A Lady of Quality

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A LADY OF QUALITY


Being a most curious, hitherto unknown
history, as related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff
but not presented to the World of
Fashion through the pages of
The Tatler, and now for the
first time written down
by
Francis Hodgson Burnett

Were Nature just to Man from his first hour, he need not ask for
Mercy; then 'tis for us--the toys of Nature--to be both just and
merciful, for so only can the wrongs she does be undone.




CHAPTER I--The twenty-fourth day of November 1690


On a wintry morning at the close of 1690, the sun shining faint and red
through a light fog, there was a great noise of baying dogs, loud voices,
and trampling of horses in the courtyard at Wildairs Hall; Sir Jeoffry
being about to go forth a-hunting, and being a man with a choleric temper
and big, loud voice, and given to oaths and noise even when in
good-humour, his riding forth with his friends at any time was attended
with boisterous commotion. This morning it was more so than usual, for
he had guests with him who had come to his house the day before, and had
supped late and drunk deeply, whereby the day found them, some with
headaches, some with a nausea at their stomachs, and some only in an evil
humour which made them curse at their horses when they were restless, and
break into loud surly laughs when a coarse joke was made. There were
many such jokes, Sir Jeoffry and his boon companions being renowned
throughout the county for the freedom of their conversation as for the
scandal of their pastimes, and this day 'twas well indeed, as their loud-
voiced, oath-besprinkled jests rang out on the cold air, that there were
no ladies about to ride forth with them.

'Twas Sir Jeoffry who was louder than any other, he having drunk even
deeper than the rest, and though 'twas his boast that he could carry a
bottle more than any man, and see all his guests under the table, his
last night's bout had left him in ill-humour and boisterous. He strode
about, casting oaths at the dogs and rating the servants, and when he
mounted his big black horse 'twas amid such a clamour of voices and
baying hounds that the place was like Pandemonium.

He was a large man of florid good looks, black eyes, and full habit of
body, and had been much renowned in his youth for his great strength,
which was indeed almost that of a giant, and for his deeds of prowess in
the saddle and at the table when the bottle went round. There were many
evil stories of his roysterings, but it was not his way to think of them
as evil, but rather to his credit as a man of the world, for, when he
heard that they were gossiped about, he greeted the information with a
loud triumphant laugh. He had married, when she was fifteen, the
blooming toast of the county, for whom his passion had long died out,
having indeed departed with the honeymoon, which had been of the
briefest, and afterwards he having borne her a grudge for what he chose
to consider her undutiful conduct. This grudge was founded on the fact
that, though she had presented him each year since their marriage with a
child, after nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was
bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his
offspring an ill turn done him.

He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle
creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her
lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another
sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce
remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was
certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view,
and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was shortening a stirrup and
being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by accident cast his eye upward to
a chamber window peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he
saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look down upon him as if
searching for him with a purpose.

He uttered an exclamation of anger.

"Damnation! Mother Posset again," he said. "What does she there, old
frump?"

The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an
unheard-of thing happened--among the servants in the hall, the same old
woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she
descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on
his black horse.

"The Devil!" he exclaimed--"what are you here for? 'Tis not time for
another wench upstairs, surely?"

"'Tis not time," answered the old nurse acidly, taking her tone from his
own. "But there is one, but an hour old, and my lady--"

"Be damned to her!" quoth Sir Jeoffry savagely. "A ninth one--and 'tis
nine too many. 'Tis more than man can bear. She does it but to spite
me."

"'Tis ill treatment for a gentleman who wants an heir," the old woman
answered, as disrespectful of his spouse as he was, being a time-serving
crone, and knowing that it paid but poorly to coddle women who did not as
their husbands would have them in the way of offspring. "It should have
been a fine boy, but it is not, and my lady--"

"Damn her puling tricks!" said Sir Jeoffry again, pulling at his horse's
bit until the beast reared.

"She would not let me rest until I came to you," said the nurse
resentfully. "She would have you told that she felt strangely, and
before you went forth would have a word with you."

"I cannot come, and am not in the mood for it if I could," was his
answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time she
hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she--but nine is
more than I have patience for."

