CHAPTER VIII--Two meet in the deserted rose garden, and the old Earl
of Dunstanwolde is made a happy man
It was not until three days later, instead of two, that Sir John
Oxon rode into the courtyard with his servant behind him. He had
been detained on his journey, but looked as if his impatience had
not caused him to suffer, for he wore his finest air of spirit and
beauty, and when he was alone with Sir Jeoffry, made his compliments
to the absent ladies, and inquired of their health with his best
town grace.
Mistress Clorinda did not appear until the dining hour, when she
swept into the room like a queen, followed by her sister, Anne, and
Mistress Wimpole, this being the first occasion of Mistress Anne's
dining, as it were, in state with her family.
The honour had so alarmed her, that she looked pale, and so ugly
that Sir Jeoffry scowled at sight of her, and swore under his breath
to Clorinda that she should have been allowed to come.
"I know my own affairs the best, by your leave, sir," answered
Clorinda, as low and with a grand flash of her eye. "She hath been
drilled well."
This she had indeed, and so had Mistress Wimpole, and throughout Sir
John Oxon's stay they were called upon to see that they played well
their parts. Two weeks he stayed and then rode gaily back to town,
and when Clorinda made her sweeping curtsey to the ground to him
upon the threshold of the flowered room in which he bade her
farewell, both Anne and Mistress Wimpole curtseyed a step behind
her.
"Now that he has gone and you have shown me that you can attend me
as I wish," she said, turning to them as the sound of his horse's
hoofs died away, "it will not trouble me should he choose some day
to come again. He has not carried with him much that he can boast
of."
In truth, it seemed to the outer world that she had held him well in
hand. If he had come as a sighing lover, the whole county knew she
had shown him but small favour. She had invited companies to the
house on several occasions, and all could see how she bore herself
towards him. She carried herself with a certain proud courtesy as
becoming the daughter of his host, but her wit did not spare him,
and sometimes when it was more than in common cutting he was seen to
wince though he held himself gallantly. There were one or two who
thought they now and then had seen his blue eyes fall upon her when
he believed none were looking, and rest there burningly for a
moment, but 'twas never for more than an instant, when he would
rouse himself with a start and turn away.
She had been for a month or two less given to passionate outbreaks,
having indeed decided that it was to her interest as a young lady
and a future great one to curb herself. Her tirewoman, Rebecca, had
begun to dare to breathe more freely when she was engaged about her
person, and had, in truth, spoken of her pleasanter fortune among
her fellows in the servants' hall.
But a night or two after the visitor took his departure, she gave
way to such an outburst as even Rebecca had scarce ever beheld,
being roused to it by a small thing in one sense, though in yet
another perhaps great enough, since it touched upon the despoiling
of one of her beauties.
She was at her toilet-table being prepared for the night, and her
long hair brushed and dressed before retiring. Mistress Wimpole had
come in to the chamber to do something at her bidding, and chancing
to stand gazing at her great and heavy fall of locks as she was
waiting, she observed a thing which caused her, foolish woman that
she was, to give a start and utter an unwise exclamation.
"Madam!" she gasped--"madam!"
"What then!" quoth Mistress Clorinda angrily. "You bring my heart
to my throat!"
"Your hair!" stammered Wimpole, losing all her small wit--"your
beauteous hair! A lock is gone, madam!"
Clorinda started to her feet, and flung the great black mass over
her white shoulder, that she might see it in the glass.
"Gone!" she cried. "Where? How? What mean you? Ah-h!"
Her voice rose to a sound that was well-nigh a scream. She saw the
rifled spot--a place where a great lock had been severed jaggedly--
and it must have been five feet long.
She turned and sprang upon her woman, her beautiful face distorted
with fury, and her eyes like flames of fire. She seized her by each
shoulder and boxed her ears until her head spun round and bells rang
within it.
"'Twas you!" she shrieked. "'Twas you--she-devil-beast--slut that
you are! 'Twas when you used your scissors to the new head you made
for me. You set it on my hair that you might set a loop--and in
your sluttish way you snipped a lock by accident and hid it from
me."
She beat her till her own black hair flew about her like the mane of
a fury; and having used her hands till they were tired, she took her
brush from the table and beat her with that till the room echoed
with the blows on the stout shoulders.
"Mistress, 'twas not so!" cried the poor thing, sobbing and
struggling. "'Twas not so, madam!"
"Madam, you will kill the woman," wept Mistress Wimpole. "I beseech
you -! 'Tis not seemly, I beseech--"
Mistress Clorinda flung her woman from her and threw the brush at
Mistress Wimpole, crying at her with the lordly rage she had been
wont to shriek with when she wore breeches.
