CHAPTER X--"Yes--I have marked him"
Through the brilliant, happy year succeeding to his marriage my Lord
of Dunstanwolde lived like a man who dreams a blissful dream and
knows it is one.
"I feel," he said to his lady, "as if 'twere too great rapture to
last, and yet what end could come, unless you ceased to be kind to
me; and, in truth, I feel that you are too noble above all other
women to change, unless I were more unworthy than I could ever be
since you are mine."
Both in the town and in the country, which last place heard many
things of his condition and estate through rumour, he was the man
most wondered at and envied of his time--envied because of his
strange happiness; wondered at because having, when long past youth,
borne off this arrogant beauty from all other aspirants she showed
no arrogance to him, and was as perfect a wife as could have been
some woman without gifts whom he had lifted from low estate and
endowed with rank and fortune. She seemed both to respect himself
and her position as his lady and spouse. Her manner of reigning in
his household was among his many delights the greatest. It was a
great house, and an old one, built long before by a Dunstanwolde
whose lavish feasts and riotous banquets had been the notable
feature of his life. It was curiously rambling in its structure.
The rooms of entertainment were large and splendid, the halls and
staircases stately; below stairs there was space for an army of
servants to be disposed of; and its network of cellars and wine-
vaults was so beyond all need that more than one long arched stone
passage was shut up as being without use, and but letting cold, damp
air into corridors leading to the servants' quarters. It was,
indeed, my Lady Dunstanwolde who had ordered the closing of this
part when it had been her pleasure to be shown her domain by her
housekeeper, the which had greatly awed and impressed her household
as signifying that, exalted lady as she was, her wit was practical
as well as brilliant, and that her eyes being open to her
surroundings, she meant not that her lacqueys should rob her and her
scullions filch, thinking that she was so high that she was ignorant
of common things and blind.
"You will be well housed and fed and paid your dues," she said to
them; "but the first man or woman who does a task ill or dishonestly
will be turned from his place that hour. I deal justice--not
mercy."
"Such a mistress they have never had before," said my lord when she
related this to him. "Nay, they have never dreamed of such a lady--
one who can be at once so severe and so kind. But there is none
other such, my dearest one. They will fear and worship you."
She gave him one of her sweet, splendid smiles. It was the
sweetness she at rare times gave her splendid smile which was her
marvellous power.
"I would not be too grand a lady to be a good housewife," she said.
"I may not order your dinners, my dear lord, or sweep your
corridors, but they shall know I rule your household and would rule
it well."
"You are a goddess!" he cried, kneeling to her, enraptured. "And
you have given yourself to a poor mortal man, who can but worship
you."
"You give me all I have," she said, "and you love me nobly, and I am
grateful."
Her assemblies were the most brilliant in the town, and the most to
be desired entrance to. Wits and beauties planned and intrigued
that they might be bidden to her house; beaux and fine ladies fell
into the spleen if she neglected them. Her lord's kinsman the Duke
of Osmonde, who had been present when she first knelt to Royalty,
had scarce removed his eyes from her so long as he could gaze. He
went to Dunstanwolde afterwards and congratulated him with stately
courtesy upon his great good fortune and happiness, speaking almost
with fire of her beauty and majesty, and thanking his kinsman that
through him such perfections had been given to their name and house.
From that time, at all special assemblies given by his kinsman he
was present, the observed of all observers. He was a man of whom
'twas said that he was the most magnificent gentleman in Europe;
that there was none to compare with him in the combination of gifts
given both by Nature and Fortune. His beauty both of feature and
carriage was of the greatest, his mind was of the highest, and his
education far beyond that of the age he lived in. It was not the
fashion of the day that men of his rank should devote themselves to
the cultivation of their intellects instead of to a life of
pleasure; but this he had done from his earliest youth, and now, in
his perfect though early maturity, he had no equal in polished
knowledge and charm of bearing. He was the patron of literature and
art; men of genius were not kept waiting in his ante-chamber, but
were received by him with courtesy and honour. At the Court 'twas
well known there was no man who stood so near the throne in favour,
and that there was no union so exalted that he might not have made
his suit as rather that of a superior than an equal. The Queen both
loved and honoured him, and condescended to avow as much with
gracious frankness. She knew no other man, she deigned to say, who
was so worthy of honour and affection, and that he had not married
must be because there was no woman who could meet him on ground that
was equal. If there were no scandals about him--and there were
none--'twas not because he was cold of heart or imagination. No man
or woman could look into his deep eye and not know that when love
came to him 'twould be a burning passion, and an evil fate if it
went ill instead of happily.
