Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/575



sudden state which it pleased my Lady Clemency Honeyfoot, of Pages Court in Sussex, to assume after three years of deepest mourning for her brother, the young Earl of Oxney, was the source of much gossip in the neighborhood of the Five Ports and the two "ancient towns" of Rye and Winchelsea. Her silver plate, it was said, had been lately fetched from Pye Bank, where it had reposed ever since the tragedy, and she had even engaged extra servants in order to do justice to her position as lady of Pages. Every one was sure that she must be going to entertain at least some rich lover from a foreign country, and that she desired to make upon him a good impression, because, having refused every gentleman between Hastings and Dover, she thought it high time, seeing she must at least be thirty-two, to secure some kind of a husband. Further, her housekeeper whispered that a specially fine dinner was to be prepared for New-year's eve, the night of the arrival of this guest; whereupon the neighborhood anticipated that, like a sensible woman, Lady Clemency would once more return to social uses and keep the New-year with all the old dignity which had marked the festival in the days of the well-loved young Earl, whose cruel and mysterious death had given the Romney Marshes something to puzzle over ever since.

It was fully three years since the tragedy. People had told the story again and again in the neighborhood to strangers whose attention had been fettered by the sight of the young and beautiful figure of a lady closely veiled as she drove about the Kentish and Sussex lanes, between Tenterden and Rye. The general version was that upon one storm-sodden night of February—and, strangely enough, on the same fateful date (the 15th) as that on which Sir George Barclay and his comrades in evil had plotted to attempt the life of King William III. as he went a-hunting from Turnham Green to Richmond Forest—a sudden summons had come to her ladyship after midnight, and a warning that she must ride ten miles in an hour if she would see her dear brother the Earl alive and give his mind peace. Persons who had known others intimately acquainted with one who actually witnessed the delivery of this sinister message told how Lady Clemency had gone out in her bedgown with her riding-dress over it, and her bare feet thrust into French riding-boots, and her hair hanging loose, to ride with the speed of a witch over the Kentish border to a mysterious house filled with armed men wearing the Orange badge. Here, stretched on a common floor of dirty stone, she had found the brother to whom all her love and youth were sacred. For half an hour she had knelt with the whole weight of his dying body in her arms, turning pitifully from one to another of the officers about her for explanation which none could give. For they were surely all guilty bunglers, who had shot the wrong man, in the hope of the reward promised by the government to all who could bring to book traitors to the Orange King and plotters on behalf of James the Fugitive and his Jesuits. The same tattler went on to say that the Earl, ere he died, had whispered in the ear of his sister the name of the true offender, and that she had given but one cry, and then sat like a stone image as his life ebbed and his eyes closed like those of a sleeping child. From which it was concluded that the name of the real sinner was one not unknown to his sister—indeed, that she had more than a passing interest in him.

After the realization of so enormous a tragedy she had been seen no more for many months. And lately she had stinted herself of every luxury, had made strange journeys to London, had visited