CHAPTER IXThe man in Bed

CHAPTER IXCHAPTER IXThe man in Bed

CHAPTER IX

WHEN the king came softly into the chamber, the stricken man lay pale in his pillows, asleep. The sufferer, now that the grave crisis of his malady was past—it having come to its head on the night the bullet was taken from his body—looked fairer and more youthful than ever. He hardly appeared more than a boy. As he lay inhis present unconsciousness, much of the petulance had gone out of his countenance; there was a tender and even sweet expression round his lips; and in many ways his face was far better to look upon than on the sad night of his arrival at the inn.

“Harry,” said his wife, in an eager tone, “open your eyes and look at his Majesty; the King hath come to see you.”

The sufferer, however, was too deeply asleep to be aroused by the soft tones of the woman.

“Do not disturb him, I pray,” said Charles. “I would not do him the least disservice for the world, not even to the robbing him of five minutes of his precious sleep. We Stuarts owe too much to him and his ever to take wantonly from one of his name that which we can never give back again. His grandfather, his father, and himself, have they not given their all—their lands, their blood, nay, their lives—for our poor father’s cause and our own? I know not what fidelity it is in a family that they should from generation to generation, from father to son, lavish their possessions on unfortunatepeople who can never hope, in any adequate degree, to requite them.”

Charles, as he spoke, seemed to warm slowly into a rhapsody of sentiment. Tears even sprang out of his eyes, his lips quivered, and for the moment he appeared wholly overcome by an emotion of inexpressible regret and tenderness. In the bearer of that name it seemed an exquisitely natural manifestation. The woman, whose life had been passed in the shadow of his ineffably lamentable history, felt herself to be succumbing to this outburst from the lips of the most unfortunate Prince since the world began. The dire circumstances in which this unhappy young King was lying; his voice; his bearing; the mean disguise to which he must have recourse because the hand of every man was against him—all this, in conjunction with the outburst of feeling he now displayed, was too much for the feminine witness of it. Every night she prayed for his safety; in her dreams she saw his face; to her he was the one hero of romance, the most exquisitely noble and tender figure in thewhole woman’s world of the ideal. He was the prince out of the fairybook; and when she saw him thus with the tears in his eyes, and a divine tremor in his tones, her heart overflowed.

She looked at the King; she looked at him to bestow upon him the mute consolation of her tender heart. The tears were in her own eyes too; her own lips quivered. The King, half-smiling through the tears that were still coursing down his cheeks, bent towards her as if overcome by such an infinite compassion. The look of sad thanks he gave her seemed to send all the blood wild in her brain; the King’s eyes seemed to set her soul on fire. She was not conscious that he had gathered her in his arms, and that her breast was drawn against his own; indeed, of only one thing had she consciousness, and that with the vague excitement of the senses a dream or a delirium induces. It was, that the King’s lips were pressed in a fierce madness against her own.

With a little cry, she thrust him from her and burst out of his arms. Involuntarily herfrightened eyes fell on the sleeper in the bed. He slept no more. He lay with his eyes riveted on the King, who had his back towards him. He lay as weak and helpless as a child from the effects of his malady; but his hands were clenched on the coverlet, his white cheeks gleamed, his eyes blazed. He strove impotently to rise from his pillows, but fell back upon them gasping for breath.

The distinct sounds of his struggle were heard by the King. He desisted from his absorbing occupation, and turned round to discover their cause.

“Ha! Farnham,” he said, coolly, “so you are awake at last. I have heard of that little affair of the bullet. I must, indeed, rejoice with you that you have struggled so valiantly against its effects; I am overjoyed, my dear Farnham, to find you so far recovered.”

The unhappy husband could not repress his fury. Again he strove to rise from his bed, and again he fell back, this time with a sob of anguish, upon his pillows. The King’s smile grew more serene.

“There—there, my dear Farnham,” said the even, gracious tones of Charles; “be wary, I pray you. Be discreet. I am sure you are not yet strong enough to leave your bed to greet me; I beg you not to think of doing so. Why, man, my lady tells me ’tis a miracle that thou art alive.”

