A Lady of Quality<br />Being a Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bicke by Frances Hodgson Burnett (world of reading .TXT) 📖

the way you have with words.  You use them so that ’tis as though they had shapes of their own and colours, and you builded with them.  I thank you for being so gracious to me, who have seen so little, and cannot tell the poor, quiet things I have seen.”

And being led into the loving boldness by her gratitude, she bent forward and touched with her lips the fair hand resting on the chair’s arm.

Mistress Clorinda fixed her fine eyes upon her in a new way.

“I’ faith, it doth not seem fair, Anne,” she said.  “I should not like to change lives with thee.  Thou hast eyes like a shot pheasant—soft, and with the bright hid beneath the dull.  Some man might love them, even if thou art no beauty.  Stay,” suddenly; “methinks—”

She uprose from her chair and went to the oaken wardrobe, and threw the door of it open wide while she looked within.

“There is a gown and tippet or so here, and a hood and some ribands I might do without,” she said.  “My woman shall bear them to your chamber, and show you how to set them to rights.  She is a nimble-fingered creature, and a gown of mine would give almost stuff enough to make you two.  Then some days, when I am not going abroad and Mistress Margery frets me too much, I will send for you to sit with me, and you shall listen to the gossip when a visitor drops in to have a dish of tea.”

Anne would have kissed her feet then, if she had dared to do so.  She blushed red all over, and adored her with a more worshipping gaze than before.

“I should not have dared to hope so much,” she stammered.  “I could not—perhaps it is not fitting—perhaps I could not bear myself as I should.  I would try to show myself a gentlewoman and seemly.  I—I am a gentlewoman, though I have learned so little.  I could not be aught but a gentlewoman, could I, sister, being of your own blood and my parents’ child?” half afraid to presume even this much.

“No,” said Clorinda.  “Do not be a fool, Anne, and carry yourself too humbly before the world.  You can be as humble as you like to me.”

“I shall—I shall be your servant and worship you, sister,” cried the poor soul, and she drew near and kissed again the white hand which had bestowed with such royal bounty all this joy.  It would not have occurred to her that a cast-off robe and riband were but small largesse.

It was not a minute after this grateful caress that Clorinda made a sharp movement—a movement which was so sharp that it seemed to be one of dismay.  At first, as if involuntarily, she had raised her hand to her tucker, and after doing so she started—though ’twas but for a second’s space, after which her face was as it had been before.

“What is it?” exclaimed Anne.  “Have you lost anything?”

“No,” quoth Mistress Clorinda quite carelessly, as she once more turned to the contents of the oaken wardrobe; “but I thought I missed a trinket I was wearing for a wager, and I would not lose it before the bet is won.”

“Sister,” ventured Anne before she left her and went away to her own dull world in the west wing, “there is a thing I can do if you will allow me.  I can mend your tapestry hangings which have holes in them.  I am quick at my needle, and should love to serve you in such poor ways as I can; and it is not seemly that they should be so worn.  All things about you should be beautiful and well kept.”

“Can you make these broken things beautiful?” said Clorinda.  “Then indeed you shall.  You may come here to mend them when you will.”

“They are very fine hangings, though so old and ill cared for,” said Anne, looking up at them; “and I shall be only too happy sitting here thinking of all you are doing while I am at my work.”

“Thinking of all I am doing?” laughed Mistress Clorinda.  “That would give you such wondrous things to dream of, Anne, that you would have no time for your needle, and my hangings would stay as they are.”

“I can think and darn also,” said Mistress Anne, “so I will come.”

CHAPTER VII—’Twas the face of Sir John Oxon the moon shone upon

From that time henceforward into the young woman’s dull life there came a little change.  It did not seem a little change to her, but a great one, though to others it would have seemed slight indeed.  She was an affectionate, house-wifely creature, who would have made the best of wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her sister, who became the empress of her soul.  She darned and patched the tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or as those nuns and novices give to embroidering altar-cloths.  There was a brightness in the room that seemed in no other in the house, and the lingering essences in the air of it were as incense to her.  In secrecy she even busied herself with keeping things in better order than Rebecca, Mistress Clorinda’s woman, had ever had time to do before.  She also contrived to get into her own hands some duties that were Rebecca’s own.  She could mend lace cleverly and arrange riband-knots with taste, and even change the fashion of a gown.  The hard-worked tirewoman was but too glad to be relieved, and kept her secret well, being praised many times for the set or fashion of a thing into which she had not so much as set a needle.  Being a shrewd baggage, she was wise enough always to relate to Anne the story of her mistress’s pleasure, having the wit to read in her delight that she would be encouraged to fresh effort.

At times it so befell that, when Anne went into the bed-chamber, she found the beauty there, who, if she chanced to be in the humour, would detain her in her presence for a space and bewitch her over again.  In sooth, it seemed that she took a pleasure in showing her female adorer how wondrously full of all fascinations she could be.  At such times Anne’s plain face would almost bloom with excitement, and her shot pheasant’s eyes would glow as if beholding a goddess.

