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) 📕

“Oh! those mad days before!” she cried—“Oh! those mad, mad days before!”

“Nay, they are long passed, sweet,” he said, in his deep, noble voice, thinking that she spoke of the wildness of her girlish years—“and all our days of joy are yet to come.”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, clinging closer, yet with shuddering, “they were before—the joy—the joy is all to come.”

His Grace of Osmonde went back to France to complete his business, and all the world knew that when he returned to England ’twould be to make his preparations for his marriage with my Lady Dunstanwolde.  It was a marriage not long to be postponed, and her ladyship herself was known already to be engaged with lacemen, linen-drapers, toyshop women, and goldsmiths.  Mercers awaited upon her at her house, accompanied by their attendants, bearing burdens of brocades and silks, and splendid stuffs of all sorts.  Her chariot was to be seen standing before their shops, and the interest in her purchases was so great that fashionable beauties would contrive to visit the counters at the same hours as herself, so that they might catch glimpses of what she chose.  In her own great house all was repressed excitement; her women were enraptured at being allowed the mere handling and laying away of the glories of her wardrobe; the lacqueys held themselves with greater state, knowing that they were soon to be a duke’s servants; her little black Nero strutted about, his turban set upon his pate with a majestic cock, and disdained to enter into battle with such pages of his own colour as wore only silver collars, he feeling assured that his own would soon be of gold.

The World of Fashion said when her ladyship’s equipage drove by, that her beauty was like that of the god of day at morning, and that ’twas plain that no man or woman had ever beheld her as his Grace of Osmonde would.

“She loves at last,” a wit said.  “Until the time that such a woman loves, however great her splendour, she is as the sun behind a cloud.”

“And now this one hath come forth, and shines so that she warms us in mere passing,” said another.  “What eyes, and what a mouth, with that strange smile upon it.  Whoever saw such before? and when she came to town with my Lord Dunstanwolde, who, beholding her, would have believed that she could wear such a look?”

In sooth, there was that in her face and in her voice when she spoke which almost made Anne weep, through its strange sweetness and radiance.  ’Twas as if the flood of her joy had swept away all hardness and disdain.  Her eyes, which had seemed to mock at all they rested on, mocked no more, but ever seemed to smile at some dear inward thought.

One night when she went forth to a Court ball, being all attired in brocade of white and silver, and glittering with the Dunstanwolde diamonds, which starred her as with great sparkling dewdrops, and yet had not the radiance of her eyes and smile, she was so purely wonderful a vision that Anne, who had been watching her through all the time when she had been under the hands of her tirewoman, and beholding her now so dazzling and white a shining creature, fell upon her knees to kiss her hand almost as one who worships.

“Oh, sister,” she said, “you look like a spirit.  It is as if with the earth you had naught to do—as if your eyes saw Heaven itself and Him who reigns there.”

The lovely orbs of Clorinda shone more still like the great star of morning.

“Sister Anne,” she said, laying her hand on her white breast, “at times I think that I must almost be a spirit, I feel such heavenly joy.  It is as if He whom you believe in, and who can forgive and wipe out sins, has forgiven me, and has granted it to me, that I may begin my poor life again.  Ah!  I will make it better; I will try to make it as near an angel’s life as a woman can; and I will do no wrong, but only good; and I will believe, and pray every day upon my knees—and all my prayers will be that I may so live that my dear lord—my Gerald—could forgive me all that I have ever done—and seeing my soul, would know me worthy of him.  Oh! we are strange things, we human creatures, Anne,” with a tremulous smile; “we do not believe until we want a thing, and feel that we shall die if ’tis not granted to us; and then we kneel and kneel and believe, because we must have somewhat to ask help from.”

“But all help has been given to you,” poor tender Anne said, kissing her hand again; “and I will pray, I will pray—”

“Ay, pray, Anne, pray with all thy soul,” Clorinda answered; “I need thy praying—and thou didst believe always, and have asked so little that has been given thee.”

“Thou wast given me, sister,” said Anne.  “Thou hast given me a home and kindness such as I never dared to hope; thou hast been like a great star to me—I have had none other, and I thank Heaven on my knees each night for the brightness my star has shed on me.”

“Poor Anne, dear Anne!” Clorinda said, laying her arms about her and kissing her.  “Pray for thy star, good, tender Anne, that its light may not be quenched.”  Then with a sudden movement her hand was pressed upon her bosom again.  “Ah, Anne,” she cried, and in the music of her voice, agony itself was ringing—“Anne, there is but one thing on this earth God rules over—but one thing that belongs—belongs to me; and ’tis Gerald Mertoun—and he is mine and shall not be taken from me, for he is a part of me, and I a part of him!”

“He will not be,” said Anne—“he will not.”

“He cannot,” Clorinda answered—“he shall not!  ’Twould not be human.”

She drew a long breath and was calm again.

“Did it reach your ears,” she said, reclasping a band of jewels on her arm, “that John Oxon had been offered a place in a foreign Court, and that ’twas said he would soon leave England?”

