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) 📖

went to first on her return at night from any gathering, and there she found her sitting as though she had dropped there in the corner of a great divan, her hands hanging clasped before her on her knee, her head hanging forward on her fallen chest, her large eyes staring into space.

“Clorinda!  Clorinda!” Anne cried, running to her and kneeling at her side.  “Clorinda!  God have mercy!  What is’t?”

Never before had her face worn such a look—’twas colourless, and so drawn and fallen in that ’twas indeed almost as if all her great beauty was gone; but the thing most awful to poor Anne was that all the new softness seemed as if it had been stamped out, and the fierce hardness had come back and was engraven in its place, mingled with a horrible despair.

“An hour ago,” she said, “I swooned.  That is why I look thus.  ’Tis yet another sign that I am a woman—a woman!”

“You are ill—you swooned?” cried Anne.  “I must send for your physician.  Have you not ordered that he be sent for yourself?  If Osmonde were here, how perturbed he would be!”

“Osmonde!” said my lady.  “Gerald!  Is there a Gerald, Anne?”

“Sister!” cried Anne, affrighted by her strange look—“oh, sister!”

“I have seen heaven,” Clorinda said; “I have stood on the threshold and seen through the part-opened gate—and then have been dragged back to hell.”

Anne clung to her, gazing upwards at her eyes, in sheer despair.

“But back to hell I will not go,” she went on saying.  “Had I not seen Heaven, they might perhaps have dragged me; but now I will not go—I will not, that I swear!  There is a thing which cannot be endured.  Bear it no woman should.  Even I, who was not born a woman, but a wolf’s she-cub, I cannot.  ’Twas not I, ’twas Fate,” she said—“’twas not I, ’twas Fate—’twas the great wheel we are bound to, which goes round and round that we may be broken on it.  ’Twas not I who bound myself there; and I will not be broken so.”

She said the words through her clenched teeth, and with all the mad passion of her most lawless years; even at Anne she looked almost in the old ungentle fashion, as though half scorning all weaker than herself, and having small patience with them.

“There will be a way,” she said—“there will be a way.  I shall not swoon again.”

She left her divan and stood upright, the colour having come back to her face; but the look Anne worshipped not having returned with it, ’twas as though Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had been born again.

“To-morrow morning I go forth on Devil,” she said; “and I shall be abroad if any visitors come.”

What passed in her chamber that night no human being knew.  Anne, who left her own apartment and crept into a chamber near hers to lie and watch, knew that she paced to and fro, but heard no other sound, and dared not intrude upon her.

When she came forth in the morning she wore the high look she had been wont to wear in the years gone by, when she ruled in her father’s house, and rode to the hunt with a following of gay middle-aged and elderly rioters.  Her eye was brilliant, and her colour matched it.  She held her head with the old dauntless carriage, and there was that in her voice before which her women quaked, and her lacqueys hurried to do her bidding.

Devil himself felt this same thing in the touch of her hand upon his bridle when she mounted him at the door, and seemed to glance askance at her sideways.

She took no servant with her, and did not ride to the Park, but to the country.  Once on the highroad, she rode fast and hard, only galloping straight before her as the way led, and having no intention.  Where she was going she knew not; but why she rode on horseback she knew full well, it being because the wild, almost fierce motion was in keeping with the tempest in her soul.  Thoughts rushed through her brain even as she rushed through the air on Devil’s back, and each leaping after the other, seemed to tear more madly.

“What shall I do?” she was saying to herself.  “What thing is there for me to do?  I am trapped like a hunted beast, and there is no way forth.”

The blood went like a torrent through her veins, so that she seemed to hear it roaring in her ears; her heart thundered in her side, or ’twas so she thought of it as it bounded, while she recalled the past and looked upon the present.

“What else could have been?” she groaned.  “Naught else—naught else.  ’Twas a trick—a trick of Fate to ruin me for my punishment.”

When she had gone forth it had been with no hope in her breast that her wit might devise a way to free herself from the thing which so beset her, for she had no weak fancies that there dwelt in this base soul any germ of honour which might lead it to relenting.  As she had sat in her dark room at night, crouched upon the floor, and clenching her hands, as the mad thoughts went whirling through her brain, she had stared her Fate in the face and known all its awfulness.  Before her lay the rapture of a great, sweet, honourable passion, a high and noble life lived in such bliss as rarely fell to lot of woman—on this one man she knew that she could lavish all the splendour of her nature, and make his life a heaven, as hers would be.  Behind her lay the mad, uncared-for years, and one black memory blighting all to come, though ’twould have been but a black memory with no power to blight if the heaven of love had not so opened to her and with its light cast all else into shadow.

“If ’twere not love,” she cried—“if ’twere but ambition, I could defy it to the last; but ’tis love—love—love, and it will kill me to forego it.”

Even as she moaned the words she heard hoof beats near her, and a horseman leaped the hedge and was at her side.  She set her teeth, and turning, stared into John Oxon’s face.

