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) 📖

“Nay, nay,” she cried.  “God! through some madness I knew not the awfulness of—because I was so young and had known naught but evil—and you were so base and wise.”

“Was your ladyship an innocent?” he answered.  “It seemed not so to me.”

“An innocent of all good,” she cried—“of all things good on earth—of all that I know now, having seen manhood and honour.”

“His Grace of Osmonde has not been told this,” he said; “and I should make it all plain to him.”

“What do you ask, devil?” she broke forth.  “What is’t you ask?”

“That you shall not be the Duchess of Osmonde,” he said, drawing near to her; “that you shall be the wife of Sir John Oxon, as you once called yourself for a brief space, though no priest had mumbled over us—”

“Who was’t divorced us?” she said, gasping; “for I was an honest thing, though I knew no other virtue.  Who was’t divorced us?”

“I confess,” he answered, bowing, “that ’twas I—for the time being.  I was young, and perhaps fickle—”

“And you left me,” she cried, “and I found that you had come but for a bet—and since I so bore myself that you could not boast, and since I was not a rich woman whose fortune would be of use to you, you followed another and left me—me!”

“As his Grace of Osmonde will when I tell him my story,” he answered.  “He is not one to brook that such things can be told of the mother of his heirs.”

She would have shrieked aloud but that she clutched her throat in time.

“Tell him!” she cried, “tell him, and see if he will hear you.  Your word against mine!”

“Think you I do not know that full well,” he answered, and he brought forth a little package folded in silk.  “Why have I done naught but threaten till this time?  If I went to him without proof, he would run me through with his sword as I were a mad dog.  But is there another woman in England from whose head her lover could ravish a lock as long and black as this?”

He unfolded the silk, and let other silk unfold itself, a great and thick ring of raven hair which uncoiled its serpent length, and though he held it high, was long enough after surging from his hand to lie upon the floor.

“Merciful God!” she cried, and shuddering, hid her face.

“’Twas a bet, I own,” he said; “I heard too much of the mad beauty and her disdain of men not to be fired by a desire to prove to her and others, that she was but a woman after all, and so was to be won.  I took an oath that I would come back some day with a trophy—and this I cut when you knew not that I did it.”

She clutched her throat again to keep from shrieking in her—impotent horror.

“Devil, craven, and loathsome—and he knows not what he is!” she gasped.  “He is a mad thing who knows not that all his thoughts are of hell.”

’Twas, in sooth, a strange and monstrous thing to see him so unwavering and bold, flinching before no ignominy, shrinking not to speak openly the thing before the mere accusation of which other men’s blood would have boiled.

“When I bore it away with me,” he said, “I lived wildly for a space, and in those days put it in a place of safety, and when I was sober again I had forgot where.  Yesterday, by a strange chance, I came upon it.  Think you it can be mistaken for any other woman’s hair?”

At this she held up her hand.

“Wait,” she said.  “You will go to Osmonde, you will tell him this, you will—”

“I will tell him all the story of the rose garden and of the sun-dial, and the beauty who had wit enough to scorn a man in public that she might more safely hold tryst with him alone.  She had great wit and cunning for a beauty of sixteen.  ’Twould be well for her lord to have keen eyes when she is twenty.”

He should have seen the warning in her eyes, for there was warning enough in their flaming depths.

“All that you can say I know,” she said—“all that you can say!  And I love him.  There is no other man on earth.  Were he a beggar, I would tramp the highroad by his side and go hungered with him.  He is my lord, and I his mate—his mate!”

“That you will not be,” he answered, made devilish by her words.  “He is a high and noble gentleman, and wants no man’s cast-off plaything for his wife.”

Her breast leaped up and down in her panting as she pressed her hand upon it; her breath came in sharp puffs through her nostrils.

“And once,” she breathed—“and once—I loved thee—cur!”

He was mad with exultant villainy and passion, and he broke into a laugh.

“Loved me!” he said.  “Thou!  As thou lovedst me—and as thou lovest him—so will Moll Easy love any man—for a crown.”

Her whip lay upon the table, she caught and whirled it in the air.  She was blind with the surging of her blood, and saw not how she caught or held it, or what she did—only that she struck!

And ’twas his temple that the loaded weapon met, and ’twas wielded by a wrist whose sinews were of steel, and even as it struck he gasped, casting up his hands, and thereupon fell, and lay stretched at her feet!

But the awful tempest which swept over her had her so under its dominion that she was like a branch whirled on the wings of the storm.  She scarce noted that he fell, or noting it, gave it not one thought as she dashed from one end of the apartment to the other with the fierce striding of a mad woman.

“Devil!” she cried, “and cur! and for thee I blasted all the years to come!  To a beast so base I gave all that an empress’ self could give—all life—all love—for ever.  And he comes back—shameless—to barter like a cheating huckster, because his trade goes ill, and I—I could stock his counters once again.”

She strode towards him, raving.

“Think you I do not know, woman’s bully and poltroon, that you plot to sell yourself, because your day has come, and no woman will bid for such an outcast, saving one that you may threaten.  Rise, vermin—rise, lest I kill thee!”

