CHAPTER XI--Wherein a noble life comes to an end
When the earl and his countess went to their house in the country,
there fell to Mistress Anne a great and curious piece of good
fortune. In her wildest dreams she had never dared to hope that
such a thing might be.
My Lady Dunstanwolde, on her first visit home, bore her sister back
with her to the manor, and there established her. She gave her a
suite of rooms and a waiting woman of her own, and even provided her
with a suitable wardrobe. This last she had chosen herself with a
taste and fitness which only such wit as her own could have devised.
"They are not great rooms I give thee, Anne," she said, "but quiet
and small ones, which you can make home-like in such ways as I know
your taste lies. My lord has aided me to choose romances for your
shelves, he knowing more of books than I do. And I shall not dress
thee out like a peacock with gay colours and great farthingales.
They would frighten thee, poor woman, and be a burden with their
weight. I have chosen such things as are not too splendid, but will
suit thy pale face and shot partridge eyes."
Anne stood in the middle of her room and looked about at its
comforts, wondering.
"Sister," she said, "why are you so good to me? What have I done to
serve you? Why is it Anne instead of Barbara you are so gracious
to?"
"Perchance because I am a vain woman and would be worshipped as you
worship me."
"But you are always worshipped," Anne faltered.
"Ay, by men!" said Clorinda, mocking; "but not by women. And it may
be that my pride is so high that I must be worshipped by a woman
too. You would always love me, sister Anne. If you saw me break
the law--if you saw me stab the man I hated to the heart, you would
think it must be pardoned to me."
She laughed, and yet her voice was such that Anne lost her breath
and caught at it again.
"Ay, I should love you, sister!" she cried. "Even then I could not
but love you. I should know you could not strike so an innocent
creature, and that to be so hated he must have been worthy of hate.
You--are not like other women, sister Clorinda; but you could not be
base--for you have a great heart."
Clorinda put her hand to her side and laughed again, but with less
mocking in her laughter.
"What do you know of my heart, Anne?" she said. "Till late I did
not know it beat, myself. My lord says 'tis a great one and noble,
but I know 'tis his own that is so. Have I done honestly by him,
Anne, as I told you I would? Have I been fair in my bargain--as
fair as an honest man, and not a puling, slippery woman."
"You have been a great lady," Anne answered, her great dull, soft
eyes filling with slow tears as she gazed at her. "He says that you
have given to him a year of Heaven, and that you seem to him like
some archangel--for the lower angels seem not high enough to set
beside you."
"'Tis as I said--'tis his heart that is noble," said Clorinda. "But
I vowed it should be so. He paid--he paid!"
The country saw her lord's happiness as the town had done, and
wondered at it no less. The manor was thrown open, and guests came
down from town; great dinners and balls being given, at which all
the country saw the mistress reign at her consort's side with such a
grace as no lady ever had worn before. Sir Jeoffry, appearing at
these assemblies, was so amazed that he forgot to muddle himself
with drink, in gazing at his daughter and following her in all her
movements.
"Look at her!" he said to his old boon companions and hers, who were
as much awed as he. "Lord! who would think she was the strapping,
handsome shrew that swore, and sang men's songs to us, and rode to
the hunt in breeches."
He was awed at the thought of paying fatherly visits to her house,
and would have kept away, but that she was kind to him in the way he
was best able to understand.
"I am country-bred, and have not the manners of your town men, my
lady," he said to her, as he sat with her alone on one of the first
mornings he spent with her in her private apartment. "I am used to
rap out an oath or an ill-mannered word when it comes to me.
Dunstanwolde has weaned you of hearing such things--and I am too old
a dog to change."
"Wouldst have thought I was too old to change," answered she, "but I
was not. Did I not tell thee I would be a great lady. There is
naught a man or woman cannot learn who hath the wit."
"Thou hadst it, Clo," said Sir Jeoffry, gazing at her with a sort of
slow wonder. "Thou hadst it. If thou hadst not -!" He paused, and
shook his head, and there was a rough emotion in his coarse face.
"I was not the man to have made aught but a baggage of thee, Clo. I
taught thee naught decent, and thou never heard or saw aught to
teach thee. Damn me!" almost with moisture in his eyes, "if I know
what kept thee from going to ruin before thou wert fifteen."
She sat and watched him steadily.
"Nor I," quoth she, in answer. "Nor I--but here thou seest me, Dad-
-an earl's lady, sitting before thee."
