God's Playthings
by Marjorie Bowen · English · Gutenberg #49504 · 438,080 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: God's Playthings
Author: Marjorie Bowen
Release date: July 21, 2015 [eBook #49504]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOD'S PLAYTHINGS ***
GOD’S PLAYTHINGS
BY
MARJORIE BOWEN
AUTHOR OF “THE VIPER OF MILAN,” “THE GLEN O’ WEEPING,”
“I WILL MAINTAIN,” ETC.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1913
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BECCLES
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE KING’S SON 1
II. A BIOGRAPHY 23
III. A POOR SPANISH LODGING 35
IV. DEFEAT 59
V. TWILIGHT 80
VI. THE CAMP OUTSIDE NAMUR 93
VII. THE POLANDER 113
VIII. THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GRACE ENDICOTT 135
IX. THE CUP OF CHICORY WATER 153
X. THE BURNING OF THE VANITIES 180
XI. A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE 202
XII. THE ARISTOCRAT 225
XIII. THE BETROTHED OF PEDRO EL JUSTICAR 249
XIV. THE MACEDONIAN GROOM 260
XV. THE PRISONER 273
XVI. THE YELLOW INTAGLIO 301
GOD’S PLAYTHINGS
THE KING’S SON
“This letter has given rise to various
conjectures.”–_Dalrymple’s Memoirs._
_From Ringwood, the 9th of July, 1685._
MY LORD,
Having had some proof of your kindness when I was last
at Whitehall, makes me hope now that you will not refuse
interceding for me with the King, being I know, though too
late, how I have been misled; were I not clearly convinced of
that, I would rather die a thousand deaths than say what I do.
I writ yesterday to the King, and the chief business of my
letter was to desire to speak to him, _for I have that to say
to him that I am sure will set him at quiet for ever_. I am
sure the whole study of my life shall hereafter be how to serve
him; and _I am sure that which I can do is worth more than
taking my life away_; and I am confident, if I may be so happy
to speak to him, he will himself be convinced of it, _being I
can give him such infallible proof of my truth to him that,
though I would alter, it would not be in my power to do it_.
This which I have now said, I hope will be enough to encourage
your lordship to show me your favour, which I do earnestly
desire of you and hope that you have so much generosity as not
to refuse it. I hope, my lord, and I make no doubt of it, that
you will not have cause to repent having saved my life, which
I am sure you can do a great deal in if you please; being it
obliges me to be entirely yours, which I shall ever be, as long
as I have life.
MONMOUTH.
_For the Earl of Rochester, Lord High Treasurer of England._
Knowing that I had been involved in the miserable final adventure of
that unhappy Prince, James Scot, Duke of Monmouth, and even been with
him in that last Council in Bridgewater, my lord Rochester showed me
this letter with a kind of languid malice, and even had the indecency
to smile at it and address to me a remark slighting to the unfortunate
writer of that desperate appeal.
“For,” said he, “had Monmouth a secret to reveal, though ever so base
a one, he had disclosed it to save his life–and since he disclosed
nothing ’tis proof plain this was but a fool’s trick to catch mercy.”
He said no more, but I was minded to tell what I knew that I might do
justice to the memory of one wronged and wretched; yet the impulse
was but passing, for I knew that the secret his dead Grace had never
discovered was one which for pity’s sake I must be silent on; and well
I was aware also that what I could say would awaken no understanding in
the cold heart of Lawrence Hyde. My Lord’s Grace of Monmouth has been
dead ten years, and in the potent and huge events that have changed
Europe since, he has been forgotten by all but some of those poor souls
in the West who called him King. But I, who joined fortunes with him in
his reckless enterprise, hold often in my thoughts him whose fate is
now reckoned but a trifle in the history of nations. Both in the exile
that followed Sedgemoor and the years in England under His present
Protestant Majesty have I considered silently the tragic mystery of
this young man whose life was useless pleasure and whose death was
bitter anguish.
It hath a curious sound that I, once penman to his Grace, should now be
secretary to the Earl of Rochester; I gave my master this reflection,
and he laughed in his indolent fashion and answered that ten years
had accomplished the work of a hundred, and that the rebellion in
the West was ancient history. Yet when he had left me to my work I
copied this same letter (written in a quick hand with the agony of the
author showing in that forceful entreaty to one who had never been his
friend), and I brought the copy home with me and now must write under
it the explanation like the key to a cipher. Not to show any, but
rather to bury or destroy; not to betray the secret of the dead, but to
ease mine own heart of one scene which has haunted me these long ten
years.
It hath a turn of folly to write what will never be read, but the
impulse driving me is stronger than reason, and so I make confession of
what I know while holding my faith inviolate.
At the time of the capture of my lord in ’85, the indecent cruelty of
the then King in seeing one whom he had resolved to be bitterly avenged
on, and in commanding to be published an account of those agonies he
should have been most sedulous to veil, was much commented upon, and
first gave his people the impression of that ill-judging severity of
character and stern harshness of temper they soon found unendurably
galling.
It was well known too at that time, that my lord had obtained that
interview with the King by reason of the desperate letter he wrote, of
the same trend as the epistle he sent to my lord Rochester, declaring
he had somewhat of such importance to reveal that it should put the
King’s mind at rest for ever concerning him. Various were the rumours
abroad concerning this secret and what it might be, and as it was
known from the King’s lips that his Grace had revealed nothing, many
supposed, as my lord Rochester, that it was but a feint to obtain an
audience of his Majesty; yet how any could read those letters and not
see they were inspired by the bitter truth, I know not. Some believed
that it was that his Grace had been urged to his fatal undertaking by
His present Majesty, then Stadtholder of the United Provinces, and
that he had about him letters from that Prince’s favourite, Monsieur
Bentinck.
Yet all evidence was against this, and the Duke himself appealed to the
Stadtholder to bear witness that he had no designs against England when
he left The Hague, but intended for Hungary (for which purpose, indeed,
the Prince equipped him) and had since been misled by the restless
spirit of the Earl of Argyll and other malcontents whom he met, to his
undoing, in Brussels.
More believed that the disclosure related to that subtle designing
minister, the Earl of Sunderland, who was deep in the councils of
the King’s enemies, yet held his Majesty in such a fascination that
no breath against him was credited, even at the last, when he ruined
the King easily with a graceful dexterity that deceived even Monsieur
Barillon, who is esteemed for his astuteness.
Yet what reason had my lord Sunderland, intent on far larger schemes,
to lure my lord Monmouth into a disastrous expedition, and what object
had his Grace in keeping a final silence about such treachery?
Nor would the revelation of the falsehood of his Majesty’s minister or
the discovery of the dissimulation of his Majesty’s nephew be such a
secret as his Grace indicated in his letter–“for I have that to say to
him which I am sure will set him at quiet for ever”–whereas either of
these communications would rather have set King and Kingdom at great
trouble and dis-ease.
No one came near the truth in their guesses, and after a while no
one troubled, and truly it is an empty matter now; still, one that
containeth a centre of such tragic interest that for me the wonder and
pity of it never dieth.
To bring myself back to the events of that fatal year (the recollection
groweth as I write), it shall here be noted that I was witness of the
great and bitter reluctance of my lord to lead this rebellion.
He was brave in his spirit, but of an exceeding modesty and softness
in his temper, of a sweet disposition, averse to offend, fearful
of hardship, a passionate lover of life, generously weak to the
importunities of others.
Yet for a great while he withstood them, avoided Argyll, shut his doors
to Lord Grey and Ferguson and was all for retirement with the lady whom
he truly loved, Harriet Wentworth.
But from Love for whom he would put by these temptations came the
goad to urge him into the arms of Ambition, and she, who in her pride
would see him set on a throne, joined her entreaties to the arguments
of the men who needed a King’s son for their leader, and pawned the
very jewels in her ears to buy him arms. And he was prevailed upon to
undertake this sad and bitter voyage with but a few adventurers whose
much enthusiasm must take the place of money and wits, for of these
last they had neither. At first his Grace’s heart utterly misgave him
and he was more despondent than any man had ever known him, being
indeed in a black and bitter mood, reluctant to speak on anything but
Brussels and my lady waiting there.
This brought him into some discredit with his followers, but Ferguson
had spirit enough to inspire the ignorant, and Lord Grey, who, though a
man dishonoured in private and public life, was of a quick moving wit
and an affable carriage, animated the little company of us, not above a
hundred, who had joined together on this doleful enterprise.
But when we had landed on the rocky shores of Lyme Regis, it was his
Grace whose mood became cheerful, for his ready sensibility was moved
by the extraordinary and deep welcome these people of the West gave us,
for, whereas we who were at first, as I have said, but a hundred, in
a few days were six thousand, all hot on an encounter and confident;
truly it was marvellous to see how these people loved his Grace and how
he was at the very height of joyous exaltation in this fair successful
opening.
Taunton saw a day of triumph when his Grace was proclaimed King in the
market-place by a mad speech of Ferguson in which wild and horrible
crimes were laid to the charge of James Stewart, and I think Monmouth
saw himself King indeed, at Whitehall, so gracious and gay was his
bearing.
But my lord Grey looked cynically, for not a single person of any
consideration had joined us, and, while the gentry held back, ill-aimed
and untrained peasants were of no use to us. Yet had his Grace done
better to trust their fanatical valour and march on for Bristol and so
take that wealthy town, instead of spending his time endeavouring to
train his men–God knows he was no general, though a brave soldier in
his services in the Low Countries!
While he dallied, my lord Beaufort was raising the trained bands, and
my lord Feversham came down from London with some of the King’s troops.
Then came that attempt of my lord Grey on Bridport when he forsook his
men and fled; though this was proved cowardice, his Grace was too soft
to even reprimand him.
In miserable searching for food, in vain straggling marches, in
hesitations, in fatal delays the time passed; his Grace might have had
Bristol, a place abounding in his own friends; yet, hearing that the
Duke of Beaufort had threatened to fire it rather than open the gates,
he turned towards Bath, saying he could not endure to bring disaster on
so fair a city.
This faint-hearted gentleness was not fitted for the position he
had assumed; at Bath they killed his herald and returned a fierce
defiance. So we fell back on Frome in disorder; and my lord saw his
visions melting, his dream of Kingship vanish, for in the same day
he received three pieces of news: that the three Dutch regiments had
landed at Gravesend, that my lord Argyll was a prisoner, and that my
lord Feversham was marching upon him with three thousand men and thirty
pieces of cannon.
And now the full utter madness of what he had undertaken was apparent;
we had neither cannon nor arms, scarcely powder; and he who had seen
the fine armies of Holland and France could not but see the hopeless
position he held with a force of these poor peasants, the cavalry
mounted on cart and plough horses, the foot but armed with scythes and
pruning-knives. Despair and dismay gained an audience of his mind;
he fell suddenly into agonies of fear and remorse for what he must
bring on these followers of his; from every one who came near him he
asked advice, and the anguish of his spirit was visible in his altered
countenance. He called councils in which nothing was resolved but the
desperate state they were in, and nothing talked of but the folly that
had put them there; his Grace passionately blaming Ferguson and Argyll
for their evil urgings. Then it was resolved to retreat on Bridgewater
to be nearer the sea; on this march some few left his Grace, but most
stayed in a dogged love, and this faith touched his tender heart as
much as his own danger, and wrought such a passion of weak agony in him
it was piteous to see the expression of it in his face.
At Bridgewater he viewed the enemy through his glasses from the top of
the church tower; there and then, I think, he knew that he gazed on a
country he must soon for ever leave.
Alas! alas! In my nostrils is still the scent of that July afternoon,
the perfume from the slumbrous grasses, the scent of the peaceful
flowers.…
That day we had a very splendid sunset; all the west was gold and
violet and the whole sky clear of clouds, yet over the morass below
the castle the marsh fog lay cold and thick, for lately it had rained
heavily and the Parret had overflowed its banks, so the whole earth was
wet–very clearly I recall all details of that day.
Here I come to that picture that is for ever with me–the last Council
of my lord. Had I the skill of some of those Hollanders whom I have
seen abroad, who can limn a scene just to the life, I could give this
scene on canvas with every colour exact.
It was a room in the Castle, not large, looking on to the garden;
through the open window showed that emblazoned sunset, and a rose and
vine leaf entwined against the mullions.
The panelling of the chamber was darkened and polished, above the
mantelpiece was a painting of a stone vase of striped and gaudy tulips,
very like, and there were logs ready on the hearth, for the evenings
were chilly. On the floor was a little carpet of Persia, and in the
centre a table with stools set about it, all of a heavy, rather ancient
design. A little brass clock with a mighty pendulum stood against the
wall on a bracket; on the table were two branched candlesticks, clumsy
and shining.
There were gathered the rebel officers, talking themselves into a
boastful confidence; the only man of quality among them, my lord Grey,
stood a little apart beside the open window–and smiled; he was a
curious man, not well-favoured, but one whom it was pleasant to look
upon, tall and dark, with that little fault in the eyes that casteth
them crooked. My office was an idle one, for there was nothing to
write, so I watched the others and felt chilled at the heart for the
hopelessness of it all.
When the dusk gathered, my lord Grey drew the curtains across the
rising mists and lit the candles slowly.
When the last flame rose up, Monmouth entered quietly: he ever had a
light step.
Marred as he then was by his inward misery, he was still the loveliest
gentleman in England and of a winning beauty impossible to be realised
by those who have not seen him; he wore a riding coat of brown cloth
and a black hat with a penache of white plumes, being more plainly
dressed than ever he had been before, I think, in all his easy life.
They all rose when he entered, but he motioned them to their seats
again, and I saw that he had not the firmness to command his voice
to speak. He took the place they had left for him, and Lord Grey,
shading the candle flame from his eyes, stared at him with that crossed
glance of his and that immovable expression of amusement on his lips.
For a while they spoke together, to cover, as I took it, this dismal
discomposure on the part of their leader.
But presently he took off his hat impatiently, showing his long soft
hair of that English-coloured brown and his eyes, of the tint of a
chestnut, that usually shone with so bright a light, and leaning a
little forward in his chair he broke into astonishing speech.
“I cannot go on,” he said. “I will not go on–there is nothing ahead but
ruin.”
At these words that so stript the poor pretence of hope from their
councils, these officers sat revealed as fearful and stricken men. They
looked at Monmouth as one who would be the mouthpiece of their own
terrors; my lord Grey withdrew himself a little from them and went to
stand by the mantelshelf, from there observing all.
The red came into the Duke’s face and he eyed them wildly.
“What are we going on?” he said. “We are not such fools as to think we
can prevail now.… I saw Dumbarton’s Scots yonder on Sedgemoor.… I know
how they can fight … they were under me at Bothwell Brig.…” He pressed
his handkerchief to his lips and he was trembling like a sick maid.
They saw in his eyes that he considered them, as the play saith,
on “the edge of doom,” and as he had given them leave for ignoble
thoughts, so each took advantage of it and bethought him of his own sad
condition.
“We have but a rabble,” said one. “And there is yet a chance to get
over seas—”
“I cannot fall into the hands of James Stewart,” muttered Monmouth;
“for I have done that which cannot be forgiven.” And there was such
pusillanimous fear in his wretched look of shivered dread that it
passed like a panic through all that they too had done what could
not be forgiven; nor was James Stewart a merciful man. One voiced the
general terror:
“We could get to the coast before any guessed we had left
Bridgewater–in flight lies our only chance.”
Then my lord Grey made this speech.
“There are six thousand people have left their homes to follow
you–would you, my lord, abandon them to that fate ye cannot face
yourself?”
Monmouth looked at him; maybe he thought it strange that the man that
had been a proved coward under fire should speak so intrepidly in the
council, yet he was too unnerved for a retort or an answer.
“Oh, you,” added Lord Grey, with a flick of a scorn in his tone, “who
took the title of a King, and are a King’s son, cannot you make a more
seemly show of it than this?”
“It is my life,” said the Duke in a piteous agitation. “Five thousand
pounds on my head … to die as Russell did.…”
“You are a King’s son,” repeated Lord Grey.
In a desperate passion his Grace answered him.
“Why did you induce me to this folly? It was you, that villain Ferguson
and Argyll—”
“He has paid,” said the other quickly.
“As I must pay.… My God, was I not happy in Brabant? You but wanted my
name to gild your desperation—”
“We would have made you King,” said Lord Grey, and he smiled a little.
There fell a silence, and it seemed that the Duke would speak, but he
said no words.
“Come, gentlemen,” spoke out my lord Grey. “The Council is over–you
will have your orders before morning–all expedients are ineffectual;
now each, in his own way, must go forward to the end.” He took up the
candle to light them from the room, and they, being men of a little
station, were overawed by his quality and went; two of them deserted
that night, and one betrayed us by firing a pistol to warn Lord
Feversham of our approach and so got the King’s pardon. God be merciful
to the others; I think they died unknown and brave.
I, being trusted because there was a price on my head and I had borne
the torture in Scotland, was asked by Lord Grey to stay and help
hearten his Grace.
We endeavoured to reason him into going into Castle Field, where
Ferguson preached to the miners and ploughmen; he would not, but in a
weak agony abused Wildman and Argyll as the engines of his torture, and
he had the look on him we call “fey”; I believed he was near his death.…
So the night fell very misty and warm, and my lord would not lie down,
but sat in that little room struggling with anguish.
He had his George of diamonds on and often looked at it and spoke
incoherently of how King Charles had given it him … surely my pity was
more provoked than my scorn, for he was soft and gentle in his ways
and so had gained much love.
That morning one had complained to him Lord Grey should be dishonoured
for his behaviour without Bridport–and he had answered: “I will not
affront my lord by any mention of his misfortune–” yet here was he sunk
in utter misery while Lord Grey strove to rouse in him a manly and
decent courage with which to be worthy of these poor brave souls who
loved and followed him; presently he came round to his old and first
appeal.
“Remember you are a King’s son.”
It was near one in the morning by the little brass clock, and I sat
wearily by the door that led to the bedchamber; the Duke was at the
table, and as my lord Grey spoke he looked up and began laughing. He
laughed so long and recklessly that we were both dumb in a kind of
horror, and when at last he came to a pause in his laughter there was
silence.
Now the Duke discovered some fortitude: he rose and helped himself to
wine, which brought the fugitive blood back into his cheeks and he held
himself with more dignity, though there was that wild look of unsettled
wits in his wide-opened eyes.
“My lord,” he said, “and you, sir–bring the candles nearer and I will
show you something—” He put back the admired locks that screened his
brow and took from the pocket of his inner coat a leather book that he
laid on the table before us.
“What is this?” asked my lord Grey.
The Duke untied the covers in quiet and let fall on the polished wood
all manner of odd and foolish papers, letters, complexion wash recipes,
charms and notes of his journeyings in Holland.
These he put aside and drew from a secret lining a silver case such as
is used for a painting in little.
It was my thought that it contained the picture of Lady Harriet, which
we were to return to her if either lived to do it, and I was sorry for
this lady who had been so faithful in her love.
From one to the other of us the Duke looked strangely; his face was
flushed now and beautiful as in former days when he was the loved one
of that great brilliance at Whitehall, yet still he had the seal of
death on him, and, worse than that, the horrible fear of it writ in
every line of his comely countenance.
“Please you, look here,” he said; he opened the locket and held it out
in his palm.
“What is this?” he asked in a husk and torn voice.
It was the likeness of a man, very fairly done, who wore a uniform and
cravat of the time of the death of King Charles I.
Lord Grey looked at it quickly.
“It is your Grace,” he said; then, seeing the dress–“No,” he added, and
glanced swiftly at Monmouth–“who is it?”
“It is Colonel Sidney taken in his youth,” I said, for I had known the
man well in Rotterdam when he was attached to the court of the late
King Charles, then in exile there. And I gazed at the painting … it was
a marvellous fair face.
While I looked my lord Duke had three letters out from the same
secret corner of his book, and I saw that two were in the writing of
Colonel Sidney and the third in a hand I did not know, the hand of an
ill-educated woman.
“Who is this?” asked Lord Grey with an amazed look. “Surely Colonel
Sidney was never any concern of your Grace?”
He stood with the picture in his hand and Monmouth looked up at him
from the old worn and folded letters he was smoothing out.
“It is Colonel Sidney,” he said.
“Well?” asked Lord Grey intently.
“He was my father,” said Monmouth; then he began laughing again, and it
had the most doleful sound of anything I have ever heard. I could not
grasp what had been said, but my lord Grey with his quick comprehension
seemed in a moment to understand and value this truth.
“Your father!” he said softly, and added: “To think we never saw
it!” which was an extraordinary thing to say; yet, on looking at the
likeness in little and on the fair agonised face staring across the
candlelight one might notice that they were in almost every detail the
same, and methought I was a very fool never to have observed before
how these two men were alike, even to little manners and fashions of
speech.
And being that I saw the tragic pitifulness of it all, I could do no
more than laugh dismally also.
“See you these letters if you want proof,” said Monmouth.
“There is no need,” answered my lord Grey. “The likeness is enough.”
Then he repeated: “And we never saw it!”
“No,” said his Grace half-fiercely; “you never saw it–I was always the
King’s son to you–instead of that I am scarce a gentleman.… Now you
know why I cannot go on.… I am no Stewart, I have no royal blood.…”
Grey looked at him, turning over in his mind, I think, the aspects
of this bewildering turn; he gazed at Colonel Sidney’s son with a
curiosity almost cruel.
