Chapter XVI--Dealing with that which was done in the Panelled Parlour

A Lady of Quality

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

He followed her to the Panelled Parlour, the one to which she had
taken Osmonde on the day of their bliss, the one in which in the
afternoon she received those who came to pay court to her over a dish
of tea. In the mornings none entered it but herself or some invited
guest. 'Twas not the room she would have chosen for him; but when he
said to her, "'Twere best your ladyship took me to some private
place," she had known there was no other so safe.

When the door was closed behind them, and they stood face to
face, they were a strange pair to behold--she with mad defiance
battling with mad despair in her face; he with the mocking which
every woman who had ever trusted him or loved him had lived to see in
his face when all was lost. Few men there lived who were as vile as
he, his power of villainy lying in that he knew not the meaning of
man's shame or honour.

"Now," she said, "tell me the worst."

"'Tis not so bad," he answered, "that a man should claim his
own, and swear that no other man shall take it from him. That I have
sworn, and that I will hold to."

"Your own!" she said--"your own you call it--villain!"

"My own, since I can keep it," quoth he. "Before you were my
Lord of Dunstanwolde's you were mine--of your own free will."

"Nay, nay," she cried. "God! through some madness I knew not
the awfulness of--because I was so young and had known naught but
evil-- and you were so base and wise."

"Was your ladyship an innocent?" he answered. "It seemed not so
to me."

"An innocent of all good," she cried--"of all things good on
earth-- of all that I know now, having seen manhood and honour."

"His Grace of Osmonde has not been told this," he said; "and I
should make it all plain to him."

"What do you ask, devil?" she broke forth. "What is't you
ask?"

"That you shall not be the Duchess of Osmonde," he said, drawing
near to her; "that you shall be the wife of Sir John Oxon, as you
once called yourself for a brief space, though no priest had mumbled
over us--"

"Who was't divorced us?" she said, gasping; "for I was an honest
thing, though I knew no other virtue. Who was't divorced us?"

"I confess," he answered, bowing, "that 'twas I--for the time
being. I was young, and perhaps fickle--"

"And you left me," she cried, "and I found that you had come but
for a bet--and since I so bore myself that you could not boast, and
since I was not a rich woman whose fortune would be of use to you,
you followed another and left me--me!"

"As his Grace of Osmonde will when I tell him my story," he
answered. "He is not one to brook that such things can be told of
the mother of his heirs."

She would have shrieked aloud but that she clutched her throat
in time.

"Tell him!" she cried, "tell him, and see if he will hear you.
Your word against mine!"

"Think you I do not know that full well," he answered, and he
brought forth a little package folded in silk. "Why have I done
naught but threaten till this time? If I went to him without proof,
he would run me through with his sword as I were a mad dog. But is
there another woman in England from whose head her lover could ravish
a lock as long and black as this?"

He unfolded the silk, and let other silk unfold itself, a great
and thick ring of raven hair which uncoiled its serpent length, and
though he held it high, was long enough after surging from his hand
to lie upon the floor.

"Merciful God!" she cried, and shuddering, hid her face.

"'Twas a bet, I own," he said; "I heard too much of the mad
beauty and her disdain of men not to be fired by a desire to prove to
her and others, that she was but a woman after all, and so was to be
won. I took an oath that I would come back some day with a trophy--
and this I cut when you knew not that I did it."

She clutched her throat again to keep from shrieking in her--
impotent horror.

"Devil, craven, and loathsome--and he knows not what he is!" she
gasped. "He is a mad thing who knows not that all his thoughts are
of hell."

'Twas, in sooth, a strange and monstrous thing to see him so
unwavering and bold, flinching before no ignominy, shrinking not to
speak openly the thing before the mere accusation of which other
men's blood would have boiled.

"When I bore it away with me," he said, "I lived wildly for a
space, and in those days put it in a place of safety, and when I was
sober again I had forgot where. Yesterday, by a strange chance, I
came upon it. Think you it can be mistaken for any other woman's
hair?"

