She laughed and pulled his long love-locks.
"Ay, my lord Marquess," she answered, "if his parents are willing to take such a young one."
Mistress Anne sate by their guest, he holding her in great favour. As the people came for their gifts she told him their names and stories. Through weakness she walked about but little in these days, and the failing soldier liked her company, so she often sate near him in her lounging-chair and with gentle artfulness lured him into reminiscences of his past campaigns. She was very frail to-day, and in her white robe, and with her large eyes which seemed to have outgrown her face, she looked like the wraith of a woman rather than a creature of flesh and blood.
"Those two her Grace rescued," she said, as Betty and Tom Beck retired; "the one from woe, the other from cruel wickedness. He had betrayed the poor child and deserted her, and "twas her Grace who touched his heart and woke manhood in it, and made them happy man and wife."
Then came an old woman leading a girl and boy, both fair and blooming and with blue eyes and fair curling locks.
"Are they both well and both happy, dame?" the d.u.c.h.ess asked. "Yes, that they are, I see. And I know they are both good."
She took the girl"s face in both hands and smiled into it as she might have smiled at a flower, and then kissed her tenderly. She gave her a little new gown and a pretty huswife stocked with implements to make it. She put her hand on the boy"s shoulder and looked at him as his mother would have looked had she been tender of him.
"For you, Robin," she said, "there are books. I know "tis books and learning you long for, and you shall have them. His Grace"s Chaplain has promised me to teach you."
The boy clasped the books under his arm, hugging them against his breast, and when her Grace turned to the next newcomer he seized a fold of her robe and kissed it.
"Who are those children?" the Captain-General asked. "They do not look like rustics."
"Those two she rescued also," answered Mistress Anne in a low voice. "She found them in a thieves" haunt being trained as pickpockets. They are the cast-off offspring of a gentleman who lived an evil life."
"Was she told his name?"
"Yes," Mistress Anne said, lower still; ""twas a gentleman who was-lost. Sir John Oxon."
The mystery of this gentleman"s disappearance was a thing forgotten, but Mistress Anne"s hearer recalled it, and that the man had left an evil reputation, and that "twas said that in the first bloom of his youth he had been among the worshippers of the Gloucestershire beauty, and there pa.s.sed through the old Duke"s mind a vague wonder as to whether the d.u.c.h.ess remembered girlish sentiments the hoyden had lived through and forgot.
It seemed the man"s name being once drawn from the past was not to be allowed to rest, for later in the day he heard of him again, and curiously indeed.
There came in the afternoon from town a st.u.r.dy, loud-voiced country gentleman, with a red, honest face and a good-humoured eye, and he was so received by the family-by his Grace, who shook him warmly by the hand, by the d.u.c.h.ess, who gave him both hers to kiss, and by the young ones, who cried out in rejoicing over him-that their distinguished guest perceived him to be an old friend who was, as it were, an old comrade.
And so it proved, for "twas soon revealed to him by the gentleman himself (whose name was Sir Christopher Crowell, and whose estate lay on the borders of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire) that he had been one of the boon companions of her Grace"s father, Sir Jeoffry Wildairs, and he had known her from the time she was five years old, and had been first made the comrade and plaything of a band of the worst rioters in three counties.
"Ay!" he cried, exultantly, for he seemed always exultant when he spoke of her Grace, who was plainly his idol. "At seven she would toss off her ale, and sing and swear as wickedly as any man among us, and had great black eyes that flashed fire when we crossed her, and her hair hung below her waist, and she was the most beauteous child-devil and the most lawless, that man or woman ever clapt eyes on. And to behold her now! to behold her now!" And then he motioned towards the little Anne, who was flashing-eyed, and long-limbed, and a brown beauty. ""Tis my Lady Anne who is most like her," he said; "but Lord! she hath been treated fair by Fortune, and loved and cherished, and is a young queen already."
Later, when the night had fallen and was thick with stars, and the festal lights were twinkling like other stars among the trees of the park, and from the happy crowds at play there floated the sounds of laughter and joyful voices, their Graces and their guests sate or walked upon the terrace amid the night-scents of flowers and watched the merriment going on below them and talked together.
"Ay," broke forth old Sir Christopher, "you two happy folk light joyful fires, and make joyful hearts wheresoever you go."
"Twas at this moment two of the other country guests-they being old Gloucestershire comrades also-stayed their sauntering before her Grace to speak to her.
