“‘HANG FAST TO YOUR HONORS BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH, MY LORD’”
“‘HANG FAST TO YOUR HONORS BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH, MY LORD’”
As he was carried away by the merry gentlemen of the court, he called back to the favorite:
“Leicester is not so great a swordsman, after all. Hang fast to your honors by the skin of your teeth, my lord.”
ITwas Monday, and the eyes of London and the court were turned towards Greenwich Park, where the Queen was to give entertainment to the French envoy who had come once more to urge upon the Queen marriage with a son of the Medici, and to obtain an assurance that she would return to France the widow of the great Montgomery and his valiant lieutenant, Michel de la Forêt. The river was covered with boats and barges, festooned, canopied, and hung with banners and devices; and from sunrise music and singing conducted down the stream the gayly dressed populace—for those were the days when a man spent on his ruff and his hose and his russet coat as much as would feed and housea family for a year; when the fine-figured ruffler with sables about his neck, corked slipper, trimmed buskin, and cloak of silk or damask furred, carried his all upon his back.
Loud-voiced gallants came floating by; men of a hundred guilds bearing devices pompously held on their way to the great pageant; country bumpkins up from Surrey roistered and swore that there was but one land that God had blessed, and challenged the grinning watermen from Gravesend and Hampton Court to deny it; and the sun with ardor drove from the sky every invading cloud, leaving Essex and Kent, as far as eye could see, perfect green gardens of opulence.
Before Elizabeth had left her bed, London had emptied itself in Greenwich Park. Thither the London companies had come in their varied dazzling accoutrements—hundreds armed in fine corselets bearing the long Moorish pike; tall halberdiers in the unique armor called Almain-rivets, and gunners or muleteers equipped in shirts of mail, withmorions or steel caps. Here, too, were to come the Gentlemen Pensioners, resplendent in scarlet, to “run with the spear”; and hundreds of men-at-arms were set at every point to give garish bravery to all. Thousands of citizens, open-mouthed, gazed down the long arenas of green festooned with every sort of decoration and picturesque invention. Cages of large birds from the Indies, fruits, corn, fishes, grapes hung in the trees, players perched in the branches discoursed sweet music, and poets recited their verses from rustic bridges or on platforms with weapons and armor hung trophywise on ragged staves. Upon a small lake a dolphin, four-and-twenty feet in length, came swimming, within its belly a lively orchestra; Italian tumblers swung from rope to bar; and crowds gathered at the places where bear and bull baiting were to excite the none too fastidious tastes of the time.
All morning the gay delights went on, and at high noon the cry was carried from mouth to mouth, “The Queen! The Queen!”
She appeared on a balcony, surrounded byher lords and ladies, and there received the diplomatists, speaking at length to the French envoy in a tone of lightness and elusive cheerfulness which he was at a loss to understand, and tried in vain to pierce by cogent remarks bearing on matters of moment involved in his embassage. Not far away stood Leicester, but the Queen had done no more than note his presence by a glance, and now and again with ostentatious emphasis she spoke to Angèle, whom she had had brought to her in the morning before chapel-going. Thus early, after a few questions and some scrutiny, she had sent her in charge of a gentleman-at-arms and a maid of the Duke’s Daughter to her father’s lodging, with orders to change her robe, to return to the palace in good time before noon, and to bring her father to a safe place where he could watch the pleasures of the people. When Angèle came to the presence again, she saw that the Queen was wearing a gown of pure white, with the sleeves shot with black, such as she herself had worn when admitted to audience yesterday. Vexed,agitated, imbittered as Elizabeth had been by the news brought to her the night before, she had kept her wardrobers and seamstresses at work the whole night to alter a white satin habit to the simplicity and style of that which Angèle had worn.
“What think you of my gown, my lady refugee?” she said to Angèle, at last, as the Gentlemen Pensioners paraded in the space below, followed by the Knights-Tilters—at their head the Queen’s champion, Sir Henry Lee: twenty-five of the most gallant and favored of the courtiers of Elizabeth, including the gravest of her counsellors and the youngest gallant who had won her smile, Master Christopher Hatton. Some of these brave suitors, taken from the noblest families, had appeared in the tilt-yard every anniversary of the year of her accession and had lifted their romantic office, which seemed but the service of enamoured knights, into an almost solemn dignity.
The vast crowd disposed itself around the great improvised yard where the Knights-Tilters were to engage, and the Queen, followedby her retinue, descended to the dais which had been set up near the palace. Her white satin gown, roped with pearls only at the neck and breast, glistened in the bright sun, and her fair hair took on a burnished radiance. As Angèle passed with her in the gorgeous procession, she could not but view the scene with admiring eye, albeit her own sweet, sober attire—a pearly gray—seemed little in keeping; for the ladies and lords were most richly attired, and the damask and satin cloaks, crimson velvet gowns, silk hoods, and jewelled swords and daggers made a brave show. She was like some moth in a whorl of butterflies.
Her face was pale, and her eyes had a curious, disturbed look, as though they had seen frightening things. The events of last evening had tried her simple spirit, and she shrank from this glittering show; but the knowledge that her lover’s life was in danger, and that her happiness was here and now at stake, held her bravely to her place, beset as it was with peril; for the Queen, with that eccentricity which had lifted her up yesterday,might cast her down to-day, and she had good reason to fear the power and influence of Leicester, who she knew with a sure instinct was intent on Michel’s ruin. Behind all her nervous shrinking and her heart’s doubt, the memory of the face of the stranger she had seen last night with Sir Andrew Melvill tortured her. She could not find the time and place where she had seen the eyes that, in the palace, had filled her with mislike and abhorrence as they looked upon the Queen. Again and again in her fitful sleep had she dreamed of him, and a sense of foreboding was heavy upon her—she seemed to hear the footfall of coming disaster. The anxiety of her soul lent an unnatural brightness to her eyes; so that more than one enamoured courtier made essay to engage her in conversation, and paid her deferential compliment when the Queen’s eyes were not turned her way. Come to the dais, she was placed not far from her Majesty, beside the Duke’s Daughter, whose whimsical nature found frequent expression in what the Queen was wont to call “a merryvolt.” She seemed a privileged person, with whom none ventured to take liberties, and against whom none was entitled to bear offence, for her quips were free from malice, and her ingenuity in humor of mark. She it was who had put into the Queen’s head that morning an idea which was presently to startle Angèle and all others.
