There was no punishment. The tender little creature grew as a blossom grows from bud to fairest bloom. His mother flowered as he, and spent her days in noble cherishing of him and tender care. Such motherhood and wifehood as were hers were as fair statues raised to Nature’s self.
“Once I thought that I was under ban,” she said to her lord in one of their sweetest hours; “but I have been given love and a life, and so I know it cannot be. Do I fill all your being, Gerald?”
“All, all!” he cried, “my sweet, sweet woman.”
“Leave I no longing unfulfilled, no duty undone, to you, dear love, to the world, to human suffering I might aid? I pray Christ with all passionate humbleness that I may not.”
“He grants your prayer,” he answered, his eyes moist with worshipping tenderness.
“And this white soul given to me from the outer bounds we know not—it has no stain; and the little human body it wakened to life in—think you that Christ will help me to fold them in love high and pure enough, and teach the human body to do honour to its soul? ’Tis not monkish scorn of itself that I would teach the body; it is so beautiful and noble a thing, and so full of the power of joy. Surely That which made it—in His own image—would not that it should despise itself and its own wonders, but do them reverence, and rejoice in them nobly, knowing all their seasons and their changes, counting not youth folly, and manhood sinful, or age aught but gentle ripeness passing onward? I pray for a great soul, and great wit, and greater power to help this fair human thing to grow, and love, and live.”
These had been born and had rested hid within her when she lay a babe struggling ’neath her dead mother’s corpse. Through the darkness of untaught years they had grown but slowly, being so unfitly and unfairly nourished; but Life’s sun but falling on her, they seemed to strive to fair fruition with her days.
’Twas not mere love she gave her offspring—for she bore others as years passed, until she was the mother of four sons and two girls, children of strength and beauty as noted as her own; she gave them of her constant thought, and an honour of their humanity such as taught them reverence of themselves as of all other human things. Their love for her was such a passion as their father bore her. She was the noblest creature that they knew; her beauty, her great unswerving love, her truth, were things bearing to their child eyes the unchangingness of God’s stars in heaven.
“Why is she not the Queen?” a younger one asked his father once, having been to London and seen the Court. “The Queen is not so beautiful and grand as she, and she could so well reign over the people. She is always just and honourable, and fears nothing.”
From her side Mistress Anne was rarely parted. In her fair retreat at Camylott she had lived a life all undisturbed by outward things. When the children were born strange joy came to her.
“Be his mother also,” the duchess had said when she had drawn the clothes aside to show her first-born sleeping in her arm. “You were made to be the mother of things, Anne.”
“Nay, or they had been given to me,” Anne had answered.
“Mine I will share with you,” her Grace had said, lifting her Madonna face. “Kiss me, sister—kiss him, too, and bless him. Your life has been so innocent it must be good that you should love and guard him.”
’Twas sweet to see the wit she showed in giving to poor Anne the feeling that she shared her motherhood. She shared her tenderest cares and duties with her. Together they bathed and clad the child in the morning, this being their high festival, in which the nurses shared but in the performance of small duties. Each day they played with him and laughed as women will at such dear times, kissing his grand round limbs, crying out at their growth, worshipping his little rosy feet, and smothering him with caresses. And then they put him to sleep, Anne sitting close while his mother fed him from her breast until his small red mouth parted and slowly released her.
When he could toddle about and was beginning to say words, there was a morning when she bore him to Anne’s tower that they might joy in him together, as was their way. It was a beautiful thing to see her walk carrying him in the strong and lovely curve of her arm as if his sturdy babyhood were of no more weight than a rose, and he cuddling against her, clinging and crowing, his wide brown eyes shining with delight.
“He has come to pay thee court, Anne,” she said. “He is a great gallant, and knows how we are his loving slaves. He comes to say his new word that I have taught him.”
She set him down where he stood holding to Anne’s knee and showing his new pearl teeth, in a rosy grin; his mother knelt beside him, beginning her coaxing.
“Who is she?” she said, pointing with her finger at Anne’s face, her own full of lovely fear lest the child should not speak rightly his lesson. “What is her name? Mammy’s man say—” and she mumbled softly with her crimson mouth at his ear.
The child looked up at Anne, with baby wit and laughter in his face, and stammered sweetly—
“Muz—Muzzer—Anne,” he said, and then being pleased with his cleverness, danced on his little feet and said it over and over.
Clorinda caught him up and set him on Anne’s lap.
“Know you what he calls you?” she said. “’Tis but a mumble, his little tongue is not nimble enough for clearness, but he says it his pretty best. ’Tis Mother Anne, he says—’tis Mother Anne.”
And then they were in each other’s arms, the child between them, he kissing both and clasping both, with little laughs of joy as if they were but one creature.
Each child born they clasped and kissed so, and were so clasped and kissed by; each one calling the tender unwed woman “Mother Anne,” and having a special lovingness for her, she being the creature each one seemed to hover about with innocent protection and companionship.