"'Twas thy wit," said he, still moved, and fairly maudlin. "'Twas
thy wit and thy devil's will!"
"Ay," she answered, "'twas they--my wit and my devil's will!"
She rode to the hunt with him as she had been wont to do, but she
wore the latest fashion in hunting habit and coat; and though
'twould not have been possible for her to sit her horse better than
of old, or to take hedges and ditches with greater daring and
spirit, yet in some way every man who rode with her felt that 'twas
a great lady who led the field. The horse she rode was a fierce,
beauteous devil of a beast which Sir Jeoffry himself would scarce
have mounted even in his younger days; but she carried her loaded
whip, and she sat upon the brute as if she scarcely felt its temper,
and held it with a wrist of steel.
My Lord Dunstanwolde did not hunt this season. He had never been
greatly fond of the sport, and at this time was a little ailing, but
he would not let his lady give up her pleasure because he could not
join it.
"Nay," he said, "'tis not for the queen of the hunting-field to stay
at home to nurse an old man's aches. My pride would not let it be
so. Your father will attend you. Go--and lead them all, my dear."
In the field appeared Sir John Oxon, who for a brief visit was at
Eldershawe. He rode close to my lady, though she had naught to say
to him after her first greetings of civility. He looked not as
fresh and glowing with youth as had been his wont only a year ago.
His reckless wildness of life and his town debaucheries had at last
touched his bloom, perhaps. He had a haggard look at moments when
his countenance was not lighted by excitement. 'Twas whispered that
he was deep enough in debt to be greatly straitened, and that his
marriage having come to naught his creditors were besetting him
without mercy. This and more than this, no one knew so well as my
Lady Dunstanwolde; but of a certainty she had little pity for his
evil case, if one might judge by her face, when in the course of the
running he took a hedge behind her, and pressing his horse, came up
by her side and spoke.
"Clorinda," he began breathlessly, through set teeth.
She could have left him and not answered, but she chose to restrain
the pace of her wild beast for a moment and look at him.
"'Your ladyship!'" she corrected his audacity. "Or--'my Lady
Dunstanwolde.'"
"There was a time"--he said.
"This morning," she said, "I found a letter in a casket in my
closet. I do not know the mad villain who wrote it. I never knew
him."
"You did not," he cried, with an oath, and then laughed scornfully.
"The letter lies in ashes on the hearth," she said. "'Twas burned
unopened. Do not ride so close, Sir John, and do not play the
madman and the beast with the wife of my Lord Dunstanwolde."
"'The wife!'" he answered. "'My lord!' 'Tis a new game this, and
well played, by God!"
She did not so much as waver in her look, and her wide eyes smiled.
"Quite new," she answered him--"quite new. And could I not have
played it well and fairly, I would not have touched the cards. Keep
your horse off, Sir John. Mine is restive, and likes not another
beast near him;" and she touched the creature with her whip, and he
was gone like a thunderbolt.
The next day, being in her room, Anne saw her come from her
dressing-table with a sealed letter in her hand. She went to the
bell and rang it.
"Anne," she said, "I am going to rate my woman and turn her from my
service. I shall not beat or swear at her as I was wont to do with
my women in time past. You will be afraid, perhaps; but you must
stay with me."
She was standing by the fire with the letter held almost at arm's
length in her finger-tips, when the woman entered, who, seeing her
face, turned pale, and casting her eyes upon the letter, paler
still, and began to shake.
"You have attended mistresses of other ways than mine," her lady
said in her slow, clear voice, which seemed to cut as knives do.
"Some fool and madman has bribed you to serve him. You cannot serve
me also. Come hither and put this in the fire. If 'twere to be
done I would make you hold it in the live coals with your hand."
The woman came shuddering, looking as if she thought she might be
struck dead. She took the letter and kneeled, ashen pale, to burn
it. When 'twas done, her mistress pointed to the door.
"Go and gather your goods and chattels together, and leave within
this hour," she said. "I will be my own tirewoman till I can find
one who comes to me honest."
When she was gone, Anne sat gazing at the ashes on the hearth. She
was pale also.
"Sister," she said, "do you--"
"Yes," answered my lady. "'Tis a man who loved me, a cur and a
knave. He thought for an hour he was cured of his passion. I could
have told him 'twould spring up and burn more fierce than ever when
he saw another man possess me. 'Tis so with knaves and curs; and
'tis so with him. He hath gone mad again."
"Ay, mad!" cried Anne--"mad, and base, and wicked!"
Clorinda gazed at the ashes, her lips curling.