"She is light-headed, mayhap," said the nurse. "She lieth huddled in a
heap, staring and muttering, and she would leave me no peace till I
promised to say to you, 'For the sake of poor little Daphne, whom you
will sure remember.' She pinched my hand and said it again and again."

Sir Jeoffry dragged at his horse's mouth and swore again.

"She was fifteen then, and had not given me nine yellow-faced wenches,"
he said. "Tell her I had gone a-hunting and you were too late;" and he
struck his big black beast with the whip, and it bounded away with him,
hounds and huntsmen and fellow-roysterers galloping after, his guests,
who had caught at the reason of his wrath, grinning as they rode.

* * * * *

In a huge chamber hung with tattered tapestries and barely set forth with
cumbersome pieces of furnishing, my lady lay in a gloomy, canopied bed,
with her new-born child at her side, but not looking at or touching it,
seeming rather to have withdrawn herself from the pillow on which it lay
in its swaddling-clothes.

She was but a little lady, and now, as she lay in the large bed, her face
and form shrunken and drawn with suffering, she looked scarce bigger than
a child. In the brief days of her happiness those who toasted her had
called her Titania for her fairy slightness and delicate beauty, but then
her fair wavy locks had been of a length that touched the ground when her
woman unbound them, and she had had the colour of a wild rose and the
eyes of a tender little fawn. Sir Jeoffry for a month or so had paid
tempestuous court to her, and had so won her heart with his dashing way
of love-making and the daringness of his reputation, that she had thought
herself--being child enough to think so--the luckiest young lady in the
world that his black eye should have fallen upon her with favour. Each
year since, with the bearing of each child, she had lost some of her
beauty. With each one her lovely hair fell out still more, her wild-rose
colour faded, and her shape was spoiled. She grew thin and yellow, only
a scant covering of the fair hair was left her, and her eyes were big and
sunken. Her marriage having displeased her family, and Sir Jeoffry
having a distaste for the ceremonies of visiting and entertainment, save
where his own cronies were concerned, she had no friends, and grew
lonelier and lonelier as the sad years went by. She being so without
hope and her life so dreary, her children were neither strong nor
beautiful, and died quickly, each one bringing her only the anguish of
birth and death. This wintry morning her ninth lay slumbering by her
side; the noise of baying dogs and boisterous men had died away with the
last sound of the horses' hoofs; the little light which came into the
room through the ivied window was a faint yellowish red; she was cold,
because the fire in the chimney was but a scant, failing one; she was
alone--and she knew that the time had come for her death. This she knew
full well.

She was alone, because, being so disrespected and deserted by her lord,
and being of a timid and gentle nature, she could not command her
insufficient retinue of servants, and none served her as was their duty.
The old woman Sir Jeoffry had dubbed Mother Posset had been her sole
attendant at such times as these for the past five years, because she
would come to her for a less fee than a better woman, and Sir Jeoffry had
sworn he would not pay for wenches being brought into the world. She was
a slovenly, guzzling old crone, who drank caudle from morning till night,
and demanded good living as a support during the performance of her
trying duties; but these last she contrived to make wondrous light,
knowing that there was none to reprove her.

"A fine night I have had," she had grumbled when she brought back Sir
Jeoffry's answer to her lady's message. "My old bones are like to break,
and my back will not straighten itself. I will go to the kitchen to get
victuals and somewhat to warm me; your ladyship's own woman shall sit
with you."

Her ladyship's "own woman" was also the sole attendant of the two little
girls, Barbara and Anne, whose nursery was in another wing of the house,
and my lady knew full well she would not come if she were told, and that
there would be no message sent to her.

She knew, too, that the fire was going out, but, though she shivered
under the bed-clothes, she was too weak to call the woman back when she
saw her depart without putting fresh fuel upon it.

So she lay alone, poor lady, and there was no sound about her, and her
thin little mouth began to feebly quiver, and her great eyes, which
stared at the hangings, to fill with slow cold tears, for in sooth they
were not warm, but seemed to chill her poor cheeks as they rolled slowly
down them, leaving a wet streak behind them which she was too far gone in
weakness to attempt to lift her hand to wipe away.

