Then call them to our presence. Face to face,
And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear
The accuser and accused freely speak;—
High-stomach’d are they both, and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.
Richard II.
“I am ordered to attend court tomorrow,” said Leicester, speaking to Varney, “to meet, as they surmise, my Lord of Sussex. The Queen intends to take up matters betwixt us. This comes of her visit to Sayes Court, of which you must needs speak so lightly.”
“I maintain it was nothing,” said Varney; “nay, I know from a sure intelligencer, who was within earshot of much that was said, that Sussex has lost rather than gained by that visit. The Queen said, when she stepped into the boat, that Sayes Court looked like a guard-house, and smelt like an hospital. ‘Like a cook’s shop in Ram’s Alley, rather,’ said the Countess of Rutland, who is ever your lordship’s good friend. And then my Lord of Lincoln must needs put in his holy oar, and say that my Lord of Sussex must be excused for his rude and old-world housekeeping, since he had as yet no wife.”
“And what said the Queen?” asked Leicester hastily.
“She took him up roundly,” said Varney, “and asked what my Lord Sussex had to do with a wife, or my Lord Bishop to speak on such a subject. ‘If marriage is permitted,’ she said, ‘I nowhere read that it is enjoined.’”
“She likes not marriages, or speech of marriage, among churchmen,” said Leicester.
“Nor among courtiers neither,” said Varney; but, observing that Leicester changed countenance, he instantly added, “that all the ladies who were present had joined in ridiculing Lord Sussex’s housekeeping, and in contrasting it with the reception her Grace would have assuredly received at my Lord of Leicester’s.”
“You have gathered much tidings,” said Leicester, “but you have forgotten or omitted the most important of all. She hath added another to those dangling satellites whom it is her pleasure to keep revolving around her.”
“Your lordship meaneth that Raleigh, the Devonshire youth,” said Varney —“the Knight of the Cloak, as they call him at court?”
“He may be Knight of the Garter one day, for aught I know,” said Leicester, “for he advances rapidly — she hath capped verses with him, and such fooleries. I would gladly abandon, of my own free will, the part — I have in her fickle favour; but I will not be elbowed out of it by the clown Sussex, or this new upstart. I hear Tressilian is with Sussex also, and high in his favour. I would spare him for considerations, but he will thrust himself on his fate. Sussex, too, is almost as well as ever in his health.”
“My lord,” replied Varney, “there will be rubs in the smoothest road, specially when it leads uphill. Sussex’s illness was to us a godsend, from which I hoped much. He has recovered, indeed, but he is not now more formidable than ere he fell ill, when he received more than one foil in wrestling with your lordship. Let not your heart fail you, my lord, and all shall be well.”
“My heart never failed me, sir,” replied Leicester.
“No, my lord,” said Varney; “but it has betrayed you right often. He that would climb a tree, my lord, must grasp by the branches, not by the blossom.”
“Well, well, well!” said Leicester impatiently; “I understand thy meaning — my heart shall neither fail me nor seduce me. Have my retinue in order — see that their array be so splendid as to put down, not only the rude companions of Ratcliffe, but the retainers of every other nobleman and courtier. Let them be well armed withal, but without any outward display of their weapons, wearing them as if more for fashion’s sake than for use. Do thou thyself keep close to me, I may have business for you.”
The preparations of Sussex and his party were not less anxious than those of Leicester.
“Thy Supplication, impeaching Varney of seduction,” said the Earl to Tressilian, “is by this time in the Queen’s hand — I have sent it through a sure channel. Methinks your suit should succeed, being, as it is, founded in justice and honour, and Elizabeth being the very muster of both. But — I wot not how — the gipsy” (so Sussex was wont to call his rival on account of his dark complexion) “hath much to say with her in these holyday times of peace. Were war at the gates, I should be one of her white boys; but soldiers, like their bucklers and Bilboa blades, get out of fashion in peace time, and satin sleeves and walking rapiers bear the bell. Well, we must be gay, since such is the fashion.— Blount, hast thou seen our household put into their new braveries? “But thou knowest as little of these toys as I do; thou wouldst be ready enow at disposing a stand of pikes.”
“My good lord,” answered Blount, “Raleigh hath been here, and taken that charge upon him — your train will glitter like a May morning. Marry, the cost is another question. One might keep an hospital of old soldiers at the charge of ten modern lackeys.”
“He must not count cost today, Nicholas,” said the Earl in reply. “I am beholden to Raleigh for his care. I trust, though, he has remembered that I am an old soldier, and would have no more of these follies than needs must.”
“Nay, I understand nought about it,” said Blount; “but here are your honourable lordship’s brave kinsmen and friends coming in by scores to wait upon you to court, where, methinks, we shall bear as brave a front as Leicester, let him ruffle it as he will.”
“Give them the strictest charges,” said Sussex, “that they suffer no provocation short of actual violence to provoke them into quarrel. They have hot bloods, and I would not give Leicester the advantage over me by any imprudence of theirs.”
The Earl of Sussex ran so hastily through these directions, that it was with difficulty Tressilian at length found opportunity to express his surprise that he should have proceeded so far in the affair of Sir Hugh Robsart as to lay his petition at once before the Queen. “It was the opinion of the young lady’s friends,” he said, “that Leicester’s sense of justice should be first appealed to, as the offence had been committed by his officer, and so he had expressly told to Sussex.”
“This could have been done without applying to me,” said Sussex, somewhat haughtily. “I at least, ought not to have been a counsellor when the object was a humiliating reference to Leicester; and I am suprised that you, Tressilian, a man of honour, and my friend, would assume such a mean course. If you said so, I certainly understood you not in a matter which sounded so unlike yourself.”
“My lord,” said Tressilian, “the course I would prefer, for my own sake, is that you have adopted; but the friends of this most unhappy lady —”
“Oh, the friends — the friends,” said Sussex, interrupting him; “they must let us manage this cause in the way which seems best. This is the time and the hour to accumulate every charge against Leicester and his household, and yours the Queen will hold a heavy one. But at all events she hath the complaint before her.”
Tressilian could not help suspecting that, in his eagerness to strengthen himself against his rival, Sussex had purposely adopted the course most likely to throw odium on Leicester, without considering minutely whether it were the mode of proceeding most likely to be attended with success. But the step was irrevocable, and Sussex escaped from further discussing it by dismissing his company, with the command, “Let all be in order at eleven o’clock; I must be at court and in the presence by high noon precisely.”
While the rival statesmen were thus anxiously preparing for their approaching meeting in the Queen’s presence, even Elizabeth herself was not without apprehension of what might chance from the collision of two such fiery spirits, each backed by a strong and numerous body of followers, and dividing betwixt them, either openly or in secret, the hopes and wishes of most of her court. The band of Gentlemen Pensioners were all under arms, and a reinforcement of the yeomen of the guard was brought down the Thames from London. A royal proclamation was sent forth, strictly prohibiting nobles of whatever degree to approach the Palace with retainers or followers armed with shot or with long weapons; and it was even whispered that the High Sheriff of Kent had secret instructions to have a part of the array of the county ready on the shortest notice.
The eventful hour, thus anxiously prepared for on all sides, at length approached, and, each followed by his long and glittering train of friends and followers, the rival Earls entered the Palace Yard of Greenwich at noon precisely.
As if by previous arrangement, or perhaps by intimation that such was the Queen’s pleasure, Sussex and his retinue came to the Palace from Deptford by water while Leicester arrived by land; and thus they entered the courtyard from opposite sides. This trifling circumstance gave Leicester a ascendency in the opinion of the vulgar, the appearance of his cavalcade of mounted followers showing more numerous and more imposing than those of Sussex’s party, who were necessarily upon foot. No show or sign of greeting passed between the Earls, though each looked full at the other, both expecting perhaps an exchange of courtesies, which neither was willing to commence. Almost in the minute of their arrival the castle-bell tolled, the gates of the Palace were opened, and the Earls entered, each numerously attended by such gentlemen of their train whose rank gave them that privilege. The yeomen and inferior attendants remained in the courtyard, where the opposite parties eyed each other with looks of eager hatred and scorn, as if waiting with impatience for some cause of tumult, or some apology for mutual aggression. But they were restrained by the strict commands of their leaders, and overawed, perhaps, by the presence of an armed guard of unusual strength.
In the meanwhile, the more distinguished persons of each train followed their patrons into the lofty halls and ante-chambers of the royal Palace, flowing on in the same current, like two streams which are compelled into the same channel, yet shun to mix their waters. The parties arranged themselves, as it were instinctively, on the different sides of the lofty apartments, and seemed eager to escape from the transient union which the narrowness of the crowded entrance had for an instant compelled them to submit to. The folding doors at the upper end of the long gallery were immediately afterwards opened, and it was announced in a whisper that the Queen was in her presence-chamber, to which these gave access. Both Earls moved slowly and stately towards the entrance — Sussex followed by Tressilian, Blount, and Raleigh, and Leicester by Varney. The pride of Leicester was obliged to give way to court-forms, and with a grave and formal inclination of the head, he paused until his rival, a peer of older creation than his own, passed before him. Sussex returned the reverence with the same formal civility, and entered the presence-room. Tressilian and Blount offered to follow him, but were not permitted, the Usher of the Black Rod alleging in excuse that he had precise orders to look to all admissions that day. To Raleigh, who stood back on the repulse of his companions, he said, “You, sir, may enter,” and he entered accordingly.
“Follow me close, Varney,” said the Earl of Leicester, who had stood aloof for a moment to mark the reception of Sussex; and advancing to the entrance, he was about to pass on, when Varney, who was close behind him, dressed out in the utmost bravery of the day, was stopped by the usher, as Tressilian and Blount had been before him, “How is this, Master Bowyer?” said the Earl of Leicester. “Know you who I am, and that this is my friend and follower?”
“Your lordship will pardon me,” replied Bowyer stoutly; “my orders are precise, and limit me to a strict discharge of my duty.”
“Thou art a partial knave,” said Leicester, the blood mounting to his face, “to do me this dishonour, when you but now admitted a follower of my Lord of Sussex.”
“My lord,” said Bowyer, “Master Raleigh is newly admitted a sworn servant of her Grace, and to him my orders did not apply.”
“Thou art a knave — an ungrateful knave,” said Leicester; “but he that hath done can undo — thou shalt not prank thee in thy authority long!”
This threat he uttered aloud, with less than his usual policy and discretion; and having done so, he entered the presence-chamber, and made his reverence to the Queen, who, attired with even more than her usual splendour, and surrounded by those nobles and statesmen whose courage and wisdom have rendered her reign immortal, stood ready to receive the hommage of her subjects. She graciously returned the obeisance of the favourite Earl, and looked alternately at him and at Sussex, as if about to speak, when Bowyer, a man whose spirit could not brook the insult he had so openly received from Leicester, in the discharge of his office, advanced with his black rad in his hand, and knelt down before her.
“Why, how now, Bowyer?” said Elizabeth, “thy courtesy seems strangely timed!”
“My Liege Sovereign,” he said, while every courtier around trembled at his audacity, “I come but to ask whether, in the discharge of mine office, I am to obey your Highness’s commands, or those of the Earl of Leicester, who has publicly menaced me with his displeasure, and treated me with disparaging terms, because I denied entry to one of his followers, in obedience to your Grace’s precise orders?”
The spirit of Henry VIII. was instantly aroused in the bosom of his daughter, and she turned on Leicester with a severity which appalled him, as well as all his followers.
“God’s death! my lord.” such was her emphatic phrase, “what means this? We have thought well of you, and brought you near to our person; but it was not that you might hide the sun from our other faithful subjects. Who gave you license to contradict our orders, or control our officers? I will have in this court, ay, and in this realm, but one mistress, and no master. Look to it that Master Bowyer sustains no harm for his duty to me faithfully discharged; for, as I am Christian woman and crowned Queen, I will hold you dearly answerable.— Go, Bowyer, you have done the part of an honest man and a true subject. We will brook no mayor of the palace here.
Bowyer kissed the hand which she extended towards him, and withdrew to his post! astonished at the success of his own audacity. A smile of triumph pervaded the faction of Sussex; that of Leicester seemed proportionally dismayed, and the favourite himself, assuming an aspect of the deepest humility, did not even attempt a word in his own esculpation.
He acted wisely; for it was the policy of Elizabeth to humble, not to disgrace him, and it was prudent to suffer her, without opposition or reply, to glory in the exertion of her authority. The dignity of the Queen was gratified, and the woman began soon to feel for the mortification which she had imposed on her favourite. Her keen eye also observed the secret looks of congratulation exchanged amongst those who favoured Sussex, and it was no part of her policy to give either party a decisive triumph.
“What I say to my Lord of Leicester,” she said, after a moment’s pause, “I say also to you, my Lord of Sussex. You also must needs ruffle in the court of England, at the head of a faction of your own?”
“My followers, gracious Princess,” said Sussex, “have indeed ruffled in your cause in Ireland, in Scotland, and against yonder rebellious Earls in the north. I am ignorant that —”
“Do you bandy looks and words with me, my lord?” said the Queen, interrupting him; “methinks you might learn of my Lord of Leicester the modesty to be silent, at least, under our censure. I say, my lord, that my grandfather and my father, in their wisdom, debarred the nobles of this civilized land from travelling with such disorderly retinues; and think you, that because I wear a coif, their sceptre has in my hand been changed into a distaff? I tell you, no king in Christendom will less brook his court to be cumbered, his people oppressed, and his kingdom’s peace disturbed, by the arrogance of overgrown power, than she who now speaks with you.— My Lord of Leicester, and you, my Lord of Sussex, I command you both to be friends with each other; or by the crown I wear, you shall find an enemy who will be too strong for both of you!”
“Madam,” said the Earl of Leicester, “you who are yourself the fountain of honour know best what is due to mine. I place it at your disposal, and only say that the terms on which I have stood with my Lord of Sussex have not been of my seeking; nor had he cause to think me his enemy, until he had done me gross wrong.”
“For me, madam,” said the Earl of Sussex, “I cannot appeal from your sovereign pleasure; but I were well content my Lord of Leicester should say in what I have, as he terms it, wronged him, since my tongue never spoke the word that I would not willingly justify either on foot or horseback.
“And for me,” said Leicester, “always under my gracious Sovereign’s pleasure, my hand shall be as ready to make good my words as that of any man who ever wrote himself Ratcliffe.”
“My lords,” said the Queen, “these are no terms for this presence; and if you cannot keep your temper, we will find means to keep both that and you close enough. Let me see you join hands, my lords, and forget your idle animosities.”
The two rivals looked at each other with reluctant eyes, each unwilling to make the first advance to execute the Queen’s will.
“Sussex,” said Elizabeth,“I entreat — Leicester, I command you.”
Yet, so were her words accented, that the entreaty sounded like command, and the command like entreaty. They remained still and stubborn, until she raised her voice to a height which argued at once impatience and absolute command.
“Sir Henry Lee,” she said, to an officer in attendance, “have a guard in present readiness, and man a barge instantly.— My Lords of Sussex and Leicester, I bid you once more to join hands; and, God’s death! he that refuses shall taste of our Tower fare ere he sees our face again. I will lower your proud hearts ere we part, and that I promise, on the word of a Queen!”
“The prison?” said Leicester, “might be borne, but to lose your Grace’s presence were to lose light and life at once.— Here, Sussex, is my hand.”
“And here,” said Sussex, “is mine in truth and honesty; but —”
“Nay, under favour, you shall add no more,” said the Queen. “Why, this is as it should be,” she added, looking on them more favourably; “and when you the shepherds of the people, unite to protect them, it shall be well with the flock we rule over. For, my lords, I tell you plainly, your follies and your brawls lead to strange disorders among your servants.— My Lord of Leicester, you have a gentleman in your household called Varney?”
“Yes, gracious madam,” replied Leicester; “I presented him to kiss your royal hand when you were last at Nonsuch.”
“His outside was well enough,” said the Queen, “but scarce so fair, I should have thought, as to have caused a maiden of honourable birth and hopes to barter her fame for his good looks, and become his paramour. Yet so it is; this fellow of yours hath seduced the daughter of a good old Devonshire knight, Sir Hugh Robsart of Lidcote Hall, and she hath fled with him from her father’s house like a castaway.— My Lord of Leicester, are you ill, that you look so deadly pale?”
“No, gracious madam,” said Leicester; and it required every effort he could make to bring forth these few words.
“You are surely ill, my lord?” said Elizabeth, going towards him with hasty speech and hurried step, which indicated the deepest concern. “Call Masters — call our surgeon in ordinary.— Where be these loitering fools?— we lose the pride of our court through their negligence.— Or is it possible, Leicester,” she continued, looking on him with a very gentle aspect, “can fear of my displeasure have wrought so deeply on thee? Doubt not for a moment, noble Dudley, that we could blame thee for the folly of thy retainer — thee, whose thoughts we know to be far otherwise employed. He that would climb the eagle’s nest, my lord, cares not who are catching linnets at the foot of the precipice.”
“Mark you that?” said Sussex aside to Raleigh. “The devil aids him surely; for all that would sink another ten fathom deep seems but to make him float the more easily. Had a follower of mine acted thus —”
“Peace, my good lord,” said Raleigh, “for God’s sake, peace! Wait the change of the tide; it is even now on the turn.”
The acute observation of Raleigh, perhaps, did not deceive him; for Leicester’s confusion was so great, and, indeed, for the moment, so irresistibly overwhelming, that Elizabeth, after looking at him with a wondering eye, and receiving no intelligible answer to the unusual expressions of grace and affection which had escaped from her, shot her quick glance around the circle of courtiers, and reading, perhaps, in their faces something that accorded with her own awakened suspicions, she said suddenly, “Or is there more in this than we see — or than you, my lord, wish that we should see? Where is this Varney? Who saw him?”
“An it please your Grace,” said Bowyer, “it is the same against whom I this instant closed the door of the presence-room.”
“An it please me?” repeated Elizabeth sharply, not at that moment in the humour of being pleased with anything.—“It does not please me that he should pass saucily into my presence, or that you should exclude from it one who came to justify himself from an accusation.”
“May it please you,” answered the perplexed usher, “if I knew, in such case, how to bear myself, I would take heed —”
“You should have reported the fellow’s desire to us, Master Usher, and taken our directions. You think yourself a great man, because but now we chid a nobleman on your account; yet, after all, we hold you but as the lead-weight that keeps the door fast. Call this Varney hither instantly. There is one Tressilian also mentioned in this petition. Let them both come before us.”
She was obeyed, and Tressilian and Varney appeared accordingly. Varney’s first glance was at Leicester, his second at the Queen. In the looks of the latter there appeared an approaching storm, and in the downcast countenance of his patron he could read no directions in what way he was to trim his vessel for the encounter. He then saw Tressilian, and at once perceived the peril of the situation in which he was placed. But Varney was as bold-faced and ready-witted as he was cunning and unscrupulous — a skilful pilot in extremity, and fully conscious of the advantages which he would obtain could he extricate Leicester from his present peril, and of the ruin that yawned for himself should he fail in doing so.
“Is it true, sirrah,” said the Queen, with one of those searching looks which few had the audacity to resist, “that you have seduced to infamy a young lady of birth and breeding, the daughter of Sir Hugh Robsart of Lidcote Hall?”
Varney kneeled down, and replied, with a look of the most profound contrition, “There had been some love passages betwixt him and Mistress Amy Robsart.”
Leicester’s flesh quivered with indignation as he heard his dependant make this avowal, and for one moment he manned himself to step forward, and, bidding farewell to the court and the royal favour, confess the whole mystery of the secret marriage. But he looked at Sussex, and the idea of the triumphant smile which would clothe his cheek upon hearing the avowal sealed his lips. “Not now, at least,” he thought, “or in this presence, will I afford him so rich a triumph.” And pressing his lips close together, he stood firm and collected, attentive to each word which Varney uttered, and determined to hide to the last the secret on which his court-favour seemed to depend. Meanwhile, the Queen proceeded in her examination of Varney.
“Love passages!” said she, echoing his last words; “what passages, thou knave? and why not ask the wench’s hand from her father, if thou hadst any honesty in thy love for her?”
“An it please your Grace,” said Varney, still on his knees, “I dared not do so, for her father had promised her hand to a gentleman of birth and honour — I will do him justice, though I know he bears me ill-will — one Master Edmund Tressilian, whom I now see in the presence.”
“Soh!” replied the Queen. “And what was your right to make the simple fool break her worthy father’s contract, through your love passages, as your conceit and assurance terms them?”
“Madam,” replied Varney, “it is in vain to plead the cause of human frailty before a judge to whom it is unknown, or that of love to one who never yields to the passion”— he paused an instant, and then added, in a very low and timid tone —“which she inflicts upon all others.”
Elizabeth tried to frown, but smiled in her own despite, as she answered, “Thou art a marvellously impudent knave. Art thou married to the girl?”
Leicester’s feelings became so complicated and so painfully intense, that it seemed to him as if his life was to depend on the answer made by Varney, who, after a moment’s real hesitation, answered, “Yes.”
“Thou false villain!” said Leicester, bursting forth into rage, yet unable to add another word to the sentence which he had begun with such emphatic passion.
“Nay, my lord,” said the Queen, “we will, by your leave, stand between this fellow and your anger. We have not yet done with him.— Knew your master, my Lord of Leicester, of this fair work of yours? Speak truth, I command thee, and I will be thy warrant from danger on every quarter.”
“Gracious madam,” said Varney, “to speak Heaven’s truth, my lord was the cause of the whole matter.”
“Thou villain, wouldst thou betray me?” said Leicester.
“Speak on,” said the Queen hastily, her cheek colouring, and her eyes sparkling, as she addressed Varney —“speak on. Here no commands are heard but mine.”
“They are omnipotent, gracious madam,” replied Varney; “and to you there can be no secrets.— Yet I would not,” he added, looking around him, “speak of my master’s concerns to other ears.”
“Fall back, my lords,” said the Queen to those who surrounded her, “and do you speak on. What hath the Earl to do with this guilty intrigue of thine? See, fellow, that thou beliest him not!”
“Far be it from me to traduce my noble patron,” replied Varney; “yet I am compelled to own that some deep, overwhelming, yet secret feeling hath of late dwelt in my lord’s mind, hath abstracted him from the cares of the household which he was wont to govern with such religious strictness, and hath left us opportunities to do follies, of which the shame, as in this case, partly falls upon our patron. Without this, I had not had means or leisure to commit the folly which has drawn on me his displeasure — the heaviest to endure by me which I could by any means incur, saving always the yet more dreaded resentment of your Grace.”
“And in this sense, and no other, hath he been accessory to thy fault?” said Elizabeth.
“Surely, madam, in no other,” replied Varney; “but since somewhat hath chanced to him, he can scarce be called his own man. Look at him, madam, how pale and trembling he stands! how unlike his usual majesty of manner!— yet what has he to fear from aught I can say to your Highness? Ah! madam, since he received that fatal packet!”
“What packet, and from whence?” said the Queen eagerly.
“From whence, madam, I cannot guess; but I am so near to his person that I know he has ever since worn, suspended around his neck and next to his heart, that lock of hair which sustains a small golden jewel shaped like a heart. He speaks to it when alone — he parts not from it when he sleeps — no heathen ever worshipped an idol with such devotion.”
“Thou art a prying knave to watch thy master so closely,” said Elizabeth, blushing, but not with anger; “and a tattling knave to tell over again his fooleries.— What colour might the braid of hair be that thou pratest of?”
Varney replied, “A poet, madam, might call it a thread from the golden web wrought by Minerva; but to my thinking it was paler than even the purest gold — more like the last parting sunbeam of the softest day of spring.”
“Why, you are a poet yourself, Master Varney,” said the Queen, smiling. “But I have not genius quick enough to follow your rare metaphors. Look round these ladies — is there”—(she hesitated, and endeavoured to assume an air of great indifference)—“is there here, in this presence, any lady, the colour of whose hair reminds thee of that braid? Methinks, without prying into my Lord of Leicester’s amorous secrets, I would fain know what kind of locks are like the thread of Minerva’s web, or the — what was it?— the last rays of the May-day sun.”