At this she held up her hand.

"Wait," she said. "You will go to Osmonde, you will tell him
this, you will--"

"I will tell him all the story of the rose garden and of the
sun- dial, and the beauty who had wit enough to scorn a man in public
that she might more safely hold tryst with him alone. She had great
wit and cunning for a beauty of sixteen. 'Twould be well for her
lord to have keen eyes when she is twenty."

He should have seen the warning in her eyes, for there was
warning enough in their flaming depths.

"All that you can say I know," she said--"all that you can say!
And I love him. There is no other man on earth. Were he a beggar, I
would tramp the highroad by his side and go hungered with him. He is
my lord, and I his mate--his mate!"

"That you will not be," he answered, made devilish by her words.
"He is a high and noble gentleman, and wants no man's cast-off
plaything for his wife."

Her breast leaped up and down in her panting as she pressed her
hand upon it; her breath came in sharp puffs through her nostrils.

"And once," she breathed--"and once--I loved thee--cur!"

He was mad with exultant villainy and passion, and he broke into
a laugh.

"Loved me!" he said. "Thou! As thou lovedst me--and as thou
lovest him--so will Moll Easy love any man--for a crown."

Her whip lay upon the table, she caught and whirled it in the
air. She was blind with the surging of her blood, and saw not how she
caught or held it, or what she did--only that she struck!

And 'twas his temple that the loaded weapon met, and 'twas
wielded by a wrist whose sinews were of steel, and even as it struck
he gasped, casting up his hands, and thereupon fell, and lay
stretched at her feet!

But the awful tempest which swept over her had her so under its
dominion that she was like a branch whirled on the wings of the
storm. She scarce noted that he fell, or noting it, gave it not one
thought as she dashed from one end of the apartment to the other with
the fierce striding of a mad woman.

"Devil!" she cried, "and cur! and for thee I blasted all the
years to come! To a beast so base I gave all that an empress' self
could give--all life--all love--for ever. And he comes
back--shameless-- to barter like a cheating huckster, because his
trade goes ill, and I--I could stock his counters once again."

She strode towards him, raving.

"Think you I do not know, woman's bully and poltroon, that you
plot to sell yourself, because your day has come, and no woman will
bid for such an outcast, saving one that you may threaten. Rise,
vermin--rise, lest I kill thee!"

In her blind madness she lashed him once across the face again.
And he stirred not--and something in the resistless feeling of the
flesh beneath the whip, and in the quiet of his lying, caused her to
pause and stand panting and staring at the thing which lay before
her. For it was a Thing, and as she stood staring, with wild heaving
breast, this she saw. 'Twas but a thing--a thing lying inert, its
fair locks outspread, its eyes rolled upward till the blue was almost
lost; a purple indentation on the right temple from which there oozed
a tiny thread of blood.

* * *

"There will be a way," she had said, and yet in her most mad
despair, of this way she had never thought; though strange it had
been, considering her lawless past, that she had not--never of this
way--never! Notwithstanding which, in one frenzied moment in which
she had known naught but her delirium, her loaded whip had found it
for her--the way!

And yet it being so found, and she stood staring, seeing what
she had done--seeing what had befallen--'twas as if the blow had been
struck not at her own temple but at her heart--a great and heavy
shock, which left her bloodless, and choked, and gasping.

"What! what!" she panted. "Nay! nay! nay!" and her eyes grew
wide and wild.

She sank upon her knees, so shuddering that her teeth began to
chatter. She pushed him and shook him by the shoulder.

"Stir!" she cried in a loud whisper. "Move thee! Why dost thou
lie so? Stir!"

Yet he stirred not, but lay inert, only with his lips drawn
back, showing his white teeth a little, as if her horrid agony made
him begin to laugh. Shuddering, she drew slowly nearer, her eyes
more awful than his own. Her hand crept shaking to his wrist and
clutched it. There was naught astir--naught! It stole to his
breast, and baring it, pressed close. That was still and moveless as
his pulse; for life was ended, and a hundred mouldering years would
not bring more of death.