I was thinking of the obscurity from which he had sprung, the mystery
round his early years in Rotterdam, his sudden appearance in a blaze of
glory at Whitehall when the King had made him Duke.…
“Who did this?” I asked. “And who kept silence?”
“King Charles loved me as his son,” he answered vaguely, “and I loved
him.… I could not have told him–and I was ambitious. What would you
have done?” he cried. “I did not know until I was fourteen.” He pressed
his hand to his breast.
“But I will not die for it,” he muttered. “Why should I die for it?”
“Your death must become your life, not your birth,” said Lord Grey.
“My death!” shivered Monmouth.
Lord Grey turned to face him; thin and harsh-featured as he was, he
made the other’s beauty a thing of nothing.
“Why?” he said commandingly. “You know that you must die–you know what
will happen to-morrow and what you have to expect from James Stewart,
and those honours that you have won in life will you not keep to grace
your death?”
“I cannot die,” answered Monmouth; he rose and began walking about in a
quick passion of protesting anguish: “I will not die.”
“That you cannot decide; the manner only is in your power,” said Lord
Grey calmly, and I marvelled to think that he had been a coward in open
field.
“I am not the King’s son—” his Grace cried out at him, and fell across
a chair sick with unavailing love of life.
Lord Grey took up a candle and turned to the door, looking at him the
while.
“Will you give James Stewart this triumph?” he asked.
This seemed the one thing to brace Monmouth, for those two had always
hated each other strongly; James in the old days had feared my lord’s
power, been jealous that he was the elder son of the elder son, and
Monmouth seemed to remember that; yet a mean thought hurried on the
heels of the manly reflection.
“He would give me my life for this,” he said weakly. “My life for this
secret—”
“Good night,” said Lord Grey–a strange man–and left us.
The Duke seemed not to know that he had gone or that I remained; after
a little he went into the bedchamber, but not to sleep, and all night I
heard him weeping … such sick and bitter womanish sobs all through that
long watch I kept.…
Colonel Sidney’s son!
Who were they who did this–and they who kept silence?
A curious commingling of motives, sordid and lovable, ambition, some
little love, some touch of self-sacrifice.… I felt compassion for King
Charles, who had had no deeper feeling in all his spoilt life than this
affection for what was not his.…
I put the wasting candles out and sat in the dark; I lifted the curtain
and saw the sun rise over Sedgemoor.
Six thousand men to fight against hopeless odds to-morrow for him they
deemed a King, the blood of Bourbon and Stewart, the heir of Tudor and
Plantagenet.…
And in my ears was the thick sobbing of a mere Englishman of a stock
that scarce boasted gentility, who could not face the end of his
masquerade nor fit the robe of greatness he had assumed.
* * * * *
So here is the secret revealed at length to the dumb and innocent
paper; God knoweth it is, as Lawrence Hyde saith, a great while ago;
for the rest, the world knows how the Duke rode out to Sedgemoor with
such a look in his face the very children knew he was marked for doom,
and how he fled, leaving his men to gain great honour after he had
forsaken them. Also how he was found in peasant’s dress, so changed
they did not know him till the George of diamonds flashed out on his
tattered garments as he fainted in his captor’s clutch. Lord Grey was
taken with him; they stayed at Ringwood two days and from there his
Grace wrote frantically to the King and to Lord Rochester.
It is very clear he meant to buy his life with his wretched secret,
though I think my lord Grey must have been ever urging him to die with
a decent carriage.
So they brought him to London and he was taken before his Majesty,
swordless and with his hands tied behind him.
What passed no man knoweth but James Stewart; he has spoken often
of it, and I know those to whom he has told of Monmouth’s ignoble
desperate pleadings for life at any cost, of his casting himself down
and imploring mercy.
Yet he must have been spurred by something in the demeanour of his
ancient enemy, for he never told his secret, and he left the presence
with anger and dignity, resolving, it must be, to cheat the King of
that last satisfaction. Yet afterwards he fell again into unmanly
misery that was the wonder of all, and then into a strange mood that
was neither the apathy of despair, or, as some said, an exalted
enthusiasm. I wondered then and now where his proofs were: not
found on him with the other poor trifles I had seen at Bridgewater
Castle–destroyed, perhaps. And so he died, hurried reluctant from life,
without either religion or repentance, sorry for the blood shed in the
West, firm in his love for Lady Harriet, indifferent to the clergyman
who cried out on the scaffold:
“God accept your imperfect repentance!”
He would not join in the prayer for the King; when they goaded him he
said “Amen” with a careless air.
Knowing as I do what bitter terror he felt, what ghastly anticipations
he had, what agony he had endured at the thought of the sheer moment of
death, with what shivering sickness he felt the axe, with what horror
he eyed the headsman, I cannot bear to write or think how they mangled
him.…
And so he died; he brought much misery on the innocent and he was maybe
a worthless man, yet I could weep for him even now. I am glad he did
not speak; Lord Grey has been ever silent and no one else knows.
* * * * *
Among all those who watched that fair-haired head held up it is strange
there is not one to think it showed little likeness to the dark-browed
Stewart Kings.…
Here the paper is endorsed in another hand:
“If this be truth then this was a thing ironical. The writer of this
rambling manuscript and the Earl of Tankerville, once Lord Grey, are
dead, and there be none that know save God who knows and judges.”
A BIOGRAPHY
THE EARL OF STRAFFORD
“Certainly never any man acted such a part, in such a theatre,
with more wisdom, constancy and eloquence, with greater
reason, judgment and temper, and with a better grace in all
his words and gestures, than this great and excellent person
did.”–_Whitelock on the trial of Strafford._
This was a man who in his own time was great and fell to dishonoured
death, leaving a brilliant memory, but one neither respected nor
praised; a King raised him, used him and forsook him, a people judged
him, condemned him, and put him to death. Great events followed; the
nation shook and changed. The King himself was swept away by that same
power to which he had in vain sacrificed his minister, a greater than
the King ruled England and men forgot the Earl of Strafford save to
execrate his policies.
But they who come home crowned with laurel from the wars the popular
heroes of an hour are not always the only saviours of their country,
and they who flatter the people do not always serve them best. History
is a hard, often an unreflective, judge; her verdict, dictated by the
passion of a moment, lasts too often for centuries.
Judging a man by his inner spirit, his desires, the use he makes of
great abilities, pitying a man for his misfortunes, his bitter death,
those English born may well give a little gratitude to this Englishman
who had ever England in his heart.
Thomas Wentworth was of an ancient and noble family of Yorkshire,
powerful by intellect, Puritan by tradition, strong by courage and
self-belief, above all things deeply desirous of rendering that service
to his country which is the way that most readily appeals to a man of
an active complexion of satisfying that almost unconscious yearning for
glory that is the sign of a great spirit. Mere personal ambition is a
proof of either meanness or madness, and the self-seeking of either
insanity or vanity has never attained any but a brittle fame and a
hollow achievement; if a man is to even contemplate the performance of
mighty deeds, he must have some mightiness within him.
Strong enthusiasm, unless it be of the headlong useless kind, is ever
joined to that tincture of melancholy which comes from viewing the
contrasting apathy of the rest of mankind, and for the first years of
his opening understanding Thomas Wentworth was silent, reserved in
matters political, given to reflect and observe more than to speak or
act.
He had the usual education of a gentleman, studied at Cambridge,
travelled in Europe, became Sir Thomas and member for Yorkshire before
he was twenty-one.
It was the beginning of the power of parliaments, the beginning of that
temper in the people which was to later furnish the extraordinary
spectacle of a nation ruling its own kings and retaining a monarchy
as a mere ornament to that independence which displayed undisguised
is likely to be too stern an object to please a people full of levity
and love of show. This party was represented by the Opposition that
had galled and restricted the first Charles since his accession; he,
however, rather disliked than feared them, and did not doubt that his
authority would quell their republican principles.
With these men, among whom was John Pym and afterwards a nobler
patriot, John Hampden, Sir Thomas took his seat; he went not into
extremes against the court, but conducted himself moderately; he
became _Custos Rotulorum_ for the West Riding; presently the king was
advised to make him Sheriff of York that he might be disqualified as a
Parliamentary candidate; next he was imprisoned for refusing to pay a
forced loan imposed by Charles; it seemed that he was committed beyond
withdrawal to the Opposition, daily more daring; and that he was to be
one of that band of men, firm willed and single minded, who discovered
in an absolute monarchy a menace to the general good; but Wentworth
did not see with them; tradition was strong in him, his imagination
glorified loyalty; he saw in the king an instrument for procuring
the greatness of the people; he saw a crisis approaching, a struggle
drawing nearer, he chose his side, knowing perhaps that it was bound
to lose, but seeing at least a chance for his own dormant abilities
to strengthen and exalt a weakening institution. In 1628 the Duke of
Buckingham was stabbed to the heart by one of those Puritans who were
resolved that all pertaining to Kingship was fatal to their country’s
peace, and in that year Thomas Wentworth took the place of the murdered
favourite and became, with Laud of Canterbury, chief adviser to the
King.
It was supposed by his former friends that he had covered himself with
immortal infamy by his desertion of the popular party for that of the
court, and their censure has been often echoed, it being assumed that
because the cause he espoused was unsuccessful he wasted his genius in
serving it; but in 1628 Sir Thomas may have hoped to make England as
great as did Cromwell afterwards, and there was no prophet to tell him
his judgment was deceived.
A personal friendship rose between him and the stately, formal King
with whose traits he had much in common. Charles, grateful to the
genius that took the place of Buckingham’s careless talents, created
him in one year baron, viscount, and Lord President of the Council of
the North.
The Puritan party viewed his rise with peculiar hatred; so hard is it
for even just men to stifle the claims of party and see any good in
that cause which is not their own.
“You have left us,” said John Pym, “but we will not leave you while
your head is on your shoulders.”
In 1633 Wentworth was made Lord Deputy of Ireland, and endeavoured to
reduce order into that vexed and discontented country by measures which
were abused as despotic, but which were necessary to a man occupied
with great schemes. England could never be a great empire while Ireland
was an independent kingdom; his claim of Connaught only anticipated the
inevitable, and if the army he was so abused for raising could have
been kept together under his direction, the crown of England might have
been saved. As far as time permitted, he introduced social benefits
into the wretched land and encouraged the linen industry by planting
flax.
But he was too late, perhaps too impetuous, blinded by his own genius
for command into overlooking the steady rise of the democracy; he
himself described his policy as “thorough.” Had he been allowed the
time, he would have made a notable thing of this policy; but the tide
was against him, and bore him sharply out to ruin.
Private malice, not his own faults, brought about his downfall, and he
was thrown by a misuse of the law as wanton as any tyranny that could
be brought against him. In 1639 John Pym carried out his threat and
impeached him of high treason; Wentworth, newly created Lord Strafford,
was committed to the Tower, and the outward disgrace and real glory of
the man began.
It was one of the most memorable of all state trials, and lacked no
element of the tragic, the strange, the terrible, or the dramatic.
The prisoner was he who for over ten years had been the greatest man
in the three kingdoms; the principal accuser was one who had been the
closest friend of the man he accused; the judges were eighty peers of
the realm, the witnesses the two Houses. A King who loved and a Queen
who hated the accused were present. The prisoner conducted his own
defence, and outside beyond the doors of Westminster Hall the first
murmurs of the growing civil war were beginning to rise and swell.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck painted Lord Strafford as a dark, handsome man
of a robust type dictating to his secretary; the picture shows a
personality such as is in accordance with what we know of the man, and
when looking at the proud, half-frowning face it is easy to imagine how
he stood during his trial, pale, composed, erect, scornful of them,
seeing very surely the axe ahead, having no trust save in the sad-eyed
King at whose ear the Bourbon Queen whispered hatred of him, yet
using all his magnificence of eloquence to save himself as one who is
conscious that his life is worth defending.
Thirteen accusers, who relieved each other, plied him with questions
for seventeen days, and he answered them all with unshaken judgment,
calm and grace, unaided, unpitied. John Pym’s hatred spurred his
enemies on, and Lord Strafford must have tasted the bitterest of all
humiliation when he looked to where sat his friend Charles Stewart, not
daring to lift a hand to save him–and he had hoped to make his King
great indeed.
The man on trial for his life and honours and the King in his regal
seat exchanged many a deep look across the commoners who were the
masters of both–“he trusts me, and I am helpless” was like a dagger in
the heart of Charles.
By his side always sat the Queen, Mary of France, black-eyed, small, in
satin and pearls, ready with her hand on his wrist, her voice in his
ear: “Do not rouse the people–let Strafford go—”
She had always hated him; she hated any who endeavoured to share her
dominion over her husband; she began, too, to be afraid of the people,
and as she was of the blood royal of France, a breed that could not
understand concession, she and her priests urged the King into further
tyrannical measures; first, let Strafford go: he had devised the
unpopular laws; if his death would appease the people, let them glut in
his blood and keep their complaints from the ear of his Majesty.
So the Queen; but the King loved Strafford, who had served him to this
end of ruin, and when he looked across at the dauntless figure pleading
his cause to ears deaf with prejudice, he vowed in his heart that his
minister should not die, and cursed the barking commoners who forced
him there to witness the humiliation of this his faithful servant.
The genius of one man was triumphant over the malice of many. Strafford
argued away every charge raised against him. A bill of attainder was
then brought forward, hurried on, and passed on April 26th, a week
after he had closed his splendid defence.
The King, desperate and seeing his own throne shaking, yet had the
resolution to refuse his assent; he had promised his protection to
Strafford and would not give way.
The whole nation rose to demand the blood of Thomas Wentworth; Laud was
already in the Tower, the Puritan party dominant; the fallen minister
had no friend save the King.
His ambitious, lofty, and reserved spirit tasted great agony while he
waited through the long days of early spring, tramping his chamber in
the Tower–he who had hoped to make England great–and here was England
howling for his life and honours … here was John Pym and his fanatic
followers triumphant.
“What is left? Can the great spirit rise to the great crisis? Having
proudly lived, can I proudly die? Can I still serve England–now?”
The King was firm, and public feeling rose to a panic of excitement.
Revolution was on the point of shaking the very palace. The Queen, with
a baseness doubly vile in a woman, used her arts to wrest death from
Strafford for her husband, vowed with tears to flee to France. The
Bishop of Lincoln urged that the needs and desires of the nation were
more than a mere private promise.
But the King was firm; he would not sign the death warrant of Strafford.
Then the Queen, potent for mischief, wrought on the King, since he was
obstinate on that point, to save his servant by violent means. The
distracted Charles took her fatal advice and endeavoured to seize the
Tower of London by force by means of the troops lately raised by the
Queen.
This attempt on the keys of the kingdom threw the nation, already in a
ferment, into a tumult of wrath and fear, and Lord Strafford was lost.
The wildfire of party zeal inflamed men into believing anything
desperate of the King; thrice the members of the House of Commons fled
on a cracking of the floor, thinking they had trod again over gunpowder
as in the former reign. There was nothing too monstrous to be stated,
nor too extravagant to be believed.
But the King would not sign the death warrant of his friend and
servant; he was supported by the Bishop of London, who bade him listen
to his conscience rather than to the fierce demands of party. Amid all
the press of turning strife one man was calm–the prisoner in the Tower
who saw every day how he had failed in his scheme of government and how
he had been the means of embroiling the King with the people instead
of establishing a great man over a great nation and making a light in
Europe of Charles Stewart.
Of all bitter failures, what can be more bitter than that of a great
statesman who hugely stakes and hugely loses beyond redemption, beyond
hope? The proud dark-faced man who had stood so high and dreamt so
daringly had his vigils of anguish during those long May days and
nights in the old Tower already darkened with noble blood and the
memory of splendid sufferers. He had lost everything but his life, and
that hung on the promise of the King. My lord did not doubt that his
master would keep that promise; but what was mere life to a man who
only valued existence as it meant use, power, achievement?
He who had given the King and England his best now gave all left to
him. On one of those awakening days of spring, when even in the Tower
there were trees bursting into leaf, glimpses of cloud-flecked blue,
bars of sunshine across the cold walls and sounds from the wide river
of music and merry-making, Lord Strafford wrote to the King, asking,
for the sake of the peace of England, to be left to his fate.
In these words he concluded his noble letter: “My consent will more
acquit you to God than all the world can do besides. To you I can
resign the life of this world with all imaginable cheerfulness.” The
King gave way, but with no abatement of his anguish, since he justly
felt that such a request was but another reason for him to keep his
word.
He could not, when he had consented, sign the warrant himself, so this
was done by four lords, and he sent a message entreating mercy of the
peers, or at least a delay; but there was no pity in England for Lord
Strafford, nor for the King.
The worst half of the tragedy was his; he never forgot nor shook his
conscience free of what he had done. When he came to his own agony and
bent his sad head to the block he looked at Juxon, that same bishop
who had been advocate for Strafford, and said, “Remember,” and it was
believed that the terrible whisper referred to the forsaken friend who
had died the same death eight years before.
At the moment he fell into a kind of apathy in the midst of the
rejoicing faction who had their way at last.
Lord Strafford prepared for death; he was in the full vigour of life,
of a worldly temper, proud and ambitious; the warm days were full of
the keen joy of life. He tasted to the utmost the sharpness of the
struggle between flesh and spirit. When he heard from the written
paper the actual words of the King formally condemning him he was for
a moment broken with emotion and overcome at thought of the friendship
that had failed so miserably; he, beloved of the King, was to die an
attainted man, a death humiliating and shameful, branded as a traitor.
He struggled to control his haughty spirit, to subdue the flesh that
clung to lovely life, but always before his eyes were the ripening
green, the sweet early weather, the sounds from the river, and it was
not easy.
The execution was hurried on; on the 12th of May he went to his death
in black satins like the great gentleman he was; as he left the gate
Archbishop Laud, his one-time coadjutor, now his fellow-prisoner, met
him, and he went on his knee to receive the blessing of one who was
to so quickly follow him to the scaffold, then on between his guards
silent and scornful like the leader of them all, while on his face
were the low-breathed air and the early sunshine, and in his ears the
calls of the birds and the swish of the river rippling hurriedly under
the fortress walls.
Many men have died for England in many ways, none under circumstances
more difficult and bitter than this proud man who sank to rest upon the
block that May day while his sick, haunted King waited in the great
palace for the awful news of the irrecoverable.
A POOR SPANISH LODGING
PHILIP WHARTON, DUKE OF WHARTON
“The scorn and wonder of his age.”–_Alexander Pope._
A young man sat at a wooden table in a small, mean room.
His hands were in his pockets and his head sunk on his breast, his legs
outstretched before him.
A miserable bed, covered with a dirty blanket, occupied one corner of
the room, above it being a gaunt and poorly carved crucifix.
The floor, walls and ceiling were lath, plaster and worn wood, all
soiled, smoked and crumbling.
The one small window was covered with a thick pane of discoloured glass
that could not open; some portmanteaux stood beneath and a broken chair.
On the table was a coarse glass stained with lees of wine, a loaf of
bread, an hour-glass and a knife.
The flies turned in and out of the glass, clustered round the loaf and
hung in clouds about the window.
Outside the sun, at its full height and strength, blazed at white heat,
and a bar of vivid light streamed through the smeared glass and fell in
a pool of gold on the dirty floor near to the young man, who appeared
to be dozing, so still did he sit and so level was his breathing.
He was humbly dressed in a travelling coat that was much worn, though
of a good cloth and fashionable cut, a frayed blue silk waistcoat,
black breeches, boots to his knees, and a coat of grey tabinet, all
much used and soiled.
At his side was a light sword, and round his throat a neckcloth of fine
Venetian lace, carelessly folded.
His hair hung untidily down his back and forward over his face; it
was a charming chestnut-brown colour and very thick. Presently he
stretched himself and raised his head without removing his hands from
his breeches pockets.
He glanced round the room, and it would have been impossible to
discover from his expression whether the squalor of his surroundings
moved him to disgust or no.
His face was unusually handsome, of a high-born and rakish type, but
ravaged in a ghastly fashion by want and illness. The contour and pose
of youth remained, but all bloom, freshness and colour had gone; his
person seemed to have seen as much hard service as his clothes and to
have suffered more.
From the lines on his brow and at the corners of his remarkably
beautiful mouth it might have been supposed that he was in pain, but
his expression was calm and his large hazel eyes serene. The flies
circled the room and beat at the window with a monotonous persistency;
the sun burnt up the already foul air and heated the room almost
unbearably. The young man rose, displaying a figure no more than the
middle height, but of a graceful, well-trained manliness, and walked
unsteadily to the window.
As he moved he felt his own weakness and caught his breath with a quick
exclamation.
For years he had been warned that he was killing himself as he had been
warned that he was ruining himself. The last had occurred; he had been
ruined in fame and fortune, and it seemed as if the first prophecy
would be justified also. Two nights ago he had ridden from one town
to another; six hours in the rain and the chill that had followed had
greatly increased the vague illness that had been for the last two
years threatening his life.
He had always been as reckless of his health as of all the other great
gifts he had once been blessed with, and he was paying toll now, a
penniless exile, bankrupt in everything.
He could see nothing from the window, the blaze of the sun was too
strong on the white Spanish street.
The flies droned in his ears, and they were the only sound.
