His Grace of Osmonde by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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HIS GRACE OF OSMONDE

[Illustration: "'From this night all men shall kneel--all men on whom I
deign to cast my eyes'"--_See p_ 187]

HIS GRACE OF OSMONDE

BEING THE PORTIONS OF THAT NOBLEMAN'S LIFE
OMITTED IN THE RELATION OF HIS LADY'S
STORY PRESENTED TO THE WORLD OF
FASHION UNDER THE TITLE OF A
LADY OF QUALITY

BY

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1914

1897, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

_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_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE FIFTH DAY OF APRIL, 1676 1

II. "HE IS THE KING" 13

III. SIR JEOFFRY WILDAIRS 26

IV. "GOD HAVE MERCY ON ITS EVIL FORTUNES" 35

V. MY LORD MARQUESS PLUNGES INTO THE THAMES 55

VI. "NO; SHE HAS NOT YET COME TO COURT" 65

VII. "'TIS CLO WILDAIRS, MAN--ALL THE COUNTY KNOWS THE VIXEN" 77

VIII. IN WHICH MY LADY BETTY TANTILLION WRITES OF A SCANDAL 92

IX. SIR JOHN OXON LAYS A WAGER AT CRIBB'S COFFEE HOUSE 107

X. MY LORD MARQUESS RIDES TO CAMYLOTT 119

XI. "IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN--IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!" 133

XII. IN WHICH IS SOLD A PORTRAIT 141

XIII. "YOUR--GRACE!" 158

XIV. "FOR ALL HER YOUTH--THERE IS NO OTHER WOMAN LIKE HER" 179

XV. "AND 'TWAS THE TOWN RAKE AND BEAUTY--SIR JOHN OXON" 190

XVI. A RUMOUR 197

XVII. AS HUGH DE MERTOUN RODE 217

XVIII. A NIGHT IN WHICH MY LORD DUKE DID NOT SLEEP 235

XIX. "THEN YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN ONE OF THOSE--" 248

XX. AT CAMYLOTT 261

XXI. UPON THE MOOR 274

XXII. MY LADY DUNSTANWOLDE IS WIDOWED 299

XXIII. HER LADYSHIP RETURNS TO TOWN 319

XXIV. SIR JOHN OXON RETURNS ALSO 337

XXV. TO-MORROW 351

XXVI. A DEAD ROSE 363

XXVII. "'TWAS THE NIGHT THOU HIDST THE PACKAGE IN THE WALL" 381

XXVIII. SIR JOHN RIDES OUT OF TOWN 394

XXIX. AT THE COW AT WICKBEN 405

XXX. ON TYBURN HILL 423

XXXI. THEIR GRACES KEEP THEIR WEDDING DAY AT CAMYLOTT 440

XXXII. IN THE TURRET CHAMBER--AND IN CAMYLOTT WOOD 457

ILLUSTRATIONS

"'From this night all men shall kneel--all men on whom I
deign to cast my eyes'" _Frontispiece_

FACING
PAGE
"Your Grace, it is this lady who is to do me the great
honour of becoming my Lady Dunstanwolde" 232

HIS GRACE OF OSMONDE

_CHAPTER I_

_The Fifth Day of April, 1676_

Upon the village of Camylott there had rested since the earliest peep
of dawn a hush of affectionate and anxious expectancy, the very
plough-boys going about their labours without boisterous laughter, the
children playing quietly, and the good wives in their kitchens and
dairies bustling less than usual and modulating the sharpness of their
voices, the most motherly among them in truth finding themselves
falling into whispering as they gossiped of the great subject of the
hour.

"The swallows were but just beginning to stir and twitter in their
nests under the eaves when I heard the horses' hoofs a-clatter on the
high road," said Dame Watt to her neighbour as they stood in close
confab in her small front garden. "Lord's mercy! though I have lain
down expecting it every night for a week, the heart of me leapt up in
my throat and I jounced Gregory with a thump in his back to wake him
from his snoring. 'Gregory,' cries I, ''tis sure begun. God be kind to
her young Grace this day. There goes a messenger clattering over the
road. Hearken to his horse's feet.'"

Dame Bush, her neighbour, being the good mother of fourteen stalwart
boys and girls, heaved a lusty sigh, the sound of which was a thing
suggesting much experience and fellow-feeling even with noble ladies at
such times.

