His Grace of Osmonde | Page 4

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