University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX
"I GIVE TO HIM THE THING HE CRAVES WITH ALL HIS SOUL—MYSELF

IN a month she was the Countess of Dunstanwolde and reigned in her lord's great town house with a retinue of servants, her powdered lackeys among the tallest, her liveries and equipages the richest the world of fashion knew. She was presented at the Court blazing with the Dunstanwolde jewels, and even with others her bridegroom had bought in his passionate desire to heap upon her the magnificence which became her so well. From the hour she knelt to kiss the hand of royalty she set the town on fire. It seemed to have been ordained by Fate that her passage through this world should be always the triumphant passage of a conqueror. As when a baby she had ruled the servants' hall, the kennel, and the grooms' quarters, later her father and his boisterous friends, and from her fifteenth birthday the whole hunting shire she lived in, so she held her sway in the great world, as did no other lady of her rank or any higher. Those of her age seemed but girls yet by her side, whether married or unmarried, and howsoever trained to modish

ways. She was but scarce eighteen at her marriage, but she was no girl, nor did she look one, glowing as was the early splendor of her bloom. Her height was far beyond the ordinary for a woman, but her shape so faultless and her carriage so regal, that though there were men whom she was tall enough to look down upon with ease, the beholder but felt that her tallness was an added grace and beauty with which all women should have been endowed, and which, as they were not, caused them to appear but insignificant. What a throat her diamonds blazed on, what shoulders and bosom her laces framed, on what a brow her diadem sat and glittered. Her lord lived as 'twere upon his knees in enraptured adoration. Since his first wife's death in his youth, he had dwelt almost entirely in the country at his house there, which was fine and stately, but had been kept gloomily half closed for a decade. His town establishment had in truth never been opened since his bereavement, and now—an elderly man—he returned to the gay world he had almost forgotten, with a bride whose youth and beauty set it aflame. What wonder that his head almost reeled at times, and that he lost his breath before the sum of his strange late bliss, and the new lease of brilliant life which seemed to have been given to him!

In the days when, while in the country, he had heard such rumors of the lawless youth of Sir Jeoffry Wildair's daughter, when he had heard of her dauntless boldness, her shrewish temper, and her violent

passions, he had been awed at the thought of what a wife such a woman would make for a gentleman accustomed to a quiet life, and he had indeed striven hard to restrain the desperate admiration he was forced to admit she had inspired in him even at her first ball.

The effort had, in sooth, been in vain, and he had passed many a sleepless night, and when, as time went on, he beheld her again and again and saw with his own eyes, as well as heard from others, of the great change which seemed to have taken place in her manners and character, he began devoutly to thank heaven for the alteration, as for a merciful boon vouchsafed to him. He had been wise enough to know that even a stronger man than himself could never conquer or rule her, and when she seemed to begin to rule herself and bear herself as befitted her birth and beauty, he had dared to allow himself to dream of what perchance might be if he had great good fortune.

In these days of her union with him, he was indeed almost humbly amazed at the grace and kindness she showed him every hour they passed in each other's company. He knew that there were men, younger and handsomer than himself, who, being wedded to beauties far less triumphant than she, found that their wives had but little time to spare them from the world which knelt at their feet, and that in some fashion they themselves seemed to fall into the background. But 'twas not so with this woman, powerful and worshiped though she might be. She bore herself with

the high dignity of her rank, but rendered to him the gracious respect and deference due both to his position and his merit. She stood by his side and not before him, and her smiles and wit were bestowed upon him as generously as on others. If she had once been a vixen she was surely so no longer, for he never heard a sharp or harsh word pass her lips, though it is true her manner was always somewhat imperial, and her lackeys and waiting-women stood in the greatest awe of her. There was that in her presence and in her eye before which all commoner or weaker creatures quailed. The men of the world who flocked to pay their court to her, and the popinjays who followed them, all knew this look and a tone in her rich voice which could cut like a knife when she chose that it should do so. But to my Lord of Dunstanwolde she was all that a worshiped lady could be.

"Your ladyship has made of me a happier man than I ever dared to dream of being, even when I was but thirty," he would say to her, with reverent devotion. "I know not what I have done to deserve this late summer which hath been given me."

"When I consented to be your wife," she answered once, "I swore to myself that I would make one for you."

And she crossed the hearth to where he sat. She was attired in all her splendor for a Court ball and starred with jewels; bent over his chair and placed a kiss upon his grizzled hair.

Upon the night before her wedding with him, her

sister, Mistress Anne, had stolen to her chamber at a late hour. When she had knocked upon the door and had been commanded to enter, she had come in, and closing the door behind her, had stood leaning against it, looking before her, with her eyes wide with agitation and her poor face almost gray.