"There is not a woman's heart in Camylott village," said she, "which
doth not beat for her to-day--and for his Grace and the heir or heiress
that will come of these hours of hers. God bless all three!"

"Lord, how the tiny thing hath been loved and waited for!" said Dame
Watt. "'Tis somewhat to be born a great Duke's child! And how its
mother hath been cherished and kept like a young saint in a shrine!"

"If 'tis not a great child and a beauteous one 'twill be a wondrous
thing, its parents being both beautiful and happy, and both deep in
love," quoth motherly Bush.

"Ay, it beginneth well; it beginneth well," said Dame Watt--"a being
born to wealth and state. What with chaplains and governors of virtue
and learning, there seemeth no way for it to go astray in life or grow
to aught but holy greatness. It should be the finest duke or duchess in
all England some day, surely."

"Heaven ordains a fair life for some new-born things, 'twould seem,"
said Bush, "and a black one for others; and the good can no more be
escaped than the bad. There goes my Matthew in his ploughboy's smock
across the fields. 'Tis a good lad and a handsome. Why was he not a
great lord's son?"

Neighbour Watt laughed.

"Because thou wert an honest woman and not a beauty," quoth she.

The small black eyes set deep in Bush's broad red face twinkled
somewhat at the rough jest, but not in hearty mirth. She rubbed her
hand across her mouth with an awkward gesture.

"Ay," answered she, "but 'twas not that I meant. I thought of all this
child is born to--love and wealth and learning--and that others are
born to naught but ill."

"Lawk! let us not even speak of ill on such a day," said her neighbour.
"Look at the sky's blueness and the spring bursting forth in every
branch and clod--and the very skylarks singing hard as if for joy."

"Ay," said Joan Bush, "and look up village street to the Plough Horse,
and see thy Gregory and my Will and their mates pouring down ale to
drink a health to it--and to her Grace and to my lord Duke, and to the
fine Court doctors, and to the nurses, and to the Chaplain, and to old
Rowe who waits about to be ready to ring a peal on the church bells.
They'll find toasts enough, I warrant."

"That will they," said Dame Watt, but she chuckled good-naturedly, as
if she held no grudge against ale drinking for this one day at least.

'Twas true the men found toasts enough and were willing to drink them
as they would have been to drink even such as were less popular. These,
in sooth, were near their hearts; and there was reason they should be,
no nobleman being more just and kindly to his tenants than his Grace of
Osmonde, and no lady more deservedly beloved and looked up to with
admiring awe than his young Duchess, now being tenderly watched over at
Camylott Tower by one of Queen Catherine's own physicians and a score
of assistants, nurses, and underlings.

Even at this moment, William Bush was holding forth to the company
gathered about the door of the Plough Horse, he having risen from the
oaken bench at its threshold to have his pewter tankard filled again.

"'Tis not alone Duke he will be," quoth he, "but with titles and
estates enough to make a man feel like King Charles himself. 'Tis thus
he will be writ down in history, as his Grace his father hath been
before him: Duke of Osmonde--Marquess of Roxholm--Earl of Osmonde--Earl
of Marlowell--Baron Dorlocke of Paulyn, and Baron Mertoun of
Charleroy."

"Can a man then be six men at once?" said Gregory Watt.

"Ay, and each of him be master of a great house and rich estate. 'Tis
so with this one. 'Tis said the Court itself waits to hear the news."

Stout Tom Comfort broke forth into a laugh.

"'Tis not often the Court waits," says he, "to hear news so honest. At
Camylott Tower lies one Duchess whom King Charles did not make, thank
God, but was made one by her husband."

Will Bush set down his tankard with a smack upon the table before the
sitting-bench.

"She had but once appeared at Whitehall when his Grace met her and fell
deep in love that hour," he said.

"Was't not rumoured," said Tom Comfort, somewhat lowering his voice,
"that _He_ cast glances her way as he casts them on every young beauty
brought before him, and that his Grace could scarce hold his
tongue--King or no King?"

"Ay," said Will Bush, sharply, "his royal glance fell on her, and he
made a jest on what a man's joy would be whose fortune it was to see
her violet eyes melt in love--and his Grace went to her mother, the
Lady Elspeth, and besought her to let him proffer his vows to the young
lady; and she was his Duchess in ten months' time--and Madame Carwell
had come from France, and in a year was made Duchess of Portsmouth."

"Heard you not that she too--some three weeks past--?" quoth Comfort,
who was as fond of gossip as an old woman.

