CHAPTER IV--Lord Twemlow's chaplain visits his patron's kinsman, and
Mistress Clorinda shines on her birthday night
Uncivilised and almost savage as her girlish life was, and
unregulated by any outward training as was her mind, there were none
who came in contact with her who could be blind to a certain strong,
clear wit, and unconquerableness of purpose, for which she was
remarkable. She ever knew full well what she desired to gain or to
avoid, and once having fixed her mind upon any object, she showed an
adroitness and brilliancy of resource, a control of herself and
others, the which there was no circumventing. She never made a
blunder because she could not control the expression of her
emotions; and when she gave way to a passion, 'twas because she
chose to do so, having naught to lose, and in the midst of all their
riotous jesting with her the boon companions of Sir Jeoffry knew
this.
"Had she a secret to keep, child though she is," said Eldershawe,
"there is none--man or woman--who could scare or surprise it from
her; and 'tis a strange quality to note so early in a female
creature."
She spent her days with her father and his dissolute friends,
treated half like a boy, half a fantastical queen, until she was
fourteen. She hunted and coursed, shot birds, leaped hedges and
ditches, reigned at the riotous feastings, and coquetted with these
mature, and in some cases elderly, men, as if she looked forward to
doing naught else all her life.
But one day, after she had gone out hunting with her father, riding
Rake, who had been given to her, and wearing her scarlet coat,
breeches, and top-boots, one of the few remaining members of her
mother's family sent his chaplain to remonstrate and advise her
father to command her to forbear from appearing in such impudent
attire.
There was, indeed, a stirring scene when this message was delivered
by its bearer. The chaplain was an awkward, timid creature, who had
heard stories enough of Wildairs Hall and its master to undertake
his mission with a quaking soul. To have refused to obey any behest
of his patron would have cost him his living, and knowing this
beyond a doubt, he was forced to gird up his loins and gather
together all the little courage he could muster to beard the lion in
his den.
The first thing he beheld on entering the big hall was a beautiful
tall youth wearing his own rich black hair, and dressed in scarlet
coat for hunting. He was playing with a dog, making it leap over
his crop, and both laughing and swearing at its clumsiness. He
glanced at the chaplain with a laughing, brilliant eye, returning
the poor man's humble bow with a slight nod as he plainly hearkened
to what he said as he explained his errand.
"I come from my Lord Twemlow, who is your master's kinsman," the
chaplain faltered; "I am bidden to see and speak to him if it be
possible, and his lordship much desires that Sir Jeoffry will allow
it to be so. My Lord Twemlow--"
The beautiful youth left his playing with the dog and came forward
with all the air of the young master of the house.
"My Lord Twemlow sends you?" he said. "'Tis long since his lordship
favoured us with messages. Where is Sir Jeoffry, Lovatt?"
"In the dining-hall," answered the servant. "He went there but a
moment past, Mistress."
The chaplain gave such a start as made him drop his shovel hat.
"Mistress!" And this was she--this fine young creature who was tall
and grandly enough built and knit to seem a radiant being even when
clad in masculine attire. He picked up his hat and bowed so low
that it almost swept the floor in his obeisance. He was not used to
female beauty which deigned to cast great smiling eyes upon him, for
at my Lord Twemlow's table he sat so far below the salt that women
looked not his way.
This beauty looked at him as if she was amused at the thought of
something in her own mind. He wondered tremblingly if she guessed
what he came for and knew how her father would receive it.
"Come with me," she said; "I will take you to him. He would not see
you if I did not. He does not love his lordship tenderly enough."
She led the way, holding her head jauntily and high, while he cast
down his eyes lest his gaze should be led to wander in a way
unseemly in one of his cloth. Such a foot and such--! He felt it
more becoming and safer to lift his eyes to the ceiling and keep
them there, which gave him somewhat the aspect of one praying.
Sir Jeoffry stood at the buffet with a flagon of ale in his hand,
taking his stirrup cup. At the sight of a stranger and one attired
in the garb of a chaplain, he scowled surprisedly.
"What's this?" quoth he. "What dost want, Clo? I have no leisure
for a sermon."
Mistress Clorinda went to the buffet and filled a tankard for
herself and carried it back to the table, on the edge of which she
half sat, with one leg bent, one foot resting on the floor.
"Time thou wilt have to take, Dad," she said, with an arch grin,
showing two rows of gleaming pearls. "This gentleman is my Lord
Twemlow's chaplain, whom he sends to exhort you, requesting you to
have the civility to hear him."
"Exhort be damned, and Twemlow be damned too!" cried Sir Jeoffry,
who had a great quarrel with his lordship and hated him bitterly.