He closed his eyes, for the dazzle of sunshine made him feel giddy.
“Gad,” he murmured, “one could do with a few drops of rain–a cloud at
least.”
He began to be conscious of a great thirst; there was no water in the
brown earthenware jug standing in the corner, he knew. Languidly, but
with the well-schooled and now unconscious grace of the man of fashion
who is used to move with a thousand eyes watching every detail of his
dress and deportment, the young Englishman crossed the room, unlatched
the door and went slowly down the dark, steep and dirty stairs.
He came directly into a large picturesque room that gave by a tall open
door on to the street.
It was a kind of general hall or kitchen, the smooth black beams of
the ceiling hung with rows of onions and herbs, all manner of pots and
pans about the huge open hearth, a window at the back looking on to the
garden, and in a dusky corner an empty cradle and a spinning wheel.
The young man went to the shelf where the thick green glasses stood,
took one down and dipped it into the red-glazed pitcher that stood
beneath. The bubble of the water sounded pleasantly; he raised the
dripping glass and drank with a grateful air.
He was glad of the cool shadows and of the intense quiet; every one
seemed abroad; it was autumn and he supposed they were at work in the
vineyards.
There was an old rush-bottomed chair near the black-carved supports
of the door; he seated himself with his back to the sunlight in the
deserted street, and his eyes on the window the other side of the
room that gave an exquisite glimpse of a fig-tree drooping in the
shadowed garden, and beyond a glossy myrtle, glittering in distant
sunbeams. The young man knew that he had not long to live, both from
ordinary signs and fore-warnings and the sure inner instinct his keen
intelligence was quick to notice and regard.
He was absolutely without fear; he had never had any credence in any
religion or any belief, even vague, in a future state of existence, nor
had, like many, tried to invent these feelings for himself or supply
their place with superstitions and conventions.
He had never needed these lures to gild his life with promise, always
he had found the moment sufficient, and whatever the moment demanded,
in wealth, honour, talent, charm or health, he had given lavishly, not
unthinkingly, for he had always known that a price would be demanded,
as he had seen it demanded from others of his kind.
And he was prepared to pay.
A long life did not attract him; all the pleasures he valued were
pleasures that could not with dignity be enjoyed when youth was past;
his own sparkling wit had often made a butt of an old rake, or an
elderly prodigal; he had never intended to join the ranks of those
people who had outworn their enjoyments.
A poet whom he had patronised had called him “The scorn and wonder of
the age;” but from his own point of view his life had been the very
steady following of a very simple philosophy.
Caring for nothing but the world, that he regarded as the golden apple
hung above the head of every youth to ignore or gain, he had bought
the world, with money, with charm, with honour, with talent, with
beauty and strength and exulted in it and sated himself–and he did not
complain of the bargain. He never complained of anything; his sweet,
good humour was held by many to condone his villainies as the grace
with which he took his final fall almost justified the acts which had
led to that fall. When his political levity, his social extravagances,
his dissipations had finally left him without health or money, he had
taken the verdict of the doctors, the curses of his creditors and
the flight of his friends with the same gentle smile, and, urged by
his ardent love of the world to make life an adventure to the last,
had disappeared from London, where he was so dazzling and infamous
a figure, to die abroad, in the sun and among scenes that by their
freshness and simplicity disguised, at least to a stranger’s eyes, the
sharpness of their poverty. So he, by birth an English Marquis, by
patent of the Pretender a Duke, son of a famous man and himself the
most renowned rake in London, even among a set that included Viscount
Bolingbroke, stayed his obscure wanderings at a poor inn in an unknown
Spanish village and prepared himself for death among the peasants of a
strange land.
He regretted nothing, not the splendid chances he had thrown away, not
the fine name he had tarnished, not the great talents he had wasted,
not the life he had sapped and used up before its time. He admitted no
sins, he claimed no virtues and he believed in no judgment.
God he considered a polite myth, invented to frighten human weaknesses,
the devil a fable to excuse man’s breakage of his own laws; he had
never paid the least regard to either; never, in any moment of
disappointment or sickness, had he felt any touch of remorse, of regret
or fear.
If he had been given his life over again he would have again used it
for the same extravagances, the same follies, the same short brilliant
flare.
As he sat now, looking at the distant fig-tree and myrtle, he was
thinking of his past life without compunction, though every incident
that rose to his memory was connected with some broken promise, some
shameless deception, some ruined heart, some wanton, dishonourable
action.
The one thing he had been faithful to (beyond his own Epicurean creed)
was the code of a gentleman, as interpreted by the society in which he
moved. It was a curious code, inherited, not learnt, an instinct more
than a quality only remotely connected with the chivalry from which it
had sprung.
The Duke would have found this code difficult to define; he called it
honour, but it was only a kind of flourishing likeness of honour.
Its laws were simple, mainly these: never be afraid; never chaffer with
money nor earn it in any way, nor mingle in trade; never play false
in your games or your bets; always be courteous to your inferiors and
to women; never take insolence from any one, even the King; seek out
danger and the company of your equals; never take up money once you
have put it down; smile when you win and laugh when you lose; never
speak of your loves nor toast an actress at your club.
My lord had never broken these laws: he did not put this to his credit;
he took them as naturally as clean linen and neat table manners, but
perhaps in the casting up of his worthless life they might be set
against the black length of his wicked record, as some poor palliative.
There was something else my lord could claim, a personal quality this
and peculiar to himself: he was tender to animals and anything weak
that came his way.
He could not have turned a step aside to seek out the poor or
miserable, but when they crossed his path he was lavish.
And no bird or beast had ever suffered through him; he had never lent
the brilliance of his presence to any baiting or cock-fighting or
bull-fight.
This, too, might be set to my lord’s account, but there was little else.
Yet he was lovable; he had always been lovable.
People who knew him and scorned him still cared for him; he had been
caressed by Charles Edward in genuine affection and liked by King
George. Perhaps because he was so utterly soulless and made no pretence
of being other than he was, because he was so entirely frank in his
passionate capacity for happiness, in his beautiful gaiety he attracted
those who were themselves divided in their aims and too timid to crown
their own vices as he crowned his, for his fascination was more than
merely physical and the attraction of exquisite manners.
He was lovable now; even after his long exile from the splendours
of St. James, even in his worn clothes, even marred by illness and
weariness, he carried with him something that was wholly pleasing, not
in the least suggestive of the shameful, unlovely things with which his
name was branded.
He was reviewing the final adventure of his life with no changed sense
of values, no blurred outlook.
The near presence of death did not alter his opinion in one jot on any
particular nor confuse his estimate nor awaken new feeling; he must
have satisfied, in some way, the purposes for which he had been born,
to be so serene, so content on the eve of the complete end.
All his senses were absolutely clear, even more exquisite than usual;
even more perhaps than ever did he appreciate the beauties of light and
colour and scent, the delicacies of sound, of touch, yet his mean and
unbeautiful surroundings did not trouble him; compared to what they
might have been they were well enough. It was better to die in a poor
Spanish lodging than in the Fleet, or a garret in Whitefriars, or some
kinsman’s back room; nay, better this than the Tower and the panoply of
death some chill morning on the scaffold.
He would perhaps have preferred an active death in some duel, but he
made no complaint that this had not been the end ordained for him.
He was grateful that he was going to die in the sun.
Leaning back easily in the old willow-wand chair, he began to compose
some verses–some of those witty cynical lines for which he had been
famous in London and which amused him to fashion.
Presently his sensitive ears detected a light sound, a sweet and
familiar sound, the play of a woman’s skirt against her ankles and the
floor.
He broke off his mental composition and turned his head towards the
shadowy depths of the room that lay between him and the window at which
he had been gazing.
From out these darknesses a figure emerged from a mysterious door
that opened and shut on farther recesses of blackness, moved into the
clearer shadows and finally into the full light.
It was a woman, young and notable, who appeared not to notice that
there was any one in the room, for she stood in a watchful, motionless
pose, gazing up the dark staircase from which the Duke had descended.
Her dress was fantastic and charming, a tight blue satin bodice gleamed
round her slender waist, and beneath it panniers of pink gauze
billowed over her hips and were looped away from a white petticoat
trimmed with blue jet that glimmered even when she stood still.
Round the bottom of this petticoat was a garland of pink roses, her
stockings, that showed well above her ankles, were blue, her shoes
white, heelless and fastened in with embroidered pink ribbons.
On one arm she carried a pale yellow cloak and a black velvet mask;
over her wide shoulders was flung, carelessly, but gracefully, a white
silk scarf with a deep fringe border.
Her dusky brown hair was slightly powdered and gathered on the top of
her small head by a huge tortoiseshell comb set with red coral, long
blue jet earrings quivered in her ears, and she wore a necklace of fine
pearls.
The Duke noticed these things and the delicacy and grace of the woman
herself, the poise of her head, the straight lines of her profile, the
fineness of her hands and ankles, the richness of her locks, the dark
sweep of her eyebrows and the dusky bloom on her round cheek.
He also knew her dress to be that of a dancer or ballerina, despite the
blue brocade train that dragged a couple of yards behind her.
What or who she was he did not care, nor how she came to be in this
poor inn dressed in this festal fashion.
He was pleased to see again one of the pretty creatures who had always
been to him the most entrancing and beautiful objects in an entrancing
and beautiful world.
He watched the gentle vision with interest and tenderness, making no
movement or sound.
Suddenly she turned full on him her dark face that, although it was too
broad for perfect beauty, was piquant and glowing with fine colour.
The Duke rose and bowed.
“I am Philip Wharton, Señora,” he said in Spanish.
She advanced towards him.
“I thought you were upstairs,” she said gravely.
Her voice was delicate, but her speech had the peasant accent of
Andalusia.
“Were you watching for me?” he asked curiously.
“Yes,” she said. “For who else? Why should I come back after this long
time save to see you? Yesterday I was here,” she added, “but you would
not see me.”
“Pardon me, I was ill yesterday and did not come downstairs.”
She gazed at him with soft, luminous and unfathomable eyes.
“Have I seen you before?” asked the Duke, endeavouring to place her
among the many women who had flitted across his life.
“I used to dance,” she answered, “at the opera in Venice.”
He did not remember her. How could he recall one face from out the
whirl of joy and gaiety he had known in Venice?
“You are Spanish?” he asked.
“From Andalusia. And you are English?”
“Yes.”
“And dying?”
“Ah, you know as much as that, do you?” he smiled.
“I know many things now.”
“Ah, wisdom!” he mocked. “I could wager your knowledge begins and ends
with the list of your victims and triumphs. How did you come here?” he
asked abruptly.
“I ran away.”
“To this place?”
“It was but a stage on the road.”
“You know me?” he asked.
“Yes; I have met you at Paris, at Vienna, at Rome and Naples.”
“By gad,” he said, “you flatter me by your memory.”
He began to notice that she never smiled, and it displeased him; he
disliked a grave woman.
“What is your name?” he asked in the tone of a master, and sank back
into the chair, for indeed he felt very weak.
She shook her head.
“I have so many.”
“Give me one.”
She bent her eyes on him earnestly.
“What was the name of your first love?” she asked.
He started.
“I have forgotten.”
“What was the name of the woman you loved the most?”
Fair faces rose before him, tearful faces, pleading faces, angry
faces–he could not choose between them.
“I do not know,” he said faintly.
She glanced round the room as if she, too, saw the faces that had risen
so clearly before his mental eyes.
“You were not kind or loyal to one of them,” she said.
Philip Wharton laughed.
“Tell me your name,” he insisted.
“You have forgotten it, and you do not know it,” she returned quickly.
“Once I was called Helen, but that was a long time ago.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Tell me about yourself,” he said, “and how you come to be here alone.”
She put her hands behind her back; the mantle trailed over her train
and her fragile dress glimmered in the shade.
“It was after the opera at Versailles,” she began. “I was dressed for
the ballet and was leaving my dressing-room, when they put a cloak over
my head and carried me out to a coach–we drove all night to the house
of an English lord in the Rue de Vaugirard—”
She stepped suddenly and noiselessly behind the Duke.
“—as I was descending from the coach they put a handkerchief over my
eyes, so—”
Philip Wharton felt a scrap of muslin flung over his head and drawn
tight over his eyes, leaving him in pleasant darkness.
“—and one led me by the hand, thus—”
Her fingers touched his; he smiled passively beneath the bandage.
“—and took me into the presence of my lord, who had betted a thousand
guineas that I should ride in his cabriolet through Paris. But it was
not very long before he was tired of me.”
She loosened the handkerchief and withdrew it gently.
Philip Wharton opened his eyes on cool shade, a room hung with raised
crimson and white velvet and furnished in a very stately style.
An arched marble window looked on to a blue canal on which the rays
of the setting sun sparkled, and in the seat of this window, that
was piled with cushions, a lady sat; she wore a great hooped skirt,
fluttering with sarcenet ribbons, and in her red-gold locks drooped a
red rose.
“As I was saying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you very soon
got tired of me.”
“_Carina_, no,” answered the Duke. “I have always been in love with you
and Venice.”
“You went away. It was the day of the Carnival. I was then wearing an
orange cloak with a fringe. It was exactly five days since I had met
you. But you cared for me more than for any woman you met in Venice.”
“I love you now,” said Philip Wharton, “for I have come back to you
when I am dying.”
She looked at him gravely and stepped out of the window on to the
balcony.
“Will you come once more in my gondola?” she asked.
He followed her.
Light steps led from the balcony to the Canal, where a gay gondola
cushioned in sapphire blue floated.
The lady stepped in and the Duke after her; the gondolier sped the
light boat forward between the palaces.
“This has always been a pleasant memory to me,” he said.
She sat erect with a fan of curled white ostrich to lips and looked at
him over the feather tips.
“The night you went away,” she said, “my husband hired three bravos. I
was crossing the bridge when I met them–this bridge—”
Suddenly the Rialto was over them; the gondola had shot from blue and
gold into darkness.
“They thought I was coming to meet you. My husband—”
The boat stopped in the blackness; he felt, though he could not see,
the lady rise and step out.
Her hand touched his, and blindly following the guidance of it, he
stepped ashore, and felt a step beneath his feet; the firm clasp on his
wrist drew him through a doorway.
“My husband is coming back to-morrow,” the voice continued. “Oh,
Philip, I am afraid!”
He put his free hand to his sword.
“That is foolish of you,” he said. “I am here.”
“But you have begun to cease to care,” her voice wailed, “and you will
go away.”
As she spoke a door opened to her right, and she released his wrist; he
followed her into a little boudoir charmingly hung with straw-coloured
silk.
The Duke remembered it very well; he turned to the woman.
She was now a pale blonde wrapped in an embroidered mob and wearing
dazzling little silver slippers.
Her face was tear-stained and her eyes pleading.
“Paris was terrible after you left,” she said. “Why did you go? You
tired so soon.”
“You have remarked that,” he returned, “twice, I think, before.”
She began to cry.
“Do not you love me any more, Philip?”
“I have come back to you,” he answered; “but my head is rather
confused. And, Madame, you are spoiling your complexion with these
tears.”
“Hush!” she cried.
She ran to the dainty hangings that concealed the door, raised them,
and listened.
“Some one is coming!”
She hastened back to him and half dragged, half pushed him to a secret
door; as she touched a spring it flew open, and he stepped with a
laugh into the concealment of a dark secret room that was filled with
a bitter, pungent perfume. He closed his eyes; there was a heaviness
in his head; he could not tell how long he had been closed in when the
sliding panel was drawn.
“It was a false alarm after all,” said the woman.
Her black hair hung dishevelled on her brocade gown, her hollow face
was pale and her eyes stormy.
“Did you say that you must leave Bois-le-Duc to-morrow?” she demanded
hoarsely.
She held a candle in a pewter stick in her right hand and her left
clasped her dress together over her palpitating bosom.
“The Prince gave me leave to return to England,” he answered.
He stepped from his concealment into a room with polished walls,
furnished heavily and well.
“You would not betray him after he has given you a Dukedom–you would
not forsake me?” she asked anxiously.
“Do you not trust me?” he asked lightly.
“Oh yes, I trusted you. But you went away.”
“Always the same!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Have I not been faithful
to return to you now?”
She began to laugh.
“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful!”
He laughed too, and the echo was long and loud.
He went to the door and opened it on dark stairs; without looking back
he descended.
The first landing blazed with the light of a thousand candles; a
magnificent doorway with portals flung wide invited him into a
gorgeous ballroom, where splendidly dressed people moved to and fro to
the melody of violin and harp.
Philip Wharton entered; in a little alcove to his right he found the
woman waiting for him.
The diamonds sparkled red and blue as if her flesh was on fire; her
powdered locks were piled high, and the billows of her violet dress
spread wide on the settee where she sat.
She laughed.
“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful! And you are leaving Vienna to-morrow!”
He seated himself on the small portion of the brocade her spreading
skirts had left uncovered.
His nostrils distended to drink in the perfumed air, and his eyes
sparkled; his whole spirit became animated in the congenial atmosphere
of a court–a luxurious court.
“And I must really die and leave all this,” he complained.
He looked at the lady and smiled; but her face was very grave.
“Let us walk once more in the garden,” she said, and rose and opened a
glass door in the alcove that led into a garden that was very prettily
lit by coloured lanterns. She took the Duke’s arm, and they passed
along the prim paths between avenues of clipped limes and box bushes.
For some while she did not speak; then she whispered–
“It is strange to see you at Kensington again, my lord.” Her voice
sounded as if it was full of tears. “Strange to think that you must
leave again so soon.”
She pressed close to his side now, for she no longer wore a hoop; a
quilted hood and cloak concealed her head and figure, and he thought
that she must wear jasmine somewhere on her person, so strong was the
scent of that blossom on the air.
“I wonder,” she continued, “if, when you come to die, you will ever
think of these moments–the broken promises, the broken hearts?”
“When I come to die,” repeated the Duke musingly, “I shall no doubt
think of you and your sweetness.”
“Not of me and my sadness?”
Philip Wharton did not answer; he smiled into the darkness, which he
perceived was beginning to be lightened by the first delicate sparkle
of dawn.
“Have you ever done one good action?” continued the voice at his side.
“Oh, Madame!”
“Or shed one tear–one tear for another? One tear to heal all the
wickedness you have committed–all the grief you have caused?”
“Never!” he answered. “Never!”
“Is there no memory you can recall that would soften you to tears now?”
He answered “None.”
Her hand slackened on his arm and was withdrawn; in the confusion of
the lifting shadows and the spreading milky whiteness of the new day he
lost her.
He was alone in the garden. No, not a garden; it was soon light enough
to see, and he then noticed that he was walking in an English field in
early spring-time.
Before him a meadow sloped to a fence that enclosed a little wood;
bluebells, daffodils, and primroses grew under the branches of the
trees; the meadow was starred all over with buttercups and daisies.
To one side of the fence was a small thatched cottage behind which
the sun was rising, and where the distance merged into the early blue
vapour the sharp spire of a church rose.
A slight, very slight, feeling of apprehension came over Philip Wharton.
“I do not wish to come back here,” he said. “This has all been a dream,
and I will wake up now.”
Yet he walked on.
It was absolutely still; though the sun had now risen clear of the
mists and was glittering in a clear heaven, there was no one abroad.
The Duke approached the cottage, saying to himself–
“I know this place, and I do not wish to see it again.”
Before the wooden gate of the tiny garden he paused.
A few modest flowers were growing in neat beds–pinks, wallflowers, and
sweet williams; beside the closed door was a lavender bush.
The Duke’s sensation of dread deepened. He noticed that a white blind
hung behind each of the four windows. He felt that he was there
against his will. Peaceful and lovely as the scene was, it was one from
which he would willingly have fled.
He left the garden and wandered away into the little wood and seated
himself under a pine tree and took his head in his hands.
And as he sat there he heard the church bell tolling.
“I am not going,” he said to himself, and for a while he was resolute
and would not move; yet presently he rose and went back to the cottage.
The door was half open now.
He pushed wide the garden gate and entered; he was acutely conscious of
the scent of the simple flowers and the tolling of the bell.
Without knocking he entered.
Two men were in the narrow passage carrying before them a coffin.
Philip Wharton found himself face to face with it; it was held upright,
and the name-plate was near his eyes. He read, “_Aged nineteen_.”
He heard a woman sobbing in the room into which the coffin was being
taken, and he peered through the crack of the door.
On a humble bed lay the wasted form of a young girl from which the soul
had recently departed.
Philip Wharton passed out of the house, out of the garden, and down the
meadow.
“I am sorry,” he said; he had never sincerely spoken those words before.
He walked till he came to the church, and then he entered the
graveyard, and seated himself on an old sunken tomb and watched the
poor funeral procession that presently wound through the lych-gate.
When they had all left and he was again alone, he walked down the
sloping churchyard path and looked at the new-made grave.
A simple headstone was already in place; it bore no name, but only the
date and the words–
“A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise.”
Philip Wharton put his hand before his eyes; he felt sorry and afraid.
All the women who had ever loved him seemed to lie buried in that
humble grave. Love itself, compact of a thousand graces, a thousand
transports, which had been made manifest to him under so many different
shapes, in so many climes, seemed to have fallen and died at last and
to lie buried here with Lucy.…
He took his hand from his eyes and saw about him the poor Spanish
lodging, the distant window with the fig and myrtle from which the sun
had now departed. He sat up shivering.
