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) 📗

me so?” she said.  “Your eyes stand out of your head like a new-hatched, unfeathered bird’s.  They irk me with their strange asking look.  Why do you stare at me?”

“I do not know,” Anne faltered.  “I could not tell you, sister.  My eyes seem to stare so because of my thinness.  I have seen them in my mirror.”

“Why do you grow thin?” quoth Clorinda harshly.  “You are not ill.”

“I—I do not know,” again Anne faltered.  “Naught ails me.  I do not know.  For—forgive me!”

Clorinda laughed.

“Soft little fool,” she said, “why should you ask me to forgive you?  I might as fairly ask you to forgive me, that I keep my shape and show no wasting.”

Anne rose from her chair and hurried to her sister’s side, sinking upon her knees there to kiss her hand.

“Sister,” she said, “one could never dream that you could need pardon.  I love you so—that all you do, it seems to me must be right—whatsoever it might be.”

Clorinda drew her fair hands away and clasped them on the top of her head, proudly, as if she crowned herself thereby, her great and splendid eyes setting themselves upon her sister’s face.

“All that I do,” she said slowly, and with the steadfast high arrogance of an empress’ self—“All that I do is right—for me.  I make it so by doing it.  Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women crouch and whine before, because they dare not break them, though they long to do so?  I am my own law—and the law of some others.”

It was by this time the first month of the summer, and to-night there was again a birth-night ball, at which the beauty was to dazzle all eyes; but ’twas of greater import than the one she had graced previously, it being to celebrate the majority of the heir to an old name and estate, who had been orphaned early, and was highly connected, counting, indeed, among the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his family full of heroic deeds.  This nobleman was also a distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the first time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again.

He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late.  But there was one who had seen him early, though no human soul had known of the event.

In the rambling, ill-cared for grounds of Wildairs Hall there was an old rose-garden, which had once been the pride and pleasure of some lady of the house, though this had been long ago; and now it was but a lonely wilderness where roses only grew because the dead Lady Wildairs had loved them, and Barbara and Anne had tended them, and with their own hands planted and pruned during their childhood and young maiden days.  But of late years even they had seemed to have forgotten it, having become discouraged, perchance, having no gardeners to do the rougher work, and the weeds and brambles so running riot.  There were high hedges and winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and it was a beauteous place deserted.

In the centre was an ancient broken sun-dial, which was in these days in the midst of a sort of thicket, where a bold tangle of the finest red roses clambered, and, defying neglect, flaunted their rich colour in the sun.

And though the place had been so long forgotten, and it was not the custom for it to be visited, about this garlanded broken sun-dial the grass was a little trodden, and on the morning of the young heir’s coming of age some one stood there in the glowing sunlight as if waiting.

This was no less than Mistress Clorinda herself.  She was clad in a morning gown of white, which seemed to make of her more than ever a tall, transcendent creature, less a woman than a conquering goddess; and she had piled the dial with scarlet red roses, which she was choosing to weave into a massive wreath or crown, for some purpose best known to herself.  Her head seemed haughtier and more splendidly held on high even than was its common wont, but upon these roses her lustrous eyes were downcast and were curiously smiling, as also was her ripe, arching lip, whose scarlet the blossoms vied with but poorly.  It was a smile like this, perhaps, which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for ’twas not a tender smile nor a melting one.  If she was waiting, she did not wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had been kept by any daring laggard.  This was not her way.

’Twas not a laggard who came soon, stepping hurriedly with light feet upon the grass, as though he feared the sound which might be made if he had trodden upon the gravel.  It was Sir John Oxon who came towards her in his riding costume.

He came and stood before her on the other side of the dial, and made her a bow so low that a quick eye might have thought ’twas almost mocking.  His feather, sweeping the ground, caught a fallen rose, which clung to it.  His beauty, when he stood upright, seemed to defy the very morning’s self and all the morning world; but Mistress Clorinda did not lift her eyes, but kept them upon her roses, and went on weaving.

“Why did you choose to come?” she asked.

“Why did you choose to keep the tryst in answer to my message?” he replied to her.

At this she lifted her great shining eyes and fixed them full upon him.

“I wished,” she said, “to hear what you would say—but more to see you than to hear.”

“And I,” he began—“I came—”

She held up her white hand with a long-stemmed rose in it—as though a queen should lift a sceptre.

“You came,” she answered, “more to see me than to hear.  You made that blunder.”

“You choose to bear yourself like a goddess, and disdain me from Olympian heights,” he said.  “I had the wit to guess it would be so.”

She shook her royal head, faintly and most strangely smiling.

