In a fair tower whose windows looked out upon spreading woods, and rich lovely plains stretching to the freshness of the sea, Mistress Anne had her abode1 which her duchess sister had given to her for her own living in as she would. There she dwelt and prayed and looked on the new life which so beauteously unfolded itself before her day by day, as the leaves of a great tree unfold from buds and become noble branches, housing birds and their nests, shading the earth and those sheltering beneath them, braving centuries of storms.
To this simile3 her simple mind oft reverted4, for indeed it seemed to her that naught5 more perfect and more noble in its high likeness6 to pure Nature and the fulfilling of God’s will than the passing days of these two lives could be.
“As the first two lived—Adam and Eve in their garden of Eden—they seem to me,” she used to say to her own heart; “but the Tree of Knowledge was not forbidden them, and it has taught them naught ignoble7.”
As she had been wont8 to watch her sister from behind the ivy9 of her chamber10 windows, so she often watched her now, though there was no fear in her hiding, only tenderness, it being a pleasure to her full of wonder and reverence11 to see this beautiful and stately pair go lovingly and in high and gentle converse12 side by side, up and down the terrace, through the paths, among the beds of flowers, under the thick branched trees and over the sward’s softness.
“It is as if I saw Love’s self, and dwelt with it—the love God’s nature made,” she said, with gentle sighs.
For if these two had been great and beauteous before, it seemed in these days as if life and love glowed within them, and shone through their mere13 bodies as a radiant light shines through alabaster14 lamps. The strength of each was so the being of the other that no thought could take form in the brain of one without the other’s stirring with it.
“Neither of us dare be ignoble,” Osmonde said, “for ’twould make poor and base the one who was not so in truth.”
“’Twas not the way of my Lady Dunstanwolde to make a man feel that he stood in church,” a frivolous15 court wit once said, “but in sooth her Grace of Osmonde has a look in her lustrous16 eyes which accords not with scandalous stories and playhouse jests.”
And true it was that when they went to town they carried with them the illumining of the pure fire which burned within their souls, and bore it all unknowing in the midst of the trivial or designing world, which knew not what it was that glowed about them, making things bright which had seemed dull, and revealing darkness where there had been brilliant glare.
They returned not to the house which had been my Lord of Dunstanwolde’s, but went to the duke’s own great mansion17, and there lived splendidly and in hospitable18 state. Royalty19 honoured them, and all the wits came there, some of those gentlemen who writ20 verses and dedications21 being by no means averse22 to meeting noble lords and ladies, and finding in their loves and graces material which might be useful. ’Twas not only Mr. Addison and Mr. Steele, Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope, who were made welcome in the stately rooms, but others who were more humble23, not yet having won their spurs, and how these worshipped her Grace for the generous kindness which was not the fashion, until she set it, among great ladies, their odes and verses could scarce express.
“They are so poor,” she said to her husband. “They are so poor, and yet in their starved souls there is a thing which can less bear flouting24 than the dull content which rules in others. I know not whether ’tis a curse or a boon26 to be born so. ’Tis a bitter thing when the bird that flutters in them has only little wings. All the more should those who are strong protect and comfort them.”
She comforted so many creatures. In strange parts of the town, where no other lady would have dared to go to give alms, it was rumoured27 that she went and did noble things privately28. In dark kennels30, where thieves hid and vagrants31 huddled32, she carried her beauty and her stateliness, the which when they shone on the poor rogues34 and victims housed there seemed like the beams of the warm and golden sun.
Once in a filthy35 hovel in a black alley36 she came upon a poor girl dying of a loathsome37 ill, and as she stood by her bed of rags she heard in her delirium38 the uttering of one man’s name again and again, and when she questioned those about she found that the sufferer had been a little country wench enticed39 to town by this man for a plaything, and in a few weeks cast off to give birth to a child in the almshouse, and then go down to the depths of vice40 in the kennel29.
“What is the name she says?” her Grace asked the hag nearest to her, and least maudlin41 with liquor. “I would be sure I heard it aright.”
“’Tis the name of a gentleman, your ladyship may be sure,” the beldam answered; “’tis always the name of a gentleman. And this is one I know well, for I have heard more than one poor soul mumbling42 it and raving2 at him in her last hours. One there was, and I knew her, a pretty rosy43 thing in her country days, not sixteen, and distraught with love for him, and lay in the street by his door praying him to take her back when he threw her off, until the watch drove her away. And she was so mad with love and grief she killed her girl child when ’twas born i’ the kennel, sobbing44 and crying that it should not live to be like her and bear others. And she was condemned45 to death, and swung for it on Tyburn Tree. And, Lord! how she cried his name as she jolted46 on her coffin47 to the gallows48, and when the hangman put the rope round her shuddering49 little fair neck. ‘Oh, John,’ screams she, ‘John Oxon, God forgive thee! Nay50, ’tis God should be forgiven for letting thee to live and me to die like this.’ Aye, ’twas a bitter sight! She was so little and so young, and so affrighted. The hangman could scarce hold her. I was i’ the midst o’ the crowd and cried to her to strive to stand still, ’twould be the sooner over. But that she could not. ‘Oh, John,’ she screams, ‘John Oxon, God forgive thee! Nay, ’tis God should be forgiven for letting thee to live and me to die like this!’”
Till the last hour of the poor creature who lay before her when she heard this thing, her Grace of Osmonde saw that she was tended, took her from her filthy hovel, putting her in a decent house and going to her day by day, until she received her last breath, holding her hand while the poor wench lay staring up at her beauteous face and her great deep eyes, whose lustrousness51 held such power to sustain, protect, and comfort.
“Be not afraid, poor soul,” she said, “be not afraid. I will stay near thee. Soon all will end in sleep, and if thou wakest, sure there will be Christ who died, and wipes all tears away. Hear me say it to thee for a prayer,” and she bent52 low and said it soft and clear into the deadening ear, “He wipes all tears away—He wipes all tears away.”
The great strength she had used in the old days to conquer and subdue53, to win her will and to defend her way, seemed now a power but to protect the suffering and uphold the weak, and this she did, not alone in hovels but in the brilliant court and world of fashion, for there she found suffering and weakness also, all the more bitter and sorrowful since it dared not cry aloud. The grandeur54 of her beauty, the elevation55 of her rank, the splendour of her wealth would have made her a protector of great strength, but that which upheld all those who turned to her was that which dwelt within the high soul of her, the courage and power of love for all things human which bore upon itself, as if upon an eagle’s outspread wings, the woes56 dragging themselves broken and halting upon earth. The starving beggar in the kennel felt it, and, not knowing wherefore, drew a longer, deeper breath, as if of purer, more exalted57 air; the poor poet in his garret was fed by it, and having stood near or spoken to her, went back to his lair59 with lightening eyes and soul warmed to believe that the words his Muse60 might speak the world might stay to hear.
From the hour she stayed the last moments of John Oxon’s victim she set herself a work to do. None knew it but herself at first, and later ............