Varney looked round the presence-chamber, his eye travelling from one lady to another, until at length it rested upon the Queen herself, but with an aspect of the deepest veneration. “I see no tresses,” he said, “in this presence, worthy of such similies, unless where I dare not look on them.”
“How, sir knave?” said the Queen; “dare you intimate —”
“Nay, madam,” replied Varney, shading his eyes with his hand, “it was the beams of the May-day sun that dazzled my weak eyes.”
“Go to — go to,” said the Queen; “thou art a foolish fellow”— and turning quickly from him she walked up to Leicester.
Intense curiosity, mingled with all the various hopes, fears, and passions which influence court faction, had occupied the presence-chamber during the Queen’s conference with Varney, as if with the strength of an Eastern talisman. Men suspended every, even the slightest external motion, and would have ceased to breathe, had Nature permitted such an intermission of her functions. The atmosphere was contagious, and Leicester, who saw all around wishing or fearing his advancement or his fall forgot all that love had previously dictated, and saw nothing for the instant but the favour or disgrace which depended on the nod of Elizabeth and the fidelity of Varney. He summoned himself hastily, and prepared to play his part in the scene which was like to ensue, when, as he judged from the glances which the Queen threw towards him, Varney’s communications, be they what they might, were operating in his favour. Elizabeth did not long leave him in doubt; for the more than favour with which she accosted him decided his triumph in the eyes of his rival, and of the assembled court of England. “Thou hast a prating servant of this same Varney, my lord,” she said; “it is lucky you trust him with nothing that can hurt you in our opinion, for believe me, he would keep no counsel.”
“From your Highness,” said Leicester, dropping gracefully on one knee, “it were treason he should. I would that my heart itself lay before you, barer than the tongue of any servant could strip it.”
“What, my lord,” said Elizabeth, looking kindly upon him, “is there no one little corner over which you would wish to spread a veil? Ah! I see you are confused at the question, and your Queen knows she should not look too deeply into her servants’ motives for their faithful duty, lest she see what might, or at least ought to, displease her.”
Relieved by these last words, Leicester broke out into a torrent of expressions of deep and passionate attachment, which perhaps, at that moment, were not altogether fictitious. The mingled emotions which had at first overcome him had now given way to the energetic vigour with which he had determined to support his place in the Queen’s favour; and never did he seem to Elizabeth more eloquent, more handsome, more interesting, than while, kneeling at her feet, he conjured her to strip him of all his dower, but to leave him the name of her servant.—“Take from the poor Dudley,” he exclaimed, “all that your bounty has made him, and bid him be the poor gentleman he was when your Grace first shone on him; leave him no more than his cloak and his sword, but let him still boast he has — what in word or deed he never forfeited — the regard of his adored Queen and mistress!”
“No, Dudley!” said Elizabeth, raising him with one hand, while she extended the other that he might kiss it. “Elizabeth hath not forgotten that, whilst you were a poor gentleman, despoiled of your hereditary rank, she was as poor a princess, and that in her cause you then ventured all that oppression had left you — your life and honour. Rise, my lord, and let my hand go — rise, and be what you have ever been, the grace of our court and the support of our throne! Your mistress may be forced to chide your misdemeanours, but never without owning your merits.— And so help me God,” she added, turning to the audience, who, with various feelings, witnessed this interesting scene —“so help me God, gentlemen, as I think never sovereign had a truer servant than I have in this noble Earl!”
A murmur of assent rose from the Leicestrian faction, which the friends of Sussex dared not oppose. They remained with their eyes fixed on the ground, dismayed as well as mortified by the public and absolute triumph of their opponents. Leicester’s first use of the familiarity to which the Queen had so publicly restored him was to ask her commands concerning Varney’s offence. “although,” he said, “the fellow deserves nothing from me but displeasure, yet, might I presume to intercede —”
“In truth, we had forgotten his matter,” said the Queen; “and it was ill done of us, who owe justice to our meanest as well as to our highest subject. We are pleased, my lord, that you were the first to recall the matter to our memory.— Where is Tressilian, the accuser?— let him come before us.”
Tressilian appeared, and made a low and beseeming reference. His person, as we have elsewhere observed, had an air of grace and even of nobleness, which did not escape Queen Elizabeth’s critical observation. She looked at him with, attention as he stood before her unabashed, but with an air of the deepest dejection.
“I cannot but grieve for this gentleman,” she said to Leicester. “I have inquired concerning him, and his presence confirms what I heard, that he is a scholar and a soldier, well accomplished both in arts and arms. We women, my lord, are fanciful in our choice — I had said now, to judge by the eye, there was no comparison to be held betwixt your follower and this gentleman. But Varney is a well-spoken fellow, and, to say truth, that goes far with us of the weaker sex.— look you, Master Tressilian, a bolt lost is not a bow broken. Your true affection, as I will hold it to be, hath been, it seems, but ill requited; but you have scholarship, and you know there have been false Cressidas to be found, from the Trojan war downwards. Forget, good sir, this Lady Light o’ Love — teach your affection to see with a wiser eye. This we say to you, more from the writings of learned men than our own knowledge, being, as we are, far removed by station and will from the enlargement of experience in such idle toys of humorous passion. For this dame’s father, we can make his grief the less by advancing his son-inlaw to such station as may enable him to give an honourable support to his bride. Thou shalt not be forgotten thyself, Tressilian — follow our court, and thou shalt see that a true Troilus hath some claim on our grace. Think of what that arch-knave Shakespeare says — a plague on him, his toys come into my head when I should think of other matters. Stay, how goes it?
‘Cressid was yours, tied with the bonds of heaven;
These bonds of heaven are slipt, dissolved, and loosed,
And with another knot five fingers tied,
The fragments of her faith are bound to Diomed.’
You smile, my Lord of Southampton — perchance I make your player’s verse halt through my bad memory. But let it suffice let there be no more of this mad matter.”
And as Tressilian kept the posture of one who would willingly be heard, though, at the same time, expressive of the deepest reverence, the Queen added with some impatience, “What would the man have? The wench cannot wed both of you? She has made her election — not a wise one perchance — but she is Varney’s wedded wife.”
“My suit should sleep there, most gracious Sovereign,” said Tressilian, “and with my suit my revenge. But I hold this Varney’s word no good warrant for the truth.”
“Had that doubt been elsewhere urged,” answered Varney, “my sword —”
“Thy sword!” interrupted Tressilian scornfully; “with her Grace’s leave, my sword shall show —”
“Peace, you knaves, both!” said the Queen; “know you where you are?— This comes of your feuds, my lords,” she added, looking towards Leicester and Sussex; “your followers catch your own humour, and must bandy and brawl in my court and in my very presence, like so many Matamoros.— Look you, sirs, he that speaks of drawing swords in any other quarrel than mine or England’s, by mine honour, I’ll bracelet him with iron both on wrist and ankle!” She then paused a minute, and resumed in a milder tone, “I must do justice betwixt the bold and mutinous knaves notwithstanding.— My Lord of Leicester, will you warrant with your honour — that is, to the best of your belief — that your servant speaks truth in saying he hath married this Amy Robsart?”
This was a home-thrust, and had nearly staggered Leicester. But he had now gone too far to recede, and answered, after a moment’s hesitation, “To the best of my belief — indeed on my certain knowledge — she is a wedded wife.”
“Gracious madam,” said Tressilian, “may I yet request to know, when and under what circumstances this alleged marriage —”
“Out, sirrah,” answered the Queen; “alleged marriage! Have you not the word of this illustrious Earl to warrant the truth of what his servant says? But thou art a loser — thinkest thyself such at least — and thou shalt have indulgence; we will look into the matter ourself more at leisure.— My Lord of Leicester, I trust you remember we mean to taste the good cheer of your Castle of Kenilworth on this week ensuing. We will pray you to bid our good and valued friend, the Earl of Sussex, to hold company with us there.”
“If the noble Earl of Sussex,” said Leicester, bowing to his rival with the easiest and with the most graceful courtesy, “will so far honour my poor house, I will hold it an additional proof of the amicable regard it is your Grace’s desire we should entertain towards each other.”
Sussex was more embarrassed. “I should,” said he, “madam, be but a clog on your gayer hours, since my late severe illness.”
“And have you been indeed so very ill?” said Elizabeth, looking on him with more attention than before; “you are, in faith, strangely altered, and deeply am I grieved to see it. But be of good cheer — we will ourselves look after the health of so valued a servant, and to whom we owe so much. Masters shall order your diet; and that we ourselves may see that he is obeyed, you must attend us in this progress to Kenilworth.”
This was said so peremptorily, and at the same time with so much kindness, that Sussex, however unwilling to become the guest of his rival, had no resource but to bow low to the Queen in obedience to her commands, and to express to Leicester, with blunt courtesy, though mingled with embarrassment, his acceptance of his invitation. As the Earls exchanged compliments on the occasion, the Queen said to her High Treasurer, “Methinks, my lord, the countenances of these our two noble peers resemble those of the two famed classic streams, the one so dark and sad, the other so fair and noble. My old Master Ascham would have chid me for forgetting the author. It is Caesar, as I think. See what majestic calmness sits on the brow of the noble Leicester, while Sussex seems to greet him as if he did our will indeed, but not willingly.”
“The doubt of your Majesty’s favour,” answered the Lord Treasurer, “may perchance occasion the difference, which does not — as what does?— escape your Grace’s eye.”
“Such doubt were injurious to us, my lord,” replied the Queen. “We hold both to be near and dear to us, and will with impartiality employ both in honourable service for the weal of our kingdom. But we will break their further conference at present.— My Lords of Sussex and Leicester, we have a word more with you. ‘Tressilian and Varney are near your persons — you will see that they attend you at Kenilworth. And as we shall then have both Paris and Menelaus within our call, so we will have the same fair Helen also, whose fickleness has caused this broil.— Varney, thy wife must be at Kenilworth, and forthcoming at my order.— My Lord of Leicester, we expect you will look to this.”
The Earl and his follower bowed low and raised their heads, without daring to look at the Queen, or at each other, for both felt at the instant as if the nets and toils which their own falsehood had woven were in the act of closing around them. The Queen, however, observed not their confusion, but proceeded to say, “My Lords of Sussex and Leicester, we require your presence at the privy-council to be presently held, where matters of importance are to be debated. We will then take the water for our divertisement, and you, my lords, will attend us.— And that reminds us of a circumstance.— Do you, Sir Squire of the Soiled Cassock” (distinguishing Raleigh by a smile), “fail not to observe that you are to attend us on our progress. You shall be supplied with suitable means to reform your wardrobe.”
And so terminated this celebrated audience, in which, as throughout her life, Elizabeth united the occasional caprice of her sex with that sense and sound policy in which neither man nor woman ever excelled her.
Well, then — our course is chosen — spread the sail —
Heave oft the lead, and mark the soundings well —
Look to the helm, good master — many a shoal
Marks this stern coast, and rocks, where sits the Siren,
Who, like ambition, lures men to their ruin.
The Shipwreck.
During the brief interval that took place betwixt the dismissal of the audience and the sitting of the privy-council, Leicester had time to reflect that he had that morning sealed his own fate. “It was impossible for him now,” he thought, “after having, in the face of all that was honourable in England, pledged his truth (though in an ambiguous phrase) for the statement of Varney, to contradict or disavow it, without exposing himself, not merely to the loss of court-favour, but to the highest displeasure of the Queen, his deceived mistress, and to the scorn and contempt at once of his rival and of all his compeers.” This certainty rushed at once on his mind, together with all the difficulties which he would necessarily be exposed to in preserving a secret which seemed now equally essential to his safety, to his power, and to his honour. He was situated like one who walks upon ice ready to give way around him, and whose only safety consists in moving onwards, by firm and unvacillating steps. The Queen’s favour, to preserve which he had made such sacrifices, must now be secured by all means and at all hazards; it was the only plank which he could cling to in the tempest. He must settle himself, therefore, to the task of not only preserving, but augmenting the Queen’s partiality — he must be the favourite of Elizabeth, or a man utterly shipwrecked in fortune and in honour. All other considerations must be laid aside for the moment, and he repelled the intrusive thoughts which forced on his mind the image of, Amy, by saying to himself there would be time to think hereafter how he was to escape from the labyrinth ultimately, since the pilot who sees a Scylla under his bows must not for the time think of the more distant dangers of Charybdis.
In this mood the Earl of Leicester that day assumed his chair at the council table of Elizabeth; and when the hours of business were over, in this same mood did he occupy an honoured place near her during her pleasure excursion on the Thames. And never did he display to more advantage his powers as a politician of the first rank, or his parts as an accomplished courtier.
It chanced that in that day’s council matters were agitated touching the affairs of the unfortunate Mary, the seventh year of whose captivity in England was now in doleful currency. There had been opinions in favour of this unhappy princess laid before Elizabeth’s council, and supported with much strength of argument by Sussex and others, who dwelt more upon the law of nations and the breach of hospitality than, however softened or qualified, was agreeable to the Queen’s ear. Leicester adopted the contrary opinion with great animation and eloquence, and described the necessity of continuing the severe restraint of the Queen of Scots, as a measure essential to the safety of the kingdom, and particularly of Elizabeth’s sacred person, the lightest hair of whose head, he maintained, ought, in their lordships’ estimation, to be matter of more deep and anxious concern than the life and fortunes of a rival, who, after setting up a vain and unjust pretence to the throne of England, was now, even while in the bosom of her country, the constant hope and theme of encouragement to all enemies to Elizabeth, whether at home or abroad. He ended by craving pardon of their lordships, if in the zeal of speech he had given any offence, but the Queen’s safety was a theme which hurried him beyond his usual moderation of debate.
Elizabeth chid him, but not severely, for the weight which he attached unduly to her personal interests; yet she owned that, since it had been the pleasure of Heaven to combine those interests with the weal of her subjects, she did only her duty when she adopted such measures of self-preservation as circumstances forced upon her; and if the council in their wisdom should be of opinion that it was needful to continue some restraint on the person of her unhappy sister of Scotland, she trusted they would not blame her if she requested of the Countess of Shrewsbury to use her with as much kindness as might be consistent with her safe keeping. And with this intimation of her pleasure the council was dismissed.
Never was more anxious and ready way made for “my Lord of Leicester,” than as he passed through the crowded anterooms to go towards the river-side, in order to attend her Majesty to her barge — never was the voice of the ushers louder, to “make room, make room for the noble Earl”— never were these signals more promptly and reverently obeyed — never were more anxious eyes turned on him to obtain a glance of favour, or even of mere recognition, while the heart of many a humble follower throbbed betwixt the desire to offer his congratulations, and the fear of intruding himself on the notice of one so infinitely above him. The whole court considered the issue of this day’s audience, expected with so much doubt and anxiety, as a decisive triumph on the part of Leicester, and felt assured that the orb of his rival satellite, if not altogether obscured by his lustre, must revolve hereafter in a dimmer and more distant sphere. So thought the court and courtiers, from high to low; and they acted accordingly.
On the other hand, never did Leicester return the general greeting with such ready and condescending courtesy, or endeavour more successfully to gather (in the words of one who at that moment stood at no great distance from him) “golden opinions from all sorts of men.”
For all the favourite Earl had a bow a smile at least, and often a kind word. Most of these were addressed to courtiers, whose names have long gone down the tide of oblivion; but some, to such as sound strangely in our ears, when connected with the ordinary matters of human life, above which the gratitude of posterity has long elevated them. A few of Leicester’s interlocutory sentences ran as follows:—
“Poynings, good morrow; and how does your wife and fair daughter? Why come they not to court?— Adams, your suit is naught; the Queen will grant no more monopolies. But I may serve you in another matter.— My good Alderman Aylford, the suit of the City, affecting Queenhithe, shall be forwarded as far as my poor interest can serve.— Master Edmund Spenser, touching your Irish petition, I would willingly aid you, from my love to the Muses; but thou hast nettled the Lord Treasurer.”
“My lord, “ said the poet, “were I permitted to explain —”
“Come to my lodging, Edmund,” answered the Earl “not tomorrow, or next day, but soon.— Ha, Will Shakespeare — wild Will!— thou hast given my nephew Philip Sidney, love-powder; he cannot sleep without thy Venus and Adonis under his pillow! We will have thee hanged for the veriest wizard in Europe. Hark thee, mad wag, I have not forgotten thy matter of the patent, and of the bears.”
The player bowed, and the Earl nodded and passed on — so that age would have told the tale; in ours, perhaps, we might say the immortal had done homage to the mortal. The next whom the favourite accosted was one of his own zealous dependants.
“How now, Sir Francis Denning,” he whispered, in answer to his exulting salutation, “that smile hath made thy face shorter by one-third than when I first saw it this morning.— What, Master Bowyer, stand you back, and think you I bear malice? You did but your duty this morning; and if I remember aught of the passage betwixt us, it shall be in thy favour.”
Then the Earl was approached, with several fantastic congees, by a person quaintly dressed in a doublet of black velvet, curiously slashed and pinked with crimson satin. A long cock’s feather in the velvet bonnet, which he held in his hand, and an enormous ruff; stiffened to the extremity of the absurd taste of the times, joined with a sharp, lively, conceited expression of countenance, seemed to body forth a vain, harebrained coxcomb, and small wit; while the rod he held, and an assumption of formal authority, appeared to express some sense of official consequence, which qualified the natural pertness of his manner. A perpetual blush, which occupied rather the sharp nose than the thin cheek of this personage, seemed to speak more of “good life,” as it was called, than of modesty; and the manner in which he approached to the Earl confirmed that suspicion.
“Good even to you, Master Robert Laneham,” said Leicester, and seemed desirous to pass forward, without further speech.
“I have a suit to your noble lordship,” said the figure, boldly following him.
“And what is it, good master keeper of the council-chamber door?”
“Clerk of the council-chamber door,” said Master Robert Laneham, with emphasis, by way of reply, and of correction.
“Well, qualify thine office as thou wilt, man,” replied the Earl; “what wouldst thou have with me?”
“Simply,” answered Laneham, “that your lordship would be, as heretofore, my good lord, and procure me license to attend the Summer Progress unto your lordship’s most beautiful and all-to-be-unmatched Castle of Kenilworth.”
“To what purpose, good Master Laneham?” replied the Earl; “bethink you, my guests must needs be many.”
“Not so many,” replied the petitioner, “but that your nobleness will willingly spare your old servitor his crib and his mess. Bethink you, my lord, how necessary is this rod of mine to fright away all those listeners, who else would play at bo-peep with the honourable council, and be searching for keyholes and crannies in the door of the chamber, so as to render my staff as needful as a fly-flap in a butcher’s shop.”
“Methinks you have found out a fly-blown comparison for the honourable council, Master Laneham,” said the Earl; “but seek not about to justify it. Come to Kenilworth, if you list; there will be store of fools there besides, and so you will be fitted.”
“Nay, an there be fools, my lord,” replied Laneham, with much glee, “I warrant I will make sport among them, for no greyhound loves to cote a hare as I to turn and course a fool. But I have another singular favour to beseech of your honour.”
“Speak it, and let me go,” said the Earl; “I think the Queen comes forth instantly.”
“My very good lord, I would fain bring a bed-fellow with me.”
“How, you irreverent rascal!” said Leicester.
“Nay, my lord, my meaning is within the canons,” answered his unblushing, or rather his ever-blushing petitioner. “I have a wife as curious as her grandmother who ate the apple. Now, take her with me I may not, her Highness’s orders being so strict against the officers bringing with them their wives in a progress, and so lumbering the court with womankind. But what I would crave of your lordship is to find room for her in some mummery, or pretty pageant, in disguise, as it were; so that, not being known for my wife, there may be no offence.”
“The foul fiend seize ye both!” said Leicester, stung into uncontrollable passion by the recollections which this speech excited —“why stop you me with such follies?”
The terrified clerk of the chamber-door, astonished at the burst of resentment he had so unconsciously produced, dropped his staff of office from his hand, and gazed on the incensed Earl with a foolish face of wonder and terror, which instantly recalled Leicester to himself.
“I meant but to try if thou hadst the audacity which befits thine office,” said he hastily. “Come to Kenilworth, and bring the devil with thee, if thou wilt.”
“My wife, sir, hath played the devil ere now, in a Mystery, in Queen Mary’s time; but me shall want a trifle for properties.”
“Here is a crown for thee,” said the Earl,—“make me rid of thee — the great bell rings.”
Master Robert Laneham stared a moment at the agitation which he had excited, and then said to himself, as he stooped to pick up his staff of office, “The noble Earl runs wild humours today. But they who give crowns expect us witty fellows to wink at their unsettled starts; and, by my faith, if they paid not for mercy, we would finger them tightly!”15
Leicester moved hastily on, neglecting the courtesies he had hitherto dispensed so liberally, and hurrying through the courtly crowd, until he paused in a small withdrawing-room, into which he plunged to draw a moment’s breath unobserved, and in seclusion.
“What am I now,” he said to himself, “that am thus jaded by the words of a mean, weather-beaten, goose-brained gull! Conscience, thou art a bloodhound, whose growl wakes us readily at the paltry stir of a rat or mouse as at the step of a lion. Can I not quit myself, by one bold stroke, of a state so irksome, so unhonoured? What if I kneel to Elizabeth, and, owning the whole, throw myself on her mercy?”
As he pursued this train of thought, the door of the apartment opened, and Varney rushed in.
“Thank God, my lord, that I have found you!” was his exclamation.
“Thank the devil, whose agent thou art,” was the Earl’s reply.
“Thank whom you will, my lord,” replied Varney; “but hasten to the water-side. The Queen is on board, and asks for you.”
“Go, say I am taken suddenly ill,” replied Leicester; “for, by Heaven, my brain can sustain this no longer!”
“I may well say so,” said Varney, with bitterness of expression, “for your place, ay, and mine, who, as your master of the horse, was to have attended your lordship, is already filled up in the Queen’s barge. The new minion, Walter Raleigh, and our old acquaintance Tressilian were called for to fill our places just as I hastened away to seek you.”
“Thou art a devil, Varney,” said Leicester hastily; “but thou hast the mastery for the present — I follow thee.”
Varney replied not, but led the way out of the palace, and towards the river, while his master followed him, as if mechanically; until, looking back, he said in a tone which savoured of familiarity at least, if not of authority, “How is this, my lord? Your cloak hangs on one side — your hose are unbraced — permit me —”
“Thou art a fool, Varney, as well as a knave,” said Leicester, shaking him off, and rejecting his officious assistance. “We are best thus, sir; when we require you to order our person, it is well, but now we want you not.”
So saying, the Earl resumed at once his air of command, and with it his self-possession — shook his dress into yet wilder disorder — passed before Varney with the air of a superior and master, and in his turn led the way to the river-side.
The Queen’s barge was on the very point of putting off, the seat allotted to Leicester in the stern, and that to his master of the horse on the bow of the boat, being already filled up. But on Leicester’s approach there was a pause, as if the bargemen anticipated some alteration in their company. The angry spot was, however, on the Queen’s cheek, as, in that cold tone with which superiors endeavour to veil their internal agitation, while speaking to those before whom it would be derogation to express it, she pronounced the chilling words, “We have waited, my Lord of Leicester.”
“Madam, and most gracious Princess,” said Leicester, “you, who can pardon so many weaknesses which your own heart never knows, can best bestow your commiseration on the agitations of the bosom, which, for a moment, affect both head and limbs. I came to your presence a doubting and an accused subject; your goodness penetrated the clouds of defamation, and restored me to my honour, and, what is yet dearer, to your favour — is it wonderful, though for me it is most unhappy, that my master of the horse should have found me in a state which scarce permitted me to make the exertion necessary to follow him to this place, when one glance of your Highness, although, alas! an angry one, has had power to do that for me in which Esculapius might have failed?”