The wonder of Anne’s life grew deeper to her hour by hour, and where she had before loved, she learned to worship, for ’twas indeed worship that her soul was filled with. She could not look back and believe that she had not dreamed a dream of all the fears gone by and that they held. This—this was true—the beauty of these days, the love of them, the generous deeds, the sweet courtesies, and gentle words spoken. This beauteous woman dwelling in her husband’s heart, giving him all joy of life and love, ruling queenly and gracious in his house, bearing him noble children, and tending them with the very genius of tenderness and wisdom.
But in Mistress Anne herself life had never been strong; she was of the fibre of her mother, who had died in youth, crushed by its cruel weight, and to her, living had been so great and terrible a thing. There had not been given to her the will to battle with the Fate that fell to her, the brain to reason and disentangle problems, or the power to set them aside. So while her Grace of Osmonde seemed but to gain greater state and beauty in her ripening, her sister’s frail body grew more frail, and seemed to shrink and age. Yet her face put on a strange worn sweetness, and her soft, dull eyes had a look almost like a saint’s who looks at heaven. She prayed much, and did many charitable works both in town and country. She read her books of devotion, and went much to church, sitting with a reverend face through many a dull and lengthy sermon she would have felt it sacrilegious to think of with aught but pious admiration. In the middle of the night it was her custom to rise and offer up prayers through the dark hours. She was an humble soul who greatly feared and trembled before her God.
“I waken in the night sometimes,” the fair, tall child Daphne said once to her mother, “and Mother Anne is there—she kneels and prays beside my bed. She kneels and prays so by each one of us many a night.”
“’Tis because she is so pious a woman and so loves us,” said young John, in his stately, generous way. The house of Osmonde had never had so fine and handsome a creature for its heir. He o’ertopped every boy of his age in height, and the bearing of his lovely youthful body was masculine grace itself.
The town and the Court knew these children, and talked of their beauty and growth as they had talked of their mother’s.
“To be the mate of such a woman, the father of such heirs, is a fate a man might pray God for,” ’twas said. “Love has not grown stale with them. Their children are the very blossoms of it. Her eyes are deeper pools of love each year.”
’Twas in these days Sir Jeoffry came to his end, it being in such way as had been often prophesied; and when this final hour came, there was but one who could give him comfort, and this was the daughter whose youth he had led with such careless evilness to harm.
If he had wondered at her when she had been my Lady Dunstanwolde, as her Grace of Osmonde he regarded her with heavy awe. Never had she been able to lead him to visit her at her house in town or at any other which was her home. “’Tis all too grand for me, your Grace,” he would say; “I am a country yokel, and have hunted and drank, and lived too hard to look well among town gentlemen. I must be drunk at dinner, and when I am in liquor I am no ornament to a duchess’s drawing-room. But what a woman you have grown,” he would say, staring at her and shaking his head. “Each time I clap eyes on you ’tis to marvel at you, remembering what a baggage you were, and how you kept from slipping by the way. There was Jack Oxon, now,” he added one day—“after you married Dunstanwolde, I heard a pretty tale of Jack—that he had made a wager among his friends in town—he was a braggart devil, Jack—that he would have you, though you were so scornful; and knowing him to be a liar, his fellows said that unless he could bring back a raven lock six feet long to show them, he had lost his bet, for they would believe no other proof. And finely they scoffed at him when he came back saying that he had had one, but had hid it away for safety when he was drunk, and could not find it again. They so flouted and jeered at him that swords were drawn, and blood as well. But though he was a beauty and a crafty rake-hell fellow, you were too sharp for him. Had you not had so shrewd a wit and strong a will, you would not have been the greatest duchess in England, Clo, as well as the finest woman.”
“Nay,” she answered—“in those days—nay, let us not speak of them! I would blot them out—out.”
As time went by, and the years spent in drink and debauchery began to tell even on the big, strong body which should have served any other man bravely long past his threescore and ten, Sir Jeoffry drank harder and lived more wildly, sometimes being driven desperate by dulness, his coarse pleasures having lost their potency.
“Liquor is not as strong as it once was,” he used to grumble, “and there are fewer things to stir a man to frolic. Lord, what roaring days and nights a man could have thirty years ago.”
So in his efforts to emulate such nights and days, he plunged deeper and deeper into new orgies; and one night, after a heavy day’s hunting, sitting at the head of his table with his old companions, he suddenly leaned forward, staring with starting eyes at an empty chair in a dark corner. His face grew purple, and he gasped and gurgled.
“What is’t, Jeoff?” old Eldershawe cried, touching his shoulder with a shaking hand. “What’s the man staring at, as if he had gone mad?”
“Jack,” cried Sir Jeoffry, his eyes still farther starting from their sockets. “Jack! what say you? I cannot hear.”
The next instant he sprang up, shrieking, and thrusting with his hands as if warding something off.