"Seventeen days gone," put in Bush; "and 'twas dead, by Heaven's mercy,
poor brat. They say she loses her looks, and that his Majesty tires of
her, and looks already toward other quarters." And so they sat over
their ale and gossiped, they being supplied with anecdote by his
Grace's gentleman's gentleman, who was fond of Court life and found the
country tiresome, and whose habit it was to spend an occasional evening
at the Plough Horse for the pleasure of having even an audience of
yokels; liking it the better since, being yokels, they would listen
open-mouthed and staring by the hour to his swagger and stories of
Whitehall and Hampton Court, and the many beauties who surrounded the
sacred person of his most gracious Majesty, King Charles the Second.
Every yokel in the country had heard rumours of these ladies, but Mr.
Mount gave those at Camylott village details which were often true and
always picturesque.

"What could be expected," he would say, "of a man who had lived in gay
exile through his first years, and then of a sudden was made a King,
and had all the beauties of England kneeling before him--and he with a
squat, black, long-toothed Portugee fastened to him for a wife? And
Mistress Barbara Palmer at him from his first landing on English soil
to be restored--she that was made my Lady Castlemaine."

And then he would relate stories of this beauteous fury, and her
tempestuous quarrels with the King, and of how 'twas known his ease and
pleasure-loving nature stood in terror of her violence and gave way
before it with bribes and promises through sheer weariness.

"'Tis not that he loves her best," said Mr. Mount, snuff-taking in
graceful Court fashion, "for he hath loved a dozen since; but she is a
shrew, and can rave and bluster at him till he would hang her with
jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies. 'Tis the
pretty orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him
longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and witty, and gives him
rest."

'Twas not alone Charles who was pleased with Nell Gwynne. All England
liked her, and the lower orders best of all, because she was merry and
kind of heart and her jokes and open-handedness pleased them. They were
deep in the midst of a story of a poor gentleman in orders whom she
had rescued from the debtors' prison, when old Rowe, who had been
watching the road leading from the park gates, pricked up his ears and
left his seat, trembling with excitement.

"'Tis a horse galloping," he cried; and as they all turned to look he
flung his cap in the air. "'Tis the messenger," he burst forth, "and he
waves his hat in his hand as if he had gone mad with joy. Off go I to
the church tower as fast as legs will carry me."

And off he hobbled, and the messenger galloped onward, flourishing his
hat as he rode, and giving it no rest till he drew rein before the
Plough Horse door, and all gathered about him to hear his news.

"An heir--an heir!" he cried. "'Tis an heir, and as lusty as a young
lion. Gerald Walter John Percy Mertoun, next Duke of Osmonde! Hurrah,
hurrah, hurrah!"

And at the words all the men shouted and flung up their hats, the
landlord with his wife and children ran forth, women rushed out of
their cottages and cried for joy--and the bells in the old church's
grey tower swung and rang such a peal of gladness as sounded as if they
had gone wild in their ecstacy of welcome to the new-born thing.

In all England there was no nobleman's estate adorned by a house more
beautiful than was the Tower of Camylott. Through the centuries in
which it had stood upon the fair hill which was its site, there had
passed no reign in which a king or queen had not been guest there, and
no pair of royal eyes had looked from its window quite without envy,
upon the richly timbered, far reaching park and the broad lovely land
rolling away to the sea. There was no palace with such lands spread
before it, and there were few kings' houses as stately and beauteous in
their proportions as was this one.

The fairest room in the fair house had ever been the one known as her
Grace's White Chamber. 'Twas a spacious room with white panelled walls
and large mullioned windows looking forth over green hill and vale and
purple woodland melting into the blue horizon. The ivy grew thick about
the windows, and birds nested therein and twittered tenderly in their
little homes. The Duchess greatly loved the sound, as she did the
fragrance of flowers with which the air of the White Chamber was ever
sweet, and which was wafted up to it by each wandering breeze from the
flower-beds blooming on the terrace below.

In this room--as the bells in the church tower rang their joyous
peal--her young Grace lay in her great bed, her new-born child on her
arm and her lord seated close to her pillow, holding her little hand
to his lips, his lashes somewhat moist as he hung over his treasures.

"You scarce can believe that he is here," the Duchess whispered with a
touching softness. "Indeed, I scarce believe it myself. 'Twas not fair
of him to keep us waiting five years when we so greatly yearned for his
coming. Perhaps he waited, knowing that we expected so much from
him--such beauty and such wisdom and such strength. Let us look at him
together, love. The physician will order you away from me soon, but let
us see first how handsome he is."

