CHAPTER XV--In which Sir John Oxon finds again a trophy he had lost
His Grace of Osmonde went back to France to complete his business,
and all the world knew that when he returned to England 'twould be
to make his preparations for his marriage with my Lady Dunstanwolde.
It was a marriage not long to be postponed, and her ladyship herself
was known already to be engaged with lacemen, linen-drapers, toyshop
women, and goldsmiths. Mercers awaited upon her at her house,
accompanied by their attendants, bearing burdens of brocades and
silks, and splendid stuffs of all sorts. Her chariot was to be seen
standing before their shops, and the interest in her purchases was
so great that fashionable beauties would contrive to visit the
counters at the same hours as herself, so that they might catch
glimpses of what she chose. In her own great house all was
repressed excitement; her women were enraptured at being allowed the
mere handling and laying away of the glories of her wardrobe; the
lacqueys held themselves with greater state, knowing that they were
soon to be a duke's servants; her little black Nero strutted about,
his turban set upon his pate with a majestic cock, and disdained to
enter into battle with such pages of his own colour as wore only
silver collars, he feeling assured that his own would soon be of
gold.
The World of Fashion said when her ladyship's equipage drove by,
that her beauty was like that of the god of day at morning, and that
'twas plain that no man or woman had ever beheld her as his Grace of
Osmonde would.
"She loves at last," a wit said. "Until the time that such a woman
loves, however great her splendour, she is as the sun behind a
cloud."
"And now this one hath come forth, and shines so that she warms us
in mere passing," said another. "What eyes, and what a mouth, with
that strange smile upon it. Whoever saw such before? and when she
came to town with my Lord Dunstanwolde, who, beholding her, would
have believed that she could wear such a look?"
In sooth, there was that in her face and in her voice when she spoke
which almost made Anne weep, through its strange sweetness and
radiance. 'Twas as if the flood of her joy had swept away all
hardness and disdain. Her eyes, which had seemed to mock at all
they rested on, mocked no more, but ever seemed to smile at some
dear inward thought.
One night when she went forth to a Court ball, being all attired in
brocade of white and silver, and glittering with the Dunstanwolde
diamonds, which starred her as with great sparkling dewdrops, and
yet had not the radiance of her eyes and smile, she was so purely
wonderful a vision that Anne, who had been watching her through all
the time when she had been under the hands of her tirewoman, and
beholding her now so dazzling and white a shining creature, fell
upon her knees to kiss her hand almost as one who worships.
"Oh, sister," she said, "you look like a spirit. It is as if with
the earth you had naught to do--as if your eyes saw Heaven itself
and Him who reigns there."
The lovely orbs of Clorinda shone more still like the great star of
morning.
"Sister Anne," she said, laying her hand on her white breast, "at
times I think that I must almost be a spirit, I feel such heavenly
joy. It is as if He whom you believe in, and who can forgive and
wipe out sins, has forgiven me, and has granted it to me, that I may
begin my poor life again. Ah! I will make it better; I will try to
make it as near an angel's life as a woman can; and I will do no
wrong, but only good; and I will believe, and pray every day upon my
knees--and all my prayers will be that I may so live that my dear
lord--my Gerald--could forgive me all that I have ever done--and
seeing my soul, would know me worthy of him. Oh! we are strange
things, we human creatures, Anne," with a tremulous smile; "we do
not believe until we want a thing, and feel that we shall die if
'tis not granted to us; and then we kneel and kneel and believe,
because we MUST have somewhat to ask help from."
"But all help has been given to you," poor tender Anne said, kissing
her hand again; "and I will pray, I will pray--"
"Ay, pray, Anne, pray with all thy soul," Clorinda answered; "I need
thy praying--and thou didst believe always, and have asked so little
that has been given thee."
"Thou wast given me, sister," said Anne. "Thou hast given me a home
and kindness such as I never dared to hope; thou hast been like a
great star to me--I have had none other, and I thank Heaven on my
knees each night for the brightness my star has shed on me."
"Poor Anne, dear Anne!" Clorinda said, laying her arms about her and
kissing her. "Pray for thy star, good, tender Anne, that its light
may not be quenched." Then with a sudden movement her hand was
pressed upon her bosom again. "Ah, Anne," she cried, and in the
music of her voice, agony itself was ringing--"Anne, there is but
one thing on this earth God rules over--but one thing that belongs--
BELONGS to me; and 'tis Gerald Mertoun--and he is mine and SHALL not
be taken from me, for he is a part of me, and I a part of him!"
"He will not be," said Anne--"he will not."
"He cannot," Clorinda answered--"he shall not! 'Twould not be
human."
She drew a long breath and was calm again.
