CHAPTER III--Wherein Sir Jeoffry's boon companions drink a toast
Her beauty of face, her fine body, her strength of limb, and great
growth for her age, would have pleased him if she had possessed no
other attraction, but the daring of her fury and her stable-boy
breeding so amused him and suited his roystering tastes that he took
to her as the finest plaything in the world.
He set her on the floor, forgetting his coursing, and would have
made friends with her, but at first she would have none of him, and
scowled at him in spite of all he did. The brandy by this time had
mounted to his head and put him in the mood for frolic, liquor
oftenest making him gamesome. He felt as if he were playing with a
young dog or marking the spirit of a little fighting cock. He
ordered the servants back to their kitchen, who stole away, the
women amazed, and the men concealing grins which burst forth into
guffaws of laughter when they came into their hall below.
"'Tis as we said," they chuckled. "He had but to see her beauty and
find her a bigger devil than he, and 'twas done. The mettle of her-
-damning and flogging him! Never was there a finer sight! She
feared him no more than if he had been a spaniel--and he roaring and
laughing till he was like to burst."
"Dost know who I am?" Sir Jeoffry was asking the child, grinning
himself as he stood before her where she sat on the oaken settle on
which he had lifted her.
"No," quoth little Mistress, her black brows drawn down, her
handsome owl's eyes verily seeming to look him through and through
in search of somewhat; for, in sooth, her rage abating before his
jovial humour, the big burly laugher attracted her attention, though
she was not disposed to show him that she leaned towards any favour
or yielding.
"I am thy Dad," he said. "'Twas thy Dad thou gavest such a
trouncing. And thou hast an arm, too. Let's cast an eye on it."
He took her wrist and pushed up her sleeve, but she dragged back.
"Will not be mauled," she cried. "Get away from me!"
He shouted with laughter again. He had seen that the little arm was
as white and hard as marble, and had such muscles as a great boy
might have been a braggart about.
"By Gad!" he said, elated. "What a wench of six years old. Wilt
have my crop and trounce thy Dad again!"
He picked up the crop from the place where she had thrown it, and
forthwith gave it in her hand. She took it, but was no more in the
humour to beat him, and as she looked still frowning from him to the
whip, the latter brought back to her mind the horse she had set out
in search of.
"Where is my horse?" she said, and 'twas in the tone of an imperial
demand. "Where is he?"
"Thy horse!" he echoed. "Which is thy horse then?"
"Rake is my horse," she answered--"the big black one. The man took
him again;" and she ripped out a few more oaths and unchaste
expressions, threatening what she would do for the man in question;
the which delighted him more than ever. "Rake is my horse," she
ended. "None else shall ride him."
"None else?" cried he. "Thou canst not ride him, baggage!"
She looked at him with scornful majesty.
"Where is he?" she demanded. And the next instant hearing the
beast's restless feet grinding into the gravel outside as he fretted
at having been kept waiting so long, she remembered what the stable-
boy had said of having seen her favourite standing before the door,
and struggling and dropping from the settle, she ran to look out;
whereupon having done so, she shouted in triumph.
"He is here!" she said. "I see him;" and went pell-mell down the
stone steps to his side.
Sir Jeoffry followed her in haste. 'Twould not have been to his
humour now to have her brains kicked out.
"Hey!" he called, as he hurried. "Keep away from his heels, thou
little devil."
But she had run to the big beast's head with another shout, and
caught him round his foreleg, laughing, and Rake bent his head down
and nosed her in a fumbling caress, on which, the bridle coming
within her reach, she seized it and held his head that she might pat
him, to which familiarity the beast was plainly well accustomed.
"He is my horse," quoth she grandly when her father reached her.
"He will not let Giles play so."
Sir Jeoffry gazed and swelled with pleasure in her.
"Would have said 'twas a lie if I had not seen it," he said to
himself. "'Tis no girl this, I swear. I thought 'twas my horse,"
he said to her, "but 'tis plain enough he is thine."
"Put me up!" said his new-found offspring.
"Hast rid him before?" Sir Jeoffry asked, with some lingering
misgiving. "Tell thy Dad if thou hast rid him."
She gave him a look askance under her long fringed lids--a surly yet
half-slyly relenting look, because she wanted to get her way of him,
and had the cunning wit and shrewdness of a child witch.
"Ay!" quoth she. "Put me up--Dad!"
He was not a man of quick mind, his brain having been too many years
bemuddled with drink, but he had a rough instinct which showed him
all the wondrous shrewdness of her casting that last word at him to
wheedle him, even though she looked sullen in the saying it. It
made him roar again for very exultation.