"Nine times like this," she panted faintly, "and 'tis for naught but
oaths and hard words that blame me. I was but a child myself and he
loved me. When 'twas 'My Daphne,' and 'My beauteous little Daphne,' he
loved me in his own man's way. But now--" she faintly rolled her head
from side to side. "Women are poor things"--a chill salt tear sliding
past her lips so that she tasted its bitterness--"only to be kissed for
an hour, and then like this--only for this and nothing else. I would
that this one had been dead."

Her breath came slower and more pantingly, and her eyes stared more
widely.

"I was but a child," she whispered--"a child--as--as this will be--if she
lives fifteen years."

Despite her weakness, and it was great and woefully increasing with each
panting breath, she slowly laboured to turn herself towards the pillow on
which her offspring lay, and, this done, she lay staring at the child and
gasping, her thin chest rising and falling convulsively. Ah, how she
panted, and how she stared, the glaze of death stealing slowly over her
wide-opened eyes; and yet, dimming as they were, they saw in the sleeping
infant a strange and troublous thing--though it was but a few hours old
'twas not as red and crumple visaged as new-born infants usually are, its
little head was covered with thick black silk, and its small features
were of singular definiteness. She dragged herself nearer to gaze.

"She looks not like the others," she said. "They had no beauty--and are
safe. She--she will be like--Jeoffry--and like _me_."

The dying fire fell lower with a shuddering sound.

"If she is--beautiful, and has but her father, and no mother!" she
whispered, the words dragged forth slowly, "only evil can come to her.
From her first hour--she will know naught else, poor heart, poor heart!"

There was a rattling in her throat as she breathed, but in her glazing
eyes a gleam like passion leaped, and gasping, she dragged nearer.

"'Tis not fair," she cried. "If I--if I could lay my hand upon thy
mouth--and stop thy breathing--thou poor thing, 'twould be fairer--but--I
have no strength."

She gathered all her dying will and brought her hand up to the infant's
mouth. A wild look was on her poor, small face, she panted and fell
forward on its breast, the rattle in her throat growing louder. The
child awakened, opening great black eyes, and with her dying weakness its
new-born life struggled. Her cold hand lay upon I its mouth, and her
head upon its body, for she was too far gone to move if she had willed to
do so. But the tiny creature's strength was marvellous. It gasped, it
fought, its little limbs struggled beneath her, it writhed until the cold
hand fell away, and then, its baby mouth set free, it fell a-shrieking.
Its cries were not like those of a new-born thing, but fierce and shrill,
and even held the sound of infant passion. 'Twas not a thing to let its
life go easily, 'twas of those born to do battle.

Its lusty screaming pierced her ear perhaps--she drew a long, slow
breath, and then another, and another still--the last one trembled and
stopped short, and the last cinder fell dead from the fire.

* * * * *

When the nurse came bustling and fretting back, the chamber was cold as
the grave's self--there were only dead embers on the hearth, the new-born
child's cries filled all the desolate air, and my lady was lying stone
dead, her poor head resting on her offspring's feet, the while her open
glazed eyes seemed to stare at it as if in asking Fate some awful
question.




CHAPTER II--In which Sir Jeoffry encounters his offspring


In a remote wing of the house, in barren, ill-kept rooms, the poor
infants of the dead lady had struggled through their brief lives, and
given them up, one after the other. Sir Jeoffry had not wished to see
them, nor had he done so, but upon the rarest occasions, and then nearly
always by some untoward accident. The six who had died, even their
mother had scarcely wept for; her weeping had been that they should have
been fated to come into the world, and when they went out of it she knew
she need not mourn their going as untimely. The two who had not
perished, she had regarded sadly day by day, seeing they had no beauty
and that their faces promised none. Naught but great beauty would have
excused their existence in their father's eyes, as beauty might have
helped them to good matches which would have rid him of them. But 'twas
the sad ill fortune of the children Anne and Barbara to have been treated
by Nature in a way but niggardly. They were pale young misses, with
insignificant faces and snub noses, resembling an aunt who died a
spinster, as they themselves seemed most likely to. Sir Jeoffry could
not bear the sight of them, and they fled at the sound of his footsteps,
if it so happened that by chance they heard it, huddling together in
corners, and slinking behind doors or anything big enough to hide them.
They had no playthings and no companions and no pleasures but such as the
innocent invention of childhood contrives for itself.