The poor husband was unable to speak; rage and his weakness rendered him inarticulate.

The King continued to smile upon him with a gracious insouciance that maddened more than it soothed.

“There, there, my dear Farnham,” he said, “do not attempt to converse. I am sure you are far too weak as yet to regale us with your talk. Do not try, I pray you. I am sure madam will entertain us admirably in the meantime.”

It may have been that the unhappy young man discerned an underlying irony in the King’s words which, superadded to the burning sense of humiliation he had already suffered at his hands, turned his blood to fire; forat least the King’s smooth sarcasm spurred him at last to find his tongue.

“Sire,” he said, weakly, “methinks my family merits some little consideration at your hands. They have served you long and faithfully, and your father also. I beg you, Sire, to forgive my mentioning their trifling claims upon your gratitude, but I would crave a boon.”

“You have but to put a name upon it, dear Farnham,” said the magnanimous Prince. “No one can be more deeply conscious of the services your family hath rendered ours than we are. Madam will tell you that that was the very theme upon our lips as you lay asleep. We pray you to mention this boon, dear Farnham.”

“It is, Sire,” said the unhappy husband, “that one of us two does not leave this chamber alive. Madam, I must ask you to have the goodness to assist me to rise. Sire, I crave that you may honour me by choosing your weapon. See, there is a case of pistols on the chair beside the bed.”

The King shrugged his shoulders.

“I protest, my dear Farnham,” he said, laughingly, “that the boon you ask is a little peculiar.”

The man in the bed struggled with his difficult breath. At all times a hot, impetuous youth, his malady had given him less control of himself than ever. Thus his overmastering anger had caused him to pursue a course which a soberer or an older man would not have dared to suggest.

“May I beg you, Sire,” he said, “not to encumber our conversation with things that are irrelevant and unnecessary. Are the long and faithful services rendered by my family to yours enough to enable you to grant me the privilege of falling by your hand, or, if fortune is so tender to me, of you falling by mine? I am sure, Sire, you will be the first to admit, after what hath passed so recently, that the same roof should not be asked to undertake the responsibility of harbouring us both.”

“Do you persist in this, my dear Farnham?” asked the King. He was astonishedat the boldness of the young man, but his thoughts were veiled by his gracious air.

“I do, Sire,” said the husband, “as far as a subject may persist with his sovereign.”

“I have no choice other than to grant it then,” said the King.

“Sire, you overwhelm me,” said the husband, fervently. “Madam, I must ask you to assist me from my couch. My wretched limbs are as paper.”

“As implacable a foe as thou art a friend,” said the King. “It is, however, the only reparation we can make you.”

The unfortunate woman showed a veritable reluctance to do the behests of her lord. She looked at the King and she looked at the man in the bed with a terrified bewilderment. On the face of the one was the eternal frank smile of audacious indifference. The countenance of the other was entirely merged in his eyes. They blazed. The woman faltered; she trembled; she hung back.

“Madam,” said the man in the bed, imperiously, “do you not hear me?”

“Madam,” said Charles, laughing a little, “we must ask you to do the bidding of my lord. Prop up the dear fellow somehow, and give him his choice of weapons. We have injured him unwittingly; but it shall never be said of Charles Stuart that he denied a reparation to friend or enemy.”

The woman, however, was far from acceding to the behests of her husband or her King.

The cold terror that possessed her was dispelled by the necessity for action. In some vague way she felt it was her right to come between them. She felt dimly that she was the source of this quarrel.

“Sire,” she said, “may I crave a boon of you also?”

“We pray you to do so,” said Charles.

“Let me beseech you to leave this chamber, Sire, now—instantly.”

“To do that,” said the King, “we must break our promise to my lord. And is not a promise of such a nature the most sacred compact that can be made? But, madam, let uscrave a similar boon of you. We would have you quit this chamber, too.”

“I cannot quit it, Sire,” she said, firmly.

“Not until thou hast got me from my bed and set me on my legs,” her husband said, weakly. “Then, Patsy woman, thou must do as the King bids thee. Come, now, I am about to rise. Give me your shoulder.”

