CHAPTER XIV--Containing the history of the breaking of the horse
Devil, and relates the returning of his Grace of Osmonde from France
There were in this strange nature, depths so awful and profound that
it was not to be sounded or to be judged as others were. But one
thing could have melted or caused the unconquerable spirit to bend,
and this was the overwhelming passion of love--not a slight, tender
feeling, but a great and powerful one, such as could be awakened but
by a being of as strong and deep a nature as itself, one who was in
all things its peer.
"I have been lonely--lonely all my life," my Lady Dunstanwolde had
once said to her sister, and she had indeed spoken a truth.
Even in her childhood she had felt in some strange way she stood
apart from the world about her. Before she had been old enough to
reason she had been conscious that she was stronger and had greater
power and endurance than any human being about her. Her strength
she used in these days in wilful tyranny, and indeed it was so used
for many a day when she was older. The time had never been when an
eye lighted on her with indifference, or when she could not rule and
punish as she willed. As an infant she had browbeaten the women-
servants and the stable-boys and grooms; but because of her quick
wit and clever tongue, and also because no humour ever made her
aught but a creature well worth looking at, they had taken her
bullying in good-humour and loved her in their coarse way. She had
tyrannised over her father and his companions, and they had adored
and boasted of her; but there had not been one among them whom she
could have turned to if a softer moment had come upon her and she
had felt the need of a friend, nor indeed one whom she did not
regard privately with contempt.
A god or goddess forced upon earth and surrounded by mere human
beings would surely feel a desolateness beyond the power of common
words to express, and a human being endowed with powers and physical
gifts so rare as to be out of all keeping with those of its fellows
of ordinary build and mental stature must needs be lonely too.
She had had no companion, because she had found none like herself,
and none with whom she could have aught in common. Anne she had
pitied, being struck by some sense of the unfairness of her lot as
compared with her own. John Oxon had moved her, bringing to her her
first knowledge of buoyant, ardent youth, and blooming strength and
beauty; for Dunstanwolde she had felt gratitude and affection; but
than these there had been no others who even distantly had touched
her heart.
The night she had given her promise to Dunstanwolde, and had made
her obeisance before his kinsman as she had met his deep and leonine
eye, she had known that 'twas the only man's eye before which her
own would fall and which held the power to rule her very soul.
She did not think this as a romantic girl would have thought it; it
was revealed to her by a sudden tempestuous leap of her heart, and
by a shock like terror. Here was the man who was of her own build,
whose thews and sinews of mind and body was as powerful as her own--
here was he who, had she met him one short year before, would have
revolutionised her world.
In the days of her wifehood when she had read in his noble face
something of that which he endeavoured to command and which to no
other was apparent, the dignity of his self-restraint had but filled
her with tenderness more passionate and grateful.
"Had he been a villain and a coward," was her thought, "he would
have made my life a bitter battle; but 'tis me he loves, not himself
only, and as I honour him so does he honour me."
Now she beheld the same passion in his eyes, but no more held in
leash: his look met hers, hiding from her nothing of what his high
soul burned with; and she was free--free to answer when he spoke,
and only feeling one bitterness in her heart--if he had but come in
time--God! why had he not been sent in time?
But, late or early, he had come; and what they had to give each
other should not be mocked at and lost. The night she had ended by
going to Anne's chamber, she had paced her room saying this again
and again, all the strength of her being rising in revolt. She had
been then a caged tigress of a verity; she had wrung her hands; she
had held her palm hard against her leaping heart; she had walked
madly to and fro, battling in thought with what seemed awful fate;
she had flung herself upon her knees and wept bitter scalding tears.
"He is so noble," she had cried--"he is so noble--and I so worship
his nobleness--and I have been so base!"
