A Lady of Quality Part 11

"I should not have been like to do otherwise," she said; "'tis an honourable condition. I would advise you to enter it."

CHAPTER XI-Wherein a n.o.ble life comes to an end

When the earl and his countess went to their house in the country, there fell to Mistress Anne a great and curious piece of good fortune. In her wildest dreams she had never dared to hope that such a thing might be.

My Lady Dunstanwolde, on her first visit home, bore her sister back with her to the manor, and there established her. She gave her a suite of rooms and a waiting woman of her own, and even provided her with a suitable wardrobe. This last she had chosen herself with a taste and fitness which only such wit as her own could have devised.

"They are not great rooms I give thee, Anne," she said, "but quiet and small ones, which you can make home-like in such ways as I know your taste lies. My lord has aided me to choose romances for your shelves, he knowing more of books than I do. And I shall not dress thee out like a peac.o.c.k with gay colours and great farthingales. They would frighten thee, poor woman, and be a burden with their weight. I have chosen such things as are not too splendid, but will suit thy pale face and shot partridge eyes."

Anne stood in the middle of her room and looked about at its comforts, wondering.

"Sister," she said, "why are you so good to me? What have I done to serve you? Why is it Anne instead of Barbara you are so gracious to?"

"Perchance because I am a vain woman and would be wors.h.i.+pped as you wors.h.i.+p me."

"But you are always wors.h.i.+pped," Anne faltered.

"Ay, by men!" said Clorinda, mocking; "but not by women. And it may be that my pride is so high that I must be wors.h.i.+pped by a woman too. You would always love me, sister Anne. If you saw me break the law-if you saw me stab the man I hated to the heart, you would think it must be pardoned to me."

She laughed, and yet her voice was such that Anne lost her breath and caught at it again.

"Ay, I should love you, sister!" she cried. "Even then I could not but love you. I should know you could not strike so an innocent creature, and that to be so hated he must have been worthy of hate. You-are not like other women, sister Clorinda; but you could not be base-for you have a great heart."

Clorinda put her hand to her side and laughed again, but with less mocking in her laughter.

"What do you know of my heart, Anne?" she said. "Till late I did not know it beat, myself. My lord says 'tis a great one and n.o.ble, but I know 'tis his own that is so. Have I done honestly by him, Anne, as I told you I would? Have I been fair in my bargain-as fair as an honest man, and not a puling, slippery woman?"

"You have been a great lady," Anne answered, her great dull, soft eyes filling with slow tears as she gazed at her. "He says that you have given to him a year of Heaven, and that you seem to him like some archangel-for the lower angels seem not high enough to set beside you."

"'Tis as I said-'tis his heart that is n.o.ble," said Clorinda. "But I vowed it should be so. He paid-he paid!"

The country saw her lord's happiness as the town had done, and wondered at it no less. The manor was thrown open, and guests came down from town; great dinners and b.a.l.l.s being given, at which all the country saw the mistress reign at her consort's side with such a grace as no lady ever had worn before. Sir Jeoffry, appearing at these a.s.semblies, was so amazed that he forgot to muddle himself with drink, in gazing at his daughter and following her in all her movements.

"Look at her!" he said to his old boon companions and hers, who were as much awed as he. "Lord! who would think she was the strapping, handsome shrew that swore, and sang men's songs to us, and rode to the hunt in breeches."

He was awed at the thought of paying fatherly visits to her house, and would have kept away, but that she was kind to him in the way he was best able to understand.

"I am country-bred, and have not the manners of your town men, my lady," he said to her, as he sat with her alone on one of the first mornings he spent with her in her private apartment. "I am used to rap out an oath or an ill-mannered word when it comes to me. Dunstanwolde has weaned you of hearing such things-and I am too old a dog to change."

"Wouldst have thought I was too old to change," answered she, "but I was not. Did I not tell thee I would be a great lady? There is naught a man or woman cannot learn who hath the wit."

"Thou hadst it, Clo," said Sir Jeoffry, gazing at her with a sort of slow wonder. "Thou hadst it. If thou hadst not-!" He paused, and shook his head, and there was a rough emotion in his coa.r.s.e face. "I was not the man to have made aught but a baggage of thee, Clo. I taught thee naught decent, and thou never heard or saw aught to teach thee. d.a.m.n me!" almost with moisture in his eyes, "if I know what kept thee from going to ruin before thou wert fifteen."