"What does the canting fool mean?"
"Sir," faltered the poor message-bearer, "his lordship hath--hath
been concerned--having heard--"
The handsome creature balanced against the table took the tankard
from her lips and laughed.
"Having heard thy daughter rides to field in breeches, and is an
unseemly-behaving wench," she cried, "his lordship sends his
chaplain to deliver a discourse thereon--not choosing to come
himself. Is not that thy errand, reverend sir?"
The chaplain, poor man, turned pale, having caught, as she spoke, a
glimpse of Sir Jeoffry's reddening visage.
"Madam," he faltered, bowing--"Madam, I ask pardon of you most
humbly! If it were your pleasure to deign to--to--allow me--"
She set the tankard on the table with a rollicking smack, and thrust
her hands in her breeches-pockets, swaying with laughter; and,
indeed, 'twas ringing music, her rich great laugh, which, when she
grew of riper years, was much lauded and written verses on by her
numerous swains.
"If 'twere my pleasure to go away and allow you to speak, free from
the awkwardness of a young lady's presence," she said. "But 'tis
not, as it happens, and if I stay here, I shall be a protection."
In truth, he required one. Sir Jeoffry broke into a torrent of
blasphemy. He damned both kinsman and chaplain, and raged at the
impudence of both in daring to approach him, swearing to horsewhip
my lord if they ever met, and to have the chaplain kicked out of the
house, and beyond the park gates themselves. But Mistress Clorinda
chose to make it her whim to take it in better humour, and as a joke
with a fine point to it. She laughed at her father's storming, and
while the chaplain quailed before it with pallid countenance and
fairly hang-dog look, she seemed to find it but a cause for
outbursts of merriment.
"Hold thy tongue a bit, Dad," she cried, when he had reached his
loudest, "and let his reverence tell us what his message is. We
have not even heard it."
"Want not to hear it!" shouted Sir Jeoffry. "Dost think I'll stand
his impudence? Not I!"
"What was your message?" demanded the young lady of the chaplain.
"You cannot return without delivering it. Tell it to me. I choose
it shall be told."
The chaplain clutched and fumbled with his hat, pale, and dropping
his eyes upon the floor, for very fear.
"Pluck up thy courage, man," said Clorinda. "I will uphold thee.
The message?"
"Your pardon, Madam--'twas this," the chaplain faltered. "My lord
commanded me to warn your honoured father--that if he did not beg
you to leave off wearing--wearing--"
"Breeches," said Mistress Clorinda, slapping her knee.
The chaplain blushed with modesty, though he was a man of sallow
countenance.
"No gentleman," he went on, going more lamely at each word--
"notwithstanding your great beauty--no gentleman--"
"Would marry me?" the young lady ended for him, with merciful good-
humour.
"For if you--if a young lady be permitted to bear herself in such a
manner as will cause her to be held lightly, she can make no match
that will not be a dishonour to her family--and--and--"
"And may do worse!" quoth Mistress Clo, and laughed until the room
rang.
Sir Jeoffry's rage was such as made him like to burst; but she
restrained him when he would have flung his tankard at the
chaplain's head, and amid his storm of curses bundled the poor man
out of the room, picking up his hat which in his hurry and fright he
let fall, and thrusting it into his hand.
"Tell his lordship," she said, laughing still as she spoke the final
words, "that I say he is right--and I will see to it that no
disgrace befalls him."
"Forsooth, Dad," she said, returning, "perhaps the old son of a--"--
something unmannerly--"is not so great a fool. As for me, I mean to
make a fine marriage and be a great lady, and I know of none
hereabouts to suit me but the old Earl of Dunstanwolde, and 'tis
said he rates at all but modest women, and, in faith, he might not
find breeches mannerly. I will not hunt in them again."
She did not, though once or twice when she was in a wild mood, and
her father entertained at dinner those of his companions whom she
was the most inclined to, she swaggered in among them in her
daintiest suits of male attire, and caused their wine-shot eyes to
gloat over her boyish-maiden charms and jaunty airs and graces.
On the night of her fifteenth birthday Sir Jeoffry gave a great
dinner to his boon companions and hers. She had herself commanded
that there should be no ladies at the feast; for she chose to
announce that she should appear at no more such, having the wit to
see that she was too tall a young lady for childish follies, and
that she had now arrived at an age when her market must be made.
"I shall have women enough henceforth to be dull with," she said.
"Thou art but a poor match-maker, Dad, or wouldst have thought of it
for me. But not once has it come into thy pate that I have no
mother to angle in my cause and teach me how to cast sheep's eyes at
bachelors. Long-tailed petticoats from this time for me, and hoops
and patches, and ogling over fans--until at last, if I play my cards
well, some great lord will look my way and be taken by my shape and
my manners."