And in her suffering her woman's nerves had for a moment betrayed
her. Heretofore she had known no weakness of her sex, but the woman
soul in her so being moved, she had been broken and conquered for a
space, and had gone to Anne's chamber, scarcely knowing what refuge
she so sought. It had been a feminine act, and she had realised all
it signified when Anne sank weeping by her. Women who wept and
prated together at midnight in their chambers ended by telling their
secrets. So it was that it fell out that Anne saw not again the
changed face to the sight of which she had that night awakened. It
seemed as if my lady from that time made plans which should never
for a moment leave her alone. The next day she was busied arranging
a brilliant rout, the next a rich banquet, the next a great
assembly; she drove in the Mall in her stateliest equipages; she
walked upon its promenade, surrounded by her crowd of courtiers,
smiling upon them, and answering them with shafts of graceful wit--
the charm of her gaiety had never been so remarked upon, her air
never so enchanting. At every notable gathering in the World of
Fashion she was to be seen. Being bidden to the Court, which was at
Hampton, her brilliant beauty and spirit so enlivened the royal
dulness that 'twas said the Queen herself was scarce resigned to
part with her, and that the ladies and gentlemen in waiting all
suffered from the spleen when she withdrew. She bought at this time
the fiercest but most beautiful beast of a horse she had ever
mounted. The creature was superbly handsome, but apparently so
unconquerable and so savage that her grooms were afraid to approach
it, and indeed it could not be saddled and bitted unless she herself
stood near. Even the horse-dealer, rogue though he was, had sold it
to her with some approach to a qualm of conscience, having confessed
to her that it had killed two grooms, and been sentenced to be shot
by its first owner, and was still living only because its great
beauty had led him to hesitate for a few days. It was by chance
that during these few days Lady Dunstanwolde heard of it, and going
to see it, desired and bought it at once.
"It is the very beast I want," she said, with a gleam in her eye.
"It will please me to teach it that there is one stronger than
itself."
She had much use for her loaded riding-whip; and indeed, not finding
it heavy enough, ordered one made which was heavier. When she rode
the beast in Hyde Park, her first battles with him were the town
talk; and there were those who bribed her footmen to inform them
beforehand, when my lady was to take out Devil, that they might know
in time to be in the Park to see her. Fops and hunting-men laid
wagers as to whether her ladyship would kill the horse or be killed
by him, and followed her training of the creature with an excitement
and delight quite wild.
"Well may the beast's name be Devil," said more than one looker-on;
"for he is not so much horse as demon. And when he plunges and
rears and shows his teeth, there is a look in his eye which flames
like her own, and 'tis as if a male and female demon fought
together, for surely such a woman never lived before. She will not
let him conquer her, God knows; and it would seem that he was
swearing in horse fashion that she should not conquer him."
When he was first bought and brought home, Mistress Anne turned ashy
at the sight of him, and in her heart of hearts grieved bitterly
that it had so fallen out that his Grace of Osmonde had been called
away from town by high and important matters; for she knew full
well, that if he had been in the neighbourhood, he would have said
some discreet and tender word of warning to which her ladyship would
have listened, though she would have treated with disdain the
caution of any other man or woman. When she herself ventured to
speak, Clorinda looked only stern.
"I have ridden only ill-tempered beasts all my life, and that for
the mere pleasure of subduing them," she said. "I have no liking
for a horse like a bell-wether; and if this one should break my
neck, I need battle with neither men nor horses again, and I shall
die at the high tide of life and power; and those who think of me
afterwards will only remember that they loved me--that they loved
me."
But the horse did not kill her, nor she it. Day after day she stood
by while it was taken from its stall, many a time dealing with it
herself, because no groom dare approach; and then she would ride it
forth, and in Hyde Park force it to obey her; the wondrous strength
of her will, her wrist of steel, and the fierce, pitiless punishment
she inflicted, actually daunting the devilish creature's courage.
She would ride from the encounter, through two lines of people who
had been watching her--and some of them found themselves following
after her, even to the Park gate--almost awed as they looked at her,
sitting erect and splendid on the fretted, anguished beast, whose
shining skin was covered with lather, whose mouth tossed blood-
flecked foam, and whose great eye was so strangely like her own, but
that hers glowed with the light of triumph, and his burned with the
agonised protest of the vanquished. At such times there was
somewhat of fear in the glances that followed her beauty, which
almost seemed to blaze--her colour was so rich, the curve of her red
mouth so imperial, the poise of her head, with its loosening coils
of velvet black hair, so high.
"It is good for me that I do this," she said to Anne, with a short
laugh, one day. "I was growing too soft--and I have need now for
all my power. To fight with the demon in this beast, rouses all in
me that I have held in check since I became my poor lord's wife.
That the creature should have set his will against all others, and
should resist me with such strength and devilishness, rouses in me
the passion of the days when I cursed and raved and struck at those
who angered me. 'Tis fury that possesses me, and I could curse and
shriek at him as I flog him, if 'twould be seemly. As it would not
be so, I shut my teeth hard, and shriek and curse within them, and
none can hear."
Among those who made it their custom to miss no day when she went
forth on Devil that they might stand near and behold her, there was
one man ever present, and 'twas Sir John Oxon. He would stand as
near as might be and watch the battle, a stealthy fire in his eye,
and a look as if the outcome of the fray had deadly meaning to him.
