Lady Dunstane

“ Assault or siege, they have achieved their triumphs; they have dominated a frailer system of nerves, and a young woman without father, or brother, or husband, to defend her, is cryingly a weak one, therefore inviting to such an order of heroes. Lady Dunstane was quick-witted and had a talkative husband; she knew a little of the upper social world of her time. She was heartily glad to have Diana by her side again. ”

“ She was unaffectedly astonished to find her outcries against the cold and the journeyings to and fro interpreted as a serving-woman's muffled comments on her mistress's behaviour. Lady Dunstane's maid Bartlett, and Mrs. Bridges the housekeeper, and Foster the butler, contrived to let her know that they could speak an if they would ”

“ In a brief, appraising glance, she comprehended the whole woman; the outré gown, the pencilled eyebrows, the rouged cheeks, the bleached hair. She took the man's arm.
"Come!" she said.
The man yielded. He bowed—smiled in an embarrassed way, flushing to his sandy hair: turned his back.
"How strange!" the lady whispered.
The woman was left alone in the aisle—not chagrined by the rebuff, being used to this attitude, sensitive no longer: but now knowing, for the first time, that the world into which her child had gone would not accept her.... The church was empty. The organ had ceased. ”

“ The present chronicle begins immediately after his marriage to Mary Beltinge of Beltinge. Dunstan, ‘of obscure middle-class origin, and a novelist whose name was just beginning to be known,’ ... lacks spine, effectiveness, precisely in the proportion that he does not lack a complacent self-sufficiency and a capacity for feeling, for suffering. It speedily becomes apparent to Mary that the marriage to Dunstan was a blunder, and in the course of their wedding trip in Brittany she coolly relinquishes him in favor of an American artist, one Lincoln, and virtually leaves the story. ”

“ With a knowing smile, promising vast gratification, she got him on her knee; and together, cheek to cheek, her arm about his waist, they bent over the page: whereon some function of the rich, to which the presence of the Duchess of Croft and of the distinguished Lord Wychester had given sensational importance, was grotesquely pictured.
"Now, mother," said he, spreading the picture flat, "show me you."
"This here lady," she answered, evasively, "is the Duchess of Croft."
"Is it?" he asked, without interest. "She is very fat. Where are you?" ”

“ Dunstan herself was a very uninteresting individual: self-righteous, self-conscious and fat, a perfect type of the moneyed middle-class woman whose balance at the local bank is invariably heavier than that of her neighbours. ”

“ But the fact is, Jack and the colonel are off to Hoolabad on business, so I thought I would take advantage of their absence to pay you a visit. And I hope you are glad to see me?’
Of course Mrs Dunstan says she is glad, and in a measure her words are true. She is glad to keep this fascinating wicked flirt under her eye, where it is impossible she can tamper with the affections of her beloved Charlie, and she is glad of her company and conversation, which is as sociable and bright as a clever little woman can make it. ”

“ Dunstan, I am here. [He partly opens his eyes, raises himself, and stares at her; then his head falls back quietly. Leslie’s face averted.] Dunstan, I have returned to you. We are one and we will make atonement for the past together. I will be your Wife, not your Judge—let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of. Dunstan! [She sees the paper which has fallen from his hand, and reads it.] Dunstan! Dunstan! No, no! Look at me! Ah! [She catches him in her arms.] Husband! Husband! Husband! ”

“ He and his monks carried him to Winchester and buried him in the Old Minster with great honour (A.-S. Chron.)
The death of Eadred rendered Dunstan's position insecure; the nobles generally turned against the queen-mother's administration, the West-Saxon party came into power. Eadwig or Edwy [q. v.] , the elder son of Eadmund, was chosen king and Eadgifu was despoiled of all her property. Before long, Dunstan incurred the ill-will of a powerful enemy. When Eadwig left his coronation feast for the company of Æthelgifu, a lady of the highest rank, and of her daughter Ælfgifu [q. v.] ”