Leicester was riding with the Knights-Tilters, and as they cantered lightly past the dais, trailing their spears in obeisance, Elizabeth engaged herself in talk with Cecil, who was standing near, and appeared not to see the favorite. This was the first time since he had mounted to good fortune that she had not thrown him a favor to pick up with his spear and wear in her honor, and he could scarce believe that she had meant to neglect him. He half halted, but she only deigned an inclination of the head, and he spurred his horse angrily on with a muttered imprecation, yet, to all seeming, gallantly paying homage.
“There shall be doings ere this day is done. ‘Beware the Gypsy!’” said the Duke’sDaughter, in a low tone, to Angèle, and she laughed lightly.
“Who is the Gypsy?” asked Angèle, with good suspicion, however.
“Who but Leicester,” answered the other. “Is he not black enough?”
“Why was he so called? Who put the name upon him?”
“Who but the Earl of Sussex, as he died—as noble a chief, as true a counsellor as ever spoke truth to a queen. But truth is not all at court, and Sussex was no flatterer. Leicester bowed under the storm for a moment when Sussex showed him in his true colors; but Sussex had no gift of intrigue, the tide turned, and so he broke his heart and died. But he left a message which I sometimes remember with my collects. ‘I am now passing to another world,’ said he, ‘and must leave you to your fortunes and to the Queen’s grace and goodness; but beware the Gypsy, for he will be too hard for all of you; you know not the beast so well as I do.’ But my Lord Sussex was wrong. One there is who knows him through andthrough, and hath little joy in the knowing.”
The look in the eyes of the Duke’s Daughter became like steel and her voice hardened, and Angèle realized that Leicester had in this beautiful and delicate maid-of-honor as bitter an enemy as ever brought down the mighty from their seats; that a pride had been sometime wounded, suffered an unwarrantable affront, which only innocence could feel so acutely. Her heart went out to the Duke’s Daughter as it had never gone out to any of her sex since her mother’s death, and she showed her admiration in her glance. The other saw it and smiled, slipping a hand in hers for a moment; and then a look, half-debating, half-triumphant, came into her face as her eyes followed Leicester down the green stretches of the tilting-yard.
The trumpet sounded, the people broke out in shouts of delight, the tilting began. For an hour the handsome joust went on, the Earl of Oxford, Charles Howard, Sir Henry Lee, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Leicester challenging, and so even was the combat thatvictory seemed to settle in the plumes of neither, though Leicester of them all showed not the greatest skill, while in some regards greatest grace and deportment. Suddenly there rode into the lists, whence no one seemed to know, so intent had the public gaze been fixed, so quickly had he come, a mounted figure all in white, and at the moment when Sir Henry Lee had cried aloud his challenge for the last time. Silence fell as the bright figure cantered down the list, lifted the gauge, and sat still upon his black steed. Consternation fell. None among the people or the Knights-Tilters knew who the invader was, and Leicester called upon the masters of the ceremonies to demand his name and quality. The white horseman made no reply, but sat unmoved, while noise and turmoil suddenly sprang up around him.
Presently the voice of the Queen was heard clearly ringing through the lists. “His quality hath evidence. Set on.”
The Duke’s Daughter laughed, and whispered mischievously in Angèle’s ear.
The gentlemen of England fared ill that day in the sight of all the people, for the challenger of the Knights-Tilters was more than a match for each that came upon him. He rode like a wild horseman of Yucatan. Wary, resourceful, sudden in device and powerful in onset, he bore all down, until the Queen cried: “There hath not been such skill in England since my father rode these lists. Three of my best gentlemen down, and it hath been but breathing to him. Now, Sir Harry Lee, it is thy turn,” she laughed, as she saw the champion ride forward; “and next ’tis thine, Leicester. Ah, Leicester, would have at him now?” she added, sharply, as she saw the favorite spur forward before the gallant Lee. “He is full of choler—it becomes him, but it shall not be; bravery is not all. And if he failed”—she smiled acidly—“he would get him home to Kenilworth and show himself no more—if he failed, and the white knight failed not! What think you, dove?” she cried to the Duke’s Daughter. “Would he not fall in the megrims for that England’s honor had beenoverthrown? Leicester could not live if England’s honor should be toppled down like my dear Chris Hatton and his gallants, yonder.”
The Duke’s Daughter courtesied. “Methinks England’s honor is in little peril—your Majesty knows well how to ‘fend it. No subject keeps it.”
“If I must ‘fend it, dove, then Leicester there must not fight to-day. It shall surely be Sir Harry Lee. My Lord Leicester must have the place of honor at the last,” she called aloud. Leicester swung his horse round, and galloped to the Queen.
“Your Majesty,” he cried, in suppressed anger, “must I give place?”
“When all have failed and Leicester has won, then all yield place to Leicester,” said the Queen, dryly.
The look on his face was not good to see, but he saluted gravely and rode away to watch the encounter between the most gallant Knight-Tilter in England and the stranger. Rage was in his heart, and it blinded him to the certainty of his defeat, for he wasnot expert in the lists. But by a sure instinct he had guessed the identity of the white horseman, and every nerve quivered with desire to meet him in combat. Last night’s good work seemed to have gone for naught. Elizabeth’s humor had changed; and to-day she seemed set on humiliating him before the nobles who hated him, before the people who had found in him the cause why the Queen had not married, so giving no heir to the throne. Perturbed and charged with anger as he was, however, the combat now forward soon chained his attention. Not in many a year had there been seen in England such a display of skill and determination. The veteran Knight-Tilter, who knew that the result of this business meant more than life to him, and that more than the honor of his comrades was at stake—even the valor of England, which had been challenged—fought as he had never fought before, as no man had fought in England for many a year. At first the people cried aloud their encouragement; but as onset and attack after onset and attack showed that twomasters of their craft, two desperate men had met, and that the great sport had become a vital combat between their own champion and the champion of another land—Spain, France, Denmark, Russia, Italy?—a hush spread over the great space, and every eye was strained; men gazed with bated breath.