"He was ever base," she said--"as he was at first, so he is now.
'Tis thy favourite, Anne," lightly, and she delicately spurned the
blackened tinder with her foot--"thy favourite, John Oxon."
Mistress Anne crouched in her seat and hid her face in her thin
hands.
"Oh, my lady!" she cried, not feeling that she could say "sister,"
"if he be base, and ever was so, pity him, pity him! The base need
pity more than all."
For she had loved him madly, all unknowing her own passion, not
presuming even to look up in his beautiful face, thinking of him
only as the slave of her sister, and in dead secrecy knowing strange
things--strange things! And when she had seen the letter she had
known the handwriting, and the beating of her simple heart had well-
nigh strangled her--for she had seen words writ by him before.
* * *
When Dunstanwolde and his lady went back to their house in town,
Mistress Anne went with them. Clorinda willed that it should be so.
She made her there as peaceful and retired a nest of her own as she
had given to her at Dunstanwolde. By strange good fortune Barbara
had been wedded to a plain gentleman, who, being a widower with
children, needed a help-meet in his modest household, and through a
distant relationship to Mistress Wimpole, encountered her charge,
and saw in her meekness of spirit the thing which might fall into
the supplying of his needs. A beauty or a fine lady would not have
suited him; he wanted but a housewife and a mother for his orphaned
children, and this, a young woman who had lived straitly, and been
forced to many contrivances for mere decency of apparel and ordinary
comfort, might be trained to become.
So it fell that Mistress Anne could go to London without pangs of
conscience at leaving her sister in the country and alone. The
stateliness of the town mansion, my Lady Dunstanwolde's retinue of
lacqueys and serving-women, her little black page, who waited on her
and took her pug dogs to walk, her wardrobe, and jewels, and
equipages, were each and all marvels to her, but seemed to her mind
so far befitting that she remembered, wondering, the days when she
had darned the tattered tapestry in her chamber, and changed the
ribbands and fashions of her gowns. Being now attired fittingly,
though soberly as became her, she was not in these days--at least,
as far as outward seeming went--an awkward blot upon the scene when
she appeared among her sister's company; but at heart she was as
timid and shrinking as ever, and never mingled with the guests in
the great rooms when she could avoid so doing. Once or twice she
went forth with Clorinda in her coach and six, and saw the
glittering world, while she drew back into her corner of the
equipage and gazed with all a country-bred woman's timorous
admiration.
"'Twas grand and like a beautiful show!" she said, when she came
home the first time. "But do not take me often, sister; I am too
plain and shy, and feel that I am naught in it."
But though she kept as much apart from the great World of Fashion as
she could, she contrived to know of all her sister's triumphs; to
see her when she went forth in her bravery, though 'twere but to
drive in the Mall; to be in her closet with her on great nights when
her tirewomen were decking her in brocades and jewels, that she
might show her highest beauty at some assembly or ball of State.
And at all these times, as also at all others, she knew that she but
shared her own love and dazzled admiration with my Lord
Dunstanwolde, whose tenderness, being so fed by his lady's unfailing
graciousness of bearing and kindly looks and words, grew with every
hour that passed.
They held one night a splendid assembly at which a member of the
Royal House was present. That night Clorinda bade her sister
appear.
"Sometimes--I do not command it always--but sometimes you must show
yourself to our guests. My lord will not be pleased else. He says
it is not fitting that his wife's sister should remain unseen as if
we hid her away through ungraciousness. Your woman will prepare for
you all things needful. I myself will see that your dress becomes
you. I have commanded it already, and given much thought to its
shape and colour. I would have you very comely, Anne." And she
kissed her lightly on her cheek--almost as gently as she sometimes
kissed her lord's grey hair. In truth, though she was still a proud
lady and stately in her ways, there had come upon her some strange
subtle change Anne could not understand.
On the day on which the assembly was held, Mistress Anne's woman
brought to her a beautiful robe. 'Twas flowered satin of the sheen
and softness of a dove's breast, and the lace adorning it was like a
spider's web for gossamer fineness. The robe was sweetly fashioned,
fitting her shape wondrously; and when she was attired in it at
night a little colour came into her cheeks to see herself so far
beyond all comeliness she had ever known before. When she found
herself in the midst of the dazzling scene in the rooms of
entertainment, she was glad when at last she could feel herself lost
among the crowd of guests. Her only pleasure in such scenes was to
withdraw to some hidden corner and look on as at a pageant or a
play. To-night she placed herself in the shadow of a screen, from
which retreat she could see Clorinda and Dunstanwolde as they
received their guests. Thus she found enjoyment enough; for, in
truth, her love and almost abject passion of adoration for her
sister had grown as his lordship's had, with every hour. For a
season there had rested upon her a black shadow beneath which she
wept and trembled, bewildered and lost; though even at its darkest
the object of her humble love had been a star whose brightness was
not dimmed, because it could not be so whatsoever passed before it.