"I have killed thee," she breathed. "I have killed thee--though
I meant it not--even hell itself doth know. Thou art a dead man--and
this is the worst of all!"

His hand fell heavily from hers, and she still knelt staring,
such a look coming into her face as throughout her life had never
been there before--for 'twas the look of a creature who, being
tortured, the worst at last being reached, begins to smile at
Fate.

"I have killed him!" she said, in a low, awful voice; "and he
lies here--and outside people walk, and know not. But he knows--and
I-- and as he lies methinks he smiles--knowing what he has done!"

She crouched even lower still, the closer to behold him, and
indeed it seemed his still face sneered as if defying her now to rid
herself of him! 'Twas as though he lay there mockingly content,
saying, "Now that I lie here, 'tis for you--for you to move me."

She rose and stood up rigid, and all the muscles of her limbs
were drawn as though she were a creature stretched upon a rack; for
the horror of this which had befallen her seemed to fill the place
about her, and leave her no air to breathe nor light to see.

"Now!" she cried, "if I would give way--and go mad, as I could
but do, for there is naught else left--if I would but give way, that
which is I--and has lived but a poor score of years--would be done
with for all time. All whirls before me. 'Twas I who struck the
blow--and I am a woman--and I could go raving--and cry out and call
them in, and point to him, and tell them how 'twas
done--all!--all!"

She choked, and clutched her bosom, holding its heaving down so
fiercely that her nails bruised it through her habit's cloth; for she
felt that she had begun to rave already, and that the waves of such a
tempest were arising as, if not quelled at their first swell, would
sweep her from her feet and engulf her for ever.

"That--that!" she gasped--"nay--that I swear I will not do!
There was always One who hated me--and doomed and hunted me from the
hour I lay 'neath my dead mother's corpse, a new-born thing. I know
not whom it was--or why--or how--but 'twas so! I was made evil, and
cast helpless amid evil fates, and having done the things that were
ordained, and there was no escape from, I was shown noble manhood and
high honour, and taught to worship, as I worship now. An angel might
so love and be made higher. And at the gate of heaven a devil grins
at me and plucks me back, and taunts and mires me, and I fall- -on
this!"

She stretched forth her arms in a great gesture, wherein it
seemed that surely she defied earth and heaven.

"No hope--no mercy--naught but doom and hell," she cried,
"unless the thing that is tortured be the stronger. Now--unless Fate
bray me small--the stronger I will be!"

She looked down at the thing before her. How its stone face
sneered, and even in its sneering seemed to disregard her. She knelt
by it again, her blood surging through her body, which had been cold,
speaking as if she would force her voice to pierce its deadened
ear.

"Ay, mock!" she said, setting her teeth, "thinking that I am
conquered--yet am I not! 'Twas an honest blow struck by a creature
goaded past all thought! Ay, mock--and yet, but for one man's sake,
would I call in those outside and stand before them, crying: 'Here
is a villain whom I struck in madness--and he lies dead! I ask not
mercy, but only justice.'"

She crouched still nearer, her breath and words coming hard and
quick. 'Twas indeed as if she spoke to a living man who heard--as if
she answered what he had said.

"There would be men in England who would give it me," she raved,
whispering. "That would there, I swear! But there would be dullards
and dastards who would not. He would give it--he! Ay, mock as thou
wilt! But between his high honour and love and me thy carrion shall
not come!"

By her great divan the dead man had fallen, and so near to it he
lay that one arm was hidden by the draperies; and at this moment this
she saw--before having seemed to see nothing but the death in his
face. A thought came to her like a flame lit on a sudden, and
springing high the instant the match struck the fuel it leaped from.
It was a thought so daring and so strange that even she gasped once,
being appalled, and her hands, stealing to her brow, clutched at the
hair that grew there, feeling it seem to rise and stand erect.