“What dreams!” he muttered. “What dreams!”
He found his eyes wet with tears; he rose and held on to the back of
the chair. For one awful moment he believed in God. Then he shook off
the oppression.
“She died as I must die,” he said. “Why not?”
A chill had fallen with the setting of the sun. He shivered again, and
found that his limbs were stiff beneath him; he pushed the dark hair
back from his face and gazed before him, trying to conjure the figure
of the dancer in the pink gauze and blue jet out of the encroaching
shadows.
But he knew that it was useless, that she was dead and buried with all
those other women.
And death had him by the throat, was struggling with him even now, and
he must prepare himself to go down into the darkness that enveloped
them.
He went upstairs to the room he called his own; as he opened the door
of it he heard steps below, and leaning over the rails saw the old
woman who owned the inn enter with a basket of grapes on her grey head.
The young Duke blew her a kiss; she was the last woman whom he would
ever see. He entered his room; the flies still buzzed round the stale
bread and dirty glass, but the golden pool of sunlight had gone from
the floor.
“Not one of those women,” reflected Philip Wharton, “ever thought that
I should die–like this!”
So saying the young rake seated himself heavily and wearily in his
former seat by the table and stretched out his hand for his pipe which
lay next the glass.
But before he touched it, he felt a slight cold touch on his shoulder,
and thought he heard some one behind him.
As he turned to look he drew a long breath.
“Why, Lucy—” he said, and on that word–died.
DEFEAT
EDWARD PLANTAGENET
Edward Plantagenet, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester,
Lord of Biscay and Uridales, rested at Bordeaux with his brother Johan
of Gaunt, Duke of Acquitaine and Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Lincoln and
Leicester, Seneschal of England and the English army.
Edward of Wales had saved his word; he could not save Acquitaine.
He had redeemed the oath sworn before the high God that the treacherous
Limoges should pay for its disloyalty. The town lay now a burning ruin;
in one day three thousand men, women, and children had atoned with
their blood for the falsity of Jean le Cros, Bishop of Limoges.
For Edward had sworn by his father’s soul to wipe out every life in
Limoges. Chained and bare-headed the Bishop had been brought before the
Prince, and had only been spared by the intercession of Johan of Gaunt,
for Edward had vowed by God and St. George that the arch traitor should
perish.
Yet at this he stayed his hand and came to Bordeaux, carried in a
litter, his vengeance satisfied but his chivalry stained by the
innocent blood of churls, an unhappy knight, ill at ease in mind and
body, without money for his men-at-arms, with Acquitaine slipping from
him. East and south and north the French were advancing, and he had no
means to stay them.
This was great bitterness for one who had been the pattern of
knighthood in Europe, who was a King’s son and the hero of the English.
So he came to Bordeaux, where his family waited him in a castle above
which the Leopards floated, and saw the ships in the harbour waiting to
carry him back to England. At Cognac he had delegated his powers and
his offices to his brother, and Johan of Gaunt had taken up the almost
hopeless task; but he was ambitious, a famous knight, eager to play a
great part among the Princes of Europe, also in his full health and
lusty; but Edward wasted from day to day. After the feverish fury of
the attack on Limoges and the ferocity of his vengeance, he fell deeper
into his sickness and brooded bitterly in his mind.
When he had halted at Lormont a messenger had ridden up to meet him
with word from the Princess, Jehanne of Kent. She had her two children
with her, and one, the elder, was sick.
Edward said no word to this message, and so they carried him, a silent
knight, into the castle.
All gaiety, all joy, all splendour of chivalry and deeds of arms, all
the brightness of glory and bliss of youth seemed overclouded now.
Edward the King was old, Edward the Prince was sick and defeated,
Philippa the Queen was dead, and English chivalry was smirched by the
massacre of Limoges.
And the ships waited to take ingloriously home the proudest knight
in Europe to rest his limbs in the Savoy and presently his bones in
St. Peter’s Church at the Abbey near Westminster. When he came to the
castle he asked after his little son Edward.
They carried him to a room overlooking the Bay of Biscay that lay
placid beneath a pale October sky, and laid him on a couch by the
window; and he asked again for his son.
Immediately the Princess Jehanne, his wife, entered the room and came
to his side, and in silence went on her knees beside him.
“Ah, _joli coeur_!” he said, and raised his weary eyes and took her
long face between his hands and gazed down into it.
“What happened at Limoges?” she asked, without a word of greeting or
duty.
His hands fell to his sides and his worn countenance overclouded.
“I kept my word,” he muttered.
Tears came into the eyes of Jehanne of Kent.
“I would you had been foresworn, seigneur,” she answered, “for the hand
of God is against us.”
“In what way?” asked Edward.
“In your sickness,” she said, “for, certes, I perceive you very
weak–and in the illness of the child.”
“Help me up,” answered the Prince, “that I may go to him.”
He raised himself to a sitting posture and put his feet to the ground;
his simple dull red robe flowed round him unbroken by a jewel, his dark
thin face had the look of a man weary of himself.
With her arm round his shoulder Jehanne supported him; she was very
grave, like one who had no comfort to give.
“That I should lean on you, _joli coeur_!” he said, and rose
unsteadily, holding to her arm. “Look well to this child, Jehanne,” he
added in a sterner tone, “for meseems he will wear the crown sooner
than I—”
“_Hèlas!_” she answered tenderly.“ This is not Edward who speaks so
sadly—”
“Jehanne,” he said, “I shall never wear mail again.”
She shook her head, looking up at him, and tried to smile.
“I shall no more set lance in rest nor draw sword,” he continued. “I
have been useless sick so long, and now I feel death in my bones.”
“Never,” said the gentle Jehanne, “have you come back to me in this ill
humour–the air of England will restore you, seigneur.”
“The air of England will be no balm to my hurts,” he answered. “Take me
to the child.”
She led him gently to the next chamber, her own, where Prince Edward
had lain two days in an increasing fever.
It was a tall and glooming room, hung with cloths covered with
stitching in bright wools.
The two arched windows opened on to the courtyard and the distant
prospect of the sea, and were crossed by the boughs of a poplar tree
that shook golden and amber leaves against the mullions.
An Eastern rug spread the floor, and there was an open hearth on which
some logs smouldered.
The bed stood out from the wall opposite the windows, and was hung with
curtains of clean blue and white check linen; at the foot of it were
two chairs, on one of which a white dog slept.
Beside the bed was a _prie dieu_, with an illuminated book on the
rest, beneath which hung a long strip of embroidered silk, beyond that
several coffers and chests, still unpacked, and a couch piled with
skins and garments.
Two women and a man were talking together over the fire; they rose
hastily at the entrance of the Prince, but he took no heed of them.
Aided by his wife, he came to the end of the bed and stood holding by
the light rail.
Under the blue and white frill of the canopy a child lay asleep, his
brown hair a tangle on the stiff white bolster, his flushed cheek
pressed against his hand.
The coverlet that was worked with the arms of England on a blue ground
was drawn up to his chin, his little body only slightly disturbed the
smoothness of the heavy fall of the silk.
“In what manner did he become sick?” demanded the Prince hoarsely. “God
wot, you might have looked to him better.”
The Princess quivered beneath his hand on her shoulder.
“Neither he nor Richard,” she answered, “has been from my sight since
you left me; but there has been much sickness in Bordeaux.” The tears
overbrimmed her eyes and ran down her pale cheeks. “I have been
watching him these two days without sleep,” she added.
Edward of Wales did not answer her; his hollow eyes were fixed upon his
heir–that third Edward who was to carry on the splendour of England and
the glory of Plantagenet.
The boy had always been next his heart; Richard, his second son, was
not of so kindly a nature. His father did not see in him promise of his
own qualities, but his eldest born was his own copy, beautiful, brave,
at six a perfect little knight.
Jehanne glanced timidly up at his bitter, stern face.
“You must not grieve,” she whispered; “he will be well in a little
while. Is he not strong, and will he not be running beside you in a few
short days?”
Still Edward the Black Prince did not answer; he disengaged himself
from her fond support and walked heavily to his son’s pillow, then sank
on his knees on the bedstep and clasped his thin hands against the
coverlet.
The little face so near to his was calm and proud, the flower of
English beauty, gold and rose in tint, blunt featured, strongly made,
yet delicate.
Save that he was deeply flushed and his hair damp beneath the tumble of
silken curls, he might have been in perfect health. The weary, sick,
disappointed, and defeated knight, with that dark day of Limoges on his
soul, stared with a piteous eagerness at the child’s gracious innocency.
The child who would be King of England soon, surely; it was mere chance
who would live the longer, the old King languishing at Westminster in
tarnished glory at Alice Perrer’s side, or his famous son who had just
resigned his commands and was coming home to die. Edward himself never
thought that he would be King; he felt the sands of life running out
too swiftly.
That day when he had been carried through the slaughter round the
church of St. Etienne at Limoges he had known that it was the last time
he would look on war.
And Edward the King could not live long now.
So soon the fair child would be Lord of England and possessor of all
the perilous honours and glories of his father. The Prince’s proud head
sank low; the hot tears welled up and blinded him, then dripped down
his cheeks as he considered his smirched chivalry.
And the Princess Jehanne saw this, but did not dare to stir from her
place, for she knew that, as a shield once dented by a heavy sword can
never be made smooth again, so a knight’s honour once stained can never
more be cleaned, even by the bitterest repentance. For her husband to
have fallen from this lofty code, which was the only code that held
among those of gentle blood, was a more awful thing than the lapse of a
poor obscure knight, for he had blazed so brightly in his chivalry and
brought such renown to England that the whole world had echoed with his
fame.
The Prince rested his cheek against the arms of England on the
coverlet; he felt the lassitude of a man who sees that life is done,
and that never more in this world will he perform feats of arms or
guide great policies or strive with men or shine before them.
The loss of his strength had had the effect of drawing a veil between
him and the world; seeing as a spectator those events in which he had
once played a leading part, he had come to estimate things differently.
And now that feeling culminated; he felt like one very old, looking
back on a long life, or as if he beheld the incidents of his career
painted in little bright pictures on a long roll of vellum.
It was an unfinished life, a broken, defeated life, perhaps men might
hereafter call it a tarnished life.
The Prince knew this, and the sense of failure was like a black cloud
on his heart.
But his little son, sleeping beneath the leopard-strewn coverlet, would
redeem his own unfulfilled promise.
“Ah, dear Lord Christ, and St. George,” he prayed, “let this be so–let
him be a very perfect knight and a great King.”
Hearing a little movement, he lifted his head.
The child was awake; the sparkling blue of his eyes was brilliant in
his flushed face.
“Seigneur!” he whispered, seeing his father; he smiled. “Shall we be
going to England soon?”
“Even now they load the boats,” answered the Prince. “You wish to
return to England?”
“_Certès_,” said the child wistfully. “Is the war over?” he added.
“What should you know of that?” asked the Prince, startled.
“I did hear the knights all talking of the war.”
“It is not over,” answered Edward sombrely. “Your Uncle Lancaster will
finish that business.”
“_Hèlas!_ I would I were a big knight, Seigneur,” murmured the child.
“There is time for that,” said the Prince.
His son stared at him for a moment’s silence, then said–
“When the knights showed us feats with the lance in the courtyard,
Richard was afraid.”
“Nay,” replied Edward angrily, “not _afraid_!”
The child nodded.
“Richard has a new silk cote hardie which pleases him mightily; but
when I am well I shall have a shirt of mail, shall I not?”
“Ay!” answered the Prince, “if the armourer can make one so small.”
The child closed his eyes.
“Why am I sick, Seigneur?” he muttered. “Did I do wrong?”
Edward shivered.
“You are not sorely sick?” he demanded hoarsely.
His son put out a hot hand, which the Prince clasped tightly.
“I feel so tired,” he whispered, still with his eyes closed; “but when
I sleep the dragons come and crawl over the bed—”
Jehanne had crept round to the other side of the pillow.
“Let him sleep, Edward,” she whispered anxiously.
“He can sleep while I hold his hand,” answered the Prince, never
lifting his eyes from his son’s face.
“Nay, but you should rest,” she insisted. “Have you not come a long
journey, and are you not sick?”
“I rested at Lormont,” answered Edward.
The Princess lifted her red kirtle from her feet and crossed to the
doctor, who stood between the two women on the hearth, and whispered to
him, her pretty face quivering with agitation.
A wind was rising from the sea, ruffling the waves, shaking the cordage
of the anchored ships and lifting the little pennons of England that
struggled at the main masts. This wind beat at the diamond-shaped
leaded casements and scattered the leaves from the poplar tree without
in a yellow shower like golden ducats dropped by a reluctant hand
across the prospect of sea and town.
The Princess Jehanne came back to the bed with the doctor; he was a
Spaniard, who had been in the service of Don Pedro and was renowned for
his knowledge of Eastern medicine.
He spoke in French to the Prince, with a courteous humility.
“Fair Seigneur, permit me to look to the little Prince. And for
yourself, it would be wiser that you should rest.”
Edward glanced up into his cool, composed face; then rose heavily and
seated himself in the stiff chair against the wall.
The doctor bent over the child, delicately touched his brow, then
called, in soft Spanish, one of the women, who came with a small horn
beaker in her hand.
The little Prince was moaning. When he saw the draught he tried to push
it away, and shut his lips obstinately.
“Ah, _par dè_!” cried the father, “what manner of knight will you
become?”
The child sat up, shuddering, but meek, and swallowed the noisome
liquid without a protest.
“Is he better?” whispered the Princess Jehanne, drawing the coverlet
anxiously up over him as he lay down.
The doctor shook his head.
“Not–worse?” she faltered.
“That I cannot say,” he replied. “The fever is very high.”
She glanced at her husband sitting gloomy and silent, and beckoned one
of the women and whispered to her to fetch Prince Richard, who might
charm the Prince out of his melancholy.
But when his second son was brought and led up to him, Edward showed no
manner of interest.
Yet the child was of a neat and exact beauty and very richly dressed in
brown silk and very humble in his duty.
“Were you afraid of the lance play?” asked his father.
Richard looked up in a mischievous and charming manner.
“I do prefer, Seigneur, to go in a litter to horseback,” he lisped.
“Do you not love to see the jousts?” frowned Edward.
“I like to play at the ball,” returned Richard.
“Take him away for a false knight,” said the Prince wearily.
“_Ahè_, at four years old!” cried Jehanne of Kent indignantly. She came
round the bed and caught the younger Prince to her bosom swiftly.
“He is my son,” flashed Edward, “and he loves not arms. Take him hence.”
The Princess gave Richard to the lady who had brought him, and as
he found himself being carried away he began to wail and cry, which
completed the Prince’s contempt; in truth he was angry with Richard for
being well and lusty while his brother lay sick. The Princess noticed
his exclamation of annoyance as the child broke into sobs.
“You are not fair to Richard,” she said, flushing.
“_Pardi_, you must have your favourite,” he retorted gloomily. “If you
had given the care to Edward you do to Richard he might have been on
his feet to welcome me.”
Jehanne turned abruptly away, smarting from the injustice of the rebuke.
“If you had spared Limoges,” she answered, “God’s judgment would not
have fallen on you in this matter.”
The Prince shrank against the wall and lifted tortured eyes.
Instantly she was on her knees before him.
“Forgive me,” she said passionately.
He did not speak a word; his thin hand lightly touched the silver caul
that bound her fair hair, but his eyes had moved to his son.
The little Prince slept again, though uneasily, with moans and
twitchings in his limbs.
“I might have spared Limoges,” muttered Edward, “but I had sworn by my
father’s soul.”
Jehanne kissed the hand that had been withdrawn from her head.
“Come away for a little while,” she pleaded, “while he sleeps.”
He rose and suffered her to lead him into the next chamber, where he
lay exhausted along the couch by the oriel window and sent for his
beloved brother, the Duke of Lancaster.
Jehanne sat silently by his side on a little stool, her brow furrowed
and her cheeks colourless; she had never seen the Prince so silent, so
weak, so troubled.
She was relieved when the magnificent Johan, still in his camail and
surtout, full of vigour and energy, entered the chamber.
“How goes the lading of the ship?” asked Edward of Wales. “We sail
with the first fair wind.”
“_Pardi_,” said the Duke in his deep voice, “I have no time to go down
to the shore yet, but I do not think they will make delays.”
“Surely,” said the Prince. “I am right weary of Acquitaine.”
And he gave a sigh as if he would burst his bosom.
“Yet I must see more of it,” returned Johan, coming to salute the
Princess, which he did with good will, being close in sincere
friendship with this lady.
The Prince lay back languidly.
“How can you keep a foothold without money?” he asked impatiently.
Johan’s deep eyes rested lovingly on his brother’s changed face.
“By St. George,” he said, “if I can keep these fiefs no other way, I
will out of my own revenues and charges support the war—”
Edward looked at him fully, and the tears washed the eyes of the
Princess.
“Seigneur,” she said, “you can with a very comfortable heart return to
England, knowing how loyally Johan will uphold you here.”
She felt warmly towards Johan, for she knew that it was he who had
turned aside the Prince’s vengeance from Jean le Cros and saved him
from the crime of taking the life of a son of the Church.
Perhaps the Prince thought of that too; perhaps he thought that the
blood of the three thousand slain in Limoges was as heavy a burden to
bear as the blood of a bishop.
“Ay, save Acquitaine, Johan,” he murmured, “for the honour of England.”
His eyes turned wistfully to the fading day that died beyond the
oriel window. Surely, he thought, I have drunk of the last drop of
bitterness. I, Edward of Wales, to return to England a useless man,
leaving defeat behind for a younger knight to redeem.
The Duke of Lancaster stood watching him, with many thoughts in his
heart, and presently Edward turned to him and spoke, in a voice earnest
and feeble.
“Johan, when the King dies I shall be in my grave.”
The Princess broke his speech by a sharp, piteous intake of breath, and
caught desperately at his slack hand.
“Oh, Jehanne,” he said, “I have flattered your fears long enough. And
now I must speak straightly.”
He paused, for his breath failed him.
“Speak,” answered Johan, “for I am ready to take any charge that you
may give me—”
“My son Edward will be King of England,” whispered the Prince; “and
he is a young child. Stand you by him and by his mother in their
difficulties.”
“I will,” said the Duke gravely.
“I entreat this of you now,” added Edward, “for it well may be that I
shall never see you again. I think,” and the bitterness of his failure
echoed in his voice, “that I shall die before we regain Acquitaine.”
“Be of better cheer, brother,” answered the Duke, “for I have great
hopes that you will recover in England.”
“Nay, I am past mending,” said the Prince; “and were it not that I have
some desire to draw my last breath in English air, I would die here and
leave my bones where I have left my knighthood and my chivalry.”
“You scarcely think of me,” said Jehanne of Kent, and her eyes reminded
him how much he had loved her once; lately he had seemed to fall away
from the close confines of her affection.
He returned her gaze sadly.
“Yea, I think of you,” he answered, “but men’s matters fill my mind.
Yet be content. You are a sweet woman, Jehanne.”
He caressed her cheek with languid fingers, and again his eyes sought
the window and the pale sky beyond, and his face was moody, as if he
saw passing in the windy spaces without all the pageants, battles,
triumphs, achievements and glories that had gone to make his life–all
the great world that was still full of feats of arms, of ambitions, of
splendour, of laughter, whirling, receding, leaving him in this quiet
chamber, useless, sick, and defeated.
The Duke of Lancaster, who was in command of the troops who had
escorted the Prince to Bordeaux and had a hundred matters on his mind,
left the chamber.
Jehanne sat silent, forgotten, unnoticed, beside the Prince, who, with
his head sunk on his breast, was dreaming of the life that was past and
the life he had hoped to live.
Presently candles were brought in, but he made no movement nor did the
Princess, stiff and cold on her stool.
The wind, with a gentle persistence, shook the tall window-frame and
lifted the arras on the wall; clouds were coming up from beyond the sea
and blotting the tawny crimson streaks of the sunset.
Dark settled in the chamber and the candles winked, little points of
light in a great gloom.
Pleasant, cheerful noises of horses and men came from the courtyard
where the lading and unlading was proceeding; the sounds of the mules
and their drivers could be heard as a long procession of them laden
with baggage started for the ships.
At last the Prince spoke.
“This is a homeward wind,” he said.
As he raised his head to speak he saw the door open and the Spanish
doctor enter.
Jehanne turned, and, fearful of bad news, put her finger to her lips.
But Edward got to his feet, caught her aside, and said in the voice of
a strong man–
“What news of my son?”
The doctor answered steadily, without fear or hesitancy.
“The Prince is worse, Seigneur, and it were well that you should come.”
Edward of Wales bowed his head and followed the doctor into the next
apartment.
The candles were lit and the curtains drawn; a smell of herbs, of wax,
of incense, was heavy in the air. A priest was kneeling at the foot of
the bed; the full Latin words of his whispered prayer came clearly to
the Prince’s ears.
The little Edward lay on his back with his head flung upwards.
An awful change had come over him since last his father had looked
on him; an expression of pain had also given him an expression of
maturity, the unnatural flush had faded, leaving him bluish-white,
while under his bright eyes was a purple stain.
The Prince staggered to the bed.
“Limoges, Limoges,” he muttered.
He cast himself on his knees and clutched the coverlet.
“Dear Lord Jesus, what is this coming to me!” he whispered.