“Did you think I would not follow you?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

“I have followed you at a distance hitherto,” he said; “now I shall follow close.”

She did not speak, but galloped on.

“Think you you can outride me?” he said grimly, quickening his steed’s pace.  “I go with your ladyship to your own house.  For fear of scandal you have not openly rebuffed me previous to this time; for a like reason you will not order your lacqueys to shut your door when I enter it with you.”

My Lady Dunstanwolde turned to gaze at him again.  The sun shone on his bright falling locks and his blue eyes as she had seen it shine in days which seemed so strangely long passed by, though they were not five years agone.

“’Tis strange,” she said, with a measure of wonder, “to live and be so black a devil.”

“Bah! my lady,” he said, “these are fine words—and fine words do not hold between us.  Let us leave them.  I would escort you home, and speak to you in private.”  There was that in his mocking that was madness to her, and made her sick and dizzy with the boiling of the blood which surged to her brain.  The fury of passion which had been a terror to all about her when she had been a child was upon her once more, and though she had thought herself freed from its dominion, she knew it again and all it meant.  She felt the thundering beat in her side, the hot flood leaping to her cheek, the flame burning her eyes themselves as if fire was within them.  Had he been other than he was, her face itself would have been a warning.  But he pressed her hard.  As he would have slunk away a beaten cur if she had held the victory in her hands, so feeling that the power was his, he exulted over the despairing frenzy which was in her look.

“I pay back old scores,” he said.  “There are many to pay.  When you crowned yourself with roses and set your foot upon my face, your ladyship thought not of this!  When you gave yourself to Dunstanwolde and spat at me, you did not dream that there could come a time when I might goad as you did.”

She struck Devil with her whip, who leaped forward; but Sir John followed hard behind her.  He had a swift horse too, and urged him fiercely, so that between these two there was a race as if for life or death.  The beasts bounded forward, spurning the earth beneath their feet.  My lady’s face was set, her eyes were burning flame, her breath came short and pantingly between her teeth.  Oxon’s fair face was white with passion; he panted also, but strained every nerve to keep at her side, and kept there.

“Keep back!  I warn thee!” she cried once, almost gasping.

“Keep back!” he answered, blind with rage.  “I will follow thee to hell!”

And in this wise they galloped over the white road until the hedges disappeared and they were in the streets, and people turned to look at them, and even stood and stared.  Then she drew rein a little and went slower, knowing with shuddering agony that the trap was closing about her.

“What is it that you would say to me?” she asked him breathlessly.

“That which I would say within four walls that you may hear it all,” he answered.  “This time ’tis not idle threatening.  I have a thing to show you.”

Through the streets they went, and as her horse’s hoofs beat the pavement, and the passers-by, looking towards her, gazed curiously at so fine a lady on so splendid a brute, she lifted her eyes to the houses, the booths, the faces, and the sky, with a strange fancy that she looked about her as a man looks who, doomed to death, is being drawn in his cart to Tyburn tree.  For ’twas to death she went, nor to naught else could she compare it, and she was so young and strong, and full of love and life, and there should have been such bliss and peace before her but for one madness of her all-unknowing days.  And this beside her—this man with the fair face and looks and beauteous devil’s eyes, was her hangman, and carried his rope with him, and soon would fit it close about her neck.

When they rode through the part of the town where abode the World of Fashion, those who saw them knew them, and marvelled that the two should be together.

“But perhaps his love has made him sue for pardon that he has so borne himself,” some said, “and she has chosen to be gracious to him, since she is gracious in these days to all.”

When they reached her house he dismounted with her, wearing an outward air of courtesy; but his eye mocked her, as she knew.  His horse was in a lather of sweat, and he spoke to a servant.

“Take my beast home,” he said.  “He is too hot to stand, and I shall not soon be ready.”

CHAPTER XVI—Dealing with that which was done in the Panelled Parlour

He followed her to the Panelled Parlour, the one to which she had taken Osmonde on the day of their bliss, the one in which in the afternoon she received those who came to pay court to her over a dish of tea.  In the mornings none entered it but herself or some invited guest.  ’Twas not the room she would have chosen for him; but when he said to her, “’Twere best your ladyship took me to some private place,” she had known there was no other so safe.

When the door was closed behind them, and they stood face to face, they were a strange pair to behold—she with mad defiance battling with mad despair in her face; he with the mocking which every woman who had ever trusted him or loved him had lived to see in his face when all was lost.  Few men there lived who were as vile as he, his power of villainy lying in that he knew not the meaning of man’s shame or honour.

“Now,” she said, “tell me the worst.”

“’Tis not so bad,” he answered, “that a man should claim his own, and swear that no other man shall take it from him.  That I have sworn, and that I will hold to.”

“Your own!” she said—“your own you call it—villain!”

“My own, since I can keep it,” quoth he.  “Before you were my Lord of Dunstanwolde’s you were mine—of your own free