“Keep back!” he yelled. “There is green mould on thee. Where hast thou been to grow mouldy? Keep back! Where hast thou been?”
His friends at table started up, staring at him and losing colour; he shrieked so loud and strangely, he clutched his hair with his hands, and fell into his chair, raving, clutching, and staring, or dashing his head down upon the table to hide his face, and then raising it as if he could not resist being drawn in his affright to gaze again. There was no soothing him. He shouted, and struggled with those who would have held him. ’Twas Jack Oxon who was there, he swore—Jack, who kept stealing slowly nearer to him, his face and his fine clothes damp and green, he beat at the air with mad hands, and at last fell upon the floor, and rolled, foaming at the mouth.
They contrived, after great strugglings, to bear him to his chamber, but it took the united strength of all who would stay near him to keep him from making an end of himself. By the dawn of day his boon companions stood by him with their garments torn to tatters, their faces drenched with sweat, and their own eyes almost starting from their sockets; the doctor who had been sent for, coming in no hurry, but scowled and shook his head when he beheld him.
“He is a dead man,” he said, “and the wonder is that this has not come before. He is sodden with drink and rotten with ill-living, besides being past all the strength of youth. He dies of the life he has lived.”
’Twas little to be expected that his boon companions could desert their homes and pleasures and tend his horrors longer than a night. Such a sight as he presented did not inspire them to cheerful spirits.
“Lord,” said Sir Chris Crowell, “to see him clutch his flesh and shriek and mouth, is enough to make a man live sober for his remaining days,” and he shook his big shoulders with a shudder.
“Ugh!” he said, “God grant I may make a better end. He writhes as in hell-fire.”
“There is but one on earth who will do aught for him,” said Eldershawe. “’Tis handsome Clo, who is a duchess; but she will come and tend him, I could swear. Even when she was a lawless devil of a child she had a way of standing by her friends and fearing naught.”
So after taking counsel together they sent for her, and in as many hours as it took to drive from London, her coach stood before the door. By this time all the household was panic-stricken and in hopeless disorder, the women-servants scattered and shuddering in far corners of the house; such men as could get out of the way having found work to do afield or in the kennels, for none had nerve to stay where they could hear the madman’s shrieks and howls.
Her Grace, entering the house, went with her woman straight to her chamber, and shortly emerged therefrom, stripped of her rich apparel, and clad in a gown of strong blue linen, her hair wound close, her white hands bare of any ornament, save the band of gold which was her wedding-ring. A serving-woman might have been clad so; but the plainness of her garb but made her height, and strength, so reveal themselves, that the mere sight of her woke somewhat that was like to awe in the eyes of the servants who beheld her as she passed.
She needed not to be led, but straightway followed the awful sounds, until she reached the chamber behind whose door they were shut. Upon the huge disordered bed, Sir Jeoffry writhed, and tried to tear himself, his great sinewy and hairy body almost stark. Two of the stable men were striving to hold him.
The duchess went to his bedside and stood there, laying her strong white hand upon his shuddering shoulder.
“Father,” she said, in a voice so clear, and with such a ring of steady command, as, the men said later, might have reached a dead man’s ear. “Father, ’tis Clo!”
Sir Jeoffry writhed his head round and glared at her, with starting eyes and foaming mouth.
“Who says ’tis Clo?” he shouted. “’Tis a lie! She was ever a bigger devil than any other, though she was but a handsome wench. Jack himself could not manage her. She beat him, and would beat him now. ’Tis a lie!”
All through that day and night the power of her Grace’s white arm was the thing which saved him from dashing out his brains. The two men could not have held him, and at his greatest frenzy they observed that now and then his bloodshot eye would glance aside at the beauteous face above him. The sound of the word “Clo” had struck upon his brain and wakened an echo.
She sent away the men to rest, calling for others in their places; but leave the bedside herself she would not. ’Twas a strange thing to see her strength and bravery, which could not be beaten down. When the doctor came again he found her there, and changed his surly and reluctant manner in the presence of a duchess, and one who in her close linen gown wore such a mien.
“You should not have left him,” she said to him unbendingly, “even though I myself can see there is little help that can be given. Thought you his Grace and I would brook that he should die alone if we could not have reached him?”
Those words “his Grace and I” put a new face upon the matter, and all was done that lay within the man’s skill; but most was he disturbed concerning the lady, who would not be sent to rest, and whose noble consort would be justly angered if she were allowed to injure her superb health.
“His Grace knew what I came to do and how I should do it,” the duchess said, unbending still. “But for affairs of State which held him, he would have been here at my side.”
She held her place throughout the second night, and that was worse than the first—the paroxysms growing more and more awful; for Jack was within a yard, and stretched out a green and mouldy hand, the finger-bones showing through the flesh, the while he smiled awfully.