"Is it madness to so dare?" she said hoarsely, and for an
instant, shuddering, hid her eyes, but then uncovered and showed them
burning. "Nay! not as I will dare it," she said, "for it will make
me steel. You fell well," she said to the stone-faced thing, "and as
you lie there, seem to tell me what to do, in your own despite. You
would not have so helped me had you known. Now 'tis 'twixt Fate and
I--a human thing--who is but a hunted woman."

She put her strong hand forth and thrust him--he was already
stiffening--backward from the shoulder, there being no shrinking on
her face as she felt his flesh yield beneath her touch, for she had
passed the barrier lying between that which is mere life and that
which is pitiless hell, and could feel naught that was human. A poor
wild beast at bay, pressed on all sides by dogs, by huntsmen, by
resistless weapons, by Nature's pitiless self -glaring with bloodshot
eyes, panting, with fangs bared in the savagery of its unfriended
agony--might feel thus. 'Tis but a hunted beast; but 'tis alone, and
faces so the terror and anguish of death.

The thing gazing with its set sneer, and moving but stiffly, she
put forth another hand upon its side and thrust it farther backward
until it lay stretched beneath the great broad seat, its glazed and
open eyes seeming to stare upward blankly at the low roof of its
strange prison; she thrust it farther backward still, and letting the
draperies fall, steadily and with care so rearranged them that all
was safe and hid from sight.

"Until to-night," she said, "You will lie well there. And
then--and then--"

She picked up the long silken lock of hair which lay like a
serpent at her feet, and threw it into the fire, watching it burn, as
all hair burns, with slow hissing, and she watched it till 'twas
gone.

Then she stood with her hands pressed upon her eyeballs and her
brow, her thoughts moving in great leaps. Although it reeled, the
brain which had worked for her ever, worked clear and strong, setting
before her what was impending, arguing her case, showing her where
dangers would arise, how she must provide against them, what she must
defend and set at defiance. The power of will with which she had
been endowed at birth, and which had but grown stronger by its
exercise, was indeed to be compared to some great engine whose lever
'tis not nature should be placed in human hands; but on that lever
her hand rested now, and to herself she vowed she would control it,
since only thus might she be saved. The torture she had undergone
for months, the warring of the evil past with the noble present, of
that which was sweet and passionately loving woman with that which
was all but devil, had strung her to a pitch so intense and high that
on the falling of this unnatural and unforeseen blow she was left
scarce a human thing. Looking back, she saw herself a creature
doomed from birth; and here in one moment seemed to stand a force
ranged in mad battle with the fate which had doomed her.

"'Twas ordained that the blow should fall so," she said, "and
those who did it laugh--laugh at me."

'Twas but a moment, and her sharp breathing became even and
regular as though at her command; her face composed itself, and she
turned to the bell and rang it as with imperious haste.

When the lacquey entered, she was standing holding papers in her
hand as if she had but just been consulting them.

"Follow Sir John Oxon," she commanded. "Tell him I have forgot
an important thing and beg him to return at once. Lose no time. He
has but just left me and can scarce be out of sight."

The fellow saw there was no time to lose. They all feared that
imperial eye of hers and fled to obey its glances. Bowing, he
turned, and hastened to do her bidding, fearing to admit that he had
not seen the guest leave, because to do so would be to confess that
he had been absent from his post, which was indeed the truth.

She knew he would come back shortly, and thus he did, entering
somewhat breathed by his haste.

"My lady," he said, "I went quickly to the street, and indeed to
the corner of it, but Sir John was not within sight."

"Fool, you were not swift enough!" she said angrily. "Wait, you
must go to his lodgings with a note. The matter is of
importance."

She went to a table--'twas close to the divan, so close that if
she had thrust forth her foot she could have touched what lay beneath
it--and wrote hastily a few lines. They were to request That which
was stiffening within three feet of her to return to her as quickly
as possible that she might make inquiries of an important nature
which she had forgotten at his departure.

"Take this to Sir John's lodgings," she said. "Let there be no
loitering by the way. Deliver into his own hands, and bring back at
once his answer."

