His Grace of Osmonde | Page 5

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