At last one pealing scream rang out after another, until after making his shuddering body into an arc resting on heels and head, the madman fell exhausted, his flesh all quaking before the eye. Then the duchess waved the men who helped, away. She sat upon the bed’s edge close—close to her father’s body, putting her two firm hands on either of his shoulders, holding him so, and bent down, looking into his wild face, as if she fixed upon his very soul all the power of her wondrous will.
“Father,” she said, “look at my face. Thou canst if thou wilt. Look at my face. Then wilt thou see ’tis Clo—and she will stand by thee.”
She kept her gaze upon his very pupils; and though ’twas at first as if his eyes strove to break away from her look, their effort was controlled by her steadfastness, and they wandered back at last, and her great orbs held them. He heaved a long breath, half a big, broken sob, and lay still, staring up at her.
“Ay,” he said, “’tis Clo! ’tis Clo!”
The sweat began to roll from his forehead, and the tears down his cheeks. He broke forth, wailing like a child.
“Clo—Clo,” he said, “I am in hell.”
She put her hand on his breast, keeping will and eyes set on him.
“Nay,” she answered; “thou art on earth, and in thine own bed, and I am here, and will not leave thee.”
She made another sign to the men who stood and stared aghast in wonder at her, but feeling in the very air about her the spell to which the madness had given way.
“’Twas not mere human woman who sat there,” they said afterwards in the stables among their fellows. “’Twas somewhat more. Had such a will been in an evil thing a man’s hair would have risen on his skull at the seeing of it.”
“Go now,” she said to them, “and send women to set the place in order.”
She had seen delirium and death enough in the doings of her deeds of mercy, to know that his strength had gone and death was coming. His bed and room were made orderly, and at last he lay in clean linen, with all made straight. Soon his eyes seemed to sink into his head and stare from hollows, and his skin grew grey, but ever he stared only at his daughter’s face.
“Clo,” he said at last, “stay by me! Clo, go not away!”
“I shall not go,” she answered.
She drew a seat close to his bed and took his hand. It lay knotted and gnarled and swollen-veined upon her smooth palm, and with her other hand she stroked it. His breath came weak and quick, and fear grew in his eyes.
“What is it, Clo?” he said. “What is’t?”
“’Tis weakness,” replied she, soothing him. “Soon you will sleep.”
“Ay,” he said, with a breath like a sob. “’Tis over.”
His big body seemed to collapse, he shrank so in the bed-clothes.
“What day o’ the year is it?” he asked.
“The tenth of August,” was her answer.
“Sixty-nine years from this day was I born,” he said, “and now ’tis done.”
“Nay,” said she—“nay—God grant—”
“Ay,” he said, “done. Would there were nine and sixty more. What a man I was at twenty. I want not to die, Clo. I want to live—to live—live, and be young,” gulping, “with strong muscle and moist flesh. Sixty-nine years—and they are gone!”
He clung to her hand, and stared at her with awful eyes. Through all his life he had been but a great, strong, human carcass; and he was now but the same carcass worn out, and at death’s door. Of not one human thing but of himself had he ever thought, not one creature but himself had he ever loved—and now he lay at the end, harking back only to the wicked years gone by.
“None can bring them back,” he shuddered. “Not even thou, Clo, who art so strong. None—none! Canst pray, Clo?” with the gasp of a craven.
“Not as chaplains do,” she answered. “I believe not in a God who clamours but for praise.”
“What dost believe in, then?”
“In One who will do justice, and demands that it shall be done to each thing He has made, by each who bears His image—ay, and mercy too—but justice always, for justice is mercy’s highest self.”
Who knows the mysteries of the human soul—who knows the workings of the human brain? The God who is just alone. In this man’s mind, which was so near a simple beast’s in all its movings, some remote, unborn consciousness was surely reached and vaguely set astir by the clear words thus spoken.
“Clo, Clo!” he cried, “Clo, Clo!” in terror, clutching her the closer, “what dost thou mean? In all my nine and sixty years—” and rolled his head in agony.
In all his nine and sixty years he had shown justice to no man, mercy to no woman, since he had thought of none but Jeoffry Wildairs; and this truth somehow dimly reached his long-dulled brain and wakened there.
“Down on thy knees, Clo!” he gasped—“down on thy knees!”
It was so horrible, the look struggling in his dying face, that she went down upon her knees that moment, and so knelt, folding his shaking hands within her own against her breast.
“Thou who didst make him as he was born into Thy world,” she said, “deal with that to which Thou didst give life—and death. Show him in this hour, which Thou mad’st also, that Thou art not Man who would have vengeance, but that justice which is God.”
“Then—then,” he gasped—“then will He damn me!”
“He will weigh thee,” she said; “and that which His own hand created will He separate from that which was thine own wilful wrong—and this, sure, He will teach thee how to expiate.”
“Clo,” he cried again—“thy mother—she was but a girl, and died alone—I did no justice to her!—Daphne! Daphne!” And he shook beneath the bed-clothes, shuddering to his feet, his face growing more grey and pinched.