She neither saw nor heard more of the miniature on the riband.  It used to make her tremble at times to fancy that by some strange chance it might still be under the bed, and that the handsome face smiled and the blue eyes gazed in the very apartment where she herself sat and her sister was robed and disrobed in all her beauty.

She used all her modest skill in fitting to her own shape and refurnishing the cast-off bits of finery bestowed upon her.  It was all set to rights long before Clorinda recalled to mind that she had promised that Anne should sometime see her chance visitors take their dish of tea with her.

But one day, for some cause, she did remember, and sent for her.

Anne ran to her bed-chamber and donned her remodelled gown with shaking hands.  She laughed a little hysterically as she did it, seeing her plain snub-nosed face in the glass.  She tried to dress her head in a fashion new to her, and knew she did it ill and untidily, but had no time to change it.  If she had had some red she would have put it on, but such vanities were not in her chamber or Barbara’s.  So she rubbed her cheeks hard, and even pinched them, so that in the end they looked as if they were badly rouged.  It seemed to her that her nose grew red too, and indeed ’twas no wonder, for her hands and feet were like ice.

“She must be ashamed of me,” the humble creature said to herself.  “And if she is ashamed she will be angered and send me away and be friends no more.”

She did not deceive herself, poor thing, and imagine she had the chance of being regarded with any great lenience if she appeared ill.

“Mistress Clorinda begged that you would come quickly,” said Rebecca, knocking at the door.

So she caught her handkerchief, which was scented, as all her garments were, with dried rose-leaves from the garden, which she had conserved herself, and went down to the chintz parlour trembling.

It was a great room with white panels, and flowered coverings to the furniture.  There were a number of ladies and gentlemen standing talking and laughing loudly together.  The men outnumbered the women, and most of them stood in a circle about Mistress Clorinda, who sat upright in a great flowered chair, smiling with her mocking, stately air, as if she defied them to dare to speak what they felt.

Anne came in like a mouse.  Nobody saw her.  She did not, indeed, know what to do.  She dared not remain standing all alone, so she crept to the place where her sister’s chair was, and stood a little behind its high back.  Her heart beat within her breast till it was like to choke her.

They were only country gentlemen who made the circle, but to her they seemed dashing gallants.  That some of them had red noses as well as cheeks, and that their voices were big and their gallantries boisterous, was no drawback to their manly charms, she having seen no other finer gentlemen.  They were specimens of the great conquering creature Man, whom all women must aspire to please if they have the fortunate power; and each and all of them were plainly trying to please Clorinda, and not she them.

And so Anne gazed at them with admiring awe, waiting until there should come a pause in which she might presume to call her sister’s attention to her presence; but suddenly, before she had indeed made up her mind how she might best announce herself, there spoke behind her a voice of silver.

“It is only goddesses,” said the voice, “who waft about them as they move the musk of the rose-gardens of Araby.  When you come to reign over us in town, Madam, there will be no perfume in the mode but that of rose-leaves, and in all drawing-rooms we shall breathe but their perfume.”

And there, at her side, was bowing, in cinnamon and crimson, with jewelled buttons on his velvet coat, the beautiful being whose fair locks the sun had shone on the morning she had watched him ride away—the man whom the imperial beauty had dismissed and called a popinjay.

Clorinda looked under her lashes towards him without turning, but in so doing beheld Anne standing in waiting.

“A fine speech lost,” she said, “though ’twas well enough for the country, Sir John.  ’Tis thrown away, because ’tis not I who am scented with rose-leaves, but Anne there, whom you must not ogle.  Come hither, sister, and do not hide as if you were ashamed to be looked at.”

And she drew her forward, and there Anne stood, and all of them stared at her poor, plain, blushing face, and the Adonis in cinnamon and crimson bowed low, as if she had been a duchess, that being his conqueror’s way with gentle or simple, maid, wife, or widow, beauty or homespun uncomeliness.

It was so with him always; he could never resist the chance of luring to himself a woman’s heart, whether he wanted it or not, and he had a charm, a strange and wonderful one, it could not be denied.  Anne palpitated indeed as she made her curtsey to him, and wondered if Heaven had ever before made so fine a gentleman and so beautiful a being.

She went but seldom to this room again, and when she went she stood always in the background, far more in fear that some one would address her than that she should meet with neglect.  She was used to neglect, and to being regarded as a nonentity, and aught else discomfited her.  All her pleasure was to hear what was said, though ’twas not always of the finest wit—and to watch Clorinda play the queen among her admirers and her slaves.  She would not have dared to speak of Sir John Oxon frequently—indeed, she let fall his name but rarely; but she learned a curious wit in contriving to hear all things concerning him.  It was her habit cunningly to lead Mistress Margery to talking about him and relating long histories of his conquests and his grace.  Mistress Wimpole knew many of them, having, for a staid and prudent matron, a lively interest in