"Being past his callow, youthful days, 'tis time he made some woman
a duchess," Dunstanwolde said reflectively once to his wife.
"'Twould be more fitting that he should; and it is his way to honour
his house in all things, and bear himself without fault as the head
of it. Methinks it strange he makes no move to do it."
"No, 'tis not strange," said my lady, looking under her black-
fringed lids at the glow of the fire, as though reflecting also.
"There is no strangeness in it."
"Why not?" her lord asked.
"There is no mate for him," she answered slowly. "A man like him
must mate as well as marry, or he will break his heart with silent
raging at the weakness of the thing he is tied to. He is too strong
and splendid for a common woman. If he married one, 'twould be as
if a lion had taken to himself for mate a jackal or a sheep. Ah!"
with a long drawn breath--"he would go mad--mad with misery;" and
her hands, which lay upon her knee, wrung themselves hard together,
though none could see it.
"He should have a goddess, were they not so rare," said
Dunstanwolde, gently smiling. "He should hold a bitter grudge
against me, that I, his unworthy kinsman, have been given the only
one."
"Yes, he should have a goddess," said my lady slowly again; "and
there are but women, naught but women."
"You have marked him well," said her lord, admiring her wisdom.
"Methinks that you--though you have spoken to him but little, and
have but of late become his kinswoman--have marked and read him
better than the rest of us."
"Yes--I have marked him," was her answer.
"He is a man to mark, and I have a keen eye." She rose up as she
spoke, and stood before the fire, lifted by some strong feeling to
her fullest height, and towering there, splendid in the shadow--for
'twas by twilight they talked. "He is a Man," she said--"he is a
Man! Nay, he is as God meant man should be. And if men were so,
there would be women great enough for them to mate with and to give
the world men like them." And but that she stood in the shadow, her
lord would have seen the crimson torrent rush up her cheek and brow,
and overspread her long round throat itself.
If none other had known of it, there was one man who knew that she
had marked him, though she had borne herself towards him always with
her stateliest grace. This man was his Grace the Duke himself.
From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up
the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her
wreath at his feet, and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he
had seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that had
he not come but just too late, she would have been his own. Each
time he had beheld her since that night he had felt this burn more
deeply in his soul. He was too high and fine in all his thoughts to
say to himself that in her he saw for the first time the woman who
was his peer; but this was very truth--or might have been, if Fate
had set her youth elsewhere, and a lady who was noble and her own
mother had trained and guarded her. When he saw her at the Court
surrounded, as she ever was, by a court of her own; when he saw her
reigning in her lord's house, receiving and doing gracious honour to
his guests and hers; when she passed him in her coach, drawing every
eye by the majesty of her presence, as she drove through the town,
he felt a deep pang, which was all the greater that his honour bade
him conquer it. He had no ignoble thought of her, he would have
scorned to sully his soul with any light passion; to him she was the
woman who might have been his beloved wife and duchess, who would
have upheld with him the honour and traditions of his house, whose
strength and power and beauty would have been handed down to his
children, who so would have been born endowed with gifts befitting
the state to which Heaven had called them. It was of this he
thought when he saw her, and of naught less like to do her honour.
And as he had marked her so, he saw in her eyes, despite her dignity
and grace, she had marked him. He did not know how closely, or that
she gave him the attention he could not restrain himself from
bestowing upon her. But when he bowed before her, and she greeted
him with all courtesy, he saw in her great, splendid eye that had
Fate willed it so, she would have understood all his thoughts,
shared all his ambitions, and aided him to uphold his high ideals.