“She loved thee once,” Clorinda said. “She was a gentle soul, and would not forget. She will show thee mercy.”
“Birth she went through,” he muttered, “and death—alone. Birth and death! Daphne, my girl—” And his voice trailed off to nothingness, and he lay staring at space, and panting.
The duchess sat by him and held his hand. She moved not, though at last he seemed to fall asleep. Two hours later he began to stir. He turned his head slowly upon his pillows until his gaze rested upon her, as she sat fronting him. ’Twas as though he had awakened to look at her.
“Clo!” he cried, and though his voice was but a whisper, there was both wonder and wild question in it—“Clo!”
But she moved not, her great eyes meeting his with steady gaze; and even as they so looked at each other his body stretched itself, his lids fell—and he was a dead man.
When they had had ten years of happiness, Anne died. ’Twas of no violent illness, it seemed but that through these years of joy she had been gradually losing life. She had grown thinner and whiter, and her soft eyes bigger and more prayerful. ’Twas in the summer, and they were at Camylott, when one sweet day she came from the flower-garden with her hands full of roses, and sitting down by her sister in her morning-room, swooned away, scattering her blossoms on her lap and at her feet.
When she came back to consciousness she looked up at the duchess with a strange, far look, as if her soul had wandered back from some great distance.
“Let me be borne to bed, sister,” she said. “I would lie still. I shall not get up again.”
The look in her face was so unearthly and a thing so full of mystery, that her Grace’s heart stood still, for in some strange way she knew the end had come.
They bore her to her tower and laid her in her bed, when she looked once round the room and then at her sister.
“’Tis a fair, peaceful room,” she said. “And the prayers I have prayed in it have been answered. To-day I saw my mother, and she told me so.”
“Anne! Anne!” cried her Grace, leaning over her and gazing fearfully into her face; for though her words sounded like delirium, her look had no wildness in it. And yet—“Anne, Anne! you wander, love,” the duchess cried.
Anne smiled a strange, sweet smile. “Perchance I do,” she said. “I know not truly, but I am very happy. She said that all was over, and that I had not done wrong. She had a fair, young face, with eyes that seemed to have looked always at the stars of heaven. She said I had done no wrong.”
The duchess’s face laid itself down upon the pillow, a river of clear tears running down her cheeks.
“Wrong!” she said—“you! dear one—woman of Christ’s heart, if ever lived one. You were so weak and I so strong, and yet as I look back it seems that all of good that made me worthy to be wife and mother I learned from your simplicity.”
Through the tower window and the ivy closing round it, the blueness of the summer sky was heavenly fair; soft, and light white clouds floated across the clearness of its sapphire. On this Anne’s eyes were fixed with an uplifted tenderness until she broke her silence.
“Soon I shall be away,” she said. “Soon all will be left behind. And I would tell you that my prayers were answered—and so, sure, yours will be.”
No man could tell what made the duchess then fall on her knees, but she herself knew. ’Twas that she saw in the exalted dying face that turned to hers concealing nothing more.
“Anne! Anne!” she cried. “Sister Anne! Mother Anne of my children! You have known—you have known all the years and kept it hid!”
She dropped her queenly head and shielded the whiteness of her face in the coverlid’s folds.
“Ay, sister,” Anne said, coming a little back to earth, “and from the first. I found a letter near the sun-dial—I guessed—I loved you—and could do naught else but guard you. Many a day have I watched within the rose-garden—many a day—and night—God pardon me—and night. When I knew a letter was hid, ’twas my wont to linger near, knowing that my presence would keep others away. And when you approached—or he—I slipped aside and waited beyond the rose hedge—that if I heard a step, I might make some sound of warning. Sister, I was your sentinel, and being so, knelt while on my guard, and prayed.”
“My sentinel!” Clorinda cried. “And knowing all, you so guarded me night and day, and prayed God’s pity on my poor madness and girl’s frenzy!” And she gazed at her in amaze, and with humblest, burning tears.
“For my own poor self as well as for you, sister, did I pray God’s pity as I knelt,” said Anne. “For long I knew it not—being so ignorant—but alas! I loved him too!—I loved him too! I have loved no man other all my days. He was unworthy any woman’s love—and I was too lowly for him to cast a glance on; but I was a woman, and God made us so.”
Clorinda clutched her pallid hand.
“Dear God,” she cried, “you loved him!”
Anne moved upon her pillow, drawing weakly, slowly near until her white lips were close upon her sister’s ear.
“The night,” she panted—“the night you bore him—in your arms—”
Then did the other woman give a shuddering start and lift her head, staring with a frozen face.
“What! what!” she cried.
“Down the dark stairway,” the panting voice went on, “to the far cellar—I kept watch again.”
“You kept watch—you?” the duchess gasped.