This cloud, however, being it seemed dispelled, the star had shone
but more brilliant in its high place, and she the more passionately
worshipped it. To sit apart and see her idol's radiance, to mark
her as she reigned and seemed the more royal when she bent the knee
to royalty itself, to see the shimmer of her jewels crowning her
midnight hair and crashing the warm whiteness of her noble neck, to
observe the admiration in all eyes as they dwelt upon her--this was,
indeed, enough of happiness.
"She is, as ever," she murmured, "not so much a woman as a proud
lovely goddess who has deigned to descend to earth. But my lord
does not look like himself. He seems shrunk in the face and old,
and his eyes have rings about them. I like not that. He is so kind
a gentleman and so happy that his body should not fail him. I have
marked that he has looked colourless for days, and Clorinda
questioned him kindly on it, but he said he suffered naught."
'Twas but a little later than she had thought this, that she
remarked a gentleman step aside and stand quite near without
observing her. Feeling that she had no testimony to her
fancifulness, she found herself thinking in a vague fashion that he,
too, had come there because he chose to be unobserved. 'Twould not
have been so easy for him to retire as it had been for her smallness
and insignificance to do so; and, indeed, she did not fancy that he
meant to conceal himself, but merely to stand for a quiet moment a
little apart from the crowd.
And as she looked up at him, wondering why this should be, she saw
he was the noblest and most stately gentleman she had ever beheld.
She had never seen him before; he must either be a stranger or a
rare visitor. As Clorinda was beyond a woman's height, he was
beyond a man's.
He carried himself as kingly as she did nobly; he had a countenance
of strong, manly beauty, and a deep tawny eye, thick-fringed and
full of fire; orders glittered upon his breast, and he wore a fair
periwig, which became him wondrously, and seemed to make his eye
more deep and burning by its contrast.
Beside his strength and majesty of bearing the stripling beauty of
John Oxon would have seemed slight and paltry, a thing for flippant
women to trifle with.
Mistress Anne looked at him with an admiration somewhat like
reverence, and as she did so a sudden thought rose to her mind, and
even as it rose, she marked what his gaze rested on, and how it
dwelt upon it, and knew that he had stepped apart to stand and gaze
as she did--only with a man's hid fervour--at her sister's self.
'Twas as if suddenly a strange secret had been told her. She read
it in his face, because he thought himself unobserved, and for a
space had cast his mask aside. He stood and gazed as a man who,
starving at soul, fed himself through his eyes, having no hope of
other sustenance, or as a man weary with long carrying of a burden,
for a space laid it down for rest and to gather power to go on. She
heard him draw a deep sigh almost stifled in its birth, and there
was that in his face which she felt it was unseemly that a stranger
like herself should behold, himself unknowing of her near presence.
She gently rose from her corner, wondering if she could retire from
her retreat without attracting his observation; but as she did so,
chance caused him to withdraw himself a little farther within the
shadow of the screen, and doing so, he beheld her.
Then his face changed; the mask of noble calmness, for a moment
fallen, resumed itself, and he bowed before her with the reverence
of a courtly gentleman, undisturbed by the unexpectedness of his
recognition of her neighbourhood.
"Madam," he said, "pardon my unconsciousness that you were near me.
You would pass?" And he made way for her.
She curtseyed, asking his pardon with her dull, soft eyes.
"Sir," she answered, "I but retired here for a moment's rest from
the throng and gaiety, to which I am unaccustomed. But chiefly I
sat in retirement that I might watch--my sister."
"Your sister, madam?" he said, as if the questioning echo were
almost involuntary, and he bowed again in some apology.
"My Lady Dunstanwolde," she replied. "I take such pleasure in her
loveliness and in all that pertains to her, it is a happiness to me
to but look on."
Whatsoever the thing was in her loving mood which touched him and
found echo in his own, he was so far moved that he answered to her
with something less of ceremoniousness; remembering also, in truth,
that she was a lady he had heard of, and recalling her relationship
and name.