Nay, he knew she understood him even now, and was stirred by what
stirred him also, even though they met but rarely, and when they
encountered each other, spoke but as kinsman and kinswoman who would
show each other all gracious respect and honour. It was because of
this pang which struck his great heart at times that he was not a
frequent visitor at my Lord Dunstanwolde's mansion, but appeared
there only at such assemblies as were matters of ceremony, his
absence from which would have been a noted thing. His kinsman was
fond of him, and though himself of so much riper age, honoured him
greatly. At times he strove to lure him into visits of greater
familiarity; but though his kindness was never met coldly or
repulsed, a further intimacy was in some gracious way avoided.
"My lady must beguile you to be less formal with us," said
Dunstanwolde. And later her ladyship spoke as her husband had
privately desired: "My lord would be made greatly happy if your
Grace would honour our house oftener," she said one night, when at
the end of a great ball he was bidding her adieu.
Osmonde's deep eye met hers gently and held it. "My Lord
Dunstanwolde is always gracious and warm of heart to his kinsman,"
he replied. "Do not let him think me discourteous or ungrateful.
In truth, your ladyship, I am neither the one nor the other."
The eyes of each gazed into the other's steadfastly and gravely.
The Duke of Osmonde thought of Juno's as he looked at hers; they
were of such velvet, and held such fathomless deeps.
"Your Grace is not so free as lesser men," Clorinda said. "You
cannot come and go as you would."
"No," he answered gravely, "I cannot, as I would."
And this was all.
It having been known by all the world that, despite her beauty and
her conquests, Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had not smiled with great
favour upon Sir John Oxon in the country, it was not wondered at or
made any matter of gossip that the Countess of Dunstanwolde was but
little familiar with him and saw him but rarely at her house in
town.
Once or twice he had appeared there, it is true, at my Lord
Dunstanwolde's instance, but my lady herself scarce seemed to see
him after her first courtesies as hostess were over.
"You never smiled on him, my love," Dunstanwolde said to his wife.
"You bore yourself towards him but cavalierly, as was your
ladyship's way--with all but one poor servant," tenderly; "but he
was one of the many who followed in your train, and if these gay
young fellows stay away, 'twill be said that I keep them at a
distance because I am afraid of their youth and gallantry. I would
not have it fancied that I was so ungrateful as to presume upon your
goodness and not leave to you your freedom."
"Nor would I, my lord," she answered. "But he will not come often;
I do not love him well enough."
His marriage with the heiress who had wealth in the West Indies was
broken off, or rather 'twas said had come to naught. All the town
knew it, and wondered, and talked, because it had been believed at
first that the young lady was much enamoured of him, and that he
would soon lead her to the altar, the which his creditors had
greatly rejoiced over as promising them some hope that her fortune
would pay their bills of which they had been in despair. Later,
however, gossip said that the heiress had not been so tender as was
thought; that, indeed, she had been found to be in love with another
man, and that even had she not, she had heard such stories of Sir
John as promised but little nuptial happiness for any woman that
took him to husband.
When my Lord Dunstanwolde brought his bride to town, and she soared
at once to splendid triumph and renown, inflaming every heart, and
setting every tongue at work, clamouring her praises, Sir John Oxon
saw her from afar in all the scenes of brilliant fashion she
frequented and reigned queen of. 'Twas from afar, it might be said,
he saw her only, though he was often near her, because she bore
herself as if she did not observe him, or as though he were a thing
which did not exist. The first time that she deigned to address him
was upon an occasion when she found herself standing so near him at
an assembly that in the crowd she brushed him with her robe. His
blue eyes were fixed burningly upon her, and as she brushed him he
drew in a hard breath, which she hearing, turned slowly and let her
own eyes fall upon his face.
"You did not marry," she said.
"No, I did not marry," he answered, in a low, bitter voice. "'Twas
your ladyship who did that."
She faintly, slowly smiled.
"I should not have been like to do otherwise," she said; "'tis an
honourable condition. I would advise you to enter it."