“Upon the stair which led to the servants’ place—that I might stop them if—if aught disturbed them, and they oped their doors—that I might send them back, telling them—it was I.”
Then stooped the duchess nearer to her, her hands clutching the coverlid, her eyes widening.
“Anne, Anne,” she cried, “you knew the awful thing that I would hide! That too? You knew that he wasthere!”
Anne lay upon her pillow, her own eyes gazing out through the ivy-hung window of her tower at the blue sky and the fair, fleecy clouds. A flock of snow-white doves were flying back and forth across it, and one sate upon the window’s deep ledge and cooed. All was warm and perfumed with summer’s sweetness. There seemed naught between her and the uplifting blueness, and naught of the earth was near but the dove’s deep-throated cooing and the laughter of her Grace’s children floating upward from the garden of flowers below.
“I lie upon the brink,” she said—“upon the brink, sister, and methinks my soul is too near to God’s pure justice to fear as human things fear, and judge as earth does. She said I did no wrong. Yes, I knew.”
“And knowing,” her sister cried, “you came to methat afternoon!”
“To stand by that which lay hidden, that I might keep the rest away. Being a poor creature and timorous and weak—”
“Weak! weak!” the duchess cried, amid a greater flood of streaming tears—“ay, I have dared to call you so, who have the heart of a great lioness. Oh, sweet Anne—weak!”
“’Twas love,” Anne whispered. “Your love was strong, and so was mine. That other love was not for me. I knew that my long woman’s life would pass without it—for woman’s life is long, alas! if love comes not. But you were love’s self, and I worshipped you and it; and to myself I said—praying forgiveness on my knees—that one woman should know love if I did not. And being so poor and imperfect a thing, what mattered if I gave my soul for you—and love, which is so great, and rules the world. Look at the doves, sister, look at them, flying past the heavenly blueness—and she said I did no wrong.”
Her hand was wet with tears fallen upon it, as her duchess sister knelt, and held and kissed it, sobbing.
“You knew, poor love, you knew!” she cried.
“Ay, all of it I knew,” Anne said—“his torture of you and the madness of your horror. And when he forced himself within the Panelled Parlour that day of fate, I knew he came to strike some deadly blow; and in such anguish I waited in my chamber for the end, that when it came not, I crept down, praying that somehow I might come between—and I went in the room!”
“And there—what saw you?” quoth the duchess, shuddering. “Somewhat you must have seen, or you could not have known.”
“Ay,” said Anne, “and heard!” and her chest heaved.
“Heard!” cried Clorinda. “Great God of mercy!”
“The room was empty, and I stood alone. It was so still I was afraid; it seemed so like the silence of the grave; and then there came a sound—a long and shuddering breath—but one—and then—”
The memory brought itself too keenly back, and she fell a-shivering.
“I heard a slipping sound, and a dead hand fell on the floor-lying outstretched, its palm turned upwards, showing beneath the valance of the couch.”
She threw her frail arms round her sister’s neck, and as Clorinda clasped her own, breathing gaspingly, they swayed together.
“What did you then?” the duchess cried, in a wild whisper.
“I prayed God keep me sane—and knelt—and looked below. I thrust it back—the dead hand, saying aloud, ‘Swoon you must not, swoon you must not, swoon you shall not—God help! God help!’—and I saw!—the purple mark—his eyes upturned—his fair curls spread; and I lost strength and fell upon my side, and for a minute lay there—knowing that shudder of breath had been the very last expelling of his being, and his hand had fallen by its own weight.”
“O God! O God! O God!” Clorinda cried, and over and over said the word, and over again.
“How was’t—how was’t?” Anne shuddered, clinging to her. “How was’t ’twas done? I have so suffered, being weak—I have so prayed! God will have mercy—but it has done me to death, this knowledge, and before I die, I pray you tell me, that I may speak truly at God’s throne.”
“O God! O God! O God!” Clorinda groaned—“O God!” and having cried so, looking up, was blanched as a thing struck with death, her eyes like a great stag’s that stands at bay.
“Stay, stay!” she cried, with a sudden shock of horror, for a new thought had come to her which, strangely, she had not had before. “You thought Imurderedhim?”
Convulsive sobs heaved Anne’s poor chest, tears sweeping her hollow cheeks, her thin, soft hands clinging piteously to her sister’s.
“Through all these years I have known nothing,” she wept—“sister, I have known nothing but that I found him hidden there, a dead man, whom you so hated and so feared.”
Her hands resting upon the bed’s edge, Clorinda held her body upright, such passion of wonder, love, and pitying adoring awe in her large eyes as was a thing like to worship.
“You thought Imurderedhim, and loved me still,” she said. “You thought I murdered him, and still you shielded me, and gave me chance to live, and to repent, and know love’s highest sweetness. You thought I murdered him, and yet your soul had mercy. Now do I believe in God, for only a God could make a heart so noble.”
