A Lady of Quality Part 17

"But all help has been given to you," poor tender Anne said, kissing her hand again; "and I will pray, I will pray-"

"Ay, pray, Anne, pray with all thy soul," Clorinda answered; "I need thy praying-and thou didst believe always, and have asked so little that has been given thee."

"Thou wast given me, sister," said Anne. "Thou hast given me a home and kindness such as I never dared to hope; thou hast been like a great star to me-I have had none other, and I thank Heaven on my knees each night for the brightness my star has shed on me."

"Poor Anne, dear Anne!" Clorinda said, laying her arms about her and kissing her. "Pray for thy star, good, tender Anne, that its light may not be quenched." Then with a sudden movement her hand was pressed upon her bosom again. "Ah, Anne," she cried, and in the music of her voice, agony itself was ringing-"Anne, there is but one thing on this earth G.o.d rules over-but one thing that belongs-belongs to me; and 'tis Gerald Mertoun-and he is mine and shall not be taken from me, for he is a part of me, and I a part of him!"

"He will not be," said Anne-"he will not."

"He cannot," Clorinda answered-"he shall not! 'Twould not be human."

She drew a long breath and was calm again.

"Did it reach your ears," she said, reclasping a band of jewels on her arm, "that John Oxon had been offered a place in a foreign Court, and that 'twas said he would soon leave England?"

"I heard some rumour of it," Anne answered, her emotion getting the better of her usual discreet speech. "G.o.d grant it may be true!"

"Ay!" said Clorinda, "would G.o.d that he were gone!"

But that he was not, for when she entered the a.s.sembly that night he was standing near the door as though he lay in waiting for her, and his eyes met hers with a leaping gleam, which was a thing of such exultation that to encounter it was like having a knife thrust deep into her side and through and through it, for she knew full well that he could not wear such a look unless he had some strength of which she knew not.

This gleam was in his eyes each time she found herself drawn to them, and it seemed as though she could look nowhere without encountering his gaze. He followed her from room to room, placing himself where she could not lift her eyes without beholding him; when she walked a minuet with a royal duke, he stood and watched her with such a look in his face as drew all eyes towards him.

"'Tis as if he threatens her," one said. "He has gone mad with disappointed love."

But 'twas not love that was in his look, but the madness of long-thwarted pa.s.sion mixed with hate and mockery; and this she saw, and girded her soul with all its strength, knowing that she had a fiercer beast to deal with, and a more vicious and dangerous one, than her horse Devil. That he kept at first at a distance from her, and but looked on with this secret exultant glow in his bad, beauteous eyes, told her that at last he felt he held some power in his hands, against which all her defiance would be as naught. Till this hour, though she had suffered, and when alone had writhed in agony of grief and bitter shame, in his presence she had never flinched. Her strength she knew was greater than his; but his baseness was his weapon, and the depths of that baseness she knew she had never reached.

At midnight, having just made obeisance before Royalty retiring, she felt that at length he had drawn near and was standing at her side.

"To-night," he said, in the low undertone it was his way to keep for such occasions, knowing how he could pierce her ear-"to-night you are Juno's self-a very Queen of Heaven!"

She made no answer.

"And I have stood and watched you moving among all lesser G.o.ddesses as the moon sails among the stars, and I have smiled in thinking of what these lesser deities would say if they had known what I bear in my breast to-night."

She did not even make a movement-in truth, she felt that at his next words she might change to stone.

"I have found it," he said-"I have it here-the lost treasure-the tress of hair like a raven's wing and six feet long. Is there another woman in England who could give a man a lock like it?"

She felt then that she had, in sooth, changed to stone; her heart hung without moving in her breast; her eyes felt great and hollow and staring as she lifted them to him.

"I knew not," she said slowly, and with bated breath, for the awfulness of the moment had even made her body weak as she had never known it feel before-"I knew not truly that h.e.l.l made things like you."

Whereupon he made a movement forward, and the crowd about surged nearer with hasty exclamations, for the strange weakness of her body had overpowered her in a way mysterious to her, and she had changed to marble, growing too heavy of weight for her sinking limbs. And those in the surrounding groups saw a marvellous thing-the same being that my Lady Dunstanwolde swayed as she turned, and falling, lay stretched, as if dead, in her white and silver and flashing jewels at the startled beholders' feet.

She wore no radiant look when she went home that night. She would go home alone and unescorted, excepting by her lacqueys, refusing all offers of companionship when once placed in her equipage. There were, of course, gentlemen who would not be denied leading her to her coach; John Oxon was among them, and at the last pressed close, with a manner of great ceremony, speaking a final word.

"'Tis useless, your ladyship," he murmured, as he made his obeisance gallantly, and though the words were uttered in his lowest tone and with great softness, they reached her ear as he intended that they should. "To-morrow morning I shall wait upon you."