"Eldershawe and me have just been saying," broke forth one of them, chuckling, "how this bringeth back old times, though "tis little like them. We three were of the birthnight party-Eldershawe, Chris, and me. Thou dost not forget old friends, Clo, and would not, wert thou ten times a d.u.c.h.ess."
"Nay, not I," answered her Grace. "Not I."
"There be not many of us left," said Sir Christopher, ruefully. "Thy poor old Dad is under sod, and others with him. Two necks were broke in hunting, the others died of years or drink."
"But one we know naught of, egad!" said my Lord Eldershawe, "and he was my kinsman."
"Lord, yes," cried out the other; "Jack Oxon! Jack, who came among us all curls and essences and brocades and lace. Thou"st not forgot Jack Oxon, Clo, for the fellow was wild in love with thee."
"No, I have not forgotten Sir John," she answered, and turned aside a little to break a rose from a bush near her and hold it to her face.
"Nay, that she hath not," cried Sir Christopher, "that I can swear to. I saw the boy and girl to-day, Clo, and, Lord! how they are like to him."
"Yes, they are like him," she answered, gravely.
"The two thou show"dst me playing "neath the trees?" said Eldershawe. "Ay, they are like enough."
"And but for her Grace would have been brought up a hang-dog thief and a poor drab, with all their beauty," went on Sir Christopher. "Ecod, thou hast done well, Clo, the task "twas thy whim to take upon thyself."
"What generous deed was that?" asked my lord Duke of Osmonde, drawing near.
"The task of undoing the wrongs a villain had done, if "twere so there could be undoing of them," answered the old fellow. "A woman rich as I," said she, "should set herself some good work to do. This shall be mine-to live John Oxon"s life again and make it bring forth good instead of evil."
Her Grace sate motionless and so did Mistress Anne, who had sunk back in her chair, and in the starlit darkness had grown more white, and was breathing faint and quickly. In the park below the people laughed as merry-makers will, in gay bursts, and half a dozen voices broke forth into a s.n.a.t.c.h of song. "Twas a good background for Sir Christopher, who was well launched upon a subject that he loved and had not often chance to hold forth upon, as her Grace was not fond of touching upon it.
"Ten years hath she followed his wicked footsteps and I have followed with her," he rambled on. "I am not squeamish, Lord knoweth! and have no reason to be; but had I known, when I began to aid in the searching, what mire I should have to wade through, ecod! I think I should have said, "Let ill alone.""
"But you did not, old friend," said the d.u.c.h.ess"s rich, low voice; "you did not."
Lady Betty and her swains had sauntered near and joined the circle, attracted by the subject which waked in them a new interest in an old mystery.
"You have been her Grace"s almoner, Sir Christopher," said her ladyship. "That accounts for the stories I have heard of your charities. They were her Grace"s good deeds, not your own."
"She knew I would sweep the kennel for her on hands and knees if she would have me," said Sir Chris, "and at the first of it she knew not the ill quarters of the town as I did, and bade me make search for her and ask questions. But "twas not long before she found her way herself and learned that a tall, strong beauty can do more to reach hearts than a red-faced old man can. Lord, how they love and fear her! And among the honest folk Jack Oxon wronged-poor tradesmen he ruined by his trickery, and simple working-folk who lost their all through him-they would kiss the dust her shoe hath trod. His debts she hath paid, his victims she hath rescued, the wounds he dealt she hath healed and made sound flesh, and for ten years she hath done it!"
Her Grace rose to her feet, the rose uplifted in a listening gesture. From the park below there floated up the lilting music of a dance, a light, unrustic measure played by their own musicians.
"The dancing begins," she said. "Hark! the dancing begins."
Mistress Anne put out her hand and caught at her sister"s dress and held a fold of its richness in her trembling hand, though her Grace was not aware of what she did.
"How sweet the music sounds," the poor gentlewoman said, nervously. "How sweet it sounds."
My Lady Betty Tantillion held up her hand as the d.u.c.h.ess, a moment since, had held the rose.
"I have heard that tune before," she cried.
"And I," said Lord Charles.
"And I," Sir Harry Granville echoed.
Lady Betty broke into a shiver.
"Why," she cried, "how strange-at just this moment. We danced to it at the ball at Dunstanwolde House the very night "twas made known Sir John Oxon had disappeared."
The d.u.c.h.ess held the rose poised in her hand and slowly bent her head.