A Lady of Quality<br />Being a Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bicke by Frances Hodgson Burnett (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📕

go on.  She heard him draw a deep sigh almost stifled in its birth, and there was that in his face which she felt it was unseemly that a stranger like herself should behold, himself unknowing of her near presence.

She gently rose from her corner, wondering if she could retire from her retreat without attracting his observation; but as she did so, chance caused him to withdraw himself a little farther within the shadow of the screen, and doing so, he beheld her.

Then his face changed; the mask of noble calmness, for a moment fallen, resumed itself, and he bowed before her with the reverence of a courtly gentleman, undisturbed by the unexpectedness of his recognition of her neighbourhood.

“Madam,” he said, “pardon my unconsciousness that you were near me.  You would pass?”  And he made way for her.

She curtseyed, asking his pardon with her dull, soft eyes.

“Sir,” she answered, “I but retired here for a moment’s rest from the throng and gaiety, to which I am unaccustomed.  But chiefly I sat in retirement that I might watch—my sister.”

“Your sister, madam?” he said, as if the questioning echo were almost involuntary, and he bowed again in some apology.

“My Lady Dunstanwolde,” she replied.  “I take such pleasure in her loveliness and in all that pertains to her, it is a happiness to me to but look on.”

Whatsoever the thing was in her loving mood which touched him and found echo in his own, he was so far moved that he answered to her with something less of ceremoniousness; remembering also, in truth, that she was a lady he had heard of, and recalling her relationship and name.

“It is then Mistress Anne Wildairs I am honoured by having speech with,” he said.  “My Lady Dunstanwolde has spoken of you in my presence.  I am my lord’s kinsman the Duke of Osmonde;” again bowing, and Anne curtseyed low once more.

Despite his greatness, she felt a kindness and grace in him which was not condescension, and which almost dispelled the timidity which, being part of her nature, so unduly beset her at all times when she addressed or was addressed by a stranger.  John Oxon, bowing his bright curls, and seeming ever to mock with his smiles, had caused her to be overcome with shy awkwardness and blushes; but this man, who seemed as far above him in person and rank and mind as a god is above a graceful painted puppet, even appeared to give of his own noble strength to her poor weakness.  He bore himself towards her with a courtly respect such as no human being had ever shown to her before.  He besought her again to be seated in her nook, and stood before her conversing with such delicate sympathy with her mood as seemed to raise her to the pedestal on which stood less humble women.  All those who passed before them he knew and could speak easily of.  The high deeds of those who were statesmen, or men honoured at Court or in the field, he was familiar with; and of those who were beauties or notable gentlewomen he had always something courtly to say.

Her own worship of her sister she knew full well he understood, though he spoke of her but little.

“Well may you gaze at her,” he said.  “So does all the world, and honours and adores.”

He proffered her at last his arm, and she, having strangely taken courage, let him lead her through the rooms and persuade her to some refreshment.  Seeing her so wondrously emerge from her chrysalis, and under the protection of so distinguished a companion, all looked at her as she passed with curious amazement, and indeed Mistress Anne was all but overpowered by the reverence shown them as they made their way.

As they came again into the apartment wherein the host and hostess received their guests, Anne felt her escort pause, and looked up at him to see the meaning of his sudden hesitation.  He was gazing intently, not at Clorinda, but at the Earl of Dunstanwolde.

“Madam,” he said, “pardon me that I seem to detain you, but—but I look at my kinsman.  Madam,” with a sudden fear in his voice, “he is ailing—he sways as he stands.  Let us go to him.  Quickly!  He falls!”

And, in sooth, at that very moment there arose a dismayed cry from the guests about them, and there was a surging movement; and as they pressed forward themselves through the throng, Anne saw Dunstanwolde no more above the people, for he had indeed fallen and lay outstretched and deathly on the floor.

’Twas but a few seconds before she and Osmonde were close enough to him to mark his fallen face and ghastly pallor, and a strange dew starting out upon his brow.

But ’twas his wife who knelt beside his prostrate body, waving all else aside with a great majestic gesture of her arm.

“Back! back!” she cried.  “Air! air! and water!  My lord!  My dear lord!”

But he did not answer, or even stir, though she bent close to him and thrust her hand within his breast.  And then the frightened guests beheld a strange but beautiful and loving thing, such as might have moved any heart to tenderness and wonder.  This great beauty, this worshipped creature, put her arms beneath and about the helpless, awful body—for so its pallor and stillness indeed made it—and lifted it in their powerful whiteness as if it had been the body of a child, and so bore it to a couch near and laid it down, kneeling beside it.

Anne and Osmonde were beside her.  Osmonde pale himself, but gently calm and strong.  He had despatched for a physician the instant he saw the fall.

“My lady,” he said, bending over her, “permit me to approach.  I have some knowledge of these seizures.  Your pardon!”

He knelt also and took the moveless hand, feeling the pulse; he, too, thrust his hand within the breast and held it there, looking at the sunken face.

“My dear lord,” her ladyship was saying, as if to the prostrate man’s ear alone, knowing that her tender voice must reach him if aught would—as indeed was truth.  “Edward!  My dear—dear lord!”