The green turf was torn and mangled, the horses reeked with sweat and foam, but overhead the soaring skylark sang, as it were, to express the joyance of the day. During many minutes the only sound that broke the stillness was the clash of armed men, the thud of hoofs, and the snorting and the wild breathing of the chargers. The lark’s notes, however, ringing out over the lists, freed the tongue of the Queen’s fool, who suddenly ran out into the lists, in his motley and cap and bells, and in his high, trilling voice sang a fool’s song to the fighting twain:
“Who would lie down and close his eyesWhile yet the lark sings o’er the dale?Who would to Love make no replies,Nor drink the nut-brown ale,While throbs the pulse, and full’s the purseAnd all the world’s for sale?”
“Who would lie down and close his eyesWhile yet the lark sings o’er the dale?Who would to Love make no replies,Nor drink the nut-brown ale,While throbs the pulse, and full’s the purseAnd all the world’s for sale?”
“Who would lie down and close his eyes
While yet the lark sings o’er the dale?
Who would to Love make no replies,
Nor drink the nut-brown ale,
While throbs the pulse, and full’s the purse
And all the world’s for sale?”
Suddenly a cry of relief, of roaring excitement, burst from the people. Both horsemen and their chargers were on the ground. The fight was over, the fierce game at an end. That which all had feared, even the Queen herself, as the fight fared on, had not come to pass—England’s champion had not been beaten by the armed mystery, though the odds had seemed against him.
“Though wintry blasts may prove unkind,When winter’s past we do forget;Love’s breast in summer-time is kind,And all’s well while life’s with us yet—Hey, ho, now the lark is mating,Life’s sweet wages are in waiting!”
“Though wintry blasts may prove unkind,When winter’s past we do forget;Love’s breast in summer-time is kind,And all’s well while life’s with us yet—Hey, ho, now the lark is mating,Life’s sweet wages are in waiting!”
“Though wintry blasts may prove unkind,
When winter’s past we do forget;
Love’s breast in summer-time is kind,
And all’s well while life’s with us yet—
Hey, ho, now the lark is mating,
Life’s sweet wages are in waiting!”
Thus sang the fool as the two warriors were helped to their feet. Cumbered with their armor, and all dust-covered and blood-stained, though not seriously hurt, they were helped to their horses, and rode to the dais where the Queen sat.
“Ye have fought like men of old,” she said, “and neither had advantage at the last. England’s champion still may cry his challenge and not be forsworn, and he whochallenged goeth in honor again from the lists. You, sir, who have challenged, shall we not see your face or hear your voice? For what country, for what prince lifted you the gauge and challenged England’s honor?”
“I crave your high Majesty’s pardon”—Angèle’s heart stood still. Her love had not pierced his disguise, though Leicester’s hate had done so on the instant—“I crave your noble Majesty’s grace,” answered the stranger, “that I may still keep my face covered in humility. My voice speaks for no country and for no prince. I have fought for mine own honor, and to prove to England’s Queen that she hath a champion who smiteth with strong arm, as on me and my steed this hath been seen to-day.”
“Gallantly thought and well said,” answered Elizabeth; “but England’s champion and his strong arm have no victory. If gifts were given they must needs be cut in twain. But answer me, what is your country? I will not have it that any man pick up the gauge of England for his own honor. What is your country?”
“I am an exile, your high Majesty; and the only land for which I raise my sword this day is that land where I have found safety from my enemies.”
The Queen turned and smiled at the Duke’s Daughter. “I knew not where my own question might lead, but he hath turned it to full account,” she said, under her breath. “His tongue is as ready as his spear. Then ye have both labored in England’s honor, and I drink to you both,” she added, and raised to her lips a glass of wine which a page presented. “I love ye both—in your high qualities,” she hastened to add, with dry irony, and her eye rested mockingly on Leicester.
“My lords and gentlemen and all of my kingdom,” she added, in a clear voice, insistent in its force, “ye have come upon May Day to take delight of England in my gardens, and ye are welcome. Ye have seen such a sight as doeth good to the eyes of brave men. It hath pleased me well, and I am constrained to say to you what, for divers great reasons, I have kept to my own counsels,laboring for your good. The day hath come, however, the day and the hour, when ye shall know that wherein I propose to serve you as ye well deserve. It is my will—and now I see my way to its good fulfilment—that I remain no longer in that virgin state wherein I have ever lived.”
Great cheering here broke in, and for a time she could get no further. Ever alive to the bent of the popular mind, she had chosen a perfect occasion to take them into her confidence—however little or much she would abide by her words, or intended the union of which she spoke. In the past she had counselled with her great advisers, with Cecil and the rest, and through them messages were borne to the people; but now she spoke direct to them all, and it had its immediate reward—the acclamations were as those with which she was greeted when she first passed through the streets of London on inheriting the crown.
Well pleased, she continued: “This I will do with expedition and weightiest judgment, for of little account though I am, he that sitswith the Queen of England in this realm, must needs be a prince indeed.... So be ye sure of this that ye shall have your heartmost wishes, and there shall be one to come after me who will wear this crown even as I have worn, in direct descent, my father’s crown. Our dearest sister, the Queen of the Scots, hath been delivered of a fair son; and in high affection the news thereof she hath sent me, with a palfrey which I shall ride among you in token of the love I bear her Majesty. She hath in her time got an heir to the throne with which we are ever in kinship and alliance, and I in my time shall give ye your hearts’ desire.”