After their mother's death a youth desolate and strange indeed lay before
them. A spinster who was a poor relation was the only person of
respectable breeding who ever came near them. To save herself from
genteel starvation, she had offered herself for the place of governess to
them, though she was fitted for the position neither by education nor
character. Mistress Margery Wimpole was a poor, dull creature, having no
wilful harm in her, but endowed with neither dignity nor wit. She lived
in fear of Sir Jeoffry, and in fear of the servants, who knew full well
that she was an humble dependant, and treated her as one. She hid away
with her pupils' in the bare school-room in the west wing, and taught
them to spell and write and work samplers. She herself knew no more.

The child who had cost her mother her life had no happier prospect than
her sisters. Her father felt her more an intruder than they had been, he
being of the mind that to house and feed and clothe, howsoever poorly,
these three burdens on him was a drain scarcely to be borne. His wife
had been a toast and not a fortune, and his estate not being great, he
possessed no more than his drinking, roystering, and gambling made full
demands upon.

The child was baptized Clorinda, and bred, so to speak, from her first
hour, in the garret and the servants' hall. Once only did her father
behold her during her infancy, which event was a mere accident, as he had
expressed no wish to see her, and only came upon her in the nurse's arms
some weeks after her mother's death. 'Twas quite by chance. The woman,
who was young and buxom, had begun an intrigue with a groom, and having a
mind to see him, was crossing the stable-yard, carrying her charge with
her, when Sir Jeoffry came by to visit a horse.

The woman came plump upon him, entering a stable as he came out of it;
she gave a frightened start, and almost let the child drop, at which it
set up a strong, shrill cry, and thus Sir Jeoffry saw it, and seeing it,
was thrown at once into a passion which expressed itself after the manner
of all his emotion, and left the nurse quaking with fear.

"Thunder and damnation!" he exclaimed, as he strode away after the
encounter; "'tis the ugliest yet. A yellow-faced girl brat, with eyes
like an owl's in an ivy-bush, and with a voice like a very peacocks.
Another mawking, plain slut that no man will take off my hands."

He did not see her again for six years. But little wit was needed to
learn that 'twas best to keep her out of his sight, as her sisters were
kept, and this was done without difficulty, as he avoided the wing of the
house where the children lived, as if it were stricken with the plague.

But the child Clorinda, it seemed, was of lustier stock than her older
sisters, and this those about her soon found out to their grievous
disturbance. When Mother Posset had drawn her from under her dead
mother's body she had not left shrieking for an hour, but had kept up her
fierce cries until the roof rang with them, and the old woman had jogged
her about and beat her back in the hopes of stifling her, until she was
exhausted and dismayed. For the child would not be stilled, and seemed
to have such strength and persistence in her as surely infant never
showed before.

"Never saw I such a brat among all I have brought into the world," old
Posset quavered. "She hath the voice of a six-months boy. It cracks my
very ears. Hush thee, then, thou little wild cat."

This was but the beginning. From the first she grew apace, and in a few
months was a bouncing infant, with a strong back, and a power to make
herself heard such as had not before appeared in the family. When she
desired a thing, she yelled and roared with such a vigour as left no
peace for any creature about her until she was humoured, and this being
the case, rather than have their conversation and love-making put a stop
to, the servants gave her her way. In this they but followed the example
of their betters, of whom we know that it is not to the most virtuous
they submit or to the most learned, but to those who, being crossed, can
conduct themselves in a manner so disagreeable, shrewish or violent, that
life is a burden until they have their will. This the child Clorinda had
the infant wit to discover early, and having once discovered it, she
never ceased to take advantage of her knowledge. Having found in the
days when her one desire was pap, that she had but to roar lustily enough
to find it beside her in her porringer, she tried the game upon all other
occasions. When she had reached but a twelvemonth, she stood stoutly
upon her little feet, and beat her sisters to gain their playthings, and
her nurse for wanting to change her smock. She was so easily thrown into
furies, and so raged and stamped in her baby way that she was a sight to
behold, and the men-servants found amusement in badgering her. To set
Mistress Clorinda in their midst on a winter's night when they were dull,
and to torment her until her little face grew scarlet with the blood
which flew up into it, and she ran from one to the other beating them and
screaming like a young spitfire, was among them a favourite
entertainment.