“ That Lady Dunstable should have unkindly slighted this motherless girl, who had evidently plenty of natural capacity under her shyness, was just like her, and Doris's feelings of antagonism to the tyrant were only sharpened by her acquaintance with the victim. Why should Miss Wigram worry her self? Lord Dunstable? Well, but after all, capable men should keep such wives in order. If Lord Dunstable had not been scandalously weak, Lady Dunstable would not have become a terror to her sex. ”

“ O, you can't have people doing that kind of thing.
OMAR [in doorway]
Master, I go.
JOHN BEAL
But why do you come?
OMAR
I came to sing a joyous song to you, master.
JOHN BEAL
Why did you want to sing me a joyous song?
OMAR
Because a lady is riding out of the West. [Exit.]
JOHN BEAL
A lady out of... Good Lord!
ARCHIE BEAL
She's coming, Johnny.
JOHN BEAL
Coming? Good Lord, no, Archie. He said a lady; there'd be the chaperon too. There'd be two of them if it was Miss Miralda. But he said a lady. One lady. It can't be her. A girl like that alone in Al Shaldomir. ”

“ When, with a spirit far beyond his years, he boldly resented the insult that Dunstan had offered to him, the whole power of the court was at once arrayed against him, for Dunstan was already venerated by the ignorant people as a saint: he had the chancellor and the primate on his side; and few would be found to make head against a cause on the part of which such powerful authorities were arranged as leaders. The respect which was due to a king must have been greatly lessened by the insult which Dunstan had offered to his sovereign. ”

“ This wonderful story ended to Dunstan’s liking, for the artful do flourish briefly sometimes.
The boy king Edred was in ill-health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man. He said to himself,—
“There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and aspirations, a man whom even the Devil cannot corrupt. ”

“ It is said that women do not value men of this sort so much as men of some other sorts. It was long, at any rate, before Dunham—whom people always called Charley Dunham—found the woman who thought him more lovely than every other woman pronounced him; and naturally Miss Hibbard was the most exacting of her sex. She required all those offices which Dunham delighted to render, and many besides: being an invalid, she needed devotion. She had refused Dunham before going out to Europe with her mother, and she had written to take him back after she got there. ”

“ But now there is no lie: there is nothing to stand upon any longer. You must get leave, or something, and go away—or I will. I am not—really—very well.”
She looked at him miserably, with twitching lips, and he laid a soothing hand—there was still no one to see—upon her arm.
“Judith, don’t talk of impossibilities. How could we two live in one world—and apart! Those are the heroics of a dear little schoolgirl. You and I are older, and braver.”
She put his hand away with a touch that was a caress, but only said irrelevantly, “And Rhoda Daye might have loved you honestly!” ”

“ Dunstan. Dunstan was an industrious art spirit, being reported by William of Malmsbury as "taking great delight in music, painting, and engraving." In the "Ancren Riwle," a book of directions for the cloistered life of women, nuns are forbidden to wear "ne ring ne brooche," and to deny themselves other personal adornments. ”

“ Afterwards she told herself that it was not a liberty—that the difference in their ages made it a right if he chose to take it—but at the moment the idea incited her to deepen his impression. She cast about her for the wherewithal to make the completest revelation of her cheaper qualities. In a crisis of candour she would show him just how audacious and superficial and trivial she could be. Women have some curious instincts.
“I am dying,” she said, with vivacity, “to see how His Highness keeps house. They say he has a golden chandelier and the prettiest harem in Bengal. ”

“ In the long, suggestive, caressing letters which reached Judith by every mail, he made an appearance of respecting her fresh widowhood that was really clever, considering the fervency which he contrived to imply. As the weeks went by, however, he began to consider this attitude of hers, the note she had struck in going six thousand miles away without seeing him, rather an extravagant gratification of conscience, and if she had been nearer it may be doubted whether his tolerance would have lasted. But she was in London and he was in Assam, which made 279restraint easier ”

“ Lady Duncan had an assignation with Count D'Evreux last night. She went up the stairway to his room. She was carrying with her a small pistol. She had had an affair with Edouard, and she had been rebuffed. She was furious. But she went to his room.
"He was drunk when she arrived—in one of the nasty moods with which both of you are familiar. She pleaded with him to accept her again as his mistress. He refused. According to Lady Duncan, he said: 'I don't want you! You're not fit to be in the same room with her!'
"The emphasis is Lady Duncan's, not my own. ”

