Chapter X--"Yes--I have marked him"

A Lady of Quality

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Through the brilliant, happy year succeeding to his marriage my
Lord of Dunstanwolde lived like a man who dreams a blissful dream and
knows it is one.

"I feel," he said to his lady, "as if 'twere too great rapture
to last, and yet what end could come, unless you ceased to be kind to
me; and, in truth, I feel that you are too noble above all other
women to change, unless I were more unworthy than I could ever be
since you are mine."

Both in the town and in the country, which last place heard many
things of his condition and estate through rumour, he was the man
most wondered at and envied of his time--envied because of his
strange happiness; wondered at because having, when long past youth,
borne off this arrogant beauty from all other aspirants she showed no
arrogance to him, and was as perfect a wife as could have been some
woman without gifts whom he had lifted from low estate and endowed
with rank and fortune. She seemed both to respect himself and her
position as his lady and spouse. Her manner of reigning in his
household was among his many delights the greatest. It was a great
house, and an old one, built long before by a Dunstanwolde whose
lavish feasts and riotous banquets had been the notable feature of
his life. It was curiously rambling in its structure. The rooms of
entertainment were large and splendid, the halls and staircases
stately; below stairs there was space for an army of servants to be
disposed of; and its network of cellars and wine- vaults was so
beyond all need that more than one long arched stone passage was shut
up as being without use, and but letting cold, damp air into
corridors leading to the servants' quarters. It was, indeed, my Lady
Dunstanwolde who had ordered the closing of this part when it had
been her pleasure to be shown her domain by her housekeeper, the
which had greatly awed and impressed her household as signifying
that, exalted lady as she was, her wit was practical as well as
brilliant, and that her eyes being open to her surroundings, she
meant not that her lacqueys should rob her and her scullions filch,
thinking that she was so high that she was ignorant of common things
and blind.

"You will be well housed and fed and paid your dues," she said
to them; "but the first man or woman who does a task ill or
dishonestly will be turned from his place that hour. I deal
justice--not mercy."

"Such a mistress they have never had before," said my lord when
she related this to him. "Nay, they have never dreamed of such a
lady-- one who can be at once so severe and so kind. But there is
none other such, my dearest one. They will fear and worship you."

She gave him one of her sweet, splendid smiles. It was the
sweetness she at rare times gave her splendid smile which was her
marvellous power.

"I would not be too grand a lady to be a good housewife," she
said. "I may not order your dinners, my dear lord, or sweep your
corridors, but they shall know I rule your household and would rule
it well."

"You are a goddess!" he cried, kneeling to her, enraptured.
"And you have given yourself to a poor mortal man, who can but
worship you."

"You give me all I have," she said, "and you love me nobly, and
I am grateful."

Her assemblies were the most brilliant in the town, and the most
to be desired entrance to. Wits and beauties planned and intrigued
that they might be bidden to her house; beaux and fine ladies fell
into the spleen if she neglected them. Her lord's kinsman the Duke
of Osmonde, who had been present when she first knelt to Royalty, had
scarce removed his eyes from her so long as he could gaze. He went
to Dunstanwolde afterwards and congratulated him with stately
courtesy upon his great good fortune and happiness, speaking almost
with fire of her beauty and majesty, and thanking his kinsman that
through him such perfections had been given to their name and house.
From that time, at all special assemblies given by his kinsman he was
present, the observed of all observers. He was a man of whom 'twas
said that he was the most magnificent gentleman in Europe; that there
was none to compare with him in the combination of gifts given both
by Nature and Fortune. His beauty both of feature and carriage was
of the greatest, his mind was of the highest, and his education far
beyond that of the age he lived in. It was not the fashion of the
day that men of his rank should devote themselves to the cultivation
of their intellects instead of to a life of pleasure; but this he had
done from his earliest youth, and now, in his perfect though early
maturity, he had no equal in polished knowledge and charm of bearing.
He was the patron of literature and art; men of genius were not kept
waiting in his ante-chamber, but were received by him with courtesy
and honour. At the Court 'twas well known there was no man who stood
so near the throne in favour, and that there was no union so exalted
that he might not have made his suit as rather that of a superior
than an equal. The Queen both loved and honoured him, and
condescended to avow as much with gracious frankness. She knew no
other man, she deigned to say, who was so worthy of honour and
affection, and that he had not married must be because there was no
woman who could meet him on ground that was equal. If there were no
scandals about him--and there were none--'twas not because he was
cold of heart or imagination. No man or woman could look into his
deep eye and not know that when love came to him 'twould be a burning
passion, and an evil fate if it went ill instead of happily.