"Ifackens!" said the butler one night, "but she is as like Sir Jeoffry in
her temper as one pea is like another. Ay, but she grows blood red just
as he does, and curses in her little way as he does in man's words among
his hounds in their kennel."

"And she will be of his build, too," said the housekeeper. "What mishap
changed her to a maid instead of a boy, I know not. She would have made
a strapping heir. She has the thigh and shoulders of a handsome
man-child at this hour, and she is not three years old."

"Sir Jeoffry missed his mark when he called her an ugly brat," said the
woman who had nursed her. "She will be a handsome woman--though large in
build, it may be. She will be a brown beauty, but she will have a colour
in her cheeks and lips like the red of Christmas holly, and her owl's
eyes are as black as sloes, and have fringes on them like the curtains of
a window. See how her hair grows thick on her little head, and how it
curls in great rings. My lady, her poor mother, was once a beauty, but
she was no such beauty as this one will be, for she has her father's long
limbs and fine shoulders, and the will to make every man look her way."

"Yes," said the housekeeper, who was an elderly woman, "there will be
doings--there will be doings when she is a ripe young maid. She will
take her way, and God grant she mayn't be _too_ like her father and
follow his."

It was true that she had no resemblance to her plain sisters, and bore no
likeness to them in character. The two elder children, Anne and Barbara,
were too meek-spirited to be troublesome; but during Clorinda's infancy
Mistress Margery Wimpole watched her rapid growth with fear and qualms.
She dare not reprove the servants who were ruining her by their
treatment, and whose manners were forming her own. Sir Jeoffry's
servants were no more moral than their master, and being brought up as
she was among them, their young mistress became strangely familiar with
many sights and sounds it is not the fortune of most young misses of
breeding to see and hear. The cooks and kitchen-wenches were flighty
with the grooms and men-servants, and little Mistress Clorinda, having a
passion for horses and dogs, spent many an hour in the stables with the
women who, for reasons of their own, were pleased enough to take her
there as an excuse for seeking amusement for themselves. She played in
the kennels and among the horses' heels, and learned to use oaths as
roundly as any Giles or Tom whose work was to wield the curry comb. It
was indeed a curious thing to hear her red baby mouth pour forth curses
and unseemly words as she would at any one who crossed her. Her temper
and hot-headedness carried all before them, and the grooms and stable-
boys found great sport in the language my young lady used in her innocent
furies. But balk her in a whim, and she would pour forth the eloquence
of a fish-wife or a lady of easy virtue in a pot-house quarrel. There
was no human creature near her who had mind or heart enough to see the
awfulness of her condition, or to strive to teach her to check her
passions; and in the midst of these perilous surroundings the little
virago grew handsomer and of finer carriage every hour, as if on the rank
diet that fed her she throve and flourished.

There came a day at last when she had reached six years old, when by a
trick of chance a turn was given to the wheel of her fate.

She had not reached three when a groom first set her on a horse's back
and led her about the stable-yard, and she had so delighted in her
exalted position, and had so shouted for pleasure and clutched her
steed's rein and clucked at him, that her audience had looked on with
roars of laughter. From that time she would be put up every day, and as
time went on showed such unchildish courage and spirit that she furnished
to her servant companions a new pastime. Soon she would not be held on,
but riding astride like a boy, would sit up as straight as a man and
swear at her horse, beating him with her heels and little fists if his
pace did not suit her. She knew no fear, and would have used a whip so
readily that the men did not dare to trust her with one, and knew they
must not mount her on a steed too mettlesome. By the time she passed her
sixth birthday she could ride as well as a grown man, and was as familiar
with her father's horses as he himself, though he knew nothing of the
matter, it being always contrived that she should be out of sight when he
visited his hunters.