A LADY OF QUALITY
Being a most curious, hitherto unknown
history, as related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff
but not presented to the World of
Fashion through the pages of
The Tatler, and now for the
first time written down
by
Francis Hodgson Burnett
Were Nature just to Man from his first hour, he need not ask for
Mercy; then 'tis for us--the toys of Nature--to be both just and
merciful, for so only can the wrongs she does be undone.
CHAPTER I--The twenty-fourth day of November 1690
On a wintry morning at the close of 1690, the sun shining faint and
red through a light fog, there was a great noise of baying dogs,
loud voices, and trampling of horses in the court-yard at Wildairs
Hall; Sir Jeoffry being about to go forth a-hunting, and being a man
with a choleric temper and big, loud voice, and given to oaths and
noise even when in good-humour, his riding forth with his friends at
any time was attended with boisterous commotion. This morning it
was more so than usual, for he had guests with him who had come to
his house the day before, and had supped late and drunk deeply,
whereby the day found them, some with headaches, some with a nausea
at their stomachs, and some only in an evil humour which made them
curse at their horses when they were restless, and break into loud
surly laughs when a coarse joke was made. There were many such
jokes, Sir Jeoffry and his boon companions being renowned throughout
the county for the freedom of their conversation as for the scandal
of their pastimes, and this day 'twas well indeed, as their loud-
voiced, oath-besprinkled jests rang out on the cold air, that there
were no ladies about to ride forth with them.
'Twas Sir Jeoffry who was louder than any other, he having drunk
even deeper than the rest, and though 'twas his boast that he could
carry a bottle more than any man, and see all his guests under the
table, his last night's bout had left him in ill-humour and
boisterous. He strode about, casting oaths at the dogs and rating
the servants, and when he mounted his big black horse 'twas amid
such a clamour of voices and baying hounds that the place was like
Pandemonium.
He was a large man of florid good looks, black eyes, and full habit
of body, and had been much renowned in his youth for his great
strength, which was indeed almost that of a giant, and for his deeds
of prowess in the saddle and at the table when the bottle went
round. There were many evil stories of his roysterings, but it was
not his way to think of them as evil, but rather to his credit as a
man of the world, for, when he heard that they were gossiped about,
he greeted the information with a loud triumphant laugh. He had
married, when she was fifteen, the blooming toast of the county, for
whom his passion had long died out, having indeed departed with the
honeymoon, which had been of the briefest, and afterwards he having
borne her a grudge for what he chose to consider her undutiful
conduct. This grudge was founded on the fact that, though she had
presented him each year since their marriage with a child, after
nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was
bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his
offspring an ill turn done him.
He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle
creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since
her lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after
another sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left.
He scarce remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and
he was certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other
things in view, and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was
shortening a stirrup and being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by
accident cast his eye upward to a chamber window peering out of the
thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he saw an old woman draw back the
curtain and look down upon him as if searching for him with a
purpose.
He uttered an exclamation of anger.
"Damnation! Mother Posset again," he said. "What does she there,
old frump?"
The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes
more an unheard-of thing happened--among the servants in the hall,
the same old woman appeared making her way with a hurried
fretfulness, and she descended haltingly the stone steps and came to
his side where he sat on his black horse.
"The Devil!" he exclaimed--"what are you here for? 'Tis not time
for another wench upstairs, surely?"
"'Tis not time," answered the old nurse acidly, taking her tone from
his own. "But there is one, but an hour old, and my lady--"
"Be damned to her!" quoth Sir Jeoffry savagely. "A ninth one--and
'tis nine too many. 'Tis more than man can bear. She does it but
to spite me."
"'Tis ill treatment for a gentleman who wants an heir," the old
woman answered, as disrespectful of his spouse as he was, being a
time-serving crone, and knowing that it paid but poorly to coddle
women who did not as their husbands would have them in the way of
offspring. "It should have been a fine boy, but it is not, and my
lady--"
"Damn her puling tricks!" said Sir Jeoffry again, pulling at his
horse's bit until the beast reared.
"She would not let me rest until I came to you," said the nurse
resentfully. "She would have you told that she felt strangely, and
before you went forth would have a word with you."
"I cannot come, and am not in the mood for it if I could," was his
answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time
she hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she--but
nine is more than I have patience for."
"She is light-headed, mayhap," said the nurse. "She lieth huddled
in a heap, staring and muttering, and she would leave me no peace
till I promised to say to you, 'For the sake of poor little Daphne,
whom you will sure remember.' She pinched my hand and said it again
and again."
Sir Jeoffry dragged at his horse's mouth and swore again.
"She was fifteen then, and had not given me nine yellow-faced
wenches," he said. "Tell her I had gone a-hunting and you were too
late;" and he struck his big black beast with the whip, and it
bounded away with him, hounds and huntsmen and fellow-roysterers
galloping after, his guests, who had caught at the reason of his
wrath, grinning as they rode.
* * *
In a huge chamber hung with tattered tapestries and barely set forth
with cumbersome pieces of furnishing, my lady lay in a gloomy,
canopied bed, with her new-born child at her side, but not looking
at or touching it, seeming rather to have withdrawn herself from the
pillow on which it lay in its swaddling-clothes.