"Did it reach your ears," she said, reclasping a band of jewels on
her arm, "that John Oxon had been offered a place in a foreign
Court, and that 'twas said he would soon leave England?"
"I heard some rumour of it," Anne answered, her emotion getting the
better of her usual discreet speech. "God grant it may be true!"
"Ay!" said Clorinda, "would God that he were gone!"
But that he was not, for when she entered the assembly that night he
was standing near the door as though he lay in waiting for her, and
his eyes met hers with a leaping gleam, which was a thing of such
exultation that to encounter it was like having a knife thrust deep
into her side and through and through it, for she knew full well
that he could not wear such a look unless he had some strength of
which she knew not.
This gleam was in his eyes each time she found herself drawn to
them, and it seemed as though she could look nowhere without
encountering his gaze. He followed her from room to room, placing
himself where she could not lift her eyes without beholding him;
when she walked a minuet with a royal duke, he stood and watched her
with such a look in his face as drew all eyes towards him.
"'Tis as if he threatens her," one said. "He has gone mad with
disappointed love."
But 'twas not love that was in his look, but the madness of long-
thwarted passion mixed with hate and mockery; and this she saw, and
girded her soul with all its strength, knowing that she had a
fiercer beast to deal with, and a more vicious and dangerous one,
than her horse Devil. That he kept at first at a distance from her,
and but looked on with this secret exultant glow in his bad,
beauteous eyes, told her that at last he felt he held some power in
his hands, against which all her defiance would be as naught. Till
this hour, though she had suffered, and when alone had writhed in
agony of grief and bitter shame, in his presence she had never
flinched. Her strength she knew was greater than his; but his
baseness was his weapon, and the depths of that baseness she knew
she had never reached.
At midnight, having just made obeisance before Royalty retiring, she
felt that at length he had drawn near and was standing at her side.
"To-night," he said, in the low undertone it was his way to keep for
such occasions, knowing how he could pierce her ear--"to-night you
are Juno's self--a very Queen of Heaven!"
She made no answer.
"And I have stood and watched you moving among all lesser goddesses
as the moon sails among the stars, and I have smiled in thinking of
what these lesser deities would say if they had known what I bear in
my breast to-night."
She did not even make a movement--in truth, she felt that at his
next words she might change to stone.
"I have found it," he said--"I have it here--the lost treasure--the
tress of hair like a raven's wing and six feet long. Is there
another woman in England who could give a man a lock like it?"
She felt then that she had, in sooth, changed to stone; her heart
hung without moving in her breast; her eyes felt great and hollow
and staring as she lifted them to him.
"I knew not," she said slowly, and with bated breath, for the
awfulness of the moment had even made her body weak as she had never
known it feel before--"I knew not truly that hell made things like
you."
Whereupon he made a movement forward, and the crowd about surged
nearer with hasty exclamations, for the strange weakness of her body
had overpowered her in a way mysterious to her, and she had changed
to marble, growing too heavy of weight for her sinking limbs. And
those in the surrounding groups saw a marvellous thing--the same
being that my Lady Dunstanwolde swayed as she turned, and falling,
lay stretched, as if dead, in her white and silver and flashing
jewels at the startled beholders' feet.
* * *
She wore no radiant look when she went home that night. She would
go home alone and unescorted, excepting by her lacqueys, refusing
all offers of companionship when once placed in her equipage. There
were, of course, gentlemen who would not be denied leading her to
her coach; John Oxon was among them, and at the last pressed close,
with a manner of great ceremony, speaking a final word.
"'Tis useless, your ladyship," he murmured, as he made his obeisance
gallantly, and though the words were uttered in his lowest tone and
with great softness, they reached her ear as he intended that they
should. "To-morrow morning I shall wait upon you."
Anne had forborne going to bed, and waited for her return, longing
to see her spirit's face again before she slept; for this poor
tender creature, being denied all woman's loves and joys by Fate,
who had made her as she was, so lived in her sister's beauty and
triumphs that 'twas as if in some far-off way she shared them, and
herself experienced through them the joy of being a woman
transcendently beautiful and transcendently beloved. To-night she
had spent her waiting hours in her closet and upon her knees,
praying with all humble adoration of the Being she approached. She
was wont to pray long and fervently each day, thanking Heaven for
the smallest things and the most common, and imploring continuance
of the mercy which bestowed them upon her poor unworthiness. For
her sister her prayers were offered up night and morning, and
ofttimes in hours between, and to-night she prayed not for herself
at all, but for Clorinda and for his Grace of Osmonde, that their
love might be crowned with happiness, and that no shadow might
intervene to cloud its brightness, and the tender rapture in her
sister's softened look, which was to her a thing so wonderful that
she thought of it with reverence as a holy thing.