In her blind madness she lashed him once across the face again.  And he stirred not—and something in the resistless feeling of the flesh beneath the whip, and in the quiet of his lying, caused her to pause and stand panting and staring at the thing which lay before her.  For it was a Thing, and as she stood staring, with wild heaving breast, this she saw.  ’Twas but a thing—a thing lying inert, its fair locks outspread, its eyes rolled upward till the blue was almost lost; a purple indentation on the right temple from which there oozed a tiny thread of blood.

* * * * *

“There will be a way,” she had said, and yet in her most mad despair, of this way she had never thought; though strange it had been, considering her lawless past, that she had not—never of this way—never!  Notwithstanding which, in one frenzied moment in which she had known naught but her delirium, her loaded whip had found it for her—the way!

And yet it being so found, and she stood staring, seeing what she had done—seeing what had befallen—’twas as if the blow had been struck not at her own temple but at her heart—a great and heavy shock, which left her bloodless, and choked, and gasping.

“What! what!” she panted.  “Nay! nay! nay!” and her eyes grew wide and wild.

She sank upon her knees, so shuddering that her teeth began to chatter.  She pushed him and shook him by the shoulder.

“Stir!” she cried in a loud whisper.  “Move thee!  Why dost thou lie so?  Stir!”

Yet he stirred not, but lay inert, only with his lips drawn back, showing his white teeth a little, as if her horrid agony made him begin to laugh.  Shuddering, she drew slowly nearer, her eyes more awful than his own.  Her hand crept shaking to his wrist and clutched it.  There was naught astir—naught!  It stole to his breast, and baring it, pressed close.  That was still and moveless as his pulse; for life was ended, and a hundred mouldering years would not bring more of death.

“I have killed thee,” she breathed.  “I have killed thee—though I meant it not—even hell itself doth know.  Thou art a dead man—and this is the worst of all!”

His hand fell heavily from hers, and she still knelt staring, such a look coming into her face as throughout her life had never been there before—for ’twas the look of a creature who, being tortured, the worst at last being reached, begins to smile at Fate.

“I have killed him!” she said, in a low, awful voice; “and he lies here—and outside people walk, and know not.  But he knows—and I—and as he lies methinks he smiles—knowing what he has done!”

She crouched even lower still, the closer to behold him, and indeed it seemed his still face sneered as if defying her now to rid herself of him!  ’Twas as though he lay there mockingly content, saying, “Now that I lie here, ’tis for you—for you to move me.”

She rose and stood up rigid, and all the muscles of her limbs were drawn as though she were a creature stretched upon a rack; for the horror of this which had befallen her seemed to fill the place about her, and leave her no air to breathe nor light to see.

“Now!” she cried, “if I would give way—and go mad, as I could but do, for there is naught else left—if I would but give way, that which is I—and has lived but a poor score of years—would be done with for all time.  All whirls before me.  ’Twas I who struck the blow—and I am a woman—and I could go raving—and cry out and call them in, and point to him, and tell them how ’twas done—all!—all!”

She choked, and clutched her bosom, holding its heaving down so fiercely that her nails bruised it through her habit’s cloth; for she felt that she had begun to rave already, and that the waves of such a tempest were arising as, if not quelled at their first swell, would sweep her from her feet and engulf her for ever.

“That—that!” she gasped—“nay—that I swear I will not do!  There was always One who hated me—and doomed and hunted me from the hour I lay ’neath my dead mother’s corpse, a new-born thing.  I know not whom it was—or why—or how—but ’twas so!  I was made evil, and cast helpless amid evil fates, and having done the things that were ordained, and there was no escape from, I was shown noble manhood and high honour, and taught to worship, as I worship now.  An angel might so love and be made higher.  And at the gate of heaven a devil grins at me and plucks me back, and taunts and mires me, and I fall—on this!”

She stretched forth her arms in a great gesture, wherein it seemed that surely she defied earth and heaven.

“No hope—no mercy—naught but doom and hell,” she cried, “unless the thing that is tortured be the stronger.  Now—unless Fate bray me small—the stronger I will be!”

She looked down at the thing before her.  How its stone face sneered, and even in its sneering seemed to disregard her.  She knelt by it again, her blood surging through her body, which had been cold, speaking as if she would force her voice to pierce its deadened ear.

“Ay, mock!” she said, setting her teeth, “thinking that I am conquered—yet am I not!  ’Twas an honest blow struck by a creature goaded past all thought!  Ay, mock—and yet, but for one man’s sake, would I call in those outside and stand before them, crying: ‘Here is a villain whom I struck in madness—and he lies dead!  I ask not mercy, but only justice.’”

She crouched still nearer, her breath and words coming hard and quick.  ’Twas indeed as if she spoke to a living man who heard—as if she answered what he had said.

“There would be men in England who would give it me,” she raved, whispering.  “That would there, I swear!  But there would be dullards and dastards who would not.  He would give it—he!  Ay, mock as thou wilt!  But between his high honour and love and me thy carrion shall not come!”

By her great divan the dead man had fallen, and so near to it he lay that one arm was hidden by the draperies; and at this moment this she saw—before having seemed to see nothing but the death in his face.  A