Then she was left alone again, and being so left, paced the room
slowly, her gaze upon the floor.

"That was well done," she said. "When he returns and has not
found him, I will be angered, and send him again to wait."

She stayed her pacing, and passed her hand across her face.

"'Tis like a nightmare," she said--"as if one dreamed, and
choked, and panted, and would scream aloud, but could not. I cannot!
I must not! Would that I might shriek, and dash myself upon the
floor, and beat my head upon it until I lay--as he does."

She stood a moment, breathing fast, her eyes widening, that part
of her which was weak woman for the moment putting her in parlous
danger, realising the which she pressed her sides with hands that
were of steel.

"Wait! wait!" she said to herself. "This is going mad. This is
loosening hold, and being beaten by that One who hates me and laughs
to see what I have come to."

Naught but that unnatural engine of will could have held her
within bounds and restrained the mounting female weakness that beset
her; but this engine being stronger than all else, it beat her
womanish and swooning terrors down.

"Through this one day I must live," she said, "and plan, and
guard each moment that doth pass. My face must tell no tale, my
voice must hint none. He will be still--God knows he will be still
enough."

Upon the divan itself there had been lying a little dog; 'twas a
King Charles' spaniel, a delicate pampered thing, which attached
itself to her, and was not easily driven away. Once during the last
hour the fierce, ill-hushed voices had disturbed it, and it had given
vent to a fretted bark, but being a luxurious little beast, it had
soon curled up among its cushions and gone to sleep again. But as
its mistress walked about muttering low words and ofttimes breathing
sharp breaths, it became disturbed again. Perhaps through some
instinct of which naught is known by human creatures, it felt the
strange presence of a thing which roused it. It stirred, at first
drowsily, and lifted its head and sniffed; then it stretched its
limbs, and having done so, stood up, turning on its mistress a
troubled eye, and this she saw and stopped to meet it. 'Twas a
strange look she bestowed upon it, a startled and fearful one; her
thought drew the blood up to her cheek, but backward again it flowed
when the little beast lifted its nose and gave a low but woeful howl.
Twice it did this, and then jumped down, and standing before the
edge of the couch, stood there sniffing.

There was no mistake, some instinct of which it knew not the
meaning had set it on, and it would not be thrust back. In all
beasts this strange thing has been remarked--that they know That
which ends them all, and so revolt against it that they cannot be at
rest so long as it is near them, but must roar, or whinny, or howl
until 'tis out of the reach of their scent. And so 'twas plain this
little beast knew and was afraid and restless. He would not let it
be, but roved about, sniffing and whining, and not daring to thrust
his head beneath the falling draperies, but growing more and yet more
excited and terrified, until at last he stopped, raised head in air,
and gave vent to a longer, louder, and more dolorous howl, and albeit
to one with so strange and noticeable a sound that her heart turned
over in her breast as she stooped and caught him in her grasp, and
shuddered as she stood upright, holding him to her side, her hand
over his mouth. But he would not be hushed, and struggled to get
down as if indeed he would go mad unless he might get to the thing
and rave at it.

"If I send thee from the room thou wilt come back, poor Frisk,"
she said. "There will be no keeping thee away, and I have never
ordered thee away before. Why couldst thou not keep still? Nay,
'twas not dog nature."

That it was not so was plain by his struggles and the yelps but
poorly stifled by her grasp.

She put her hand about his little neck, turning, in sooth, very
pale.

"Thou too, poor little beast," she said. "Thou too, who art so
small a thing and never harmed me."

When the lacquey came back he wore an air more timorous than
before.

"Your ladyship," he faltered, "Sir John had not yet reached his
lodgings. His servant knew not when he might expect him."

"In an hour go again and wait," she commanded. "He must return
ere long if he has not left town."

And having said this, pointed to a little silken heap which lay
outstretched limp upon the floor. "'Tis poor Frisk, who has had some
strange spasm, and fell, striking his head. He hath been ailing for
days, and howled loudly but an hour ago. Take him away, poor
beast."