“And you—did not—” cried out Anne, and raised upon her elbow, her breast panting, but her eyes growing wide with light as from stars from heaven. “Oh, sister love—thanks be to Christ who died!”
The duchess rose, and stood up tall and great, her arms out-thrown.
“I think ’twas God Himself who did it,” she said, “though ’twas I who struck the blow. He drove me mad and blind, he tortured me, and thrust to my heart’s core. He taunted me with that vile thing Nature will not let women bear, and did it in my Gerald’s name, calling on him. And then I struck with my whip, knowing nothing, not seeing, only striking, like a goaded dying thing. He fell—he fell and lay there—and all was done!”
“But not with murderous thought—only through frenzy and a cruel chance—a cruel, cruel chance. And of your own will blood is not upon your hand,” Anne panted, and sank back upon her pillow.
“With deepest oaths I swear,” Clorinda said, and she spoke through her clenched teeth, “if I had not loved, if Gerald had not been my soul’s life and I his, I would have stood upright and laughed in his face at the devil’s threats. Should I have feared? You know me. Was there a thing on earth or in heaven or hell I feared until love rent me. ’Twould but have fired my blood, and made me mad with fury that dares all. ‘Spread it abroad!’ I would have cried to him. ‘Tell it to all the world, craven and outcast, whose vileness all men know, and see how I shall bear myself, and how I shall drive through the town with head erect. As I bore myself when I set the rose crown on my head, so shall I bear myself then. And you shall see what comes!’ This would I have said, and held to it, and gloried. But I knew love, and there was an anguish that I could not endure—that my Gerald should look at me with changed eyes, feeling that somewhat of his rightful meed was gone. And I was all distraught and conquered. Of ending his base life I never thought, never at my wildest, though I had thought to end my own; but when Fate struck the blow for me, then I swore that carrion should not taint my whole life through. It should not—should not—for ’twas Fate’s self had doomed me to my ruin. And there it lay until the night; for this I planned, that being of such great strength for a woman, I could bear his body in my arms to the farthest of that labyrinth of cellars I had commanded to be cut off from the rest and closed; and so I did when all were sleeping—but you, poor Anne—but you! And there I laid him, and there he lies to-day—an evil thing turned to a handful of dust.”
“It was not murder,” whispered Anne—“no, it was not.” She lifted to her sister’s gaze a quivering lip. “And yet once I had loved him—years I had loved him,” she said, whispering still. “And in a woman there is ever somewhat that the mother creature feels”—the hand which held her sister’s shook as with an ague, and her poor lip quivered—“Sister, I—saw him again!”
The duchess drew closer as she gasped, “Again!”
“I could not rest,” the poor voice said. “He had been so base, he was so beautiful, and so unworthy love—and he was dead,—none knowing, untouched by any hand that even pitied him that he was so base a thing, for that indeed is piteous when death comes and none can be repentant. And he lay so hard, so hard upon the stones.”
Her teeth were chattering, and with a breath drawn like a wild sob of terror, the duchess threw her arm about her and drew her nearer.
“Sweet Anne,” she shuddered—“sweet Anne—come back—you wander!”
“Nay, ’tis not wandering,” Anne said. “’Tis true, sister. There is no night these years gone by I have not remembered it again—and seen. In the night after that you bore him there—I prayed until the mid-hours, when all were sleeping fast—and then I stole down—in my bare feet, that none could hear me—and at last I found my way in the black dark—feeling the walls until I reached that farthest door in the stone—and then I lighted my taper and oped it.”
“Anne!” cried the duchess—“Anne, look through the tower window at the blueness of the sky—at the blueness, Anne!” But drops of cold water had started out and stood upon her brow.
“He lay there in his grave—it was a little black place with its stone walls—his fair locks were tumbled,” Anne went on, whispering. “The spot was black upon his brow—and methought he had stopped mocking, and surely looked upon some great and awful thing which asked of him a question. I knelt, and laid his curls straight, and his hands, and tried to shut his eyes, but close they would not, but stared at that which questioned. And having loved him so, I kissed his poor cheek as his mother might have done, that he might not stand outside, having carried not one tender human thought with him. And, oh, I prayed, sister—I prayed for his poor soul with all my own. ‘If there is one noble or gentle thing he has ever done through all his life,’ I prayed, ‘Jesus remember it—Christ do not forget.’ We who are human do so few things that are noble—oh, surely one must count.”
The duchess’s head lay near her sister’s breast, and she had fallen a-sobbing—a-sobbing and weeping like a young broken child.
“Oh, brave and noble, pitiful, strong, fair soul!” she cried. “As Christ loved you have loved, and He would hear your praying. Since you so pleaded, He would find one thing to hang His mercy on.”
She lifted her fair, tear-streaming face, clasping her hands as one praying.