All the tapers for which places could be found had been gathered together and the room was a blaze of light. In the midst of it, before her mirror, Clorinda stood attired in her bridal splendor of white satin and flowing rich lace—a diamond crescent on her head, sparks of light flaming from every point of her raiment. When she caught sight of Anne's reflection in the glass before her, she turned and stood staring at her in wonder.

"What—nay, what is this?" she cried. "What do you come for? On my soul, you come for something—or you have gone mad."

Anne started forward, trembling, her hands clasped upon her breast, and fell at her feet with sobs.

"Yes, yes," she gasped, "I came—for something—to speak—to pray you—! Sister—Clorinda, have patience with me till my courage comes again!" And she clutched her robe.

Something which came nigh to being a shudder passed through Mistress Clorinda's frame; but it was gone in a second, and she touched Anne—though not ungently—with her foot, withdrawing her robe.

"Do not stain it with your tears," she said, "'twould be a bad omen."

Anne buried her face in her hands, and knelt so before her.

"'Tis not too late!" she said, "'tis not too late yet."

"For what?" Clorinda asked; "for what, I pray you tell me if you can find your wits. You go beyond my patience with your folly."

"Too late to stop," said Anne "to draw back and repent."

"What?" commanded Clorinda. "Of what, then, should I repent me?"

"This marriage," trembled Mistress Anne, taking her poor hands from her face to wring them. "It should not be."

"Fool!" quoth Clorinda. "Get up and cease your groveling. Did you come to tell me it was not too late to draw back and refuse to be the Countess of Dunstanwolde?" And she laughed bitterly.

"But it should not be it must not," Anne panted. "I—I know, sister! I know—!"

Clorinda bent deliberately and laid her strong, jeweled hand on her shoulder with a grasp like a vise. There was no hurry in her movement or in her air, but by sheer, slow strength she forced her head backward so that the terrified woman was staring in her face.

"Look at me," she said. "I would see you well, and be squarely looked at, that my eyes may keep you from going mad. You have pondered over this marriage until you have a frenzy. Women who live alone are sometimes so, and your brain was always weak. What

is it that you know? Look—in my eyes and tell me."

It seemed as if her gaze stabbed through Anne's eyes to the very centre of her brain. Anne tried to bear it and shrunk and withered; she would have fallen upon the floor at her feet a helpless, sobbing heap, but the white hand would not let her go.

"Find your courage if you have lost it—and speak plain words," Clorinda commanded. Anne tried to writhe away, but could not again, and burst into passionate, hopeless weeping.

"I can not—I dare not!" she gasped. "I am afraid. You are right, my brain is weak, and I—but that—that gentleman—who so loved you—"

"Which?" said Clorinda, with a brief, scornful laugh.

"The one who was so handsome with the fair locks and the gallant air—"

"The one you fell in love with and stared at through the window," said Clorinda, with her brief laugh, again. "John Oxon! He has victims enough, forsooth, to have spared such an one as you are."

"But he loved you!" cried Anne, piteously; "and it must have been that you—you, too, sister—or—or else—" She choked again with sobs, and Clorinda released her grasp upon her shoulder and stood upright.

"He wants none of me—nor I of him," she said, with strange sternness. "We have done with one another. Get up upon your feet, if you would not have me thrust you out into the corridor."

She turned from her, and walking back to her dressing-table, stood there steadying the diadem on her hair, which had loosed a fastening when Anne tried to writhe away from her. Anne half sat, half knelt upon the floor, staring at her with wet, wild eyes of misery and fear.

"Leave your kneeling," commanded her sister again, "and come here."

Anne staggered to her feet and obeyed her behest. In the glass she could see the resplendent reflection, but Clorinda did not deign to turn toward her while she addressed her, changing the while the brilliants in her hair.

"Hark you, sister Anne," she said. "I read you better than you think. You are a poor thing, but you love me, and—in my fashion—I think I love you somewhat, too. You think I should not marry a gentleman whom you fancy I do not love as I might a younger, handsomer man. You are full of love, and spinster dreams of it which make you flighty. I love my Lord of Dunstanwolde as well as any other man, and better than some, for I do not hate him. He has a fine estate and is a gentleman—and worships me. Since I have been promised to him, I own I have for a moment seen another gentleman who might—but 'twas but for a moment, and 'tis done with. 'Twas too late then. If we had met two years agone 'twould not have been so. My Lord Dunstanwolde gives to me wealth and rank and life at Court. I give to him the thing he craves with all his soul—myself. It is

an honest bargain, and I shall bear my part of it with honesty. I have no virtues. Where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women's virtues, but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man's. 'Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when 'tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. 'Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will not cheat him as weaker women do their husbands; for he pays—poor gentleman—he pays."