"It is then Mistress Anne Wildairs I am honoured by having speech
with," he said. "My Lady Dunstanwolde has spoken of you in my
presence. I am my lord's kinsman the Duke of Osmonde;" again
bowing, and Anne curtseyed low once more.
Despite his greatness, she felt a kindness and grace in him which
was not condescension, and which almost dispelled the timidity
which, being part of her nature, so unduly beset her at all times
when she addressed or was addressed by a stranger. John Oxon,
bowing his bright curls, and seeming ever to mock with his smiles,
had caused her to be overcome with shy awkwardness and blushes; but
this man, who seemed as far above him in person and rank and mind as
a god is above a graceful painted puppet, even appeared to give of
his own noble strength to her poor weakness. He bore himself
towards her with a courtly respect such as no human being had ever
shown to her before. He besought her again to be seated in her
nook, and stood before her conversing with such delicate sympathy
with her mood as seemed to raise her to the pedestal on which stood
less humble women. All those who passed before them he knew and
could speak easily of. The high deeds of those who were statesmen,
or men honoured at Court or in the field, he was familiar with; and
of those who were beauties or notable gentlewomen he had always
something courtly to say.
Her own worship of her sister she knew full well he understood,
though he spoke of her but little.
"Well may you gaze at her," he said. "So does all the world, and
honours and adores."
He proffered her at last his arm, and she, having strangely taken
courage, let him lead her through the rooms and persuade her to some
refreshment. Seeing her so wondrously emerge from her chrysalis,
and under the protection of so distinguished a companion, all looked
at her as she passed with curious amazement, and indeed Mistress
Anne was all but overpowered by the reverence shown them as they
made their way.
As they came again into the apartment wherein the host and hostess
received their guests, Anne felt her escort pause, and looked up at
him to see the meaning of his sudden hesitation. He was gazing
intently, not at Clorinda, but at the Earl of Dunstanwolde.
"Madam," he said, "pardon me that I seem to detain you, but--but I
look at my kinsman. Madam," with a sudden fear in his voice, "he is
ailing--he sways as he stands. Let us go to him. Quickly! He
falls!"
And, in sooth, at that very moment there arose a dismayed cry from
the guests about them, and there was a surging movement; and as they
pressed forward themselves through the throng, Anne saw Dunstanwolde
no more above the people, for he had indeed fallen and lay out-
stretched and deathly on the floor.
'Twas but a few seconds before she and Osmonde were close enough to
him to mark his fallen face and ghastly pallor, and a strange dew
starting out upon his brow.
But 'twas his wife who knelt beside his prostrate body, waving all
else aside with a great majestic gesture of her arm.
"Back! back!" she cried. "Air! air! and water! My lord! My dear
lord!"
But he did not answer, or even stir, though she bent close to him
and thrust her hand within his breast. And then the frightened
guests beheld a strange but beautiful and loving thing, such as
might have moved any heart to tenderness and wonder. This great
beauty, this worshipped creature, put her arms beneath and about the
helpless, awful body--for so its pallor and stillness indeed made
it--and lifted it in their powerful whiteness as if it had been the
body of a child, and so bore it to a couch near and laid it down,
kneeling beside it.
Anne and Osmonde were beside her. Osmonde pale himself, but gently
calm and strong. He had despatched for a physician the instant he
saw the fall.
"My lady," he said, bending over her, "permit me to approach. I
have some knowledge of these seizures. Your pardon!"
He knelt also and took the moveless hand, feeling the pulse; he,
too, thrust his hand within the breast and held it there, looking at
the sunken face.
"My dear lord," her ladyship was saying, as if to the prostrate
man's ear alone, knowing that her tender voice must reach him if
aught would--as indeed was truth. "Edward! My dear--dear lord!"
Osmonde held his hand steadily over the heart. The guests shrunk
back, stricken with terror.
There was that in this corner of the splendid room which turned
faces pale.
Osmonde slowly withdrew his hand, and turning to the kneeling woman-
-with a pallor like that of marble, but with a noble tenderness and
pity in his eyes -
"My lady," he said, "you are a brave woman. Your great courage must
sustain you. The heart beats no more. A noble life is finished."
* * *
The guests heard, and drew still farther back, a woman or two
faintly whimpering; a hurrying lacquey parted the crowd, and so, way
being made for him, the physician came quickly forward.
Anne put her shaking hands up to cover her gaze. Osmonde stood
still, looking down. My Lady Dunstanwolde knelt by the couch and
hid her beautiful face upon the dead man's breast.