"Damnation to thy seemliness!" she cried, "and to thee too! Get
thee gone--from me, both--get thee gone from my sight!"
And both women fled weeping, and sobbing, and gasping from the room
incontinently.
She was shrewish and sullen with her woman for days after, and it
was the poor creature's labour to keep from her sight, when she
dressed her head, the place from whence the lock had been taken. In
the servants' hall the woman vowed that it was not she who had cut
it, that she had had no accident, though it was true she had used
the scissors about her head, yet it was but in snipping a ribbon,
and she had not touched a hair.
"If she were another lady," she said, "I should swear some gallant
had robbed her of it; but, forsooth, she does not allow them to come
near enough for such sport, and with five feet of hair wound up in
coronals, how could a man unwind a lock, even if 'twas permitted him
to stand at her very side."
Two years passed, and the beauty had no greater fields to conquer
than those she found in the country, since her father, Sir Jeoffry,
had not the money to take her to town, he becoming more and more
involved and so fallen into debt that it was even whispered that at
times it went hard with him to keep even the poor household he had.
Mistress Clorinda's fortunes the gentry of the neighbourhood
discussed with growing interest and curiosity. What was like to
become of her great gifts and powers in the end, if she could never
show them to the great world, and have the chance to carry her
splendid wares to the fashionable market where there were men of
quality and wealth who would be like to bid for them. She had not
chosen to accept any of those who had offered themselves so far, and
it was believed that for some reason she had held off my lord of
Dunstanwolde in his suit. 'Twas evident that he admired her
greatly, and why he had not already made her his countess was a sort
of mystery which was productive of many discussions and bore much
talking over. Some said that, with all her beauty and his
admiration, he was wary and waited, and some were pleased to say
that the reason he waited was because the young lady herself
contrived that he should, it being her desire to make an open
conquest of Sir John Oxon, and show him to the world as her slave,
before she made up her mind to make even a much greater match. Some
hinted that for all her disdainfulness and haughty pride she would
marry Sir John if he asked her, but that he being as brilliant a
beau as she a beauty, he was too fond of his pleasures and his gay
town life to give them up even to a goddess who had no fortune. His
own had not been a great one, and he had squandered it
magnificently, his extravagances being renowned in the world of
fashion, and having indeed founded for him his reputation.
It was, however, still his way to accept frequent hospitalities from
his kinsman Eldershawe, and Sir Jeoffry was always rejoiced enough
to secure him as his companion for a few days when he could lure him
from the dissipation of the town. At such times it never failed
that Mistress Wimpole and poor Anne kept their guard. Clorinda
never allowed them to relax their vigilance, and Mistress Wimpole
ceased to feel afraid, and became accustomed to her duties, but Anne
never did so. She looked always her palest and ugliest when Sir
John was in the house, and she would glance with sad wonder and
timid adoration from him to Clorinda; but sometimes when she looked
at Sir John her plain face would grow crimson, and once or twice he
caught her at the folly, and when she dropped her eyes overwhelmed
with shame, he faintly smiled to himself, seeing in her a new though
humble conquest.
There came a day when in the hunting-field there passed from mouth
to mouth a rumour, and Sir Jeoffry, hearing it, came pounding over
on his big black horse to his daughter and told it to her in great
spirits.
"He is a sly dog, John Oxon," he said, a broad grin on his rubicund
face. "This very week he comes to us, and he and I are cronies, yet
he has blabbed nothing of what is being buzzed about by all the
world."
"He has learned how to keep a closed mouth," said Mistress Clorinda,
without asking a question.
"But 'tis marriage he is so mum about, bless ye!" said Sir Jeoffry.
"And that is not a thing to be hid long. He is to be shortly
married, they say. My lady, his mother, has found him a great
fortune in a new beauty but just come to town. She hath great
estates in the West Indies, as well as a fine fortune in England--
and all the world is besieging her; but Jack hath come and bowed
sighing before her, and writ some verses, and borne her off from
them all."
"'Tis time," said Clorinda, "that he should marry some woman who can
pay his debts and keep him out of the spunging house, for to that he
will come if he does not play his cards with skill."
Sir Jeoffry looked at her askance and rubbed his red chin.
"I wish thou hadst liked him, Clo," he said, "and ye had both had
fortunes to match. I love the fellow, and ye would have made a
handsome pair."
Mistress Clorinda laughed, sitting straight in her saddle, her fine
eyes unblenching, though the sun struck them.