She sat and watched him steadily.

"Nor I," quoth she, in answer. "Nor I-but here thou seest me, Dad-an earl's lady, sitting before thee."

"'Twas thy wit," said he, still moved, and fairly maudlin. "'Twas thy wit and thy devil's will!"

"Ay," she answered, "'twas they-my wit and my devil's will!"

She rode to the hunt with him as she had been wont to do, but she wore the latest fas.h.i.+on in hunting habit and coat; and though 'twould not have been possible for her to sit her horse better than of old, or to take hedges and ditches with greater daring and spirit, yet in some way every man who rode with her felt that 'twas a great lady who led the field. The horse she rode was a fierce, beauteous devil of a beast which Sir Jeoffry himself would scarce have mounted even in his younger days; but she carried her loaded whip, and she sat upon the brute as if she scarcely felt its temper, and held it with a wrist of steel.

My Lord Dunstanwolde did not hunt this season. He had never been greatly fond of the sport, and at this time was a little ailing, but he would not let his lady give up her pleasure because he could not join it.

"Nay," he said, "'tis not for the queen of the hunting-field to stay at home to nurse an old man's aches. My pride would not let it be so. Your father will attend you. Go-and lead them all, my dear."

In the field appeared Sir John Oxon, who for a brief visit was at Eldershawe. He rode close to my lady, though she had naught to say to him after her first greetings of civility. He looked not as fresh and glowing with youth as had been his wont only a year ago. His reckless wildness of life and his town debaucheries had at last touched his bloom, perhaps. He had a haggard look at moments when his countenance was not lighted by excitement. 'Twas whispered that he was deep enough in debt to be greatly straitened, and that his marriage having come to naught his creditors were besetting him without mercy. This and more than this, no one knew so well as my Lady Dunstanwolde; but of a certainty she had little pity for his evil case, if one might judge by her face, when in the course of the running he took a hedge behind her, and pressing his horse, came up by her side and spoke.

"Clorinda," he began breathlessly, through set teeth.

She could have left him and not answered, but she chose to restrain the pace of her wild beast for a moment and look at him.

"'Your ladys.h.i.+p!'" she corrected his audacity. "Or-'my Lady Dunstanwolde.'"

"There was a time"-he said.

"This morning," she said, "I found a letter in a casket in my closet. I do not know the mad villain who wrote it. I never knew him."

"You did not," he cried, with an oath, and then laughed scornfully.

"The letter lies in ashes on the hearth," she said. "'Twas burned unopened. Do not ride so close, Sir John, and do not play the madman and the beast with the wife of my Lord Dunstanwolde."

"'The wife!'" he answered. "'My lord!' 'Tis a new game this, and well played, by G.o.d!"

She did not so much as waver in her look, and her wide eyes smiled.

"Quite new," she answered him-"quite new. And could I not have played it well and fairly, I would not have touched the cards. Keep your horse off, Sir John. Mine is restive, and likes not another beast near him;" and she touched the creature with her whip, and he was gone like a thunderbolt.

The next day, being in her room, Anne saw her come from her dressing-table with a sealed letter in her hand. She went to the bell and rang it.

"Anne," she said, "I am going to rate my woman and turn her from my service. I shall not beat or swear at her as I was wont to do with my women in time past. You will be afraid, perhaps; but you must stay with me."

She was standing by the fire with the letter held almost at arm's length in her finger-tips, when the woman entered, who, seeing her face, turned pale, and casting her eyes upon the letter, paler still, and began to shake.

"You have attended mistresses of other ways than mine," her lady said in her slow, clear voice, which seemed to cut as knives do. "Some fool and madman has bribed you to serve him. You cannot serve me also. Come hither and put this in the fire. If 'twere to be done I would make you hold it in the live coals with your hand."

The woman came shuddering, looking as if she thought she might be struck dead. She took the letter and kneeled, ashen pale, to burn it. When 'twas done, her mistress pointed to the door.

"Go and gather your goods and chattels together, and leave within this hour," she said. "I will be my own tirewoman till I can find one who comes to me honest."

When she was gone, Anne sat gazing at the ashes on the hearth. She was pale also.

"Sister," she said, "do you-"