Another doctor moved about; Jehanne stopped and spoke to him. He could
tell her nothing save that, despite all the most approved remedies, the
Prince had within the last hour become rapidly worse and finally lost
consciousness.
Jehanne turned desperately to the great bed where her child lay,
breathing heavily, with glazed fixed eyes and dry lips.
“Is it the plague?” she asked.
They could not tell her.
“Oh, dear, dear Lord and St. George,” prayed the Prince, “put not this
loss on England; punish me not this way!”
The child turned on his side and muttered a few words, all relating to
arms and horses and war; his eyes closed jerkily and then fluttered
open.
Johan of Lancaster entered; he whispered to the doctors, then came
lightly to the bed, walking as softly as a woman for all his great
stature and bulk.
He glanced at the child, he glanced at his brother, then touched the
kneeling priest on the shoulder.
“He will not die,” said the Prince; “in a little while he will wake and
be well again.”
The priest rose and left the room.
A long swell of wind lifted the Eastern tapestry on the floor,
fluttered the long curtains and stirred the aromatic scents and the
clouds of incense that hung in the air.
Jehanne of Kent stood rigid, staring down at the pillow; her yellow
hair had slipped and hung loose in the silver caul.
And her face showed hollow in the fluttering candlelight.
The little Prince turned from side to side, catching his breath in his
throat.
“Seigneur …” he gasped, “let me … mount the white horse … the great
horse.…”
He began to cough, and his small fingers pulled at the pillow; he
stared straight at his father.
“He does not see me,” whispered Edward; “he is blind.”
“Why do you leave me alone?” complained the child; “but I … am … not …
afraid–never … afraid.”
The Prince caught his arm passionately, then turned in a slow horror,
for he saw Jehanne and his brother sink to their knees. He looked over
his shoulder.
In the doorway stood three priests; the centre one held with upraised
hands an object swathed in white silk.
The Host.
“_In nomine patris, filiis, et spiritus sanctus_,” he said, and drew
aside the white silk, revealing the Eucharist glittering like a
captured star.
“No,” began Edward, “no—”
He turned again to the bed; a light struggle shook the child’s limbs.
He twisted his arm out of his father’s grasp and pressed his two hands
together, pointed heavenwards.
“Saint–George—” he breathed very faintly, then “England.”
His hands fell apart and his mouth dropped into a circle; a faint
quiver ran through his body, and his head sank on to his shoulder.
The Host was borne round the bed, and no one moved.
Then Edward rose, regardless of the Presence of God.
“Too late,” he said in a terrible voice. “My son, my son!”
And before the priest carrying the Eucharist the victor of Cressy sank
like a felled sapling, and Jehanne caught his head on her knee, her
heart motionless in her bosom.
So died the youngest of the three royal Edwards of England, a few days
before the sailing from Bordeaux, and soon after the other two were
both at peace in Westminster and Richard was on the throne with Johan
of Gaunt for his guardian and many troubles ahead.
TWILIGHT
LUCREZIA BORGIA, DUCHESS D’ESTE
Three women stood before a marble-margined pool in the grounds of the
Ducal palace at Ferrara; behind them three cypresses waved against a
purple sky from which the sun was beginning to fade; at the base of
these trees grew laurel, ilex, and rose bushes. Round the pool was a
sweep of smooth green across which the light wind lifted and chased the
red, white and pink rose leaves.
Beyond the pool the gardens descended, terrace on terrace of opulent
trees and flowers; behind the pool the square strength of the palace
rose, with winding steps leading to balustraded balconies. Further
still, beyond palace and garden, hung vineyard and cornfield in the
last warm maze of heat.
All was spacious, noble, silent; ambrosial scents rose from the heated
earth–the scent of pine, lily, rose and grape.
The centre woman of the three who stood by the pool was the Spanish
Duchess, Lucrezia, daughter of the Borgia Pope. The other two held her
up under the arms, for her limbs were weak beneath her.
The pool was spread with the thick-veined leaves of water-lilies and
upright plants with succulent stalks broke the surface of the water. In
between the sky was reflected placidly, and the Duchess looked down at
the counterfeit of her face as clearly given as if in a hand-mirror.
It was no longer a young face; beauty was painted on it skilfully;
false red, false white, bleached hair cunningly dyed, faded eyes
darkened on brow and lash, lips glistening with red ointment, the lost
loveliness of throat and shoulders concealed under a lace of gold and
pearls, made her look like a portrait of a fair woman, painted crudely.
And, also like one composed for her picture, her face was
expressionless save for a certain air of gentleness, which seemed as
false as everything else about her–false and exquisite, inscrutable
and alluring–alluring still with a certain sickly and tainted charm,
slightly revolting as were the perfumes of her unguents when compared
to the pure scents of trees and flowers. Her women had painted faces,
too, but they were plainly gowned, one in violet, one in crimson, while
the Duchess blazed in every device of splendour.
Her dress, of citron-coloured velvet, trailed about her in huge folds,
her bodice and her enormous sleeves sparkled with tight-sewn jewels;
her hair was twisted into plaits and curls and ringlets; in her ears
were pearls so large that they touched her shoulders.
She trembled in her splendour and her knees bent; the two women stood
silent, holding her up–they were little more than slaves.
She continued to gaze at the reflection of herself; in the water she
was fair enough. Presently she moistened her painted lips with a quick
movement of her tongue.
“Will you go in, Madonna?” asked one of the women.
The Duchess shook her head; the pearls tinkled among the dyed curls.
“Leave me here,” she said.
She drew herself from their support and sank heavily and wearily on the
marble rim of the pool.
“Bring me my cloak.”
They fetched it from a seat among the laurels; it was white velvet,
unwieldy with silver and crimson embroidery.
Lucrezia drew it round her shoulders with a little shudder.
“Leave me here,” she repeated.
They moved obediently across the soft grass and disappeared up the
laurel-shaded steps that led to the terraces before the high-built
palace.
The Duchess lifted her stiff fingers, that were rendered almost useless
by the load of gems on them, to her breast.
Trails of pink vapour, mere wraiths of clouds began to float about the
west; the long Italian twilight had fallen.
A young man parted the bushes and stepped on to the grass; he carried
a lute slung by a red ribbon across his violet jacket; he moved
delicately, as if reverent of the great beauty of the hour.
Lucrezia turned her head and watched him with weary eyes.
He came lightly nearer, not seeing her. A flock of homing doves passed
over his head; he swung on his heel to look at them and the reluctantly
departing sunshine was golden on his upturned face.
Lucrezia still watched him, intently, narrowly; he came nearer again,
saw her, and paused in confusion, pulling off his black velvet cap.
“Come here,” she said in a chill, hoarse voice.
He obeyed with an exquisite swiftness and fell on one knee before her;
his dropped hand touched the ground a pace beyond the furthest-flung
edge of her gown.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Ormfredo Orsini, one of the Duke’s gentlemen, Madonna,” he answered.
He looked at her frankly surprised to see her alone in the garden at
the turn of the day. He was used to see her surrounded by her poets,
her courtiers, her women; she was the goddess of a cultured court and
persistently worshipped.
“One of the Orsini,” she said. “Get up from your knees.”
He thought she was thinking of her degraded lineage, of the bad, bad
blood in her veins. As he rose he considered these things for the first
time. She had lived decorously at Ferrara for twenty-one years, nearly
the whole of his lifetime; but he had heard tales, though he had never
dwelt on them.
“You look as if you were afraid of me—”
“Afraid of you–I, Madonna?”
“Sit down,” she said.
He seated himself on the marble rim and stared at her; his fresh face
wore a puzzled expression.
“What do you want of me, Madonna?” he asked.
“Ahè!” she cried. “How very young you are, Orsini!”
Her eyes flickered over him impatiently, greedily; the twilight was
beginning to fall over her, a merciful veil; but he saw her for the
first time as an old woman. Slightly he drew back, and his lute touched
the marble rim as he moved, and the strings jangled.
“When I was your age,” she said, “I had been betrothed to one man and
married to another, and soon I was wedded to a third. I have forgotten
all of them.”
“You have been so long our lady here,” he answered. “You may well have
forgotten the world, Madonna, beyond Ferrara.”
“You are a Roman?”
“Yes, Madonna.”
She put out her right hand and clasped his arm.
“Oh, for an hour of Rome!–in the old days!”
Her whole face, with its artificial beauty and undisguisable look
of age, was close to his; he felt the sense of her as the sense of
something evil.
She was no longer the honoured Duchess of Ferrara, but Lucrezia, the
Borgia’s lure, Cesare’s sister, Alessandro’s daughter, the heroine of a
thousand orgies, the inspiration of a hundred crimes.
The force with which this feeling came over him made him shiver; he
shrank beneath her hand.
“Have you heard things of me?” she asked in a piercing voice.
“There is no one in Italy who has not heard of you, Madonna.”
“That is no answer, Orsini. And I do not want your barren flatteries.”
“You are the Duke’s wife,” he said, “and I am the servant of the Duke.”
“Does that mean that you must lie to me?”
She leant even nearer to him; her whitened chin, circled by the stiff
goldwork of her collar, touched his shoulder.
“Tell me I am beautiful,” she said. “I must hear that once more–from
young lips.”
“You are beautiful, Madonna.”
She moved back and her eyes flared.
“Did I not say I would not have your flatteries?”
“What, then, was your meaning?”
“Ten years ago you would not have asked; no man would have asked. I am
old. Lucrezia old!–ah, Gods above!”
“You are beautiful,” he repeated. “But how should I dare to touch you
with my mouth?”
“You would have dared, if you had thought me desirable,” she answered
hoarsely. “You cannot guess how beautiful I was–before you were born,
Orsini.”
He felt a sudden pity for her; the glamour of her fame clung round her
and gilded her. Was not this a woman who had been the fairest in Italy
seated beside him?
He raised her hand and kissed the palm, the only part that was not
hidden with jewels.
“You are sorry for me,” she said.
Orsini started at her quick reading of his thoughts.
“I am the last of my family,” she added. “And sick. Did you know that I
was sick, Orsini?”
“Nay, Madonna.”
“For weeks I have been sick. And wearying for Rome.”
“Rome,” he ventured, “is different now, Madonna.”
“Ahè!” she wailed. “And I am different also.”
Her hand lay on his knee; he looked at it and wondered if the things
he had heard of her were true. She had been the beloved child of her
father, the old Pope, rotten with bitter wickedness; she had been
the friend of her brother, the dreadful Cesare–her other brother,
Francesco, and her second husband–was it not supposed that she knew how
both had died?
But for twenty-one years she had lived in Ferrara, patroness of poet
and painter, companion of such as the courteous gentle Venetian, Pietro
Bembo.
And Alfonso d’Este, her husband, had found no fault with her; as far as
the world could see, there had been no fault to find.
Ormfredo Orsini stared at the hand sparkling on his knee and wondered.
“Suppose that I was to make you my father confessor?” she said. The
white mantle had fallen apart and the bosom of her gown glittered, even
in the twilight.
“What sins have you to confess, Madonna?” he questioned.
She peered at him sideways.
“A Pope’s daughter should not be afraid of the Judgment of God,” she
answered. “And I am not. I shall relate my sins at the bar of Heaven
and say I have repented–Ahè–if I was young again!”
“Your Highness has enjoyed the world,” said Orsini.
“Yea, the sun,” she replied, “but not the twilight.”
“The twilight?”
“It has been twilight now for many years,” she said, “ever since I came
to Ferrara.”
The moon was rising behind the cypress trees, a slip of glowing light.
Lucrezia took her chin in her hand and stared before her; a soft breeze
stirred the tall reeds in the pool behind her and gently ruffled the
surface of the water.
The breath of the night-smelling flowers pierced the slumbrous air; the
palace showed a faint shape, a marvellous tint; remote it looked and
uncertain in outline.
Lucrezia was motionless; her garments were dim, yet glittering, her
face a blur; she seemed the ruin of beauty and graciousness, a fair
thing dropped suddenly into decay.
Orsini rose and stepped away from her; the perfume of her unguents
offended him. He found something horrible in the memory of former
allurement that clung to her; ghosts seemed to crowd round her and
pluck at her, like fierce birds at carrion.
He caught the glitter of her eyes through the dusk; she was surely
evil, bad to the inmost core of her heart; her stale beauty reeked of
dead abomination.… Why had he never noticed it before?
The ready wit of his rank and blood failed him; he turned away towards
the cypress trees.
The Duchess made no attempt to detain him; she did not move from her
crouching, watchful attitude.
When he reached the belt of laurels he looked back and saw her dark
shape still against the waters of the pool that were beginning to be
touched with the argent glimmer of the rising moon. He hurried on,
continually catching the strings of his lute against the boughs of the
flowering shrubs; he tried to laugh at himself for being afraid of an
old, sick woman; he tried to ridicule himself for believing that the
admired Duchess, for so long a decorous great lady, could in truth be a
creature of evil.
But the conviction flashed into his heart was too deep to be uprooted.
She had not spoken to him like a Duchess of Ferrara, but rather as the
wanton Spaniard whose excesses had bewildered and sickened Rome.
A notable misgiving was upon him; he had heard great men praise her,
Ludovico Ariosto, Cardinal Ippolito’s secretary and the noble Venetian
Bembo; he had himself admired her remote and refined splendour. Yet,
because of these few moments of close talk with her, because of a
near gaze into her face, he felt that she was something horrible, the
poisoned offshoot of a bad race.
He thought that there was death on her glistening painted lips, and
that if he had kissed them he would have died, as so many of her lovers
were reputed to have died.
He parted the cool leaves and blossoms and came on to the borders of a
lake that lay placid under the darkling sky.
It was very lonely; bats twinkled past with a black flap of wings; the
moon had burnt the heavens clear of stars; her pure light began to fill
the dusk. Orsini moved softly, with no comfort in his heart.
The stillness was intense; he could hear his own footfall, the soft
leather on the soft grass. He looked up and down the silence of the
lake.
Then suddenly he glanced over his shoulder. Lucrezia Borgia was
standing close behind him; when he turned her face looked straight into
his.
He moaned with terror and stood rigid; awful it seemed to him that she
should track him so stealthily and be so near to him in this silence
and he never know of her presence.
“Eh, Madonna!” he said.
“Eh, Orsini,” she answered in a thin voice, and at the sound of it he
stepped away, till his foot was almost in the lake.
His unwarrantable horror of her increased, as he found that the glowing
twilight had confused him; for, whereas at first he had thought she was
the same as when he had left her seated by the pool, royal in dress and
bearing, he saw now that she was leaning on a stick, that her figure
had fallen together, that her face was yellow as a church candle, and
that her head was bound with plasters, from the under edge of which her
eyes twinkled, small and lurid.
She wore a loose gown of scarlet brocade that hung open on her arms
that showed lean and dry; the round bones at her wrist gleamed white
under the tight skin, and she wore no rings.
“Madonna, you are ill,” muttered Ormfredo Orsini. He wondered how long
he had been wandering in the garden.
“Very ill,” she said. “But talk to me of Rome. You are the only Roman
at the Court, Orsini.”
“Madonna, I know nothing of Rome,” he answered, “save our palace there
and sundry streets—”
She raised one hand from the stick and clutched his arm.
“Will you hear me confess?” she asked. “All my beautiful sins that I
cannot tell the priest? All we did in those days of youth before this
dimness at Ferrara?”
“Confess to God,” he answered, trembling violently.
Lucrezia drew nearer.
“All the secrets Cesare taught me,” she whispered. “Shall I make you
heir to them?”
“Christ save me,” he said, “from the Duke of Valentinois’ secrets!”
“Who taught you to fear my family?” she questioned with a cunning
accent. “Will you hear how the Pope feasted with his Hebes and
Ganymedes? Will you hear how we lived in the Vatican?”
Orsini tried to shake her arm off; anger rose to equal his fear.
“Weed without root or flower, fruitless uselessness!” he said hoarsely.
“Let me free of your spells!”
She loosed his arm and seemed to recede from him without movement;
the plasters round her head showed ghastly white, and he saw all the
wrinkles round her drooped lips and the bleached ugliness of her bare
throat.
“Will you not hear of Rome?” she insisted in a wailing whisper. He fled
from her, crashing through the bushes.
Swiftly and desperately he ran across the lawns and groves, up the
winding steps to the terraces before the palace, beating the twilight
with his outstretched hands as if it was an obstacle in his way.
Stumbling and breathless, he gained the painted corridors that were lit
with a hasty blaze of wax light. Women were running to and fro, and he
saw a priest carrying the Holy Eucharist cross a distant door.
One of these women he stopped.
“The Duchess—” he began, panting.
She laid her finger on her lip.
“They carried her in from the garden an hour ago; they bled and
plastered her, but she died–before she could swallow the wafer–(hush!
she was not thinking of holy things, Orsini!)–ten minutes ago—”
THE CAMP OUTSIDE NAMUR
DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA
“Sa Majesté ne résout rien; du moins, on me tient ignorant de
ses intentions. Je pousse des cris, mais en vain. Il est clair
qu’on nous laisse ici pour y languir jusqu’à notre dernier
soupir.”
_Don Juan to Mendoza_, _September 16th, 1578_,
from “The Camp” outside Namur.
“Nos vies sont en jeu et tout que nous demandons, c’est de les
perdre avec honneur.”
_Don Juan to Philip II._, _September 20th, 1578_,
from “The Camp” outside Namur.
The Imperial Army, composed of Germans, Walloons and Spanish regiments,
was encamped outside Namur, at the juncture of the Sambre and Meuse,
where Charles V. had been entrenched when pressed by the forces of
Henri II.
The Commander of the Army was the son of Charles V., Don Juan of
Austria, the hero of Christendom armed against the infidel, the victor
of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, blessed by the Pope, a brilliant
name in Europe, half-brother of the great King Philip and son of a
servant girl, near the throne, of the blood royal, but barred for ever
from it, a prince yet linked with peasants; he had blazed very brightly
over Europe, the King had flattered him, had caressed him and used him.
By the King’s favour he had swept over Italy, Sicily, Africa, a
conqueror, almost within touch of a throne; by the King’s favour he had
been sent to crush the rebel heretics who were rising against the might
of Spain in the Low Countries.
And now the King was silent; it seemed as if he meant to abandon Don
Juan. Antonio Perez was always at the King’s ear, and he hated Don
Juan; Escovedo, the Prince’s Secretary and favourite, was assassinated
in the streets of Madrid by order of Perez.
When Don Juan heard this news he thought that there was no better end
preparing for him and that Perez meant his ruin; the King did not
answer his letters, and his glory broke like a bubble.
He had been too great, too beloved, too popular; Philip tolerated no
rivals.
And now he began to be unfortunate; the Prince William of Orange, one
time page to Don Juan’s father and now the Captain of Heretics, marched
against him with a powerful army; the Duc D’Anjou joined the cause of
the rebels, and the Queen of England, Elizabeth Tudor, at last decided
to send succours to the rebellious provinces.
The forces met; the day of Rynemants was almost a defeat for Don Juan.
A haunted, hunted feeling began to possess him; in the brilliant south
everything had been right with him; here, in the cursed Low Countries,
every step he took seemed a step nearer his grave.
The death of Escovedo weighed on him day and night.
And the King would not write.
Don Juan began to fear and hate his second-in-command, the Prince of
Parma, Alessandro Farnese, a man of his own age, but his nephew, for
Farnese’s mother was Margaret, daughter of Charles V.
This man was in the confidence of the King; Don Juan knew and feared
that fact. He began to dread the sight of the dark Italian face; the
figure of Farnese seemed to him like that of a spy–or executioner.
When he had fought Boussu at Rynemants he had been ill; when he had
held the useless conference with the English envoys he had scarcely
been able to hold himself on his horse, and when he returned to the
camp on the heights of Bouges outside Namur he fell to his knees as he
dismounted and could not rise for the weight of his armour.
They carried him to the quarter of the regiment of Figueroa and lodged
him in a pigeon-house or place for fowls belonging to a Flemish farm
the Spanish guns had demolished.
No one knew what illness ailed him; some spoke of the plague, some of
the Dutch fever, others said he had worn himself out with the fatigues
of war and the delights of Italy.
The fever increased on him; he wrote to Mendoza, the Spanish agent at
Genoa; he wrote to Andrea D’Aria, his companion in arms of Lepanto; he
wrote to the King. But with little hope, for he felt himself abandoned.
Monseigneur François D’Anjou, brother of the King of France, was
at Mons and had taken on himself the title of Defender of the Low
Countries against the Spanish Tyranny; Don Juan had only eighteen
thousand men, of which six thousand were Spanish, old, tried troops,
and the rest merely Walloon and German mercenaries of doubtful loyalty.
They had scarcely any artillery and but little powder.
The plague appeared in the camp, numbers of the small army sickened and
died.
There came news that the English were sailing for Flushing and that
William of Orange was advancing on Namur.
Don Juan of Austria lay in the pigeon-house, prostrate with fever, sad
and silent.
It was the end of September; day after day was sunny, with a
honey-coloured peaceful light resting on the camp, on the two rivers,
on the fortifications of Namur; the windmills stood motionless in the
stagnant air; the few willows by the river turned from grey-green to
dull amber and shook their long leaves on the soft, muddy bank; the
horizon was veiled in mist, yellow, soft and mournful; at night the
moon rose pale gold through languid dusky vapours; in the morning the
sun rose, glimmering through melancholy mists, and above the camp hung,
day and night, the fumes of the plague, of fever, the exhalations of
decay and sickness, the close odours of death.
