A Lady of Quality<br />Being a Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bicke by Frances Hodgson Burnett (e ink epub reader .TXT) 📗

his ways.  It seemed, truly—if one must believe her long-winded stories—that no duchess under seventy had escaped weeping for him and losing rest, and that ladies of all ranks had committed follies for his sake.

Mistress Anne, having led her to this fruitful subject, would sit and listen, bending over her embroidery frame with strange emotions, causing her virgin breast to ache with their swelling.  She would lie awake at night thinking in the dark, with her heart beating.  Surely, surely there was no other man on earth who was so fitted to Clorinda, and to whom it was so suited that this empress should give her charms.  Surely no woman, however beautiful or proud, could dismiss his suit when he pressed it.  And then, poor woman, her imagination strove to paint the splendour of their mutual love, though of such love she knew so little.  But it must, in sooth, be bliss and rapture; and perchance, was her humble thought, she might see it from afar, and hear of it.  And when they went to court, and Clorinda had a great mansion in town, and many servants who needed a housewife’s eye upon their doings to restrain them from wastefulness and riot, might it not chance to be that if she served well now, and had the courage to plead with her then, she might be permitted to serve her there, living quite apart in some quiet corner of the house.  And then her wild thoughts would go so far that she would dream—reddening at her own boldness—of a child who might be born to them, a lordly infant son and heir, whose eyes might be blue and winning, and his hair in great fair locks, and whom she might nurse and tend and be a slave to—and love—and love—and love, and who might end by knowing she was his tender servant, always to be counted on, and might look at her with that wooing, laughing glance, and even love her too.

The night Clorinda laid her commands upon Mistress Wimpole concerning the coming of Sir John Oxon, that matron, after receiving them, hurried to her other charges, flurried and full of talk, and poured forth her wonder and admiration at length.

“She is a wondrous lady!” she said—“she is indeed!  It is not alone her beauty, but her spirit and her wit.  Mark you how she sees all things and lets none pass, and can lay a plan as prudent as any lady old enough to be twice her mother.  She knows all the ways of the world of fashion, and will guard herself against gossip in such a way that none can gainsay her high virtue.  Her spirit is too great to allow that she may even seem to be as the town ladies.  She will not have it!  Sir John will not find his court easy to pay.  She will not allow that he shall be able to say to any one that he has seen her alone a moment.  Thus, she says, he cannot boast.  If all ladies were as wise and cunning, there would be no tales to tell.”  She talked long and garrulously, and set forth to them how Mistress Clorinda had looked straight at her with her black eyes, until she had almost shaken as she sat, because it seemed as though she dared her to disobey her will; and how she had sat with her hair trailing upon the floor over the chair’s back, and at first it had seemed that she was flushed with anger, but next as if she had smiled.

“Betimes,” said Mistress Wimpole, “I am afraid when she smiles, but to-night some thought had crossed her mind that pleased her.  I think it was that she liked to think that he who has conquered so many ladies will find that he is to be outwitted and made a mock of.  She likes that others shall be beaten if she thinks them impudent.  She liked it as a child, and would flog the stable-boys with her little whip until they knelt to beg her pardon for their freedoms.”

That night Mistress Anne went to her bed-chamber with her head full of wandering thoughts, and she had not the power to bid them disperse themselves and leave her—indeed, she scarce wished for it.  She was thinking of Clorinda, and wondering sadly that she was of so high a pride that she could bear herself as though there were no human weakness in her breast, not even the womanly weakness of a heart.  How could it be possible that she could treat with disdain this gallant gentleman, if he loved her, as he surely must?  Herself she had been sure that she had seen an ardent flame in his blue eyes, even that first day when he had bowed to her with that air of grace as he spoke of the fragrance of the rose leaves he had thought wafted from her robe.  How could a woman whom he loved resist him?  How could she cause him to suffer by forcing him to stand at arm’s length when he sighed to draw near and breathe his passion at her feet?

