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) đ
- Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
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From the hour she stayed the last moments of John Oxonâs victim she set herself a work to do. None knew it but herself at first, and later Anne, for âtwas done privately. From the hag who had told her of the poor girlâs hanging upon Tyburn Tree, she learned things by close questioning, which to the old womanâs dull wit seemed but the curiousness of a great lady, and from others who stood too deep in awe of her to think of her as a mere human being, she gathered clues which led her far in the tracing of the evils following one wicked, heartless life. Where she could hear of man, woman, or child on whom John Oxonâs sins had fallen, or who had suffered wrong by him, there she went to help, to give light, to give comfort and encouragement. Strangely, as it seemed to them, and as if done by the hand of Heaven, the poor tradesmen he had robbed were paid their dues, youth he had led into evil ways was checked mysteriously and set in better paths; women he had dragged downward were given aid and chance of peace or happiness; children he had cast upon the world, unfathered, and with no prospect but the education of the gutter, and a life of crime, were cared for by a powerful unseen hand. The pretty country girl saved by his death, protected by her Grace, and living innocently at Dunstanwolde, memory being merciful to youth, forgot him, gained back her young roses, and learned to smile and hope as though he had been but a name.
âSince âtwas I who killed him,â said her Grace to her inward soul, ââtis I must live his life which I took from him, and making it better I may be forgivenâif there is One who dares to say to the poor thing He made, âI will not forgive.ââ
Surely it was said there had never been lives so beautiful and noble as those the Duke of Osmonde and his lady lived as time went by. The Tower of Camylott, where they had spent the first months of their wedded life, they loved better than any other of their seats, and there they spent as much time as their duties of Court and State allowed them. It was indeed a splendid and beautiful estate, the stately tower being built upon an eminence, and there rolling out before it the most lovely land in England, moorland and hills, thick woods and broad meadows, the edge of the heather dipping to show the soft silver of the sea.
Here was this beauteous woman chatelaine and queen, wife of her husband as never before, he thought, had wife blessed and glorified the existence of mortal man. All her great beauty she gave to him in tender, joyous tribute; all her great gifts of mind and wit and grace it seemed she valued but as they were joys to him; in his stately households in town and country she reigned a lovely empress, adored and obeyed with reverence by every man or woman who served her and her lord. Among the people on his various estates she came and went a tender goddess of benevolence. When she appeared amid them in the first months of her wedded life, the humble souls regarded her with awe not unmixed with fear, having heard such wild stories of her youth at her fatherâs house, and of her proud state and bitter wit in the great London world when she had been my Lady Dunstanwolde; but when she came among them all else was forgotten in their wonder at her graciousness and noble way.
âTo see her come into a poor bodyâs cottage, so tall and grand a lady, and with such a carriage as she hath,â they said, hobnobbing together in their talk of her, âlooking as if a crown of gold should sit on her high black head, and then to hear her gentle speech and see the look in her eyes as if she was but a simple new-married girl, full of her joy, and her heart big with the wish that all other women should be as happy as herself, it is, forsooth, a beauteous sight to see.â
âAy, and no hovel too poor for her, and no man or woman too sinful,â was said again.
