat
heavy-witted and easily wavering womanhood the greater; and there were
those who feared him, for such reasons as few men in his position had
been feared before.
His Grace had been but two days in town, and on the morning of the
second had driven in his chariot to Kensington, and had an audience
upon the private matter already spoken of, and which would in all
likelihood take him, despite his wishes, across the Channel and to the
French Court. He might be commanded away at the very moment that he
wished most to be on English soil, in London itself. For howsoever
ardent and long hidden a man's passion, he must, if he be delicate of
feeling, await that moment which is ripe for him to speak. And this he
pondered on as his chariot rolled through the streets to bear him to
make his first visit to her ladyship of Dunstanwolde.
"I have known and dreamed of her almost all her life," he thought.
"'Tis but three years since she first saw my face; through the first
year she was another man's wife, and these two last his mourning widow.
When I behold her to day I shall learn much."
The sun was shining gloriously, and the skies' blue was deep and clear.
He looked up at it as he drove, and at the fresh early summer greenness
of the huge trees and thick grass in the parks and gardens; and when
his equipage rolled into the court at Dunstanwolde House, he smiled to
himself for pleasure to see its summer air, with the lacqueys making
excuse to stand outside in the brightness of the day, little Nero, the
black negro page, sunning himself and his pugs and spaniels on the plot
of grass at the front, and the windows thrown open to let in the soft
fresh air, while the balconies before the drawing-room casements were
filled with masses of flowers--yellow and white perfumed things, sent
up fresh from the country and set in such abundance that the balconies
bloomed like gardens. The last time he had beheld her, she had stood by
her husband's coffin, swathed in long, heavy draperies of black,
looking indeed a wonderful tragic figure; and this was in his mind as
he walked up the broad staircase, followed by the lacquey, who a moment
later flung open the door of the saloon and announced him with solemn
majesty.
But oh! the threshold once crossed, the great white-and-gold decorated
apartment seemed flooded with sunlight and filled with the fragrance of
daffodils and jonquils and narcissus blown in through the open window,
and Mistress Anne sate sweet and modest in a fine chair too big for her
dear small body; but my lord Duke scarce could see her, for 'twas as if
the sun shone in his eyes when there rose from a divan to meet him a
tall goddess clad in white and with a gold ribband confining her black
hair and her waist, and a branch of yellow-gold flowers in her hand,
which looked as if surely she might just have gathered them on the
terrace at Camylott.
And she had surely by some magic blotted out the past and had awakened
to a present which was like new birth and had no past, for she blushed
the loveliest, radiant blush--at sight of him--as if she had been no
great lady, but a sweet, glowing girl.
What he said to her, or she to him, he knew no more than any lesser man
in his case knows, for he was in a whirl of wonder and strange delight,
and could scarce hold in his mind that there was need that he should be
sober, this being his first visit to her since she had cast the weeds
worn for his own kinsman; and there sate Mistress Anne, changing from
red to white, as if through some great secret emotion--though he did
not know 'twas at the sight of them standing together, and the sudden
knowledge and joy it brought to her, which made her very heart to quake
in its tenderness. This--_this_ was the meaning of what she had so
wondered at in her sister's mood when they spoke of the poor girl left
widowed; this was how she had known, and if so, she must have learned
it in her own despite at first, in that year when she had been a bound
woman, when they two had been forced to encounter each other, holding
their hearts in gyves of iron and making no sound or sign. And the fond
creature remembered the night before the marriage when she had passed
through a strange scene in her sister's chamber, and one thing she had
said came back to her, and now she understood its meaning.
"I love my Lord Dunstanwolde as well as any other man, and better than
some, for I do not hate him. Since I have been promised to him"--('twas
this which now came back to her)--"I own I have for a moment met
another gentleman who _might_--'twas but for a moment, and 'tis done
with."
And this--this had been he, his Grace the Duke of Osmonde--who was so
fit a mate for her, and whose brown eyes so burned with love. And she
was a free woman, and there they stood at the open window among the
flowers--both bound, both free!
Free! She started a little as she said the word in thought again, for
she knew a strange wild story none other than herself knew, and her
sister, and Sir John Oxon, and they did not suspect she shared their
secret. And for long it had seemed to her only some cruel thing she had
dreamed; and the wild lovely creature she had watched and stood guard
over with such trembling, during a brief season of bewildered anguish,
seemed to be a sort of vision also. At the end of but a few short
months Mistress Anne had felt this lawless, beauteous being had left
the splendid body she had inhabited, and another woman's life had begun
in it--another woman's. That woman it was who had wed Lord Dunstanwolde
and made him a blissful man, that woman had been since then her sister,
her protector, and her friend; 'twas she who had watched by my lord's
body, and spoke low words to him, and stroked his poor dead hand; 'twas
she who laid his wife's hair and her child's, and the little picture,
on his still breast; 'twas she who sate by the widowed girl at
Wildairs--and 'twas she, she made glorious by love, who stood and
smiled among the window's daffodils.
His Grace and her ladyship were speaking softly together of the
flowers, the sunshine, of the town and Court, and of beauteous
Camylott. Once my lord Duke's laugh rang out, rich and gay like a
boy's, and there was such youth and fire and happiness in his handsome
face as made Mistress Anne remember that, as it was with my lady, so it
was with him--that because he was so tall and great and stately, the
world forgot that he was young.
"But," said the loving woman to herself with a sudden fear, "if _he_
should come back. Nothing so cruel could happen--'tis past and dead and
forgiven. He could not--could not come."
Then his Grace went away. My lady spoke sweet and gracious words to him
with the laughing, shining eyes of Clo Wildairs at her most wondrous
hours, and the Duke holding her hand, bent and kissed it with the
tender passion of a hungered man, as he had not dared to dream of
kissing it before.