Angèle, who had, with palpitating heart and swimming head, seen Michel de la Forêt leave the lists and disappear among the trees, as mysteriously as he came, was scarce conscious of the cheers and riotous delight that followed Elizabeth’s tactful if delusive speech to the people. A few whispered words from the Duke’s Daughter had told her that Michel had obeyed the Queen’s command in entering the lists and taking up the challenge;and that she herself, carrying the royal message to him and making arrangements for his accoutrement and mounting, had urged him to obedience. She observed dryly that he had needed little pressure, and that his eyes had lighted at the prospect of the combat. Apart from his innate love of fighting, he had realized that in the moment of declining to enter the Queen’s service he had been at a disadvantage, and that his courage was open to attack by the incredulous or malicious. This would have mattered little were it not that he had been given unusual importance as a prisoner by the Queen’s personal notice of himself. He had, therefore, sprung to the acceptance, and sent his humble duty to the Queen by her winsome messenger, who, with conspicuous dramatic skill, had arranged secretly, with the help of a Gentleman Pensioner and the Master of the Horse, his appearance and his exit. That all succeeded as she had planned quickened her pulses, and made her heart still warmer to Angèle, who, now that all was over, and her Huguenot lover had gonehis mysterious way, seemed lost in a troubled reverie.
It was a troubled reverie, indeed, for Angèle’s eyes were on the stranger who was present with Sir Andrew Melvill the night before. Her gaze upon him now became fixed and insistent, for the sense of foreboding so heavy on her deepened to a torturing suspense. Where had she seen this man before? To what day or hour in her past did he belong? What was there in his smooth, smiling, malicious face that made her blood run cold? As she watched him, he turned his head. She followed his eyes. The horse which Mary Queen of Scots had sent with the message of the birth of her son was being led to the Queen by the dark-browed, pale-faced churl who had brought it from Scotland. She saw a sharp, dark look pass between the two.
Suddenly her sight swam, she swayed and would have fainted, but resolution steadied her, and a low exclamation broke from her lips. Now she knew!
The face that had eluded her was at lastin the grasp of horrified memory. It was the face of one who many years ago was known to have poisoned the Duc de Chambly by anointing the pommel of his saddle with a delicate poison which the rider would touch, and touching would, perhaps, carry to his nostrils or mouth as he rode, and die upon the instant. She herself had seen the Duc de Chambly fall; had seen this man fly from Paris for his life; and had thereafter known of his return to favor at the court of Mary and Francis, for nothing could be proved against him. The memory flashed like lightning through her brain. She moved swiftly forward despite the detaining hand of the Duke’s Daughter. The Queen was already mounted, her hand already upon the pommel of the saddle.
Elizabeth noted the look of anguished anxiety in Angèle’s eyes, her face like that of one who had seen souls in purgatory; and some swift instinct, born of years upon years of peril in old days when her life was no boon to her enemies, made her lean towards the girl, whose quick whispered words wereto her as loud as thunder. She was, however, composed and still. Not a tremor passed through her.
“Your wish is granted, mistress,” she said aloud, then addressed a word to Cecil at her side, who passed on her command. Presently she turned slowly to the spot where Sir Andrew Melvill and the other sat upon their horses. She scanned complacently the faces of both, then her eyes settled steadily on the face of the murderer. Still gazing intently, she drew the back of her gloved fingers along the pommel. The man saw the motion, unnoted and unsignificant to any other save Angèle, meaningless even to Melvill, the innocent and honest gentleman at his side; and he realized that the Queen had had a warning. Noting the slight stir among the gentlemen round him, he knew that his game was foiled, that there was no escape. He was not prepared for what followed.
In a voice to be heard only at small distance, the Queen said, calmly:
“This palfrey sent me by my dear sister of Scotland shall bear me among you, friends;and in days to comeI will remember how she hath given new life to me by her loving message. Sir Andrew Melvill, I shall have further speech with you; and you, sir”—speaking to the sinister figure by his side—“come hither.”
The man dismounted, and with unsteady step came forward. Elizabeth held out her gloved hand for him to kiss. His face turned white. It was come soon, his punishment. None knew save Angèle and the Queen the doom that was upon him, if Angèle’s warning was well founded. He knelt, and bent his head over her hand.
“Salute sir,” she said, in a low voice.
He touched his lips to her fingers. She pressed them swiftly against his mouth. An instant, then he rose and stepped backward to his horse. Tremblingly, blindly, he mounted.
A moment passed, then Elizabeth rode on with her ladies behind her, her gentlemen beside her. As she passed slowly, the would-be regicide swayed and fell from his horse, and stirred no more.
Elizabeth rode on, her hand upon the pommel of the saddle. So she rode for a full half-hour, and came back to her palace. But she raised not her gloved right hand above the pommel, and she dismounted with exceeding care.
That night the man who cared for the horse died secretly, as had done his master, with the Queen’s glove pressed to his nostrils by one whom Cecil could trust. And the matter was hidden from the court and the people; for it was given out that Melvill’s friend had died of some heart trouble.
ITseemed an unspeakable smallness in a man of such high place in the state, whose hand had tied and untied myriad knots of political and court intrigue, that he should stoop to a game which any pettifogging hanger-on might play—and reap scorn in the playing. By insidious arts, Leicester had in his day turned the Queen’s mind to his own will; had foiled the diplomacy of the Spaniard, the German, and the Gaul; had by subterranean means checkmated the designs of the Medici; had traced his way through plot and counter-plot, hated by most, loved by none save, maybe, his royal mistress, to whom he was now more a custom than a beloved friend. Year upon year he had built up his influence. Nonehad championed him save himself, and even from the consequences of rashness and folly he had risen to a still higher place in the kingdom. But such as Leicester are ever at last a sacrifice to the laborious means by which they achieve their greatest ends—means contemptible and small.
To the great intriguers every little detail, every commonplace insignificance is used—and must be used by them alone—to further their dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to faithful subordinates. They cannot say, “Here is the end; this is the work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!” They must “stoop to conquer.” Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds. The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature, that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the occasion is trifling and the end negligible.