She thrust the covering aside and the two heads--one golden and one
brown--pressed closer together that they might the better behold the
infant charms which were such joy to them.

"I would not let them bind his little limbs and head as is their way,"
she said. "From the first hour I spoke with his chief nurse, I gave her
my command that he should be left free to grow and to kick his pretty
legs as soon as he was strong enough. See, John, he stirs them a little
now. They say he is of wondrous size and long and finely made, and
indeed he seems so to me--and 'tis not only because I am so proud, is
it?"

"I know but little of their looks when they are so young, sweet," her
lord answered, his voice and eyes as tender as her own; for in sooth he
felt himself moved as he had been at no other hour in his life before,
though he was a man of a nature as gentle as 'twas strong. "I will own
that I had ever thought of them as strange, unbeauteous red things a
man almost held in fear, and whose ugliness a woman but loved because
she was near angel; but this one--" and he drew nearer still with a
grave countenance--"surely it looks not like the rest. 'Tis not so red
and crumple-visaged--its tiny face hath a sort of comeliness. It hath a
broad brow, and its eyes will sure be large and well set."

The Duchess slipped her fair arm about his neck--he was so near to her
'twas easy done--and her smile trembled into sweet tears which were
half laughter.

"Ah, we love him so," she cried, "how could we think him like any
other? We love him so and are so happy and so proud."

And for a moment they remained silent, their cheeks pressed together,
the scent of the spring flowers wafting up to them from the terrace,
the church bells pealing out through the radiant air.

"He was born of love," his mother whispered at last. "He will live amid
love and see only honour and nobleness."

"He will grow to be a noble gentleman," said my lord Duke. "And some
day he will love a noble lady, and they will be as we have been--as we
have been, beloved."

And their faces turned towards each other as if some law of nature drew
them, and their lips met--and their child stirred softly in its first
sleep.

_CHAPTER II_

"_He is the King_"

The bells pealed at intervals throughout the day in at least five
villages over which his Grace of Osmonde was lord--at Roxholm they
pealed, at Marlowell Dane, at Paulyn Dorlocke, at Mertounhurst, at
Camylott--and in each place, when night fell, bonfires were lighted and
oxen roasted whole, while there were dancing and fiddling and drinking
of ale on each village green.

In truth, as Dame Watt had said, he had begun well--Gerald Walter John
Percy Mertoun, Marquess of Roxholm; and well it seemed he would go on.
He throve in such a way as was a wonder to his physicians and nurses,
the first gentlemen finding themselves with no occasion for practising
their skill, since he suffered from no infant ailments whatsoever, but
fed and slept and grew lustier and fairer every hour. He grew so
finely--perhaps because his young mother had defied ancient custom and
forbidden his limbs and body to be bound--that at three months he was
as big and strong as an infant of half a year. 'Twas plain he was built
for a tall man with broad shoulders and noble head. But a few months
had passed before his baby features modelled themselves into promise
of marked beauty, and his brown eyes gazed back at human beings, not
with infant vagueness, but with a look which had in it somewhat of
question and reply. His retinue of serving-women were filled with such
ardent pride in him that his chief nurse had much to do to keep the
peace among them, each wishing to be first with him, and being jealous
of another who made him laugh and crow and stretch forth his arms that
she might take him. The Commandress-in-Chief of the nurses was no
ordinary female. She was the widow of a poor chaplain--her name
Mistress Rebecca Halsell--and she gratefully rejoiced to have had the
happiness to fall into a place of such honour and responsibility. She
was of sober age, and being motherly as well as discreet, kept such
faithful watch over him as few children begin life under.