"Put me up, Dad!" he cried. "That will I--and see what thou wilt
do."
He lifted her, she springing as he set his hands beneath her arms,
and flinging her legs over astride across the saddle when she
reached it. She was all fire and excitement, and caught the reins
like an old huntsman, and with such a grasp as was amazing. She sat
up with a straight, strong back, her whole face glowing and
sparkling with exultant joy. Rake seemed to answer to her excited
little laugh almost as much as to her hand. It seemed to wake his
spirit and put him in good-humour. He started off with her down the
avenue at a light, spirited trot, while she, clinging with her
little legs and sitting firm and fearless, made him change into
canter and gallop, having actually learned all his paces like a
lesson, and knowing his mouth as did his groom, who was her familiar
and slave. Had she been of the build ordinary with children of her
age, she could not have stayed upon his back; but she sat him like a
child jockey, and Sir Jeoffry, watching and following her, clapped
his hands boisterously and hallooed for joy.
"Lord, Lord!" he said. "There's not a man in the shire has such
another little devil--and Rake, 'her horse,'" grinning--"and she to
ride him so. I love thee, wench--hang me if I do not!"
She made him play with her and with Rake for a good hour, and then
took him back to the stables, and there ordered him about finely
among the dogs and horses, perceiving that somehow this great man
she had got hold of was a creature who was in power and could be
made use of.
When they returned to the house, he had her to eat her mid-day meal
with him, when she called for ale, and drank it, and did good
trencher duty, making him the while roar with laughter at her
impudent child-talk.
"Never have I so split my sides since I was twenty," he said. "It
makes me young again to roar so. She shall not leave my sight,
since by chance I have found her. 'Tis too good a joke to lose,
when times are dull, as they get to be as a man's years go on."
He sent for her woman and laid strange new commands on her.
"Where hath she hitherto been kept?" he asked.
"In the west wing, where are the nurseries, and where Mistress
Wimpole abides with Mistress Barbara and Mistress Anne," the woman
answered, with a frightened curtsey.
"Henceforth she shall live in this part of the house where I do," he
said. "Make ready the chambers that were my lady's, and prepare to
stay there with her."
From that hour the child's fate was sealed. He made himself her
playfellow, and romped with and indulged her until she became fonder
of him than of any groom or stable-boy she had been companions with
before. But, indeed, she had never been given to bestowing much
affection on those around her, seeming to feel herself too high a
personage to show softness. The ones she showed most favour to were
those who served her best; and even to them it was always FAVOUR she
showed, not tenderness. Certain dogs and horses she was fond of,
Rake coming nearest to her heart, and the place her father won in
her affections was somewhat like to Rake's. She made him her
servant and tyrannised over him, but at the same time followed and
imitated him as if she had been a young spaniel he was training.
The life the child led, it would have broken a motherly woman's
heart to hear about; but there was no good woman near her, her
mother's relatives, and even Sir Jeoffry's own, having cut
themselves off early from them--Wildairs Hall and its master being
no great credit to those having the misfortune to be connected with
them. The neighbouring gentry had gradually ceased to visit the
family some time before her ladyship's death, and since then the
only guests who frequented the place were a circle of hunting,
drinking, and guzzling boon companions of Sir Jeoffry's own, who
joined him in all his carousals and debaucheries.
To these he announced his discovery of his daughter with tumultuous
delight. He told them, amid storms of laughter, of his first
encounter with her; of her flogging him with his own crop, and
cursing him like a trooper; of her claiming Rake as her own horse,
and swearing at the man who had dared to take him from the stable to
ride; and of her sitting him like an infant jockey, and seeming, by
some strange power, to have mastered him as no other had been able
heretofore to do. Then he had her brought into the dining-room,
where they sat over their bottles drinking deep, and setting her on
the table, he exhibited her to them, boasting of her beauty, showing
them her splendid arm and leg and thigh, measuring her height, and
exciting her to test the strength of the grip of her hand and the
power of her little fist.
"Saw you ever a wench like her?" he cried, as they all shouted with
laughter and made jokes not too polite, but such as were of the sole
kind they were given to. "Has any man among you begot a boy as big
and handsome? Hang me! if she would not knock down any lad of ten
if she were in a fury."
"We wild dogs are out of favour with the women," cried one of the
best pleased among them, a certain Lord Eldershawe, whose seat was a
few miles from Wildairs Hall--"women like nincompoops and chaplains.
Let us take this one for our toast, and bring her up as girls should
be brought up to be companions for men. I give you, Mistress
Clorinda Wildairs--Mistress Clorinda, the enslaver of six years old-
-bumpers, lads!--bumpers!"