“How is this?” said Elizabeth hastily, looking at Varney; “hath your lord been ill?”
“Something of a fainting fit,” answered the ready-witted Varney, “as your Grace may observe from his present condition. My lord’s haste would not permit me leisure even to bring his dress into order.”
“It matters not,” said Elizabeth, as she gazed on the noble face and form of Leicester, to which even the strange mixture of passions by which he had been so lately agitated gave additional interest; “make room for my noble lord. Your place, Master Varney, has been filled up; you must find a seat in another barge.”
Varney bowed, and withdrew.
“And you, too, our young Squire of the Cloak,” added she, looking at Raleigh, “must, for the time, go to the barge of our ladies of honour. As for Tressilian, he hath already suffered too much by the caprice of women that I should aggrieve him by my change of plan, so far as he is concerned.”
Leicester seated himself in his place in the barge, and close to the Sovereign. Raleigh rose to retire, and Tressilian would have been so ill-timed in his courtesy as to offer to relinquish his own place to his friend, had not the acute glance of Raleigh himself, who seemed no in his native element, made him sensible that so ready a disclamation of the royal favour might be misinterpreted. He sat silent, therefore, whilst Raleigh, with a profound bow, and a look of the deepest humiliation, was about to quit his place.
A noble courtier, the gallant Lord Willoughby, read, as he thought, something in the Queen’s face which seemed to pity Raleigh’s real or assumed semblance of mortification.
“It is not for us old courtiers,” he said, “to hide the sunshine from the young ones. I will, with her Majesty’s leave, relinquish for an hour that which her subjects hold dearest, the delight of her Highness’s presence, and mortify myself by walking in starlight, while I forsake for a brief season the glory of Diana’s own beams. I will take place in the boat which the ladies occupy, and permit this young cavalier his hour of promised felicity.”
The Queen replied, with an expression betwixt mirth and earnest, “If you are so willing to leave us, my lord, we cannot help the mortification. But, under favour, we do not trust you — old and experienced as you may deem yourself — with the care of our young ladies of honour. Your venerable age, my lord,” she continued, smiling, “may be better assorted with that of my Lord Treasurer, who follows in the third boat, and by whose experience even my Lord Willoughby’s may be improved.”
Lord Willoughby hid his disappointment under a smile — laughed, was confused, bowed, and left the Queen’s barge to go on board my Lord Burleigh’s. Leicester, who endeavoured to divert his thoughts from all internal reflection, by fixing them on what was passing around, watched this circumstance among others. But when the boat put off from the shore — when the music sounded from a barge which accompanied them — when the shouts of the populace were heard from the shore, and all reminded him of the situation in which he was placed, he abstracted his thoughts and feelings by a strong effort from everything but the necessity of maintaining himself in the favour of his patroness, and exerted his talents of pleasing captivation with such success, that the Queen, alternately delighted with his conversation, and alarmed for his health, at length imposed a temporary silence on him, with playful yet anxious care, lest his flow of spirits should exhaust him.
“My lords,” she said, “having passed for a time our edict of silence upon our good Leicester, we will call you to counsel on a gamesome matter, more fitted to be now treated of, amidst mirth and music, than in the gravity of our ordinary deliberations. Which of you, my lords,” said she, smiling, “know aught of a petition from Orson Pinnit, the keeper, as he qualifies himself, of our royal bears? Who stands godfather to his request?”
“Marry, with Your Grace’s good permission, that do I,” said the Earl of Sussex. “Orson Pinnit was a stout soldier before he was so mangled by the skenes of the Irish clan MacDonough; and I trust your Grace will be, as you always have been, good mistress to your good and trusty servants.”
“Surely,” said the Queen, “it is our purpose to be so, and in especial to our poor soldiers and sailors, who hazard their lives for little pay. We would give,” she said, with her eyes sparkling, “yonder royal palace of ours to be an hospital for their use, rather than they should call their mistress ungrateful. But this is not the question,” she said, her voice, which had been awakened by her patriotic feelings, once more subsiding into the tone of gay and easy conversation; “for this Orson Pinnit’s request goes something further. He complains that, amidst the extreme delight with which men haunt the play-houses, and in especial their eager desire for seeing the exhibitions of one Will Shakespeare (whom I think, my lords, we have all heard something of), the manly amusement of bear-baiting is falling into comparative neglect, since men will rather throng to see these roguish players kill each other in jest, than to see our royal dogs and bears worry each other in bloody earnest.— What say you to this, my Lord of Sussex?”
“Why, truly, gracious madam,” said Sussex, “you must expect little from an old soldier like me in favour of battles in sport, when they are compared with battles in earnest; and yet, by my faith, I wish Will Shakespeare no harm. He is a stout man at quarter-staff, and single falchion, though, as I am told, a halting fellow; and he stood, they say, a tough fight with the rangers of old Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot, when he broke his deer-park and kissed his keeper’s daughter.”
“I cry you mercy, my Lord of Sussex,” said Queen Elizabeth, interrupting him; “that matter was heard in council, and we will not have this fellow’s offence exaggerated — there was no kissing in the matter, and the defendant hath put the denial on record. But what say you to his present practice, my lord, on the stage? for there lies the point, and not in any ways touching his former errors, in breaking parks, or the other follies you speak of.”
“Why, truly, madam,” replied Sussex, “as I said before, I wish the gamesome mad fellow no injury. Some of his whoreson poetry (I crave your Grace’s pardon for such a phrase) has rung in mine ears as if the lines sounded to boot and saddle. But then it is all froth and folly — no substance or seriousness in it, as your Grace has already well touched. What are half a dozen knaves, with rusty foils and tattered targets, making but a mere mockery of a stout fight, to compare to the royal game of bear-baiting, which hath been graced by your Highness’s countenance, and that of your royal predecessors, in this your princely kingdom, famous for matchless mastiffs and bold bearwards over all Christendom? Greatly is it to be doubted that the race of both will decay, if men should throng to hear the lungs of an idle player belch forth nonsensical bombast, instead of bestowing their pence in encouraging the bravest image of war that can be shown in peace, and that is the sports of the Bear-garden. There you may see the bear lying at guard, with his red, pinky eyes watching the onset of the mastiff, like a wily captain who maintains his defence that an assailant may be tempted to venture within his danger. And then comes Sir Mastiff, like a worthy champion, in full career at the throat of his adversary; and then shall Sir Bruin teach him the reward for those who, in their over-courage, neglect the policies of war, and, catching him in his arms, strain him to his breast like a lusty wrestler, until rib after rib crack like the shot of a pistolet. And then another mastiff; as bold, but with better aim and sounder judgment, catches Sir Bruin by the nether lip, and hangs fast, while he tosses about his blood and slaver, and tries in vain to shake Sir Talbot from his hold. And then —”
“Nay, by my honour, my lord,” said the Queen, laughing, “you have described the whole so admirably that, had we never seen a bear-baiting, as we have beheld many, and hope, with Heaven’s allowance, to see many more, your words were sufficient to put the whole Bear-garden before our eyes.— But come, who speaks next in this case?— My Lord of Leicester, what say you?”
“Am I then to consider myself as unmuzzled, please your Grace?” replied Leicester.
“Surely, my lord — that is, if you feel hearty enough to take part in our game,” answered Elizabeth; “and yet, when I think of your cognizance of the bear and ragged staff, methinks we had better hear some less partial orator.”
“Nay, on my word, gracious Princess,” said the Earl, “though my brother Ambrose of Warwick and I do carry the ancient cognizance your Highness deigns to remember, I nevertheless desire nothing but fair play on all sides; or, as they say, ‘fight dog, fight bear.’ And in behalf of the players, I must needs say that they are witty knaves, whose rants and jests keep the minds of the commons from busying themselves with state affairs, and listening to traitorous speeches, idle rumours, and disloyal insinuations. When men are agape to see how Marlow, Shakespeare, and other play artificers work out their fanciful plots, as they call them, the mind of the spectators is withdrawn from the conduct of their rulers.”
“We would not have the mind of our subjects withdrawn from the consideration of our own conduct, my lord,” answered Elizabeth; “because the more closely it is examined, the true motives by which we are guided will appear the more manifest.”
“I have heard, however, madam,” said the Dean of St. Asaph’s, an eminent Puritan, “that these players are wont, in their plays, not only to introduce profane and lewd expressions, tending to foster sin and harlotry; but even to bellow out such reflections on government, its origin and its object, as tend to render the subject discontented, and shake the solid foundations of civil society. And it seems to be, under your Grace’s favour, far less than safe to permit these naughty foul-mouthed knaves to ridicule the godly for their decent gravity, and, in blaspheming heaven and slandering its earthly rulers, to set at defiance the laws both of God and man.”
“If we could think this were true, my lord,” said Elizabeth, “we should give sharp correction for such offences. But it is ill arguing against the use of anything from its abuse. And touching this Shakespeare, we think there is that in his plays that is worth twenty Bear-gardens; and that this new undertaking of his Chronicles, as he calls them, may entertain, with honest mirth, mingled with useful instruction, not only our subjects, but even the generation which may succeed to us.”
“Your Majesty’s reign will need no such feeble aid to make it remembered to the latest posterity,” said Leicester. “And yet, in his way, Shakespeare hath so touched some incidents of your Majesty’s happy government as may countervail what has been spoken by his reverence the Dean of St. Asaph’s. There are some lines, for example — I would my nephew, Philip Sidney, were here; they are scarce ever out of his mouth — they are spoken in a mad tale of fairies, love-charms, and I wot not what besides; but beautiful they are, however short they may and must fall of the subject to which they bear a bold relation — and Philip murmurs them, I think, even in his dreams.”
“You tantalize us, my lord,” said the Queen —“Master Philip Sidney is, we know, a minion of the Muses, and we are pleased it should be so. Valour never shines to more advantage than when united with the true taste and love of letters. But surely there are some others among our young courtiers who can recollect what your lordship has forgotten amid weightier affairs.— Master Tressilian, you are described to me as a worshipper of Minerva — remember you aught of these lines?”
Tressilian’s heart was too heavy, his prospects in life too fatally blighted, to profit by the opportunity which the Queen thus offered to him of attracting her attention; but he determined to transfer the advantage to his more ambitious young friend, and excusing himself on the score of want of recollection, he added that he believed the beautiful verses of which my Lord of Leicester had spoken were in the remembrance of Master Walter Raleigh.
At the command of the Queen, that cavalier repeated, with accent and manner which even added to their exquisite delicacy of tact and beauty of description, the celebrated vision of Oberon:—
“That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid, allarm’d: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the west;
And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts:
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
And the imperial vot’ress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy free.”
The voice of Raleigh, as he repeated the last lines, became a little tremulous, as if diffident how the Sovereign to whom the homage was addressed might receive it, exquisite as it was. If this diffidence was affected, it was good policy; but if real, there was little occasion for it. The verses were not probably new to the Queen, for when was ever such elegant flattery long in reaching the royal ear to which it was addressed? But they were not the less welcome when repeated by such a speaker as Raleigh. Alike delighted with the matter, the manner, and the graceful form and animated countenance of the gallant young reciter, Elizabeth kept time to every cadence with look and with finger. When the speaker had ceased, she murmured over the last lines as if scarce conscious that she was overheard, and as she uttered the words,
“In maiden meditation, fancy free,” she dropped into the Thames the supplication of Orson Pinnit, keeper of the royal bears, to find more favourable acceptance at Sheerness, or wherever the tide might waft it.
Leicester was spurred to emulation by the success of the young courtier’s exhibition, as the veteran racer is roused when a high-mettled colt passes him on the way. He turned the discourse on shows, banquets, pageants, and on the character of those by whom these gay scenes were then frequented. He mixed acute observation with light satire, in that just proportion which was free alike from malignant slander and insipid praise. He mimicked with ready accent the manners of the affected or the clownish, and made his own graceful tone and manner seem doubly such when he resumed it. Foreign countries — their customs, their manners, the rules of their courts —-the fashions, and even the dress of their ladies-were equally his theme; and seldom did he conclude without conveying some compliment, always couched in delicacy, and expressed with propriety, to the Virgin Queen, her court, and her government. Thus passed the conversation during this pleasure voyage, seconded by the rest of the attendants upon the royal person, in gay discourse, varied by remarks upon ancient classics and modern authors, and enriched by maxims of deep policy and sound morality, by the statesmen and sages who sat around and mixed wisdom with the lighter talk of a female court.
When they returned to the Palace, Elizabeth accepted, or rather selected, the arm of Leicester to support her from the stairs where they landed to the great gate. It even seemed to him (though that might arise from the flattery of his own imagination) that during this short passage she leaned on him somewhat more than the slippiness of the way necessarily demanded. Certainly her actions and words combined to express a degree of favour which, even in his proudest day he had not till then attained. His rival, indeed, was repeatedly graced by the Queen’s notice; but it was in manner that seemed to flow less from spontaneous inclination than as extorted by a sense of his merit. And in the opinion of many experienced courtiers, all the favour she showed him was overbalanced by her whispering in the ear of the Lady Derby that “now she saw sickness was a better alchemist than she before wotted of, seeing it had changed my Lord of Sussex’s copper nose into a golden one.”
The jest transpired, and the Earl of Leicester enjoyed his triumph, as one to whom court-favour had been both the primary and the ultimate motive of life, while he forgot, in the intoxication of the moment, the perplexities and dangers of his own situation. Indeed, strange as it may appear, he thought less at that moment of the perils arising from his secret union, than of the marks of grace which Elizabeth from time to time showed to young Raleigh. They were indeed transient, but they were conferred on one accomplished in mind and body, with grace, gallantry, literature, and valour. An accident occurred in the course of the evening which riveted Leicester’s attention to this object.
The nobles and courtiers who had attended the Queen on her pleasure expedition were invited, with royal hospitality, to a splendid banquet in the hall of the Palace. The table was not, indeed, graced by the presence of the Sovereign; for, agreeable to her idea of what was at once modest and dignified, the Maiden Queen on such occasions was wont to take in private, or with one or two favourite ladies, her light and temperate meal. After a moderate interval, the court again met in the splendid gardens of the Palace; and it was while thus engaged that the Queen suddenly asked a lady, who was near to her both in place and favour, what had become of the young Squire Lack-Cloak.
The Lady Paget answered, “She had seen Master Raleigh but two or three minutes since standing at the window of a small pavilion or pleasure-house, which looked out on the Thames, and writing on the glass with a diamond ring.”
“That ring,” said the Queen, “was a small token I gave him to make amends for his spoiled mantle. Come, Paget, let us see what use he has made of it, for I can see through him already. He is a marvellously sharp-witted spirit.” They went to the spot, within sight of which, but at some distance, the young cavalier still lingered, as the fowler watches the net which he has set. The Queen approached the window, on which Raleigh had used her gift, to inscribe the following line:—
“Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall.”
The Queen smiled, read it twice over, once with deliberation to Lady Paget, and once again to herself. “It is a pretty beginning,” she said, after the consideration of a moment or two; “but methinks the muse hath deserted the young wit at the very outset of his task. It were good-natured — were it not, Lady Paget?— to complete it for him. Try your rhyming faculties.”
Lady Paget, prosaic from her cradle upwards as ever any lady of the bedchamber before or after her, disclaimed all possibility of assisting the young poet.
“Nay, then, we must sacrifice to the Muses ourselves,” said Elizabeth.
“The incense of no one can be more acceptable,” said Lady Paget; “and your Highness will impose such obligation on the ladies of Parnassus —”
“Hush, Paget,” said the Queen, “you speak sacrilege against the immortal Nine — yet, virgins themselves, they should be exorable to a Virgin Queen — and therefore — let me see how runs his verse —
‘Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall.’
Might not the answer (for fault of a better) run thus?—
‘If thy mind fail thee, do not climb at all.’”
The dame of honour uttered an exclamation of joy and surprise at so happy a termination; and certainly a worse has been applauded, even when coming from a less distinguished author.
The Queen, thus encouraged, took off a diamond ring, and saying, “We will give this gallant some cause of marvel when he finds his couplet perfected without his own interference,” she wrote her own line beneath that of Raleigh.
The Queen left the pavilion; but retiring slowly, and often looking back, she could see the young cavalier steal, with the flight of a lapwing, towards the place where he had seen her make a pause. “She stayed but to observe,” as she said, “that her train had taken;” and then, laughing at the circumstance with the Lady Paget, she took the way slowly towards the Palace. Elizabeth, as they returned, cautioned her companion not to mention to any one the aid which she had given to the young poet, and Lady Paget promised scrupulous secrecy. It is to be supposed that she made a mental reservation in favour of Leicester, to whom her ladyship transmitted without delay an anecdote so little calculated to give him pleasure.
Raleigh, in the meanwhile, stole back to the window, and read, with a feeling of intoxication, the encouragement thus given him by the Queen in person to follow out his ambitious career, and returned to Sussex and his retinue, then on the point of embarking to go up the river, his heart beating high with gratified pride, and with hope of future distinction.
The reverence due to the person of the Earl prevented any notice being taken of the reception he had met with at court, until they had landed, and the household were assembled in the great hall at Sayes Court; while that lord, exhausted by his late illness and the fatigues of the day, had retired to his chamber, demanding the attendance of Wayland, his successful physician. Wayland, however, was nowhere to be found; and while some of the party were, with military impatience, seeking him and cursing his absence, the rest flocked around Raleigh to congratulate him on his prospects of court-favour.
He had the good taste and judgment to conceal the decisive circumstance of the couplet to which Elizabeth had deigned to find a rhyme; but other indications had transpired, which plainly intimated that he had made some progress in the Queen’s favour. All hastened to wish him joy on the mended appearance of his fortune — some from real regard, some, perhaps, from hopes that his preferment might hasten their own, and most from a mixture of these motives, and a sense that the countenance shown to any one of Sussex’s household was, in fact, a triumph to the whole. Raleigh returned the kindest thanks to them all, disowning, with becoming modesty, that one day’s fair reception made a favourite, any more than one swallow a summer. But he observed that Blount did not join in the general congratulation, and, somewhat hurt at his apparent unkindness, he plainly asked him the reason.
Blount replied with equal sincerity —“My good Walter, I wish thee as well as do any of these chattering gulls, who are whistling and whooping gratulations in thine ear because it seems fair weather with thee. But I fear for thee, “Walter” (and he wiped his honest eye), “I fear for thee with all my heart. These court-tricks, and gambols, and flashes of fine women’s favour are the tricks and trinkets that bring fair fortunes to farthings, and fine faces and witty coxcombs to the acquaintance of dull block and sharp axes.”
So saying, Blount arose and left the hall, while Raleigh looked after him with an expression that blanked for a moment his bold and animated countenance.
Stanley just then entered the hall, and said to Tressilian, “My lord is calling for your fellow Wayland, and your fellow Wayland is just come hither in a sculler, and is calling for you, nor will he go to my lord till he sees you. The fellow looks as he were mazed, methinks; I would you would see him immediately.”
Tressilian instantly left the hall, and causing Wayland Smith to be shown into a withdrawing apartment, and lights placed, he conducted the artist thither, and was surprised when he observed the emotion of his countenance.
“What is the matter with you, Smith?” said Tressilian; “have you seen the devil?”
“Worse, sir, worse,” replied Wayland; “I have seen a basilisk. Thank God, I saw him first; for being so seen, and seeing not me, he will do the less harm.”
“In God’s name, speak sense,” said Tressilian, “and say what you mean.”
“I have seen my old master,” said the artist. “Last night a friend whom I had acquired took me to see the Palace clock, judging me to be curious in such works of art. At the window of a turret next to the clock-house I saw my old master.”
“Thou must needs have been mistaken,” said Tressilian.
“I was not mistaken,” said Wayland; “he that once hath his features by heart would know him amongst a million. He was anticly habited; but he cannot disguise himself from me, God be praised! as I can from him. I will not, however, tempt Providence by remaining within his ken. Tarleton the player himself could not so disguise himself but that, sooner or later, Doboobie would find him out. I must away tomorrow; for, as we stand together, it were death to me to remain within reach of him.”
“But the Earl of Sussex?” said Tressilian.
“He is in little danger from what he has hitherto taken, provided he swallow the matter of a bean’s size of the orvietan every morning fasting; but let him beware of a relapse.”
“And how is that to be guarded against?” said Tressilian.
“Only by such caution as you would use against the devil,” answered Wayland. “Let my lord’s clerk of the kitchen kill his lord’s meat himself, and dress it himself, using no spice but what he procures from the surest hands. Let the sewer serve it up himself, and let the master of my lord’s household see that both clerk and sewer taste the dishes which the one dresses and the other serves. Let my lord use no perfumes which come not from well accredited persons; no unguents — no pomades. Let him, on no account, drink with strangers, or eat fruit with them, either in the way of nooning or otherwise. Especially, let him observe such caution if he goes to Kenilworth — the excuse of his illness, and his being under diet, will, and must, cover the strangeness of such practice.”
“And thou,” said Tressilian, “what dost thou think to make of thyself?”
“France, Spain, either India, East or West, shall be my refuge,” said Wayland, “ere I venture my life by residing within ken of Doboobie, Demetrius, or whatever else he calls himself for the time.”
“Well,” said Tressilian, “this happens not inopportunely. I had business for you in Berkshire, but in the opposite extremity to the place where thou art known; and ere thou hadst found out this new reason for living private, I had settled to send thee thither upon a secret embassage.”
The artist expressed himself willing to receive his commands, and Tressilian, knowing he was well acquainted with the outline of his business at court, frankly explained to him the whole, mentioned the agreement which subsisted betwixt Giles Gosling and him, and told what had that day been averred in the presence-chamber by Varney, and supported by Leicester.
“Thou seest,” he added, “that, in the circumstances in which I am placed, it behoves me to keep a narrow watch on the motions of these unprincipled men, Varney and his complices, Foster and Lambourne, as well as on those of my Lord Leicester himself, who, I suspect, is partly a deceiver, and not altogether the deceived in that matter. Here is my ring, as a pledge to Giles Gosling. Here is besides gold, which shall be trebled if thou serve me faithfully. Away down to Cumnor, and see what happens there.”
“I go with double good-will,” said the artist, “first, because I serve your honour, who has been so kind to me; and then, that I may escape my old master, who, if not an absolute incarnation of the devil, has, at least, as much of the demon about him, in will, word, and action; as ever polluted humanity. And yet let him take care of me. I fly him now, as heretofore; but if, like the Scottish wild cattle, I am vexed by frequent pursuit, I may turn on him in hate and desperation.16 Will your honour command my nag to be saddled? I will but give the medicine to my lord, divided in its proper proportions, with a few instructions. His safety will then depend on the care of his friends and domestics; for the past he is guarded, but let him beware of the future.”
Wayland Smith accordingly made his farewell visit to the Earl of Sussex, dictated instructions as to his regimen, and precautions concerning his diet, and left Sayes Court without waiting for morning.
The moment comes —
It is already come — when thou must write
The absolute total of thy life’s vast sum.
The constellations stand victorious o’er thee,
The planets shoot good fortune in fair junctions,
And tell thee, “Now’s the time.”
Schiller’s Wallenstein, by Coleridge.
When Leicester returned to his lodging, alter a day so important and so harassing, in which, after riding out more than one gale, and touching on more than one shoal, his bark had finally gained the harbour with banner displayed, he seemed to experience as much fatigue as a mariner after a perilous storm. He spoke not a word while his chamberlain exchanged his rich court-mantle for a furred night-robe, and when this officer signified that Master Varney desired to speak with his lordship, he replied only by a sullen nod. Varney, however, entered, accepting this signal as a permission, and the chamberlain withdrew.
The Earl remained silent and almost motionless in his chair, his head reclined on his hand, and his elbow resting upon the table which stood beside him, without seeming to be conscious of the entrance or of the presence of his confidant. Varney waited for some minutes until he should speak, desirous to know what was the finally predominant mood of a mind through which so many powerful emotions had that day taken their course. But he waited in vain, for Leicester continued still silent, and the confidant saw himself under the necessity of being the first to speak. “May I congratulate your lordship,” he said, “on the deserved superiority you have this day attained over your most formidable rival?”