He would gnaw his lip until at times the blood started; his face
would by turns flush scarlet and turn deadly pale; he would move
suddenly and restlessly, and break forth under breath into oaths of
exclamation. One day a man close by him saw him suddenly lay his
hand upon his sword, and having so done, still keep it there, though
'twas plain he quickly remembered where he was.
As for the horse's rider, my Lady Dunstanwolde, whose way it had
been to avoid this man and to thrust him from her path by whatsoever
adroit means she could use, on these occasions made no effort to
evade him and his glances; in sooth, he knew, though none other did
so, that when she fought with her horse she did it with a fierce joy
in that he beheld her. 'Twas as though the battle was between
themselves; and knowing this in the depths of such soul as he
possessed, there were times when the man would have exulted to see
the brute rise and fall upon her, crushing her out of life, or dash
her to the earth and set his hoof upon her dazzling upturned face.
Her scorn and deadly defiance of him, her beauty and maddening
charm, which seemed but to increase with every hour that flew by,
had roused his love to fury. Despite his youth, he was a villain,
as he had ever been; even in his first freshness there had been
older men--and hardened ones--who had wondered at the selfish
mercilessness and blackness of the heart that was but that of a boy.
They had said among themselves that at his years they had never
known a creature who could be so gaily a dastard, one who could plan
with such light remorselessness, and using all the gifts given him
by Nature solely for his own ends, would take so much and give so
little. In truth, as time had gone on, men who had been his
companions, and had indeed small consciences to boast of, had begun
to draw off a little from him, and frequent his company less. He
chose to tell himself that this was because he had squandered his
fortune and was less good company, being pursued by creditors and
haunted by debts; but though there was somewhat in this, perchance
'twas not the entire truth.
"By Gad!" said one over his cups, "there are things even a rake-hell
fellow like me cannot do; but he does them, and seems not to know
that they are to his discredit."
There had been a time when without this woman's beauty he might have
lived--indeed, he had left it of his own free vicious will; but in
these days, when his fortunes had changed and she represented all
that he stood most desperately in need of, her beauty drove him mad.
In his haunting of her, as he followed her from place to place, his
passion grew day by day, and all the more gained strength and
fierceness because it was so mixed with hate. He tossed upon his
bed at night and cursed her; he remembered the wild past, and the
memory all but drove him to delirium. He knew of what stern stuff
she was made, and that even if her love had died, she would have
held to her compact like grim death, even while loathing him. And
he had cast all this aside in one mad moment of boyish cupidity and
folly; and now that she was so radiant and entrancing a thing, and
wealth, and splendour, and rank, and luxury lay in the hollow of her
hand, she fixed her beauteous devil's eyes upon him with a scorn in
their black depths which seemed to burn like fires of hell.
The great brute who dashed, and plunged, and pranced beneath her
seemed to have sworn to conquer her as he had sworn himself; but let
him plunge and kick as he would, there was no quailing in her eye,
she sat like a creature who was superhuman, and her hand was iron,
her wrist was steel. She held him so that he could not do his worst
without such pain as would drive him mad; she lashed him, and rained
on him such blows as almost made him blind. Once at the very worst,
Devil dancing near him, she looked down from his back into John
Oxon's face, and he cursed aloud, her eye so told him his own story
and hers. In those days their souls met in such combat as it seemed
must end in murder itself.
"You will not conquer him," he said to her one morning, forcing
himself near enough to speak.
"I will, unless he kills me," she answered, "and that methinks he
will find it hard to do."
"He will kill you," he said. "I would, were I in his four shoes."
"You would if you could," were her words; "but you could not with
his bit in your mouth and my hand on the snaffle. And if he killed
me, still 'twould be he, not I, was beaten; since he could only kill
what any bloody villain could with any knife. He is a brute beast,
and I am that which was given dominion over such. Look on till I
have done with him."
And thus, with other beholders, though in a different mood from
theirs, he did, until a day when even the most sceptical saw that
the brute came to the fray with less of courage, as if there had at
last come into his brain the dawning of a fear of that which rid
him, and all his madness could not displace from its throne upon his
back.
"By God!" cried more than one of the bystanders, seeing this,
despite the animal's fury, "the beast gives way! He gives way! She
has him!" And John Oxon, shutting his teeth, cut short an oath and
turned pale as death.