And they set her in the very midst of the big table and drank her
health, standing, bursting into a jovial, ribald song; and the
child, excited by the noise and laughter, actually broke forth and
joined them in a high, strong treble, the song being one she was
quite familiar with, having heard it often enough in the stable to
have learned the words pat.
* * *
Two weeks after his meeting with her, Sir Jeoffry was seized with
the whim to go up to London and set her forth with finery. 'Twas
but rarely he went up to town, having neither money to waste, nor
finding great attraction in the more civilised quarters of the
world. He brought her back such clothes as for richness and odd,
unsuitable fashion child never wore before. There were brocades
that stood alone with splendour of fabric, there was rich lace, fine
linen, ribbands, farthingales, swansdown tippets, and little
slippers with high red heels. He had a wardrobe made for her such
as the finest lady of fashion could scarcely boast, and the tiny
creature was decked out in it, and on great occasions even strung
with her dead mother's jewels.
Among these strange things, he had the fantastical notion to have
made for her several suits of boy's clothes: pink and blue satin
coats, little white, or amber, or blue satin breeches, ruffles of
lace, and waistcoats embroidered with colours and silver or gold.
There was also a small scarlet-coated hunting costume and all the
paraphernalia of the chase. It was Sir Jeoffry's finest joke to bid
her woman dress her as a boy, and then he would have her brought to
the table where he and his fellows were dining together, and she
would toss off her little bumper with the best of them, and rip out
childish oaths, and sing them, to their delight, songs she had
learned from the stable-boys. She cared more for dogs and horses
than for finery, and when she was not in the humour to be made a
puppet of, neither tire-woman nor devil could put her into her
brocades; but she liked the excitement of the dining-room, and, as
time went on, would be dressed in her flowered petticoats in a
passion of eagerness to go and show herself, and coquet in her lace
and gewgaws with men old enough to be her father, and loose enough
to find her premature airs and graces a fine joke indeed. She ruled
them all with her temper and her shrewish will. She would have her
way in all things, or there should be no sport with her, and she
would sing no songs for them, but would flout them bitterly, and sit
in a great chair with her black brows drawn down, and her whole
small person breathing rancour and disdain.
Sir Jeoffry, who had bullied his wife, had now the pleasurable
experience of being henpecked by his daughter; for so, indeed, he
was. Miss ruled him with a rod of iron, and wielded her weapon with
such skill that before a year had elapsed he obeyed her as the
servants below stairs had done in her infancy. She had no fear of
his great oaths, for she possessed a strangely varied stock of her
own upon which she could always draw, and her voice being more
shrill than his, if not of such bigness, her ear-piercing shrieks
and indomitable perseverance always proved too much for him in the
end. It must be admitted likewise that her violence of temper and
power of will were somewhat beyond his own, notwithstanding her
tender years and his reputation. In fact, he found himself obliged
to observe this, and finally made something of a merit and joke of
it.
"There is no managing of the little shrew," he would say. "Neither
man nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her
carcass, she would die shrieking hell at me and defiance."
If one admits the truth, it must be owned that if she had not had
bestowed upon her by nature gifts of beauty and vivacity so
extraordinary, and had been cursed with a thousandth part of the
vixenishness she displayed every day of her life, he would have
broken every bone in her carcass without a scruple or a qualm. But
her beauty seemed but to grow with every hour that passed, and it
was by exceeding good fortune exactly the fashion of beauty which he
admired the most. When she attained her tenth year she was as tall
as a fine boy of twelve, and of such a shape and carriage as young
Diana herself might have envied. Her limbs were long, and most
divinely moulded, and of a strength that caused admiration and
amazement in all beholders. Her father taught her to follow him in
the hunting-field, and when she appeared upon her horse, clad in her
little breeches and top-boots and scarlet coat, child though she
was, she set the field on fire. She learned full early how to
coquet and roll her fine eyes; but it is also true that she was not
much of a languisher, as all her ogling was of a destructive or
proudly-attacking kind. It was her habit to leave others to
languish, and herself to lead them with disdainful vivacity to doing
so. She was the talk, and, it must be admitted, the scandal, of the
county by the day she was fifteen. The part wherein she lived was a
boisterous hunting shire where there were wide ditches and high
hedges to leap, and rough hills and moors to gallop over, and within
the region neither polite life nor polite education were much
thought of; but even in the worst portions of it there were
occasional virtuous matrons who shook their heads with much gravity
and wonder over the beautiful Mistress Clorinda.