The wife stirred not a finger, although the man in the bed, gasping for breath and the purple veins swelling in his forehead, contrived to raise himself on his two hands. But he could get no further; he fell back in distress upon his pillows.

“You are much too weak to quit your couch, my dear Farnham,” said Charles. “Even if you could be got upon your legs, you would never be able to keep them. But I think we can contrive it otherwise. We must support you in your present place. Madam will lend her aid, I trust.”

The woman, however, would not heed the words of the King. She hung back, convulsed with terror. Charles, laughing a little still,prepared to do the office himself. He took young Lord Farnham in his arms, lifted him up among the sheets into a sitting posture, and made a wall of his pillows to keep him in it. The lad’s skin seemed to burn the arms of his monarch like a live coal; his whole frame shook and quivered; he was racked with a hectic weakness he was striving to control. The King, having at last fixed him deftly thus, turned triumphantly towards the lady.

“Confess, madam,” he said, “that you would not think, to look at us, that we had such a cunning in attendance on the sick. And now we must ask you to leave us for a minute. Only for a minute, madam; we will not deny you longer, we do promise you.”

“No, Sire,” she answered, firmly, “I cannot go; I will not go. Harry, art thou mad?”

“I think I am,” said the young man, sitting up among the pillows, in a voice so small and querulous it sounded like a child’s. “I think I am.”

“I will not stand by and see a murder done,” said the woman, with a sudden resolution.“Sire, my poor lad is unhinged; he is not sane. I beseech you not to heed him.”

“Sane or mad,” said the King, “whenever our family can make a requital to his in the smallest particular, Charles Stuart shall not withhold it. The man hath set his heart upon it; he shall have all that he desires.”

“Nay, Sire, he shall not,” said the woman, defiantly.

In her capacity of faithful subject and hero-worshipper, the unhappy lady would have submitted to her tongue being torn out rather than such words should have been uttered by it to her Prince. But as a mother, a wife, and a woman, there was no other course than to utter them. Besides, the King was a young man, too. In a sense she felt that her riper years made her the mentor of both these headstrong youths. She seized the case of pistols lying on the settle beside the bed. Her fingers closed upon them convulsively.

“Madam, I must ask you to give them to us,” said the King.

“Never!” said the woman.

The King shrugged his shoulders and put his brows up whimsically.

“Vous êtes difficile,” he said. “Celui qui force une femme contre son gré ne viendra jamais à bout. Now, madam, if I make my tone very winning, very coaxing, wilt thou not give them to me? Come, my dearest lady.”

The King held out his hand to take them with a pretty air.

“Never!” said the lady. Her fingers grasped them tighter than before.

“Patsy,” said the man in the pillows, in his weak voice, “do not be a fool.”

The King exchanged his look of slightly humorous deprecation for a mock severity.

“Madam, the King commands you,” he said.

“I will not!” said the lady; she stamped her imperious foot. She was as pale as death. Her teeth were clenched. Her chin and mouth were as hard as the King’s eyes.

“Are you stark mad, woman?” said the petulant voice from the pillows. “The King commands you; give them up to him at once.Give them up to the King at once, d’ye hear, or ’fore God! I will make you.”

“Never, Harry!” said his wife.

Her lord struggled to get out of his bed, as if himself to wrest them from her hands. But he was powerless to move. He flopped and wriggled about in a piteous manner, like a live fish in the sand. The King laughed.

“Hush! my dear lad,” he said, “lie quiet. Never grow peremptory with a woman, never force her. Believe us, it is but a waste of energy. Be easy with ’em, my good Farnham, be easy with ’em. However, I think we will call for the landlord.”

The King opened the door of the chamber, and called down the stairs for Gamaliel Hooker. Within a minute the landlord came fussing and puffing upwards, his rosy gills inflamed by exertion, and an execrable humility oozing out of his face. The change in his demeanour from an hour before was so entirely ludicrous, that Charles clapped his hands to his ribs when he saw him, and laughed till a stitch came into his side.