Anne had forborne going to bed, and waited for her return, longing to see her spirit's face again before she slept; for this poor tender creature, being denied all woman's loves and joys by Fate, who had made her as she was, so lived in her sister's beauty and triumphs that 'twas as if in some far-off way she shared them, and herself experienced through them the joy of being a woman transcendently beautiful and transcendently beloved. To-night she had spent her waiting hours in her closet and upon her knees, praying with all humble adoration of the Being she approached. She was wont to pray long and fervently each day, thanking Heaven for the smallest things and the most common, and imploring continuance of the mercy which bestowed them upon her poor unworthiness. For her sister her prayers were offered up night and morning, and ofttimes in hours between, and to-night she prayed not for herself at all, but for Clorinda and for his Grace of Osmonde, that their love might be crowned with happiness, and that no shadow might intervene to cloud its brightness, and the tender rapture in her sister's softened look, which was to her a thing so wonderful that she thought of it with reverence as a holy thing.

Her prayers being at length ended, she had risen from her knees and sat down, taking a sacred book to read, a book of sermons such as 'twas her simple habit to pore over with entire respect and child-like faith, and being in the midst of her favourite homily, she heard the chariot's returning wheels, and left her chair, surprised, because she had not yet begun to expect the sound.

"'Tis my sister," she said, with a soft, sentimental smile. "Osmonde not being among the guests, she hath no pleasure in mingling with them."

She went below to the room her ladyship usually went to first on her return at night from any gathering, and there she found her sitting as though she had dropped there in the corner of a great divan, her hands hanging clasped before her on her knee, her head hanging forward on her fallen chest, her large eyes staring into s.p.a.ce.

"Clorinda! Clorinda!" Anne cried, running to her and kneeling at her side. "Clorinda! G.o.d have mercy! What is't?"

Never before had her face worn such a look-'twas colourless, and so drawn and fallen in that 'twas indeed almost as if all her great beauty was gone; but the thing most awful to poor Anne was that all the new softness seemed as if it had been stamped out, and the fierce hardness had come back and was engraven in its place, mingled with a horrible despair.

"An hour ago," she said, "I swooned. That is why I look thus. 'Tis yet another sign that I am a woman-a woman!"

"You are ill-you swooned?" cried Anne. "I must send for your physician. Have you not ordered that he be sent for yourself? If Osmonde were here, how perturbed he would be!"

"Osmonde!" said my lady. "Gerald! Is there a Gerald, Anne?"

"Sister!" cried Anne, affrighted by her strange look-"oh, sister!"

"I have seen heaven," Clorinda said; "I have stood on the threshold and seen through the part-opened gate-and then have been dragged back to h.e.l.l."

Anne clung to her, gazing upwards at her eyes, in sheer despair.

"But back to h.e.l.l I will not go," she went on saying. "Had I not seen Heaven, they might perhaps have dragged me; but now I will not go-I will not, that I swear! There is a thing which cannot be endured. Bear it no woman should. Even I, who was not born a woman, but a wolf's she-cub, I cannot. 'Twas not I, 'twas Fate," she said-"'twas not I, 'twas Fate-'twas the great wheel we are bound to, which goes round and round that we may be broken on it. 'Twas not I who bound myself there; and I will not be broken so."

She said the words through her clenched teeth, and with all the mad pa.s.sion of her most lawless years; even at Anne she looked almost in the old ungentle fashion, as though half scorning all weaker than herself, and having small patience with them.

"There will be a way," she said-"there will be a way. I shall not swoon again."

She left her divan and stood upright, the colour having come back to her face; but the look Anne worshipped not having returned with it, 'twas as though Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had been born again.

"To-morrow morning I go forth on Devil," she said; "and I shall be abroad if any visitors come."

What pa.s.sed in her chamber that night no human being knew. Anne, who left her own apartment and crept into a chamber near hers to lie and watch, knew that she paced to and fro, but heard no other sound, and dared not intrude upon her.

When she came forth in the morning she wore the high look she had been wont to wear in the years gone by, when she ruled in her father's house, and rode to the hunt with a following of gay middle-aged and elderly rioters. Her eye was brilliant, and her colour matched it. She held her head with the old dauntless carriage, and there was that in her voice before which her women quaked, and her lacqueys hurried to do her bidding.

Devil himself felt this same thing in the touch of her hand upon his bridle when she mounted him at the door, and seemed to glance askance at her sideways.

She took no servant with her, and did not ride to the Park, but to the country. Once on the highroad, she rode fast and hard, only galloping straight before her as the way led, and having no intention. Where she was going she knew not; but why she rode on horseback she knew full well, it being because the wild, almost fierce motion was in keeping with the tempest in her soul. Thoughts rushed through her brain even as she rushed through the air on Devil's back, and each leaping after the other, seemed to tear more madly.

"What shall I do?" she was saying to herself. "What thing is there for me to do? I am trapped like a hunted beast, and there is no way forth."

The blood went like a torrent through her veins, so that she seemed to hear it roaring in her ears; her heart thundered in her side, or 'twas so she thought of it as it bounded, while she recalled the past and looked upon the present.

"What else could have been?" she groaned. "Naught else-naught else. 'Twas a trick-a trick of Fate to ruin me for my punishment."