“ And as she passed before him into the empty house he saw that her face was so drawn that even he could scarcely find it beautiful.
91 CHAPTER VI. “Mummie,” remarked Miss Daye, as she pushed on the fingers of a new pair of gloves in the drawing-room, “the conviction grows upon me that I shall never become Mrs. Ancram.”
“Rhoda, if you talk like that you will certainly bring on one of my headaches, and it will be the third in a fortnight that I’ll have to thank you for. Did I or did I not send home the order for your wedding dress by last mail?” ”

“ If she had private questionings and secret alarms, she hid them with intrepidity; and if it seemed to her to be anything ridiculous that the wayward god should present himself behind the careful countenance and the well-starched shirt-front of early middle-age, holding an eyeglass in attenuated fingers, and mutely implying that he had been bored for years, she did not betray her impression. The thrall of their engagement made no change in her ”

“ We are all very hungry, I'm afraid," said Lady Dunstable, with a smile. Meadows was conscious of a rising fury. His quick sense perceived something delicately offensive in every word and look of the great lady. Doris, of course, had done an incredibly foolish thing. What she had come to say to Lady Dunstable he could not conceive; for the first explanation—that of a silly jealousy—had by now entirely failed him. But it was evident to him that Lady Dunstable assumed it—or chose to assume it. ”

“ So much so, that Captain Thrush, A.D.C., registered his conviction that she was really rather a pretty girl—more in her than he thought; and the Honourable Mr. Lewis Ancram said to himself that she was enjoying, in anticipation, the prestige she would have a month later, and that the cleverest of women were deplorably susceptible to social ambition.
The Superintendent met them at the wharf, and John Church led the way up the great central avenue of palms, whose grey, shaven polls look as if they had been turned by some giant lathe, with his hand on the arm of this gentleman. ”

“ Bryanston Street, I suppose?"
"Thursday won't suit us," Janet put in decisively. "No, papa; I've got people coming here to tea. Besides, Lady Halifax is quite equal to representing the whole British public by herself, aren't you, dear?" That excellent woman nodded with a pretence of loftily consenting, and her daughter gave Janet rather a suspicious glance. "Daddy and I will come another day," Janet went on in reassuring tones ”

“ Good fellow, Sparks, thoroughly good fellow. I hope he’ll get on. It’s very disheartening work, this of ours in India,” he went on absently; “one feels the depression of it always, more or less, but to-night——” He paused and closed his eyes as if he were too weary to finish the sentence. A servant appeared with a wicker table and another with a tray.
“A cup of tea,” said Judith cheerfully, “will often redeem the face of nature” ”

“ Then he began to walk to his tent. Dunstan had lighted a fresh torch and was waiting for him. But the great barons, who had gone up to the King and Queen before him, pressed round him and shook his hand, one after another, and bade him to their feasting on the morrow; nor was there jealousy of him, as there had been when he had saved the Queen's life at Nicaea, for now that they saw him they felt that he was no courtier, and desired only the safety of the army, with his own honour. ”

“ Dunstane quicklie declared that this Dunstan séeth the diuell often, but now he was become a waiter at the table when Dunstane sat with the king. dreame signified the kings death, and the changing of the nobles into dum and insensible beasts betokened that the princes & gouernors of the realme should decline from the waie of truth, and wander as foolish beasts without a guide to rule them. ”

“ Rhoda, don’t make any engagement for Sunday afternoon. I’ve accepted an invitation from Belvedere for a river-party.”
The face in the looking-glass showed the least contraction between the eyebrows. The ayah saw it, and brushed even more gently than before. Mrs. Daye was watching for it, and hurried on. “I gather from Mrs. Church’s extremely kind note—she writes herself, and not the aide-de-camp—that it is a little fête she is making especially, in a manner, for you and Mr. Ancram, dear—in celebration, as it were. She has asked only people we know very well indeed ”