"We had fortunes to match," she said--"I was a beggar and he was a
spendthrift. Here comes Lord Dunstanwolde."
And as the gentleman rode near, it seemed to his dazzled eyes that
the sun so shone down upon her because she was a goddess and drew it
from the heavens.
In the west wing of the Hall 'twas talked of between Mistress
Wimpole and her charges, that a rumour of Sir John Oxon's marriage
was afloat.
"Yet can I not believe it," said Mistress Margery; "for if ever a
gentleman was deep in love, though he bitterly strove to hide it,
'twas Sir John, and with Mistress Clorinda."
"But she," faltered Anne, looking pale and even agitated--"she was
always disdainful to him and held him at arm's length. I--I wished
she would have treated him more kindly."
"'Tis not her way to treat men kindly," said Mistress Wimpole.
But whether the rumour was true or false--and there were those who
bestowed no credit upon it, and said it was mere town talk, and that
the same things had been bruited abroad before--it so chanced that
Sir John paid no visit to his relative or to Sir Jeoffry for several
months. 'Twas heard once that he had gone to France, and at the
French Court was making as great a figure as he had made at the
English one, but of this even his kinsman Lord Eldershawe could
speak no more certainly than he could of the first matter.
The suit of my Lord of Dunstanwolde--if suit it was--during these
months appeared to advance somewhat. All orders of surmises were
made concerning it--that Mistress Clorinda had privately quarrelled
with Sir John and sent him packing; that he had tired of his love-
making, as 'twas well known he had done many times before, and
having squandered his possessions and finding himself in open
straits, must needs patch up his fortunes in a hurry with the first
heiress whose estate suited him. But 'twas the women who said these
things; the men swore that no man could tire of or desert such
spirit and beauty, and that if Sir John Oxon stayed away 'twas
because he had been commanded to do so, it never having been
Mistress Clorinda's intention to do more than play with him awhile,
she having been witty against him always for a fop, and meaning
herself to accept no man as a husband who could not give her both
rank and wealth.
"We know her," said the old boon companions of her childhood, as
they talked of her over their bottles. "She knew her price and
would bargain for it when she was not eight years old, and would
give us songs and kisses but when she was paid for them with sweet
things and knickknacks from the toy-shops. She will marry no man
who cannot make her at least a countess, and she would take him but
because there was not a duke at hand. We know her, and her beauty's
ways."
But they did not know her; none knew her, save herself.
In the west wing, which grew more bare and ill-furnished as things
wore out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler.
She was so thin in two months' time, that her soft, dull eyes looked
twice their natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people.
One day, indeed, as she sat at work in her sister's room, Clorinda
being there at the time, the beauty, turning and beholding her face
suddenly, uttered a violent exclamation.
"Why look you at me so?" she said. "Your eyes stand out of your
head like a new-hatched, unfeathered bird's. They irk me with their
strange asking look. Why do you stare at me?"
"I do not know," Anne faltered. "I could not tell you, sister. My
eyes seem to stare so because of my thinness. I have seen them in
my mirror."
"Why do you grow thin?" quoth Clorinda harshly. "You are not ill."
"I--I do not know," again Anne faltered. "Naught ails me. I do not
know. For--forgive me!"
Clorinda laughed.
"Soft little fool," she said, "why should you ask me to forgive you?
I might as fairly ask you to forgive ME, that I keep my shape and
show no wasting."
Anne rose from her chair and hurried to her sister's side, sinking
upon her knees there to kiss her hand.
"Sister," she said, "one could never dream that you could need
pardon. I love you so--that all you do, it seems to me must be
right--whatsoever it might be."
Clorinda drew her fair hands away and clasped them on the top of her
head, proudly, as if she crowned herself thereby, her great and
splendid eyes setting themselves upon her sister's face.
"All that I do," she said slowly, and with the steadfast high
arrogance of an empress' self--"All that I do IS right--for me. I
make it so by doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the
laws that other women crouch and whine before, because they dare not
break them, though they long to do so? I am my own law--and the law
of some others."
It was by this time the first month of the summer, and to-night
there was again a birth-night ball, at which the beauty was to
dazzle all eyes; but 'twas of greater import than the one she had
graced previously, it being to celebrate the majority of the heir to
an old name and estate, who had been orphaned early, and was highly
connected, counting, indeed, among the members of his family the
Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles
in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous
estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his
family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a distant
kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the first
time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again.
He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late. But
there was one who had seen him early, though no human soul had known
of the event.