Leicester raised his head, and answered sadly, but without anger, “Thou, Varney, whose ready invention has involved me in a web of most mean and perilous falsehood, knowest best what small reason there is for gratulation on the subject.”
“Do you blame me, my lord,” said Varney, “for not betraying, on the first push, the secret on which your fortunes depended, and which you have so oft and so earnestly recommended to my safe keeping? Your lordship was present in person, and might have contradicted me and ruined yourself by an avowal of the truth; but surely it was no part of a faithful servant to have done so without your commands.”
“I cannot deny it, Varney,” said the Earl, rising and walking across the room; “my own ambition has been traitor to my love.”
“Say rather, my lord, that your love has been traitor to your greatness, and barred you from such a prospect of honour and power as the world cannot offer to any other. To make my honoured lady a countess, you have missed the chance of being yourself —”
He paused, and seemed unwilling to complete the sentence.
“Of being myself what?” demanded Leicester; “speak out thy meaning, Varney.”
“Of being yourself a King, my lord,” replied Varney; “and King of England to boot! It is no treason to our Queen to say so. It would have chanced by her obtaining that which all true subjects wish her — a lusty, noble, and gallant husband.”
“Thou ravest, Varney,” answered Leicester. “Besides, our times have seen enough to make men loathe the Crown Matrimonial which men take from their wives’ lap. There was Darnley of Scotland.”
“He!” said Varney; “a, gull, a fool, a thrice-sodden ass, who suffered himself to be fired off into the air like a rocket on a rejoicing day. Had Mary had the hap to have wedded the noble Earl once destined to share her throne, she had experienced a husband of different metal; and her husband had found in her a wife as complying and loving as the mate of the meanest squire who follows the hounds a-horseback, and holds her husband’s bridle as he mounts.”
“It might have been as thou sayest, Varney,” said Leicester, a brief smile of self-satisfaction passing over his anxious countenance. “Henry Darnley knew little of women — with Mary, a man who knew her sex might have had some chance of holding his own. But not with Elizabeth, Varney for I thank God, when he gave her the heart of a woman, gave her the head of a man to control its follies. No, I know her. She will accept love-tokens, ay, and requite them with the like — put sugared sonnets in her bosom, ay, and answer them too — push gallantry to the very verge where it becomes exchange of affection; but she writes nil ultra to all which is to follow, and would not barter one iota of her own supreme power for all the alphabet of both Cupid and Hymen.”
“The better for you, my lord,” said Varney —“that is, in the case supposed, if such be her disposition; since you think you cannot aspire to become her husband. Her favourite you are, and may remain, if the lady at Cumnor place continues in her present obscurity.”
“Poor Amy!” said Leicester, with a deep sigh; “she desires so earnestly to be acknowledged in presence of God and man!”
“Ay, but, my lord,” said Varney, “is her desire reasonable? That is the question. Her religious scruples are solved; she is an honoured and beloved wife, enjoying the society of her husband at such times as his weightier duties permit him to afford her his company. What would she more? I am right sure that a lady so gentle and so loving would consent to live her life through in a certain obscurity — which is, after all, not dimmer than when she was at Lidcote Hall — rather than diminish the least jot of her lord’s honours and greatness by a premature attempt to share them.”
“There is something in what thou sayest,” said Leicester, “and her appearance here were fatal. Yet she must be seen at Kenilworth; Elizabeth will not forget that she has so appointed.”
“Let me sleep on that hard point,” said Varney; “I cannot else perfect the device I have on the stithy, which I trust will satisfy the Queen and please my honoured lady, yet leave this fatal secret where it is now buried. Has your lordship further commands for the night?”
“I would be alone,” said Leicester. “Leave me, and place my steel casket on the table. Be within summons.”
Varney retired, and the Earl, opening the window of his apartment, looked out long and anxiously upon the brilliant host of stars which glimmered in the splendour of a summer firmament. The words burst from him as at unawares, “I had never more need that the heavenly bodies should befriend me, for my earthly path is darkened and confused.”
It is well known that the age reposed a deep confidence in the vain predictions of judicial astrology, and Leicester, though exempt from the general control of superstition, was not in this respect superior to his time, but, on the contrary, was remarkable for the encouragement which he gave to the professors of this pretended science. Indeed, the wish to pry into futurity, so general among the human race, is peculiarly to be found amongst those who trade in state mysteries and the dangerous intrigues and cabals of courts. With heedful precaution to see that it had not been opened, or its locks tampered with, Leicester applied a key to the steel casket, and drew from it, first, a parcel of gold pieces, which he put into a silk purse; then a parchment inscribed with planetary signs, and the lines and calculations used in framing horoscopes, on which he gazed intently for a few moments; and, lastly, took forth a large key, which, lifting aside the tapestry, he applied to a little, concealed door in the corner of the apartment, and opening it, disclosed a stair constructed in the thickness of the wall.
“Alasco,” said the Earl, with a voice raised, yet no higher raised than to be heard by the inhabitant of the small turret to which the stair conducted —“Alasco, I say, descend.”
“I come, my lord,” answered a voice from above. The foot of an aged man was heard slowly descending the narrow stair, and Alasco entered the Earl’s apartment. The astrologer was a little man, and seemed much advanced in age, for his heard was long and white, and reached over his black doublet down to his silken girdle. His hair was of the same venerable hue. But his eyebrows were as dark as the keen and piercing black eyes which they shaded, and this peculiarity gave a wild and singular cast to the physiognomy of the old man. His cheek was still fresh and ruddy, and the eyes we have mentioned resembled those of a rat in acuteness and even fierceness of expression. His manner was not without a sort of dignity; and the interpreter of the stars, though respectful, seemed altogether at his ease, and even assumed a tone of instruction and command in conversing with the prime favourite of Elizabeth.
“Your prognostications have failed, Alasco,” said the Earl, when they had exchanged salutations —“he is recovering.”
“My son,” replied the astrologer, “let me remind you I warranted not his death; nor is there any prognostication that can be derived from the heavenly bodies, their aspects and their conjunctions, which is not liable to be controlled by the will of Heaven. Astra Regunt Homines, Sed Regit Astra Deus.”
“Of what avail, then, is your mystery?” inquired the Earl.
“Of much, my son,” replied the old man, “since it can show the natural and probable course of events, although that course moves in subordination to an Higher Power. Thus, in reviewing the horoscope which your Lordship subjected to my skill, you will observe that Saturn, being in the sixth House in opposition to Mars, retrograde in the House of Life, cannot but denote long and dangerous sickness, the issue whereof is in the will of Heaven, though death may probably be inferred. Yet if I knew the name of the party I would erect another scheme.”
“His name is a secret,” said the Earl; “yet, I must own, thy prognostication hath not been unfaithful. He has been sick, and dangerously so, not, however, to death. But hast thou again cast my horoscope as Varney directed thee, and art thou prepared to say what the stars tell of my present fortune?”
“My art stands at your command,” said the old man; “and here, my son, is the map of thy fortunes, brilliant in aspect as ever beamed from those blessed signs whereby our life is influenced, yet not unchequered with fears, difficulties, and dangers.”
“My lot were more than mortal were it otherwise,” said the Earl. “Proceed, father, and believe you speak with one ready to undergo his destiny in action and in passion as may beseem a noble of England.”
“Thy courage to do and to suffer must be wound up yet a strain higher,” said the old man. “The stars intimate yet a prouder title, yet an higher rank. It is for thee to guess their meaning, not for me to name it.”
“Name it, I conjure you — name it, I command you!” said the Earl, his eyes brightening as he spoke.
“I may not, and I will not,” replied the old man. “The ire of princes Is as the wrath of the lion. But mark, and judge for thyself. Here Venus, ascendant in the House of Life, and conjoined with Sol, showers down that flood of silver light, blent with gold, which promises power, wealth, dignity, all that the proud heart of man desires, and in such abundance that never the future Augustus of that old and mighty Rome heard from his haruspices such a tale of glory, as from this rich text my lore might read to my favourite son.”
“Thou dost but jest with me, father,” said the Earl, astonished at the strain of enthusiasm in which the astrologer delivered his prediction.
“Is it for him to jest who hath his eye on heaven, who hath his foot in the grave?” returned the old man solemnly.
The Earl made two or three strides through the apartment, with his hand outstretched, as one who follows the beckoning signal of some phantom, waving him on to deeds of high import. As he turned, however, he caught the eye of the astrologer fixed on him, while an observing glance of the most shrewd penetration shot from under the penthouse of his shaggy, dark eyebrows. Leicester’s haughty and suspicious soul at once caught fire. He darted towards the old man from the farther end of the lofty apartment, only standing still when his extended hand was within a foot of the astrologer’s body.
“Wretch!” he said, “if you dare to palter with me, I will have your skin stripped from your living flesh! Confess thou hast been hired to deceive and to betray me — that thou art a cheat, and I thy silly prey and booty!”
The old man exhibited some symptoms of emotion, but not more than the furious deportment of his patron might have extorted from innocence itself.
“What means this violence, my lord?” he answered, “or in what can I have deserved it at your hand?”
“Give me proof,” said the Earl vehemently, “that you have not tampered with mine enemies.”
“My lord,” replied the old man, with dignity, “you can have no better proof than that which you yourself elected. In that turret I have spent the last twenty-four hours under the key which has been in your own custody. The hours of darkness I have spent in gazing on the heavenly bodies with these dim eyes, and during those of light I have toiled this aged brain to complete the calculation arising from their combinations. Earthly food I have not tasted — earthly voice I have not heard. You are yourself aware I had no means of doing so; and yet I tell you — I who have been thus shut up in solitude and study — that within these twenty-four hours your star has become predominant in the horizon, and either the bright book of heaven speaks false, or there must have been a proportionate revolution in your fortunes upon earth. If nothing has happened within that space to secure your power, or advance your favour, then am I indeed a cheat, and the divine art, which was first devised in the plains of Chaldea, is a foul imposture.”
“It is true,” said Leicester, after a moment’s reflection, “thou wert closely immured; and it is also true that the change has taken place in my situation which thou sayest the horoscope indicates.”
“Wherefore this distrust then, my son?” said the astrologer, assuming a tone of admonition; “the celestial intelligences brook not diffidence, even in their favourites.”
“Peace, father,” answered Leicester, “I have erred in doubting thee. Not to mortal man, nor to celestial intelligence — under that which is supreme — will Dudley’s lips say more in condescension or apology. Speak rather to the present purpose. Amid these bright promises thou hast said there was a threatening aspect. Can thy skill tell whence, or by whose means, such danger seems to impend?”
“Thus far only,” answered the astrologer, “does my art enable me to answer your query. The infortune is threatened by the malignant and adverse aspect, through means of a youth, and, as I think, a rival; but whether in love or in prince’s favour, I know not nor can I give further indication respecting him, save that he comes from the western quarter.”
“The western — ha!” replied Leicester, “it is enough — the tempest does indeed brew in that quarter! Cornwall and Devon — Raleigh and Tressilian — one of them is indicated-I must beware of both. Father, if I have done thy skill injustice, I will make thee a lordly recompense.”
He took a purse of gold from the strong casket which stood before him. “Have thou double the recompense which Varney promised. Be faithful — be secret — obey the directions thou shalt receive from my master of the horse, and grudge not a little seclusion or restraint in my cause — it shall be richly considered.— Here, Varney — conduct this venerable man to thine own lodging; tend him heedfully in all things, but see that he holds communication with no one.
Varney bowed, and the astrologer kissed the Earl’s hand in token of adieu, and followed the master of the horse to another apartment, in which were placed wine and refreshments for his use.
The astrologer sat down to his repast, while Varney shut two doors with great precaution, examined the tapestry, lest any listener lurked behind it, and then sitting down opposite to the sage, began to question him.
“Saw you my signal from the court beneath?”
“I did,” said Alasco, for by such name he was at present called, “and shaped the horoscope accordingly.”
“And it passed upon the patron without challenge?” continued Varney.
“Not without challenge,” replied the old man, “but it did pass; and I added, as before agreed, danger from a discovered secret, and a western youth.”
“My lord’s fear will stand sponsor to the one, and his conscience to the other, of these prognostications,” replied Varney. “Sure never man chose to run such a race as his, yet continued to retain those silly scruples! I am fain to cheat him to his own profit. But touching your matters, sage interpreter of the stars, I can tell you more of your own fortune than plan or figure can show. You must be gone from hence forthwith.”
“I will not,” said Alasco peevishly. “I have been too much hurried up and down of late — immured for day and night in a desolate turret-chamber. I must enjoy my liberty, and pursue my studies, which are of more import than the fate of fifty statesmen and favourites that rise and burst like bubbles in the atmosphere of a court.”
“At your pleasure,” said Varney, with a sneer that habit had rendered familiar to his features, and which forms the principal characteristic which painters have assigned to that of Satan —“at your pleasure,” he said; “you may enjoy your liberty and your studies until the daggers of Sussex’s followers are clashing within your doublet and against your ribs.” The old man turned pale, and Varney proceeded. “Wot you not he hath offered a reward for the arch-quack and poison-vender, Demetrius, who sold certain precious spices to his lordship’s cook? What! turn you pale, old friend? Does Hali already see an infortune in the House of Life? Why, hark thee, we will have thee down to an old house of mine in the country, where thou shalt live with a hobnailed slave, whom thy alchemy may convert into ducats, for to such conversion alone is thy art serviceable.”
“It is false, thou foul-mouthed railer,” said Alasco, shaking with impotent anger; “it is well known that I have approached more nearly to projection than any hermetic artist who now lives. There are not six chemists in the world who possess so near an approximation to the grand arcanum —”
“Come, come,” said Varney, interrupting him, “what means this, in the name of Heaven? Do we not know one another? I believe thee to be so perfect — so very perfect — in the mystery of cheating, that, having imposed upon all mankind, thou hast at length in some measure imposed upon thyself, and without ceasing to dupe others, hast become a species of dupe to thine own imagination. Blush not for it, man — thou art learned, and shalt have classical comfort:
‘Ne quisquam Ajacem possit superare nisi Ajax.’
No one but thyself could have gulled thee; and thou hast gulled the whole brotherhood of the Rosy Cross besides — none so deep in the mystery as thou. But hark thee in thine ear: had the seasoning which spiced Sussex’s broth wrought more surely, I would have thought better of the chemical science thou dost boast so highly.”
“Thou art an hardened villain, Varney,” replied Alasco; “many will do those things who dare not speak of them.”
“And many speak of them who dare not do them,” answered Varney. “But be not wroth — I will not quarrel with thee. If I did, I were fain to live on eggs for a month, that I might feed without fear. Tell me at once, how came thine art to fail thee at this great emergency?”
“The Earl of Sussex’s horoscope intimates,” replied the astrologer, “that the sign of the ascendant being in combustion —”
“Away with your gibberish,” replied Varney; “thinkest thou it is the patron thou speakest with?”
“I crave your pardon,” replied the old man, “and swear to you I know but one medicine that could have saved the Earl’s life; and as no man living in England knows that antidote save myself — moreover, as the ingredients, one of them in particular, are scarce possible to be come by, I must needs suppose his escape was owing to such a constitution of lungs and vital parts as was never before bound up in a body of clay.”
“There was some talk of a quack who waited on him,” said Varney, after a moment’s reflection. “Are you sure there is no one in England who has this secret of thine?”
“One man there was,” said the doctor, “once my servant, who might have stolen this of me, with one or two other secrets of art. But content you, Master Varney, it is no part of my policy to suffer such interlopers to interfere in my trade. He pries into no mysteries more, I warrant you, for, as I well believe, he hath been wafted to heaven on the wing of a fiery dragon — peace be with him! But in this retreat of mine shall I have the use of mine elaboratory?”
“Of a whole workshop, man,” said Varney; “for a reverend father abbot, who was fain to give place to bluff King Hal and some of his courtiers, a score of years since, had a chemist’s complete apparatus, which he was obliged to leave behind him to his successors. Thou shalt there occupy, and melt, and puff, and blaze, and multiply, until the Green Dragon become a golden goose, or whatever the newer phrase of the brotherhood may testify.”
“Thou art right, Master Varney,” said the alchemist setting his teeth close and grinding them together —“thou art right even in thy very contempt of right and reason. For what thou sayest in mockery may in sober verity chance to happen ere we meet again. If the most venerable sages of ancient days have spoken the truth — if the most learned of our own have rightly received it; if I have been accepted wherever I travelled in Germany, in Poland, in Italy, and in the farther Tartary, as one to whom nature has unveiled her darkest secrets; if I have acquired the most secret signs and passwords of the Jewish Cabala, so that the greyest beard in the synagogue would brush the steps to make them clean for me;— if all this is so, and if there remains but one step — one little step — betwixt my long, deep, and dark, and subterranean progress, and that blaze of light which shall show Nature watching her richest and her most glorious productions in the very cradle — one step betwixt dependence and the power of sovereignty — one step betwixt poverty and such a sum of wealth as earth, without that noble secret, cannot minister from all her mines in the old or the new-found world; if this be all so, is it not reasonable that to this I dedicate my future life, secure, for a brief period of studious patience, to rise above the mean dependence upon favourites, and their favourites, by which I am now enthralled!”
“Now, bravo! bravo! my good father,” said Varney, with the usual sardonic expression of ridicule on his countenance; “yet all this approximation to the philosopher’s stone wringeth not one single crown out of my Lord Leicester’s pouch, and far less out of Richard Varney’s. We must have earthly and substantial services, man, and care not whom else thou canst delude with thy philosophical charlatanry.”
“My son Varney,” said the alchemist, “the unbelief, gathered around thee like a frost-fog, hath dimmed thine acute perception to that which is a stumbling-block to the wise, and which yet, to him who seeketh knowledge with humility, extends a lesson so clear that he who runs may read. Hath not Art, thinkest thou, the means of completing Nature’s imperfect concoctions in her attempts to form the precious metals, even as by art we can perfect those other operations of incubation, distillation, fermentation, and similar processes of an ordinary description, by which we extract life itself out of a senseless egg, summon purity and vitality out of muddy dregs, or call into vivacity the inert substance of a sluggish liquid?”
“I have heard all this before,” said Varney, “and my heart is proof against such cant ever since I sent twenty good gold pieces (marry, it was in the nonage of my wit) to advance the grand magisterium, all which, God help the while, vanished in fumo. Since that moment, when I paid for my freedom, I defy chemistry, astrology, palmistry, and every other occult art, were it as secret as hell itself, to unloose the stricture of my purse-strings. Marry, I neither defy the manna of Saint Nicholas, nor can I dispense with it. The first task must be to prepare some when thou gett’st down to my little sequestered retreat yonder, and then make as much gold as thou wilt.”
“I will make no more of that dose,” said the alchemist, resolutely.
“Then,” said the master of the horse, “thou shalt be hanged for what thou hast made already, and so were the great secret for ever lost to mankind. Do not humanity this injustice, good father, but e’en bend to thy destiny, and make us an ounce or two of this same stuff; which cannot prejudice above one or two individuals, in order to gain lifetime to discover the universal medicine, which shall clear away all mortal diseases at once. But cheer up, thou grave, learned, and most melancholy jackanape! Hast thou not told me that a moderate portion of thy drug hath mild effects, no ways ultimately dangerous to the human frame, but which produces depression of spirits, nausea, headache, an unwillingness to change of place — even such a state of temper as would keep a bird from flying out of a cage were the door left open?”
“I have said so, and it is true,” said the alchemist. “This effect will it produce, and the bird who partakes of it in such proportion shall sit for a season drooping on her perch, without thinking either of the free blue sky, or of the fair greenwood, though the one be lighted by the rays of the rising sun, and the other ringing with the newly-awakened song of all the feathered inhabitants of the forest.”
“And this without danger to life?” said Varney, somewhat anxiously.
“Ay, so that proportion and measure be not exceeded; and so that one who knows the nature of the manna be ever near to watch the symptoms, and succour in case of need.”
“Thou shalt regulate the whole,” said Varney. “Thy reward shall be princely, if thou keepest time and touch, and exceedest not the due proportion, to the prejudice of her health; otherwise thy punishment shall be as signal.”
“The prejudice of her health!” repeated Alasco; “it is, then, a woman I am to use my skill upon?”
“No, thou fool,” replied Varney, “said I not it was a bird — a reclaimed linnet, whose pipe might soothe a hawk when in mid stoop? I see thine eye sparkle, and I know thy beard is not altogether so white as art has made it — that, at least, thou hast been able to transmute to silver. But mark me, this is no mate for thee. This caged bird is dear to one who brooks no rivalry, and far less such rivalry as thine, and her health must over all things be cared for. But she is in the case of being commanded down to yonder Kenilworth revels, and it is most expedient — most needful — most necessary that she fly not thither. Of these necessities and their causes, it is not needful that she should know aught; and it is to be thought that her own wish may lead her to combat all ordinary reasons which can be urged for her remaining a housekeeper.”
“That is but natural,” said the alchemist with a strange smile, which yet bore a greater reference to the human character than the uninterested and abstracted gaze which his physiognomy had hitherto expressed, where all seemed to refer to some world distant from that which was existing around him.
“It is so,” answered Varney; “you understand women well, though it may have been long since you were conversant amongst them. Well, then, she is not to be contradicted; yet she is not to be humoured. Understand me — a slight illness, sufficient to take away the desire of removing from thence, and to make such of your wise fraternity as may be called in to aid, recommend a quiet residence at home, will, in one word, be esteemed good service, and remunerated as such.”
“I am not to be asked to affect the House of Life?” said the chemist.
“On the contrary, we will have thee hanged if thou dost,” replied Varney.
“And I must,” added Alasco, “have opportunity to do my turn, and all facilities for concealment or escape, should there be detection?”
“All, all, and everything, thou infidel in all but the impossibilities of alchemy. Why, man, for what dost thou take me?”
The old man rose, and taking a light walked towards the end of the apartment, where was a door that led to the small sleeping-room destined for his reception during the night. At the door he turned round, and slowly repeated Varney’s question ere he answered it. “For what do I take thee, Richard Varney? Why, for a worse devil than I have been myself. But I am in your toils, and I must serve you till my term be out.”
“Well, well,” answered Varney hastily, “be stirring with grey light. It may be we shall not need thy medicine — do nought till I myself come down. Michael Lambourne shall guide you to the place of your destination.”17
When Varney heard the adept’s door shut and carefully bolted within, he stepped towards it, and with similar precaution carefully locked it on the outside, and took the key from the lock, muttering to himself, “Worse than thee, thou poisoning quacksalver and witch-monger, who, if thou art not a bounden slave to the devil, it is only because he disdains such an apprentice! I am a mortal man, and seek by mortal means the gratification of my passions and advancement of my prospects; thou art a vassal of hell itself — So ho, Lambourne!” he called at another door, and Michael made his appearance with a flushed cheek and an unsteady step.
“Thou art drunk, thou villain!” said Varney to him.
“Doubtless, noble sir,” replied the unabashed Michael; “We have been drinking all even to the glories of the day, and to my noble Lord of Leicester and his valiant master of the horse. Drunk! odds blades and poniards, he that would refuse to swallow a dozen healths on such an evening is a base besognio, and a puckfoist, and shall swallow six inches of my dagger!”
“Hark ye, scoundrel,” said Varney, “be sober on the instant — I command thee. I know thou canst throw off thy drunken folly, like a fool’s coat, at pleasure; and if not, it were the worse for thee.”
Lambourne drooped his head, left the apartment, and returned in two or three minutes with his face composed, his hair adjusted, his dress in order, and exhibiting as great a difference from his former self as if the whole man had been changed.
“Art thou sober now, and dost thou comprehend me?” said Varney sternly.
Lambourne bowed in acquiescence.
