A Lady of Quality Part 24

"And he has not yet returned, then?" she asked. "You have not seen him?"

The girl shook her fair locks, weeping with piteous little sobs.

"He has not," she cried, "and I know not what to do-and the great town seems full of evil men and wicked women. I know not which way to turn, for all plot wrong against me, and would drag me down to shamefulness-and back to my poor mother I cannot go."

"Wherefore not, poor child?" my lady asked her.

"I have not been made an honest, wedded woman, and none would believe my story, and-and he might come back."

"And if he came back?" said her ladyship.

At this question the girl slipped from her grasp and down upon her knees again, catching at her rich petticoat and holding it, her eyes searching the great lady's in imploring piteousness, her own streaming.

"I love him," she wept-"I love him so-I cannot leave the place where he might be. He was so beautiful and grand a gentleman, and, sure, he loved me better than all else-and I cannot thrust away from me that last night when he held me to his breast near our cottage door, and the nightingale sang in the roses, and he spake such words to me. I lie and sob all night on my hard pillow-I so long to see him and to hear his voice-and hearing he had been with you that last morning, I dared to come, praying that you might have heard him let drop some word that would tell me where he may be, for I cannot go away thinking he may come back longing for me-and I lose him and never see his face again. Oh! my lady, my lady, this place is so full of wickedness and fierce people-and dark kennels where crimes are done. I am affrighted for him, thinking he may have been struck some blow, and murdered, and hid away; and none will look for him but one who loves him-who loves him. Could it be so?-could it be? You know the town's ways so well. I pray you, tell me-in G.o.d's name I pray you!"

"G.o.d's mercy!" Anne breathed, and from behind her hands came stifled sobbing. My Lady Dunstanwolde bent down, her colour dying.

"Nay, nay," she said, "there has been no murder done-none! Hush, poor thing, hush thee. There is somewhat I must tell thee."

She tried to raise her, but the child would not be raised, and clung to her rich robe, shaking as she knelt gazing upward.

"It is a bitter thing," my lady said, and 'twas as if her own eyes were imploring. "G.o.d help you bear it-G.o.d help us all. He told me nothing of his journey. I knew not he was about to take it; but wheresoever he has travelled, 'twas best that he should go."

"Nay! nay!" the girl cried out-"to leave me helpless. Nay! it could not be so. He loved me-loved me-as the great duke loves you!"

"He meant you evil," said my lady, shuddering, "and evil he would have done you. He was a villain-a villain who meant to trick you. Had G.o.d struck him dead that day, 'twould have been mercy to you. I knew him well."

The young thing gave a bitter cry and fell swooning at her feet; and down upon her knees my lady went beside her, loosening her gown, and chafing her poor hands as though they two had been of sister blood.

"Call for hartshorn, Anne, and for water," she said; "she will come out of her swooning, poor child, and if she is cared for kindly in time her pain will pa.s.s away. G.o.d be thanked she knows no pain that cannot pa.s.s! I will protect her-aye, that will I, as I will protect all he hath done wrong to and deserted."

She was so strangely kind through the poor victim's swoons and weeping that the very menials who were called to aid her went back to their hall wondering in their talk of the n.o.ble grandness of so great a lady, who on the very brink of her own joy could stoop to protect and comfort a creature so far beneath her, that to most ladies her sorrow and desertion would have been things which were too trivial to count; for 'twas guessed, and talked over with great freedom and much shrewdness, that this was a country victim of Sir John Oxon's, and he having deserted his creditors, was ready enough to desert his rustic beauty, finding her heavy on his hands.

Below stairs the men closing the entrance to the pa.s.sage with brick, having caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of the servants' gossip, talked of what they heard among themselves as they did their work.

"Ay, a n.o.ble lady indeed," they said. "For 'tis not a woman's way to be kindly with the cast-off fancy of a man, even when she does not want him herself. He was her own worshipper for many a day, Sir John; and before she took the old earl 'twas said that for a s.p.a.ce people believed she loved him. She was but fifteen and a high mettled beauty; and he as handsome as she, and had a blue eye that would melt any woman-but at sixteen he was a town rake, and such tricks as this one he hath played since he was a lad. 'Tis well indeed for this poor thing her ladyship hath seen her. She hath promised to protect her, and sends her down to Dunstanwolde with her mother this very week. Would all fine ladies were of her kind. To hear such things of her puts a man in the humour to do her work well."

CHAPTER XX-A n.o.ble marriage

When the duke came back from France, and to pay his first eager visit to his bride that was to be, her ladyship's lacqueys led him not to the Panelled Parlour, but to a room which he had not entered before, it being one she had had the fancy to have remodelled and made into a beautiful closet for herself, her great wealth rendering it possible for her to accomplish changes without the loss of time the owners of limited purses are subjected to in the carrying out of plans. This room she had made as unlike the Panelled Parlour as two rooms would be unlike one another. Its panellings were white, its furnishings were bright and delicate, its draperies flowered with rosebuds tied in cl.u.s.ters with love-knots of pink and blue; it had a large bow-window, through which the sunlight streamed, and it was blooming with great rose-bowls overrunning with sweetness.