“There never was so unctuous a rogue in the world before,” said the King. “What a double-chinned, great paunched, incomparable old knave of an innkeeper it is to be sure! Pray do not crawl like a worm, my good Boniface, an it chafes your belly. Stand upon your legs, good fellow; your appearance is become too beastly, now you writhe upon the ground. Your congees offend me, Boniface; they offend me. They are altogether too gross for a man of my nice instinct. But a truce to our pleasantries; my lord Farnham is in a highly serious mood. Landlord, do you go into your filthy stable, and rummage about in Will Jackson’s bed of straw. You will find a leathern case concealed there. Bring it to me as speedily as may be.”

The landlord backed out of the chamber, his body still bent double, so that the tip of his nose appeared to rest on his belly.

“Pah!” said the King; “I declare I must open the window. I wonder why every species of crawling reptile leaves a nauseous oily savour behind it.”

To the woman it seemed an incredibly short time ere the landlord was back again with the leathern case; to the man in the bed, an incredibly long one. To the King himself, it had no period. He was too indifferent; indeed, he was absorbed in noticing how adorable the woman looked now the defiance was in her eyes. In his opinion, she looked the better for that charming attribute.

As the unhappy lady had feared, the leathern case of the King’s was proved to contain a pair of pistols. With an inimitable air of courtesy, he offered them both to the man propped on the pillows.

“My dear Farnham,” he said, “I can assure you that they are both equally excellent. But take your choice.”

“This, Sire,” said Lord Farnham.

By now he had got that petulant voice of his under admirable control.

“You are too undone to prime it, Farnham,” said the King, graciously. “Pray allow me to do it for you.”

Lord Farnham thanked him humbly.

The King charged the pistol deftly but deliberately. Perfectly calm, nonchalant, smiling as ever, he began to hum a rather loose ballad under his breath. Having primed Lord Farnham’s and placed it tenderly in his grasp, he primed the other for himself, with precisely the same carefulness of hand and the same carelessness of demeanour.

“Farnham,” said the King, “in these somewhat peculiar circumstances I must ask you to take the first shot.”

“Sire, you are the King,” said Lord Farnham. “No subject can take precedence of the King.”

“Unless the King requests him. But there is really no established mode of procedure, my dear Farnham. I believe this occasion to be unique—unique in the annals of the world. I cannot recall a parallel of any subject being granted such a privilege by his monarch.”

“Sire,” said Lord Farnham, impetuous boy as he was, “I am sensible that your noble, your unexampled magnanimity hath conferred such an honour on me and mine as was neverconferred upon a house before. Sire, I am overcome by it, believe me.”

The young man’s face showed how deeply sensible he was of the King’s singular generosity. He had lost control of its muscles. It twitched as one of rare sensibility may sometimes do under the stress of a ravishing piece of music. The King, on his part, was young and impetuous too. He knew it, and he was aware that he had granted a request that, had either of them been older or more sober blooded, it would have been impossible to prefer, let alone to concede.

“My dear Farnham,” he said, having for the first time a sense of the vast responsibilities his kingship implied, “we have given to you, I hope you understand, that which we could not possibly have given to another. It is in consideration, my dear Farnham, of the long and honourable services of your house to mine. We must insist that you fire first. If we create a precedent in the history of the world, we must name all the conditions of it.”

Lord Farnham bowed his head in assent.He could not trust himself to speak. For the first time he fully realised how terrible the circumstances were. The King stood opposite his pillows at the foot of the bed. His arms were folded with the same inimitable nonchalance as ever. There was the same slightly humorous indifference in his eyes, the same whimsical deprecation about his mouth. It was as if the whole affair amused him a little, and bored him a little too.

The implacable husband, hardly daring to look at Charles, raised the pistol in his trembling fingers. As he did so, his wife stepped in front of the King.

“Harry,” she said, “thou art surely mad; thou art overwrought a little with thy weakness. The fever is not yet out of thy blood. Lie down, mine own, and get thee to sleep again.”

Farnham regarded her with the ingenuous naïveté of a child. For the first time a look of irresolution crept into his wilful eyes. Suddenly he allowed the pistol to slip from his fingers on to the coverlet.

“You are right, Patsy woman,” he said, with a groan. “I can’t do it; my God! I can’t do it.”

The woman ran forward and flung herself into his arms.

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