“Thou must presently down to Cumnor Place with the reverend man of art who sleeps yonder in the little vaulted chamber. Here is the key, that thou mayest call him by times. Take another trusty fellow with you. Use him well on the journey, but let him not escape you — pistol him if he attempt it, and I will be your warrant. I will give thee letters to Foster. The doctor is to occupy the lower apartments of the eastern quadrangle, with freedom to use the old elaboratory and its implements. He is to have no access to the lady, but such as I shall point out — only she may be amused to see his philosophical jugglery. Thou wilt await at Cumnor Place my further orders; and, as thou livest, beware of the ale-bench and the aqua vitae flask. Each breath drawn in Cumnor Place must be kept severed from common air.”
“Enough, my lord — I mean my worshipful master, soon, I trust, to be my worshipful knightly master. You have given me my lesson and my license; I will execute the one, and not abuse the other. I will be in the saddle by daybreak.”
“Do so, and deserve favour. Stay — ere thou goest fill me a cup of wine — not out of that flask, sirrah,” as Lambourne was pouring out from that which Alasco had left half finished, “fetch me a fresh one.”
Lambourne obeyed, and Varney, after rinsing his mouth with the liquor, drank a full cup, and said, as he took up a lamp to retreat to his sleeping apartment, “It is strange — I am as little the slave of fancy as any one, yet I never speak for a few minutes with this fellow Alasco, but my mouth and lungs feel as if soiled with the fumes of calcined arsenic — pah!”
So saying, he left the apartment. Lambourne lingered, to drink a cup of the freshly-opened flask. “It is from Saint John’s-Berg,” he said, as he paused on the draught to enjoy its flavour, “and has the true relish of the violet. But I must forbear it now, that I may one day drink it at my own pleasure.” And he quaffed a goblet of water to quench the fumes of the Rhenish wine, retired slowly towards the door, made a pause, and then, finding the temptation irresistible, walked hastily back, and took another long pull at the wine flask, without the formality of a cup.
“Were it not for this accursed custom,” he said, “I might climb as high as Varney himself. But who can climb when the room turns round with him like a parish-top? I would the distance were greater, or the road rougher, betwixt my hand and mouth! But I will drink nothing tomorrow save water — nothing save fair water.”
Pistol. And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,
And happy news of price.
Falstaff. I prithee now deliver them like to men of this world.
Pistol. A foutra for the world, and worldlings base!
I speak of Africa, and golden joys.
Henry IV. Part II.
The public room of the Black Bear at Cumnor, to which the scene of our story now returns, boasted, on the evening which we treat of, no ordinary assemblage of guests. There had been a fair in the neighbourhood, and the cutting mercer of Abingdon, with some of the other personages whom the reader has already been made acquainted with, as friends and customers of Giles Gosling, had already formed their wonted circle around the evening fire, and were talking over the news of the day.
A lively, bustling, arch fellow, whose pack, and oaken ellwand studded duly with brass points, denoted him to be of Autolycus’s profession, occupied a good deal of the attention, and furnished much of the amusement, of the evening. The pedlars of those days, it must be remembered, were men of far greater importance than the degenerate and degraded hawkers of our modern times. It was by means of these peripatetic venders that the country trade, in the finer manufactures used in female dress particularly, was almost entirely carried on; and if a merchant of this description arrived at the dignity of travelling with a pack-horse, he was a person of no small consequence, and company for the most substantial yeoman or franklin whom he might meet in his wanderings.
The pedlar of whom we speak bore, accordingly, an active and unrebuked share in the merriment to which the rafters of the bonny Black Bear of Cumnor resounded. He had his smile with pretty Mistress Cicely, his broad laugh with mine host, and his jest upon dashing Master Goldthred, who, though indeed without any such benevolent intention on his own part, was the general butt of the evening. The pedlar and he were closely engaged in a dispute upon the preference due to the Spanish nether-stock over the black Gascoigne hose, and mine host had just winked to the guests around him, as who should say, “You will have mirth presently, my masters,” when the trampling of horses was heard in the courtyard, and the hostler was loudly summoned, with a few of the newest oaths then in vogue to add force to the invocation. Out tumbled Will Hostler, John Tapster, and all the militia of the inn, who had slunk from their posts in order to collect some scattered crumbs of the mirth which was flying about among the customers. Out into the yard sallied mine host himself also, to do fitting salutation to his new guests; and presently returned, ushering into the apartment his own worthy nephew, Michael Lambourne, pretty tolerably drunk, and having under his escort the astrologer. Alasco, though still a little old man, had, by altering his gown to a riding-dress, trimming his beard and eyebrows, and so forth, struck at least a score of years from his apparent age, and might now seem an active man of sixty, or little upwards. He appeared at present exceedingly anxious, and had insisted much with Lambourne that they should not enter the inn, but go straight forward to the place of their destination. But Lambourne would not be controlled. “By Cancer and Capricorn,” he vociferated, “and the whole heavenly host, besides all the stars that these blessed eyes of mine have seen sparkle in the southern heavens, to which these northern blinkers are but farthing candles, I will be unkindly for no one’s humour — I will stay and salute my worthy uncle here. Chesu! that good blood should ever be forgotten betwixt friends!— A gallon of your best, uncle, and let it go round to the health of the noble Earl of Leicester! What! shall we not collogue together, and warm the cockles of our ancient kindness?— shall we not collogue, I say?”
“With all my heart, kinsman,” said mine host, who obviously wished to be rid of him; “but are you to stand shot to all this good liquor?”
This is a question has quelled many a jovial toper, but it moved not the purpose of Lambourne’s soul, “Question my means, nuncle?” he said, producing a handful of mixed gold and silver pieces; “question Mexico and Peru — question the Queen’s exchequer — God save her Majesty!— she is my good Lord’s good mistress.”
“Well, kinsman,” said mine host, “it is my business to sell wine to those who can buy it — so, Jack Tapster, do me thine office. But I would I knew how to come by money as lightly as thou dost, Mike.”
“Why, uncle,” said Lambourne, “I will tell thee a secret. Dost see this little old fellow here? as old and withered a chip as ever the devil put into his porridge — and yet, uncle, between you and me — he hath Potosi in that brain of his —‘sblood! he can coin ducats faster than I can vent oaths.”
“I will have none of his coinage in my purse, though, Michael,” said mine host; “I know what belongs to falsifying the Queen’s coin.”
“Thou art an ass, uncle, for as old as thou art.— Pull me not by the skirts, doctor, thou art an ass thyself to boot — so, being both asses, I tell ye I spoke but metaphorically.”
“Are you mad?’ said the old man; “is the devil in you? Can you not let us begone without drawing all men’s eyes on us?”
“Sayest thou?” said Lambourne. “Thou art deceived now — no man shall see you, an I give the word.— By heavens, masters, an any one dare to look on this old gentleman, I will slash the eyes out of his head with my poniard!— So sit down, old friend, and be merry; these are mine ingles — mine ancient inmates, and will betray no man.”
“Had you not better withdraw to a private apartment, nephew?” said Giles Gosling. “You speak strange matter,” he added, “and there be intelligencers everywhere.”
“I care not for them,” said the magnanimous Michael — “intelligencers? pshaw! I serve the noble Earl of Leicester. — Here comes the wine.— Fill round, Master Skinker, a carouse to the health of the flower of England, the noble Earl of Leicester! I say, the noble Earl of Leicester! He that does me not reason is a swine of Sussex, and I’ll make him kneel to the pledge, if I should cut his hams and smoke them for bacon.”
None disputed a pledge given under such formidable penalties; and Michael Lambourne, whose drunken humour was not of course diminished by this new potation, went on in the same wild way, renewing his acquaintance with such of the guests as he had formerly known, and experiencing a reception in which there was now something of deference mingled with a good deal of fear; for the least servitor of the favourite Earl, especially such a man as Lambourne, was, for very sufficient reasons, an object both of the one and of the other.
In the meanwhile, the old man, seeing his guide in this uncontrollable humour, ceased to remonstrate with him, and sitting down in the most obscure corner of the room, called for a small measure of sack, over which he seemed, as it were, to slumber, withdrawing himself as much as possible from general observation, and doing nothing which could recall his existence to the recollection of his fellow-traveller, who by this time had got into close intimacy with his ancient comrade, Goldthred of Abingdon.
“Never believe me, bully Mike,” said the mercer, “if I am not as glad to see thee as ever I was to see a customer’s money! Why, thou canst give a friend a sly place at a mask or a revel now, Mike; ay, or, I warrant thee, thou canst say in my lord’s ear, when my honourable lord is down in these parts, and wants a Spanish ruff or the like — thou canst say in his ear, There is mine old friend, young Lawrence Goldthred of Abingdon, has as good wares, lawn, tiffany, cambric, and so forth — ay, and is as pretty a piece of man’s flesh, too, as is in Berkshire, and will ruffle it for your lordship with any man of his inches; and thou mayest say —”
“I can say a hundred d — d lies besides, mercer,” answered Lambourne; “what, one must not stand upon a good word for a friend!”
“Here is to thee, Mike, with all my heart,” said the mercer; “and thou canst tell one the reality of the new fashions too. Here was a rogue pedlar but now was crying up the old-fashioned Spanish nether-stock over the Gascoigne hose, although thou seest how well the French hose set off the leg and knee, being adorned with parti-coloured garters and garniture in conformity.”
“Excellent, excellent,” replied Lambourne; “why, thy limber bit of a thigh, thrust through that bunch of slashed buckram and tiffany, shows like a housewife’s distaff when the flax is half spun off!”
“Said I not so?” said the mercer, whose shallow brain was now overflowed in his turn; “where, then, where be this rascal pedlar?— there was a pedlar here but now, methinks.— Mine host, where the foul fiend is this pedlar?”
“Where wise men should be, Master Goldthred,” replied Giles Gosling; “even shut up in his private chamber, telling over the sales of today, and preparing for the custom of tomorrow.”
“Hang him, a mechanical chuff!” said the mercer; “but for shame, it were a good deed to ease him of his wares — a set of peddling knaves, who stroll through the land, and hurt the established trader. There are good fellows in Berkshire yet, mine host — your pedlar may be met withal on Maiden Castle.”
“Ay,” replied mine host, laughing, “and he who meets him may meet his match — the pedlar is a tall man.”
“Is he?” said Goldthred.
“Is he?” replied the host; “ay, by cock and pie is he — the very pedlar he who raddled Robin Hood so tightly, as the song says,—
‘Now Robin Hood drew his sword so good,
The pedlar drew his brand,
And he hath raddled him, Robin Hood,
Till he neither could see nor stand.’”
“Hang him, foul scroyle, let him pass,” said the mercer; “if he be such a one, there were small worship to be won upon him.— And now tell me, Mike — my honest Mike, how wears the Hollands you won of me?”
“Why, well, as you may see, Master Goldthred,” answered Mike; “I will bestow a pot on thee for the handsel.— Fill the flagon, Master Tapster.”
“Thou wilt win no more Hollands, think, on such wager, friend Mike,” said the mercer; “for the sulky swain, Tony Foster, rails at thee all to nought, and swears you shall ne’er darken his doors again, for that your oaths are enough to blow the roof off a Christian man’s dwelling.”
“Doth he say so, the mincing, hypocritical miser?” vociferated Lambourne. “Why, then, he shall come down and receive my commands here, this blessed night, under my uncle’s roof! And I will ring him such a black sanctus, that he shall think the devil hath him by the skirts for a month to come, for barely hearing me.”
“Nay, now the pottle-pot is uppermost, with a witness!” said the mercer. “Tony Foster obey thy whistle! Alas! good Mike, go sleep — go sleep.”
“I tell thee what, thou thin-faced gull,” said Michael Lambourne, in high chafe, “I will wager thee fifty angels against the first five shelves of thy shop, numbering upward from the false light, with all that is on them, that I make Tony Foster come down to this public-house before we have finished three rounds.”
“I will lay no bet to that amount,” said the mercer, something sobered by an offer which intimated rather too private a knowledge on Lambourne’s part of the secret recesses of his shop. “I will lay no such wager,” he said; “but I will stake five angels against thy five, if thou wilt, that Tony Foster will not leave his own roof, or come to ale-house after prayer time, for thee, or any man.”
“Content,” said Lambourne.—“Here, uncle, hold stakes, and let one of your young bleed-barrels there — one of your infant tapsters — trip presently up to The Place, and give this letter to Master Foster, and say that I, his ingle, Michael Lambourne, pray to speak with him at mine uncle’s castle here, upon business of grave import.— Away with thee, child, for it is now sundown, and the wretch goeth to bed with the birds to save mutton-suet — faugh!”
Shortly after this messenger was dispatched — an interval which was spent in drinking and buffoonery — he returned with the answer that Master Foster was coming presently.
“Won, won!” said Lambourne, darting on the stakes.
“Not till he comes, if you please,” said the mercer, interfering.
“Why, ‘sblood, he is at the threshold,” replied Michael.—“What said he, boy?”
“If it please your worship,” answered the messenger, “he looked out of window, with a musquetoon in his hand, and when I delivered your errand, which I did with fear and trembling, he said, with a vinegar aspect, that your worship might be gone to the infernal regions.”
“Or to hell, I suppose,” said Lambourne —“it is there he disposes of all that are not of the congregation.”
“Even so,” said the boy; “I used the other phrase as being the more poetical.”
“An ingenious youth,” said Michael; “shalt have a drop to whet thy poetical whistle. And what said Foster next?”
“He called me back,” answered the boy, “and bid me say you might come to him if you had aught to say to him.”
“And what next?” said Lambourne.
“He read the letter, and seemed in a fluster, and asked if your worship was in drink; and I said you were speaking a little Spanish, as one who had been in the Canaries.”
“Out, you diminutive pint-pot, whelped of an overgrown reckoning!” replied Lambourne —“out! But what said he then?”
“Why,” said the boy, “he muttered that if he came not your worship would bolt out what were better kept in; and so he took his old flat cap, and threadbare blue cloak, and, as I said before, he will be here incontinent.”
“There is truth in what he said,” replied Lambourne, as if speaking to himself —“my brain has played me its old dog’s trick. But corragio — let him approach!— I have not rolled about in the world for many a day to fear Tony Foster, be I drunk or sober.— Bring me a flagon of cold water to christen my sack withal.”
While Lambourne, whom the approach of Foster seemed to have recalled to a sense of his own condition, was busied in preparing to receive him, Giles Gosling stole up to the apartment of the pedlar, whom he found traversing the room in much agitation.
“You withdrew yourself suddenly from the company,” said the landlord to the guest.
“It was time, when the devil became one among you,” replied the pedlar.
“It is not courteous in you to term my nephew by such a name,” said Gosling, “nor is it kindly in me to reply to it; and yet, in some sort, Mike may be considered as a limb of Satan.”
“Pooh — I talk not of the swaggering ruffian,” replied the pedlar; “it is of the other, who, for aught I know — But when go they? or wherefore come they?”
“Marry, these are questions I cannot answer,” replied the host. “But look you, sir, you have brought me a token from worthy Master Tressilian — a pretty stone it is.” He took out the ring, and looked at it, adding, as he put it into his purse again, that it was too rich a guerdon for anything he could do for the worthy donor. He was, he said, in the public line, and it ill became him to be too inquisitive into other folk’s concerns. He had already said that he could hear nothing but that the lady lived still at Cumnor Place in the closest seclusion, and, to such as by chance had a view of her, seemed pensive and discontented with her solitude. “But here,” he said, “if you are desirous to gratify your master, is the rarest chance that hath occurred for this many a day. Tony Foster is coming down hither, and it is but letting Mike Lambourne smell another wine-flask, and the Queen’s command would not move him from the ale-bench. So they are fast for an hour or so. Now, if you will don your pack, which will be your best excuse, you may, perchance, win the ear of the old servant, being assured of the master’s absence, to let you try to get some custom of the lady; and then you may learn more of her condition than I or any other can tell you.”
“True — very true,” answered Wayland, for he it was; “an excellent device, but methinks something dangerous — for, say Foster should return?”
“Very possible indeed,” replied the host.
“Or say,” continued Wayland, “the lady should render me cold thanks for my exertions?”
“As is not unlikely,” replied Giles Gosling. “I marvel Master Tressilian will take such heed of her that cares not for him.”
“In either case I were foully sped,” said Wayland, “and therefore I do not, on the whole, much relish your device.”
“Nay, but take me with you, good master serving-man,” replied mine host. “This is your master’s business, and not mine:, you best know the risk to be encountered, or how far you are willing to brave it. But that which you will not yourself hazard, you cannot expect others to risk.”
“Hold, hold,” said Wayland; “tell me but one thing — goes yonder old man up to Cumnor?”
“Surely, I think so?” said the landlord; “their servant said he was to take their baggage thither. But the ale-tap has been as potent for him as the sack-spigot has been for Michael.”
“It is enough,” said Wayland, assuming an air of resolution. “I will thwart that old villain’s projects; my affright at his baleful aspect begins to abate, and my hatred to arise. Help me on with my pack, good mine host.— And look to thyself, old Albumazar; there is a malignant influence in thy horoscope, and it gleams from the constellation Ursa Major.”
So saying, he assumed his burden, and, guided by the landlord through the postern gate of the Black Bear, took the most private way from thence up to Cumnor Place.
Clown. You have of these pedlars, that have more in’em than you’d think, sister.
Winter’s Tale, Act IV., Scene 3.
In his anxiety to obey the Earl’s repeated charges of secrecy, as well as from his own unsocial and miserly habits, Anthony Foster was more desirous, by his mode of housekeeping, to escape observation than to resist intrusive curiosity. Thus, instead of a numerous household, to secure his charge, and defend his house, he studied as much as possible to elude notice by diminishing his attendants; so that, unless when there were followers of the Earl, or of Varney, in the mansion, one old male domestic, and two aged crones, who assisted in keeping the Countess’s apartments in order, were the only servants of the family.
It was one of these old women who opened the door when Wayland knocked, and answered his petition, to be admitted to exhibit his wares to the ladies of the family, with a volley of vituperation, couched in what is there called the Jowring dialect. The pedlar found the means of checking this vociferation by slipping a silver groat into her hand, and intimating the present of some stuff for a coif, if the lady would buy of his wares.
“God ield thee, for mine is aw in littocks. Slocket with thy pack into gharn, mon — her walks in gharn.” Into the garden she ushered the pedlar accordingly, and pointing to an old, ruinous garden house, said, “Yonder be’s her, mon — yonder be’s her. Zhe will buy changes an zhe loikes stuffs.”
“She has left me to come off as I may,” thought Wayland, as he heard the hag shut the garden-door behind him. “But they shall not beat me, and they dare not murder me, for so little trespass, and by this fair twilight. Hang it, I will on — a brave general never thought of his retreat till he was defeated. I see two females in the old garden-house yonder — but how to address them? Stay — Will Shakespeare, be my friend in need. I will give them a taste of Autolycus.” He then sung, with a good voice, and becoming audacity, the popular playhouse ditty,—
“Lawn as white as driven snow,
Cyprus black as e’er was crow,
Gloves as sweet as damask roses,
Masks for faces and for noses.”
“What hath fortune sent us here for an unwonted sight, Janet?” said the lady.
“One of those merchants of vanity, called pedlars,” answered Janet, demurely, “who utters his light wares in lighter measures. I marvel old Dorcas let him pass.”
“It is a lucky chance, girl,” said the Countess; “we lead a heavy life here, and this may while off a weary hour.”
“Ay, my gracious lady,” said Janet; “but my father?”
“He is not my father, Janet, nor I hope my master,” answered the lady. “I say, call the man hither — I want some things.”
“Nay,” replied Janet, “your ladyship has but to say so in the next packet, and if England can furnish them they will be sent. There will come mischief on’t — pray, dearest lady, let me bid the man begone!”
“I will have thee bid him come hither,” said the Countess;—“or stay, thou terrified fool, I will bid him myself, and spare thee a chiding.”
“Ah! well-a-day, dearest lady, if that were the worst,” said Janet sadly; while the lady called to the pedlar, “Good fellow, step forward — undo thy pack; if thou hast good wares, chance has sent thee hither for my convenience and thy profit.”
“What may your ladyship please to lack?” said Wayland, unstrapping his pack, and displaying its contents with as much dexterity as if he had been bred to the trade. Indeed he had occasionally pursued it in the course of his roving life, and now commended his wares with all the volubility of a trader, and showed some skill in the main art of placing prices upon them.
“What do I please to lack?” said the lady, “why, considering I have not for six long months bought one yard of lawn or cambric, or one trinket, the most inconsiderable, for my own use, and at my own choice, the better question is, What hast thou got to sell? Lay aside for me that cambric partlet and pair of sleeves — and those roundells of gold fringe, drawn out with cyprus — and that short cloak of cherry-coloured fine cloth, garnished with gold buttons and loops;— is it not of an absolute fancy, Janet?”
“Nay, my lady,” replied Janet, “if you consult my poor judgment, it is, methinks, over-gaudy for a graceful habit.”
“Now, out upon thy judgment, if it be no brighter, wench,” said the Countess. “Thou shalt wear it thyself for penance’ sake; and I promise thee the gold buttons, being somewhat massive, will comfort thy father, and reconcile him to the cherry-coloured body. See that he snap them not away, Janet, and send them to bear company with the imprisoned angels which he keeps captive in his strong-box.”
“May I pray your ladyship to spare my poor father?” said Janet.
“Nay, but why should any one spare him that is so sparing of his own nature?” replied the lady.—“Well, but to our gear. That head garniture for myself, and that silver bodkin mounted with pearl; and take off two gowns of that russet cloth for Dorcas and Alison, Janet, to keep the old wretches warm against winter comes.— And stay — hast thou no perfumes and sweet bags, or any handsome casting bottles of the newest mode?”
“Were I a pedlar in earnest, I were a made merchant,” thought Wayland, as he busied himself to answer the demands which she thronged one on another, with the eagerness of a young lady who has been long secluded from such a pleasing occupation. “But how to bring her to a moment’s serious reflection?” Then as he exhibited his choicest collection of essences and perfumes, he at once arrested her attention by observing that these articles had almost risen to double value since the magnificent preparations made by the Earl of Leicester to entertain the Queen and court at his princely Castle of Kenilworth.
“Ha!” said the Countess hastily; “that rumour, then, is true, Janet.”
“Surely, madam,” answered Wayland; “and I marvel it hath not reached your noble ladyship’s ears. The Queen of England feasts with the noble Earl for a week during the Summer’s Progress; and there are many who will tell you England will have a king, and England’s Elizabeth — God save her!— a husband, ere the Progress be over.”
“They lie like villains!” said the Countess, bursting forth impatiently.
“For God’s sake, madam, consider,” said Janet, trembling with apprehension; “who would cumber themselves about pedlar’s tidings?”
“Yes, Janet!” exclaimed the Countess; “right, thou hast corrected me justly. Such reports, blighting the reputation of England’s brightest and noblest peer, can only find currency amongst the mean, the abject, and the infamous!”
“May I perish, lady,” said Wayland Smith, observing that her violence directed itself towards him, “if I have done anything to merit this strange passion! I have said but what many men say.”
By this time the Countess had recovered her composure, and endeavoured, alarmed by the anxious hints of Janet, to suppress all appearance of displeasure. “I were loath,” she said, “good fellow, that our Queen should change the virgin style so dear to us her people — think not of it.” And then, as if desirous to change the subject, she added, “And what is this paste, so carefully put up in the silver box?” as she examined the contents of a casket in which drugs and perfumes were contained in separate drawers.
“It is a remedy, Madam, for a disorder of which I trust your ladyship will never have reason to complain. The amount of a small turkey-bean, swallowed daily for a week, fortifies the heart against those black vapours which arise from solitude, melancholy, unrequited affection, disappointed hope —”
“Are you a fool, friend?” said the Countess sharply; “or do you think, because I have good-naturedly purchased your trumpery goods at your roguish prices, that you may put any gullery you will on me? Who ever heard that affections of the heart were cured by medicines given to the body?”