To all intriguers life has lost romance; there is no poem left in nature; no ideal, personal,public, or national, detains them in its wholesome influence; no great purpose allures them; they have no causes for which to die—save themselves. They are so honeycombed with insincerity and the vice of thought that by-and-by all colors are as one, all pathways the same; because, whichever hue of light breaks upon their world they see it through the gray-cloaked mist of falsehood; and whether the path be good or bad they would still walk in it crookedly. How many men and women Leicester had tracked or lured to their doom; over how many men and women he had stepped to his place of power, history speaks not carefully; but the traces of his deeds run through a thousand archives, and they suggest plentiful sacrifices to a subverted character.
Favorite of a queen, he must now stoop to set a trap for the ruin of as simple a soul as ever stepped upon the soil of England; and his dark purposes had not even the excuse of necessity on the one hand, of love or passion on the other. An insane jealousy of the place the girl had won in the considerationof the Queen, of her lover who, he thought, had won a still higher place in the same influence, was his only motive for action at first. His cruelty was not redeemed even by the sensuous interest the girl might arouse in a reckless nature by her beauty and her charm.
So the great Leicester—the Gypsy, as the dead Sussex had called him—lay in wait in Greenwich Park for Angèle to pass, like some orchard-thief in the blossoming trees. Knowing the path by which she would come to her father’s cottage from the palace, he had placed himself accordingly. He had thought he might have to wait long or come often for the perfect opportunity; but it seemed as if fate played his game for him, and that once again the fruit he would pluck should fall into his palm. Bright-eyed, and elated from a long talk with the Duke’s Daughter, who had given her a message from the Queen, Angèle had abstractedly taken the wrong path in the wood. Leicester saw that it would lead her into the maze some distance off. Making a détour, he met her at themoment she discovered her mistake. The light from the royal word her friend had brought was still in her face; but it was crossed by perplexity now.
He stood still, as though astonished at seeing her, a smile upon his face. So perfectly did he play his part that she thought the meeting accidental; and though in her heart she had a fear of the man, and knew how bitter an enemy he was of Michel’s, his urbane power, his skilful diplomacy of courtesy had its way. These complicated lives, instinct with contradiction, have the interest of forbidden knowledge. The dark experiences of life leave their mark, and give such natures that touch of mystery which allures even those who have high instincts and true feelings, as one peeps over a hidden depth and wonders what lies beyond the dark. So Angèle, suddenly arrested, was caught by the sense of mystery in the man, by the fascination offinesse, of dark power; and it was womanlike that all on an instant she should dream of the soul of goodness in things evil.
Thus in life we are often surprised out of long years of prejudice, and even of dislike and suspicion, by some fortuitous incident, which might have chanced to two who had every impulse towards each other, not such antagonisms as lay between Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and this Huguenot refugee. She had every cue to hate him. Each moment of her life in England had been beset with peril because of him—peril to the man she loved, therefore peril to herself. And yet, so various is the nature of woman that, while steering straitly by one star, she levies upon the light of other stars. Faithful and sincere, yet loving power, curious and adventurous, she must needs, without intention, without purpose, stray into perilous paths.
As Leicester stepped suddenly into Angèle’s gaze, she was only, as it were, conscious of a presence in itself alluring by virtue of the history surrounding it. She was surprised out of an instinctive dislike, and the cue she had to loathe him was for the moment lost.
Unconsciously, unintentionally, she smiled at him now, then, realizing, retreated, shrinking from him, her face averted. Man or woman had found in Leicester the delicate and intrepid gamester, exquisite in the choice of detail, masterful in the breadth of method. And now, as though his whole future depended on this interview, he brought to bear a life-long skill to influence her. He had determined to set the Queen against her. He did not know—not even he—that she had saved the Queen’s life on that auspicious May Day when Harry Lee had fought the white knight, Michel de la Forêt, and halved the honors of the lists with him. If he had but known that the Queen had hid from him this fact—this vital thing touching herself and England—he would have viewed his future with a vaster distrust. But there could be no surer sign of Elizabeth’s growing coldness and intended breach than that she had hid from him the dreadful incident of the poisoned glove and the swift execution of the would-be murderer, and had made Cecil her only confidant. But he didknow that Elizabeth herself had commanded Michel de la Forêt to the lists; and his mad jealousy impelled him to resort to a satanic cunning towards these two fugitives, who seemed to have mounted within a few short days as far as had he in thrice as many years to a high place in the regard of the Majesty of England.
To disgrace them both, to sow distrust of the girl in the Queen’s mind; to make her seem the opposite of what she was; to drop in her own mind suspicion of her lover; to drive her to some rash act, some challenge of the Queen herself—that was his plan. He knew how little Elizabeth’s imperious spirit would brook any challenge from this fearless girl concerning De la Forêt. But to convince her that the Queen favored Michel in some shadowed sense, that De la Forêt was privy to a dark compact—so deep a plot was all worthy of a larger end. He had well inspired the court of France through its ambassador to urge the Medici to press actively and bitterly for De la Forêt’s return to France, and to the beheading sword that waited forhim; and his task had been made light by international difficulties, which made the heart of Elizabeth’s foreign policy friendship with France and an alliance against Philip of Spain. She had, therefore, opened up, even in the past few days, negotiations once again for the long-talked-of marriage with the Duke of Anjou, the brother of the King, son of the Medici. State policy was involved, and, if De la Forêt might be a counter, the pledge of exchange in the game, as it were, the path would once more be clear.
He well believed that Elizabeth’s notice of De la Forêt was but a fancy that would pass, as a hundred times before such fancies had come and gone; but against that brighter prospect there lay the fact that never before had she shown himself such indifference. In the past she had raged against him, she had imprisoned him, she had driven him from her presence in her anger, but always her paroxysms of rage had been succeeded by paroxysms of tenderness. Now he saw a colder light in the sky, a grayer horizon methis eye. So at every corner of the compass he played for the breaking of the spell.