“And I—and I,” she cried—“have I not built a temple on his grave? Have I not tried to live a fair life, and be as Christ bade me? Have I not loved, and pitied, and succoured those in pain? Have I not filled a great man’s days with bliss, and love, and wifely worship? Have I not given him noble children, bred in high lovingness, and taught to love all things God made, even the very beasts that perish, since they, too, suffer as all do? Have I left aught undone? Oh, sister, I have so prayed that I left naught. Even though I could not believe that there was One who, ruling all, could yet be pitiless as He is to some, I have prayed That—which sure it seems must be, though we comprehend it not—to teach me faith in something greater than my poor self, and not of earth. Say this to Christ’s self when you are face to face—say this to Him, I pray you! Anne, Anne, look not so strangely through the window at the blueness of the sky, sweet soul, but look at me.”
For Anne lay upon her pillow so smiling that ’twas a strange thing to behold. It seemed as she were smiling at the whiteness of the doves against the blue. A moment her sister stood up watching her, and then she stirred, meaning to go to call one of the servants waiting outside; but though she moved not her gaze from the tower window, Mistress Anne faintly spoke.
“Nay—stay,” she breathed. “I go—softly—stay.”
Clorinda fell upon her knees again and bent her lips close to her ear. This was death, and yet she feared it not—this was the passing of a soul, and while it went it seemed so fair and loving a thing that she could ask it her last question—her greatest—knowing it was so near to God that its answer must be rest.
“Anne, Anne,” she whispered, “must he know—my Gerald? Must I—must I tell him all? If so I must, I will—upon my knees.”
The doves came flying downward from the blue, and lighted on the window stone and cooed—Anne’s answer was as low as her soft breath and her still eyes were filled with joy at that she saw but which another could not.
“Nay,” she breathed. “Tell him not. What need? Wait, and let God tell him—who understands.”
Then did her soft breath stop, and she lay still, her eyes yet open and smiling at the blossoms, and the doves who sate upon the window-ledge and lowly cooed and cooed.
* * * * *
’Twas her duchess sister who clad her for her last sleeping, and made her chamber fair—the hand of no other touched her; and while ’twas done the tower chamber was full of the golden sunshine, and the doves ceased not to flutter about the window, and coo as if they spoke lovingly to each other of what lay within the room.
Then the children came to look, their arms full of blossoms and flowering sprays. They had been told only fair things of death, and knowing but these fair things, thought of it but as the opening of a golden door. They entered softly, as entering the chamber of a queen, and moving tenderly, with low and gentle speech, spread all their flowers about the bed—laying them round her head, on her breast, and in her hands, and strewing them thick everywhere.
“She lies in a bower and smiles at us,” one said. “She hath grown beautiful like you, mother, and her face seems like a white star in the morning.”
“She loves us as she ever did,” the fair child Daphne said; “she will never cease to love us, and will be our angel. Now have we an angel of our own.”
When the duke returned, who had been absent since the day before, the duchess led him to the tower chamber, and they stood together hand in hand and gazed at her peace.
“Gerald,” the duchess said, in her tender voice, “she smiles, does not she?”
“Yes,” was Osmonde’s answer—“yes, love, as if at God, who has smiled at herself—faithful, tender woman heart!”
The hand which he held in his clasp clung closer. The other crept to his shoulder and lay there tremblingly.
“How faithful and how tender, my Gerald,” Clorinda said, “I only know. She is my saint—sweet Anne, whom I dared treat so lightly in my poor wayward days. Gerald, she knows all my sins, and to-day she has carried them in her pure hands to God and asked His mercy on them. She had none of her own.”
“And so having done, dear heart, she lies amid her flowers, and smiles,” he said, and he drew her white hand to press it against his breast.
* * * * *
While her body slept beneath soft turf and flowers, and that which was her self was given in God’s heaven, all joys for which her earthly being had yearned, even when unknowing how to name its longing, each year that passed made more complete and splendid the lives of those she so had loved. Never, ’twas said, had woman done such deeds of gentleness and shown so sweet and generous a wisdom as the great duchess. None who were weak were in danger if she used her strength to aid them; no man or woman was a lost thing whom she tried to save: such tasks she set herself as no lady had ever given herself before; but ’twas not her way to fail—her will being so powerful, her brain so clear, her heart so purely noble. Pauper and prince, noble and hind honoured her and her lord alike, and all felt wonder at their happiness. It seemed that they had learned life’s meaning and the honouring of love, and this they taught to their children, to the enriching of a long and noble line. In the ripeness of years they passed from earth in as beauteous peace as the sun sets, and upon a tablet above the resting-place of their ancestors there are inscribed lines like these:—
“Here sleeps by her husband the purest and noblest lady God e’er loved, yet the high and gentle deeds of her chaste sweet life sleep not, but live and grow, and so will do so long as earth is earth.”
“Here sleeps by her husband the purest and noblest lady God e’er loved, yet the high and gentle deeds of her chaste sweet life sleep not, but live and grow, and so will do so long as earth is earth.”