Juan of Austria loathed this place as passionately as he had loved
Naples and Sicily; the plain with the two rivers embracing the frowning
town of Namur seemed to him hateful as some roadway to Hell; he dreaded
the warm moist nights, the long misty days, the veiled Northern skies,
the flat, distant melancholy horizon, and he hated these things more
because he sometimes felt that he would never see any other skies or
fields but these, never see any moon or sun rise over any town but this
high battlemented fortress of Namur.
He was trapped, abandoned, forgotten; the hero of Lepanto, the
conqueror of Tunis, was left to die miserably in this vile
swamp–forsaken!
He resolved, when the fever left his mind clear, that he would not die,
that he would live to face Philip in the Escurial and demand an account
for this–and for other things.
On September 28th he confessed, on the 28th he received the communion.
His confessor, Francisco Orantes, told him that he was dying, but he
laughed that away.
In the evening of that day he fell into a delirium and for two days
tossed unconscious, in great torments, talking continually of wars, of
soldiers, of conquests and arms.
On the first of October the fever abated and he seemed much recovered;
he fell into a little sleep about the dawn, and when it was fully light
he woke and sent for the Prince of Parma.
When that general came, Juan of Austria raised himself on his elbow and
looked at him with a searching kind of eagerness, and Farnese stood
arrested, in the poor doorway, glaring at the sick man.
The pigeon-house, in which Don Juan lay, was the size of a small tent,
of clay with niches in the walls for the birds; part of the tiled roof
and a portion of one wall had gone, and through this the early, misty
Northern sunlight streamed, for the canvas that had been dragged over
the aperture was drawn away to admit the air.
On the rough mud floor a carpet of arras had been flung; there were a
couple of camp chairs of steel and leather; a pile of armour, helmet,
greaves, cuirass, cruises, vambraces, damascened in black and gold and
hung with scarlet straps, was in one corner; above swung a lantern and
a crucifix.
Facing the entrance the Emperor’s son lay on a pile of rich cloaks
and garments embroidered with a thousand colours in a thousand shapes
of fantasy; two cloth of gold cushions served to support his head and
gleamed incongruously against the dull clay wall.
He was himself swathed to the breast in a mantle of black and orange,
and covering his lower limbs was a robe of crimson samite lined with
fox’s fur.
The fine ruffled shirt he wore had been torn in his delirious struggles
and showed his throat and the gaunt lines of his shoulders.
His face was colourless with the pure pallor of a blonde complexion,
and his long, pale waving hair clung to his damp forehead and hung
dishevelled either side of his hollow cheeks; his large grey eyes,
whose usual expression was so joyous, careless and ardent, now shone
with the brilliancy of fever and were sunk and shadowed beneath with
the bluish tinge that stained his close-drawn lips.
His right hand, on which sparkled an emerald ring, clutched at the
linen over his heart; the other was taut on the ground with the effort
of supporting his body.
In the niche above him a solitary white pigeon sat contented and
surveyed his invaded home.
Alessandro Farnese, tall and very slender, dark-haired, from head to
foot in black save for a great chain of linked gold and jewels over his
velvet doublet, let the improvised curtain fall into place over the
doorway and stood leaning against the wall, never moving his sombre
eyes from the Prince whose gleaming glance fiercely returned the
scrutiny.
“Your Highness is a whole man to-day,” he said; his voice was smooth,
low, carefully trained like his expression and his gestures; Philip’s
favourites always had this quiet way.
“Whether I shall get well or no I cannot tell,” answered Don Juan
hoarsely. “But this I know–that His Majesty hath forsaken me.”
The Prince of Parma took his right elbow in his left hand and put his
right hand to his pointed chin.
“You speak too plainly, señor,” he said. His subtle mind disliked
boldness of speech and action; he had always been annoyed by these
qualities in Don Juan.
“I have done with pretences,” answered the Prince. “I think I must be
dying, for I care very little what happens on earth–yet I have some
curiosity; it is because of that I sent for you—” he paused gathering
his strength. “Why hath the King forsaken me?” he asked intensely.
“Even if this were so,” said Alessandro Farnese, “how should I know it?”
“It is so and you know it,” replied Don Juan. “The King hath cast me
down, and he is putting you in my place.”
The Prince of Parma lifted his dark, arched brows.
“The mind of your Highness is still bemused by your sickness,” he
answered soothingly. “Any hour may bring a post from Madrid.”
Don Juan dropped from his elbow, and his head sank on the gold brocade
cushions.
“I was lost when they killed Escovedo,” he muttered; “there went
my last friend. It would have been more honourable to die on the
battle-field—”
Farnese answered smoothly–
“Your Highness will win many battles yet.”
The Emperor’s son smiled up at him.
“What did Philip pay you to mislead me?” he asked.
The Italian’s shallow cheek flushed faintly, and a little quiver, it
might be of rage or fear, ran through his sensitive frame.
“The fever returns on you, señor,” he said coldly.
Again Don Juan dragged himself into a sitting posture.
“No,” he answered with a terrible air, “my mind is very clear. I see
what I have been all my life. Philip’s plaything–no more. And I dreamt
to be a King! He used me till I climbed too high and then cast me away.
And you, señor, are to take my place. It was never meant that I should
leave the Low Countries. It was never meant that I should return again
a victor to Madrid–as servant and as brother I have served the King
well, and in his own fashion he hath rewarded me.”
He put his hands before his face and a shudder went through his body,
for in that moment he thought of all the glorious past that had ended
so suddenly and so terribly.
“I suffer!” he moaned. “Jésu and Maria, I suffer!”
He fell prostrate, face downwards, on the tumbled couch, and the
strengthening sunlight played with a mocking brilliance on the
scattered strands of his fair hair.
The Prince of Parma lifted the curtain before the door and spoke to one
of his servants who waited outside, then crossed and knelt beside his
general.
“Prince,” he said in a low tone, “the fever has turned your mind—”
Juan raised his head.
“I am no prince,” he answered. “I never was–but what I am your mother
is, Farnese–you and I alike are tainted.”
A sickly pallor crept into the Italian’s cheek; he clasped his fingers
together as if he prayed for patience.
“But you are too crafty to be deceived as I was,” resumed Don Juan
faintly. “You would never dream as I dreamt of being ‘Infante’ of
Spain, of being a King! Therefore Philip spares you, for you are a
useful man, Farnese, and puts his foot on me because I dared too
high–but we are both–his puppets.”
The Prince of Parma clenched his hands till the knuckles showed white
through the dark skin.
“You–always–hated–me,” gasped Don Juan.
“Are you in pain?” asked Farnese gently.
“In the torments of Hell,” answered the sick man with a ghostly smile;
“there is fire eating my heart, my blood, my brains.”
The Prince of Parma’s face changed in an extraordinary fashion; it was
a slight change, yet one that transformed his expression into that of
utter and satisfied cruelty.
But Don Juan kept his eyes closed, and did not notice this look bending
over him.
Farnese spoke, and his voice was still very gentle.
“Will your Highness drink this potion?”
The Prince lifted his burning lids and saw his page advancing with a
goblet of rock crystal, in which a pale gold liquid floated.
The boy gave this to the kneeling Farnese, who took it between his
long, dark, capable hands.
“This draught has often soothed your Highness,” he said.
Don Juan dragged himself to a sitting posture; as he moved such a weak
giddiness seized him that the clay walls, the rift of sky and the
figure of Farnese swung round him like reflections in troubled water.
He set his teeth and put out his hot hands for the goblet; as he drank
a sweet languor and a grateful cessation of pain swept over him; he
drained the last drop and gave a little sigh as Farnese took the
shining cup from his feeble grasp.
As he sank back on his cushions he noticed that a drop of the liquid
had fallen on the brocade cushion, and lay there like an amber bead
holding a spark of sunlight.
The Prince of Parma rose silently, and beckoning to the page, left the
sick man alone.
An exquisite lassitude crept over Don Juan; his limbs relaxed, his
breath came easily, he became certain that there were long years of
glorious and pleasant life before him; it was only necessary for him
to regain his health–to defeat the heretics and return to Spain to
confound that villain Perez.…
He was slipping out of consciousness; the blue sea of Italy began to
rise before his eyes–an endless expanse of celestial colour over which
sailed the galleys of Spain, Genoa and Venice bearing down on the
infidel fleet.
The victor of Lepanto quivered with joy; he thought he was back in
Naples, in Sicily; the warm scent of a thousand flowers floated round
the rose and amber pillars of the heathen temples, and from the high
windows of gold and painted palaces dark-eyed women looked, leaning on
folds of glimmering tapestry and twisting wreaths of roses and laurels
in gemmed fingers.
He saw the myrtle with the frail bridal blossoms, he saw the vineyards
with the opulent grapes, he saw ladies in dresses stiff with jewels and
heavy sleeves slipping from polished shoulders, he saw peasant girls
with flushed faces and dusky hair.…
Then these pictures faded; he was in the dark silence of the Escurial;
his terrible brother was speaking to him, caressing him; then Perez
pulled a curtain back, and he saw his confidant Escovedo, lying mangled
on a bier, bloody, with a fearful face.
Don Juan moaned and opened his eyes; he was light-headed; he beat his
hands on the cushions.
“Escovedo!” he muttered. “Escovedo!”
The pigeon above, startled by his sudden movement, flew out over his
head and away into freedom through the broken wall.
Juan of Austria shivered and blenched before the swift flash of the
white wings as if an angel had passed him.
“I am a great sinner,” he said with trembling lips. He remembered how
the Pope had embraced and blessed him after Lepanto; he hoped that,
in case he died, God would remember it too, and how he had slain the
infidel on the coast of Africa. His mind cleared, he looked round for
Farnese, he called his secretary, his page, but no one came.
He lay quite still, thinking now of the great ambition, the great
chimera of his life, the passionate desire to be recognised as royal,
as a Prince, to one day be a King.
He had dreamt that he might be King of many countries, even King of
England with Marie Stewart for wife, but he had never attained even
recognition as a Prince of Spain.
All Philip’s promises, all Philip’s flatteries had amounted to nothing.
While he was useful he was caressed; when he grew too great he was
forsaken, left without arms, without money, without men, left with
Farnese watching him night and day.
And they had killed the man he loved, his friend, his confidant
Escovedo.
That fact rose up horrid, insistent, burning his heart with rage.
He could not forgive Perez; he could not forgive Philip.
In discomfort of mind and body he tossed from side to side. One of the
gold cushions slipped from beneath him, and he was too weak to recover
it; he lay with his eyes vacantly on it, and presently sat up with
sudden strength and pointed at it with a quivering finger.
On the gold brocade was a round black hole where the stuff had been
burnt away.
Don Juan began to laugh; he remembered the yellow drop of liquid that
had gleamed on the rich fabric; he shouted for some one to come.
There was no answer; he supposed that they, thinking he suffered from
the plague, would not through fear approach him.
He waited; his attention wandered from the cushion; he heard the
trumpets without and smiled.
Presently a party of horsemen galloped past; he could catch a glimpse
of them through the aperture in the wall; one carried his flag–a cross
on the royal standard with the proud legend: “In hoc haereticos signo
vici Turcos; in hoc signo vincam haereticos.” The heavy silk folds
recalled these words to the Prince’s mind; he thought of his success at
Gembloux.
“I could defeat them now,” he murmured, “if I was–on horseback–with a
thousand men–behind me—”
The Lowland sun was creeping across the floor and glimmering in the
armour in the corner, showing the dints and marks in it, the worn
straps, the beautiful gold inlay and the long pure white plumes
floating above the helmet.
Juan of Austria shivered at the sight of the pale sky, the pale
sunlight; he longed passionately for the South, for all the purple
heat, the violet shade, the soft hours of noonday silence in a marble
chamber overlooking the sea, the glossy darkness of laurel and ilex.
“I will not die here,” he said in his throat.
Presently his confessor came, a slow-footed priest, and asked him if he
would not make his will.
“No, for I have nothing to leave,” he answered, “so I am spared that
trouble.”
Francisco Orantes then asked if he would have the canvas drawn over the
broken roof and wall, for the sun was creeping very near his face.
He answered yes, and it was done; the barn was now only lit by the
glimmer from the one small window.
“Father, I am not dying,” said Don Juan. “When I die it will be in
Spain or Italy; tell the King so–tell him I know that he wants me
dead–but that I will not die like this.”
The priest, seeing he was out of his wits, made no answer, but
approached and felt his wrist and brow.
“Poison,” said Don Juan rapidly. “Poison–why not the sword–as with
Escovedo? I have made my peace with heaven–but when shall Philip clear
himself before God?”
The priest moved away silently as he had come; the sick man lay staring
at the partial darkness; his blood was flaming with a returning agony.
“Philip!” he cried. “Philip! Will you bury me in the Escurial? If I
die will you put me next my father? My father as well as yours, Philip!
Hold my hand, some one–are you all afraid? This is not the plague. I
have watched the heretics burning–I am burning now–I shall not go to
Hell; I am absolved. Who will absolve Philip? Give me a little ease—”
The priest stood motionless beside the entrance, watching him; Juan
dropped into silence, and then Francisco Orantes came again to his
side and gazed as intently as the dim light allowed into the young,
distorted and beautiful face.
The Prince was unconscious; the priest’s bloodless hand crept gently to
his heart, which still beat, though reluctantly and faintly.
Farnese entered.
“He sleeps,” said Francisco Orantes.
The Prince of Parma made no answer; a slight convulsion shook him, and
his face was swept with a look of limitless pride and ambition which
distorted his fine features hideously.
The priest glanced up at him and shrunk away.
“This seems a foul end for one who loved life so,” he muttered.
Farnese fingered his long gemmed chain.
“You serve Philip,” he answered coldly.
Don Juan struggled back to consciousness, opened his eyes and looked up
at the two bending over him; a sensation that he had never known before
in all his life overcame him–a sensation of wild fear.
He fought with his weakness and dragged himself up.
“Is there no one to help me?” he implored. “To save me from Philip and
Philip’s men! Jésu whom I served in Africa do not let me die this way!”
Farnese leant swiftly down and caught the Prince by the shoulder.
“Hush!” he said, “Hush!” and forced him gently back into the cushions.
Juan resisted him with all his feeble strength, his eyes glittering
with terror.
“You are murdering me as Carlos was murdered–and Escovedo,” his voice
was hoarse, broken, but tense with fear, “as you will be murdered when
Philip is weary of you. I do not want to die–I–will–not—”
“Hush!” said Farnese again.
Juan dragged away from him and crouched back against the wall.
“I leave you heir,” he panted, “to all my honours, all my commands.
Philip meant you as my successor. I leave you heir to my death of
loneliness and exile. When did one of Philip’s servants escape this
reward?”
The priest shivered and his figure bowed together, but Farnese listened
patiently like a man waiting for the cessation of something that soon
must end.
The Prince’s fear rose and swelled to a stronger passion, hate.
He thought that he saw in these two instruments of the King a symbol
of the two things that had dogged his glory all his life, the powerful
cruelty of his brother that had used his gifts, his successes, his
popularity for his own ends, lured him with the promise of rewards and
always withheld them, and the opinion of the world that the degradation
of his mother equalled the splendour of his father and would always
prevent him taking that last step into royal rank.
It _had_ prevented him; he saw that now, he saw how hopeless his
ambition had been from the first.…
“If I had my life again I would not serve Philip,” he muttered.
Then pain began to seize and grip him, and he became unconscious of
everything save the physical agony; he fell on his face and clutched
the rich mantles on which he lay, groaned and shrieked in blasphemous
ravings.
“He hath not much fortitude after all,” said Farnese, who had looked on
suffering so often that no anguish could move him; his cold eyes had
many times rested on men and women flaming at the stake with the same
expression of cruel indifference with which they now rested on this man
of his own blood, who had served his turn and was no longer useful to
the policies of Spain.
“How long will this last?” asked the priest.
“I cannot tell,” answered the Prince of Parma. “He must have great
strength.”
“He had until he used it in the delights of Italy,” said Francisco
Orantes. “Such a life as his, señor, does not make for old age—”
“Escovedo! Escovedo!” moaned Don Juan. “Help me! Succour me! I am
burning–burning to the bone, the marrow! Jèsu! Jèsu and Maria!”
“Ay, pray for your sins,” remarked Farnese sombrely, “or you will go to
light the flames that burn to all eternity.”
“Nay, señor,” said the priest; “he confessed and received absolution.”
“Who shall absolve Philip?” murmured Don Juan, who had caught the
sentence. “I wish I had not betrayed Don Carlos. How awful it is to
die!”
Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, and his fingers trembled on
the brocade covering him.
“The war,” he whispered, “the war.”
He thought of the great armies sweeping to and fro over the Low
Countries, of all the toss and turmoil of Europe through which he had
moved so gaily, so splendidly, of the infidel smitten in Africa; he did
not think of his childhood at all. Life seemed to have begun for him on
the day on which he had first met the King in the green forest glade.
“Pray,” urged the priest, “pray, señor.”
He shook his head feebly; he was not at all afraid of God–only of
Philip. Besides, he did not mean to die.
The dreadful pain was lessening in his veins; he turned over on his
side and looked up at Farnese.
“Where shall we put your body when your soul has left us?” asked the
priest.
The sick man’s eyes gleamed.
“The Escurial,” he muttered. “Philip, remembering Lepanto might
give me that–if not, then Our Lady of Montserrat–but I am not
dying,” he added. “My life is not finished–you must see that–my life
is–not–finished.”
An extraordinary feeling of peace came over him; he wondered at it and
closed his eyes; he again saw the blue Sicilian seas encompassing him
and heard their lapping waves in his ears.
“I will sleep now,” he thought, “and when I wake I will plan a
victory–life is so long and I am so young—”
He smiled, for all the agony had ceased, and he was no longer conscious
of his body; his head sank to one side so that his face was turned
towards the wall.…
Francisco Orantes rose from his knees.
“He died very gently,” he said; “his soul passed as lightly as a bird
to the bough.”
Farnese made the sign of the cross, and his figure dilated with pride,
ambition and power; he went to the armour in the corner and picked up
the dead man’s bâton of command.
* * * * *
Philip buried his brother in the Escurial near the great Emperor who
was their father.
THE POLANDER
The Polander was a very innocent fellow who came out of Germany to
enter the service of my lord Conningsmarke, a Gentleman of a great
Quality at this moment in _London_.
He had taught the Polander some while ago at the instance of Captain
Vratz, who was an old retainer of his, and who gave this youth a good
character, especially for dressing Horses after the German Fashion. The
Polander knew nothing of my lord Count Conningsmarke, and nothing about
_England_, for he was very simple and ignorant, being but of Peasant
birth, but the Captain he knew and loved, for this man had brought him
out of Evil Days in Poland, and his heart held little else but a deep
Affection for this Captain Vratz.
On a Friday he came to London and inquired for the Governor of my Lord
at the Academy of M. Flaubert and this gentleman sent for the Count’s
Secretary; and there the Polander lay on Saturday night feeling very
strange in this new City and constantly praying that he might meet with
Captain Vratz soon, who had been to him such a Benefactor.
The next day being the 11th of _February_ and bitter cold, Mr. Hanson,
the Governor of my Lords, the young Counts of Conningsmarke, came to
the Polander and bid him make ready to be carried to the Lodging of my
Lord Charles.
This Governor seemed in a great Confusion of mind; he went over words
twice when he spoke, which was in the _German_ language (for the
Polander knew not _English_) and the colour was up and down in his Face
and his hands a-tremble.
The Polander stood before him, very tall and strong and humble, with
his blue eyes clouded with Bewilderment and Disappointment; for he
hoped he would be taken to Captain Vratz, and presently dared to say as
much, very timidly.
Upon this Mr. Hanson broke out in a kind of Excitement.
“Would to God!” said he, “that this Swede Vratz had stayed out of
England, for I think he will be the Engine of some harm to my Lord.”
Then he went on to say that he was in no way responsible for the Count
Charles but only for the other lord, Philip his younger Brother.
“But I must help a great man where I can,” he added, and seemed
Troubled.
The Polander Wondered he should speak so to a Servant, but dare say no
more but followed him out into the cold streets of _London_. It was
bitter enough and the Polander was in _Rags_, but the Buildings and
the people so pleased him that he took no heed of the Sharpness of the
weather but smiled to himself with pleasure at a City so _Fine_. So
they came to _St. Martin’s Lane_ where the Count Lodged and in a room
mean enough, high up, a place strange for a Man of Quality.
“My Lord Lodged in the _Haymarket_” said Mr. Hanson, “but the Chimney
smoked so that he was fain to move”–and with that he opened a Door and
the Polander followed him into the Count’s Chamber.
This was an ill habitation for a Gentleman, being mean and low and of a
poor Furnishing. There was a fire on the hearth, very brightly burning,
and near the window a Bed, on which my lord the Count Charles lay,
wrapped in a Flowered Robe of taffeta stuff.
He was a very young Gentleman, fair and pale, with a look of fear in
eyes of an unusual bright blue; at the entry of Mr. Hanson and the
Polander he sprang to a sitting posture on the Bed.
“This is the fellow, my Lord,” said the Governor.