Yet as he now bowed low before Angèle there seemed to show in his face a very candor of surprise, of pleasure, joined to a something friendly and protective in his glance and manner. His voice insinuated that by-gones should be by-gones; it suggested that she had misunderstood him. It pleaded against the injustice of her prejudice.
“So far from home!” he said, with a smile.
“More miles from home,” she replied, thinking of never-returning days in France, “than I shall ever count again.”
“But no, methinks the palace is within a whisper,” he responded.
“Lord Leicester knows well I am a prisoner, that I no longer abide in the palace,” she answered.
He laughed lightly. “An imprisonment in a Queen’s friendship. I bethink me, it is three hours since I saw you go to the palace. It is a few worthless seconds since you have got your freedom.”
She nettled at his tone. “Lord Leicestertakes great interest in my unimportant goings and comings. I cannot think it is because I go and come.”
He chose to misunderstand her meaning. Drawing closer, he bent over her shoulder. “Since your arrival here my only diary is the tally of your coming and going.” Suddenly, as though by an impulse of great frankness, he added, in a low tone:
“And is it strange that I should follow you—that I should worship grace and virtue? Men call me this and that. You have no doubt been filled with dark tales of my misdeeds. Has there been one in the court, even one, who, living by my bounty or my patronage, has said one good word of me? And why? For long years the Queen, who, maybe, might have been better counselled, chose me for her friend, adviser—because I was true to her. I have lived for the Queen, and living for her have lived for England. Could I keep—I ask you, could I keep myself blameless in the midst of flattery, intrigue, and conspiracy? I admit that I have played with fiery weapons in my day,and must needs still do so. The incorruptible cannot exist in the corrupted air of this court. You have come here with the light of innocence and truth about you. At first I could scarce believe that such goodness lived, hardly understood it. The light half-blinded and embarrassed; but at last I saw! You of all this court have made me see what sort of life I might have lived. You have made me dream the dreams of youth and high, unsullied purpose once again. Was it strange that in the dark pathways of the court I watched your footsteps come and go, carrying radiance with you? No—Leicester has learned how sombre, sinister, has been his past, by a presence which is the soul of beauty, of virtue, and of happy truth. Lady, my heart is yours. I worship you.”
Overborne for the moment by the eager, searching eloquence of his words, she had listened bewildered to him. Now she turned upon him with panting breath, and said:
“My lord, my lord, I will hear no more. You know I love Monsieur de la Forêt, forwhose sake I am here in England—for whose sake I still remain.”
“’Tis a labor of love but ill requited,” he answered, with suggestion in his tone.
“What mean you, my lord?” she asked, sharply, a kind of blind agony in her voice; for she felt his meaning, and though she did not believe him, and knew in her soul he slandered, there was a sting, for slander ever scorches where it touches.
“Can you not see?” he said. “May Day—why did the Queen command him to the lists? Why does she keep him here—in the palace? Why, against the will of France, her ally, does she refuse to send him forth? Why, unheeding the laughter of the court, does she favor this unimportant stranger, brave though he be? Why should she smile upon him?... Can you not see, sweet lady?”
“You know well why the Queen detains him here,” she answered, calmly now. “In the Queen’s understanding with France, exiles who preach the faith are free from extradition. You heard what the Queen required of him—that on Trinity Day heshould preach before her, and upon this preaching should depend his safety.”
“Indeed, so her Majesty said with great humor,” replied Leicester. “So, indeed, she said; but when we hide our faces a thin veil suffices. The man is a soldier—a soldier born. Why should he turn priest now? I pray you, think again. He was quick of wit; the Queen’s meaning was clear to him; he rose with seeming innocence to the fly, and she landed him at the first toss. But what is forward bodes no good to you, dear star of heaven. I have known the Queen for half a lifetime. She has wild whims and dangerous fancies, fills her hours of leisure with experiences—an artist is the Queen. She means no good to you.”
She had made as if to leave him, though her eyes searched in vain for the path which she should take; but she now broke in, impatiently:
“Poor, unnoted though I am, the Queen of England is my friend,” she answered. “What evil could she wish me? From me she has naught to fear. I am not an atom inher world. Did she but lift her finger I am done. But she knows that, humble though I be, I would serve her to my last breath; because I know, my Lord Leicester, how many there are who serve her foully, faithlessly, and there should be those by her who would serve her singly.”
His eyes half closed, he beat his toe upon the ground. He frowned, as though he had no wish to hurt her by words which he yet must speak. With calculated thought he faltered.
“Yet do you not think it strange,” he said, at last, “that Monsieur de la Forêt should be within the palace ever, and that you should be banished from the palace? Have you never seen the fly and the spider in the web? Do you not know that they who have the power to bless or ban, to give joy or withhold it, appear to give when they mean to withhold? God bless us all—how has your innocence involved your judgment!”
She suddenly flushed to the eyes. “I have wit enough,” she said, acidly, “to feelthat truth which life’s experience may not have taught me. It is neither age nor evil that teaches one to judge ’twixt black and white. God gives the true divination to human hearts that need.”
It was a contest in which Leicester revelled—simplicity and single-mindedness against the multifarious and double-tongued. He had made many efforts in his time to conquer argument and prejudice. When he chose, none could be more insinuating or turn the flank of a proper argument by adroit suggestion. He used his power now.
“You think she means well by you? You think that she, who has a thousand ladies of a kingdom at her call, of the best and most beautiful—and even,” his voice softened, “though you are more beautiful than all, that beauty would soften her towards you? When was it Elizabeth loved beauty? When was it that her heart warmed towards those who would love or wed? Did she not imprison me, even in these palace grounds, for one whole year because I sought to marry? Has she not a hundred times sent from herpresence women with faces like flowers because they were in contrast to her own? Do you see love blossoming at this court? God’s Son! but she would keep us all like babes in Eden and she could, unmated and unloved.”
He drew quickly to her and leaned over her, whispering down her shoulder. “Do you think there is any reason why all at once she should change her mind and cherish lovers?”
She looked up at him fearlessly and firmly.