"Being past his callow, youthful days, 'tis time he made some
woman a duchess," Dunstanwolde said reflectively once to his wife.
"'Twould be more fitting that he should; and it is his way to honour
his house in all things, and bear himself without fault as the head
of it. Methinks it strange he makes no move to do it."

"No, 'tis not strange," said my lady, looking under her black-
fringed lids at the glow of the fire, as though reflecting also.
"There is no strangeness in it."

"Why not?" her lord asked.

"There is no mate for him," she answered slowly. "A man like
him must mate as well as marry, or he will break his heart with
silent raging at the weakness of the thing he is tied to. He is too
strong and splendid for a common woman. If he married one, 'twould
be as if a lion had taken to himself for mate a jackal or a sheep.
Ah!" with a long drawn breath--"he would go mad--mad with misery;"
and her hands, which lay upon her knee, wrung themselves hard
together, though none could see it.

"He should have a goddess, were they not so rare," said
Dunstanwolde, gently smiling. "He should hold a bitter grudge
against me, that I, his unworthy kinsman, have been given the only
one."

"Yes, he should have a goddess," said my lady slowly again; "and
there are but women, naught but women."

"You have marked him well," said her lord, admiring her wisdom.
"Methinks that you--though you have spoken to him but little, and
have but of late become his kinswoman--have marked and read him
better than the rest of us."

"Yes--I have marked him," was her answer.

"He is a man to mark, and I have a keen eye." She rose up as
she spoke, and stood before the fire, lifted by some strong feeling
to her fullest height, and towering there, splendid in the
shadow--for 'twas by twilight they talked. "He is a Man," she
said--"he is a Man! Nay, he is as God meant man should be. And if
men were so, there would be women great enough for them to mate with
and to give the world men like them." And but that she stood in the
shadow, her lord would have seen the crimson torrent rush up her
cheek and brow, and overspread her long round throat itself.

If none other had known of it, there was one man who knew that
she had marked him, though she had borne herself towards him always
with her stateliest grace. This man was his Grace the Duke himself.
From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up
the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her
wreath at his feet, and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he had
seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that had he
not come but just too late, she would have been his own. Each time
he had beheld her since that night he had felt this burn more deeply
in his soul. He was too high and fine in all his thoughts to say to
himself that in her he saw for the first time the woman who was his
peer; but this was very truth--or might have been, if Fate had set
her youth elsewhere, and a lady who was noble and her own mother had
trained and guarded her. When he saw her at the Court surrounded, as
she ever was, by a court of her own; when he saw her reigning in her
lord's house, receiving and doing gracious honour to his guests and
hers; when she passed him in her coach, drawing every eye by the
majesty of her presence, as she drove through the town, he felt a
deep pang, which was all the greater that his honour bade him conquer
it. He had no ignoble thought of her, he would have scorned to sully
his soul with any light passion; to him she was the woman who might
have been his beloved wife and duchess, who would have upheld with
him the honour and traditions of his house, whose strength and power
and beauty would have been handed down to his children, who so would
have been born endowed with gifts befitting the state to which Heaven
had called them. It was of this he thought when he saw her, and of
naught less like to do her honour. And as he had marked her so, he
saw in her eyes, despite her dignity and grace, she had marked him.
He did not know how closely, or that she gave him the attention he
could not restrain himself from bestowing upon her. But when he
bowed before her, and she greeted him with all courtesy, he saw in
her great, splendid eye that had Fate willed it so, she would have
understood all his thoughts, shared all his ambitions, and aided him
to uphold his high ideals. Nay, he knew she understood him even now,
and was stirred by what stirred him also, even though they met but
rarely, and when they encountered each other, spoke but as kinsman
and kinswoman who would show each other all gracious respect and
honour. It was because of this pang which struck his great heart at
times that he was not a frequent visitor at my Lord Dunstanwolde's
mansion, but appeared there only at such assemblies as were matters
of ceremony, his absence from which would have been a noted thing.
His kinsman was fond of him, and though himself of so much riper age,
honoured him greatly. At times he strove to lure him into visits of
greater familiarity; but though his kindness was never met coldly or
repulsed, a further intimacy was in some gracious way avoided.