"With thy shape, Clo, God knows every man will," laughed Sir
Jeoffry, "but I fear me not with thy manners. Thou hast the manners
of a baggage, and they are second nature to thee."
"They are what I was born with," answered Mistress Clorinda. "They
came from him that begot me, and he has not since improved them.
But now"--making a great sweeping curtsey, her impudent bright
beauty almost dazzling his eyes--"now, after my birth-night, they
will be bettered; but this one night I will have my last fling."
When the men trooped into the black oak wainscotted dining-hall on
the eventful night, they found their audacious young hostess
awaiting them in greater and more daring beauty than they had ever
before beheld. She wore knee-breeches of white satin, a pink satin
coat embroidered with silver roses, white silk stockings, and shoes
with great buckles of brilliants, revealing a leg so round and
strong and delicately moulded, and a foot so arched and slender, as
surely never before, they swore one and all, woman had had to
display. She met them standing jauntily astride upon the hearth,
her back to the fire, and she greeted each one as he came with some
pretty impudence. Her hair was tied back and powdered, her black
eyes were like lodestars, drawing all men, and her colour was that
of a ripe pomegranate. She had a fine, haughty little Roman nose, a
mouth like a scarlet bow, a wonderful long throat, and round cleft
chin. A dazzling mien indeed she possessed, and ready enough she
was to shine before them. Sir Jeoffry was now elderly, having been
a man of forty when united to his conjugal companion. Most of his
friends were of his own age, so that it had not been with unripe
youth Mistress Clorinda had been in the habit of consorting. But
upon this night a newcomer was among the guests. He was a young
relation of one of the older men, and having come to his kinsman's
house upon a visit, and having proved himself, in spite of his
youth, to be a young fellow of humour, high courage in the hunting-
field, and by no means averse either to entering upon or discussing
intrigue and gallant adventure, had made himself something of a
favourite. His youthful beauty for a man almost equalled that of
Mistress Clorinda herself. He had an elegant, fine shape, of great
strength and vigour, his countenance was delicately ruddy and
handsomely featured, his curling fair hair flowed loose upon his
shoulders, and, though masculine in mould, his ankle was as slender
and his buckled shoe as arched as her own.
He was, it is true, twenty-four years of age and a man, while she
was but fifteen and a woman, but being so tall and built with such
unusual vigour of symmetry, she was a beauteous match for him, and
both being attired in fashionable masculine habit, these two pretty
young fellows standing smiling saucily at each other were a
charming, though singular, spectacle.
This young man was already well known in the modish world of town
for his beauty and adventurous spirit. He was indeed already a beau
and conqueror of female hearts. It was suspected that he cherished
a private ambition to set the modes in beauties and embroidered
waistcoats himself in time, and be as renowned abroad and as much
the town talk as certain other celebrated beaux had been before him.
The art of ogling tenderly and of uttering soft nothings he had
learned during his first season in town, and as he had a great
melting blue eye, the figure of an Adonis, and a white and shapely
hand for a ring, he was well equipped for conquest. He had darted
many an inflaming glance at Mistress Clorinda before the first meats
were removed. Even in London he had heard a vague rumour of this
handsome young woman, bred among her father's dogs, horses, and boon
companions, and ripening into a beauty likely to make town faces
pale. He had almost fallen into the spleen on hearing that she had
left her boy's clothes and vowed she would wear them no more, as
above all things he had desired to see how she carried them and what
charms they revealed. On hearing from his host and kinsman that she
had said that on her birth-night she would bid them farewell for
ever by donning them for the last time, he was consumed with
eagerness to obtain an invitation. This his kinsman besought for
him, and, behold! the first glance the beauty shot at him pierced
his inflammable bosom like a dart. Never before had it been his
fortune to behold female charms so dazzling and eyes of such lustre
and young majesty. The lovely baggage had a saucy way of standing
with her white jewelled hands in her pockets like a pretty fop, and
throwing up her little head like a modish beauty who was of royal
blood; and these two tricks alone, he felt, might have set on fire
the heart of a man years older and colder than himself.