“In truth, I do. My Lord Leicester, you have lived in the circle of her good pleasure, near to her noble Majesty, as you say, for half a lifetime. Have you not found a reason why now or any time she should cherish love and lovers? Ah, no; you have seen her face, you have heard her voice, but you have not known her heart!”
“Ah, opportunity lacked,” he said, in irony and with a reminiscent smile. “I have been busy with state affairs, I have not sat on cushions, listening to royal fingers on the virginals. Still, I ask you, do you thinkthere is a reason why from her height she should stoop down to rescue you or give you any joy? Wherefore should the Queen do aught to serve you? Wherefore should she save your lover?”
It was on Angèle’s lips to answer, “Because I saved her life on May Day.” It was on her lips to tell of the poisoned glove, but she only smiled, and said:
“But, yes, I think, my lord, there is a reason, and in that reason I have faith.”
Leicester saw how firmly she was fixed in her idea, how rooted was her trust in the Queen’s intentions towards her; and he guessed there was something hidden which gave her such supreme confidence.
“If she means to save him, why does she not save him now? Why not end the business in a day—not stretch it over these long midsummer weeks?”
“I do not think it strange,” she answered. “He is a political prisoner. Messages must come and go between England and France. Besides, who calleth for haste? Is it I who have most at stake? It is not the first timeI have been at court, my lord. In these high places things are orderly”—a touch of sarcasm came into her tone—“life is not a mighty rushing wind save to those whom vexing passion drives to hasty deeds.”
She made to move on once more, but paused, still not certain of her way.
“Permit me to show you,” he said, with a laugh and a gesture towards a path. “Not that—this is the shorter. I will take you to a turning which leads straight to your durance—and another which leads elsewhere!”
She could not say no, because she had, in very truth, lost her way, and she might wander far and be in danger. Also, she had no fear of him. Steeled to danger in the past, she was not timid; but, more than all, the game of words between them had had its fascination. The man himself, by virtue of what he was, had his fascination also. The thing inherent in all her sex, to peep over the hedge, to skirt dangerous fires lightly, to feel the warmth distantly and not be scorched—that was in her, too, and she lived according to her race and the long predispositionof the ages. Most women like her—as good as she—have peeped and stretched out hands to the alluring fire and come safely through, wiser and no better. But many, too, bewildered and confused by what they see—as light from a mirror flashed into the eye half blinds—have peeped over the hedge and, miscalculating their power of self-control, have entered in, and returned no more into the quiet garden of unstraying love.
Leicester quickly put on an air of gravity. “I warn you that danger lies before you. If you cross the Queen—and you will cross the Queen when you know the truth, as I know it—you will pay a heavy price for refusing Leicester as your friend.”
She made a protesting motion and seemed about to speak, but suddenly, with a passionate gesture, Leicester added: “Let them go their way. Monsieur de la Forêt will be tossed aside before another winter comes. Do you think he can abide here in the midst of plot and intrigue and hated by the people of the court? He is doomed. But more,he is unworthy of you; while I can serve you well, and I can love you well.” She shrank away from him. “No, do not turn from me, for, in very truth, Leicester’s heart has been pierced by the inevitable arrow. You think I mean you evil?”
He paused as though uncertain how to proceed, then with a sudden impulse continued: “No! no! And if there be a saving grace in marriage, marriage it shall be, if you will but hear me. You shall be my wife—Leicester’s wife. As I have mounted to power, so I will hold power with you—with you, the brightest spirit that ever England saw. Worthy of a kingdom with you beside me, I shall win to greater, happier days; and at Kenilworth, where kings and queens have lodged, you shall be ruler. We will leave this court until Elizabeth, betrayed by those who know not how to serve her, shall send for me again. Here—the power behind the throne—you and I will sway this realm through the aging, sentimental Queen. Listen, and look at me in the eyes—I speak the truth, you read my heart. You think Ihated you and hated De la Forêt. By all the gods! it’s true I hated him, because I saw that he would come between me and the Queen. A man must have one great passion. Life itself must be a passion. Power was my passion—power, not the Queen. You have broken all that down. I yield it all to you—for your sake and my own. I would steal from life yet before my sun goes to its setting a few years of truth and honesty and clear design. At heart I am a patriot—a loyal Englishman. Your cause—the cause of Protestantism—did I not fight for it at Rochelle? Have I not ever urged the Queen to spend her revenue for your cause, to send her captains and her men to fight for it?”
She raised her head in interest, and her lips murmured, “Ah, yes, I know you did that.”
He saw his advantage and pursued it. “See, I will be honest with you—honest at last, as I have wished in vain to be, for honesty was misunderstood. It is not so with you—you understand. Ah, light of womanhood,I speak the truth now. I have been evil in my day—I admit it—evil because I was in the midst of evil. I betrayed because I was betrayed; I slew else I should have been slain. We have had dark days in England, privy conspiracy and rebellion; and I have had to thread my way through dreadful courses by a thousand blind paths. Would it be no joy to you if I, through your influence, recast my life—remade my policy, renewed my youth—pursuing principle where I have pursued opportunity? Angèle, come to Kenilworth with me. Leave De la Forêt to his fate. The way to happiness is with me. Will you come?”
He had made his great effort. As he spoke he almost himself believed that he told the truth. Under the spell of his own emotional power it seemed as though he meant to marry her, as though he could find happiness in the union. He had almost persuaded himself to be what he would have her to believe he might be.
Under the warmth and convincing force of his words her pulses had beat faster, herheart had throbbed in her throat, her eyes had glistened; but not with that light which they had shed for Michel de la Forêt. How different was this man’s wooing—its impetuous, audacious, tender violence, with that quiet, powerful, almost sacred gravity of her Camisard lover! It is this difference—the weighty, emotional difference—between a desperate passion and a pure love which has ever been so powerful in twisting the destinies of a moiety of the world to misery, who otherwise would have stayed contented, inconspicuous, and good. Angèle would have been more than human if she had not felt the spell of the ablest intriguer, of the most fascinating diplomatist of his day.