The Count gave the Polander a Look of a startling keenness.
“Are you trustworthy?” says he.
“I will do anything for Captain Vratz,” answers the Polander humbly Yet
with obstinacy.
My Lord put his feet, which were in white Satin slippers, very soiled,
to the ground. “You are in my service,” he says swiftly.
“To Look after Horses,” replied the Polander simply, “and to _dress_
them in the German Fashion, if it please your Honour.”
The Count glanced at the Governor and said:
“This is a fellow of a _great_ simplicity and _well suited_.”
Mr. Hanson answered with some uneasiness:
“Oh, I know not–Captain Vratz gave him a good Character for
faithfulness.”
At this the Polander was very satisfied and his eyes held Gratitude.
The Count, leaning on one elbow against the Bed Post, addressed him:
“What is your Name?”
“George Borosky, my Lord.”
“Well,” said the Count of Conningsmarke, “it is true that I wish you to
dress horses in the German fashion, for I believe you are a good Groom
and I am here in _England incognito_ to raise a _Regiment_ of _Horse_
for the service of the _King of England_ Who is to enter into an
Alliance with _Swedeland_ and _Holland_ against _France_–indeed there
is talk of a _Surprise_ on _Strasburg_ and my Brother has bought one
Horse already and is to buy more.”
Here he stopped abruptly and the Polander gave a salute after the
Military Fashion, not knowing what to say and withdrew against the Wall
at the far end of the Chamber. Then my Lord spoke to Mr. Hanson.
“Have you made those Enquiries?” he asked.
“My Lord, I did ask the _Swedish resident_ and his answer was–that if
you should Meddle in any Way with Esquire Thynne you would have but a
bad living in _England_–but as for the Law of it, he could not say.”
“And for the Other?” asked my Lord, in a low voice.
“He said, that if you should Duel Mr. Thynne, he could not instruct
you as to what the Law might be regarding your Hopes of the Lady Ogle,
Esquire Thynne’s Wife.”
“Monsieur Lienburgh knoweth nought!” cried my Lord impatiently; “What
said he as to Riding Out in the Hyde Park on a Sunday?”
“He said it might certainly be done, before and after Sermon time.”
My Lord seemed Satisfied with that and looked again towards the
Polander, who had heard all this Conversation as it was held in the
High Dutch or German, but had made Nothing of it and was only thinking
of Captain Vratz.
“You are very Ragged,” said the Count, “and have never a Sword—”
Then he questioned him–had he not been long in coming?
And the Polander answered Yes, and there had been fear of the Ship
being cast away, owing to the High Storms, he having been twelve days
from _Strasburg_ to _Hamburg_ and fourteen from _Hamburg_ to _London_,
instead of eight.
“Yes,” said my Lord pleasantly, “and I feared you were lost and went to
enquire of the Ship at the ’Change, and I would have been unwilling to
lose you, for Captain Vratz tells me you are a mighty Able Groom.”
“I do love Horses,” said the Polander, “and have trusted them always.”
“No man of mine can go in such a coat,” says my Lord, “but I have none
to send to purchase one nor can I go out Myself by reason of the physic
_Dr. Harder_ gave me, for I must no wise be Chilled, he said.”
“Why, I will do this Service for your Lordship, very Heartily,”
answered Mr. Hanson.
“And a Sword also,” said the Count.
“That also,” said the Governor, “and Boots.” He asked my Lord then how
his _Illness_ went and the Answer was–better, though the Ague was by no
Means gone.
“Now, fellow,” said Mr. Hanson, “come with me to make these Purchases.”
My Lord took some money from the pocket of his gown and gave it to the
Polander.
“That is to discharge your Lodging at Monsieur Flaubert’s Academy,” he
said; “to-night you shall lie here.” He spoke in a Languid Tone, but
his eyes had an Extraordinary sparkle and brightness.
Mr. Hanson now asked my Lord–How Much he was willing to dispose of on a
Sword?
And he answered ten Shillings, and as much for the Coat.
Mr. Hanson then carried the Polander to a shop near and bought a riding
Coat and a Pair of Boots and there was some difficulty in getting
either large enough for one of his Bulk and Bearing.
They then went down _St. Martin’s Lane_ but could find never a Sword
worth a Groat; then on Mr. Hanson went as far as _Charing Cross_ and
then into a Cutler’s and bestowed ten Shillings on a Sword for a
Servant, which could not be ready till Evening, however.
Mr. Hanson said he would call for it when he came back from the Play
that night and took the Polander back to M. Flaubert’s Academy, where
the Younger Count, a very Gay and Beautiful Gentleman, was learning to
ride the Great Horse.
The Polander Paid for his Lodging and waited in the Academy feeling sad
for loneliness till Mr. Hanson came back from the Theatre and took him
again to the Cutler’s; but the Sword was by no means Ready.
“’Tis strange,” cried the Governor, “that a Gentleman cannot get a
Little Sword for himself in a whole Afternoon!”
“Well, sir,” said the Cutler, “pray do not be Impatient. I will send
the Sword.”
They then left the shop and went towards _St. Martin’s Lane_; it was
now Snowing and a Great Volume of Wind abroad.
When they reached my Lord’s Lodging they found him still in his Gown
and Night Cap sitting over the fire and he looked like a sick man save
for the great Light and Glitter in his Eyes.
He asked where his Brother was.
“At his Grace of Richmond’s,” said Mr. Hanson; “We were at the Play
together and I have ordered the Broadsword which will come anon.”
They were talking without any Regard to the Polander who stood stiff in
his New Coat, Longing to see Captain Vratz and to go to the horses he
was to look after (and he wondered where the Stables might be as this
was too Ill a House to have any). Now Mr. Hanson went up to my Lord in
moved fashion.
“Think of the Consequences of this, Count Charles!” he said.
My Lord looked up in a kind of Passion.
“He puts Words on me that are no wise to be borne!”
“Is it for the words he Used or for the sake of the Red Haired Girl you
saw at the Hague?” asked Mr. Hanson, biting the end Curls of his Peruke.
“He called me a Hector,” said my Lord, “and Laughed at my Horse–and, by
God, you shall leave the Lady Ogle Out of this!”
“Your Lordship has not left her Out,” answered Mr. Hanson, “for you bid
me discover if you would have any Hopes of her if you got rid of her
Husband—”
At this Point the Count bid the Polander go down to the Kitchens of the
house and dine, and he added that in this place he was known as Carlo
Cuski, and not by his Real Name.
Thereupon the Polander went; there was a Man and a Maid and a Boy in
the Kitchen who had no Language but _English_, so the Count’s man ate
his meat in Silence and was presently going to the place appointed to
him to sleep in when a young Gentleman, very finely Dressed in Blue,
came down, and speaking _German_, bade him Come up to the Count, which
he did and found to his vast Joy, Captain Vratz with his Lordship.
“Come here, Fellow,” said my Lord; he stood up in the Light of the Fire
and his slight figure in the Limp Gown, the Night Cap pulled over his
tumbled Hair, his pallid face with the feverish eyes was in a Contrast
with the Men of Lesser Quality who were Splendid enough in cut Velvet
and Lace and Tassels.
Christopher Vratz lifted his Face flushed with Fairness after the
fashion of the Swedelander and looked at the Polander.
“You are my Servant now, Borosky,” said he.
“Yes,” added my Lord. “I have given you to Vratz,” and he Shivered a
little closer to the Fire and Held out his hand to the Glow of it,
Regarding the three with Eyes so unnaturally blazing that they conveyed
a thrill of terror.
“Oh, dear sir,” said the Polander, “this is a Greater Joy than I looked
for in coming to _England_.”
He bent with more Grace than might easily have been expected from his
Bulk and kissed the Count’s thin hand in a humble Gratitude.
“This is a man,” said Captain Vratz, “who will do Anything for me–out
of the Great Affection he hath for my Person—”
“Need you set him on a losing Game?” asked the young German, glancing
at the pleased, simple face of the Polander. “There is many an
_Italian_ walking about the Piazza of Covent Garden who would do the
Trick for the Matter of Fifty Pounds.”
At that my Lord looked up Sharply and seemed Mightily out of
Countenance and Captain Vratz answered:
“That is in the Count’s hands. I am his Man.”
Now the Polander made nothing of all this but only Wished to be away
with his Master; and they made so little account of him that they never
abated their Talk but treated him like a Dog that had just been bought
by a new Master, and so he took it himself and truly his Attention
was absorbed by a Broadsword he beheld on a Table near, and that he
Surmised was that ordered by Mr. Hanson at the Cutler’s at _Charing
Cross_ and a fine Weapon too, from the Look.
Near this Weapon was a Black Peruke, and the Polander wondered why a
Gentleman of so fair a face as my Lord should have so Black a Wig and
he surmised that it belonged to Mr. Hanson.
My Lord walked about the bare floor and seemed in some contained
Passion of Excitement.
“It will be a Stain on my Blood,” said he, “but one good action at the
Wars or one Fight on the Counterscarp will wipe that away—”
And he spoke like a Man exalted in his Courage and ready for a Tragic
Turn.
Presently the three–Vratz, Stern the _German_ lieutenant, and the
Polander–went away, it being then late at Night and Cold.
And before they went the Count gave the Polander the Sword that Mr.
Hanson had bestowed Ten Shillings on, and the last that Fellow saw of
my Lord was the sight of him in the glimmer of a dying Candle staring
after the three of them with a Face very Young, very Ill, very Wild,
beneath the tumbled Night Cap.
The three of them went to the Captain’s Lodgings; he lay at the _Black
Bull_ in _Holborn_, in an ill Part of the Town.
Then the Captain called the Polander up to his room and gave him to
Drink and after a little said:
“What will You do for Me, George Borosky?”
“Before God, Anything–for the great Gratitude I have to You.”
At this Vratz Laughed and cast off his Hat and Wig and his face was
Fresh and Ruddy as a Rose under the Gold of his Hair.
“Look you, Borosky,” he made answer, “there is a Man in _London_ who
has put an insult on me–and I did put a Challenge on him by the post
having no Gentleman to send, and he returned answer by his Servant
that I was not of a Sufficient Quality for a man of his Breeding to
fight–and this is a thing difficult to Avenge.”
The Polander waited eagerly for his Part in this.
“It is Esquire Thynne of Longleat Hall,” continued the Captain, “a
Great Jolly _English_ Gentleman and a Notable Rake at Court–a man very
Rich and splendid–he will be riding along the _Mall_ to-morrow on his
way to Church and it is we three who must stop him.”
With that he took a Blunderbuss from the wall and laid it in the great
Hands of the Polander.
“As you love me,” he said earnestly, “you will put some bullet into
this Tom Thynne.”
The Polander stared at the weapon and at his Master, then went on his
knees, very Pale in his Countenance.
“This is plain Murder,” he answered, very troubled, “and I have Lived
an Innocent Life, even at the war, twenty crowns would pay for all I
took in Plunder and I have been Compassionate, nor given to Treachery
or Swearing—”
“I ask you to do no Wrong,” said Vratz, “only to Obey your Master–If a
man will not Duel how can one Come at him but this Way?”
“It is a Just thing,” added Stern, “to obey those we have an Obligation
to–and I am Pledged to you, yet I am willing to be Instructed in the
Laws of _England_ to discover what Penalty one must Pay for this—”
“Why, None,” replied the Captain, “for we will leave the Country by the
first pair of oars going to _Gravesend_, and should we be taken–first
we have a friend in that Noble Prince, the Count of Conningsmarke, and
secondly, all will fall on me as the Principal and none on you as the
Agents or mere Engines of my Will–And Afterwards,” he added, “you shall
be Rich Men.”
“Not for Money,” said the Polander sadly. “I would rather spend my Days
with Horses than the Rich. I would sooner die Old and Comfortable than
in Prison in a Strange Country–but I have promised to serve you and if
God does not directly tell me it is a Sin I will do this for you.”
“You may trust me when I tell you it is no Sin but an Act Necessary to
Wipe out Dishonour,” returned the Captain.
“I do trust you!” replied the Polander “yet I will also ask God about
this matter.”
Then the Captain laughed and dismissed him, bidding him be Ready on the
Morrow, and the Polander went to a Bed set for him in a Garret of the
_Black Bull_. He was Much Troubled in his Mind that the first Service
asked of him by the Captain should be a Murder and that on the second
night of his stay in a Strange Country he should have such a Task put
on him as to Shoot a Gentleman coming from _Church_, for it seemed an
unmanly Action.
What Penalties might follow he did not know, for he was Ignorant of
the Laws of _England_; to this he gave Little Heed for, however: he
had faith in the Captain and that Great Gentleman who was his friend,
Charles, Count of Conningsmarke. As he sat in the Dark wondering where
the right lay in this Case he decided to make Proof of it and to that
end went on his Knees and Recited the _Lord’s Prayer_ very Gravely
and Earnestly. And when he had finished he rose up again and Searched
in his Heart to see if he was Strengthened against this Action; but
he found no change in his Feelings: so he thought that if it had been
anything Wrong God would have this Way told him; so was Comforted and
Decided to Help the Captain.
Having come to this Resolve he lay down on his bed, dressed as he was,
and Chanced to Dream of Poland which Country he had not seen this Great
While–but he saw it in the Dream very Clear with the sparkle of Snow in
Winter and the bright-coloured dresses in the Streets.
He thought he saw a Church too and dreamt he stood on the threshold and
was thinking with much pleasure of Entering when he was awakened by the
voice of Christopher Vratz.
The Polander got to his Feet, Remembering everything and the Captain
put in his hand a Blunderbuss and bade him be Silent; the two went down
to the stables of the _Black Bull_ where was Ernest Stern and three
Horses and it was then about Seven of the Clock.
And the Polander, on seeing he was to be Mounted was greatly
Encouraged, for he believed no evil could come to him when he was on
the back of a Horse, so took this for a Good Omen.
“I wish we had Another Man,” said Captain Vratz, “for Esquire Thynne is
one to go with a great Medley of Servants about him.”
They mounted then and as they Rode out of the Yard the _German_ asked
what this Mr. Thynne was?
And the Captain made answer that he was a Man Well Known in _London_
for his marriage to Elizabeth, my Lady Ogle, last of the Percies, who
was heiress to Five Baronies and one of the richest Women in the World;
she had been married before, yet was but a child of fifteen and still
under Governance at _The Hague_ and Mr. Thynne was looked upon as a
lucky Man to have all this Wealth without the trouble of a Wife.
“The death of such a One will make a Stir in _England_,” said the
lieutenant with an air of Misgiving; but Vratz bid him take Courage.
“For,” he declared, “if there be any Penalties, I will pay them all.”
And the Polander Rode behind them patiently, much Remarked by the
passers-by for his foreign air and Great Stature, and so they came to
the _Mall_ where there was a goodly number of People.
And one of Them, who was a Young Man with a Mirror in his hat, Pranking
on a Sizeable Horse, the Captain stopped and, Saying he was new come to
_London_ and Desirous of seeing the Notables, asked if Esquire Thynne
had yet passed?
The Englishman, making out this request with some difficulty from the
Swedelander’s strange accent, answered at length Courteously that
Mr. Thynne was Driving Out with His Grace of Monmouth, and would be
coming from _Northumberland House_, where they had made a visit, anon,
_Northumberland House_ being nearly at the End of the _Mall_, on the
river at _Charing Cross_.
So they waited and the Sun mounted the Snow Clouds pleasantly but it
was yet scarcely light, and the Bells of the Big Churches near by
sounded in their first Ringing.
And after a few minutes a Coach and four Horses came swinging on its
Leathers with Six Servants Riding at the Sides and Vratz knew the
colours.
Before came a Fellow with a Flambeau; the Captain rode Past him and
Caught the Reins of the Foremost horses, stopping the coach, and Stern
cried out to the Polander: “Shoot!” at the same time Threatening the
Coachman. Like one in a Stupour the Polander rode round to the Side of
the Coach, and saw the Handsome Face of an _Englishman_ with Brown Eyes
looking out of the window.
“Shoot!” cried Captain Vratz.
And the Polander raised his Blunderbuss and Fired into the lace-covered
Bosom of Esquire Thynne.
“_Damn_ your _Foreign_ tricks, I’m murdered!” cried the _Englishman_;
he fell back on the Seat of the Coach and the Polander Turned and
Galloped away up _St. James Street_ and _Alban Street_ with the Captain
and Stern after him; and the Servant with the Flambeau put a Pursuit
on them as far as the _Haymarket_, then could go no Further; but the
Polander had Cast away his Blunderbuss and that the Servant Caught up
and carried back to the _Mall_, where was a Great Press and Mr. Thynne
Dying with three bullets in him and the People saying how his Grace of
Monmouth had but just left the coach and what a stroke that was, for he
might have been Murdered else.
And the three rode to my Lord’s Lodgings in _St. Martin’s Lane_ and
asked for him.
“For it may be Well,” said the Captain, “that we ask my Lord to let us
Lie at the _Swedish Resident’s_—”
But when they answered his knock he was told that the Count had gone
early that Morning to Windsor wearing a Black Periwig and in a Coat he
had borrowed of a Servant. At hearing this news the Captain came back
with a Look of Death in his face.
“If he hath Fled to Gravesend—” he said, and They All went Back to the
_Black Bull_ and Mounted to the Captain’s Chamber and sat Still and
Silly, looking at each other.
“We have trusted _You_,” said Stern, “and there is your Word to it that
we are Safe.”
“I had the Count of Conningsmarke’s Word,” answered the Captain, “but
he hath failed me—”
“Will you Fail us?” asked Stern.
The Polander said nothing but watched the Captain in a Troubled Way.
The German got to his feet and laid his hand on Vratz’s Shoulder.
“If my Lord hath gone to _Gravesend_ in a Black Periwig–should not
we go after him and slip down _the Thames_ to _Margate_ where we may
likely enough get a Ship for Home?”
The Captain looked up like one Undecided, then in a moment was on his
Feet, for there had come a Great Knocking on the Door; nor did those
without Long stay at _Knocking_ but burst open the door and _Entered_.
They were Constables and the People of the Inn and in front of them a
Man in Squire Thynne’s Liveries carrying a Musquetoon, and on seeing
the three he gave a Cry and called out:
“That is the man did shoot my Master!”
And the Polander saw that it was the Blunderbuss he had Dropt in the
_Haymarket_.
“Why do you put this on _Us_?” asked Captain Vratz in his ill English.
A Constable spoke to him and answered:
“We took this Musquetoon to the Maker whose name is thereon, and he
told us he had sold it yesterday to one Captain Vratz who lodged at the
_Black Bull_.”
“I do admit,” answered the Captain, “that I was at the shooting of Mr.
Thynne, but I went with the design to Challenge him, he having Refused
me Satisfaction, and I took these Two with me as Protection, Mr. Thynne
being a Gentleman who has commonly a great Press of Servants about him
which he might have set on me. And in the _Melée_ my Servant fired and
that I know nothing of.”
At this they were all three disarmed and arrested, at which the
Polander Wept mightily.
And when they had a Lodgement in Prison it came to them that my Lord of
Conningsmarke had been arrested at _Deptford_ by an Agent of the Duke
of Monmouth when he had been taking a Pair of Sculls for _Gravesend_.
In the Prison they were separated and the Polander sat alone till his
trial and when they Pressed him he said that he had Acted only as His
Master Directed and that was the Law he had been brought up in–to obey
his Master; and he added that not having been Strengthened against the
deed after the Recital of the Lord’s Prayer he Concluded that God had
meant him to do this thing.
Stern also Confessed to the Fact and accused the Captain of drawing him
into a Snare, but Vratz maintained his first Story and would not bring
my Lord into the Business.
And the Count of Conningsmarke denied all of them.
Now this Trial was held before the Lord Chief Justice and the other
Great Judges with manifest and open Fairness, according to the
_English_ Law, even to have the Jury part Foreign and giving all rights
to the Prisoners, such as having an Interpreter, one _Vandore_, who
interpreted to them all the _English_ Spoken, putting it into _High
Dutch_ or _French_.
Yet there was Little Doubt as to the End of this Trial, as all three
Confessed to the Design on Esquire Thynne and the Polander to the
actual shooting; but Captain Vratz would by no means bring the Count of
Conningsmarke in, but took the Whole Matter on his own shoulders; but
the other two, Stern from Anger and the Polander from Simplicity, told
what they knew of my Lord’s part in This.
Yet at the End it was the Count who was Acquitted and the three Humble
Ones who were Condemned, and my Lord left Them to the Law; yet even
Then Captain Vratz Persisted that he was alone Guilty.
And when the Prisoners were asked what they had to say for Themselves,
the Captain Vratz Said that he had not been rightly Examined, Stern
that he had gone into the Affair as Second to the Captain and in that
Capacity would end it, and the Polander asked God for Mercy.
When in Prison these Three were seen by Dr. Burnet and Dr. Horneck
who knew Foreign Languages and to both of these Priests Stern and the
Polander Confessed, but Vratz would write nor say Nothing, but to their
solicitations Replied with great Composure that the Matter was between
him and God and that he Perceived that they wished to draw him to
Implicate the Count, which he would by no Means do.
Dr. Horneck was Much Impressed by the Innocent Lives these Men had led
and by their Devotion to the Captain and the nice sense of Honour Stern
showed and the Humble Ingenuousness of the Polander, and he brought all
three together and exhorted Vratz to a Confession.