"My lady must beguile you to be less formal with us," said
Dunstanwolde. And later her ladyship spoke as her husband had
privately desired: "My lord would be made greatly happy if your
Grace would honour our house oftener," she said one night, when at
the end of a great ball he was bidding her adieu.

Osmonde's deep eye met hers gently and held it. "My Lord
Dunstanwolde is always gracious and warm of heart to his kinsman," he
replied. "Do not let him think me discourteous or ungrateful. In
truth, your ladyship, I am neither the one nor the other."

The eyes of each gazed into the other's steadfastly and gravely.
The Duke of Osmonde thought of Juno's as he looked at hers; they were
of such velvet, and held such fathomless deeps.

"Your Grace is not so free as lesser men," Clorinda said. "You
cannot come and go as you would."

"No," he answered gravely, "I cannot, as I would."

And this was all.

It having been known by all the world that, despite her beauty
and her conquests, Mistress Clorinda Wildairs had not smiled with
great favour upon Sir John Oxon in the country, it was not wondered
at or made any matter of gossip that the Countess of Dunstanwolde was
but little familiar with him and saw him but rarely at her house in
town.

Once or twice he had appeared there, it is true, at my Lord
Dunstanwolde's instance, but my lady herself scarce seemed to see him
after her first courtesies as hostess were over.

"You never smiled on him, my love," Dunstanwolde said to his
wife. "You bore yourself towards him but cavalierly, as was your
ladyship's way--with all but one poor servant," tenderly; "but he was
one of the many who followed in your train, and if these gay young
fellows stay away, 'twill be said that I keep them at a distance
because I am afraid of their youth and gallantry. I would not have
it fancied that I was so ungrateful as to presume upon your goodness
and not leave to you your freedom."

"Nor would I, my lord," she answered. "But he will not come
often; I do not love him well enough."

His marriage with the heiress who had wealth in the West Indies
was broken off, or rather 'twas said had come to naught. All the
town knew it, and wondered, and talked, because it had been believed
at first that the young lady was much enamoured of him, and that he
would soon lead her to the altar, the which his creditors had greatly
rejoiced over as promising them some hope that her fortune would pay
their bills of which they had been in despair. Later, however,
gossip said that the heiress had not been so tender as was thought;
that, indeed, she had been found to be in love with another man, and
that even had she not, she had heard such stories of Sir John as
promised but little nuptial happiness for any woman that took him to
husband.

When my Lord Dunstanwolde brought his bride to town, and she
soared at once to splendid triumph and renown, inflaming every heart,
and setting every tongue at work, clamouring her praises, Sir John
Oxon saw her from afar in all the scenes of brilliant fashion she
frequented and reigned queen of. 'Twas from afar, it might be said,
he saw her only, though he was often near her, because she bore
herself as if she did not observe him, or as though he were a thing
which did not exist. The first time that she deigned to address him
was upon an occasion when she found herself standing so near him at
an assembly that in the crowd she brushed him with her robe. His
blue eyes were fixed burningly upon her, and as she brushed him he
drew in a hard breath, which she hearing, turned slowly and let her
own eyes fall upon his face.

"You did not marry," she said.

"No, I did not marry," he answered, in a low, bitter voice.
"'Twas your ladyship who did that."

She faintly, slowly smiled.

"I should not have been like to do otherwise," she said; "'tis
an honourable condition. I would advise you to enter it."