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) 📗

He made some renowned conquests and set the mode in some new essences and sword-knots.  But even these triumphs appeared to pall upon him shortly, since he deserted the town and returned again to the country, where, on this occasion, he did not stay with his relative, but with Sir Jeoffry himself, who had taken a boisterous fancy to him.

It had been much marked since the altered life of Mistress Clorinda that she, who had previously defied all rules laid down on behaviour for young ladies, and had been thought to do so because she knew none of them, now proved that her wild fashion had been but wilfulness, since it was seen that she must have observed and marked manners with the best.  There seemed no decorum she did not know how to observe with the most natural grace.  It was, indeed, all grace and majesty, there being no suggestion of the prude about her, but rather the manner of a young lady having been born with pride and stateliness, and most carefully bred.  This was the result of her wondrous wit, the highness of her talents, and the strength of her will, which was of such power that she could carry out without fail anything she chose to undertake.  There are some women who have beauty, and some who have wit or vigour of understanding, but she possessed all three, and with them such courage and strength of nerve as would have well equipped a man.

Quick as her wit was and ready as were her brilliant quips and sallies, there was no levity in her demeanour, and she kept Mistress Margery Wimpole in discreet attendance upon her, as if she had been the daughter of a Spanish Hidalgo, never to be approached except in the presence of her duenna.  Poor Mistress Margery, finding her old fears removed, was overpowered with new ones.  She had no lawlessness or hoyden manners to contend with, but instead a haughtiness so high and demands so great that her powers could scarcely satisfy the one or her spirit stand up before the other.

“It is as if one were lady-in-waiting to her Majesty’s self,” she used to whimper when she was alone and dare do so.  “Surely the Queen has not such a will and such a temper.  She will have me toil to look worthy of her in my habit, and bear myself like a duchess in dignity.  Alack!  I have practised my obeisance by the hour to perfect it, so that I may escape her wrath.  And I must know how to look, and when and where to sit, and with what air of being near at hand, while I must see nothing!  And I must drag my failing limbs hither and thither with genteel ease while I ache from head to foot, being neither young nor strong.”

The poor lady was so overawed by, and yet so admired, her charge, that it was piteous to behold.

“She is an arrant fool,” quoth Mistress Clorinda to her father.  “A nice duenna she would be, forsooth, if she were with a woman who needed watching.  She could be hoodwinked as it pleased me a dozen times a day.  It is I who am her guard, not she mine!  But a beauty must drag some spy about with her, it seems, and she I can make to obey me like a spaniel.  We can afford no better, and she is well born, and since I bought her the purple paduasoy and the new lappets she has looked well enough to serve.”

“Dunstanwolde need not fear for thee now,” said Sir Jeoffry.  “Thou art a clever and foreseeing wench, Clo.”

“Dunstanwolde nor any man!” she answered.  “There will be no gossip of me.  It is Anne and Barbara thou must look to, Dad, lest their plain faces lead them to show soft hearts.  My face is my fortune!”

When Sir John Oxon paid his visit to Sir Jeoffry the days of Mistress Margery were filled with carking care.  The night before he arrived, Mistress Clorinda called her to her closet and laid upon her her commands in her own high way.  She was under her woman’s hands, and while her great mantle of black hair fell over the back of her chair and lay on the floor, her tirewoman passing the brush over it, lock by lock, she was at her greatest beauty.  Either she had been angered or pleased, for her cheek wore a bloom even deeper and richer than usual, and there was a spark like a diamond under the fringe of her lashes.

At her first timorous glance at her, Mistress Margery thought she must have been angered, the spark so burned in her eyes, and so evident was the light but quick heave of her bosom; but the next moment it seemed as if she must be in a pleasant humour, for a little smile deepened the dimples in the corner of her bowed, full lips.  But quickly she looked up and resumed her stately air.

“This gentleman who comes to visit to-morrow,” she said, “Sir John Oxon—do you know aught of him?”

“But little, Madame,” Mistress Margery answered with fear and humility.

“Then it will be well that you should, since I have commands to lay upon you concerning him,” said the beauty.

“You do me honour,” said the poor gentlewoman.

Mistress Clorinda looked her straight in the face.

“He is a gentleman from town, the kinsman of Lord Eldershawe,” she said.  “He is a handsome man, concerning whom many women have been fools.  He chooses to allow it to be said that he is a conqueror of female hearts and virtue, even among women of fashion and rank.  If this be said in the town, what may not be said in the country?  He shall wear no such graces here.  He chooses to pay his court to me.  He is my father’s guest and a man of fashion.  Let him make as many fine speeches as he has the will to.  I will listen or not as I choose.  I am used to words.  But see that we are not left alone.”

The tirewoman pricked up her ears.  Clorinda saw her in the glass.

“Attend to thy business if thou dost not want a box o’ the ear,” she said in a tone which made the woman start.

“You would not be left alone with the gentleman, Madam?” faltered Mistress Margery.