“Under your honourable favour,” said Wayland, “I am an honest man, and I have sold my goods at an honest price. As to this most precious medicine, when I told its qualities, I asked you not to purchase it, so why should I lie to you? I say not it will cure a rooted affection of the mind, which only God and time can do; but I say that this restorative relieves the black vapours which are engendered in the body of that melancholy which broodeth on the mind. I have relieved many with it, both in court and city, and of late one Master Edmund Tressilian, a worshipful gentleman in Cornwall, who, on some slight received, it was told me, where he had set his affections, was brought into that state of melancholy which made his friends alarmed for his life.”
He paused, and the lady remained silent for some time, and then asked, with a voice which she strove in vain to render firm and indifferent in its tone, “Is the gentleman you have mentioned perfectly recovered?”
“Passably, madam,” answered Wayland; “he hath at least no bodily complaint.”
“I will take some of the medicine, Janet,” said the Countess. “I too have sometimes that dark melancholy which overclouds the brain.”
“You shall not do so, madam,” said Janet; “who shall answer that this fellow vends what is wholesome?”
“I will myself warrant my good faith,” said Wayland; and taking a part of the medicine, he swallowed it before them. The Countess now bought what remained, a step to which Janet, by further objections, only determined her the more obstinately. She even took the first dose upon the instant, and professed to feel her heart lightened and her spirits augmented — a consequence which, in all probability, existed only in her own imagination. The lady then piled the purchases she had made together, flung her purse to Janet, and desired her to compute the amount, and to pay the pedlar; while she herself, as if tired of the amusement she at first found in conversing with him, wished him good evening, and walked carelessly into the house, thus depriving Wayland of every opportunity to speak with her in private. He hastened, however, to attempt an explanation with Janet.
“Maiden,” he said, “thou hast the face of one who should love her mistress. She hath much need of faithful service.”
“And well deserves it at my hands,” replied Janet; “but what of that?”
“Maiden, I am not altogether what I seem,” said the pedlar, lowering his voice.
“The less like to be an honest man,” said Janet.
“The more so,” answered Wayland, “since I am no pedlar.”
“Get thee gone then instantly, or I will call for assistance,” said Janet; “my father must ere this be returned.”
“Do not be so rash,” said Wayland; “you will do what you may repent of. I am one of your mistress’s friends; and she had need of more, not that thou shouldst ruin those she hath.”
“How shall I know that?” said Janet.
“Look me in the face,” said Wayland Smith, “and see if thou dost not read honesty in my looks.”
And in truth, though by no means handsome, there was in his physiognomy the sharp, keen expression of inventive genius and prompt intellect, which, joined to quick and brilliant eyes, a well-formed mouth, and an intelligent smile, often gives grace and interest to features which are both homely and irregular. Janet looked at him with the sly simplicity of her sect, and replied, “Notwithstanding thy boasted honesty, friend, and although I am not accustomed to read and pass judgment on such volumes as thou hast submitted to my perusal, I think I see in thy countenance something of the pedlar-something of the picaroon.”
“On a small scale, perhaps,” said Wayland Smith, laughing. “But this evening, or tomorrow, will an old man come hither with thy father, who has the stealthy step of the cat, the shrewd and vindictive eye of the rat, the fawning wile of the spaniel, the determined snatch of the mastiff — of him beware, for your own sake and that of your distress. See you, fair Janet, he brings the venom of the aspic under the assumed innocence of the dove. What precise mischief he meditates towards you I cannot guess, but death and disease have ever dogged his footsteps. Say nought of this to thy mistress; my art suggests to me that in her state the fear of evil may be as dangerous as its operation. But see that she take my specific, for” (he lowered his voice, and spoke low but impressively in her ear) “it is an antidote against poison.— Hark, they enter the garden!”
In effect, a sound of noisy mirth and loud talking approached the garden door, alarmed by which Wayland Smith sprung into the midst of a thicket of overgrown shrubs, while Janet withdrew to the garden-house that she might not incur observation, and that she might at the same time conceal, at least for the present, the purchases made from the supposed pedlar, which lay scattered on the floor of the summer-house.
Janet, however, had no occasion for anxiety. Her father, his old attendant, Lord Leicester’s domestic, and the astrologer, entered the garden in tumult and in extreme perplexity, endeavouring to quiet Lambourne, whose brain had now become completely fired with liquor, and who was one of those unfortunate persons who, being once stirred with the vinous stimulus, do not fall asleep like other drunkards, but remain partially influenced by it for many hours, until at length, by successive draughts, they are elevated into a state of uncontrollable frenzy. Like many men in this state also, Lambourne neither lost the power of motion, speech, or expression; but, on the contrary, spoke with unwonted emphasis and readiness, and told all that at another time he would have been most desirous to keep secret.
“What!” ejaculated Michael, at the full extent of his voice, “am I to have no welcome, no carouse, when I have brought fortune to your old, ruinous dog-house in the shape of a devil’s ally, that can change slate-shivers into Spanish dollars?— Here, you, Tony Fire-the-Fagot, Papist, Puritan, hypocrite, miser, profligate, devil, compounded of all men’s sins, bow down and reverence him who has brought into thy house the very mammon thou worshippest.”
“For God’s sake,” said Foster, “speak low — come into the house — thou shalt have wine, or whatever thou wilt.”
“No, old puckfoist, I will have it here,” thundered the inebriated ruffian —“here, al fresco, as the Italian hath it. No, no, I will not drink with that poisoning devil within doors, to be choked with the fumes of arsenic and quick-silver; I learned from villain Varney to beware of that.”
“Fetch him wine, in the name of all the fiends!” said the alchemist.
“Aha! and thou wouldst spice it for me, old Truepenny, wouldst thou not? Ay, I should have copperas, and hellebore, and vitriol, and aqua fortis, and twenty devilish materials bubbling in my brain-pan like a charm to raise the devil in a witch’s cauldron. Hand me the flask thyself, old Tony Fire-the-Fagot — and let it be cool — I will have no wine mulled at the pile of the old burnt bishops. Or stay, let Leicester be king if he will — good — and Varney, villain Varney, grand vizier — why, excellent!— and what shall I be, then?— why, emperor — Emperor Lambourne! I will see this choice piece of beauty that they have walled up here for their private pleasures; I will have her this very night to serve my wine-cup and put on my nightcap. What should a fellow do with two wives, were he twenty times an Earl? Answer me that, Tony boy, you old reprobate, hypocritical dog, whom God struck out of the book of life, but tormented with the constant wish to be restored to it — you old bishop-burning, blasphemous fanatic, answer me that.”
“I will stick my knife to the haft in him,” said Foster, in a low tone, which trembled with passion.
“For the love of Heaven, no violence!” said the astrologer. “It cannot but be looked closely into.— Here, honest Lambourne, wilt thou pledge me to the health of the noble Earl of Leicester and Master Richard Varney?”
“I will, mine old Albumazar — I will, my trusty vender of ratsbane. I would kiss thee, mine honest infractor of the Lex Julia (as they said at Leyden), didst thou not flavour so damnably of sulphur, and such fiendish apothecary’s stuff.— Here goes it, up seyes — to Varney and Leicester two more noble mounting spirits — and more dark-seeking, deep-diving, high-flying, malicious, ambitious miscreants — well, I say no more, but I will whet my dagger on his heart-spone that refuses to pledge me! And so, my masters —”
Thus speaking, Lambourne exhausted the cup which the astrologer had handed to him, and which contained not wine, but distilled spirits. He swore half an oath, dropped the empty cup from his grasp, laid his hand on his sword without being able to draw it, reeled, and fell without sense or motion into the arms of the domestic, who dragged him off to his chamber, and put him to bed.
In the general confusion, Janet regained her lady’s chamber unobserved, trembling like an aspen leaf, but determined to keep secret from the Countess the dreadful surmises which she could not help entertaining from the drunken ravings of Lambourne. Her fears, however, though they assumed no certain shape, kept pace with the advice of the pedlar; and she confirmed her mistress in her purpose of taking the medicine which he had recommended, from which it is probable she would otherwise have dissuaded her. Neither had these intimations escaped the ears of Wayland, who knew much better how to interpret them. He felt much compassion at beholding so lovely a creature as the Countess, and whom he had first seen in the bosom of domestic happiness, exposed to the machinations of such a gang of villains. His indignation, too, had been highly excited by hearing the voice of his old master, against whom he felt, in equal degree, the passions of hatred and fear. He nourished also a pride in his own art and resources; and, dangerous as the task was, he that night formed a determination to attain the bottom of the mystery, and to aid the distressed lady, if it were yet possible. From some words which Lambourne had dropped among his ravings, Wayland now, for the first time, felt inclined to doubt that Varney had acted entirely on his own account in wooing and winning the affections of this beautiful creature. Fame asserted of this zealous retainer that he had accommodated his lord in former love intrigues; and it occurred to Wayland Smith that Leicester himself might be the party chiefly interested. Her marriage with the Earl he could not suspect; but even the discovery of such a passing intrigue with a lady of Mistress Amy Robsart’s rank was a secret of the deepest importance to the stability of the favourite’s power over Elizabeth. “If Leicester himself should hesitate to stifle such a rumour by very strange means,” said he to himself, “he has those about him who would do him that favour without waiting for his consent. If I would meddle in this business, it must be in such guise as my old master uses when he compounds his manna of Satan, and that is with a close mask on my face. So I will quit Giles Gosling tomorrow, and change my course and place of residence as often as a hunted fox. I should like to see this little Puritan, too, once more. She looks both pretty and intelligent to have come of such a caitiff as Anthony Fire-the-Fagot.”
Giles Gosling received the adieus of Wayland rather joyfully than otherwise. The honest publican saw so much peril in crossing the course of the Earl of Leicester’s favourite that his virtue was scarce able to support him in the task, and he was well pleased when it was likely to be removed from his shoulders still, however, professing his good-will, and readiness, in case of need, to do Mr. Tressilian or his emissary any service, in so far as consisted with his character of a publican.
Vaulting ambition, that o’erleaps itself,
And falls on t’other side.
Macbeth.
The splendour of the approaching revels at Kenilworth was now the conversation through all England; and everything was collected at home, or from abroad, which could add to the gaiety or glory of the prepared reception of Elizabeth at the house of her most distinguished favourite, Meantime Leicester appeared daily to advance in the Queen’s favour. He was perpetually by her side in council — willingly listened to in the moments of courtly recreation — favoured with approaches even to familiar intimacy — looked up to by all who had aught to hope at court — courted by foreign ministers with the most flattering testimonies of respect from their sovereigns,— the alter ego, as it seemed, of the stately Elizabeth, who was now very generally supposed to be studying the time and opportunity for associating him, by marriage, into her sovereign power.
Amid such a tide of prosperity, this minion of fortune and of the Queen’s favour was probably the most unhappy man in the realm which seemed at his devotion. He had the Fairy King’s superiority over his friends and dependants, and saw much which they could not. The character of his mistress was intimately known to him. It was his minute and studied acquaintance with her humours, as well as her noble faculties, which, joined to his powerful mental qualities, and his eminent external accomplishments, had raised him so high in her favour; and it was that very knowledge of her disposition which led him to apprehend at every turn some sudden and overwhelming disgrace. Leicester was like a pilot possessed of a chart which points out to him all the peculiarities of his navigation, but which exhibits so many shoals, breakers, and reefs of rocks, that his anxious eye reaps little more from observing them than to be convinced that his final escape can be little else than miraculous.
In fact, Queen Elizabeth had a character strangely compounded of the strongest masculine sense, with those foibles which are chiefly supposed proper to the female sex. Her subjects had the full benefit of her virtues, which far predominated over her weaknesses; but her courtiers, and those about her person, had often to sustain sudden and embarrassing turns of caprice, and the sallies of a temper which was both jealous and despotic. She was the nursing-mother of her people, but she was also the true daughter of Henry VIII.; and though early sufferings and an excellent education had repressed and modified, they had not altogether destroyed, the hereditary temper of that “hard-ruled king.” “Her mind,” says her witty godson, Sir John Harrington, who had experienced both the smiles and the frowns which he describes, “was ofttime like the gentle air that cometh from the western point in a summer’s morn —’twas sweet and refreshing to all around her. Her speech did win all affections. And again, she could put forth such alterations, when obedience was lacking, as left no doubting whose daughter she was. When she smiled, it was a pure sunshine, that every one did choose to bask in, if they could; but anon came a storm from a sudden gathering of clouds, and the thunder fell in a wondrous manner on all alike.”18
This variability of disposition, as Leicester well knew, was chiefly formidable to those who had a share in the Queen’s affections, and who depended rather on her personal regard than on the indispensable services which they could render to her councils and her crown. The favour of Burleigh or of Walsingham, of a description far less striking than that by which he was himself upheld, was founded, as Leicester was well aware, on Elizabeth’s solid judgment, not on her partiality, and was, therefore, free from all those principles of change and decay necessarily incident to that which chiefly arose from personal accomplishments and female predilection. These great and sage statesmen were judged of by the Queen only with reference to the measures they suggested, and the reasons by which they supported their opinions in council; whereas the success of Leicester’s course depended on all those light and changeable gales of caprice and humour which thwart or favour the progress of a lover in the favour of his mistress, and she, too, a mistress who was ever and anon becoming fearful lest she should forget the dignity, or compromise the authority, of the Queen, while she indulged the affections of the woman. Of the difficulties which surrounded his power, “too great to keep or to resign,” Leicester was fully sensible; and as he looked anxiously round for the means of maintaining himself in his precarious situation, and sometimes contemplated those of descending from it in safety, he saw but little hope of either. At such moments his thoughts turned to dwell upon his secret marriage and its consequences; and it was in bitterness against himself, if not against his unfortunate Countess, that he ascribed to that hasty measure, adopted in the ardour of what he now called inconsiderate passion, at once the impossibility of placing his power on a solid basis, and the immediate prospect of its precipitate downfall.
“Men say,” thus ran his thoughts, in these anxious and repentant moments, “that I might marry Elizabeth, and become King of England. All things suggest this. The match is carolled in ballads, while the rabble throw their caps up. It has been touched upon in the schools — whispered in the presence-chamber — recommended from the pulpit — prayed for in the Calvinistic churches abroad — touched on by statists in the very council at home. These bold insinuations have been rebutted by no rebuke, no resentment, no chiding, scarce even by the usual female protestation that she would live and die a virgin princess. Her words have been more courteous than ever, though she knows such rumours are abroad — her actions more gracious, her looks more kind — nought seems wanting to make me King of England, and place me beyond the storms of court-favour, excepting the putting forth of mine own hand to take that crown imperial which is the glory of the universe! And when I might stretch that hand out most boldly, it is fettered down by a secret and inextricable bond! And here I have letters from Amy,” he would say, catching them up with a movement of peevishness, “persecuting me to acknowledge her openly — to do justice to her and to myself — and I wot not what. Methinks I have done less than justice to myself already. And she speaks as if Elizabeth were to receive the knowledge of this matter with the glee of a mother hearing of the happy marriage of a hopeful son! She, the daughter of Henry, who spared neither man in his anger nor woman in his desire — she to find herself tricked, drawn on with toys of passion to the verge of acknowledging her love to a subject, and he discovered to be a married man!— Elizabeth to learn that she had been dallied with in such fashion, as a gay courtier might trifle with a country wench — we should then see, to our ruin, furens quid faemina!”
He would then pause, and call for Varney, whose advice was now more frequently resorted to than ever, because the Earl remembered the remonstrances which he had made against his secret contract. And their consultation usually terminated in anxious deliberation how, or in what manner, the Countess was to be produced at Kenilworth. These communings had for some time ended always in a resolution to delay the Progress from day to day. But at length a peremptory decision became necessary.
“Elizabeth will not be satisfied without her presence,” said the Earl. “Whether any suspicion hath entered her mind, as my own apprehensions suggest, or whether the petition of Tressilian is kept in her memory by Sussex or some other secret enemy, I know not; but amongst all the favourable expressions which she uses to me, she often recurs to the story of Amy Robsart. I think that Amy is the slave in the chariot, who is placed there by my evil fortune to dash and to confound my triumph, even when at the highest. Show me thy device, Varney, for solving the inextricable difficulty. I have thrown every such impediment in the way of these accursed revels as I could propound even with a shade of decency, but today’s interview has put all to a hazard. She said to me kindly, but peremptorily, ‘We will give you no further time for preparations, my lord, lest you should altogether ruin yourself. On Saturday, the 9th of July, we will be with you at Kenilworth. We pray you to forget none of our appointed guests and suitors, and in especial this light-o’-love, Amy Robsart. We would wish to see the woman who could postpone yonder poetical gentleman, Master Tressilian, to your man, Richard Varney.’— Now, Varney, ply thine invention, whose forge hath availed us so often for sure as my name is Dudley, the danger menaced by my horoscope is now darkening around me.”
“Can my lady be by no means persuaded to bear for a brief space the obscure character which circumstances impose on her?” Said Varney after some hesitation.
“How, sirrah? my Countess term herself thy wife!— that may neither stand with my honour nor with hers.”
“Alas! my lord,” answered Varney, “and yet such is the quality in which Elizabeth now holds her; and to contradict this opinion is to discover all.”
“Think of something else, Varney,” said the Earl, in great agitation; “this invention is nought. If I could give way to it, she would not; for I tell thee, Varney, if thou knowest it not, that not Elizabeth on the throne has more pride than the daughter of this obscure gentleman of Devon. She is flexible in many things, but where she holds her honour brought in question she hath a spirit and temper as apprehensive as lightning, and as swift in execution.”
“We have experienced that, my lord, else had we not been thus circumstanced,” said Varney. “But what else to suggest I know not. Methinks she whose good fortune in becoming your lordship’s bride, and who gives rise to the danger, should do somewhat towards parrying it.”
“It is impossible,” said the Earl, waving his hand; “I know neither authority nor entreaties would make her endure thy name for an hour.
“It is somewhat hard, though,” said Varney, in a dry tone; and, without pausing on that topic, he added, “Suppose some one were found to represent her? Such feats have been performed in the courts of as sharp-eyed monarchs as Queen Elizabeth.”
“Utter madness, Varney,” answered the Earl; “the counterfeit would be confronted with Tressilian, and discovery become inevitable,”
“Tressilian might be removed from court,” said the unhesitating Varney.
“And by what means?”
“There are many,” said Varney, “by which a statesman in your situation, my lord, may remove from the scene one who pries into your affairs, and places himself in perilous opposition to you.”
“Speak not to me of such policy, Varney,” said the Earl hastily, “which, besides, would avail nothing in the present case. Many others there be at court to whom Amy may be known; and besides, on the absence of Tressilian, her father or some of her friends would be instantly summoned hither. Urge thine invention once more.”
“My lord, I know not what to say,” answered Varney; “but were I myself in such perplexity, I would ride post down to Cumnor Place, and compel my wife to give her consent to such measures as her safety and mine required.”
“Varney,” said Leicester, “I cannot urge her to aught so repugnant to her noble nature as a share in this stratagem; it would be a base requital to the love she bears me.”
“Well, my lord,” said Varney, “your lordship is a wise and an honourable man, and skilled in those high points of romantic scruple which are current in Arcadia perhaps, as your nephew, Philip Sidney, writes. I am your humble servitor — a man of this world, and only happy that my knowledge of it, and its ways, is such as your lordship has not scorned to avail yourself of. Now I would fain know whether the obligation lies on my lady or on you in this fortunate union, and which has most reason to show complaisance to the other, and to consider that other’s wishes, conveniences, and safety?”
“I tell thee, Varney,” said the Earl, “that all it was in my power to bestow upon her was not merely deserved, but a thousand times overpaid, by her own virtue and beauty; for never did greatness descend upon a creature so formed by nature to grace and adorn it.”
“It is well, my lord, you are so satisfied,” answered Varney, with his usual sardonic smile, which even respect to his patron could not at all times subdue; “you will have time enough to enjoy undisturbed the society of one so gracious and beautiful — that is, so soon as such confinement in the Tower be over as may correspond to the crime of deceiving the affections of Elizabeth Tudor. A cheaper penalty, I presume, you do not expect.”
“Malicious fiend!” answered Leicester, “do you mock me in my misfortune?— Manage it as thou wilt.”
“If you are serious, my lord,” said Varney, “you must set forth instantly and post for Cumnor Place.”
“Do thou go thyself, Varney; the devil has given thee that sort of eloquence which is most powerful in the worst cause. I should stand self-convicted of villainy, were I to urge such a deceit. Begone, I tell thee; must I entreat thee to mine own dishonour?”
“No, my lord,” said Varney; “but if you are serious in entrusting me with the task of urging this most necessary measure, you must give me a letter to my lady, as my credentials, and trust to me for backing the advice it contains with all the force in my power. And such is my opinion of my lady’s love for your lordship, and of her willingness to do that which is at once to contribute to your pleasure and your safety, that I am sure she will condescend to bear for a few brief days the name of so humble a man as myself, especially since it is not inferior in antiquity to that of her own paternal house.”
Leicester seized on writing materials, and twice or thrice commenced a letter to the Countess, which he afterwards tore into fragments. At length he finished a few distracted lines, in which he conjured her, for reasons nearly concerning his life and honour, to consent to bear the name of Varney for a few days, during the revels at Kenilworth. He added that Varney would communicate all the reasons which rendered this deception indispensable; and having signed and sealed these credentials, he flung them over the table to Varney with a motion that he should depart, which his adviser was not slow to comprehend and to obey.
Leicester remained like one stupefied, till he heard the trampling of the horses, as Varney, who took no time even to change his dress, threw himself into the saddle, and, followed by a single servant, set off for Berkshire. At the sound the Earl started from his seat, and ran to the window, with the momentary purpose of recalling the unworthy commission with which he had entrusted one of whom he used to say he knew no virtuous property save affection to his patron. But Varney was already beyond call; and the bright, starry firmament, which the age considered as the Book of Fate, lying spread before Leicester when he opened the casement, diverted him from his better and more manly purpose.
“There they roll, on their silent but potential course,” said the Earl, looking around him, “without a voice which speaks to our ear, but not without influences which affect, at every change, the indwellers of this vile, earthly planet. This, if astrologers fable not, is the very crisis of my fate! The hour approaches of which I was taught to beware — the hour, too, which I was encouraged to hope for. A King was the word — but how?— the crown matrimonial. All hopes of that are gone — let them go. The rich Netherlands have demanded me for their leader, and, would Elizabeth consent, would yield to me their crown. And have I not such a claim even in this kingdom? That of York, descending from George of Clarence to the House of Huntingdon, which, this lady failing, may have a fair chance — Huntingdon is of my house.— But I will plunge no deeper in these high mysteries. Let me hold my course in silence for a while, and in obscurity, like a subterranean river; the time shall come that I will burst forth in my strength, and bear all opposition before me.”
While Leicester was thus stupefying the remonstrances of his own conscience, by appealing to political necessity for his apology, or losing himself amidst the wild dreams of ambition, his agent left town and tower behind him on his hasty journey to Berkshire. he also nourished high hope. He had brought Lord Leicester to the point which he had desired, of committing to him the most intimate recesses of his breast, and of using him as the channel of his most confidential intercourse with his lady. Henceforward it would, he foresaw, be difficult for his patron either to dispense with his services, or refuse his requests, however unreasonable. And if this disdainful dame, as he termed the Countess, should comply with the request of her husband, Varney, her pretended husband, must needs become so situated with respect to her, that there was no knowing where his audacity might be bounded perhaps not till circumstances enabled him to obtain a triumph, which he thought of with a mixture of fiendish feelings, in which revenge for her previous scorn was foremost and predominant. Again he contemplated the possibility of her being totally intractable, and refusing obstinately to play the part assigned to her in the drama at Kenilworth.