And Stern added his Words, saying:
“I Forgive you for having Drawn me into this Business, for the Count
of Conningsmarke deluded you, but Repent now, for we are very near the
Judgment of God.”
Thereupon Vratz fell into a passion, and gave him Reproachful Words,
saying he Lied.
“Put no Blame on my Lord,” he said, “for he is Guiltless.”
And with that he was Going, when the Polander Spoke.
“Give me a Word,” he said, “for soon I must Die.”
But Vratz looked at him with quick Kindled Wrath.
“You too defamed my Lord,” he said, “and I thought you were a Faithful
Servant.” Then he left them.
And the Polander Wept mightily.
“The Two things I have most trusted In have Betrayed me,” he said,
“first the Captain who sadly Deceived me in this matter–then I had a
great Love for Horses and thought to spend my Life in the care of them,
but when this Late Misfortune happened, I was on the back of One.”
Stern asked if he might be Buried, not Gibbeted, if he made a Written
Confession, and they told him, Yes, maybe, so he wrote what he knew of
it all.
Now the Night before their Execution there came a Message from the
Captain, Confessing that he had drawn them into this Snare and asking
their Forgiveness.
Upon which they Both Returned him a Message of Great Affection and the
Polander felt indeed Happy and Almost Satisfied to die if he might be
on these Terms with the Captain.
So they came to be Hanged, on the Tenth of _March_, in _Pall Mall_ on
the Spot where Esquire Thynne had been Murdered; and Vratz was Buried
but the other two Hung in Chains, and the Great Frame of the Polander
hung near Camden Town long after his crime had been Forgotten by the
General.
There was a Fine Marble put up in the Abbey Church of _Westminster_
to the Memory of Mr. Thynne, and next year his Widow, the Lady Ogle,
married the Duke of Somerset, who was the Proudest Man in _England_.
As for Charles Count of Conningsmarke, he went to the Wars and became
Famous for his Achievements, but it was Believed that he was a Haunted
Man, and it has been Rumoured that he Confessed to being Troubled, not
by Mr. Thynne, or either of the two Soldiers, but by the figure of the
Polander in the New Coat and carrying the new Broadsword Mr. Hanson had
Bought, smiling, very humble and Grateful.
This Figure Followed him so Persistently that his Death at the Siege of
Argos in 1685 was a Release from a Life that had become _Unbearable_.
THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF GRACE ENDICOTT
Grace Endicott hath had as remarkable history as any woman of her
times, and slander, calumny and malice, as well as curiosity and
wonder, having noised and mouthed her story until it hath been used as
a scorn against the Nonconformists and the town of Bedford, one who
was well acquainted with her here putteth forth the facts as they were
known to him, of the which he can solemnly attest and sware the truth,
by his faith in Christianity. After this preamble he now giveth the
case, leaving the judgment thereof to the charity of the human heart
and the Eye of God Almighty, only adding for himself that never was
there a stranger instance of the dealings of Heaven and Hell with man
and woman.
Mrs. Endicott was born at Edworth, in the county of Bedford, in the
year 1652, being the period of the high glory of our late the Lord
Protector.
Her family was of the yeomanry and of considerable substance; she early
lost her mother and had but one sister, younger than herself.
Her father being a pious man, she was brought up to walk in the ways
of righteousness, and was well educated beside in the accomplishments
of her sex; and she became a hopeful sprightly maiden, full of winning
graces, so that she drew unto her many likely swains, yet would have
none of them, being contented enough in her present situation.
In the year 1672, Mrs. Endicott being then twenty years of age and her
sister married into a house of her own rank, her father left his farm
in charge of a steward and bought a residence in Bedford, where he came
to live with this remaining daughter.
Here Mrs. Endicott, by reason of her personal endowment and handsome
fortune promised, found herself in the midst of much courtship and
flush of friendship from the better sort and received many a treat and
compliment; in fine she began to lead a life of uselessness and vanity
and to lose pleasure in everything but the gauds of the world.
Full often have I seen her setting forth in a little chariot with
pearls on her head and a marvel of silk and braid about her person and
a coat on her back of sable fur that would have brought a copyhold.
And many of those who watched this maiden thought the Father of
Darkness had set some springe to catch her soul, so different was she
from the meekness of her tender years, and this was a curious thing
withal, for her people had ever leant to Puritan doctrine, and during
the civil war had stood for the Godly side. And those who thus made
talk of the lightness of Mrs. Endicott’s behaviour soon found a cause
for it in the person of Gilbert Farry, who was an attorney of the place.
Now this Farry, for divers reasons, was neither loved nor liked; the
main argument against him being that he and his family were unknown in
the neighbourhood where he had lived but a few years, and therefore
he was, in a manner, a foreigner; nay, some held it that he was
foreign indeed, and had false French or Italian blood in him, for his
complexion was unnaturally dark and his temper sudden and gusty.
Though he had money enough, and indeed lived above his station, yet he
never honestly proclaimed how he came by it nor openly spoke of his
parents or former residence, and this closeness caused people to take
up a dislike to him and predict no good of his end.
There was something strange in his dress, for he greatly affected
outlandish colours of a brightness ill-befitting a Christian, and often
when he went abroad there would be a set of boys of the baser sort
calling after him, for he had the affliction of a limp that caused
his garments to be the more noticeable; yet methinks it true that he
overtopped the Bedford gallants in presence and speech, and the old
wives said there would have been many a wench glad enough to take him,
for there was nought definite against him and he never missed his
church-going, though the malicious said it was but fear of the fine
that sent him there.
Now it seemed that from the moment of their first meeting this Farry
took no manner of heed of any woman but Mrs. Endicott, and she gave
him no discouragements, and her father was friendly enough and clearly
looked upon the young man as a suitor, and when wise folks shook
their heads he would laugh and bid them wait till affairs were riper.
Inasmuch as the whole town took notice of this courtship which went on
in open freedom a wonderment began to grow that Farry, having screwed
himself into the favour of the father, did not demand the hand of Mrs.
Endicott.
And there was much pursing of lips and many a round declaration that
Mr. Endicott would have done a wiser thing in lending his countenance
to one of his own knowledge and county.
Now about this time, it being near Christmas, Mr. Endicott gave a ball,
and the expectants said that his daughter’s betrothal would follow this
feast, and using curiosity as a cloak for carnal inclinations many
worthy folk went who would have served the Lord better by remaining by
their own hearth.
The dance was continued till late, indeed when every one became much
animated, for Mr. Endicott was open-handed with his meat and drink, and
there was music of fiddles and a harp.
At midnight Mr. Farry led out Mrs. Endicott for some new fangled step
from the court (and there were many wanted to hear how he came to know
it and how he had found occasion to teach her), and they came down the
room hand in hand, she in a pink taffeta with trimmings of silvered
silks which had been bought in London and her hair trimmed and dressed
like a city Madam at least.
So they came down the room, and all eyes were on them; they looked only
at each other, and it was commonly averred afterwards that the look on
the face of Mrs. Endicott was that of one whom earthly passion hurrieth
forward to inevitable actions, maybe of folly or wickedness.
Still gazing at him, she changed hands in the centre of the room, and
moving round for the first figure gave him her left.
Then of a sudden her radiant face withered; she cast an affrighted
glance at her feet, recoiled like one who has stepped on a springe and
with a shriek fell on the ground, passing into fit after fit with many
frantic gestures and maniac words.
This thing did completely put an end to that festival, and was blazing
matter for talk, for Mrs. Endicott lay ill for many weeks and gave for
reason for her sudden disorder that she had had a vision of Hell.
Yea, she declared with floods of tears to all who came about her that
Hell itself had opened at her feet, and she gave such details and spoke
with such earnestness of the horrid spectacle of smoke and flame and
the faces grinning up at her and the hands endeavouring to pull her
down that there was none who dare entirely slight or discredit her tale
lest they should be casting scorn on one of the Judgments of God; so
all made agree to tell her that it was a forewarning brought on her by
her careless life and she used all haste to make amends.
She sold all her gauds and fine things and gave the money to the needy;
she came often to the prayers and devoted herself to household stuff as
was beseeming one in her situation. No longer did she go prinking like
an idle wanton lady, but went in a humble habit without adornment and
took up thrifty ways and a sober conversation.
Nor would she have any manner of intercourse with Gilbert nor even
speak of him; nay, he was of all others the creature she most hated to
hear tell of, and though she could give no reason for the aversion she
discovered yet she maintained it against her opposition.
Her father argued this matter with her with some heat, declaring
that the young man deserved some kindness from her who had so lately
encouraged him in a way that had made public comment; in short, being
still close in friendship with Mr. Farry, Mr. Endicott made every
endeavour to bring him again into his daughter’s favour, yet without
success, for she was resolved in this and was by no means to be moved.
She gave as her reasons the horror she felt at the sneering irreverent
way Mr. Farry had of talking of holy things and the general looseness
and idleness of his life.
To such a height was her hatred against him now raised that when one
day in springtide he did send her a wattle basket full of the first
rose blooms she cast them from her with a shudder, and let them lie
in the garden, where the sun sucked the life from them; yet was she
commonly fond of flowers.
Yet did she have to suffer him about the house, for her father every
day drew nearer with him in friendship, and even drew up a will leaving
most of his goods to Mrs. Grace on condition of her marriage to this
Farry.
At this time a wonderful man preached at the Baptist Chapel in Bedford;
he had been a soldier in the Parliamentary Army, and of great profanity
and wickedness, but having been marvellously converted he had taken
to preach the pure Word of God, and there were a many went to listen
to him, some to scoff, for he was unlettered to be talking of learned
things, but many to pray, moved by the truth that was in him.
Now to hear this preacher, who began to be well known in these parts,
went Grace Endicott, and ofttimes took her father and her sister
and brother-in-law, for, as hath been told, the family leant to the
Noncomformist views. After but a little while Mrs. Endicott became
wrapt up in the spiritual life and an ardent convert to the preachings
of this poor preacher, Mr. John Bunyan, whose doctrines filled her life
with gladness and rejoicings.
Surely she was like a woman transformed, and took no delight save in
the meetings at the Baptist Chapel, which were often enough broken
by Mr. Bunyan being in Bedford Gaol, for the King had lately issued
strong laws against the Nonconformists and had no mind to suffer them
to worship in peace.
At first Mr. Endicott was much uplifted by these meetings, and
inclined to turn from worldly things and to uphold his daughter in her
devotions, but after a while Gilbert Farry worked on him again, and he
went but seldom and his fervour died.
Yet truly he in no way interfered with his daughter, but allowed her
her will in the matter, and though Farry screwed more and more into his
confidence, yet Mrs. Endicott was unmolested in her devotions. About
the year 1678 Mr. Endicott sold his house in Bedford and returned to
his farm at Edworth, which was at some distance from the chapel where
Mr. Bunyan preached.
Yet Mrs. Endicott was nothing daunted by difficulties of road or
weather, and attended the meetings as regularly as any grave elder of
them all.
Now this persistency of hers gave occasion for Gilbert Farry to
influence her father’s mind in an evil fashion; it was not in nature,
he said, for a woman young and excessively comely (and who had been
addicted to gay things) to be so blinded, addicted and possessed by
religious zeal as was Grace Endicott. He hinted that John Bunyan was a
personable man and one who had not so long been reformed from the most
carnal ways of the Devil; he related how the preacher and the maiden
held long conversations, going to and from the chapel, and he spread
these scandals until they were known to all Bedford. It happened that
while things were in this pass, in the winter of this year ’78, Mr.
Bunyan was appointed to preach and administer the Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper at Gamlingay, which is some distance from Edworth.
Mrs. Endicott made her preparations to go, but when it came to asking
the consent of her father it was angrily withheld.
Whereupon she fell into a great travail of mind and besought him with
utter earnestness and piteous entreaties to permit her to attend this
meeting, until he weakened before her importunities and gave his
consent on the two conditions–that she did her household before she
went and that she returned the same night at a godly hour.
On the Friday, therefore, Mrs. Endicott, having well looked to all her
duties, left her home and went to her brother-in-law’s house, where she
was to wait for a Baptist minister who was to escort her to Gamlingay.
Here she waited, but the hour became late and the minister did not
come; then did Mrs. Endicott implore her relative to lend her a horse,
but he had not one which was not at work, save only that on which he
and his wife were riding to the meeting themselves.
Hearing this, Mrs. Endicott broke into a passion of despair and paced
about the apartment in an extremity of anguish, and made such a plaint
that even her own sister thought she showed an excess of sorrow. In
the midst of this scene Mr. Bunyan himself came riding past, and Mrs.
Endicott had him stopped and bid her brother-in law ask if the preacher
would take her upon his pillion.
And down she came and stood on the doorstep to second this request.
“Will you take me, Mr. Bunyan,” she asked, “for my soul’s sake?”
And he was mute, for he was both loath and unwilling, for he knew the
hard things said of him and her in Bedford town.
“It is for my soul,” says Mrs. Endicott again; and so he must be
persuaded, and take her up behind him through the darkling lanes to
Gamlingay.
And the chance was that they had not gone a mile before they passed the
man Farry standing by the cross roads, who closely looked at them.
Mr. Bunyan did not salute him, not being of his acquaintance, and Mrs.
Endicott stared at him with eyes that might have been of glass, so
blank they were; thereupon Gilbert Farry went softly to Edworth and
spoke to George Endicott, and said–
“I have seen your daughter riding pillion with John Bunyan to Gamlingay
as if they were man and wife.”
Now whether or no she pictured Mr. Farry poisoning her father, Mrs.
Endicott stayed to the end of the meeting and seemed wrapt in the
ecstasy of worship and the joy of the moment.
Yet when the meeting was over her sorrows began again; Mr. Bunyan was
riding another way, and there was no manner of means for her to get
home. There was much delay and argument, and then she found a woman who
had a cart and who would take her as far as her sister-in-law’s house,
but from there was no convenience, yet mindful of her promise to her
father Mrs. Endicott set out on the dark, miry and rough roads and so
came to her home, spent with walking and affrighted with loneliness.
Still it was not more than eleven of the clock, and it caused her amaze
to see the windows dark and the door locked.
With trembling hands she knocked at the door, and her father came to an
upper window with a candle in his hand and demanded who was there.
“It is I, father, come home wet and dirty,” replied Mrs. Endicott. “I
pray you let me in.”
“Nay,” he answered. “Where you have been all the evening you may go all
the night–and never do you cross my threshold until I have your promise
not to see John Bunyan again.”
“That is to give up my soul’s life,” she said; “and I cannot.”
Thereupon he shut the window and took away the light.
Mrs. Endicott did plead desperately and tearfully but to no avail, for
the bitter night winds took her words away and her father heard not.
Then, the storm coming up apace, she was fain to go into the barn, and
there to lay her down on the straw till the morning.
When her father made his round he saw her there, with her clothes
frozen on her and her eyes wet and wild.
“Good morrow, father,” she said. “I have had a dreary night, but it had
been worse had not God sustained me.”
“No matter for that,” he answered; “here you stay until you promise
never to frequent meetings again and never to speak to John Bunyan.”
Thereupon she hung upon him with vain tears and entreaties, but he
would have none of it without her promise, and that she would in no
wise give; so at length he flung her from him roughly, and she lay
along a byre and wept for comfortlessness.
At noontide up came her brother-in-law, and made the endeavour to
conclude a peace, but this was beyond his powers, for George Endicott
was obdurate and his daughter would not give her promise; neither would
she leave her father’s house, but dwelt without it for several days,
living on such food as the pity of the servants gave her and sleeping
on the ground or in the stalls of the horses.
And day by day came Gilbert Farry and tempted her with promises of
love and comfort, but she would have none of it, but remained a beggar
before her father’s door.
On the tenth day her father came to her and again demanded of her her
promise; and if she gave it not, he added, she should no longer have
even the shelter of his barns, but be cast out upon the high-road among
the knaves and gipsies. Grace Endicott rose up from the straw and
stood erect in her torn, soiled garments, with her hair unbound and
her cheeks stained with weeping.
“Sir,” she made answer, “I stand between Good and Evil, and you
would have me choose Evil. This is my immortal soul you ask for. For
certainly I was in the power of the Devil from whom I was rescued by
Mr. Bunyan, and if you deny me his converse, then I am no better than
lost.”
But her father was in no way moved, and asked if she would promise or
go upon the roads.
“Well and well again,” she said with much wildness, “I promise, but it
is a lost soul you take into your house.”
Thereupon her father took her by the hand and led her in, and as she
crossed the threshold she said again–
“It is a damned soul you bring home, my father.”
In the parlour was a feast spread and wine laid out and Gilbert Farry
waiting, and he took her to him with no excuse and kissed her.
“So you have won,” she murmured, and made no resistance.
So for a month she lived quietly in her father’s house, until one day
near on Christmas she met Mr. Bunyan in the market-place of Bedford
town, and he was being taken to prison for his preaching, and there
were many of his following going with him with words of encouragement
and love. But Grace Endicott denied him, and looked as if she did not
know his face, even asking one who stood by, “Who is that fellow?”
At this John Bunyan looked through the press and spoke to her, quoting
scripture–
“Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My
Father which is in Heaven,” he said.
“I obey _my_ father,” answered Mrs. Endicott.
“He that loveth father or mother before Me is not worthy of Me,” spake
Mr. Bunyan, and went on his way to gaol.
Now all the rest of that day, being Tuesday, Mrs. Endicott was very
silent; those among whom she moved marked it with concern. The next
night she came running through the darkness to her sister’s house, all
wild and beside herself, and implored them all to come home with her,
which they did in a great fright.
Upon the way she told them that her father had fallen ill, and was now
dying.
This they found true enough; George Endicott was crouching over a
hastily lit fire and bemoaning his sins, and in little while without
further speech he died. Mrs. Endicott was taken to her sister’s home on
the way, it being then dawn, and they met Gilbert Farry, and told him
Mr. Endicott was sudden dead.
“It is no more than I looked for,” said he; whereupon Mrs. Endicott
shocked those with her in the cart by laughing, and his remark and her
manner of taking it were remembered afterwards.
The end of this business was that the doctors made discovery that
George Endicott had been poisoned by a drug given him in his ale; and
a drug of this nature had been bought by Mrs. Endicott in Bedford a
few hours after John Bunyan had spoken to her; this, together with the
circumstances of her late dispute with her father, her being alone
with him in the house, the suddenness of his illness and some broken
words he had let drop in his last moments, was evidence enough, and
Mrs. Endicott was arrested on the awful charge of murdering her father
and lodged in Bedford Gaol, to the great scandal and confusion of all
Nonconformists and damage to the cause of John Bunyan.
The trial is within the memory of all, and no account of it is here
required. Mrs. Endicott defended herself with prudence and spirit
and strove to cast the guilt on the man Farry, who was the principal
witness against her; and, indeed, his known spite towards her, the
fact that Mr. Endicott’s will was in his favour and the misty kind of
character he bore gave her some handle, but since she could no wise
explain the drug she had bought save lamely saying it was for cleaning
tiles and that she knew not its deadly properties, the case looked ill
against the woman. Nevertheless, her youth, her comeliness, her known
piety and long sweet behaviour, the influence of her relatives and
the feeling of the people pleaded for her, and there was no one who
doubted that she would be acquitted when on the last day of her trial
she startled the court by rising up and declaring herself guilty and a
helpmate of the Devil from the moment she abjured John Bunyan in her
father’s barn.
In fine she vowed herself a witch, and baring her arm showed them a
purple hoof-print on the flesh that was known for the particular mark
and sign of Hell. After this she refused to speak again either to her
relatives or to the clergyman, and came forth to be hanged next day in
a green tabinet gown with red ribbons. Not a word spoke she while being
led through Bedford town, but was composed and seemed in a meditation.
With her own hands she tied down her skirts and put up her hair, and so
without a prayer or any plea for mercy was hanged in full sight of all
Bedford.
There was afterwards found in her gown a paper which was taken
possession of by me, being one of the clergy present, and here
published by me that all the facts be known to all who care to read.
As for Gilbert Farry, he came to the execution and stood close to the
gallows, and when she was dead went westward, leaving his properties in
his lodgings, nor was he ever seen or heard of again in Bedford.
And his belongings were principally books in pagan languages and gaudy
clothes, which were burnt before the Town Hall, for there was a great
distrust of this man, it being thought that he had brought to ruin the
soul of Grace Endicott.
Here followeth the paper written by Mrs. Endicott the day before she
died:–
“Bedford Gaol, Wednesday, March 25th, 1679.
“Powerful is evil and hard to escape, and wise are those who
step aside from the world which is set with springes into one
of which I fell, who was once a Chrisom child and spun Church
linen at my father’s door.
“When I was in my tender years I thought of neither good nor
evil, but went my way in empty vanity; then, behold! I had a
warning and beheld Hell in its flames and saw that Love was but
the Devil and so let go his hand.
“Soon there came a man, wonderful and strong, who took my soul
from the embrace of Evil and set it on the road to Heaven and
for six years I laboured in that thorny way, and thought I had
found peace.
“Yet was the Devil busy, and pursued me and set his hounds on
my soul, and his traps for my feet, but the preacher bade me
hold fast to him, and surely he was drawing me Heavenwards. Yet
through weakness of body I denied him, and the Devil kissed me,
and I was a damned soul, and the net was so tight about me I
could n
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