“I heard some rumour of it,” Anne answered, her emotion getting the better of her usual discreet speech.  “God grant it may be true!”

“Ay!” said Clorinda, “would God that he were gone!”

But that he was not, for when she entered the assembly that night he was standing near the door as though he lay in waiting for her, and his eyes met hers with a leaping gleam, which was a thing of such exultation that to encounter it was like having a knife thrust deep into her side and through and through it, for she knew full well that he could not wear such a look unless he had some strength of which she knew not.

This gleam was in his eyes each time she found herself drawn to them, and it seemed as though she could look nowhere without encountering his gaze.  He followed her from room to room, placing himself where she could not lift her eyes without beholding him; when she walked a minuet with a royal duke, he stood and watched her with such a look in his face as drew all eyes towards him.

“’Tis as if he threatens her,” one said.  “He has gone mad with disappointed love.”

But ’twas not love that was in his look, but the madness of long-thwarted passion mixed with hate and mockery; and this she saw, and girded her soul with all its strength, knowing that she had a fiercer beast to deal with, and a more vicious and dangerous one, than her horse Devil.  That he kept at first at a distance from her, and but looked on with this secret exultant glow in his bad, beauteous eyes, told her that at last he felt he held some power in his hands, against which all her defiance would be as naught.  Till this hour, though she had suffered, and when alone had writhed in agony of grief and bitter shame, in his presence she had never flinched.  Her strength she knew was greater than his; but his baseness was his weapon, and the depths of that baseness she knew she had never reached.

At midnight, having just made obeisance before Royalty retiring, she felt that at length he had drawn near and was standing at her side.

“To-night,” he said, in the low undertone it was his way to keep for such occasions, knowing how he could pierce her ear—“to-night you are Juno’s self—a very Queen of Heaven!”

She made no answer.

“And I have stood and watched you moving among all lesser goddesses as the moon sails among the stars, and I have smiled in thinking of what these lesser deities would say if they had known what I bear in my breast to-night.”

She did not even make a movement—in truth, she felt that at his next words she might change to stone.

“I have found it,” he said—“I have it here—the lost treasure—the tress of hair like a raven’s wing and six feet long.  Is there another woman in England who could give a man a lock like it?”

She felt then that she had, in sooth, changed to stone; her heart hung without moving in her breast; her eyes felt great and hollow and staring as she lifted them to him.

“I knew not,” she said slowly, and with bated breath, for the awfulness of the moment had even made her body weak as she had never known it feel before—“I knew not truly that hell made things like you.”

Whereupon he made a movement forward, and the crowd about surged nearer with hasty exclamations, for the strange weakness of her body had overpowered her in a way mysterious to her, and she had changed to marble, growing too heavy of weight for her sinking limbs.  And those in the surrounding groups saw a marvellous thing—the same being that my Lady Dunstanwolde swayed as she turned, and falling, lay stretched, as if dead, in her white and silver and flashing jewels at the startled beholders’ feet.

* * * * *

She wore no radiant look when she went home that night.  She would go home alone and unescorted, excepting by her lacqueys, refusing all offers of companionship when once placed in her equipage.  There were, of course, gentlemen who would not be denied leading her to her coach; John Oxon was among them, and at the last pressed close, with a manner of great ceremony, speaking a final word.

“’Tis useless, your ladyship,” he murmured, as he made his obeisance gallantly, and though the words were uttered in his lowest tone and with great softness, they reached her ear as he intended that they should.  “To-morrow morning I shall wait upon you.”

Anne had forborne going to bed, and waited for her return, longing to see her spirit’s face again before she slept; for this poor tender creature, being denied all woman’s loves and joys by Fate, who had made her as she was, so lived in her sister’s beauty and triumphs that ’twas as if in some far-off way she shared them, and herself experienced through them the joy of being a woman transcendently beautiful and transcendently beloved.  To-night she had spent her waiting hours in her closet and upon her knees, praying with all humble adoration of the Being she approached.  She was wont to pray long and fervently each day, thanking Heaven for the smallest things and the most common, and imploring continuance of the mercy which bestowed them upon her poor unworthiness.  For her sister her prayers were offered up night and morning, and ofttimes in hours between, and to-night she prayed not for herself at all, but for Clorinda and for his Grace of Osmonde, that their love might be crowned with happiness, and that no shadow might intervene to cloud its brightness, and the tender rapture in her sister’s softened look, which was to her a thing so wonderful that she thought of it with reverence as a holy thing.

Her prayers being at length ended, she had risen from her knees and sat down, taking a sacred book to read, a book of sermons such as ’twas her simple habit to pore over with entire respect and child-like faith, and being in the midst of her favourite homily, she heard the chariot’s returning wheels, and left her chair, surprised, because she had not yet begun to expect the sound.

“’Tis my sister,” she said, with a soft, sentimental smile.  “Osmonde not being among the guests, she hath no pleasure in mingling with them.”

She went below to the room her ladyship usually