A Lady of Quality: Being a Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff but Not Presented to the World of Fashion Through the Pages of The Tatler, and Now for the First Time Written DownBurnett, Frances Hodgson
General
A Lady of Quality: Being a Most Curious, Hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff but Not Presented to the World of Fashion Through the Pages of The Tatler, and Now for the First Time Written Down
Burnett, Frances Hodgson
Nobility -- Fiction
"Nay, 'tis not wandering," Anne said. "'Tis true, sister. There is no
night these years gone by I have not remembered it again--and seen. In
the night after that you bore him there--I prayed until the mid-hours,
when all were sleeping fast--and then I stole down--in my bare feet, that
none could hear me--and at last I found my way in the black dark--feeling
the walls until I reached that farthest door in the stone--and then I
lighted my taper and oped it."
"Anne!" cried the duchess--"Anne, look through the tower window at the
blueness of the sky--at the blueness, Anne!" But drops of cold water had
started out and stood upon her brow.
"He lay there in his grave--it was a little black place with its stone
walls--his fair locks were tumbled," Anne went on, whispering. "The spot
was black upon his brow--and methought he had stopped mocking, and surely
looked upon some great and awful thing which asked of him a question. I
knelt, and laid his curls straight, and his hands, and tried to shut his
eyes, but close they would not, but stared at that which questioned. And
having loved him so, I kissed his poor cheek as his mother might have
done, that he might not stand outside, having carried not one tender
human thought with him. And, oh, I prayed, sister--I prayed for his poor
soul with all my own. 'If there is one noble or gentle thing he has ever
done through all his life,' I prayed, 'Jesus remember it--Christ do not
forget.' We who are human do so few things that are noble--oh, surely
one must count."
The duchess's head lay near her sister's breast, and she had fallen a-
sobbing--a-sobbing and weeping like a young broken child.
"Oh, brave and noble, pitiful, strong, fair soul!" she cried. "As Christ
loved you have loved, and He would hear your praying. Since you so
pleaded, He would find one thing to hang His mercy on."
She lifted her fair, tear-streaming face, clasping her hands as one
praying.
"And I--and I," she cried--"have I not built a temple on his grave? Have
I not tried to live a fair life, and be as Christ bade me? Have I not
loved, and pitied, and succoured those in pain? Have I not filled a
great man's days with bliss, and love, and wifely worship? Have I not
given him noble children, bred in high lovingness, and taught to love all
things God made, even the very beasts that perish, since they, too,
suffer as all do? Have I left aught undone? Oh, sister, I have so
prayed that I left naught. Even though I could not believe that there
was One who, ruling all, could yet be pitiless as He is to some, I have
prayed That--which sure it seems must be, though we comprehend it not--to
teach me faith in something greater than my poor self, and not of earth.
Say this to Christ's self when you are face to face--say this to Him, I
pray you! Anne, Anne, look not so strangely through the window at the
blueness of the sky, sweet soul, but look at me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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