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) 📖

discreet retirement she rapped out oaths and boxed her woman’s ears with a vigorous hand, tore off her gowns and stamped them beneath her feet, or flung pots of pomade at the poor woman’s head.  She took these freedoms with such a readiness and spirit that she was served with a despatch and humbleness scarcely to be equalled, and, it is certain, never excelled.

The high courage and undaunted will which had been the engines she had used to gain her will from her infant years aided her in these days to carry out what her keen mind and woman’s wit had designed, which was to take the county by storm with her beauty, and reign toast and enslaver until such time as she won the prize of a husband of rich estates and notable rank.

It was soon bruited abroad, to the amazement of the county, that Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had changed her strange and unseemly habits of life, and had become as much a young lady of fashion and breeding as her birth and charm demanded.  This was first made known by her appearing one Sunday morning at church, accompanied—as though attended with a retinue of servitors—by Mistress Wimpole and her two sisters, whose plain faces, awkward shape, and still more awkward attire were such a foil to her glowing loveliness as set it in high relief.  It was seldom that the coach from Wildairs Hall drew up before the lych-gate, but upon rare Sunday mornings Mistress Wimpole and her two charges contrived, if Sir Jeoffry was not in an ill-humour and the coachman was complaisant, to be driven to service.  Usually, however, they trudged afoot, and, if the day chanced to be sultry, arrived with their snub-nosed faces of a high and shiny colour, or if the country roads were wet, with their petticoats bemired.

This morning, when the coach drew up, the horses were well groomed, the coachman smartly dressed, and a footman was in attendance, who sprang to earth and opened the door with a flourish.

The loiterers in the churchyard, and those who were approaching the gate or passing towards the church porch, stared with eyes wide stretched in wonder and incredulity.  Never had such a thing before been beheld or heard of as what they now saw in broad daylight.

Mistress Clorinda, clad in highest town fashion, in brocades and silver lace and splendid furbelows, stepped forth from the chariot with the air of a queen.  She had the majestic composure of a young lady who had worn nothing less modish than such raiment all her life, and who had prayed decorously beneath her neighbours’ eyes since she had left her nurse’s care.

Her sisters and their governess looked timorous, and as if they knew not where to cast their eyes for shamefacedness; but not so Mistress Clorinda, who moved forward with a stately, swimming gait, her fine head in the air.  As she stepped into the porch a young gentleman drew back and made a profound obeisance to her.  She cast her eyes upon him and returned it with a grace and condescension which struck the beholders dumb with admiring awe.  To some of the people of a commoner sort he was a stranger, but all connected with the gentry knew he was Sir John Oxon, who was staying at Eldershawe Park with his relative, whose estate it was.

How Mistress Clorinda contrived to manage it no one was aware but herself, but after a few appearances at church she appeared at other places.  She was seen at dinners at fine houses, and began to be seen at routs and balls.  Where she was seen she shone, and with such radiance as caused matchmaking matrons great dismay, and their daughters woeful qualms.  Once having shone, she could not be extinguished or hidden under a bushel; for, being of rank and highly connected through mother as well as father, and playing her cards with great wit and skill, she could not be thrust aside.

At her first hunt ball she set aflame every male breast in the shire, unmasking such a battery of charms as no man could withstand the fire of.  Her dazzling eye, her wondrous shape, the rich music of her laugh, and the mocking wit of her sharp saucy tongue were weapons to have armed a dozen women, and she was but one, and in the first rich tempting glow of blooming youth.

She turned more heads and caused more quarrels than she could have counted had she sat up half the night.  She went to her coach with her father followed by a dozen gallants, each ready to spit the other for a smile.  Her smiles were wondrous, but there seemed always a touch of mockery or disdain in them which made them more remembered than if they had been softer.

One man there was, who perchance found something in her high glance not wholly scornful, but he was used to soft treatment from women, and had, in sooth, expected milder glances than were bestowed upon him.  This was young Sir John Oxon, who had found himself among the fair sex that night as great a beau as she had been a belle; but two dances he had won from her, and this was more than any other man could boast, and what other gallants envied him with darkest hatred.

Sir Jeoffry, who had watched her as she queened it amongst rakes and fops and honest country squires and knights, had marked the vigour with which they plied her with an emotion which was a new sensation to his drink-bemuddled brain.  So far as it was in his nature to love another than himself, he had learned to love this young lovely virago of his own flesh and blood, perchance because she was the only creature who had never quailed before him, and had always known how to bend him to her will.

When the chariot rode away, he looked at her as she sat erect in the early morning light, as unblenching, bright, and untouched in bloom as if she had that moment risen from her pillow and washed her face in dew.  He was not so drunk as he had been at midnight, but he was a little maudlin.

“By God, thou art handsome, Clo!” he said.  “By God, I never saw a finer woman!”

“Nor I,” she answered back, “which I thank Heaven for.”