“Alasco must then do his part,” he said. “Sickness must serve her Majesty as an excuse for not receiving the homage of Mrs. Varney — ay, and a sore and wasting sickness it may prove, should Elizabeth continue to cast so favourable an eye on my Lord of Leicester. I will not forego the chance of being favourite of a monarch for want of determined measures, should these be necessary. Forward, good horse, forward — ambition and haughty hope of power, pleasure, and revenge strike their stings as deep through my bosom as I plunge the rowels in thy flanks. On, good horse, on — the devil urges us both forward!”
Say that my beauty was but small,
Among court ladies all despised,
Why didst thou rend it from that hall
Where, scornful Earl, ’twas dearly prized?
No more thou com’st with wonted speed,
Thy once beloved bride to see;
But be she alive, or be she dead,
I fear, stern Earl, ‘s the same to thee.
Cumnor Hall, by William Julius Mickle.
The ladies of fashion of the present, or of any other period, must have allowed that the young and lovely Countess of Leicester had, besides her youth and beauty, two qualities which entitled her to a place amongst women of rank and distinction. She displayed, as we have seen in her interview with the pedlar, a liberal promptitude to make unnecessary purchases, solely for the pleasure of acquiring useless and showy trifles which ceased to please as soon as they were possessed; and she was, besides, apt to spend a considerable space of time every day in adorning her person, although the varied splendour of her attire could only attract the half satirical praise of the precise Janet, or an approving glance from the bright eyes which witnessed their own beams of triumph reflected from the mirror.
The Countess Amy had, indeed, to plead for indulgence in those frivolous tastes, that the education of the times had done little or nothing for a mind naturally gay and averse to study. If she had not loved to collect finery and to wear it, she might have woven tapestry or sewed embroidery, till her labours spread in gay profusion all over the walls and seats at Lidcote Hall; or she might have varied Minerva’s labours with the task of preparing a mighty pudding against the time that Sir Hugh Robsart returned from the greenwood. But Amy had no natural genius either for the loom, the needle, or the receipt-book. Her mother had died in infancy; her father contradicted her in nothing; and Tressilian, the only one that approached her who was able or desirous to attend to the cultivation of her mind, had much hurt his interest with her by assuming too eagerly the task of a preceptor, so that he was regarded by the lively, indulged, and idle girl with some fear and much respect, but with little or nothing of that softer emotion which it had been his hope and his ambition to inspire. And thus her heart lay readily open, and her fancy became easily captivated by the noble exterior and graceful deportment and complacent flattery of Leicester, even before he was known to her as the dazzling minion of wealth and power.
The frequent visits of Leicester at Cumnor, during the earlier part of their union, had reconciled the Countess to the solitude and privacy to which she was condemned; but when these visits became rarer and more rare, and when the void was filled up with letters of excuse, not always very warmly expressed, and generally extremely brief, discontent and suspicion began to haunt those splendid apartments which love had fitted up for beauty. Her answers to Leicester conveyed these feelings too bluntly, and pressed more naturally than prudently that she might be relieved from this obscure and secluded residence, by the Earl’s acknowledgment of their marriage; and in arranging her arguments with all the skill she was mistress of, she trusted chiefly to the warmth of the entreaties with which she urged them. Sometimes she even ventured to mingle reproaches, of which Leicester conceived he had good reason to complain.
“I have made her Countess,” he said to Varney; “surely she might wait till it consisted with my pleasure that she should put on the coronet?”
The Countess Amy viewed the subject in directly an opposite light.
“What signifies,” she said, “that I have rank and honour in reality, if I am to live an obscure prisoner, without either society or observance, and suffering in my character, as one of dubious or disgraced reputation? I care not for all those strings of pearl, which you fret me by warping into my tresses, Janet. I tell you that at Lidcote Hall, if I put but a fresh rosebud among my hair, my good father would call me to him, that he might see it more closely; and the kind old curate would smile, and Master Mumblazen would say something about roses gules. And now I sit here, decked out like an image with gold and gems, and no one to see my finery but you, Janet. There was the poor Tressilian, too — but it avails not speaking of him.”
“It doth not indeed, madam,” said her prudent attendant; “and verily you make me sometimes wish you would not speak of him so often, or so rashly.”
“It signifies nothing to warn me, Janet,” said the impatient and incorrigible Countess; “I was born free, though I am now mewed up like some fine foreign slave, rather than the wife of an English noble. I bore it all with pleasure while I was sure he loved me; but now my tongue and heart shall be free, let them fetter these limbs as they will. I tell thee, Janet, I love my husband — I will love him till my latest breath — I cannot cease to love him, even if I would, or if he — which, God knows, may chance — should cease to love me. But I will say, and loudly, I would have been happier than I now am to have remained in Lidcote Hall, even although I must have married poor Tressilian, with his melancholy look and his head full of learning, which I cared not for. He said, if I would read his favourite volumes, there would come a time that I should be glad of having done so. I think it is come now.”
“I bought you some books, madam,” said Janet, “from a lame fellow who sold them in the Market-place — and who stared something boldly, at me, I promise you.”
“Let me see them, Janet,” said the Countess; “but let them not be of your own precise cast,— How is this, most righteous damsel?— ‘A Pair of Snuffers for the Golden Candlestick‘—’Handfull of Myrrh and Hyssop to put a Sick Soul to Purgation‘—’A Draught of Water from the Valley of Baca‘—’Foxes and Firebrands‘— what gear call you this, maiden?”
“Nay, madam,” said Janet, “it was but fitting and seemly to put grace in your ladyship’s way; but an you will none of it, there are play-books, and poet-books, I trow.”
The Countess proceeded carelessly in her examination, turning over such rare volumes as would now make the fortune of twenty retail booksellers. Here was a “Boke of Cookery, Imprinted by Richard Lant,” and “Skelton’s Books“—”The Passtime of the People“—”The Castle of Knowledge,” etc. But neither to this lore did the Countess’s heart incline, and joyfully did she start up from the listless task of turning over the leaves of the pamphlets, and hastily did she scatter them through the floor, when the hasty clatter of horses’ feet, heard in the courtyard, called her to the window, exclaiming, “It is Leicester!— it is my noble Earl!— it is my Dudley!— every stroke of his horse’s hoof sounds like a note of lordly music!”
There was a brief bustle in the mansion, and Foster, with his downward look and sullen manner, entered the apartment to say, “That Master Richard Varney was arrived from my lord, having ridden all night, and craved to speak with her ladyship instantly.”
“Varney?” said the disappointed Countess; “and to speak with me? — pshaw! But he comes with news from Leicester, so admit him instantly.”
Varney entered her dressing apartment, where she sat arrayed in her native loveliness, adorned with all that Janet’s art and a rich and tasteful undress could bestow. But the most beautiful part of her attire was her profuse and luxuriant light-brown locks, which floated in such rich abundance around a neck that resembled a swan’s, and over a bosom heaving with anxious expectation, which communicated a hurried tinge of red to her whole countenance.
Varney entered the room in the dress in which he had waited on his master that morning to court, the splendour of which made a strange contrast with the disorder arising from hasty riding during a dark night and foul ways. His brow bore an anxious and hurried expression, as one who has that to say of which he doubts the reception, and who hath yet posted on from the necessity of communicating his tidings. The Countess’s anxious eye at once caught the alarm, as she exclaimed, “You bring news from my lord, Master Varney — Gracious Heaven! is he ill?”
“No, madam, thank Heaven!” said Varney. “Compose yourself, and permit me to take breath ere I communicate my tidings.”
“No breath, sir,” replied the lady impatiently; “I know your theatrical arts. Since your breath hath sufficed to bring you hither, it may suffice to tell your tale — at least briefly, and in the gross.”
“Madam,” answered Varney, “we are not alone, and my lord’s message was for your ear only.”
“Leave us, Janet, and Master Foster,” said the lady; “but remain in the next apartment, and within call.”
Foster and his daughter retired, agreeably to the Lady Leicester’s commands, into the next apartment, which was the withdrawing-room. The door which led from the sleeping-chamber was then carefully shut and bolted, and the father and daughter remained both in a posture of anxious attention, the first with a stern, suspicious, anxious cast of countenance, and Janet with folded hands, and looks which seemed divided betwixt her desire to know the fortunes of her mistress, and her prayers to Heaven for her safety. Anthony Foster seemed himself to have some idea of what was passing through his daughter’s mind, for he crossed the apartment and took her anxiously by the hand, saying, “That is right — pray, Janet, pray; we have all need of prayers, and some of us more than others. Pray, Janet — I would pray myself, but I must listen to what goes on within — evil has been brewing, love — evil has been brewing. God forgive our sins, but Varney’s sudden and strange arrival bodes us no good.”
Janet had never before heard her father excite or even permit her attention to anything which passed in their mysterious family; and now that he did so, his voice sounded in her ear — she knew not why — like that of a screech-owl denouncing some deed of terror and of woe. She turned her eyes fearfully towards the door, almost as if she expected some sounds of horror to be heard, or some sight of fear to display itself.
All, however, was as still as death, and the voices of those who spoke in the inner chamber were, if they spoke at all, carefully subdued to a tone which could not be heard in the next. At once, however, they were heard to speak fast, thick, and hastily; and presently after the voice of the Countess was heard exclaiming, at the highest pitch to which indignation could raise it, “Undo the door, sir, I command you!— undo the door!— I will have no other reply!” she continued, drowning with her vehement accents the low and muttered sounds which Varney was heard to utter betwixt whiles. “What ho! without there!” she persisted, accompanying her words with shrieks, “Janet, alarm the house!— Foster, break open the door — I am detained here by a traitor! Use axe and lever, Master Foster — I will be your warrant!”
“It shall not need, madam,” Varney was at length distinctly heard to say. “If you please to expose my lord’s important concerns and your own to the general ear, I will not be your hindrance.”
The door was unlocked and thrown open, and Janet and her father rushed in, anxious to learn the cause of these reiterated exclamations.
When they entered the apartment Varney stood by the door grinding his teeth, with an expression in which rage, and shame, and fear had each their share. The Countess stood in the midst of her apartment like a juvenile Pythoness under the influence of the prophetic fury. The veins in her beautiful forehead started into swoln blue lines through the hurried impulse of her articulation — her cheek and neck glowed like scarlet — her eyes were like those of an imprisoned eagle, flashing red lightning on the foes which it cannot reach with its talons. Were it possible for one of the Graces to have been animated by a Fury, the countenance could not have united such beauty with so much hatred, scorn, defiance, and resentment. The gesture and attitude corresponded with the voice and looks, and altogether presented a spectacle which was at once beautiful and fearful; so much of the sublime had the energy of passion united with the Countess Amy’s natural loveliness. Janet, as soon as the door was open, ran to her mistress; and more slowly, yet with more haste than he was wont, Anthony Foster went to Richard Varney.
“In the Truth’s name, what ails your ladyship?” said the former.
“What, in the name of Satan, have you done to her?” said Foster to his friend.
“Who, I?— nothing,” answered Varney, but with sunken head and sullen voice; “nothing but communicated to her her lord’s commands, which, if the lady list not to obey, she knows better how to answer it than I may pretend to do.”
“Now, by Heaven, Janet!” said the Countess, “the false traitor lies in his throat! He must needs lie, for he speaks to the dishonour of my noble lord; he must needs lie doubly, for he speaks to gain ends of his own, equally execrable and unattainable.”
“You have misapprehended me, lady,” said Varney, with a sulky species of submission and apology; “let this matter rest till your passion be abated, and I will explain all.”
“Thou shalt never have an opportunity to do so,” said the Countess.—“Look at him, Janet. He is fairly dressed, hath the outside of a gentleman, and hither he came to persuade me it was my lord’s pleasure — nay, more, my wedded lord’s commands — that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him — him there — that very cloak-brushing, shoe-cleaning fellow — him there, my lord’s lackey, for my liege lord and husband; furnishing against myself, Great God! whenever I was to vindicate my right and my rank, such weapons as would hew my just claim from the root, and destroy my character to be regarded as an honourable matron of the English nobility!”
“You hear her, Foster, and you, young maiden, hear this lady,” answered Varney, taking advantage of the pause which the Countess had made in her charge, more for lack of breath than for lack of matter —“you hear that her heat only objects to me the course which our good lord, for the purpose to keep certain matters secret, suggests in the very letter which she holds in her hands.”
Foster here attempted to interfere with a face of authority, which he thought became the charge entrusted to him, “Nay, lady, I must needs say you are over-hasty in this. Such deceit is not utterly to be condemned when practised for a righteous end I and thus even the patriarch Abraham feigned Sarah to be his sister when they went down to Egypt.”
“Ay, sir,” answered the Countess; “but God rebuked that deceit even in the father of His chosen people, by the mouth of the heathen Pharaoh. Out upon you, that will read Scripture only to copy those things which are held out to us as warnings, not as examples!”
“But Sarah disputed not the will of her husband, an it be your pleasure,” said Foster, in reply, “but did as Abraham commanded, calling herself his sister, that it might be well with her husband for her sake, and that his soul might live because of her beauty.”
“Now, so Heaven pardon me my useless anger,” answered the Countess, “thou art as daring a hypocrite as yonder fellow is an impudent deceiver! Never will I believe that the noble Dudley gave countenance to so dastardly, so dishonourable a plan. Thus I tread on his infamy, if indeed it be, and thus destroy its remembrance for ever!”
So saying, she tore in pieces Leicester’s letter, and stamped, in the extremity of impatience, as if she would have annihilated the minute fragments into which she had rent it.
“Bear witness,” said Varney, collecting himself, “she hath torn my lord’s letter, in order to burden me with the scheme of his devising; and although it promises nought but danger and trouble to me, she would lay it to my charge, as if I had any purpose of mine own in it.”
“Thou liest, thou treacherous slave!” said the Countess in spite of Janet’s attempts to keep her silent, in the sad foresight that her vehemence might only furnish arms against herself —“thou liest,” she continued.—“Let me go, Janet — were it the last word I have to speak, he lies. He had his own foul ends to seek; and broader he would have displayed them had my passion permitted me to preserve the silence which at first encouraged him to unfold his vile projects.”
“Madam,” said Varney, overwhelmed in spite of his effrontery, “I entreat you to believe yourself mistaken.”
“As soon will I believe light darkness,” said the enraged Countess. “Have I drunk of oblivion? Do I not remember former passages, which, known to Leicester, had given thee the preferment of a gallows, instead of the honour of his intimacy. I would I were a man but for five minutes! It were space enough to make a craven like thee confess his villainy. But go — begone! Tell thy master that when I take the foul course to which such scandalous deceits as thou hast recommended on his behalf must necessarily lead me, I will give him a rival something worthy of the name. He shall not be supplanted by an ignominious lackey, whose best fortune is to catch a gift of his master’s last suit of clothes ere it is threadbare, and who is only fit to seduce a suburb-wench by the bravery of new roses in his master’s old pantoufles. Go, begone, sir! I scorn thee so much that I am ashamed to have been angry with thee.”
Varney left the room with a mute expression of rage, and was followed by Foster, whose apprehension, naturally slow, was overpowered by the eager and abundant discharge of indignation which, for the first time, he had heard burst from the lips of a being who had seemed, till that moment, too languid and too gentle to nurse an angry thought or utter an intemperate expression. Foster, therefore, pursued Varney from place to place, persecuting him with interrogatories, to which the other replied not, until they were in the opposite side of the quadrangle, and in the old library, with which the reader has already been made acquainted. Here he turned round on his persevering follower, and thus addressed him, in a tone tolerably equal, that brief walk having been sufficient to give one so habituated to command his temper time to rally and recover his presence of mind.
“Tony,” he said, with his usual sneering laugh, “it avails not to deny it. The Woman and the Devil, who, as thine oracle Holdforth will confirm to thee, cheated man at the beginning, have this day proved more powerful than my discretion. Yon termagant looked so tempting, and had the art to preserve her countenance so naturally, while I communicated my lord’s message, that, by my faith, I thought I might say some little thing for myself. She thinks she hath my head under her girdle now, but she is deceived. Where is Doctor Alasco?”
“In his laboratory,” answered Foster. “It is the hour he is spoken not withal. We must wait till noon is past, or spoil his important — what said I? important!— I would say interrupt his divine studies.”
“Ay, he studies the devil’s divinity,” said Varney; “but when I want him, one hour must suffice as well as another. Lead the way to his pandemonium.”
So spoke Varney, and with hasty and perturbed steps followed Foster, who conducted him through private passages, many of which were well-nigh ruinous, to the opposite side of the quadrangle, where, in a subterranean apartment, now occupied by the chemist Alasco, one of the Abbots of Abingdon, who had a turn for the occult sciences, had, much to the scandal of his convent, established a laboratory, in which, like other fools of the period, he spent much precious time, and money besides, in the pursuit of the grand arcanum.
Anthony Foster paused before the door, which was scrupulously secured within, and again showed a marked hesitation to disturb the sage in his operations. But Varney, less scrupulous, roused him by knocking and voice, until at length, slowly and reluctantly, the inmate of the apartment undid the door. The chemist appeared, with his eyes bleared with the heat and vapours of the stove or alembic over which he brooded and the interior of his cell displayed the confused assemblage of heterogeneous substances and extraordinary implements belonging to his profession. The old man was muttering, with spiteful impatience, “Am I for ever to be recalled to the affairs of earth from those of heaven?”
“To the affairs of hell,” answered Varney, “for that is thy proper element.— Foster, we need thee at our conference.”
“Foster slowly entered the room. Varney, following, barred the door, and they betook themselves to secret council.
In the meanwhile, the Countess traversed the apartment, with shame and anger contending on her lovely cheek.
“The villain,” she said —“the cold-blooded, calculating slave!— But I unmasked him, Janet — I made the snake uncoil all his folds before me, and crawl abroad in his naked deformity; I suspended my resentment, at the danger of suffocating under the effort, until he had let me see the very bottom of a heart more foul than hell’s darkest corner.— And thou, Leicester, is it possible thou couldst bid me for a moment deny my wedded right in thee, or thyself yield it to another?— But it is impossible — the villain has lied in all.— Janet, I will not remain here longer — I fear him — I fear thy father. I grieve to say it, Janet — but I fear thy father, and, worst of all, this odious Varney, I will escape from Cumnor.”
“Alas! madam, whither would you fly, or by what means will you escape from these walls?”
“I know not, Janet,” said the unfortunate young lady, looking upwards! and clasping her hands together, “I know not where I shall fly, or by what means; but I am certain the God I have served will not abandon me in this dreadful crisis, for I am in the hands of wicked men.”
“Do not think so, dear lady,” said Janet; “my father is stern and strict in his temper, and severely true to his trust — but yet —”
At this moment Anthony Foster entered the apartment, bearing in his hand a glass cup and a small flask. His manner was singular; for, while approaching the Countess with the respect due to her rank, he had till this time suffered to become visible, or had been unable to suppress, the obdurate sulkiness of his natural disposition, which, as is usual with those of his unhappy temper, was chiefly exerted towards those over whom circumstances gave him control. But at present he showed nothing of that sullen consciousness of authority which he was wont to conceal under a clumsy affectation of civility and deference, as a ruffian hides his pistols and bludgeon under his ill-fashioned gaberdine. And yet it seemed as if his smile was more in fear than courtesy, and as if, while he pressed the Countess to taste of the choice cordial, which should refresh her spirits after her late alarm, he was conscious of meditating some further injury. His hand trembled also, his voice faltered, and his whole outward behaviour exhibited so much that was suspicious, that his daughter Janet, after she had stood looking at him in astonishment for some seconds, seemed at once to collect herself to execute some hardy resolution, raised her head, assumed an attitude and gait of determination and authority, and walking slowly betwixt her father and her mistress, took the salver from the hand of the former, and said in a low but marked and decided tone, “Father, I will fill for my noble mistress, when such is her pleasure.”
“Thou, my child?” said Foster, eagerly and apprehensively; “no, my child — it is not thou shalt render the lady this service.”
“And why, I pray you,” said Janet, “if it be fitting that the noble lady should partake of the cup at all?”
“Why — why?” said the seneschal, hesitating, and then bursting into passion as the readiest mode of supplying the lack of all other reason —“why, because it is my pleasure, minion, that you should not! Get you gone to the evening lecture.”
“Now, as I hope to hear lecture again,” replied Janet, “I will not go thither this night, unless I am better assured of my mistress’s safety. Give me that flask, father”— and she took it from his reluctant hand, while he resigned it as if conscience-struck. “And now,” she said, “father, that which shall benefit my mistress, cannot do me prejudice. Father, I drink to you.”
Foster, without speaking a word, rushed on his daughter and wrested the flask from her hand; then, as if embarrassed by what he had done, and totally unable to resolve what he should do next, he stood with it in his hand, one foot advanced and the other drawn back, glaring on his daughter with a countenance in which rage, fear, and convicted villainy formed a hideous combination.
“This is strange, my father,” said Janet, keeping her eye fixed on his, in the manner in which those who have the charge of lunatics are said to overawe their unhappy patients; “will you neither let me serve my lady, nor drink to her myself?”
The courage of the Countess sustained her through this dreadful scene, of which the import was not the less obvious that it was not even hinted at. She preserved even the rash carelessness of her temper, and though her cheek had grown pale at the first alarm, her eye was calm and almost scornful. “Will you taste this rare cordial, Master Foster? Perhaps you will not yourself refuse to pledge us, though you permit not Janet to do so. Drink, sir, I pray you.”
“I will not,” answered Foster.
“And for whom, then, is the precious beverage reserved, sir?” said the Countess.
“For the devil, who brewed it!” answered Foster; and, turning on his heel, he left the chamber.
Janet looked at her mistress with a countenance expressive in the highest degree of shame, dismay, and sorrow.
“Do not weep for me, Janet,” said the Countess kindly.
“No, madam,” replied her attendant, in a voice broken by sobs, “it is not for you I weep; it is for myself — it is for that unhappy man. Those who are dishonoured before man — those who are condemned by God — have cause to mourn; not those who are innocent! Farewell, madam!” she said hastily assuming the mantle in which she was wont to go abroad.
“Do you leave me, Janet?” said her mistress —“desert me in such an evil strait?”
“Desert you, madam!” exclaimed Janet; and running back to her mistress, she imprinted a thousand kisses on her hand —“desert you I— may the Hope of my trust desert me when I do so! No, madam; well you said the God you serve will open you a path for deliverance. There is a way of escape. I have prayed night and day for light, that I might see how to act betwixt my duty to yonder unhappy man and that which I owe to you. Sternly and fearfully that light has now dawned, and I must not shut the door which God opens. Ask me no more. I will return in brief space.”
So speaking, she wrapped herself in her mantle, and saying to the old woman whom she passed in the outer room that she was going to evening prayer, she left the house.
Meanwhile her father had reached once more the laboratory, where he found the accomplices of his intended guilt. “Has the sweet bird sipped?” said Varney, with half a smile; while the astrologer put the same question with his eyes, but spoke not a word.
“She has not, nor she shall not from my hands,” replied Foster; “would you have me do murder in my daughter’s presence?”
“Wert thou not told, thou sullen and yet faint-hearted slave,” answered Varney, with bitterness, “that no murder as thou callest it, with that staring look and stammering tone, is designed in the matter? Wert thou not told that a brief illness, such as woman puts on in very wantonness, that she may wear her night-gear at noon, and lie on a settle when she should mind her domestic business, is all here aimed at? Here is a learned man will swear it to thee by the key of the Castle of Wisdom.”
“I swear it,” said Alasco, “that the elixir thou hast there in the flask will not prejudice life! I swear it by that immortal and indestructible quintessence of gold, which pervades every substance in nature, though its secret existence can be traced by him only to whom Trismegistus renders the key of the Cabala.”
“An oath of force,” said Varney. “Foster, thou wert worse than a pagan to disbelieve it. Believe me, moreover, who swear by nothing but by my own word, that if you be not conformable, there is no hope, no, not a glimpse of hope, that this thy leasehold may be transmuted into a copyhold. Thus, Alasco will leave your pewter artillery untransmigrated, and I, honest Anthony, will still have thee for my tenant.”