Osmonde held his hand steadily over the heart.  The guests shrunk back, stricken with terror.

There was that in this corner of the splendid room which turned faces pale.

Osmonde slowly withdrew his hand, and turning to the kneeling woman—with a pallor like that of marble, but with a noble tenderness and pity in his eyes—

“My lady,” he said, “you are a brave woman.  Your great courage must sustain you.  The heart beats no more.  A noble life is finished.”

* * * * *

The guests heard, and drew still farther back, a woman or two faintly whimpering; a hurrying lacquey parted the crowd, and so, way being made for him, the physician came quickly forward.

Anne put her shaking hands up to cover her gaze.  Osmonde stood still, looking down.  My Lady Dunstanwolde knelt by the couch and hid her beautiful face upon the dead man’s breast.

CHAPTER XII—Which treats of the obsequies of my Lord of Dunstanwolde, of his lady’s widowhood, and of her return to town

All that remained of my Lord Dunstanwolde was borne back to his ancestral home, and there laid to rest in the ancient tomb in which his fathers slept.  Many came from town to pay him respect, and the Duke of Osmonde was, as was but fitting, among them.  The countess kept her own apartments, and none but her sister, Mistress Anne, beheld her.

The night before the final ceremonies she spent sitting by her lord’s coffin, and to Anne it seemed that her mood was a stranger one, than ever woman had before been ruled by.  She did not weep or moan, and only once kneeled down.  In her sweeping black robes she seemed more a majestic creature than she had ever been, and her beauty more that of a statue than of a mortal woman.  She sent away all other watchers, keeping only her sister with her, and Anne observed in her a strange protecting gentleness when she spoke of the dead man.

“I do not know whether dead men can feel and hear,” she said.  “Sometimes there has come into my mind—and made me shudder—the thought that, though they lie so still, mayhap they know what we do—and how they are spoken of as nothings whom live men and women but wait a moment to thrust away, that their own living may go on again in its accustomed way, or perchance more merrily.  If my lord knows aught, he will be grateful that I watch by him to-night in this solemn room.  He was ever grateful, and moved by any tenderness of mine.”

’Twas as she said, the room was solemn, and this almost to awfulness.  It was a huge cold chamber at best, and draped with black, and hung with hatchments; a silent gloom filled it which made it like a tomb.  Tall wax-candles burned in it dimly, but adding to its solemn shadows with their faint light; and in his rich coffin the dead man lay in his shroud, his hands like carvings of yellowed ivory clasped upon his breast.

Mistress Anne dared not have entered the place alone, and was so overcome at sight of the pinched nostrils and sunk eyes that she turned cold with fear.  But Clorinda seemed to feel no dread or shrinking.  She went and stood beside the great funeral-draped bed of state on which the coffin lay, and thus standing, looked down with a grave, protecting pity in her face.  Then she stooped and kissed the dead man long upon the brow.

“I will sit by you to-night,” she said.  “That which lies here will be alone to-morrow.  I will not leave you this last night.  Had I been in your place you would not leave me.”

She sat down beside him and laid her strong warm hand upon his cold waxen ones, closing it over them as if she would give them heat.  Anne knelt and prayed—that all might be forgiven, that sins might be blotted out, that this kind poor soul might find love and peace in the kingdom of Heaven, and might not learn there what might make bitter the memory of his last year of rapture and love.  She was so simple that she forgot that no knowledge of the past could embitter aught when a soul looked back from Paradise.

Throughout the watches of the night her sister sat and held the dead man’s hand; she saw her more than once smooth his grey hair almost as a mother might have touched a sick sleeping child’s; again she kissed his forehead, speaking to him gently, as if to tell him he need not fear, for she was close at hand; just once she knelt, and Anne wondered if she prayed, and in what manner, knowing that prayer was not her habit.

’Twas just before dawn she knelt so, and when she rose and stood beside him, looking down again, she drew from the folds of her robe a little package.

“Anne,” she said, as she untied the ribband that bound it, “when first I was his wife I found him one day at his desk looking at these things as they lay upon his hand.  He thought at first it would offend me to find him so; but I told him that I was gentler than he thought—though not so gentle as the poor innocent girl who died in giving him his child.  ’Twas her picture he was gazing at, and a little ring and two locks of hair—one a brown ringlet from her head, and one—such a tiny wisp of down—from the head of her infant.  I told him to keep them always and look at them often, remembering how innocent she had been, and that she had died for him.  There were tears on my hand when he kissed it in thanking me.  He kept the little package in his desk, and I have brought it to him.”

The miniature was of a sweet-faced girl with large loving childish eyes, and cheeks that blushed like the early morning.  Clorinda looked at her almost with tenderness.

“There is no marrying or giving in marriage, ’tis said,” quoth she; “but were there, ’tis you who were his wife—not I.  I was but a lighter thing, though I bore his name and he honoured me.  When you and your child greet him he will forget me—and all will be well.”

She held the miniature and the soft hair to his cold lips a moment, and Anne saw with wonder that her own mouth worked.  She slipped the ring on his least finger, and hid the picture and the ringlets within the palms of his folded hands.

“He was a good man,” she said; “he was the first good man that I had ever known.”  And she held out her hand to Anne and drew her from