If she had been of the order of soft-natured charmers, they would
have fallen into each other's eyes before the wine was changed; but
this Mistress Clorinda was not. She did not fear to meet the full
battery of his enamoured glances, but she did not choose to return
them. She played her part of the pretty young fellow who was a
high-spirited beauty, with more of wit and fire than she had ever
played it before. The rollicking hunting-squires, who had been her
play-fellows so long, devoured her with their delighted glances and
roared with laughter at her sallies. Their jokes and flatteries
were not of the most seemly, but she had not been bred to seemliness
and modesty, and was no more ignorant than if she had been, in
sooth, some gay young springald of a lad. To her it was part of the
entertainment that upon this last night they conducted themselves as
beseemed her boyish masquerading. Though country-bred, she had
lived among companions who were men of the world and lived without
restraints, and she had so far learned from them that at fifteen
years old she was as worldly and as familiar with the devices of
intrigue as she would be at forty. So far she had not been pushed
to practising them, her singular life having thrown her among few of
her own age, and those had chanced to be of a sort she disdainfully
counted as country bumpkins.
But the young gallant introduced to-night into the world she lived
in was no bumpkin, and was a dandy of the town. His name was Sir
John Oxon, and he had just come into his title and a pretty
property. His hands were as white and bejewelled as her own, his
habit was of the latest fashionable cut, and his fair flowing locks
scattered a delicate French perfume she did not even know the name
of.
But though she observed all these attractions and found them
powerful, young Sir John remarked, with a slight sinking qualm, that
her great eye did not fall before his amorous glances, but met them
with high smiling readiness, and her colour never blanched or
heightened a whit for all their masterly skilfulness. But he had
sworn to himself that he would approach close enough to her to fire
off some fine speech before the night was ended, and he endeavoured
to bear himself with at least an outward air of patience until he
beheld his opportunity.
When the last dish was removed and bottles and bumpers stood upon
the board, she sprang up on her chair and stood before them all,
smiling down the long table with eyes like flashing jewels. Her
hands were thrust in her pockets--with her pretty young fop's air,
and she drew herself to her full comely height, her beauteous lithe
limbs and slender feet set smartly together. Twenty pairs of
masculine eyes were turned upon her beauty, but none so ardently as
the young one's across the table.
"Look your last on my fine shape," she proclaimed in her high, rich
voice. "You will see but little of the lower part of it when it is
hid in farthingales and petticoats. Look your last before I go to
don my fine lady's furbelows."
And when they filled their glasses and lifted them and shouted
admiring jests to her, she broke into one of her stable-boy songs,
and sang it in the voice of a skylark.
No man among them was used to showing her the courtesies of polite
breeding. She had been too long a boy to them for that to have
entered any mind, and when she finished her song, sprang down, and
made for the door, Sir John beheld his long-looked-for chance, and
was there before her to open it with a great bow, made with his hand
upon his heart and his fair locks falling.
"You rob us of the rapture of beholding great beauties, Madam," he
said in a low, impassioned voice. "But there should be indeed but
ONE happy man whose bliss it is to gaze upon such perfections."
"I am fifteen years old to-night," she answered; "and as yet I have
not set eyes upon him."
"How do you know that, madam?" he said, bowing lower still.
She laughed her great rich laugh.
"Forsooth, I do not know," she retorted. "He may be here this very
night among this company; and as it might be so, I go to don my
modesty."
And she bestowed on him a parting shot in the shape of one of her
prettiest young fop waves of the hand, and was gone from him.
* * *
When the door closed behind her and Sir John Oxon returned to the
table, for a while a sort of dulness fell upon the party. Not being
of quick minds or sentiments, these country roisterers failed to
understand the heavy cloud of spleen and lack of spirit they
experienced, and as they filled their glasses and tossed off one
bumper after another to cure it, they soon began again to laugh and
fell into boisterous joking.
They talked mostly, indeed, of their young playfellow, of whom they
felt, in some indistinct manner, they were to be bereft; they
rallied Sir Jeoffry, told stories of her childhood and made pictures
of her budding beauties, comparing them with those of young ladies
who were celebrated toasts.
"She will sail among them like a royal frigate," said one; "and they
will pale before her lustre as a tallow dip does before an
illumination."
The clock struck twelve before she returned to them. Just as the
last stroke sounded the door was thrown open, and there she stood, a
woman on each side of her, holding a large silver candelabra bright
with wax tapers high above her, so that she was in a flood of light.
She was attired in rich brocade of crimson and silver, and wore a
great hooped petticoat, which showed off her grandeur, her waist of
no more bigness than a man's hands could clasp, set in its midst
like the stem of a flower; her black hair was rolled high and
circled with jewels, her fair long throat blazed with a collar of
diamonds, and the majesty of her eye and lip and brow made up a mien
so dazzling that every man sprang to his feet beholding her.
She made a sweeping obeisance and then stood up before them, her
head thrown back and her lips curving in the triumphant mocking
smile of a great beauty looking upon them all as vassals.
"Down upon your knees," she cried, "and drink to me kneeling. From
this night all men must bend so--all men on whom I deign to cast my
eyes."