“Thou pretty, brazen baggage,” her father laughed.  “Old Dunstanwolde looked thee well over to-night.  He never looked away from the moment he clapped eyes on thee.”

“That I knew better than thee, Dad,” said the beauty; “and I saw that he could not have done it if he had tried.  If there comes no richer, younger great gentleman, he shall marry me.”

“Thou hast a sharp eye and a keen wit,” said Sir Jeoffry, looking askance at her with a new maggot in his brain.  “Wouldst never play the fool, I warrant.  They will press thee hard and ’twill be hard to withstand their love-making, but I shall never have to mount and ride off with pistols in my holsters to bring back a man and make him marry thee, as Chris Crowell had to do for his youngest wench.  Thou wouldst never play the fool, I warrant—wouldst thou, Clo?”

She tossed her head and laughed like a young scornful devil, showing her white pearl teeth between her lips’ scarlet.

“Not I,” she said.  “There thou mayst trust me.  I would not be found out.”

She played her part as triumphant beauty so successfully that the cleverest managing mother in the universe could not have bettered her position.  Gallants brawled for her; honest men fell at her feet; romantic swains wrote verses to her, praising her eyes, her delicate bosom, the carnation of her cheek, and the awful majesty of her mien.  In every revel she was queen, in every contest of beauties Venus, in every spectacle of triumph empress of them all.

The Earl of Dunstanwolde, who had the oldest name and the richest estates in his own county and the six adjoining ones, who, having made a love-match in his prime, and lost wife and heir but a year after his nuptials, had been the despair of every maid and mother who knew him, because he would not be melted to a marriageable mood.  After the hunt ball this mourning nobleman, who was by this time of ripe years, had appeared in the world again as he had not done for many years.  Before many months had elapsed, it was known that his admiration of the new beauty was confessed, and it was believed that he but waited further knowledge of her to advance to the point of laying his title and estates at her feet.

But though, two years before, the entire county would have rated low indeed the wit and foresight of the man who had even hinted the possibility of such honour and good fortune being in prospect for the young lady, so great was Mistress Clorinda’s brilliant and noble beauty, and with such majesty she bore herself in these times, that there were even those who doubted whether she would think my lord a rich enough prize for her, and if, when he fell upon his knees, she would deign to become his countess, feeling that she had such splendid wares to dispose of as might be bartered for a duke, when she went to town and to court.

During the length of more than one man’s lifetime after, the reign of Mistress Clorinda Wildairs was a memory recalled over the bottle at the dining-table among men, some of whom had but heard their fathers vaunt her beauties.  It seemed as if in her person there was not a single flaw, or indeed a charm, which had not reached the highest point of beauty.  For shape she might have vied with young Diana, mounted side by side with her upon a pedestal; her raven locks were of a length and luxuriance to clothe her as a garment, her great eye commanded and flashed as Juno’s might have done in the goddess’s divinest moments of lovely pride, and though it was said none ever saw it languish, each man who adored her was maddened by the secret belief that Venus’ self could not so melt in love as she if she would stoop to loving—as each one prayed she might—himself.  Her hands and feet, her neck, the slimness of her waist, her mantling crimson and ivory white, her little ear, her scarlet lip, the pearls between them and her long white throat, were perfection each and all, and catalogued with oaths of rapture.

“She hath such beauties,” one admirer said, “that a man must toast them all and cannot drink to her as to a single woman.  And she hath so many that to slight none her servant must go from the table reeling.”

There was but one thing connected with her which was not a weapon to her hand, and this was, that she was not a fortune.  Sir Jeoffry had drunk and rioted until he had but little left.  He had cut his timber and let his estate go to rack, having, indeed, no money to keep it up.  The great Hall, which had once been a fine old place, was almost a ruin.  Its carved oak and noble rooms and galleries were all of its past splendours that remained.  All had been sold that could be sold, and all the outcome had been spent.  The county, indeed, wondered where Mistress Clorinda’s fine clothes came from, and knew full well why she was not taken to court to kneel to the Queen.  That she was waiting for this to make her match, the envious were quite sure, and did not hesitate to whisper pretty loudly.

The name of one man of rank and fortune after another was spoken of as that of a suitor to her hand, but in some way it was discovered that she refused them all.  It was also known that they continued to worship her, and that at any moment she could call even the best among them back.  It seemed that, while all the men were enamoured of her, there was not one who could cure himself of his passion, however hopeless it might be.

Her wit was as great as her beauty, and she had a spirit before which no man could stand if she chose to be disdainful.  To some she was so, and had the whim to flout them with great brilliancy.  Encounters with her were always remembered, and if heard by those not concerned, were considered worthy both of recollection and of being repeated to the world; she had a tongue so nimble and a wit so full of fire.

Young Sir John Oxon’s visit to his relative at Eldershawe being at an end, he returned to town, and remaining there through a few weeks of fashionable gaiety, won new reputations as a triumpher over the female heart.