Her prayers being at length ended, she had risen from her knees and
sat down, taking a sacred book to read, a book of sermons such as
'twas her simple habit to pore over with entire respect and child-
like faith, and being in the midst of her favourite homily, she
heard the chariot's returning wheels, and left her chair, surprised,
because she had not yet begun to expect the sound.
"'Tis my sister," she said, with a soft, sentimental smile.
"Osmonde not being among the guests, she hath no pleasure in
mingling with them."
She went below to the room her ladyship usually went to first on her
return at night from any gathering, and there she found her sitting
as though she had dropped there in the corner of a great divan, her
hands hanging clasped before her on her knee, her head hanging
forward on her fallen chest, her large eyes staring into space.
"Clorinda! Clorinda!" Anne cried, running to her and kneeling at
her side. "Clorinda! God have mercy! What is't?"
Never before had her face worn such a look--'twas colourless, and so
drawn and fallen in that 'twas indeed almost as if all her great
beauty was gone; but the thing most awful to poor Anne was that all
the new softness seemed as if it had been stamped out, and the
fierce hardness had come back and was engraven in its place, mingled
with a horrible despair.
"An hour ago," she said, "I swooned. That is why I look thus. 'Tis
yet another sign that I am a woman--a woman!"
"You are ill--you swooned?" cried Anne. "I must send for your
physician. Have you not ordered that he be sent for yourself? If
Osmonde were here, how perturbed he would be!"
"Osmonde!" said my lady. "Gerald! Is there a Gerald, Anne?"
"Sister!" cried Anne, affrighted by her strange look--"oh, sister!"
"I have seen heaven," Clorinda said; "I have stood on the threshold
and seen through the part-opened gate--and then have been dragged
back to hell."
Anne clung to her, gazing upwards at her eyes, in sheer despair.
"But back to hell I will not go," she went on saying. "Had I not
seen Heaven, they might perhaps have dragged me; but now I will not
go--I will not, that I swear! There is a thing which cannot be
endured. Bear it no woman should. Even I, who was not born a
woman, but a wolf's she-cub, I cannot. 'Twas not I, 'twas Fate,"
she said--"'twas not I, 'twas Fate--'twas the great wheel we are
bound to, which goes round and round that we may be broken on it.
'Twas not I who bound myself there; and I will not be broken so."
She said the words through her clenched teeth, and with all the mad
passion of her most lawless years; even at Anne she looked almost in
the old ungentle fashion, as though half scorning all weaker than
herself, and having small patience with them.
"There will be a way," she said--"there will be a way. I shall not
swoon again."
She left her divan and stood upright, the colour having come back to
her face; but the look Anne worshipped not having returned with it,
'twas as though Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had been born again.
"To-morrow morning I go forth on Devil," she said; "and I shall be
abroad if any visitors come."
What passed in her chamber that night no human being knew. Anne,
who left her own apartment and crept into a chamber near hers to lie
and watch, knew that she paced to and fro, but heard no other sound,
and dared not intrude upon her.
When she came forth in the morning she wore the high look she had
been wont to wear in the years gone by, when she ruled in her
father's house, and rode to the hunt with a following of gay middle-
aged and elderly rioters. Her eye was brilliant, and her colour
matched it. She held her head with the old dauntless carriage, and
there was that in her voice before which her women quaked, and her
lacqueys hurried to do her bidding.
Devil himself felt this same thing in the touch of her hand upon his
bridle when she mounted him at the door, and seemed to glance
askance at her sideways.
She took no servant with her, and did not ride to the Park, but to
the country. Once on the highroad, she rode fast and hard, only
galloping straight before her as the way led, and having no
intention. Where she was going she knew not; but why she rode on
horseback she knew full well, it being because the wild, almost
fierce motion was in keeping with the tempest in her soul. Thoughts
rushed through her brain even as she rushed through the air on
Devil's back, and each leaping after the other, seemed to tear more
madly.
"What shall I do?" she was saying to herself. "What thing is there
for me to do? I am trapped like a hunted beast, and there is no way
forth."
The blood went like a torrent through her veins, so that she seemed
to hear it roaring in her ears; her heart thundered in her side, or
'twas so she thought of it as it bounded, while she recalled the
past and looked upon the present.
"What else could have been?" she groaned. "Naught else--naught
else. 'Twas a trick--a trick of Fate to ruin me for my punishment."