And then, still looking at the glass, she pointed to the doorway through which her sister had come, and in obedience to her gesture of command Mistress Anne stole silently away.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Through the brilliant, happy year succeeding to his marriage my Lord of Dunstanwolde lived like a man who dreams a blissful dream and knows it is one.

"I feel," he said to his lady, "as if 'twere too great rapture to last, and yet what end could come unless you ceased to be kind to me, and in truth I feel that you are too noble above all other women to change, unless I were more unworthy than I could ever be since you are mine."

Both in the town and in the country, which last place heard many things of his condition and estate through rumor, he was the man most wondered at and envied of his time—envied because of his strange happiness,

wondered at because having, when long past youth, borne off this arrogant beauty from all other aspirants. She showed no arrogance to him, and was as perfect a wife as could have been some woman without gifts whom he had lifted from low estate and endowed with rank and fortune. She seemed both to respect himself and her position as his lady and spouse. Her manner of reigning in his household was, among his many delights, the greatest. It was a great house, and an old one, built long before by Dunstanwolde, whose lavish feasts and riotous banquets had been the notable features of his life. It was curiously rambling in its structure. The rooms of entertainment were large and splendid, the halls and staircases stately; below stairs there was space for an army of servants to be disposed of, and its network of cellars and wine vaults was so beyond all need that more than one long arched stone passage was shut up as being without use, and but letting cold, damp air into the corridors leading to the servants' quarters. It was indeed my Lady Dunstanwolde who had ordered the closing of this part, when it had been her pleasure to be shown her domain by her housekeeper, the which had greatly awed and impressed her household, as signifying that, exalted lady as she was, her wit was practical as well as brilliant, and that her eyes being open to her surroundings, she meant not that her lackeys should rob her and her scullions filch, thinking that she was so high that she was ignorant of common things and blind.

"You will be well housed and fed and paid your dues," she said to them; "but the first man or woman who does a task ill or dishonestly will be turned from his place that hour. I deal justice—not mercy."

"Such a mistress they have never had before," said my lord, when she related this to him. "Nay, they have never dreamed of such a lady—one who can be at once so severe and so kind. But there is none other such, my dearest one. They will fear and worship you."

She gave him one of her sweet, splendid smiles. It was the sweetness she at rare times gave her splendid smile which was her marvelous power.

"I would not be too grand a lady to be a good housewife," she said. "I may not order your dinners, my dear lord, or sweep your corridors, but they shall know I rule your household, and would rule it well."

"You are a goddess!" he cried, kneeling to her enraptured. "And you have given yourself to a poor mortal man, who can but worship you."

"You give me all I have," she said, "and you love me nobly, and I am grateful."

Her assemblies were the most brilliant in the town, and the most to be desired entrance to. Wits and beauties planned and intrigued that they might be bidden to her house; beaux and fine ladies fell into the spleen if she neglected them. Her lord's kinsman, the Duke of Osmonde, who had been present when she first knelt to royalty, had scarce removed his eyes from her so long as he could gaze. He went to

Dunstanwolde afterward and congratulated him with stately courtesy upon his great good fortune and happiness, speaking almost with fire of her beauty and majesty, and thanking his kinsman that through him such perfections had been given to their name and house. From that time, at all special assemblies given by his kinsman he was present, the observed of all observers. He was a man of whom 'twas said that he was the most magnificent gentleman in Europe, that there was none to compare with him in the combination of gifts given both by nature and fortune. His beauty, both of feature and carriage, was of the greatest, his mind was of the highest, and his education far beyond that of the age he lived in. It was not the fashion of the day that men of his rank should devote themselves to the cultivation of their intellects instead of to a life of pleasure; but this he had done from his earliest youth, and now in his perfect, though early, maturity he had no equal in polished knowledge and charm of bearing. He was the patron of literature and art—men of genius were not kept waiting in his antechamber, but were received by him with courtesy and honor. At the Court 'twas well known there was no man who stood so near the throne in favor, and that there was no union so exalted that he might not have made his suit as rather that of a superior than an equal. The Queen both loved and honored him, and condescended to avow as much with gracious frankness. She knew no other man, she deigned to say, who was so worthy of honor and affection, and that he had not married must be because there was no woman who could meet him on ground that was equal. If there were no scandals about him—and there were none 'twas not because he was cold of heart or imagination. No man or woman could look into his deep eye and not know that when love came to him 'twould be a burning passion, and an evil fate if it went ill instead of happily.

"Being past his callow youthful days, 'tis time he made some woman a duchess," Dunstanwolde said reflectively once to his wife. "'Twould be more fitting that he should, and it is his way to honor his house in all things, and bear himself without fault as the head of it. Methinks it strange he makes no move to do it."