“If he comes to boast of conquests,” said Mistress Clorinda, looking at her straight again and drawing down her black brows, “I will play as cleverly as he.  He cannot boast greatly of one whom he never makes his court to but in the presence of a kinswoman of ripe years.  Understand that this is to be your task.”

“I will remember,” Madam, answered Mistress Margery.  “I will bear myself as you command.”

“That is well,” said Mistress Clorinda.  “I will keep you no more.  You may go.”

CHAPTER VI—Relating how Mistress Anne discovered a miniature

The good gentlewoman took her leave gladly.  She had spent a life in timid fears of such things and persons as were not formed by Nature to excite them, but never had she experienced such humble terrors as those with which Mistress Clorinda inspired her.  Never did she approach her without inward tremor, and never did she receive permission to depart from her presence without relief.  And yet her beauty and wit and spirit had no admirer regarding them with more of wondering awe.

In the bare west wing of the house, comfortless though the neglect of its master had made it, there was one corner where she was unafraid.  Her first charges, Mistress Barbara and Mistress Anne, were young ladies of gentle spirit.  Their sister had said of them that their spirit was as poor as their looks.  It could not be said of them by any one that they had any pretension to beauty, but that which Mistress Clorinda rated at as poor spirit was the one element of comfort in their poor dependent kinswoman’s life.  They gave her no ill words, they indulged in no fantastical whims and vapours, and they did not even seem to expect other entertainment than to walk the country roads, to play with their little lap-dog Cupid, wind silks for their needlework, and please themselves with their embroidery-frames.

To them their sister appeared a goddess whom it would be presumptuous to approach in any frame of mind quite ordinary.  Her beauty must be heightened by rich adornments, while their plain looks were left without the poorest aid.  It seemed but fitting that what there was to spend must be spent on her.  They showed no signs of resentment, and took with gratitude such cast-off finery as she deigned at times to bestow upon them, when it was no longer useful to herself.  She was too full of the occupations of pleasure to have had time to notice them, even if her nature had inclined her to the observance of family affections.  It was their habit, when they knew of her going out in state, to watch her incoming and outgoing through a peep-hole in a chamber window.  Mistress Margery told them stories of her admirers and of her triumphs, of the county gentlemen of fortune who had offered themselves to her, and of the modes of life in town of the handsome Sir John Oxon, who, without doubt, was of the circle of her admiring attendants, if he had not fallen totally her victim, as others had.

Of the two young women, it was Mistress Anne who had the more parts, and the attraction of the mind the least dull.  In sooth, Nature had dealt with both in a niggardly fashion, but Mistress Barbara was the plainer and the more foolish.  Mistress Anne had, perchance, the tenderer feelings, and was in secret given to a certain sentimentality.  She was thin and stooping, and had but a muddy complexion; her hair was heavy, it is true, but its thickness and weight seemed naught but an ungrateful burden; and she had a dull, soft eye.  In private she was fond of reading such romances as she could procure by stealth from the library of books gathered together in past times by some ancestor Sir Jeoffry regarded as an idiot.  Doubtless she met with strange reading in the volumes she took to her closet, and her simple virgin mind found cause for the solving of many problems; but from the pages she contrived to cull stories of lordly lovers and cruel or kind beauties, whose romances created for her a strange world of pleasure in the midst of her loneliness.  Poor, neglected young female, with every guileless maiden instinct withered at birth, she had need of some tender dreams to dwell upon, though Fate herself seemed to have decreed that they must be no more than visions.

It was, in sooth, always the beauteous Clorinda about whose charms she builded her romances.  In her great power she saw that for which knights fought in tourney and great kings committed royal sins, and to her splendid beauty she had in secrecy felt that all might be forgiven.  She cherished such fancies of her, that one morning, when she believed her absent from the house, she stole into the corridor upon which Clorinda’s apartment opened.  Her first timid thought had been, that if a chamber door were opened she might catch a glimpse of some of the splendours her sister’s woman was surely laying out for her wearing at a birth-night ball, at the house of one of the gentry of the neighbourhood.  But it so happened that she really found the door of entrance open, which, indeed, she had not more than dared to hope, and finding it so, she stayed her footsteps to gaze with beating heart within.  On the great bed, which was of carved oak and canopied with tattered tapestry, there lay spread such splendours as she had never beheld near to before.  ’Twas blue and silver brocade Mistress Clorinda was to shine in to-night; it lay spread forth in all its dimensions.  The beautiful bosom and shoulders were to be bared to the eyes of scores of adorers, but rich lace was to set their beauties forth, and strings of pearls.  Why Sir Jeoffry had not sold his lady’s jewels before he became enamoured of her six-year-old child it would be hard to explain.  There was a great painted fan with jewels in the sticks, and on the floor—as if peeping forth from beneath the bravery of the expanded petticoats—was a pair of blue and silver shoes, high-heeled and arched and slender.  In gazing at them Mistress Anne lost her breath, thinking that in some fashion they had a regal air of being made to trample hearts beneath them.

To the gentle, hapless virgin, to whom such possessions were as the wardrobe of a queen, the temptation to behold them near was too great.  She could not forbear from passing the