âHeard ye how she found that poor wench of Haylits lying sobbing among the fern in the Tower woods, and stayed and knelt beside her to hear her trouble? The poor soul has gone to ruin at fourteen, and her father, finding her out, beat her and thrust her from his door, and her Grace coming through the wood at sunsetâit being her way to walk about for mere pleasure as though she had no coach to ride inâthe girl says she came through the golden glow as if she had been one of Godâs angelsâand she kneeled and took the poor wench in her armsâas strong as a man, Betty says, but as soft as a young motherâand she said to her things surely no mortal lady ever said beforeâthat she knew naught of a surety of what Godâs true will might be, or if His laws were those that have been made by man concerning marriage by priests saying common words, but that she surely knew of a man whose name was Christ, and He had taught love and helpfulness and pity, and for His sake, He having earned our trust in Him, whether He was God or man, because He hung and died in awful torture on the Crossâfor His sake all of us must love and help and pityââI you, poor Betty,â were her very words, âand you me.â And then she went to the girlâs father and mother, and so talked to them that she brought them to weeping, and begging Betty to come home; and also she went to her sweetheart, Tom Beck, and made so tender a story to him of the poor pretty wench whose love for him had brought her to such trouble, that she stirred him up to falling in love again, which is not manâs way at such times, and in a weekâs time he and Betty went to church together, her Grace setting them up in a cottage on the estate.â
âI used all my wit and all my tenderest words to make a picture that would fire and touch him, Gerald,â her Grace said, sitting at her husbandâs side, in a great window, from which they often watched the sunset in the valley spread below; âand that with which I am so strong sometimesâI know not what to call it, but âtis a power people bend to, that I knowâthat I used upon him to waken his dull soul and brain. Whose fault is it that they are dull? Poor lout, he was born so, as I was born strong and passionate, and as you were born noble and pure and high. I led his mind back to the past, when he had been made happy by the sight of Bettyâs little smiling, blushing face, and when he had kissed her and made love in the hayfields. And this I saidâthough âtwas not a thing I have learned from any chaplainâthat when âtwas said he should make an honest woman of her, it was my thought that she had been honest from the first, being too honest to know that the world was not so, and that even the man a woman loved with all her soul, might be a rogue, and have no honesty in him. And at lastââtwas when I talked to him about the childâand that I put my whole soulâs strength inâhe burst out a-crying like a schoolboy, and said indeed she was a fond little thing and had loved him, and he had loved her, and âtwas a shame he had so done by her, and he had not meant it at the first, but she was so simple, and he had been a villain, but if he married her now, he would be called a fool, and laughed at for his pains. Then was I angry, Gerald, and felt my eyes flash, and I stood up tall and spoke fiercely: âLet them dare,â I saidââlet any man or woman dare, and then will they see what his Grace will say.ââ
Osmonde drew her to his breast, laughing into her lovely eyes.
âNay, âtis not his Grace who need be called on,â he said; ââtis her Grace they love and fear, and will obey; though âtis the sweetest, womanish thing that you should call on me when you are power itself, and can so rule all creatures you come near.â
âNay,â she said, with softly pleading face, âlet me not rule. Rule for me, or but help me; I so long to say your name that they may know I speak but as your wife.â
âWho is myself,â he answeredââmy very self.â
âAy,â she said, with a little nod of her head, âthat I knowâthat I am yourself; and âtis because of this that one of us cannot be proud with the other, for there is no other, there is only one. And I am wrong to say, âLet me not rule,â for âtis as if I said, âYou must not rule.â I meant surely, âGod give me strength to be as noble in ruling as our love should make me.â But just as one tree is a beech and one an oak, just as the grass stirs when the summer wind blows over it, so a woman is a woman, and âtis her nature to find her joy in saying such words to the man who loves her, when she loves as I do. Her heart is so full that she must joy to say her husbandâs name as that of one she cannot think withoutâwho is her life as is her blood and her pulses beating. âTis a joy to say your name, Gerald, as it will be a joyââand she looked far out across the sun-goldened valley and plains, with a strange, heavenly sweet smileââas it will be a joy to say our childâsâand put his little mouth to my full breast.â
âSweet love,â he cried, drawing her by the hand that he might meet the radiance of her lookââheartâs dearest!â
She did not withhold her lovely eyes from him, but withdrew them from the sunsetâs mist of gold, and the clouds piled as it were at the gates of heaven, and they seemed to bring back some of the far-off glory with them. Indeed, neither her smile nor she seemed at that moment to be things of earth. She held out her fair, noble arms, and he sprang to her, and so they stood, side beating against side.
âYes, love,â she saidââyes, loveâand I have prayed, my Gerald, that I may give you sons who shall be men like you. But when I give you women children, I shall pray with all my soul for themâthat they may be just and strong and noble, and life begin for them as it began not for me.â
* * * * *
In the morning of a spring day when the cuckoos cried in the woods, and May blossomed thick, white and pink, in all the hedges, the bells in the grey church-steeple at Camylott rang out a joyous, jangling peal, telling all the village that the heir had been born at the Tower. Children stopped in their play to listen, men at their work in field and barn; good gossips ran out of their cottage door, wiping their arms dry, from their tubs and scrubbing-buckets, their honest red faces broadening into maternal grins.
âAy, âtis well over, that means surely,â one said to the other; âand a happy day has begun for the poor ladyâthough God knows she bore herself queenly to the very last, as if she could have carried her burden for
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