In the rambling, ill-cared for grounds of Wildairs Hall there was an
old rose-garden, which had once been the pride and pleasure of some
lady of the house, though this had been long ago; and now it was but
a lonely wilderness where roses only grew because the dead Lady
Wildairs had loved them, and Barbara and Anne had tended them, and
with their own hands planted and pruned during their childhood and
young maiden days. But of late years even they had seemed to have
forgotten it, having become discouraged, perchance, having no
gardeners to do the rougher work, and the weeds and brambles so
running riot. There were high hedges and winding paths overgrown
and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses,
flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more
delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and
scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have
trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in
the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and
it was a beauteous place deserted.
In the centre was an ancient broken sun-dial, which was in these
days in the midst of a sort of thicket, where a bold tangle of the
finest red roses clambered, and, defying neglect, flaunted their
rich colour in the sun.
And though the place had been so long forgotten, and it was not the
custom for it to be visited, about this garlanded broken sun-dial
the grass was a little trodden, and on the morning of the young
heir's coming of age some one stood there in the glowing sunlight as
if waiting.
This was no less than Mistress Clorinda herself. She was clad in a
morning gown of white, which seemed to make of her more than ever a
tall, transcendent creature, less a woman than a conquering goddess;
and she had piled the dial with scarlet red roses, which she was
choosing to weave into a massive wreath or crown, for some purpose
best known to herself. Her head seemed haughtier and more
splendidly held on high even than was its common wont, but upon
these roses her lustrous eyes were downcast and were curiously
smiling, as also was her ripe, arching lip, whose scarlet the
blossoms vied with but poorly. It was a smile like this, perhaps,
which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for 'twas not a
tender smile nor a melting one. If she was waiting, she did not
wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had
been kept by any daring laggard. This was not her way.
'Twas not a laggard who came soon, stepping hurriedly with light
feet upon the grass, as though he feared the sound which might be
made if he had trodden upon the gravel. It was Sir John Oxon who
came towards her in his riding costume.
He came and stood before her on the other side of the dial, and made
her a bow so low that a quick eye might have thought 'twas almost
mocking. His feather, sweeping the ground, caught a fallen rose,
which clung to it. His beauty, when he stood upright, seemed to
defy the very morning's self and all the morning world; but Mistress
Clorinda did not lift her eyes, but kept them upon her roses, and
went on weaving.
"Why did you choose to come?" she asked.
"Why did you choose to keep the tryst in answer to my message?" he
replied to her.
At this she lifted her great shining eyes and fixed them full upon
him.
"I wished," she said, "to hear what you would say--but more to SEE
you than to hear."
"And I," he began--"I came--"
She held up her white hand with a long-stemmed rose in it--as though
a queen should lift a sceptre.
"You came," she answered, "more to see ME than to hear. You made
that blunder."
"You choose to bear yourself like a goddess, and disdain me from
Olympian heights," he said. "I had the wit to guess it would be
so."
She shook her royal head, faintly and most strangely smiling.
"That you had not," was her clear-worded answer. "That is a later
thought sprung up since you have seen my face. 'Twas quick--for
you--but not quick enough." And the smile in her eyes was
maddening. "You thought to see a woman crushed and weeping, her
beauty bent before you, her locks dishevelled, her streaming eyes
lifted to Heaven--and you--with prayers, swearing that not Heaven
could help her so much as your deigning magnanimity. You have seen
women do this before, you would have seen ME do it--at your feet--
crying out that I was lost--lost for ever. THAT you expected! 'Tis
not here."
Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or
conscience--for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of
rakes and fashionable villains--well as he thought he knew all women
and their ways, betraying or betrayed--this creature taught him a
new thing, a new mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like
a thunderbolt.
"Gods!" he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back
apace, "Damnation! you are NOT a woman!"
She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes
should loose themselves from hers.
"But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights,"
she said; "I am not one--I am a woman who would show other women how
to bear themselves in hours like these. Because I am a woman why
should I kneel, and weep, and rave? What have I lost--in losing
you? I should have lost the same had I been twice your wife. What
is it women weep and beat their breasts for--because they love a
man--because they lose his love. They never have them."
She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at
it. What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so--a heavy,
sumptuous thing--in her white hands, her head thrown backward.
"You marry soon," she asked--"if the match is not broken?"
"Yes," he answered, watching her--a flame growing in his eyes and in
his soul in his own despite.
"It cannot be too soon," she said. And she turned and faced him,
holding the wreath high in her two hands poised like a crown above
her head--the brilliant sun embracing her, her lips curling, her
face uplifted as if she turned to defy the light, the crimson of her
cheek. 'Twas as if from foot to brow the woman's whole person was a
flame, rising and burning triumphant high above him. Thus for one
second's space she stood, dazzling his very eyesight with her
strange, dauntless splendour; and then she set the great rose-wreath
upon her head, so crowning it.