And he went down the staircase a new man, carrying his head as though a
crown had been set on it and he would bear it nobly. In his tawny eye
there was a smile which was yet solemn though it was deeply bright.
"'Tis the beginning of the world," he said inwardly--"'And the evening
and the morning were the first day.' I have looked into her eyes."
And as his chariot rolled through the entrance into the street, another
passed it and entered the court, and through the glass he saw a fair
man, richly dressed, his bright curls falling soft and thick on his
shoulders; and he was arranging the ribband of his sword-knot, and
smiling a little with downcast eyes--and it was Sir John Oxon.
_CHAPTER XXV_
_To-morrow_
A dozen gentlemen at least, rumour said, would have rejoiced to end for
her, by marriage, this lovely lady's widowhood; but there were but two
she would be like to choose between, and they were different men
indeed. One of them, both her heart and her ambition might have caused
her to make choice of, for he combined such qualities and fortunes as
might well satisfy either.
"Zounds," said an old beau, "the woman who wants more than his Grace of
Osmonde can give--more money, greater estates, and more good looks--is
like to go unsatisfied to her grave. She will take him, I swear, and
smile like Heaven in doing it."
"But there was a time," said Sir Chris Crowell, who had come to town
(to behold his beauty's conquests, as he said) and who spent much time
at the coffee-houses and taverns telling garrulous stories of the days
of Mistress Clo of Wildairs, "there was a time when I would have took
oath that Jack Oxon was the man who would have her. Lord! he was the
first young handsome thing she had ever met--and she was but fifteen
for all her impudence, and had lived in the country and seen naught
but a handful of thick-bodied, red-faced old rakes. And Jack was but
four and twenty and fresh from town, and such a beauty that there was
not a dairymaid in the country but was heartbroke by him--though he may
have done no more than cast his devilish blue eye on her. For he had a
way, I tell ye, that lad, he had a way with him that would have took
any woman in. A dozen parts he could play and be a wonder in every one
of them--and languish, and swear oaths, and repent his sins, and plead
for mercy, with the look of an angel come to earth, and bring a woman
to tears--and sometimes ruin, God knows!--by his very playing of the
mountebank. Good Lord! to see those two at the birthnight supper was a
sight indeed. My Lady Oxon she would have been, if either of them had
been a fortune. But 'twas Fate--and which jilted the other, Heaven
knows. And if 'twas _he_ who played false, and he would come back now,
he will find he hath fire to deal with--for my Lady Dunstanwolde is a
fierce creature yet, though her eye shines so soft in these days." And
he puffed at his churchwarden's pipe and grinned.
Among the men who had been her playmates it would seem that perhaps
this old fellow had loved her best of all, or was more given to being
demonstrative, or more full of a good-natured vanity which exulted in
her as being a sort of personal property to vaunt and delight in; at
all events Sir Chris had come to the town, where he had scarce ever
visited in all his life before, and had in a way constituted himself a
sort of henchman or courtier of her ladyship of Dunstanwolde.
At her house he presented himself when first he came up--short, burly,
red-faced, and in his best Gloucestershire clothes, which indeed wore a
rustic air when borne to London on the broad back of a country
gentleman in a somewhat rusty periwig.
When he beheld the outside stateliness of the big town mansion he
grinned with delight; when he entered its doors and saw its interior
splendours he stared about him with wondering eyes; and when he was
passed from point to point by one tall and gorgeously liveried lacquey
after another, he grew sober. When her ladyship came to him shortly
after, she found him standing in the middle of the magnificent saloon
(which had been rearranged and adorned for her by her late lord in
white and golden panels, with decoration of garlands and Cupids and
brocades after the manner of the French King Louis Fourteenth), and he
was gazing about him still, and now scratching his periwig absently.
"Eh, my lady," he said, making an awkward bow, as if he did not know
how to bear himself in the midst of such surroundings; "thy father was
right."
Never had he seen a lady clad in such rich stuffs and looking so grand
and like a young queen, but her red lips parted, showing her white
teeth, and her big black eyes laughed as merrily as ever he had seen
them when Clo Wildairs tramped across the moors with him, her gun over
her fustian shoulder.
"Was he so?" she cried, taking hold of his thick hand and drawing him
towards a huge gold carved sofa. "Come and tell me then when he was
right, and if 'twas thou wast wrong."
Sir Chris stared at her a minute, straight at her arch, brilliant face,
and then his rueful countenance relaxed itself into a grin.
"Ecod!" he said, still staring hard, "thou art not changed a whit."
"Ecod!" she said, mocking him, "but I am that. Shame on thee to deny
it. I am a Countess and have been presented to the Queen, and cast my
ill manners, and can make a Court obeisance." And she made him a great,
splendid courtesy, sweeping down amidst her rich brocades as if she
would touch the floor.
"Lord! Lord!" he said, and scratched his periwig again. "Thou look'st
like a Queen thyself. But 'tis thy big eyes are not changed, Clo, that
laughed so through the black fringes of them, like stars shining
through a bush, and--and thy saucy way that makes a man want to seize
hold on thee and hug thee--though--though--" He checked himself,
half-frightened, but she laughed out at him with that bell-like
clearness he remembered so well, and which he swore afterwards would
put heart into any man.
"'Tis no harm that a man should want to seize hold upon a woman," she
said; "'tis a thing men are given to, poor souls, and 'tis said Heaven
made them so; but let him not be unwary and strive to do it. Town
gentlemen know 'tis not the fashion."
Sir Chris chuckled and looked about him again.
"Clo," he said, "since thou hast laughed at me and I am not frightened
by thy grandness, as I was at first, I will tell thee. I am going to
stay in Lunnon for awhile, and look on at thee, and be a town man
myself. Canst make a town man of me, Clo?"--grinning.