A Lady of Quality Part 19

'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 s.p.a.ce, 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sion, 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 h.e.l.l 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 n.o.ble manhood and high honour, and taught to wors.h.i.+p, as I wors.h.i.+p 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 h.e.l.l," 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 thought came to her like a flame lit on a sudden, and springing high the instant the match struck the fuel it leaped from. It was a thought so daring and so strange that even she gasped once, being appalled, and her hands, stealing to her brow, clutched at the hair that grew there, feeling it seem to rise and stand erect.

"Is it madness to so dare?" she said hoa.r.s.ely, and for an instant, shuddering, hid her eyes, but then uncovered and showed them burning. "Nay! not as I will dare it," she said, "for it will make me steel. You fell well," she said to the stone-faced thing, "and as you lie there, seem to tell me what to do, in your own despite. You would not have so helped me had you known. Now 'tis 'twixt Fate and I-a human thing-who is but a hunted woman."

She put her strong hand forth and thrust him-he was already stiffening-backward from the shoulder, there being no shrinking on her face as she felt his flesh yield beneath her touch, for she had pa.s.sed the barrier lying between that which is mere life and that which is pitiless h.e.l.l, and could feel naught that was human. A poor wild beast at bay, pressed on all sides by dogs, by huntsmen, by resistless weapons, by Nature's pitiless self-glaring with bloodshot eyes, panting, with fangs bared in the savagery of its unfriended agony-might feel thus. 'Tis but a hunted beast; but 'tis alone, and faces so the terror and anguish of death.

The thing gazing with its set sneer, and moving but stiffly, she put forth another hand upon its side and thrust it farther backward until it lay stretched beneath the great broad seat, its glazed and open eyes seeming to stare upward blankly at the low roof of its strange prison; she thrust it farther backward still, and letting the draperies fall, steadily and with care so rearranged them that all was safe and hid from sight.

"Until to-night," she said, "you will lie well there. And then-and then-"

She picked up the long silken lock of hair which lay like a serpent at her feet, and threw it into the fire, watching it burn, as all hair burns, with slow hissing, and she watched it till 'twas gone.

Then she stood with her hands pressed upon her eyeb.a.l.l.s and her brow, her thoughts moving in great leaps. Although it reeled, the brain which had worked for her ever, worked clear and strong, setting before her what was impending, arguing her case, showing her where dangers would arise, how she must provide against them, what she must defend and set at defiance. The power of will with which she had been endowed at birth, and which had but grown stronger by its exercise, was indeed to be compared to some great engine whose lever 'tis not nature should be placed in human hands; but on that lever her hand rested now, and to herself she vowed she would control it, since only thus might she be saved. The torture she had undergone for months, the warring of the evil past with the n.o.ble present, of that which was sweet and pa.s.sionately loving woman with that which was all but devil, had strung her to a pitch so intense and high that on the falling of this unnatural and unforeseen blow she was left scarce a human thing. Looking back, she saw herself a creature doomed from birth; and here in one moment seemed to stand a force ranged in mad battle with the fate which had doomed her.

"'Twas ordained that the blow should fall so," she said, "and those who did it laugh-laugh at me."

'Twas but a moment, and her sharp breathing became even and regular as though at her command; her face composed itself, and she turned to the bell and rang it as with imperious haste.

When the lacquey entered, she was standing holding papers in her hand as if she had but just been consulting them.