In the silence of her chamber as she disrobed, she sighed with restless pain, but did not know that her sighing was for grief that love—of which there seemed so little in some lives—could be wasted and flung away.  She could not fall into slumber when she lay down upon her pillow, but tossed from side to side with a burdened heart.

“She is so young and beautiful and proud,” she thought.  “It is because I am so much older that I can see these things—that I see that this is surely the one man who should be her husband.  There may be many others, but they are none of them her equals, and she would scorn and hate them when she was once bound to them for life.  This one is as beautiful as she—and full of grace, and wit, and spirit.  She could not look down upon him, however wrath she was at any time.  Ah me!  She should not spurn him, surely she should not!”

She was so restless and ill at ease that she could not lie upon her bed, but rose therefrom, as she often did in her wakeful hours, and went to her lattice, gently opening it to look out upon the night, and calm herself by sitting with her face uplifted to the stars, which from her childhood she had fancied looked down upon her kindly and as if they would give her comfort.

To-night there were no stars.  There should have been a moon three-quarters full, but, in the evening, clouds had drifted across the sky and closed over all heavily, so that no moonlight was to be seen, save when a rare sudden gust made a ragged rent, for a moment, in the blackness.

She did not sit this time, but knelt, clad in her night-rail as she was.  All was sunk into the profoundest silence of the night.  By this time the entire household had been long enough abed to be plunged in sleep.  She alone was waking, and being of that simple mind which, like a child’s, must ever bear its trouble to a protecting strength, she looked up at the darkness of the cloudy sky and prayed for the better fortune of the man who had indeed not remembered her existence after the moment he had made her his obeisance.  She was too plain and sober a creature to be remembered.

“Perchance,” she murmured, “he is at this moment also looking at the clouds from his window, because he cannot sleep for thinking that in two days he will be beneath her father’s roof and will see her loveliness, and he must needs be contriving within his mind what he will say, if she do but look as if she might regard him with favour, which I pray she will.”

From the path below, that moment there rose a slight sound, so slight a one that for a moment she thought she must have been deceived in believing it had fallen upon her ear.  All was still after it for full two minutes, and had she heard no more she would have surely forgotten she had heard aught, or would have believed herself but the victim of fancy.  But after the long pause the same sound came again, though this time it was slighter; yet, despite its slightness, it seemed to her to be the crushing of the earth and stone beneath a cautious foot.  It was a foot so cautious that it was surely stealthy and scarce dared to advance at all.  And then all was still again.  She was for a moment overcome with fears, not being of a courageous temper, and having heard, but of late, of a bold gipsy vagabond who, with a companion, had broken into the lower rooms of a house of the neighbourhood, and being surprised by its owner, had only been overcome and captured after a desperate fight, in which shots were exchanged, and one of the hurriedly-awakened servants killed.  So she leaned forward to hearken further, wondering what she should do to best alarm the house, and, as she bent so, she heard the sound again and a smothered oath, and with her straining eyes saw that surely upon the path there stood a dark-draped figure.  She rose with great care to her feet, and stood a moment shaking and clinging to the window-ledge, while she bethought her of what servants she could wake first, and how she could reach her father’s room.  Her poor heart beat in her side, and her breath came quickly.  The soundlessness of the night was broken by one of the strange sudden gusts of wind which tossed the trees, and tore at the clouds as they hurried.  She heard the footsteps again, as if it feared its own sound the less when the wind might cover it.  A faint pale gleam showed between two dark clouds behind which the moon had been hidden; it grew brighter, and a jagged rent was torn, so that the moon herself for a second or so shone out dazzling bright before the clouds rushed over her again and shut her in.

It was at this very instant Mistress Anne heard the footsteps once more, and saw full well a figure in dark cloak and hat which stepped quickly into the shade of a great tree.  But more she saw—and clapped her hand upon her mouth to stifle the cry that would have otherwise risen in spite of her—that notwithstanding his fair locks were thrust out of sight beneath his hat, and he looked strange and almost uncomely, it was the face of Sir John Oxon, the moon, bursting through the jagged clouds, had shone upon.

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