"You came to see me," she said, the spark in her eyes growing to the
size of a star; "I bid you look at me--and see how grief has faded
me these past months, and how I am bowed down by it. Look well--
that you may remember."
"I look," he said, almost panting.
"Then," she said, her fine-cut nostril pinching itself with her
breath, as she pointed down the path before her--"GO!--back to your
kennel!"
* * *
That night she appeared at the birth-night ball with the wreath of
roses on her head. No other ladies wore such things, 'twas a
fashion of her own; but she wore it in such beauty and with such
state that it became a crown again even as it had been the first
moment that she had put it on. All gazed at her as she entered, and
a murmur followed her as she moved with her father up the broad oak
staircase which was known through all the country for its width and
massive beauty. In the hall below guests were crowded, and there
were indeed few of them who did not watch her as she mounted by Sir
Jeoffry's side. In the upper hall there were guests also, some
walking to and fro, some standing talking, many looking down at the
arrivals as they came up.
"'Tis Mistress Wildairs," these murmured as they saw her.
"Clorinda, by God!" said one of the older men to his crony who stood
near him. "And crowned with roses! The vixen makes them look as if
they were built of rubies in every leaf."
At the top of the great staircase there stood a gentleman, who had
indeed paused a moment, spellbound, as he saw her coming. He was a
man of unusual height and of a majestic mien; he wore a fair
periwig, which added to his tallness; his laces and embroiderings
were marvels of art and richness, and his breast blazed with orders.
Strangely, she did not seem to see him; but when she reached the
landing, and her face was turned so that he beheld the full blaze of
its beauty, 'twas so great a wonder and revelation to him that he
gave a start. The next moment almost, one of the red roses of her
crown broke loose from its fastenings and fell at his very feet.
His countenance changed so that it seemed almost, for a second, to
lose some of its colour. He stooped and picked the rose up and held
it in his hand. But Mistress Clorinda was looking at my Lord of
Dunstanwolde, who was moving through the crowd to greet her. She
gave him a brilliant smile, and from her lustrous eyes surely there
passed something which lit a fire of hope in his.
After she had made her obeisance to her entertainers, and her
birthday greetings to the young heir, he contrived to draw closely
to her side and speak a few words in a tone those near her could not
hear.
"To-night, madam," he said, with melting fervour, "you deign to
bring me my answer as you promised."
"Yes," she murmured. "Take me where we may be a few moments alone."
He led her to an antechamber, where they were sheltered from the
gaze of the passers-by, though all was moving gaiety about them. He
fell upon his knee and bowed to kiss her fair hand. Despite the
sobriety of his years, he was as eager and tender as a boy.
"Be gracious to me, madam," he implored. "I am not young enough to
wait. Too many months have been thrown away."
"You need wait no longer, my lord," she said--"not one single hour."
And while he, poor gentleman, knelt, kissing her hand with adoring
humbleness, she, under the splendour of her crown of roses, gazed
down at his grey-sprinkled head with her great steady shining orbs,
as if gazing at some almost uncomprehended piteous wonder.
In less than an hour the whole assemblage knew of the event and
talked of it. Young men looked daggers at Dunstanwolde and at each
other; and older men wore glum or envious faces. Women told each
other 'twas as they had known it would be, or 'twas a wonder that at
last it had come about. Upon the arm of her lord that was to be,
Mistress Clorinda passed from room to room like a royal bride.
As she made her first turn of the ballroom, all eyes upon her, her
beauty blazing at its highest, Sir John Oxon entered and stood at
the door. He wore his gallant air, and smiled as ever; and when she
drew near him he bowed low, and she stopped, and bent lower in a
curtsey sweeping the ground.
'Twas but in the next room her lord led her to a gentleman who stood
with a sort of court about him. It was the tall stranger, with the
fair periwig, and the orders glittering on his breast--the one who
had started at sight of her as she had reached the landing of the
stairs. He held still in his hand a broken red rose, and when his
eye fell on her crown the colour mounted to his cheek.
"My honoured kinsman, his Grace the Duke of Osmonde," said her
affianced lord. "Your Grace--it is this lady who is to do me the
great honour of becoming my Lady Dunstanwolde."
And as the deep, tawny brown eye of the man bending before her
flashed into her own, for the first time in her life Mistress
Clorinda's lids fell, and as she swept her curtsey of stately
obeisance her heart struck like a hammer against her side.