The figure of this good woman throughout his childhood stood out from
among all others surrounding him, with singular distinctness. She
seemed not like a servant, nor was she like any other in the household.
As he ripened in years, he realised that in his earliest memories of
her there was a recollection of a certain grave respect she had seemed
to pay him, and he saw it had been not mere deference but respect, as
though he had been a man in miniature, and one to whom, despite his
tender youth, dignity and reason should be qualities of nature, and
therefore might be demanded from him in all things. As early as thought
began to form itself clearly in him, he singled out Mistress Halsell as
a person to reflect upon. When he was too young to know wherefore, he
comprehended vaguely that she was of a world to which the rest of his
attendants did not belong. 'Twas not that she was of greatly superior
education and manners, since all those who waited upon him had been
carefully chosen; 'twas that she seemed to love him more gravely than
did the others, and to mean a deeper thing when she called him "my lord
Marquess." She was a pock-marked woman (she having taken the disease
from her late husband the Chaplain, who had died of that scourge), and
in her earliest bloom could have been but plainly favoured. She had a
large-boned frame, and but for a good and serious carriage would have
seemed awkward. She had, however, the good fortune to be the possessor
of a mellow voice, and to have clear grey eyes, set well and deep in
her head, and full of earnest meaning.

"Her I shall always remember," the young Marquess often said when he
had grown to be a man and was Duke, and had wife and children of his
own. "I loved to sit upon her knee, and lean against her breast, and
gaze up into her eyes. 'Twas my child-fancy that there was deep within
them something like a star, and when I gazed at it, I felt a kind of
loving awe such as grew within me when I lay and looked up at a star in
the sky."

His mother's eyes were of so dark a violet that 'twas his fancy of them
that they looked like the velvet of a purple pansy. Her complexion was
of roses and lilies, and had in truth by nature that sweet bloom which
Sir Peter Lely was kind enough to bestow upon every beauty of King
Charles's court his brush made to live on canvas. She was indeed a
lovely creature and a happy one, her life with her husband and child so
contenting her that, young though she was, she cared as little for
Court life as my lord Duke, who, having lived longer in its midst than
she, had no taste for its intrigues and the vices which so flourished
in its hot-bed. Though the noblest Duke in England, and of a family
whose whole history was enriched with services to the royal house, his
habits and likings were not such as made noblemen favourites at the
court of Charles the Second. He was not given to loose adventure, and
had not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love
to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome
and stalwart gentleman. Besides this, he had been so moved by the
piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her
rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of
her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the
poor Catherine had found herself sitting alone, deserted, while her
husband and her courtiers gathered in laughing, worshipping groups
about her triumphant rival, this one gentleman had sought by his
courteous respect to support her in her humiliated desolation, though
the King himself had first looked black and then had privately mocked
at him.

"He hath fallen in love with her," the Castlemaine had said afterwards
to a derisive group; "he hath fallen deep in love--with her long teeth
and her Portuguese farthingale."

"She needs love, poor soul, Heaven knows," the Duke returned, when this
speech was repeated to him. "A poor girl taken from her own country,
married to a King, and then insulted by his Court and his mistresses!
Some man should remember her youth and desolateness, and not forget
that another man has broke her heart and lets his women laugh at her
misfortunes."

'Twould have been a dangerous speech perhaps had a man of the Court of
Henry the Eighth made it, even to a friend, but Charles was too lightly
vicious and too fond of gay scenes to be savage. His brutality was such
as was carelessly wreaked on hearts instead of heads--hearts he
polluted, made toys of, flung in the mire or broke; heads he left on
the shoulders they belonged to. But he did not love his Grace of
Osmonde, and though his rank and character were such that he could not
well treat him with indignity, he did not regret that after his Grace's
marriage with the Lady Rosalys Delile he appeared but seldom at Court.

"He is a tiresome fellow, for one can find no fault with him," his
Majesty said, fretfully. "Odd's fish! fortune is on his side where my
house is concerned. His father fought at Edgehill and Marston Moor, and
they tell me died but two years after Naseby of a wound he had there.
Let him go and bury himself on his great estates, play the benefactor
to his tenantry, listen to his Chaplain's homilies, and pay stately
visits to the manors of his neighbours."

His Grace lived much in the country, not being fond of town, but he did
not bury himself and his fair spouse. Few men lived more active lives
and found such joy in existence. He entertained at his country seats
most brilliantly, since, though he went but seldom to London, he was
able to offer London such pleasures and allurements that it was glad to
come to him. There were those who were delighted to leave the Court
itself to visit Roxholm or Camylott or some other of his domains. Men
who loved hunting and out-of-door life found entertainment on the
estates of a man who was the most splendid sportsman of his day, whose
moors and forests provided the finest game and his stables the finest
horses in England. Women who were beauties found that in his stately
rooms they might gather courts about them. Men of letters knew that in
his libraries they might delve deep into the richest mines. Those who
loved art found treasures in his galleries, and wide comprehension and
finished tastes in their master.

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