Before he spoke of marriage the thrill—the unconvincing thrill though it was—of a perilous temptation was upon her; but the very thing most meant to move her only made her shudder; for in her heart of hearts she knew that he was ineradicably false. To be married to one constitutionally untrue would be more terrible a fate for her than to be linked to him in a lighter, more dissolublebond. So do the greatest tricksters of this world overdo their part, so play the wrong card when every past experience suggests it is the card to play. He knew by the silence that followed his words, and the slow, steady look she gave him, that she was not won nor on the way to the winning.
“My lord,” she said, at last, and with a courage which steadied her affrighted and perturbed innocence, “you are eloquent, you are fruitful of flattery, of those things which have, I doubt not, served you well in your day. But, if you see your way to a better life, it were well you should choose one of nobler mould than I. I am not made for sacrifice, to play the missioner and snatch brands from the burning. I have enough to do to keep my own feet in the ribbon-path of right. You must look elsewhere for that guardian influence which is to make of you a paragon.”
“No, no,” he answered, sharply, “you think the game not worth the candle—you doubt me and what I can do for you; my sincerity, my power you doubt.”
“Indeed, yes, I doubt both,” she answered, gravely, “for you would have me believe that I have power to lead you. With how small a mind you credit me! You think, too, that you sway this kingdom; but I know that you stand upon a cliff’s edge, and that the earth is fraying ’neath your tread. You dare to think that you have power to drag down with you the man who honors me with—”
“With his love, you’d say. Yet he will leave you fretting out your soul until the sharp-edged truth cuts your heart in twain. Have you no pride? I care not what you say of me—say your worst, and I will not resent it, for I will still prove that your way lies with me.”
She gave a bitter sigh, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers. “If words could prove it, I had been convinced but now, for they are well devised, and they have music, too; but such a music, my lord, as would drown the truth in the soul of a woman. Your words allure, but you have learned the art of words. You yourself—oh,my lord, you who have tasted all the pleasures of this world, could you then have the heart to steal from one who has so little that little which gives her happiness?”
“You know not what can make you happy—I can teach you that. By God’s Son! but you have wit and intellect and are a match for a prince, not for a cast-off Camisard. I shall ere long be lord-lieutenant of these isles—of England and Ireland. Come to my nest. We will fly far! Ah, your eye brightens, your heart leaps to mine—I feel it now, I—”
“Oh, have done, have done,” she passionately broke in. “I would rather die, be torn upon the rack, burned at the stake, than put my hand in yours. And you do not wish it—you speak but to destroy, not to cherish. While you speak to me I see all those”—she made a gesture as though to put something from her—“all those to whom you have spoken as you have done to me. I hear the myriad falsehoods you have told—one whelming confusion. I feel the blindness which has crept upon them—those poor women—as you have sown the air with the dust of the passion which you call love. Oh, you never knew what love meant, my lord. I doubt if when you lay in your mother’s arms you turned to her with love. You never did one kindly act for love; no generous thought was ever born in you by love. Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book: your life has been one long calculation—your sympathy or kindness a calculated thing. Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the divine thing by which the world is saved. Were there but one little place where that Eden flower might bloom within your heart, you could not seek to ruin that love which lives in mine and fills it, conquering all the lesser part of me. I never knew of how much love I was capable until I heard you speak to-day. Out of your life’s experience, out of all that you have learned of women, good and evil, you—for a selfish, miserable purpose—would put the gyves upon my wrists, make me a pawn in your dark game—a pawn which you would lose without a thought as the game went on.
“If you must fight, my lord, if you must ruin Monsieur de la Forêt and a poor Huguenot girl, do it by greater means than this. You have power, you say. Use it then; destroy us, if you will. Send us to the Medici: bring us to the block, murder us—that were no new thing to Lord Leicester. But do not stoop to treachery and falsehood to thrust us down. Oh, you have made me see the depths of shame to-day! But yet”—her voice suddenly changed, a note of plaintive force filled it—“I have learned much this hour—more than I ever knew. Perhaps it is that we come to knowledge only through fire and tears.” She smiled sadly. “I suppose that sometimes, some day, this page of life would have scorched my sight. Oh, my lord, what was there in me that you dared speak so to me? Was there naught to have stayed your tongue and stemmed the tide in which you would engulf me?”
He had listened as in a dream at first. She had read him as he might read himself, had revealed him with the certain truth, as none other had done in all his days. Hewas silent for a long moment, then raised his hand in protest.
“You have a strange idea of what makes offence and shame. I offered you marriage,” he said, complacently. “And when I come to think upon it, after all that you have said, fair Huguenot, I see no cause for railing. You call me this and that; to you I am a liar, a rogue, a cut-throat, what you will; and yet, and yet, I will have my way—I will have my way in the end.”
“You offered me marriage—and meant it not. Do I not know? Did you rely so little on your compelling powers, my lord, that you must needs resort to that bait? Do you think that you will have your way to-morrow if you have failed to-day?”
With a quick change of tone and a cold, scornful laugh he rejoined, “Do you intend to measure swords with me?”
“Oh no, my lord,” she answered, quietly, “what should one poor, unfriended girl do in contest with the Earl of Leicester? But yet, in very truth, I have friends, and in my hour of greatest need I shall go seeking.”
She was thinking of the Queen. He guessed her thought.
“You will not be so mad,” he said, urbanely, again. “Of what can you complain to the Queen? Tut! tut! you must seek other friends than the Majesty of England.”
“Then, my lord, I will,” she answered, bravely. “I will seek the help of such a Friend as fails not when all fails, even He who putteth down the mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble.”
“Ah, well, if I have not touched your heart,” he answered, gallantly, “I at least have touched your wit and intellect. Once more I offer you alliance. Think well before you decline.”
He had no thought that he would succeed, but it was ever his way to return to the charge. It had been the secret of his life’s success so far. He had never taken a refusal. He had never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant; and if it were meant he still believed that constant dropping would wear away the stone. Hestill held that persistence was the greatest lever in the world, that unswerving persistence was the master of opportunity.