"No, 'tis not strange," said my lady, looking under her black-fringed lids at the glow of the fire, as though reflecting also. "There is no strangeness in it."

"Why not?" her lord asked.

"There is no mate for him," she answered, slowly. "A man like him must mate as well as marry, or he will break his heart with silent raging at the weakness of the thing he is tied to. He is too strong and splendid for a common woman. If he married one, 'twould be as if a lion had taken to his care for mate a jackal or a sheep. Ah!"—with a long-drawn breath—"he would go mad—mad with misery." And her hands, which lay upon her knee, wrung themselves hard together, though none could see it.

"He should have a goddess, were they not so rare,"

said Dunstanwolde, gently smiling. "He should hold a bitter grudge against me, that I, his unworthy kinsman, have been given the only one."

"Yes, he should have a goddess," said my lady, slowly again. "And there are but women, naught but women."

"You have marked him well," said her lord, admiring her wisdom. "Methinks that you, though you have spoken to him but little and have but of late become his kinswoman, have marked and read him better than the rest of us."

"Yes, I have marked him," was her answer. "He is a man to mark, and I have a keen eye." She rose up as she spoke and stood before the fire, lifted by some strong feeling to her fullest height and towering there, splendid in the shadow—for 'twas by twilight they talked. "He is a man," she said, "he is a man! Nay, he is as God meant man should be. And if men were so, there would be women great enough for them to mate with and to give the world men like them." And but that she stood in the shadow, her lord would have seen the crimson torrent rush up her cheek and brow and overspread her long round throat itself.

If none other had known of it, there was one man who knew that she had marked him, though she had borne herself toward him always with her stateliest graciousness. This man was his Grace the Duke himself. From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her wreath at his

feet and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he had seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that, had he not come but just too late, she would have been his own. Each time he had beheld her since that night, he had felt this burn more deeply in his soul. He was too high and fine in all his thoughts to say to himself, that in her he saw for the first time the woman who was his peer; but this was very truth—or might have been, if fate had set her youth elsewhere, and a lady who was noble and her own mother had trained and guarded her. When he saw her at the Court surrounded, as she ever was, by a court of her own; when he saw her reigning in her lord's house, receiving and doing gracious honor to his guests and hers; when she passed him in her coach, drawing every eye by the majesty of her presence, as she drove through the town, he felt a deep pang which was all the greater that his honor bade him conquer it. He had no ignoble thought of her, he would have scorned to sully his soul with any light passion. To him she was the woman who might have been his beloved wife and duchess, who would have upheld with him the honor and traditions of his house, whose strength and power and beauty would have been handed down to his children, who so would have been born endowed with gifts befitting the state to which Heaven had called them. It was of this he thought when he saw her, and of naught less like to do her honor. And as he had marked her, so he saw in her eyes, despite her dignity and grace, she had marked him. He did not know how closely, or that she gave him the attention he could not restrain himself from bestowing upon her. But when he bowed before her and she greeted him with all courtesy, he saw in her great, splendid eye that had fate willed it so, she would have understood all his thoughts, shared all his ambitions, and aided him to uphold his high ideals. Nay, he knew she understood him even now, and was stirred by what stirred him also, even though they met but rarely, and when they encountered each other, spoke but as kinsman and kinswoman, who would show each other all gracious respect and honor. It was because of this pang, which struck his great heart at times, that he was not a frequent visitor at my Lord Dunstanwolde's mansion, but appeared there only at such assemblies as were matters of ceremony, his absence from which would have been a noted thing. His kinsman was fond of him, and though himself of so much riper age, honored him greatly. At times he strove to lure him into visits of greater familiarity, but though his kindness was never met coldly or repulsed, a further intimacy was in some gracious way avoided.

"My Lady must beguile you to be less formal with us," said Dunstanwolde. And later her ladyship spoke as her husband had privately desired: "My Lord would be made greatly happy if your Grace would honor our house oftener," she said one night, when at the end of a great ball he was bidding her adieu.

Osmonde's deep eye met hers gently and held it.

"My Lord Dunstanwolde is always gracious and warm of heart to his kinsman," he replied. "Do not let him think me discourteous or ungrateful. In truth, your ladyship, I am neither the one nor the other."

The eyes of each gazed into the other's steadfastly and gravely. The Duke of Osmonde thought of Juno's as he looked at hers. They were such liquid velvet, and held such fathomless deeps.

"Your Grace is not so free as lesser men," Clorinda said; "you can not come and go as you would."

"No," he answered, gravely, "I can not as I would."

And this was all.