She was but a little lady, and now, as she lay in the large bed, her
face and form shrunken and drawn with suffering, she looked scarce
bigger than a child. In the brief days of her happiness those who
toasted her had called her Titania for her fairy slightness and
delicate beauty, but then her fair wavy locks had been of a length
that touched the ground when her woman unbound them, and she had had
the colour of a wild rose and the eyes of a tender little fawn. Sir
Jeoffry for a month or so had paid tempestuous court to her, and had
so won her heart with his dashing way of love-making and the
daringness of his reputation, that she had thought herself--being
child enough to think so--the luckiest young lady in the world that
his black eye should have fallen upon her with favour. Each year
since, with the bearing of each child, she had lost some of her
beauty. With each one her lovely hair fell out still more, her
wild-rose colour faded, and her shape was spoiled. She grew thin
and yellow, only a scant covering of the fair hair was left her, and
her eyes were big and sunken. Her marriage having displeased her
family, and Sir Jeoffry having a distaste for the ceremonies of
visiting and entertainment, save where his own cronies were
concerned, she had no friends, and grew lonelier and lonelier as the
sad years went by. She being so without hope and her life so
dreary, her children were neither strong nor beautiful, and died
quickly, each one bringing her only the anguish of birth and death.
This wintry morning her ninth lay slumbering by her side; the noise
of baying dogs and boisterous men had died away with the last sound
of the horses' hoofs; the little light which came into the room
through the ivied window was a faint yellowish red; she was cold,
because the fire in the chimney was but a scant, failing one; she
was alone--and she knew that the time had come for her death. This
she knew full well.
She was alone, because, being so disrespected and deserted by her
lord, and being of a timid and gentle nature, she could not command
her insufficient retinue of servants, and none served her as was
their duty. The old woman Sir Jeoffry had dubbed Mother Posset had
been her sole attendant at such times as these for the past five
years, because she would come to her for a less fee than a better
woman, and Sir Jeoffry had sworn he would not pay for wenches being
brought into the world. She was a slovenly, guzzling old crone, who
drank caudle from morning till night, and demanded good living as a
support during the performance of her trying duties; but these last
she contrived to make wondrous light, knowing that there was none to
reprove her.
"A fine night I have had," she had grumbled when she brought back
Sir Jeoffry's answer to her lady's message. "My old bones are like
to break, and my back will not straighten itself. I will go to the
kitchen to get victuals and somewhat to warm me; your ladyship's own
woman shall sit with you."
Her ladyship's "own woman" was also the sole attendant of the two
little girls, Barbara and Anne, whose nursery was in another wing of
the house, and my lady knew full well she would not come if she were
told, and that there would be no message sent to her.
She knew, too, that the fire was going out, but, though she shivered
under the bedclothes, she was too weak to call the woman back when
she saw her depart without putting fresh fuel upon it.
So she lay alone, poor lady, and there was no sound about her, and
her thin little mouth began to feebly quiver, and her great eyes,
which stared at the hangings, to fill with slow cold tears, for in
sooth they were not warm, but seemed to chill her poor cheeks as
they rolled slowly down them, leaving a wet streak behind them which
she was too far gone in weakness to attempt to lift her hand to wipe
away.
"Nine times like this," she panted faintly, "and 'tis for naught but
oaths and hard words that blame me. I was but a child myself and he
loved me. When 'twas 'My Daphne,' and 'My beauteous little Daphne,'
he loved me in his own man's way. But now--" she faintly rolled her
head from side to side. "Women are poor things"--a chill salt tear
sliding past her lips so that she tasted its bitterness--"only to be
kissed for an hour, and then like this--only for this and nothing
else. I would that this one had been dead."
Her breath came slower and more pantingly, and her eyes stared more
widely.
"I was but a child," she whispered--"a child--as--as this will be--
if she lives fifteen years."
Despite her weakness, and it was great and woefully increasing with
each panting breath, she slowly laboured to turn herself towards the
pillow on which her offspring lay, and, this done, she lay staring
at the child and gasping, her thin chest rising and falling
convulsively. Ah, how she panted, and how she stared, the glaze of
death stealing slowly over her wide-opened eyes; and yet, dimming as
they were, they saw in the sleeping infant a strange and troublous
thing--though it was but a few hours old 'twas not as red and
crumple visaged as new-born infants usually are, its little head was
covered with thick black silk, and its small features were of
singular definiteness. She dragged herself nearer to gaze.
"She looks not like the others," she said. "They had no beauty--and
are safe. She--she will be like--Jeoffry--and like ME."
The dying fire fell lower with a shuddering sound.
"If she is--beautiful, and has but her father, and no mother!" she
whispered, the words dragged forth slowly, "only evil can come to
her. From her first hour--she will know naught else, poor heart,
poor heart!"
There was a rattling in her throat as she breathed, but in her
glazing eyes a gleam like passion leaped, and gasping, she dragged
nearer.
"'Tis not fair," she cried. "If I--if I could lay my hand upon thy
mouth--and stop thy breathing--thou poor thing, 'twould be fairer--
but--I have no strength."
She gathered all her dying will and brought her hand up to the
infant's mouth. A wild look was on her poor, small face, she panted
and fell forward on its breast, the rattle in her throat growing
louder. The child awakened, opening great black eyes, and with her
dying weakness its new-born life struggled. Her cold hand lay upon
I its mouth, and her head upon its body, for she was too far gone to
move if she had willed to do so. But the tiny creature's strength
was marvellous. It gasped, it fought, its little limbs struggled
beneath her, it writhed until the cold hand fell away, and then, its
baby mouth set free, it fell a-shrieking. Its cries were not like
those of a new-born thing, but fierce and shrill, and even held the
sound of infant passion. 'Twas not a thing to let its life go
easily, 'twas of those born to do battle.
Its lusty screaming pierced her ear perhaps--she drew a long, slow
breath, and then another, and another still--the last one trembled
and stopped short, and the last cinder fell dead from the fire.
* * *
When the nurse came bustling and fretting back, the chamber was cold
as the grave's self--there were only dead embers on the hearth, the
new-born child's cries filled all the desolate air, and my lady was
lying stone dead, her poor head resting on her offspring's feet, the
while her open glazed eyes seemed to stare at it as if in asking
Fate some awful question.