From that moment her victory was a thing assured. The duel of
strength became less desperate, and having once begun to learn his
lesson, the brute was made to learn it well. His bearing was a
thing superb to behold; once taught obedience, there would scarce be
a horse like him in the whole of England. And day by day this he
learned from her, and being mastered, was put through his paces, and
led to answer to the rein, so that he trotted, cantered, galloped,
and leaped as a bird flies. Then as the town had come to see him
fight for freedom, it came to see him adorn the victory of the being
who had conquered him, and over their dishes of tea in the afternoon
beaux and beauties of fashion gossiped of the interesting and
exciting event; and there were vapourish ladies who vowed they could
not have beaten a brute so, and that surely my Lady Dunstanwolde
must have looked hot and blowzy while she did it, and have had the
air of a great rough man; and there were some pretty tiffs and even
quarrels when the men swore that never had she looked so magnificent
a beauty and so inflamed the hearts of all beholding her.
On the first day after her ladyship's last battle with her horse,
the one which ended in such victory to her that she rode him home
hard through the streets without an outbreak, he white with lather,
and marked with stripes, but his large eye holding in its velvet a
look which seemed almost like a human thought--on that day after
there occurred a thing which gave the town new matter to talk of.
His Grace of Osmonde had been in France, called there by business of
the State, and during his absence the gossip concerning the horse
Devil had taken the place of that which had before touched on
himself. 'Twas not announced that he was to return to England, and
indeed there were those who, speaking with authority, said that for
two weeks at least his affairs abroad would not be brought to a
close; and yet on this morning, as my Lady Dunstanwolde rode 'neath
the trees, holding Devil well in hand, and watching him with eagle
keenness of eye, many looking on in wait for the moment when the
brute might break forth suddenly again, a horseman was seen
approaching at a pace so rapid that 'twas on the verge of a gallop,
and the first man who beheld him looked amazed and lifted his hat,
and the next, seeing him, spoke to another, who bowed with him, and
all along the line of loungers hats were removed, and people wore
the air of seeing a man unexpectedly, and hearing a name spoken in
exclamation by his side, Sir John Oxon looked round and beheld ride
by my lord Duke of Osmonde. The sun was shining brilliantly, and
all the Park was gay with bright warmth and greenness of turf and
trees. Clorinda felt the glow of the summer morning permeate her
being. She kept her watch upon her beast; but he was going well,
and in her soul she knew that he was beaten, and that her victory
had been beheld by the one man who knew that it meant to her that
which it seemed to mean also to himself. And filled with this
thought and the joy of it, she rode beneath the trees, and so was
riding with splendid spirit when she heard a horse behind her, and
looked up as it drew near, and the rich crimson swept over her in a
sweet flood, so that it seemed to her she felt it warm on her very
shoulders, 'neath her habit, for 'twas Osmonde's self who had
followed and reached her, and uncovered, keeping pace by her side.
Ah, what a face he had, and how his eyes burned as they rested on
her. It was such a look she met, that for a moment she could not
find speech, and he himself spoke as a man who, through some deep
emotion, has almost lost his breath.
"My Lady Dunstanwolde," he began; and then with a sudden passion,
"Clorinda, my beloved!" The time had come when he could not keep
silence, and with great leapings of her heart she knew. Yet not one
word said she, for she could not; but her beauty, glowing and
quivering under his eyes' great fire, answered enough.
"Were it not that I fear for your sake the beast you ride," he said,
"I would lay my hand upon his bridle, that I might crush your hand
in mine. At post-haste I have come from France, hearing this thing-
-that you endangered every day that which I love so madly. My God!
beloved, cruel, cruel woman--sure you must know!"
She answered with a breathless wild surrender. "Yes, yes!" she
gasped, "I know."
"And yet you braved this danger, knowing that you might leave me a
widowed man for life."
"But," she said, with a smile whose melting radiance seemed akin to
tears--"but see how I have beaten him--and all is passed."
"Yes, yes," he said, "as you have conquered all--as you have
conquered me--and did from the first hour. But God forbid that you
should make me suffer so again."
"Your Grace," she said, faltering, "I--I will not!"
"Forgive me for the tempest of my passion," he said. "'Twas not
thus I had thought to come to make my suit. 'Tis scarcely fitting
that it should be so; but I was almost mad when I first heard this
rumour, knowing my duty would not loose me to come to you at once--
and knowing you so well, that only if your heart had melted to the
one who besought you, you would give up."
"I--give up," she answered; "I give up."
"I worship you," he said; "I worship you." And their meeting eyes
were drowned in each other's tenderness.