From a seat in the morning sunshine among the flowers and plants in the bow-window, there rose a tall figure in a snow-white robe-a figure like that of a beautiful stately girl who was half an angel. It was my lady, who came to him with blushing cheeks and radiant shining eyes, and was swept into his arms in such a pa.s.sion of love and blessed tenderness as Heaven might have smiled to see.

"My love! my love!" he breathed. "My life! my life and soul!"

"My Gerald!" she cried. "My Gerald-let me say it on your breast a thousand times!"

"My wife!" he said-"so soon my wife and all my own until life's end."

"Nay, nay," she cried, her cheek pressed to his own, "through all eternity, for Love's life knows no end."

As it had seemed to her poor lord who had died, so it seemed to this man who lived and so worshipped her-that the wonder of her sweetness was a thing to marvel at with pa.s.sionate reverence. Being a man of greater mind and poetic imagination than Dunstanwolde, and being himself adored by her, as that poor gentleman had not had the good fortune to be, he had ten thousand-fold the power and reason to see the tender radiance of her. As she was taller than other women, so her love seemed higher and greater, and as free from any touch of earthly poverty of feeling as her beauty was from any flaw. In it there could be no doubt, no pride; it could be bounded by no limit, measured by no rule, its depths sounded by no plummet.

His very soul was touched by her great longing to give to him the feeling, and to feel herself, that from the hour that she had become his, her past life was a thing blotted out.

"I am a new created thing," she said; "until you called me 'Love' I had no life! All before was darkness. 'Twas you, my Gerald, who said, 'Let there be light, and there was light.'"

"Hush, hush, sweet love," he said. "Your words would make me too near G.o.d's self."

"Sure Love is G.o.d," she cried, her hands upon his shoulders, her face uplifted. "What else? Love we know; Love we worship and kneel to; Love conquers us and gives us Heaven. Until I knew it, I believed naught. Now I kneel each night and pray, and pray, but to be pardoned and made worthy."

Never before, it was true, had she knelt and prayed, but from this time no nun in her convent knelt oftener or prayed more ardently, and her prayer was ever that the past might be forgiven her, the future blessed, and she taught how to so live that there should be no faintest shadow in the years to come.

"I know not What is above me," she said. "I cannot lie and say I love It and believe, but if there is aught, sure It must be a power which is great, else had the world not been so strange a thing, and I-and those who live in it-and if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely-surely He will lend an ear! We know naught, we have been told naught; we have but an old book which has been handed down through strange hands and strange tongues, and may be but poor history. We have so little, and we are threatened so; but for love's sake I will pray the poor prayers we are given, and for love's sake there is no dust too low for me to lie in while I plead."

This was the strange truth-though 'twas not so strange if the world feared not to admit such things-that through her Gerald, who was but n.o.ble and high-souled man, she was led to bow before G.o.d's throne as the humblest and holiest saint bows, though she had not learned belief and only had learned love.

"But life lasts so short a while," she said to Osmonde. "It seems so short when it is spent in such joy as this; and when the day comes-for, oh! Gerald, my soul sees it already-when the day comes that I kneel by your bedside and see your eyes close, or you kneel by mine, it must be that the one who waits behind shall know the parting is not all."

"It could not be all, beloved," Osmonde said. "Love is sure, eternal."

Often in these blissful hours her way was almost like a child's, she was so tender and so clinging. At times her beauteous, great eyes were full of an imploring which made them seem soft with tears, and thus they were now as she looked up at him.

"I will do all I can," she said. "I will obey every law, I will pray often and give alms, and strive to be dutiful and-holy, that in the end He will not thrust me from you; that I may stay near-even in the lowest place, even in the lowest-that I may see your face and know that you see mine. We are so in His power, He can do aught with us; but I will so obey Him and so pray that He will let me in."

To Anne she went with curious humility, questioning her as to her religious duties and beliefs, asking her what books she read, and what services she attended.

"All your life you have been a religious woman," she said. "I used to think it folly, but now-"

"But now-" said Anne.

"I know not what to think," she answered. "I would learn."

But when she listened to Anne's simple homilies, and read her weighty sermons, they but made her restless and unsatisfied.

"Nay, 'tis not that," she said one day, with a deep sigh. "'Tis more than that; 'tis deeper, and greater, and your sermons do not hold it. They but set my brain to questioning and rebellion."

But a short time elapsed before the marriage was solemnised, and such a wedding the world of fashion had not taken part in for years, 'twas said. Royalty honoured it; the greatest of the land were proud to count themselves among the guests; the retainers, messengers, and company of the two great houses were so numerous that in the west end of the town the streets wore indeed quite a festal air, with the pa.s.sing to and fro of servants and gentlefolk with favours upon their arms.

'Twas to the Tower of Camylott, the most beautiful and remote of the bridegroom's several notable seats, that they removed their household, when the irksomeness of the extended ceremonies and entertainments were over-for these they were of too distinguished rank to curtail as lesser personages might have done. But when all things were over, the stately town houses closed, and their equipages rolled out beyond the sight of town into the country roads, the great duke and his great d.u.c.h.ess sat hand in hand, gazing into each other's eyes with as simple and ardent a joy as they had been but young 'prentice and country maid, flying to hide from the world their love.

"There is no other woman who is so like a queen," Osmonde said, with tenderest smiling. "And yet your eyes wear a look so young in these days that they are like a child's. In all their beauty, I have never seen them so before."