“That you had not,” was her clear-worded answer.  “That is a later thought sprung up since you have seen my face.  ’Twas quick—for you—but not quick enough.”  And the smile in her eyes was maddening.  “You thought to see a woman crushed and weeping, her beauty bent before you, her locks dishevelled, her streaming eyes lifted to Heaven—and you—with prayers, swearing that not Heaven could help her so much as your deigning magnanimity.  You have seen women do this before, you would have seen me do it—at your feet—crying out that I was lost—lost for ever.  That you expected!  ’Tis not here.”

Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or conscience—for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of rakes and fashionable villains—well as he thought he knew all women and their ways, betraying or betrayed—this creature taught him a new thing, a new mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like a thunderbolt.

“Gods!” he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back apace, “Damnation! you are not a woman!”

She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes should loose themselves from hers.

“But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights,” she said; “I am not one—I am a woman who would show other women how to bear themselves in hours like these.  Because I am a woman why should I kneel, and weep, and rave?  What have I lost—in losing you?  I should have lost the same had I been twice your wife.  What is it women weep and beat their breasts for—because they love a man—because they lose his love.  They never have them.”

She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it.  What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so—a heavy, sumptuous thing—in her white hands, her head thrown backward.

“You marry soon,” she asked—“if the match is not broken?”

“Yes,” he answered, watching her—a flame growing in his eyes and in his soul in his own despite.

“It cannot be too soon,” she said.  And she turned and faced him, holding the wreath high in her two hands poised like a crown above her head—the brilliant sun embracing her, her lips curling, her face uplifted as if she turned to defy the light, the crimson of her cheek.  ’Twas as if from foot to brow the woman’s whole person was a flame, rising and burning triumphant high above him.  Thus for one second’s space she stood, dazzling his very eyesight with her strange, dauntless splendour; and then she set the great rose-wreath upon her head, so crowning it.

“You came to see me,” she said, the spark in her eyes growing to the size of a star; “I bid you look at me—and see how grief has faded me these past months, and how I am bowed down by it.  Look well—that you may remember.”

“I look,” he said, almost panting.

“Then,” she said, her fine-cut nostril pinching itself with her breath, as she pointed down the path before her—“go!—back to your kennel!”

* * * * *

That night she appeared at the birth-night ball with the wreath of roses on her head.  No other ladies wore such things, ’twas a fashion of her own; but she wore it in such beauty and with such state that it became a crown again even as it had been the first moment that she had put it on.  All gazed at her as she entered, and a murmur followed her as she moved with her father up the broad oak staircase which was known through all the country for its width and massive beauty.  In the hall below guests were crowded, and there were indeed few of them who did not watch her as she mounted by Sir Jeoffry’s side.  In the upper hall there were guests also, some walking to and fro, some standing talking, many looking down at the arrivals as they came up.

“’Tis Mistress Wildairs,” these murmured as they saw her.  “Clorinda, by God!” said one of the older men to his crony who stood near him.  “And crowned with roses!  The vixen makes them look as if they were built of rubies in every leaf.”

At the top of the great staircase there stood a gentleman, who had indeed paused a moment, spellbound, as he saw her coming.  He was a man of unusual height and of a majestic mien; he wore a fair periwig, which added to his tallness; his laces and embroiderings were marvels of art and richness, and his breast blazed with orders.  Strangely, she did not seem to see him; but when she reached the landing, and her face was turned so that he beheld the full blaze of its beauty, ’twas so great a wonder and revelation to him that he gave a start.  The next moment almost, one of the red roses of her crown broke loose from its fastenings and fell at his very feet.  His countenance changed so that it seemed almost, for a second, to lose some of its colour.  He stooped and picked the rose up and held it in his hand.  But Mistress Clorinda was looking at my Lord of Dunstanwolde, who was moving through the crowd to greet her.  She gave him a brilliant smile, and from her lustrous eyes surely there passed something which lit a fire of hope in his.

After she had made her obeisance to her entertainers, and her birthday greetings to the young heir, he contrived to draw closely to her side and speak a few words in a tone those near her could not hear.

“To-night, madam,” he said, with melting fervour, “you deign to bring me my answer as you promised.”

“Yes,” she murmured.  “Take me where we may be a few moments alone.”

He led her to an antechamber, where they were sheltered from the gaze of the passers-by, though all was moving gaiety about them.  He fell upon his knee and bowed to kiss her fair hand.  Despite the sobriety of his years, he was as eager and tender as a boy.

“Be gracious to me, madam,” he implored.  “I am not young enough to wait.  Too many months have