“I know not, gentlemen,” said Foster, “where your designs tend to; but in one thing I am bound up,— that, fall back fall edge, I will have one in this place that may pray for me, and that one shall be my daughter. I have lived ill, and the world has been too weighty with me; but she is as innocent as ever she was when on her mother’s lap, and she, at least, shall have her portion in that happy City, whose walls are of pure gold, and the foundations garnished with all manner of precious stones.”
“Ay, Tony,” said Varney, “that were a paradise to thy heart’s content.— Debate the matter with him, Doctor Alasco; I will be with you anon.”
So speaking, Varney arose, and taking the flask from the table, he left the room.
“I tell thee, my son,” said Alasco to Foster, as soon as Varney had left them, “that whatever this bold and profligate railer may say of the mighty science, in which, by Heaven’s blessing, I have advanced so far that I would not call the wisest of living artists my better or my teacher — I say, howsoever yonder reprobate may scoff at things too holy to be apprehended by men merely of carnal and evil thoughts, yet believe that the city beheld by St. John, in that bright vision of the Christian Apocalypse, that new Jerusalem, of which all Christian men hope to partake, sets forth typically the discovery of the Grand Secret, whereby the most precious and perfect of nature’s works are elicited out of her basest and most crude productions; just as the light and gaudy butterfly, the most beautiful child of the summer’s breeze, breaks forth from the dungeon of a sordid chrysalis.”
“Master Holdforth said nought of this exposition,” said Foster doubtfully; “and moreover, Doctor Alasco, the Holy Writ says that the gold and precious stones of the Holy City are in no sort for those who work abomination, or who frame lies.”
“Well, my son,” said the Doctor, “and what is your inference from thence?”
“That those,” said Foster, “who distil poisons, and administer them in secrecy, can have no portion in those unspeakable riches.”
“You are to distinguish, my son,” replied the alchemist, “betwixt that which is necessarily evil in its progress and in its end also, and that which, being evil, is, nevertheless, capable of working forth good. If, by the death of one person, the happy period shall be brought nearer to us, in which all that is good shall be attained, by wishing its presence — all that is evil escaped, by desiring its absence — in which sickness, and pain, and sorrow shall be the obedient servants of human wisdom, and made to fly at the slightest signal of a sage — in which that which is now richest and rarest shall be within the compass of every one who shall be obedient to the voice of wisdom — when the art of healing shall be lost and absorbed in the one universal medicine when sages shall become monarchs of the earth, and death itself retreat before their frown,— if this blessed consummation of all things can be hastened by the slight circumstance that a frail, earthly body, which must needs partake corruption, shall be consigned to the grave a short space earlier than in the course of nature, what is such a sacrifice to the advancement of the holy Millennium?”
“Millennium is the reign of the Saints,” said Foster, somewhat doubtfully.
“Say it is the reign of the Sages, my son,” answered Alasco; “or rather the reign of Wisdom itself.”
“I touched on the question with Master Holdforth last exercising night,” said Foster; “but he says your doctrine is heterodox, and a damnable and false exposition.”
“He is in the bonds of ignorance, my son,” answered Alasco, “and as yet burning bricks in Egypt; or, at best, wandering in the dry desert of Sinai. Thou didst ill to speak to such a man of such matters. I will, however, give thee proof, and that shortly, which I will defy that peevish divine to confute, though he should strive with me as the magicians strove with Moses before King Pharaoh. I will do projection in thy presence, my son,— in thy very presence — and thine eyes shall witness the truth.”
“Stick to that, learned sage,” said Varney, who at this moment entered the apartment; “if he refuse the testimony of thy tongue, yet how shall he deny that of his own eyes?”
“Varney!” said the adept —“Varney already returned! Hast thou —” he stopped short.
“Have I done mine errand, thou wouldst say?” replied Varney. “I have! And thou,” he added, showing more symptoms of interest than he had hitherto exhibited, “art thou sure thou hast poured forth neither more nor less than the just measure?”
“Ay,” replied the alchemist, “as sure as men can be in these nice proportions, for there is diversity of constitutions.”
“Nay, then,” said Varney, “I fear nothing. I know thou wilt not go a step farther to the devil than thou art justly considered for — thou wert paid to create illness, and wouldst esteem it thriftless prodigality to do murder at the same price. Come, let us each to our chamber we shall see the event tomorrow.”
“What didst thou do to make her swallow it?” said Foster, shuddering.
“Nothing,” answered Varney, “but looked on her with that aspect which governs madmen, women, and children. They told me in St. Luke’s Hospital that I have the right look for overpowering a refractory patient. The keepers made me their compliments on’t; so I know how to win my bread when my court-favour fails me.”
“And art thou not afraid,” said Foster, “lest the dose be disproportioned?”
“If so,” replied Varney, “she will but sleep the sounder, and the fear of that shall not break my rest. Good night, my masters.”
Anthony Foster groaned heavily, and lifted up his hands and eyes. The alchemist intimated his purpose to continue some experiment of high import during the greater part of the night, and the others separated to their places of repose.
Now God be good to me in this wild pilgrimage!
All hope in human aid I cast behind me.
Oh, who would be a woman?— who that fool,
A weeping, pining, faithful, loving woman?
She hath hard measure still where she hopes kindest,
And all her bounties only make ingrates.
Love’s Pilgrimage.
The summer evening was closed, and Janet, just when her longer stay might have occasioned suspicion and inquiry in that zealous household, returned to Cumnor Place, and hastened to the apartment in which she had left her lady. She found her with her head resting on her arms, and these crossed upon a table which stood before her. As Janet came in, she neither looked up nor stirred.
Her faithful attendant ran to her mistress with the speed of lightning, and rousing her at the same time with her hand, conjured the Countess, in the most earnest manner, to look up and say what thus affected her. The unhappy lady raised her head accordingly, and looking on her attendant with a ghastly eye, and cheek as pale as clay —“Janet,” she said, “I have drunk it.”
“God be praised!” said Janet hastily —“I mean, God be praised that it is no worse; the potion will not harm you. Rise, shake this lethargy from your limbs, and this despair from your mind.”
“Janet,” repeated the Countess again, “disturb me not — leave me at peace — let life pass quietly. I am poisoned.”
“You are not, my dearest lady,” answered the maiden eagerly. “What you have swallowed cannot injure you, for the antidote has been taken before it, and I hastened hither to tell you that the means of escape are open to you.”
“Escape!” exclaimed the lady, as she raised herself hastily in her chair, while light returned to her eye and life to her cheek; “but ah! Janet, it comes too late.”
“Not so, dearest lady. Rise, take mine arm, walk through the apartment; let not fancy do the work of poison! So; feel you not now that you are possessed of the full use of your limbs?”
“The torpor seems to diminish,” said the Countess, as, supported by Janet, she walked to and fro in the apartment; “but is it then so, and have I not swallowed a deadly draught? Varney was here since thou wert gone, and commanded me, with eyes in which I read my fate, to swallow yon horrible drug. O Janet! it must be fatal; never was harmless draught served by such a cup-bearer!”
“He did not deem it harmless, I fear,” replied the maiden; “but God confounds the devices of the wicked. Believe me, as I swear by the dear Gospel in which we trust, your life is safe from his practice. Did you not debate with him?”
“The house was silent,” answered the lady —“thou gone — no other but he in the chamber — and he capable of every crime. I did but stipulate he would remove his hateful presence, and I drank whatever he offered.— But you spoke of escape, Janet; can I be so happy?”
“Are you strong enough to bear the tidings, and make the effort?” said the maiden.
“Strong!” answered the Countess. “Ask the hind, when the fangs of the deerhound are stretched to gripe her, if she is strong enough to spring over a chasm. I am equal to every effort that may relieve me from this place.”
“Hear me, then,” said Janet. “One whom I deem an assured friend of yours has shown himself to me in various disguises, and sought speech of me, which — for my mind was not clear on the matter until this evening — I have ever declined. He was the pedlar who brought you goods — the itinerant hawker who sold me books; whenever I stirred abroad I was sure to see him. The event of this night determined me to speak with him. He awaits even now at the postern gate of the park with means for your flight.— But have you strength of body?— have you courage of mind?— can you undertake the enterprise?”
“She that flies from death,” said the lady, “finds strength of body — she that would escape from shame lacks no strength of mind. The thoughts of leaving behind me the villain who menaces both my life and honour would give me strength to rise from my deathbed.”
“In God’s name, then, lady,” said Janet, “I must bid you adieu, and to God’s charge I must commit you!”
“Will you not fly with me, then, Janet?” said the Countess, anxiously. “Am I to lose thee? Is this thy faithful service?”
“Lady, I would fly with you as willingly as bird ever fled from cage, but my doing so would occasion instant discovery and pursuit. I must remain, and use means to disguise the truth for some time. May Heaven pardon the falsehood, because of the necessity!”
“And am I then to travel alone with this stranger?” said the lady. “Bethink thee, Janet, may not this prove some deeper and darker scheme to separate me perhaps from you, who are my only friend?”
“No, madam, do not suppose it,” answered Janet readily; “the youth is an honest youth in his purpose to you, and a friend to Master Tressilian, under whose direction he is come hither.”
“If he be a friend of Tressilian,” said the Countess, “I will commit myself to his charge as to that of an angel sent from heaven; for than Tressilian never breathed mortal man more free of whatever was base, false, or selfish. He forgot himself whenever he could be of use to others. Alas! and how was he requited?”
With eager haste they collected the few necessaries which it was thought proper the Countess should take with her, and which Janet, with speed and dexterity, formed into a small bundle, not forgetting to add such ornaments of intrinsic value as came most readily in her way, and particularly a casket of jewels, which she wisely judged might prove of service in some future emergency. The Countess of Leicester next changed her dress for one which Janet usually wore upon any brief journey, for they judged it necessary to avoid every external distinction which might attract attention. Ere these preparations were fully made, the moon had arisen in the summer heaven, and all in the mansion had betaken themselves to rest, or at least to the silence and retirement of their chambers.
There was no difficulty anticipated in escaping, whether from the house or garden, provided only they could elude observation. Anthony Foster had accustomed himself to consider his daughter as a conscious sinner might regard a visible guardian angel, which, notwithstanding his guilt, continued to hover around him; and therefore his trust in her knew no bounds. Janet commanded her own motions during the daytime, and had a master-key which opened the postern door of the park, so that she could go to the village at pleasure, either upon the household affairs, which were entirely confided to her management, or to attend her devotions at the meeting-house of her sect. It is true the daughter of Foster was thus liberally entrusted under the solemn condition that she should not avail herself of these privileges to do anything inconsistent with the safe-keeping of the Countess; for so her residence at Cumnor Place had been termed, since she began of late to exhibit impatience of the restrictions to which she was subjected. Nor is there reason to suppose that anything short of the dreadful suspicions which the scene of that evening had excited could have induced Janet to violate her word or deceive her father’s confidence. But from what she had witnessed, she now conceived herself not only justified, but imperatively called upon, to make her lady’s safety the principal object of her care, setting all other considerations aside.
The fugitive Countess with her guide traversed with hasty steps the broken and interrupted path, which had once been an avenue, now totally darkened by the boughs of spreading trees which met above their head, and now receiving a doubtful and deceiving light from the beams of the moon, which penetrated where the axe had made openings in the wood. Their path was repeatedly interrupted by felled trees, or the large boughs which had been left on the ground till time served to make them into fagots and billets. The inconvenience and difficulty attending these interruptions, the breathless haste of the first part of their route, the exhausting sensations of hope and fear, so much affected the Countess’s strength, that Janet was forced to propose that they should pause for a few minutes to recover breath and spirits. Both therefore stood still beneath the shadow of a huge old gnarled oak-tree, and both naturally looked back to the mansion which they had left behind them, whose long, dark front was seen in the gloomy distance, with its huge stacks of chimneys, turrets, and clock-house, rising above the line of the roof, and definedly visible against the pure azure blue of the summer sky. One light only twinkled from the extended and shadowy mass, and it was placed so low that it rather seemed to glimmer from the ground in front of the mansion than from one of the windows. The Countess’s terror was awakened. “They follow us!” she said, pointing out to Janet the light which thus alarmed her.
Less agitated than her mistress, Janet perceived that the gleam was stationary, and informed the Countess, in a whisper, that the light proceeded from the solitary cell in which the alchemist pursued his occult experiments. “He is of those,” she added, “who sit up and watch by night that they may commit iniquity. Evil was the chance which sent hither a man whose mixed speech of earthly wealth and unearthly or superhuman knowledge hath in it what does so especially captivate my poor father. Well spoke the good Master Holdforth — and, methought, not without meaning that those of our household should find therein a practical use. ‘There be those,’ he said, ‘and their number is legion, who will rather, like the wicked Ahab, listen to the dreams of the false prophet Zedekiah, than to the words of him by whom the Lord has spoken.’ And he further insisted —‘Ah, my brethren, there be many Zedekiahs among you — men that promise you the light of their carnal knowledge, so you will surrender to them that of your heavenly understanding. What are they better than the tyrant Naas, who demanded the right eye of those who were subjected to him?’ And further he insisted —”
It is uncertain how long the fair Puritan’s memory might have supported her in the recapitulation of Master Holdforth’s discourse; but the Countess now interrupted her, and assured her she was so much recovered that she could now reach the postern without the necessity of a second delay.
They set out accordingly, and performed the second part of their journey with more deliberation, and of course more easily, than the first hasty commencement. This gave them leisure for reflection; and Janet now, for the first time, ventured to ask her lady which way she proposed to direct her flight. Receiving no immediate answer — for, perhaps, in the confusion of her mind this very obvious subject of deliberation had not occurred to the Countess —-Janet ventured to add, “Probably to your father’s house, where you are sure of safety and protection?”
“No, Janet,” said the lady mournfully; “I left Lidcote Hall while my heart was light and my name was honourable, and I will not return thither till my lord’s permission and public acknowledgment of our marriage restore me to my native home with all the rank and honour which he has bestowed on me.”
“And whither will you, then, madam?” said Janet.
“To Kenilworth, girl,” said the Countess, boldly and freely. “I will see these revels — these princely revels — the preparation for which makes the land ring from side to side. Methinks, when the Queen of England feasts within my husband’s halls, the Countess of Leicester should be no unbeseeming guest.”
“I pray God you may be a welcome one!” said Janet hastily.
“You abuse my situation, Janet,” said the Countess, angrily, “and you forget your own.”
“I do neither, dearest madam,” said the sorrowful maiden; “but have you forgotten that the noble Earl has given such strict charges to keep your marriage secret, that he may preserve his court-favour? and can you think that your sudden appearance at his castle, at such a juncture, and in such a presence, will be acceptable to him?”
“Thou thinkest I would disgrace him,” said the Countess; “nay, let go my arm, I can walk without aid and work without counsel.”
“Be not angry with me, lady,” said Janet meekly, “and let me still support you; the road is rough, and you are little accustomed to walk in darkness.”
“If you deem me not so mean as may disgrace my husband,” said the Countess, in the same resentful tone, “you suppose my Lord of Leicester capable of abetting, perhaps of giving aim and authority to, the base proceedings of your father and Varney, whose errand I will do to the good Earl.”
“For God’s sake, madam, spare my father in your report,” said Janet; “let my services, however poor, be some atonement for his errors!”
“I were most unjust, dearest Janet, were it otherwise,” said the Countess, resuming at once the fondness and confidence of her manner towards her faithful attendant, “No, Janet, not a word of mine shall do your father prejudice. But thou seest, my love, I have no desire but to throw my self on my husband’s protection. I have left the abode he assigned for me, because of the villainy of the persons by whom I was surrounded; but I will disobey his commands in no other particular. I will appeal to him alone — I will be protected by him alone; to no other, than at his pleasure, have I or will I communicate the secret union which combines our hearts and our destinies. I will see him, and receive from his own lips the directions for my future conduct. Do not argue against my resolution, Janet; you will only confirm me in it. And to own the truth, I am resolved to know my fate at once, and from my husband’s own mouth; and to seek him at Kenilworth is the surest way to attain my purpose.”
While Janet hastily revolved in her mind the difficulties and uncertainties attendant on the unfortunate lady’s situation, she was inclined to alter her first opinion, and to think, upon the whole, that since the Countess had withdrawn herself from the retreat in which she had been placed by her husband, it was her first duty to repair to his presence, and possess him with the reasons for such conduct. She knew what importance the Earl attached to the concealment of their marriage, and could not but own, that by taking any step to make it public without his permission, the Countess would incur, in a high degree, the indignation of her husband. If she retired to her father’s house without an explicit avowal of her rank, her situation was likely greatly to prejudice her character; and if she made such an avowal, it might occasion an irreconcilable breach with her husband. At Kenilworth, again, she might plead her cause with her husband himself, whom Janet, though distrusting him more than the Countess did, believed incapable of being accessory to the base and desperate means which his dependants, from whose power the lady was now escaping, might resort to, in order to stifle her complaints of the treatment she had received at their hands. But at the worst, and were the Earl himself to deny her justice and protection, still at Kenilworth, if she chose to make her wrongs public, the Countess might have Tressilian for her advocate, and the Queen for her judge; for so much Janet had learned in her short conference with Wayland. She was, therefore, on the whole, reconciled to her lady’s proposal of going towards Kenilworth, and so expressed herself; recommending, however, to the Countess the utmost caution in making her arrival known to her husband,
“Hast thou thyself been cautious, Janet?” said the Countess; “this guide, in whom I must put my confidence, hast thou not entrusted to him the secret of my condition?”
“From me he has learned nothing,” said Janet; “nor do I think that he knows more than what the public in general believe of your situation.”
“And what is that?” said the lady.
“That you left your father’s house — but I shall offend you again if I go on,” said Janet, interrupting herself.
“Nay, go on,” said the Countess; “I must learn to endure the evil report which my folly has brought upon me. They think, I suppose, that I have left my father’s house to follow lawless pleasure. It is an error which will soon be removed — indeed it shall, for I will live with spotless fame, or I shall cease to live.— I am accounted, then, the paramour of my Leicester?”
“Most men say of Varney,” said Janet; “yet some call him only the convenient cloak of his master’s pleasures; for reports of the profuse expense in garnishing yonder apartments have secretly gone abroad, and such doings far surpass the means of Varney. But this latter opinion is little prevalent; for men dare hardly even hint suspicion when so high a name is concerned, lest the Star Chamber should punish them for scandal of the nobility.”
“They do well to speak low,” said the Countess, “who would mention the illustrious Dudley as the accomplice of such a wretch as Varney.— We have reached the postern. Ah! Janet, I must bid thee farewell! Weep not, my good girl,” said she, endeavouring to cover her own reluctance to part with her faithful attendant under an attempt at playfulness; “and against we meet again, reform me, Janet, that precise ruff of thine for an open rabatine of lace and cut work, that will let men see thou hast a fair neck; and that kirtle of Philippine chency, with that bugle lace which befits only a chambermaid, into three-piled velvet and cloth of gold — thou wilt find plenty of stuffs in my chamber, and I freely bestow them on you. Thou must be brave, Janet; for though thou art now but the attendant of a distressed and errant lady, who is both nameless and fameless, yet, when we meet again, thou must be dressed as becomes the gentlewoman nearest in love and in service to the first Countess in England.”
“Now, may God grant it, dear lady!” said Janet —“not that I may go with gayer apparel, but that we may both wear our kirtles over lighter hearts.”
By this time the lock of the postern door had, after some hard wrenching, yielded to the master-key; and the Countess, not without internal shuddering, saw herself beyond the walls which her husband’s strict commands had assigned to her as the boundary of her walks. Waiting with much anxiety for their appearance, Wayland Smith stood at some distance, shrouding himself behind a hedge which bordered the high-road.
“Is all safe?” said Janet to him anxiously, as he approached them with caution.
“All,” he replied; “but I have been unable to procure a horse for the lady. Giles Gosling, the cowardly hilding, refused me one on any terms whatever, lest, forsooth, he should suffer. But no matter; she must ride on my palfrey, and I must walk by her side until I come by another horse. There will be no pursuit, if you, pretty Mistress Janet, forget not thy lesson.”
“No more than the wise widow of Tekoa forgot the words which Joab put into her mouth,” answered Janet. “Tomorrow, I say that my lady is unable to rise.”
“Ay; and that she hath aching and heaviness of the head a throbbing at the heart, and lists not to be disturbed. Fear not; they will take the hint, and trouble thee with few questions — they understand the disease,”
“But,” said the lady, “My absence must be soon discovered, and they will murder her in revenge. I will rather return than expose her to such danger.”
“Be at ease on my account, madam,” said Janet; “I would you were as sure of receiving the favour you desire from those to whom you must make appeal, as I am that my father, however angry, will suffer no harm to befall me.”
The Countess was now placed by Wayland upon his horse, around the saddle of which he had placed his cloak, so folded as to make her a commodious seat.
“Adieu, and may the blessing of God wend with you!” said Janet, again kissing her mistress’s hand, who returned her benediction with a mute caress. They then tore themselves asunder, and Janet, addressing Wayland, exclaimed, “May Heaven deal with you at your need, as you are true or false to this most injured and most helpless lady!”
“Amen! dearest Janet,” replied Wayland; “and believe me, I will so acquit myself of my trust as may tempt even your pretty eyes, saintlike as they are, to look less scornfully on me when we next meet.”
The latter part of this adieu was whispered into Janet’s ear and although she made no reply to it directly, yet her manner, influenced, no doubt, by her desire to leave every motive in force which could operate towards her mistress’s safety, did not discourage the hope which Wayland’s words expressed. She re-entered the postern door, and locked it behind her; while, Wayland taking the horse’s bridle in his hand, and walking close by its head, they began in silence their dubious and moonlight journey.
Although Wayland Smith used the utmost dispatch which he could make, yet this mode of travelling was so slow, that when morning began to dawn through the eastern mist, he found himself no farther than about ten miles distant from Cumnor. “Now, a plague upon all smooth-spoken hosts!” said Wayland, unable longer to suppress his mortification and uneasiness. “Had the false loon, Giles Gosling, but told me plainly two days since that I was to reckon nought upon him, I had shifted better for myself. But your hosts have such a custom of promising whatever is called for that it is not till the steed is to be shod you find they are out of iron. Had I but known, I could have made twenty shifts; nay, for that matter, and in so good a cause, I would have thought little to have prigged a prancer from the next common — it had but been sending back the brute to the headborough. The farcy and the founders confound every horse in the stables of the Black Bear!”
The lady endeavoured to comfort her guide, observing that the dawn would enable him to make more speed.
“True, madam,” he replied; “but then it will enable other folk to take note of us, and that may prove an ill beginning of our journey. I had not cared a spark from anvil about the matter had we been further advanced on our way. But this Berkshire has been notoriously haunted, ever since I knew the country, with that sort of malicious elves who sit up late and rise early for no other purpose than to pry into other folk’s affairs. I have been endangered by them ere now. But do not fear,” he added, “good madam; for wit, meeting with opportunity, will not miss to find a salve for every sore.”
The alarms of her guide made more impression on the Countess’s mind than the comfort which he judged fit to administer along with it. She looked anxiously around her. and as the shadows withdrew from the landscape, and the heightening glow of the eastern sky promised the speedy rise of the sun, expected at every turn that the increasing light would expose them to the view of the vengeful pursuers, or present some dangerous and insurmountable obstacle to the prosecution of their journey. Wayland Smith perceived her uneasiness, and, displeased with himself for having given her cause of alarm, strode on with affected alacrity, now talking to the horse as one expert in the language of the stable, now whistling to himself low and interrupted snatches of tunes, and now assuring the lady there was no danger, while at the same time he looked sharply around to see that there was nothing in sight which might give the lie to his words while they were issuing from his mouth. Thus did they journey on, until an unexpected incident gave them the means of continuing their pilgrimage with more speed and convenience.