When she had gone forth it had been with no hope in her breast that
her wit might devise a way to free herself from the thing which so
beset her, for she had no weak fancies that there dwelt in this base
soul any germ of honour which might lead it to relenting. As she
had sat in her dark room at night, crouched upon the floor, and
clenching her hands, as the mad thoughts went whirling through her
brain, she had stared her Fate in the face and known all its
awfulness. Before her lay the rapture of a great, sweet, honourable
passion, a high and noble life lived in such bliss as rarely fell to
lot of woman--on this one man she knew that she could lavish all the
splendour of her nature, and make his life a heaven, as hers would
be. Behind her lay the mad, uncared-for years, and one black memory
blighting all to come, though 'twould have been but a black memory
with no power to blight if the heaven of love had not so opened to
her and with its light cast all else into shadow.
"If 'twere not love," she cried--"if 'twere but ambition, I could
defy it to the last; but 'tis love--love--love, and it will kill me
to forego it."
Even as she moaned the words she heard hoof beats near her, and a
horseman leaped the hedge and was at her side. She set her teeth,
and turning, stared into John Oxon's face.
"Did you think I would not follow you?" he asked.
"No," she answered.
"I have followed you at a distance hitherto," he said; "now I shall
follow close."
She did not speak, but galloped on.
"Think you you can outride me?" he said grimly, quickening his
steed's pace. "I go with your ladyship to your own house. For fear
of scandal you have not openly rebuffed me previous to this time;
for a like reason you will not order your lacqueys to shut your door
when I enter it with you."
My Lady Dunstanwolde turned to gaze at him again. The sun shone on
his bright falling locks and his blue eyes as she had seen it shine
in days which seemed so strangely long passed by, though they were
not five years agone.
"'Tis strange," she said, with a measure of wonder, "to live and be
so black a devil."
"Bah! my lady," he said, "these are fine words--and fine words do
not hold between us. Let us leave them. I would escort you home,
and speak to you in private." There was that in his mocking that
was madness to her, and made her sick and dizzy with the boiling of
the blood which surged to her brain. The fury of passion which had
been a terror to all about her when she had been a child was upon
her once more, and though she had thought herself freed from its
dominion, she knew it again and all it meant. She felt the
thundering beat in her side, the hot flood leaping to her cheek, the
flame burning her eyes themselves as if fire was within them. Had
he been other than he was, her face itself would have been a
warning. But he pressed her hard. As he would have slunk away a
beaten cur if she had held the victory in her hands, so feeling that
the power was his, he exulted over the despairing frenzy which was
in her look.
"I pay back old scores," he said. "There are many to pay. When you
crowned yourself with roses and set your foot upon my face, your
ladyship thought not of this! When you gave yourself to
Dunstanwolde and spat at me, you did not dream that there could come
a time when I might goad as you did."
She struck Devil with her whip, who leaped forward; but Sir John
followed hard behind her. He had a swift horse too, and urged him
fiercely, so that between these two there was a race as if for life
or death. The beasts bounded forward, spurning the earth beneath
their feet. My lady's face was set, her eyes were burning flame,
her breath came short and pantingly between her teeth. Oxon's fair
face was white with passion; he panted also, but strained every
nerve to keep at her side, and kept there.
"Keep back! I warn thee!" she cried once, almost gasping.
"Keep back!" he answered, blind with rage. "I will follow thee to
hell!"
And in this wise they galloped over the white road until the hedges
disappeared and they were in the streets, and people turned to look
at them, and even stood and stared. Then she drew rein a little and
went slower, knowing with shuddering agony that the trap was closing
about her.
"What is it that you would say to me?" she asked him breathlessly.
"That which I would say within four walls that you may hear it all,"
he answered. "This time 'tis not idle threatening. I have a thing
to show you."
Through the streets they went, and as her horse's hoofs beat the
pavement, and the passers-by, looking towards her, gazed curiously
at so fine a lady on so splendid a brute, she lifted her eyes to the
houses, the booths, the faces, and the sky, with a strange fancy
that she looked about her as a man looks who, doomed to death, is
being drawn in his cart to Tyburn tree. For 'twas to death she
went, nor to naught else could she compare it, and she was so young
and strong, and full of love and life, and there should have been
such bliss and peace before her but for one madness of her all-
unknowing days. And this beside her--this man with the fair face
and looks and beauteous devil's eyes, was her hangman, and carried
his rope with him, and soon would fit it close about her neck.
When they rode through the part of the town where abode the World of
Fashion, those who saw them knew them, and marvelled that the two
should be together.
"But perhaps his love has made him sue for pardon that he has so
borne himself," some said, "and she has chosen to be gracious to
him, since she is gracious in these days to all."
When they reached her house he dismounted with her, wearing an
outward air of courtesy; but his eye mocked her, as she knew. His
horse was in a lather of sweat, and he spoke to a servant.
"Take my beast home," he said. "He is too hot to stand, and I shall
not soon be ready."
