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) 📗

cast aside, and trampled on.

At the playhouse when she looked from her box, she saw him leaning against some pillar or stationed in some noticeable spot, his bold blue eyes fixed burningly upon her; at fashionable assemblies he made his way to her side and stood near her, gazing, or dropping words into her ear; at church he placed himself in some pew near by, that she and all the world might behold him; when she left her coach and walked in the Mall he joined her or walked behind.  At such times in my lady’s close-fringed eyes there shone a steady gleam; but they were ever eyes that glowed, and there were none who had ever come close enough to her to know her well, and so there were none who read its meaning.  Only Anne knew as no other creature could, and looked on with secret terror and dismay.  The world but said that he was a man mad with love, and desperate at the knowledge of the powerfulness of his rivals, could not live beyond sight of her.

They did not hear the words that passed between them at times when he stood near her in some crowd, and dropped, as ’twas thought, words of burning prayer and love into her ear.  ’Twas said that it was like her to listen with unchanging face, and when she deigned reply, to answer without turning towards him.  But such words and replies it had more than once been Anne’s ill-fortune to be near enough to catch, and hearing them she had shuddered.

One night at a grand rout, the Duke of Osmonde but just having left the reigning beauty’s side, she heard the voice she hated close by her, speaking.

“You think you can disdain me to the end,” it said.  “Your ladyship is sure so?”

She did not turn or answer, and there followed a low laugh.

“You think a man will lie beneath your feet and be trodden upon without speaking.  You are too high and bold.”

She waved her painted fan, and gazed steadily before her at the crowd, now and then bending her head in gracious greeting and smiling at some passer-by.

“If I could tell the story of the rose garden, and of what the sun-dial saw, and what the moon shone on—” he said.

He heard her draw her breath sharply through her teeth, he saw her white bosom lift as if a wild beast leapt within it, and he laughed again.

“His Grace of Osmonde returns,” he said; and then marking, as he never failed to do, bitterly against his will, the grace and majesty of this rival, who was one of the greatest and bravest of England’s gentlemen, and knowing that she marked it too, his rage so mounted that it overcame him.

“Sometimes,” he said, “methinks that I shall kill you!”

“Would you gain your end thereby?” she answered, in a voice as low and deadly.

“I would frustrate his—and yours.”

“Do it, then,” she hissed back, “some day when you think I fear you.”

“’Twould be too easy,” he answered.  “You fear it too little.  There are bitterer things.”

She rose and met his Grace, who had approached her.  Always to his greatness and his noble heart she turned with that new feeling of dependence which her whole life had never brought to her before.  His deep eyes, falling on her tenderly as she rose, were filled with protecting concern.  Involuntarily he hastened his steps.

“Will your Grace take me to my coach?” she said.  “I am not well.  May I—go?” as gently as a tender, appealing girl.

And moved by this, as by her pallor, more than his man’s words could have told, he gave her his arm and drew her quickly and supportingly away.

Mistress Anne did not sleep well that night, having much to distract her mind and keep her awake, as was often in these days the case.  When at length she closed her eyes her slumber was fitful and broken by dreams, and in the mid hour of the darkness she wakened with a start as if some sound had aroused her.  Perhaps there had been some sound, though all was still when she opened her eyes; but in the chair by her bedside sat Clorinda in her night-rail, her hands wrung hard together on her knee, her black eyes staring under a brow knit into straight deep lines.

“Sister!” cried Anne, starting up in bed.  “Sister!”

Clorinda slowly turned her head towards her, whereupon Anne saw that in her face there was a look as if of horror which struggled with a grief, a woe, too monstrous to be borne.

“Lie down, Anne,” she said.  “Be not afraid—’tis only I,” bitterly—“who need fear?”

Anne cowered among the pillows and hid her face in her thin hands.  She knew so well that this was true.

“I never thought the time would come,” her sister said, “when I should seek you for protection.  A thing has come upon me—perhaps I shall go mad—to-night, alone in my room, I wanted to sit near a woman—’twas not like me, was it?”

Mistress Anne crept near the bed’s edge, and stretching forth a hand, touched hers, which were as cold as marble.

“Stay with me, sister,” she prayed.  “Sister, do not go!  What—what can I say?”

“Naught,” was the steady answer.  “There is naught to be said.  You were always a woman—I was never one—till now.”

She rose up from her chair and threw up her arms, pacing to and fro.

“I am a desperate creature,” she cried.  “Why was I born?”

She walked the room almost like a thing mad and caged.

“Why was I thrown into the world?” striking her breast.  “Why was I made so—and not one to watch or care through those mad years?  To be given a body like this—and tossed to the wolves.”

She turned to Anne, her arms outstretched, and so stood white and strange and beauteous as a statue, with drops like great pearls running down her lovely cheeks, and she caught her breath sobbingly, like a child.

“I was thrown to them,” she wailed piteously, “and they harried me—and left the marks of their great teeth—and of the scars I cannot rid myself—and since it was my fate—pronounced from my first hour—why was not this,” clutching her breast, “left hard as ’twas at first?  Not a woman’s—not a woman’s, but a she-cub’s.  Ah! ’twas not just—not just that it should be so!”

Anne slipped from her bed and ran to her, falling upon her knees and clinging to her, weeping bitterly.

“Poor heart!” she cried.  “Poor, dearest heart!”

Her touch and words seemed to recall Clorinda to herself.  She started as if wakened from a dream, and drew her form up rigid.

“I have gone mad,” she said.  “What is it I do?”  She passed her hand across her brow and laughed a little wild laugh.  “Yes,” she said; “this it is to be a woman—to turn weak and run to other women—and weep and talk.  Yes, by these signs I am a woman!”  She stood with her clenched hands pressed against her breast.  “In any fair fight,” she said, “I could have struck back blow for blow—and mine would have been the heaviest; but being changed into a woman, my arms are taken from me.  He who strikes, aims at my bared breast—and that he knows and triumphs in.”

She set her teeth together, and ground them, and the look, which was like that of a chained and harried tigress, lit itself in her eyes.

“But there is none shall beat me,” she said through these fierce shut teeth.  “Nay I there is none!  Get up, Anne,” bending to raise her.  “Get up, or I shall be kneeling too—and I must stand upon my feet.”

She made a motion as if she would have turned and gone from the room without further explanation, but Anne still clung to her.  She was afraid of her again, but her piteous love was stronger than her fear.

“Let me go with you,” she cried.  “Let me but go and lie in your closet that I may be near, if you should call.”

Clorinda put her hands upon her shoulders, and stooping, kissed her, which in all their lives she had done but once or twice.

“God bless thee, poor Anne,” she said.  “I think thou wouldst lie on my threshold and watch the whole night through, if I should need it; but I have given way to womanish vapours too much—I must go and be alone.  I was driven by my thoughts to come and sit and look at thy good face—I did not mean to wake thee.  Go back to bed.”

She would be obeyed, and led Anne to her couch herself, making her lie down, and drawing the coverlet about her; after which she stood upright with a strange smile, laying her hands lightly about her own white throat.

“When I was a new-born thing and had a little throat and a weak breath,” she cried, “’twould have been an easy thing to end me.  I have been told I lay beneath my mother when they found her dead.  If, when she felt her breath leaving her, she had laid her hand upon my mouth and stopped mine, I should not,” with the little laugh again—“I should not lie awake to-night.”

And then she went away.

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