They galloped side by side, and the watchers looked on, exchanging
words and glances, seeing in her beauteous, glowing face, in his
joyous one, the final answer to the question they had so often asked
each other. 'Twas his Grace of Osmonde who was the happy man, he
and no other. That was a thing plain indeed to be seen, for they
were too high above the common world to feel that they must play the
paltry part of outward trifling to deceive it; and as the sun
pierces through clouds and is stronger than they, so their love
shone like the light of day itself through poor conventions. They
did not know the people gazed and whispered, and if they had known
it, the thing would have counted for naught with them.
"See!" said my lady, patting her Devil's neck--"see, he knows that
you have come, and frets no more."
They rode homeward together, the great beauty and the great duke,
and all the town beheld; and after they had passed him where he
stood, John Oxon mounted his own horse and galloped away, white-
lipped and with mad eyes.
"Let me escort you home," the duke had said, "that I may kneel to
you there, and pour forth my heart as I have so dreamed of doing.
Tomorrow I must go back to France, because I left my errand
incomplete. I stole from duty the time to come to you, and I must
return as quickly as I came." So he took her home; and as they
entered the wide hall together, side by side, the attendant lacqueys
bowed to the ground in deep, welcoming obeisance, knowing it was
their future lord and master they received.
Together they went to her own sitting-room, called the Panelled
Parlour, a beautiful great room hung with rare pictures, warm with
floods of the bright summer sunshine, and perfumed with bowls of
summer flowers; and as the lacquey departed, bowing, and closed the
door behind him, they turned and were enfolded close in each other's
arms, and stood so, with their hearts beating as surely it seemed to
them human hearts had never beat before.
"Oh! my dear love, my heavenly love!" he cried. "It has been so
long--I have lived in prison and in fetters--and it has been so
long!"
Even as my Lord Dunstanwolde had found cause to wonder at her gentle
ways, so was this man amazed at her great sweetness, now that he
might cross the threshold of her heart. She gave of herself as an
empress might give of her store of imperial jewels, with sumptuous
lavishness, knowing that the store could not fail. In truth, it
seemed that it must be a dream that she so stood before him in all
her great, rich loveliness, leaning against his heaving breast, her
arms as tender as his own, her regal head thrown backward that they
might gaze into the depths of each other's eyes.
"From that first hour that I looked up at you," she said, "I knew
you were my lord--my lord! And a fierce pain stabbed my heart,
knowing you had come too late by but one hour; for had it not been
that Dunstanwolde had led me to you, I knew--ah! how well I knew--
that our hearts would have beaten together not as two hearts but as
one."
"As they do now," he cried.
"As they do now," she answered--"as they do now!"
"And from the moment that your rose fell at my feet and I raised it
in my hand," he said, "I knew I held some rapture which was my own.
And when you stood before me at Dunstanwolde's side and our eyes
met, I could not understand--nay, I could scarce believe that it had
been taken from me."
There, in her arms, among the flowers and in the sweetness of the
sun, he lived again the past, telling her of the days when, knowing
his danger, he had held himself aloof, declining to come to her
lord's house with the familiarity of a kinsman, because the pang of
seeing her often was too great to bear; and relating to her also the
story of the hours when he had watched her and she had not known his
nearness or guessed his pain, when she had passed in her equipage,
not seeing him, or giving him but a gracious smile. He had walked
outside her window at midnight sometimes, too, coming because he was
a despairing man, and could not sleep, and returning homeward,
having found no rest, but only increase of anguish. "Sometimes," he
said, "I dared not look into your eyes, fearing my own would betray
me; but now I can gaze into your soul itself, for the midnight is
over--and joy cometh with the morning."
As he had spoken, he had caressed softly with his hand her cheek and
her crown of hair, and such was his great gentleness that 'twas as
if he touched lovingly a child; for into her face there had come
that look which it would seem that in the arms of the man she loves
every true woman wears--a look which is somehow like a child's in
its trusting, sweet surrender and appeal, whatsoever may be her
stateliness and the splendour of her beauty.
Yet as he touched her cheek so and her eyes so dwelt on him,
suddenly her head fell heavily upon his breast, hiding her face,
even while her unwreathing arms held more closely.
"Oh! those mad days before!" she cried--"Oh! those mad, mad days
before!"
"Nay, they are long passed, sweet," he said, in his deep, noble
voice, thinking that she spoke of the wildness of her girlish years-
-"and all our days of joy are yet to come."
"Yes, yes," she cried, clinging closer, yet with shuddering, "they
were BEFORE--the joy--the joy is all to come."
